Copyright © 2007 Jack Maeby
All rights reserved, Wild Child Publishing.
This excerpt contains some strong language. We do not recommend it for those under 18 years of age or for any one who is bothered by violence or profanity.
"Get off me, motherfucker!" a man shouted when I stumbled over him. My knee slammed into his soft belly. Cold beer splashed on my face as I plowed through a table, propelled forward by the unseen hand.
Soon, I lost all sense of place. I was flying through a bottomless void filled with screams and explosive flashes. The shapes started moving again. The massive darkness overpowered small rays of light in my head. I said a silent prayer that it would all be over soon.
The clipped echoes of frightened whispers told me I was in a smaller space. The cold room smelled like hairspray, perfume and disinfectant. The voices were hushed and female, except for the one closest to me.
"You all right, Jimmy?" he whispered.
It was Tommy Laidlaw, the organ player who got me most of my gigs. Like me, he was white, but he was several years older, a veteran of the local music scene.
"Laid?" I asked in an unsteady whisper. "Did you grab me?"
"Shit, yeah. What did I tell you? When the bullets start flyin', this is where you go. Motherfuckers never think to come in here."
The gunshots seemed like a far off dream, but the panic in the small room was real. I heard sobs and labored breathing all around.
A girl moaned. "Oh, Lord! Are we gon' die?"
"We are if you don't shut your God-damn mouth!" a woman answered.
Laid snickered softly. I turned in the direction I'd last heard his voice, banging my head into something hard. It rang metallically, like a cheap cymbal. Sharp pain radiated from my temple. Once the ringing stopped, an eerie silence settled in.
From outside of our hideout, a tense male voice shouted, "Somebody turn on the God-damn lights!"
Moments later an ancient fluorescent bulb flickered weakly to life above us, casting its yellow glow on the dirty porcelain sinks and brown female faces surrounding us. Grateful for the light, I looked around the room. The metal I'd collided with was a box on the wall with pink letters on it: Kotex.
A tall, dark-skinned woman, with full lips and buck teeth, cocked a hand onto her hip and stepped forward. "You boys a little out yo' element, ain't 'cha?"
"You can say that again, Gladys," a round, whiskey-voiced lady said with a smile. "They look like two boiled potatoes swimmin' in a pan full of brown gravy."
A spontaneous roar of laughter echoed off the bathroom's tile walls. The panic inside faded. Laid and I slunk out the door with battered pride, but at least we hadn't gotten shot. I knew that my comeback had taken a serious detour.
My hands shook as I accepted a cool bottle of beer from Laidlaw.
"You all right?" he asked.
"Yeah. I wasn't ready for that."
"I hear you. But if you're gonna play this music, then you're gonna wind up in shit holes like this sometimes. Mostly it's all right, but once in a while some midget feels like he has to shoot some other midget, and you gotta know what to do. Just hit the deck, and keep movin', either outside or into the basement, or when all else fails, the ladies' bathroom."
"Thanks, Laid," I said. "It just happened so fast."
"Sure. Most of the time, guys in the band survive shit like this. The only time a musician gets killed is when somebody wants him dead."
I knew that Laid's words were meant to be comforting, but the idea that anyone might want a musician dead sent a shiver coursing through me. I took a deep breath and swallowed half of the beer in one pull.