Previously in The Blues & Billie Armstrong…
“You could be an artist here,” I said. “The parents said you’re free to leave when you turn eighteen, but you don’t have to, you could change your mind.”
“We’ll see,” she said.
Seven cars and a big diesel truck whooshed by, the drivers showing no interest in picking up two scraggly, sweating teenagers.
Tired, hot, silent. I was trying to calculate in my head how long it might take to walk the twenty-some miles to Lupoyoma when we spotted another potential ride approaching in the distance. We both resumed the thumbs-out position. Then I had the sensation I recognized this indistinct hump of white speeding toward us. As it got closer, I heard the unmistakable rattle and click of a Volkswagen engine, and I said “Oh no!” and reached for Billie’s arm but too late.
Aunt Laurette slammed on the brakes, downshifted, and her VW Beetle skidded to a stop right beside us. The radio was up loud, and even outside the car we could hear American Woman by The Guess Who. Laurette turned the volume knob, reached across the passenger seat and rolled down the window. “Archer Edward King… what in the hell are you doing out here?”
Billie froze in place with a grip on the door handle, probably wondering why this strange woman knew my name. We both peered in through the open window. Laurette, looking like some variety show go-go dancer—gold corduroy mini-skirt, white boots, a low-cut peasant blouse white and sheer enough I could see the outlines of her lacy bra. Black hair teased up in a puffy mound and wraparound sunglasses with red plastic frames that matched her lipstick.
She took off the sunglasses as if to get a better look. “And who are you?”
Billie, by contrast, in worn, patched, cutoff overalls, braless in her sweat-stained tie-dyed tank top, wild wind-tossed hair and Janis Joplin sunglasses. “Um, I’m Billie Armstrong.”
“Ah, of course. The newest member of our so-called happy family. Well, I’m Laurette.” She reached out a hand.
“Oh, the cool aunt!” Billie shook the hand through the window, smiled her big smile, opened the car door, called “shotgun!” and took the front seat while I was still standing in the gravel imagining my cool Aunt Laurette’s betrayal at a future family gathering. By the way, I picked up Archer the other day. Standing on the side of the road, hitchhiking. The little bum.
Billie leaned the seat forward so I could squeeze behind and into the back. The VW motor rattled idly and The Guess Who sang on at a lower volume.
Laurette waited for me to settle, turned and looked over the seat. “Not like I never cut school in my day, you know.” She flashed a quick wink, all thick mascara and her signature blue flame eyeshadow. “But, really, what are you kids doing way out here?”
I opened my mouth to say something, but Billie spoke first. “Shopping!” she said, holding up the bag from The Bus Stop. And she started off on one of her excited rambles, how much she loved second-hand stores and heard there was a great one out this way and dragged me with her so she wouldn’t have to hitchhike alone, and Laurette just nodded along looking unconvinced, so Billie opened the bag and showed off the embroidery around the neck of the weird dress she’d bought, the one she said was “a far out bohemian caftan,” whatever that means, and how she really dug all the cool things in the store and her line about a thousand lives, and Laurette turned back to me with this bug-eyed smile like Is this girl for real!?
And I saw again how Billie could talk her way right into someone’s heart. Then Laurette put the red sunglasses back on, shifted into gear, pulled onto the highway and headed for Lupoyoma.
Once the VW got up to speed, I couldn’t hear well, and I was still worried about Laurette’s reaction to the situation, so I stuck my head up between the front seats as Billie rhapsodized over the entire inventory of the store. Meanwhile the Supremes sang Someday We’ll Be Together with those butter-smooth girl harmonies, the KFRC disc jockey laughed at his own corny puns, and the commercials sang of car batteries and candy bars.
“It is kind of a cool store,” I said.
“And I just loved Frankie, the lady who works there, do you know her?” Billie said.
“Frankie Watkins?” Laurette said. “You don’t want to get too close to her.” She didn’t seem to notice the way Billie and I both did a double-take on the name Watkins, probably had no idea that name was on every one of the envelopes we’d found in my mother’s hatbox: Evelyn King c/o Mrs. Watkins. “She’s what you call persona non grata in Lupoyoma county,” said Laurette.
“Oh, why’s that?” I tried to fake indifference, but what I really wanted was for Laurette to slam on the brakes and spin an immediate u-turn so we could go back to The Bus Stop and interrogate Frankie Watkins.
“She got busted a couple years ago… went to jail for harboring a fugitive. They say she was trying to help some draft dodger get to Canada.” Laurette said.
“And they put her in jail?” Billie sounded indignant.
Laurette chuckled. “Yeah, this ain’t Berkeley, you know. Surprised she’s still around. I heard the bank took her house while she was locked up. Now she must be living in that damn store. And that could be risky. Some of these flag-waving rednecks around here won’t be happy till she’s gone.”
As casual as I could muster, I wondered aloud. “So, what happened to the draft dodger?”
“Heard they caught him up by Eureka and made him join the army.” She shook her head. “Poor guy probably ended up in Vietnam. This motherfucking war.”
Billie sighed and threw up her hands. “That’s what Frankie said.”
I withdrew into the back of the car, my mind spinning around this new information. We’d been looking for J.R. Cole without really thinking about the other name on all those envelopes. Then we’d been face-to-face with Mrs Watkins without realizing who she was. The story Laurette told fit what we already knew. Frankie Watkins would probably know more. She might even know where to find Cole.
Up in front, Laurette couldn’t have known what it meant to us, and Billie never let on. She just kept hopscotching from one thing to another in her normal cascade of words and busy arms, and Laurette occasionally interjected, sometimes wry and cautionary, but sometimes excited and entertained by Billie’s expansiveness. They must’ve hit thirty topics in a twenty minute drive. Most of it went by me in a blur, muddied with the drone of the rear engine, the music, and the outbursts of the disc jockey.
Billie said something about Tricky Dick Nixon, and ranted how Doc Meaney had refused to give her "The Pill" and called her promiscuous, then a story about a truck driver who picked her up hitchhiking and took her to see Elvis in Las Vegas; she impersonated the truck driver and Elvis too, and Laurette laughed and slapped the steering wheel. They jumped around subject to subject, story to story—boys, jobs, women’s lib, more hitchhiking adventures, I only caught pieces of it. But at one point I clearly heard Laurette say, “I wish I was that brave at seventeen,” and it came out kind of like sarcasm but with a touch of sadness underneath.
Billie said she’d had some rough times, too. She’d been broke and hungry, ripped off, beat up, locked up. “And worse,” she said, and I wasn’t sure what that meant but Laurette looked over and gave her a somber nod like she understood all too well.
When Billie rattled on about her dream of being an artist and what a nowhere backasswards town Lupoyoma was, and how it might drive her absolutely madhouse insane, Laurette said, “Trust me, this can be a dangerous town for a girl with actual ambition, especially if you’re not afraid to speak your mind.”
And Billie said, “That’s me all over! Big ideas and a big mouth to boot! Guess I’m screwed!” And they both cracked up laughing.
Laurette reached over and turned up the radio. “I love this song,” she said. It was that Everybody’s Talkin’ song from the Midnight Cowboy movie that was banned from Lupoyoma theaters. Outside the car, California poppies bloomed like fire on the hillsides and the colors rushed by the side windows in a smear—green and gold and orange.
As we pulled up to the curb in front of the house on Fourth Street, Billie asked Laurette if she had any Midol, and Laurette said, “Cramps, huh?” and told her to check the glove compartment.
“What’s Midol?” I said. And they seemed to think that was a funny question. Billie showed me a little tin container that said: FOR FAST RELIEF OF FUNCTIONAL MENSTRUAL PAIN AND ACCOMPANYING CRAMPS, HEADACHE, BLUES.
It was clear they expected a thirteen-year-old boy to be embarrassed or at least uncomfortable with the mention of the menstrual cycle. And, normally, I might have been. But I don’t think they got the reaction they wanted because I was too distracted by the curious idea that this particular medication claimed THE BLUES as one of the afflictions it could remedy.
I was standing on the curb and the two women were still talking, Billie hanging on the open door of the Volkswagen. Laurette said, “Anyway, if you really want a job, I hear they’re looking for a waitress at the Weeping Willow.”
“Oh, my dream job,” Billie said.
“Hey, you don’t have to make a career out of it,” Laurette said. “It’s part-time, minimum wage, but a girl like you would probably make decent tips.”
“Yeah?”
“Think about it, let me know. I could put in a word.”
I guess it was around three o’clock. The parents weren’t home from work yet. We watched the VW disappear up the street. Billie handed me the bag of stuff from Frankie’s store and said she was going to visit Alice at the library.
I said, “You heard what Laurette said about Frankie, right? We didn’t realize who we were talking to. We gotta go back and talk to her soon as we can.”
“Oh, for sure man, for sure,” Billie said.
The Blues & Billie Armstrong is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance of the fictional characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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