The Naked Girl, Chapter 4, Stones Comes Alive

A serial novel by Mark Howell

Chapter Four

The Stones Come Alive

The story so far: Our two heroes, Thom One and David Carpenter (Thom is your narrator in these episodes), have arrived in America from England for an adventure before attending college. The year is 1964, just months after the murder of the president. On the boat from Britain to New York they meet a bevy of co-eds from Painesville, Ohio, and are now on their way to visit them at Lake Erie College in a beat-up Plymouth Savoy they purchased for next to nothing from two kindly beatniks in Times Square. All is true and, as of now, they have yet to encounter any naked girl in a tree house.

It was our first real fight. Every day, making our separate ways back home from work to our weekly rental on 30^th Street, we’d each find ourselves gazing up Fifth Avenue to its horizon uptown, yearning to just get in our car and drive toward that sunny sky hailing us from the other end of Manhattan, luring us to the West Coast beyond. Song of the open road: The sexiest and most maddening sound of all. We’d been working and waiting long enough.

Now we were actually on the road, David driving, punching a chrome button on the dash of the Plymouth Savoy each time he wanted to kick us into a faster gear, a priceless process to anyone who’d learned to drive on an Austin 7.

And for the first time the two of us were quarreling. “Of course we have to go to Niagara Falls!” I yelled at him! Are you joking? How can we miss Niagara Falls?”

“Unless you want us to pluck apples in Iowa, we have enough cash to get us to my uncle in L.A., and that’s it. Even at 30 cents per gallon of petrol,” he responded.

I realized he wanted to get to Painesville to meet up with the girls as fast as possible, which at the rate we were traveling was 75 mph.

Forsaking Niagara Falls seemed a big sacrifice to me. But what did I know, really?

David increased our speed, maybe to blast past the Falls exit. We were on the brand-new Interstate system, built to follow Eisenhower’s orders that every slope and corner be safely negotiable by a convoy of intercontinental missiles at 60 mph. This was something we’d been craving to experience ever since we’d learned how to drive.

Even the signage was unbelievable — and uniform throughout the country! Our own land of leading speedsters like Stirling Moss and Mike Hawthorne would never have anything to match it, condemned for all time to loopy lanes and cobbled streets that we drove like maniacs anyway.

It wasn’t long before a black-and-white sedan in the far lane started to pace us, steadily drawing closer alongside for the driver to take a closer look. And why not? Scrawled on the shiny, aluminum-blue finish of our vehicle, in big white letters, was this: THE ROLLING STONES: London to Los Angeles.

The cop brought down his front window on the passenger side and mouthed what looked like the words, “You boys are coming with me!”

“Open the window!” I yelled at David, who was fumbling with the knobs by his side never having operated an electric window in his life.

The breeze whistled in, but David was not slowing. Instead he was saying, in the cop’s direction, “Excuse me?” The officer blinked at this and then barked, “Follow me!” swerving in front of us to us to lead the way to the upcoming exit.

David finally squealed to a halt behind him on a dusty roadside. He was indeed the sheriff. The badge said so and so did the way he fingered the holsters of those twin revolvers.

“So you boys are the Rolling Stones?”

“Brian Jones,” I bleated. “And this is Keith Richards.”

“Richard,” said the sheriff. “Where in hell did you learn how to drive?”

“Keith,” corrected David. “I’m Keith.”

“My daughter is very taken with you Rolling Stones,” said the sheriff. And with the air of a hunter dragging home the day’s prey, he added, “I’m thinkin’ that you two boys are gonna have to come with me.”

And so we did, following his black-and-white with its siren on the roof and searchlight at the front window, kicking up a cloud of dust and obscuring any hope of knowing where we were or how, at this point, we might ever get out of here.

I swiveled around to reach the back seat and rummage for David’s guitar. “What if they ask us to sing?” I said.

“Then we’ll sing,” said David, “like we did on the boat.”

“I don’t know any Stones songs,” I declared. “Nor does anyone,” countered David. “They haven’t even begun their tour here yet. They don’t have a hit in the States yet. We’ll sing Beatles songs. Follow my lead.”

I groaned, hauling the guitar over to the front seat. It was cocktail hour on a warm day in May, a small-town sheriff had just shanghaied us and there was about a half-hour before we were on stage in the United States of America. I could picture the coming catastrophe.

We arrived at a rather neat little farmyard by the side of a two-story house. Chickens clucked around the sheriff’s car while we parked ours by the side of a hayrick.

“Hey, Debby,” yelled our captor. “Lookee see what I have here!” Debby appeared at the front door. “It’s two of them Rolling Stones.”

“Lordee, Walter, what have you done now?” she said. “Sally!” she called. “Come on down.”

As David and I clambered out of the car, Sweet 17 arrived in the yard behind her mother. It was all smiles from us as we sauntered up to introduce ourselves. Debby was smiling, too, inspecting the lettering on the side of the car, “London to Los Angeles,” while Sally was essentially hysterical.

Sheriff Walt soon beckoned us to join him for some refreshment inside, where we couldn’t help but notice Debby in the kitchen, making several calls on the wall phone.

Uh-oh. Show time.

The rest is really a blur. About 20 couples began to arrive, many with children, the yard and driveway steadily filling up with, to our eyes, enormous automobiles.

These were folk who could not wait for the fun. We were all introduced to each other and by the time dusk fell, David and I were comfortably seated on the lower stoop of the stepped haystack facing the front of the house.

Our audience, pretty well pickled already, their kids racing about the place, began to hush as David theatrically started to tune his guitar.

He started with “Till There Was You,” not strictly a Beatles number since it came from “The Music Man,” but it was included on a recent album and everyone seemed to know the words. It was a song that might bring to light what hidden talents we had, mine for singing in counter-tenor, hitting those high notes, and David’s for sounding like a whole orchestra when strumming his guitar full tilt. My God, I thought, as he started up, he’s fantastic; he’s doing the wall of sound thing. I began to realize we might actually get away with this. The next song brought a round of applause with its opening notes.

Oh please, say to me

          You’ll let me be your man

          And please, say to me

          You’ll let me hold your haaand!

Speaking for myself, I got a little cocky at this point, with the audience singing along, oblivious at this particular point in 1964 whether they might be listening to the work of the Beatles or the Stones.

I caught the eye of our host’s daughter, Sally, as she laughed and clapped beside us on the hayrick. Brazenly, I beckoned her to come with me as David launched into a strumming solo. I raced behind where they were sitting, turning to check that she’d followed. Behind the hayrick I held her hand like the song said and in the delirium of the music I kissed her on the lips, the prettiest girl I’d touched since Jane back in England.

And when I touch you I feel happy

          Inside

          It’s such a feeling that my love

          I can’t hide.

She laughed and laughed. “I’m T —“ I said carelessly. “I know who you are, Brian,” she said. I grabbed her hand and we scampered up the back of the haystack and on to the top, where we surveyed the heads of the audience, turning up to look at us.

Yeah, you’ve got that something

I think you’ll understand

When I’ll say that something

I wanna hold your hand

I wanna hold your hand

I wanna hold your hand.

I led Sally leap by leap, in a gentle dance down the front of the rick.

And at each step, holding her hand, I caught her eye and I smiled and she smiled deeply back. And I saw her eyes flash at me like I’d never ever seen a person’s eyes flash before.

We danced our way down the hay, step by step, holding hands just like the song said, laughing along with the audience’s applause, and I knew then that my life had met its moment.

All is true. The story continues…