All Is True: The Naked Girl in the Treehouse
Chapter 13
A Hero in Laramie
The invading Chevy Impala squealed into the dead end of the alleyway where David Carpenter and I were parked with Hadi and Winona for our impromptu concert.
“I don’t want this,” I wailed to David, foreseeing the most violent of trouble. “We don’t need it — it’s none of our business!”
“Oh for Christ’s sake, Thom One,” he seethed. “Grow up and be a man!”
I was on the edge of tears but David had both fists balled up already. For a moment I thought he was going to hit me but then he jumped out of the car, just as the Impala skidded to a stop in a flurry of gravel and both its doors were flung open.
“You couple of Sioux suckers!” yelled the driver.
My eyes were open but my mind went black. I still can’t believe what was happening. I have no memory of getting out of the car or even of grappling with the door. All I know now is that my face was right up against this punk’s face, same height as me, same age, same mad look in his eyes. And blam! Actually the sound was more like a nasty crack as my fist landed squarely on this shit-head’s upper lip.
He screamed and I inhaled. My fist hurt like hell. His mouth spouted blood.
David dived into a yelling match with the other fellow while Hadi and Winona leaped out of the Plymouth’s back seat and really started to make a noise. The dead end of the alleyway echoed with mayhem.
Without knowing what exactly it was doing, my right arm swung back once more and my brain went black again. Hadi had her arms around me, holding my upper body from behind and screaming so loud my left ear went deaf. She pulled me back so my spine went the wring way and I saw our two adversaries scramble back into their Chevy, then squeal into a reverse-gear retreat, the sound of crunching metal as they did so.
“They hit a dustbin!” yelled David with glee.
“Trash can,” I corrected him.
Hadi swiveled me around and violently kissed me on the mouth, her lips and tongue willfully violating my facial space. Many seconds of bliss. No more pain in my fist. An unbeatable high point in our journey across America.
What happened next was almost as good.
As we drove backward out of the alley at a more seemly pace than the Impala, but still striking that tipped-up garbage can, Winona made a pronouncement from the back seat.
“We got news for you two boys,” she said as David negotiated the car back onto Laramie’s Main Street and aimed it out of town.
“You’re my hero, Thom,” interrupted Hadi, massaging my shoulders and neck and giggling. But there was better to come.
It began with a pronouncement from Winona.
“Murray the K is not the fifth Beatle any more than you two are Rolling Stones!”
I died a little, my life flashing before my eyes, littered with images of my lost girl Mary weeping over my absence.
“What are you talking about, Win?” protested David.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “Pull over, OK?”
We parked on a side street and she unfolded a piece of paper and was smoothing it out and glaring at us as we swiveled around to find out what was going on.
“This is a press release I ripped out of a magazine from some fellow named Andrew Loog Oldham, OK?”
David and I both swallowed hard. Yet, our determination actually seemed to harden, I could feel it. Such is the power of the satanic, which by now we certainly had in common with Mr. Jagger and his band.
“I’m going to read these little biographies of Brian Jones and Keith Richard and we’re gonna quiz you about them to see if you’re real.
“Go right ahead,” I murmured.
“You’re my hero, Thom,” breathed Hadi.
But at this particular moment I could not get Mary out of my mind.
David spoke up. “This is blood curdling, Win,” he laughed. “We can’t wait for your little test.” She blew him a kiss and sighed sarcastically.
“So here we go,” she began, piercing me with her eyes. “Brian Jones, you were born in Cheltenham.”
“That’s true, I was!” I said, a little too eagerly.
“You smoke 60 cigarettes a day.”
“True!”
“You’ve had a lot of different jobs in your 19 years, including coal lorry driving. What’s a lorry?” she asked triumphantly.
“A truck,” I answered, triumphantly.”
“You spent a years hitchhiking on the Continent,” she read. “What’s the Continent?”
“Europe,” I shouted.
“You’re fascinated by railways. What’s a railway?”
“The railroad, Win! And I win!”
“All right. Now, Keith, it’s your turn.”
All four of us were giggling at this point.
“Black-haired Keith,” read Winona, “was born in Dartford 19 years ago and has worked in a post office. What’s a post office?”
“Where you buy stamps and mail letters,” answered David.
“Has one romance in his life — his guitar —and would like a house-boat on the Thames.”
She pronounced it with a soft “th,” not as in “Tems.”
“It’s Thames!” declared David with the English pronunciation” “I win!”
“OK, I give up,” said Winona. “But why don’t you just list the hits you’ve had on … Decca, is it?” she read from the cutting.
I swallowed hard at this, not sure either of us could do it.
“‘Paint It Black,’ ‘Long, Long While,’ ‘Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby,’ ‘Who’s Driving Your Plane,’ ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together,’ ‘Ruby Tuesday,’ ‘We Love You’ and ‘Dandelion!’” said David, truly triumphantly. I was proud of him.
“So, Brian and Keith,” said Winona while Hadi laughed long and hard. “Welcome to the wild, wild west.”
David and I immediately broke into a rendition of “If I Fell” by the Beatles.
“I have fallen in love with you,” Hadi told me a couple of hours later at a White Castle hamburger joint, sitting separately from David and Winona, both busy cooing at each other.
“That test was easy,” I told her. “But why did you both think we weren’t really the Rolling Stones?”
Next week: A brilliant answer to that question and, at last, the naked girl in the treehouse. Who really will she be?
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