Eddie and the Cruisers Read online

  He hangs between …’

  Who was that? I forget the name.”

  “Alexander Pope,” I replied, ashamed of myself. I remembered the name. But I’d forgotten the lines.

  “Yeah, Pope. I use his stuff for a sign-off now and then. Some of these kids, they think I made it up myself. He dead?”

  “Pope? Yes.”

  “A long time? More than twenty-seven years?”

  “A lot longer.”

  “Nobody’s gonna sue me then. Public domain. Knocks ’em out, these apple-knockers. Hey, how about …

  ‘Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;

  Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled;

  The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.’

  Same guy, isn’t it? Pope?”

  “Yes.”

  “I figured it was. Slow down, kid. It’s on the right, just past the welding-supplies place.”

  The highway and the motel Doc lived in had grown old together, bypassed by better roads and newer lodgings. It was a cabin court, a sad little place with individual bungalows and empty garages to collect last year’s leaves and a “Vacancy” sign they didn’t even bother turning on.

  “They may look like shacks on the outside,” Doc said, as he motioned me through the door and reached for the light switch, “but you’d be surprised at the interior.”

  It was a total, wall-to-wall trashing. Everything that could be lifted was upside down: chairs, lamps, desk, table. Everything that could be cut was slashed: pillows, cushions, clothing, suitcases. What they couldn’t toss or cut, they’d smashed: alarm clock, radio, plates and glasses, cups and saucers. They’d turned on the water in the kitchen and bathroom, started fires in the living room and bedroom, and left without sticking around to see which one won.

  “Maid’s day off,” Doc said.

  “What happened?”

  “Last night. When I got home from the studio. I wanted you to see what they did. See, kid, it’s like the punch line to the old joke. ‘I might be paranoid, but that doesn’t mean they’re not after me.’”

  “Who’s after you?”

  “Music lovers!”

  “Why?”

  “They think I’m into something. They think I have something they want. Too bad you weren’t around last night. You could have told them I’m a worthless crock of shit.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Don’t extend yourself. No need to clean up. I’ll just move over to another cabin. There’s nine of ’em, all empty. Anyway, they’ll keep comin’ back at me till they get what they want. Beer okay?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he disappeared inside. I heard him moving through the puddles in the kitchen. I sat outside in one of two metal garden chairs that had escaped the holocaust.

  “It’s warm. Sorry.” He came back out and sat next to me. When he snapped open the can, it spurted out onto his shirt and pants.

  “I wondered why they left the beer.” He handed me the open can after it stopped foaming and opened the second one more carefully, holding it out in front of him till it calmed down. Then he drained it in a swallow.

  “You still haven’t figured it out, have you?” he said.

  “No.”

  “Try. Think about it. What could they be after? What do I have that’s worth stealing? Was it my Sony radio? My Robert Hall suit? My Wilkinson blades?”

  “Doc, I can’t …”

  “Don’t give up yet. I’ll give you a clue. Two clues. This radio station I work for is—what would you say?—obscure? rustic? But my name does show up in various broadcasting directories. And on the union rolls. That’s one clue. And I’ll remind you that I was manager of Eddie Wilson and the Parkway Cruisers, and every record you guys ever made had my name on it as producer. In short, I’m not hard to find, if you want to find me. And someone obviously does. What I want you to tell me is … why?”

  I sat there for a while, trying to look thoughtful, but I didn’t have the faintest idea. There were, of course, any number of reasons why someone might be after Doc Robbins.

  “I know what you’re thinking. A guy like Doc, no telling how many trash cans he’s knocked over in his time. Bad checks, bogus contracts, broken promises, it could be anything. And it sure as hell could be. Except they called me at the studio last night, from here, just when they were leaving. They told me what they wanted. I told them I didn’t have it. They were not convinced. And it has to do with Eddie and the Cruisers, all right. It has to do with you. They can’t get it from me, they could come looking for you.”

  “Doc, for Christ’s sake, what are they after?”

  “The tapes.”

  “What tapes?”

  “From Lakehurst.”

  • • •

  It’s halfway between New York and Atlantic City. When we were there, the Lakewood area was already on the skids. I remembered Hasidic Jews with pale skins and dark suits, cautiously sunning on the verandahs of ancient kosher hotels that were subject to suspicious fires in the off-season. I remembered blacks, a generation away from tenant farming, who crowded into frame houses on the edge of town and sold tomatoes and peaches along the highway. I only saw them: in those days, James Brown was a secret they were keeping to themselves.

  The month in nearby Lakehurst was Eddie’s idea. First he called it a vacation, but we saw through that. What Eddie wanted was some time off to work with Wendell.

  “A month in the studio!” Sally jeered. “Just when we were gettin’ hot. A month to … compose? Who pays you for being creative?!”

  Hopkins went back to Westfield. I retired to the back room at Vince’s. And Sally returned home to Philadelphia. He was the one who hurt the most. I remember the morning we dropped Wendell and Eddie off at the studio Doc had found for them, a place whose acoustics, he claimed, “couldn’t be duplicated for a million bucks.”

  “Huck and Jim in New Jersey,” I joked, as we drove down a winding dirt road through the pine barrens. Wendell and Eddie sat quietly in back. I was up front with Sally. Hopkins had already split.

  “Hey, Eddie,” Sally heckled, “what say you write a song about how them big Jewish hotels burn down in the winters. Insurance fires. You call it ‘Jewish Lightning.’ Can’t miss!”

  Sally hooted when he saw what Doc had rented: a forlorn quonset at the end of the road. While I helped Eddie and Wendell unpack their gear, Sally worked himself into a manic fit. First he theorized that the hut was a Nazi headquarters; he knew that the Hindenburg had crashed and burned just two miles away. Or maybe it was a storage deposit for cigarettes and firecrackers bootlegged up from Carolina. To Wendell, he hinted that it had to be a Klan headquarters: that combination of sandy soil and pine trees was just what they loved. But as soon as we left, Sally fell silent and stayed that way, the whole ride to Atlantic City.

  The month passed. We hit the road again. Nothing was said about how the experiment turned out. If there was new material, I never heard it. Of course, it’s not likely that I would have. A week after leaving Lakehurst, Eddie was dead.

  “Me and my big mouth,” Doc was saying. “I brought it on myself.”

  “Brought what on, Doc?”

  “This craziness. See, kid, for years I been wondering what Eddie was up to out in the woods.”

  “Did you ever ask him?”

  “Sure I did, right after we hit the road again. We were headed to the state fairgrounds at Flemington, him and me and that Joann girl in the car. I figured I was the manager, you know? But he was acting funny around then, so I worked up to it real careful. So how was Lakehurst? Were the acoustics okay? Have everything you need? Enough tape? I told him I figured it was a real step up, moving into a studio, since I got a double hernia from carrying recording equipment into Vince’s Bar. Believe me, Wordman, I wasn’t pushy. I wanted to know, I figured I had a right, but I was gonna let him tell me in his own way.”

  “And?”

  “‘I’ve got something like nothing you’ve ever
heard,’ he says. I didn’t know how to take it, whether or not he was putting me on. About once a week for the rest of my life I’ve been replaying that sentence, trying to decide whether he was jerking me off. Did I say once a week?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not lately. Lately it’s been once a day. So a coupla weeks ago, there’s this tri-state broadcasters’ convention up at Great Gorge, and I run into a guy on one of the trade papers. I decide, what’s to lose? Why not write a note, put it in a bottle, toss it in the ocean, and see where it floats. Here.”

  LOST CHORDS?

  FORMER MANAGER HINTS AT

  EDDIE WILSON CACHE

  Surprise best-seller Eddie Wilson may have left behind a legacy of unreleased tunes. That’s the hopeful theory of the late rock and roller’s one-time manager, Earl “Doc” Robbins, now a KCGM (Stroudsburg) deejay.

  “Just before Eddie died, I set him up in a recording studio,” says Robbins. “He had a full month of work. Nobody distracted him, not even me. And the results were dynamite. Eddie told me so himself.”

  Robbins concedes he never heard the tapes and doesn’t know anybody who has. Their current whereabouts is equally a mystery.

  “Eddie was keeping them to himself until he had everything just right,” says Robbins. “After he died, I looked around, but they weren’t to be found.”

  If located, the Wilson tunes could extend an already unprecedented revival. Based on only 12 known cuts—all contained on a single l.p.—the Cruiser craze is bound to run out of gas. The new material could be priceless.

  “It’s not the money,” protests Robbins. “It’s the music. Eddie gave it all he had. His new audience deserves to hear it all.”

  “So that’s what did it,” Doc resumed. “Somebody read that thing and figured I was just bullshitting—that I had the tapes myself and was fixing to make a big deal out of rediscovering them. Not a bad idea. But, fact is, I don’t have ’em.”

  “Would you tell me if you did?”

  “Hell, no! You’da never heard from me again!” Doc laughed. “But I don’t have ’em. So the question doesn’t come up. Do you have ’em?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. But that won’t help much.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, when they come looking for you. This is a treasure hunt. They’ll come after you. You got the same name you always had, the same face. You live in the same town. You’re not much of a mover. Unless they find them someplace else first, they’ll come at you. I guarantee you.”

  “But, Doc … who are they?”

  “Where you been, Wordman? You think there’s a shortage of crooks in the world?”

  “Don’t condescend to me, Doc.”

  “Okay, okay. You want to know what I think? I think it’s the squirt. Your little pen pal.”

  “Mannheim?”

  “His tender years don’t disqualify him. They help him get past the likes of you.”

  “You think he totaled your place?”

  “Maybe not him personally. But I bet he had a little to do with it. Look, it’s just a hunch. He showed up at the station with a tape recorder, I thought he might be all right. I wasn’t gonna give him nothin’, but I guess he looked legit. Anxious, awkward, all those words. But you know what? After he left, I left. I didn’t follow him. But I go home past the shopping center down the road, and there he is, making a long-distance phone call …”

  “He could have been—”

  “Calling mother? Sure. But our boy is driving a vintage M.G., which was remarkable considering he told me he came out on the bus. And the vintage M.G. has a little fuckie doll in the front seat.”

  “So he’s a rich kid.”

  “Sure. You could say that. He’s a kid who’s rich. And if he packed a gun, you’d say he’s just a rich kid who happens to like guns. And if he has a stiff in the trunk, you’d say he’s a rich kid who likes guns who’s studying to be a mortician Sure, Wordman. Keep on giving him the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Okay, but if they found the tapes, they’d be trading in—’

  “Stolen goods? Absolutely. Pirates do. And they could go the pirate route, peddling under the table. Or they’ll set up a half-dozen dummy companies, here and in Europe and on some islands you never heard of, and finally make a sale to a legit distributor, and we can spend the rest of our lives trying to get what’s rightfully ours. And it is ours! That’s what gripes me. Waiting twenty years to get hosed.”

  Doc fell silent then, and so did I. We watched the traffic on the highway like a pair of unlucky hitchhikers. We belonged together. We were both losers. Doc’s defeats were many and varied—close to the surface and easy to spot. My defeats went deeper.

  “What are we gonna do about it?” he asked.

  “Do we have a choice?” Spoken like a true loser.

  “I don’t. Kid, I’m broke. I barely beat the checks to the bank, every week. And I can’t move around like I used to. I need you.”

  “Me?”

  “You. You got two legs. You got a car and a little money put aside. You got a summer vacation coming up. What were you gonna do this summer, anyway?”

  “Teach summer school.”

  “Don’t. Give this a shot.”

  “How?”

  “Go around to the Cruisers, whoever you can find, and see if you can get a line on the tapes.”

  “The article says you asked around back then and that you couldn’t find anything. Why should I be any luckier now?”

  “That’s bullshit. I never asked. How was I to know what was gonna happen? Besides, the group was kind of uptight after Lakehurst. Sally and I never got along anyway. I never said much to Wendell. And that Hopkins kid, I never trusted. He was too cute by half. But hell, I just didn’t think those tapes would be worth a dime.”

  “So it’s not just the music, is it? It’s the money.”

  “Yeah, sure. But I … it’s more than the money. … Once in my life, I’d life to bring home a winner. You believe me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You asked me why all this was happening. Why are Eddie Wilson and the Parkway Cruisers so hot? You want me to tell you? You think you can handle it?”

  “Try me.”

  “You were great.”

  “You mean Eddie was great.”

  “I mean you were all great. You were great together. I’m not saying I knew it at the time. But I can hear it now. Along with a million other people. I play a lot of records. You guys had something they don’t have now. And they know it. This generation ain’t worth shit. Look at their music. Their movies. If it’s not a remake, it’s a sequel. You guys were originals. They don’t make ’em anymore.”

  “But Eddie—”

  “—was the key, the spark. Sure. But you were all part of it. Eddie needed Sally ’cause Sally was steady, regular, solid. Wendell was a wizard, so he needed him. And he needed Hopkins because Hopkins believed in nothing but fun, and if it wasn’t fun, he wouldn’t do it, and Eddie didn’t want the fun to go out of his music. And he needed you, Wordman. Because you were our touch of class.”

  “Come off it, Doc,” I protested. “Eddie just took me along for the ride. Like Sally used to say—they kidnapped me off a bookmobile.”

  “Eddie had his reasons,” Doc responded. “And charity wasn’t one of them. You think I didn’t brace him about it, when he said you were gonna be a Cruiser? The bookworm? The egghead? Joe College? You know what he told me?”

  “No,” I said. It made me uncomfortable, knowing that I was going to learn something new about what had ended long ago. My memories of that time were firm and set and familiar. I was their proprietor and manager. Receiving new information upset me. And Doc sensed my weakness. The old pitchman leaned forward so his eyes stared straight into mine, and his hand touched my knee.

  “I wasn’t in your corner, Wordman. I can remember it like yesterday. I found Eddie in the back room at Vince’s, him and that girl, and I said, ‘E
ddie, who needs this kid? What you want him for? A pen pal? If it’s free tickets, I can handle it. He wants to tag along, that’s fine. But put him up on stage? Sounds to me like you’re trying to carry six pounds of shit in a five-pound bag.’ Know what he said?”

  “No,” I answered in a whisper, abashed at the thought that I was going to hear Eddie’s voice all over again, Eddie talking about me.

  “He said, ‘I want the kid along, Doc. There’s something he’s got, we need.’ ‘Like what?’ I ask. And for a minute there, I figure I stumped him. He ran his hands through his hair like he always did when he didn’t know what to say, and he turns away and I’m thinking, well I guess that’s settled, and then, damn it, Eddie faces me and starts in again. ‘The way he reacts. The words he uses. The way he comes at songs, like they’re not dance music, they’re lyrics.’ ‘He can’t dance worth a damn, that’s for sure,’ I said, ‘but come on, Eddie, what’s with you, you fixing to write an opera?’ He says, ‘Words and music, Doc, words and music.’ And he crossed his fingers, showing how they go together.”

  He rested in his chair and waited for the story to take effect. He already had me where he wanted me, but he finished me off anyway, crossing his fingers just like Eddie had.

  “Words and music. You and Eddie. That’s how much he thought of you. So do Eddie a favor. Check around. See what’s left of Eddie out there.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “I can point you in the right direction, for Sally anyway. From there on out, you follow your nose.”

  “I don’t know, Doc.”

  “Yes you do. Give it a shot. What’s to lose? Summer school? What’s that? I went once. You got brown-nosers in front of the room and future criminals in back. Besides, you got twenty years of summer school in front of you.”

  He had me there.

  6

  That night, driving back to New Jersey, I wondered how to tell Doris about my decision to spend the summer on the road, hunting down old Cruisers. I thought we’d go into the breakfast-nook with a pot of coffee, and I’d start from that first night at Vince’s.