Ghost Tour (ch.16)

September 22, 1998

Colorado’s right next to Utah, but Kenny ducked north into Wyoming first. Less wrestling with the Rockies. Fewer miles, too. Everyone slept well, including Reid, and no one fell out of their bunks rounding the tight curve past Laramie.

The bus was still rolling west on 80 in Wyoming in the morning as, one-by-one, bandmates awoke from slumber.

Liz made herself a cup of tea and settled into the new Vanity Fair she’d bought back in Denver. Magazines made good tour bus reading. Manageable chunks of varying lengths depending on mood. Vanity Fair had enough real reportage so it didn’t feel like fluff.

Reid had brought Moby-Dick thinking long stretches of bus ride would force him to read it. Mistake. Hadn’t touched it yet.

Jordan had left a book on the couch called Walkin Blues, about the roadhouse circuit back in the day. Nice short chapters. Reid read one while drinking coffee from his truck stop travel mug. It gave him an idea.

“Hey Roncho, where’s that laptop?”

For the first time, Reid sat down to type some tour journal without having to be asked.

# # #

We were all freaking out with the ghost sitting here on our tour bus, staring at us face-to-face. At the same time, there was a lot we wanted to know. Not everyday you have an emissary from the spirit world volunteering to answer questions.

There was obvious stuff, like, who was this guy? But also, maybe we could use this situation to our advantage. If he could see into the future, maybe he’d help us bet on the ponies.

“Are you a ghost or an alien?” Jordan asked, just to make sure.

The form resembled a person from another time, but details of his face were hazy. When it opened its mouth, its lips didn’t move, but this low, scratchy voice began to emanate:

“One to thirty… Thirty to fifty… Fifty to forty…”

The image started getting blurrier, breaking up like a bad transmission.

Subs picked up the pearly black box he’d wired into the bus’s audio system, it had grown hot to the touch and was hard to hold. He gave it a shake but no use.

“It’s overheating,” Subs said, “I think it’s gonna short the whole bus.”

Whatever the spirit was trying to say trailed into nothingness. The image disappeared. The bus went wonky for a moment then completely back to normal.

We all sat there looking at each other, wondering what the hell just happened, or if it had happened at all.

“Were those lottery numbers?” our roadie Rex asked.

“That’s the old Lincoln Highway,” Kenny called back from the driver’s seat, he must’ve been listening while trying to keep the bus under control.

“What’s that, Kenny?” we asked.

“Before the interstates,” Kenny said. “Those are the old route numbers, you know, how you got yourself cross the country.”

“When was that?”

“Interstates came in under Eisenhower,” Kenny said. He’s the only one on the bus old enough to remember, so we gotta take his word for it.

We still don’t know who or what our resident ghost is. But whoever he is, we reckon he’s been roaming these highways since at least 1950 something…

# # #

The air above Salt Lake City was awash with incoming and outgoing spirits, no tour bus necessary.

Down below, there were a few hours to kill before soundcheck. Reid remembered an old diner from a previous tour that had pictures of all the past presidents on the placemats. It wasn’t hard to convince Liz to grab a little lunch.

They both ordered the French toast, a house specialty.

“So, anything else weird been happening? Reid asked.

“Weird as in…”

“Like, someone was knocking on your bunk that one night?”

Liz had more-or-less already forgotten about that, seemed minor compared to having to fend off creepy guys in rock clubs.

“Just the once,” she said.

“Hmm.”

Liz tried to catch Reid’s eye while he was stirring the creamer into his coffee.

“You wanna tell me about last night?” she said.

Reid was trying to remember if he’d done anything to offend her.

“Last night?”

She didn’t want to come out and say it, but she also didn’t want to let him off the hook. Having something resembling an adult conversation was not always comfortable.

“The beer,” she said.

Reid didn’t want to turn this into a thing.

“I just had the one,” he said.

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“I’m not going to make a habit of it.”

She let it drop for the moment. At least the conversation had been broached so could be revisited if necessary. Or maybe this was all it would take, putting him on notice that someone was watching.

Either way, she had done her due diligence.

# # #

The Metro Bar had a common area between the dressings rooms, two fold-out tables crammed end-to-end making one long table.

Benzedrine was already sitting there eating when X-13 finished soundcheck. Billy Somerville was off somewhere, but Owen Kaye was at the table tonight along with Tommy T and Aiden Dunlop. He was surprisingly welcoming.

“C’mon, join us,” he said.

Jordan didn’t eat much before a show, he sat down next to Owen just to be personable. Reid and Corey scooped lasagne from foil pans onto paper plates. Corey in particular tended to carbo-load before a show, drumming took energy.

Subs and Rex weren’t entirely sure they were invited, but X-13 band-and-crew always ate together, so they helped themselves to dinner and cautiously slid into folding chairs with the rest.

Liz, like Jordan, eventually sat without filling a plate, having been unable to deduce if any of it was meatless. She couldn’t help but notice Owen had a take-out container with sprouts exploding all over the place.

“Freddy found me a macrobiotic place,” Owen explained. “You want to try a spring roll? They’re good.”

“I had French toast earlier,” Liz said. “I still do eggs.”

“Total vegan,” Owen said, “I’ve lost four pounds since Ohio.”

Aiden Dunlop, who didn’t seem too keen on sharing the dinner table to begin with, rolled his eyes.

“You know how many foods have genetically modified ingredients?” Owen continued, half asking Liz, half holding forth if anyone else cared to listen.

“I was just reading about that,” Liz said, staying in the game.

“I dig that guitar line on that one song,” Tommy T broke in, “what’s it called, Shattered?”

It took Reid a second to realize Tommy T was talking to him.

“Oh, you mean Scattered?” Reid said.

“Scattered,” Tommy corrected himself.

“Thanks, man,” Reid said, amazed Tommy had been paying attention to him at all.

“The EU is going to illegalize GMOs,” Owen said.

“Food’s way better over there anyway,” Liz said.

With multiple conversations breaking out simultaneously, the volume level rose and everyone seemed more at their ease.

Subs and Rex began talking between themselves. Rex had been careful until now about being too much of a smart ass in front of the headliners, but the highfalutin foodie talk was needling him and he forgot his place. Stabbing a sloppy square of lasagne, he held his fork aloft for inspection.

“When you can taste the tin can, now that’s what I appreciate in a tomato sauce,” Rex said, maybe a little too loudly.

Without any warning whatsoever, Aiden Dunlop took a meatball off his plate and whipped it across the table, hitting Rex squarely in the chest.

The whole table fell immediately into a stunned silence trying to process what had just happened, Rex’s white t-shirt had an explosion dead-center like a gunshot wound, Aiden’s fingers still dripped with red sauce.

If Billy Somerville had been in the room, he would’ve said something immediately, being Benzedrine’s most reliable diplomat, but with him elsewhere there was momentary uncertainty.

The pecking order was laid bare. Jordan was lead singer in his own band, but could he openly challenge the headliner’s drummer? Certainly Rex, who’d clearly been put in his place, could not say anything.

“You’ll have to forgive our band,” Owen Kaye finally spoke up when no one else did. “Some of us lack self-restraint.”

Kaye eyed Dunlop in a pointed way that suggested his comment cut deeper than a mild scolding about table manners.

Dunlop returned the glare, stood abruptly, shook the sauce from his hand and stormed out.

Tommy T started laughing to break the silence.

“Wackadoo,” he said, shaking his head.

Owen, meanwhile, regarded Rex for probably the first time all tour.

“Talk to Freddy,” he said, “he’ll hook you up with a new t-shirt.”

# # #

Billy Somerville, hearing what his bandmate had done over dinner in his absence, declared

“That’s bullshit.”

He made a point of apologizing to everyone in X-13 personally, including Rex, who after the initial shock had quickly embraced the story. Aiden Dunlop hitting him with a meatball would be enshrined in X-13 mythology as well has his own.

By the time X-13 hit the stage, Rex was already sporting the heavy-weight cotton long-sleeve he’d scored from Freddy at the merch table.

X-13 used the night to their advantage, tweaking the set one last time before the west coast. It wasn’t so bad to have one last low-pressure show before things heated up.

Benzedrine didn’t have as good a night. Having watched them fairly carefully since Ohio, Jordan could see there was something off about their performance. Behind the drums, Aiden Dunlop looked like he was about to explode.

# # #

The longest continuous tour X-13 had done to date was about six weeks. It was generally understood that six weeks was enough time for your personality to shift, you’d have to remember who you were when you got back home.

It hadn’t been much more than a week, but Reid was already starting to have that sensation. He’d used the phone in the Metro’s business office to try checking in with Kristina. When he got the machine at John and Isabella’s where she was likely still staying, he didn’t leave a message.

As he walked out to the bus, he found himself oddly neutral about what he’d assumed to be his life back in Clinton. Ever-changing as it might seem, his life now seemed to be out here, on the road. Even Salt Lake City had an air of unreality, knowing it’d be in their rearview mirror in less than an hour.

He plunked himself in the back lounge, well-established site of the nightly rolling afterparty.

Rex came back still sporting his new Benzedrine t-shirt like a trophy. He rolled a joint and presented it fresh to Reid, before even lighting it.

Reid considered the tidy little joint being offered to him. Last night he’d had a single beer. The worst thing that came of it was he’d finally gotten a good night’s sleep.

What could happen?

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