Chapter 30: Trouble in River Bend

Maria had decided to go home with her grandmother for a few weeks before college started to make sure she would be O.K. after the traumatic experience in Spain. Maria was hurting also, but seemed to bear up better if she focused her concern on her grandmother.

Maria was healing also, because she could lose herself in this wonderfully small town. On Friday and Saturday nights, farmers came into town to buy groceries, and listen to a band put together by several high school boys who did a pretty good impersonation of Elvis, Roy Orbison, and Buddy Holly. Between themselves, they would also do Chuck Berry, Marvin Gaye, and Sam Cooke.

While Maria was there, she tried to talk her grandmother into performing. Ginny refused. Maria decided she would take the initiative. She thought that since they both liked to dance, she might talk her Grandma into it.

Maria had some of the men create a separate stage in one corner for her (and hopefully her grandmother's) own dancing. There was another room behind it, which she used to create a back-lit situation. They put up a tall screen in front of the stage. You could see the person going up the steps to the stage, but could not see anybody on stage.

Finally, one day at breakfast, as Maria was pouring coffee, she told the customers that they would have some new entertainment that night. Ginny knew nothing about it.

That night, they had a pretty respectable crowd for such a small town. Maria and Ginny were serving beer and Rocky Mountain Oysters. This was not a real sophisticated café like they had been to in Barcelona.

Once the Rocky Mountain Oysters had disappeared, and the high-school boys had stopped their music for a break, Maria made an announcement that the new entertainment would start. She had hoped that if she started, she or the crowd could goad her Grandmother into following her.

Maria was dressed in logging boots that went almost to her knees, a short light button down dress, and a crinkled western straw hat. Maria walked up the short flight of steps behind the white sheet curtain that was stretched across an aluminum tube frame. She turned on a sound system with a recording of Louis Armstrong playing "Saint Louis Blues." It was a wailing blues tune with a hard beat.

Maria turned on the back lighting. She was standing to one side, so the light created a silhouette of the barstool with a high back that shone on the white sheet.

Maria swayed to the music as she twirled her way over to the Bar Stool and sat down on it. The people in the audience could see the black and white silhouette shadow of Maria as she pulled up one leg, unlaced one boot and took it. She tossed it over the sheet into the crowd. Next came the other boot, followed by the straw hat.