Chapter 199

“Di immortals virtutem approbare, non adhibere debent.”
(God rewards virtue; he shouldn’t have to furnish it.)
—Gellius (quotation from a speech by Quintus Metellus Numidicus)

SUNDAY WAS OUR DAY OF REST, simply by virtue of the difficulty of getting an audience on Sunday. I’m sure if they’d found venues and audiences, they’d have booked us to perform every day. As it was, when we left Memphis, our stops would be farther apart and every day for the next week. We wouldn’t need to worry about campsites as we’d simply be moving from loading dock to loading dock. I was thankful for the comfortable bed in the motorhome, though I took my turn in the bunk as well as the sofa bed. I think we were all staying focused on being considerate of our mates or the cramped space and long hours would have had us at each other’s throats.

Our campground was on the eastern edge of the metroplex adjacent to Shelby Farms Park. It had miles of trails through 4,500 acres of green space. We got in about ten in the morning and I took off for a run as soon as our camp was set up and stable. Em ran with me for the first 5k and then peeled back around to the campsite. I just wanted to run and breathe the fresh country air.

It was after noon when I got back to the campsite. Most of my wives had gone to the nearby farmers’ market but Rachel was sitting in our narrow patio space with Remas. Aside from the things that were nearby, this campground had little to recommend it. Rigs were parked front door to front door in spaces so narrow we basically shared the patio space and couldn’t extend our awning all the way unless the rigs were jogged toward the front of the sites. The backs of rigs were so close you couldn’t pass through between the slide-outs. I wasn’t sure ours was even extended all the way.

Still, there were Rachel and Remas. I jogged up and gave a very sweaty hug to each.

“You need a shower,” Rachel said. “That’s no way to greet our girlfriend.”

“Not unless I can shower with you,” Remas laughed. “God, I’ve missed you. And it’s only been two weeks!”

“I’ve missed you, too. How about I run to the showers and get back here so we can have a proper hug and talk?” I grabbed a towel and went to the camp showers. It was a good thing it was early afternoon. I could only imagine what these four shower stalls would look like in the morning when 400 units opened their doors to try and get ready for travel.

I pulled on a pair of shorts and T-shirt and made my way back to camp a little more slowly so I wouldn’t start sweating again.

“So, the issue is mostly with the transitions from set to set. That includes your costume changes,” Remas said. We sat at the dining table with Cindy and Donna to go over the changes the school was suggesting. She stressed that we could do what we wanted with their suggestions but she thought we’d like their ideas. I was certainly open to it.

“Anything to make the performance move more smoothly,” I said. “I’m ready to listen.”

“Okay. Your talks and Cindy’s talks provide an opportunity for the other person to change costume and come back out on stage. That works pretty well. The real bottleneck is in the second act when Donna has to come out and basically do an advertisement while the two of you rush through a costume change at the same time. Don’t get me wrong, no one objects to you trying to sell CDs during your concert, but it feels out of place with the kind of message you are delivering in the other breaks.”

“I’ve never felt completely comfortable with that,” Donna said. “I think we all recognized it was a space filler for the costume change. What do you suggest?”

“Well, Ms. Ralston, who will be Cindy’s primary flute instructor at the school, suggested you trade off solos at that point. That would give you an opportunity to show off your individual skills as well as how well you play together. She suggested you scrap Andaluza that you do right before that break. By the way, everyone loves your dancing during the Tangos. Even Ms. Ralston was breathing hard. If we drop Andaluza and you do one of the other lively Spanish pieces you’ve done before, like Albeniz’s Mallorca, that would give Cindy time to come down a little and get changed without risking a wardrobe malfunction. Then when Cindy reenters in costume, you take a bow and go backstage to change.”

“Leaving me on stage alone?” Cindy squeaked. We all laughed. I put my hand on her thigh and she pulled it straight up into her crotch. She might be nervous about what Remas was asking, but that always seemed to make her horny at the same time.

“You know Chick Corea’s Spain was written as a flute solo. You’re playing a duet arrangement. You could just as easily move the piece before the Suite Buenos Aires and give Jacob the same opportunity he’s given you to catch your breath. Then Jacob reenters in costume and you end on a high point with the last movement of the Suite.”

“I could do that,” Cindy whispered as she pushed my finger into her wetness.

There were a few other suggestions regarding the transitions and one outright criticism suggesting we practice the Bach Flute Sonata with the music in front of us. Apparently, we’d gone astray. They also suggested we drop the Morricone piece and end the set after our Mozart Sonata in C Major. They felt it would be a cleaner break from one style to another and we’d make up the lost length of the program in the added length of Mallorca in the second act. I wasn’t sure about that one. I really liked The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but Remas made a good point that our duet version paled by comparison to the other versions we’d done, even with only Desi’s voice added to the mix.

Cindy and I did a skip through of the new program, focusing on a careful practice of the Bach and on the new transitions. We were all happy to get rid of the advertisement in the second act. After we finished practicing, Donna and I reviewed my spoken messages to make sure I was still on point. I was a little antsy because I wanted to go take care of Cindy. I’d had to wipe my fingers and dry them before I could play the guitar.

“Oh, God! Yes! Fuck me!” Cindy screamed from the bedroom. I looked around. Em was fixing vegetables at the kitchen sink with Rachel. Beca and Joan were outside. That meant Remas must have realized Cindy’s condition as well. We all started laughing.

I grilled steaks that night and we had the Tennessee equivalent of Donna’s farmer’s salad. That night, I slipped into bed between Rachel and Remas, and into each of them.

Monday started the week from hell. Memphis was our first outdoor venue since California at The Shell. It was hard to estimate how many people were there because they all brought their own chairs or blankets to sit on, packed picnics, and drank whatever was in their hip flasks. It was obvious they were there for a good time, though, and we got an enthusiastic reception. We had to use our pickups and amplify the sound because the outdoor acoustics sucked. Two big monitors on either side of the bandshell projected our faces in bigger than life proportions so people at the back of the space and sitting in the bars could see us.

Then our crew grabbed our gear and stowed it in record time. We were loaded in the motorhome by nine-thirty since the show started at seven. Em drove us straight through to Jackson, Mississippi, where we parked in a casino lot and all passed out.

Memphis to Jackson, Miss, to Baton Rouge, LA, to Mobile, Alabama. We hadn’t had any upsets. A few boos from non-reformists. Mostly, people in this part of the country just wanted the music and what we played wasn’t what they normally heard. The worst heckle we got was some guy in Baton Rouge during the tangos who screamed out “Stop playing that Spic music, ya damn Mexicans!” I’m not sure what happened to him, but we didn’t hear another word from him through the rest of the show.

We pulled out of Mobile late at night headed toward Montgomery, Alabama. I didn’t know why they didn’t schedule a performance for us there. I could just imagine standing on the steps of the capitol building playing our music where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the crowds after the Selma to Montgomery march. I don’t suppose that meant much to the rest of my family. They were too young to remember.

Em had been operating on the night shift for the entire week and slept during the day and during our shows. As a result, she decided to push on toward Atlanta. By ten in the morning, we were checked in at Stone Mountain Park on the east side of Atlanta. It had been a seven-hour drive with rest stops. We’d stopped at a Cracker Barrel early in the morning for breakfast.

“Is it even okay for us to stay here as Americans?” Beca asked. “The streets are Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis, and Robert E. Lee. There’s a statue of them carved into a mountain like it was Mount Rushmore.”

“It’s part of their heritage,” Remas said. “My parents live near here. I hope you don’t mind if I invite them to meet you all.”

“I have slaveowners in my family tree, too,” Donna said. “We just don’t brag about it.”

“At least your ancestors didn’t join forces to fight against the United States,” Rachel said. “If you all want me to find us a different campground, I will.”

“No,” I sighed. “It wouldn’t make a difference. I don’t think we’d find anywhere in Georgia that isn’t proud of their Confederate heritage. That they were at war against the United States doesn’t seem to be in conflict with their patriotism. We should just start a movement to have a statue to Osama bin Laden erected at Ground Zero since that is also a part of our national heritage.”

“That’s harsh, Jacob,” Remas said. “True, but harsh. Please don’t leave. I know it’s kind of disgusting, but I really want my parents to meet everyone.”

“Can we get camped and make sure poor Em gets some sleep first?” Joan said. She had an arm around my sister and looked like she was holding her up.

“Oh! I wasn’t suggesting right now. I did kind of suggest that they could come for dinner tonight, though,” Remas said. “Is that okay?”

“Hop in the car, girl,” Rachel said. “We need to go shopping. And I want a nap soon, too.”

Talk about people fond of their heritage! Remas’s family was proud to be Gypsies. Not only did her parents show up, but so did her two younger brothers and an aunt who seemed awfully attached to her father. I understood why Remas wasn’t thrown at all by a polyamorous relationship.

We had a good time.

It turned out that Acorn was a law professor at Georgia State University and Femi taught nursing at Herzing University. Both pretty high-powered academics. Nonetheless, Acorn wore a sleeveless shirt that showed his full sleeve tattoos and Femi had a backless dress that showed the incredible artwork on her back.

“We’ve been wanting to meet the group that captured the heart of our Remas,” Acorn said. “We’re allies. I’ve done a lot of work on the new bill, reviewing the legal aspects. It’s good to meet you all,” he enthused. “Let’s play music!” Acorn produced a kind of flute and made an instant friend of Cindy. Femi and Alifair had beautiful voices that blended and we learned a ton of new songs from them. I wished Desi was with us.

All told, we sat around our firepit and played way into the night. Several campers from nearby sites came to listen and a few to add their instruments to the jam session. And booze. There was a lot of it flowing around the fire. I confess I had a few too many of some kind of plum liquor. Not that there weren’t a lot of different kinds of alcohol being passed around. I finally carried Cindy to bed when it was obvious she couldn’t draw enough breath to blow her flute.

Atlanta was a riot. Literally.

I was glad we weren’t performing early in the day on Saturday. Everyone in the motorhome was dragging and complaining of headaches. Nonetheless, we disconnected the trailer from the motorhome and connected it to the Toyota Sienna Rachel had rented. It was big enough that all eight of us could ride in it and it could tow what was a fairly lightweight trailer to the venue.