Till now, Sam Hellerman and I had done all of our band activities at my house because his parents, even though they were almost never home, came from Germany and were all weird and strict. They specifically disapproved of music, it seemed. How he had talked them into buying him a bass I will never know.
Actually, out of the vast universe of things Sam Hellerman’s parents frowned upon, the one they seemed to disapprove of most of all was Sam Hellerman himself. He had to take great care to hide what he did and anything he might be interested in, because if they ever found out about an activity or interest their first impulse was to ban it immediately.
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By now so many things were prohibited in the Hellerman household that no one could keep track anymore, and a lot could slide by. Still, Sam Hellerman’s peace of mind required that he limit contact with his parents as much as possible, as each enthusiasm stomped upon by the Ministry of Stomping on Enthusiasms represented a tiny missing piece of Sam Hellerman’s soul that would probably never grow back. He didn’t know whether in reality it would be physically possible for German parent-vampires to suck the rock and roll completely out of the hearts of their defenseless offspring. But he didn’t want to be around to find out the hard way.
Nevertheless, Some Delicious Sky had nowhere else to go, for the moment. So we crept into the tomblike foyer of the Hellerman house, carrying our guitars, with a palpable feeling that we were up to no good.
The Hellermans didn’t have a Magnavox Astro-Sonic hi-fi console in their living room, but rather an extremely expensive-looking audio setup with all sorts of extra boxes that glowed purply blue. It was always on standby and was never used, as far as I know. Sam Hellerman wasn’t allowed to touch it, or even look at it. I suppressed an urge to kick the whole thing over as I tiptoed by, following Sam Hellerman down the hall and into his room.
Sam Hellerman ran the bass through his stereo. As for the guitar: there was this old electronic toy called a Speak-amatic, left over from remote childhood. When you pushed the buttons, it would play funny sound effects through a tiny speaker. It was shaped like a little cow in overalls, and the speaker was the cow’s mouth. When you pressed button #1, it would say: “Moo. What would you like to hear today?”
Sam Hellerman had somehow rigged up the Speak-a-matic cow so that I could plug my guitar into it and the sound would come out of the cow’s mouth. Well, it sort of did. The 149
sound was rotten and squilchy, and very, very quiet, but come on, how cool is it to be playing a ’65 Melody Maker through a souped-up Speak-a-matic cow mouth? That boy is a genius.
Yet I was starting to wonder if it was possible to fashion a crude band out of ordinary household materials. Without amps, I mean.
A couple of practices of that sort were more than enough to demonstrate that rock and roll, like nearly everything else on the planet, was not destined to flourish in the bowels of Hellerman Manor. We had to find another way, I thought.
And, as if directly in answer, Sam Hellerman revealed that he had a plan.
“You know,” he said, on the Friday of the second week of his mysterious pod-hippie-dom. “I don’t think we should go to the Pep Rally.”
I stared at him, with the look that said “Gee, ya think?”
Once a month, the school cancels the period after lunch so they can hold a lengthy Pep Rally in the gym. Sometimes, when it is judged that lunch plus one period is insufficient, they cancel the period before lunch, as well. I wasn’t into the idea of two or three solid hours of—what? To be honest, I’ve never been to a Pep Rally, and I don’t know what goes on at one. But I can’t imagine it’d be too pleasant. You’re supposed to go, but they don’t have any way to check, so for anyone not interested in upping their pep intake for the day it’s like a little vacation. You just take off. Sam Hellerman’s saying “I don’t think we should go to the Pep Rally” was like Sam Hellerman saying “You know, I don’t think we should use these big rusty nails to hammer our hands and feet to the floor today.”
This particular Rally promised to be especially gruesome, as it was billed as a “Cultural Awareness Pep Rally.” In a way, 150
it was nice to know that Hillmont’s assault on taste and decency was going strong—a predictable world is a manageable world. But that’s no reason to participate in the madness, if there’s a way to get out of it.
I was a little surprised that Sam Hellerman chose hanging out with me rather than Celeste Fletcher’s ass for the precious extended lunch break. But, as I said, Sam Hellerman had a plan, which for once did not involve any of Celeste Fletcher’s anatomical parts.
The solution to our amp problem had been under our noses all along, though it took Sam Hellerman’s genius to uncover the secret. Ages ago, when the school system had more money and everyone was trying a lot harder to create the impression that Hillmont High School was more than just a clean, well-lighted place for hazing, they used to have a Jazz Band. It is beyond my capabilities to imagine what sort of god-awful “jazz” the Hillmont High band students might have managed to emit in those odd moments when they weren’t otherwise occupied in student-on-student abuse. The Jazz Band program had been discontinued long ago, its terrors and cruelties lost in history. (One day they will discontinue all the programs, and that will be a fine day. A world without programs will be just as hard to take, maybe, but at least it will be more honest.)
Some of the Jazz Band paraphernalia remained, however, and it included a couple of amplifiers that were buried behind and underneath several layers of other band-related junk.
There was a Polytone twin guitar amp, and a Fender Bassman, which was actually a legitimately cool amp, though I gather from reading interviews with real rock guys that the cool way to use the Fender Bassman is as a guitar amp rather than a bass amp. Anyway, they were better than the nothing we had. And they were free. In a sense.
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The band room was normally locked when not occupied, of course, but Sam Hellerman had a key to the main building because he had signed up for a practice room. And he had somehow temporarily rigged the band room door so it wouldn’t latch properly when Ms. Filuli, the band teacher, left the building. That boy is a criminal genius.
We had to burrow through quite a few layers, but it didn’t take long. The school was deserted; everyone was either at the Pep Rally or skipping the Pep Rally. So no one was there to notice when I picked up the Polytone and just walked out with it. No one even came to investigate when Sam Hellerman wheeled the creaky Fender out of the band room and into the hall, even though its wheels made a squealing sound like I imagine a five-year-old girl might make if someone hung her outside a window by the ankle. Preventing geeks from swiping decrepit school property wasn’t high on everybody’s list of priorities that day.
We replaced all the band room junk and jumbled and jos-tled it a bit so it looked pretty much as it had before, kind of like how you would trample on the dirt on top of a grave you didn’t want anyone to find out about. Hardly anyone even knew the amps were there in the first place, so we were pretty safe. We left the school grounds and took turns wheel-ing the Fender with the Polytone on top of it back to my house. I had an absurd feeling of (devil-head) euphoria, like we were on our way.
What finally made us get off our asses and solve the amp problem? Well, there had been another big development, bandwise. Sam Hellerman had taken some time off from his busy schedule of keeping tabs on Celeste Fletcher’s ass and had managed to scare up a drummer. An actual drummer. I kid you not. His name was Todd Panchowski, he had a drum 152