He opened the door and got out of the car, the crushed gravel of the parking lot crunching underneath his feet; and the crunching of the gravel triggered the recognition of the place, supplied the reason for the familiarity that had first eluded him. He stood stock-still, half-frozen at the knowledge, looking at the ghostly leafiness of the towering elm trees that grew to either side of the dark bulk of the pavilion. His eyes took in the contour of the looming hills, and he recognized the contour, and standing there, straining for the sound, he heard the gurgle of the rushing water that came out of the hill, flowing through a wooden channel into a wayside watering trough that was now falling apart with neglect, no longer needed since the automobile had taken over from the horse-drawn vehicles of some years before.
He turned and sat down weakly on the running board of the Model T. His eyes could not deceive him or his ears betray him. He’d heard the distinctive sound of that running water too often in years long past to mistake it now; and the loom of the elm trees, the contour of the hills, the graveled parking lot, the string of bulbs on the pavilion’s front, taken all together, could only mean that somehow he had returned or been returned, to Big Spring Pavilion. But that, he told himself, was fifty years or more ago, when I was lithe and young, when Old Virg had his Maxwell and I my Model T.
He found within himself a growing excitement that surged above the wonder and the sense of absurd impossibility—an excitement that was as puzzling as the place itself and his being there again. He rose and walked across the parking lot, with the coarse gravel rolling and sliding and crunching underneath his feet, and there was a strange lightness in his body, the kind of youthful lightness he had not known for years, and as the music came welling out at him, he found that he was gliding and turning to the music. Not the kind of music the kids played nowadays, with all the racket amplified by electronic contraptions, not the grating, no-rhythm junk that set one’s teeth on edge and turned the morons glassy-eyed, but music with a beat to it, music you could dance to with a certain haunting quality that was no longer heard. The saxophone sounded clear, full-throated; and a sax, he told himself, was an instrument all but forgotten now. But it was here, and the music to go with it, and the bulbs above the door swaying in the little breeze that came drifting up the valley.
He was halfway through the door when he suddenly remembered that the pavilion was not free, and he was about to get some change out of his pocket (what little there was left after all those beers he’d had at Brad’s) when he noticed the inky marking of the stamp on the back of his right hand. That had been the way, he remembered, that they’d marked you as having paid your way into the pavilion, a stamp placed on your hand. He showed his hand with its inky marking to the man who stood beside the door and went on in. The pavilion was bigger than he’d remembered it. The band sat on a raised platform to one side, and the floor was filled with dancers.
The years fell away, and it all was as he remembered it. The girls wore pretty dresses; there was not a single one who was dressed in jeans. The boys wore ties and jackets, and there was a decorum and a jauntiness that he had forgotten. The man who played the saxophone stood up, and the sax wailed in lonely melody, and there was a magic in the place that he had thought no longer could exist.
He moved out into the magic. Without knowing that he was about to do it, surprised when he found himself doing it, he was out on the floor, dancing by himself, dancing with all the other dancers, sharing in the magic—after all the lonely years, a part of it again. The beat of the music filled the world, and all the world drew in to center on the dance floor, and although there was no girl and he danced all by himself, he remembered all the girls he had ever danced with.
Someone laid a heavy hand on his arm, and someone else was saying, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, leave the old guy be; he’s just having fun like all the rest of us.” The heavy hand was jerked from his arm, and the owner of the heavy hand went staggering out across the floor, and there was a sudden flurry of activity that could not be described as dancing. A girl grabbed him by the hand. “Come on, Pop,” she said, “let’s get out of here.” Someone else was pushing at his back to force him in the direction that the girl was pulling, and then he was out-of-doors. “You better get on your way, Pop,” said a young man. “They’ll be calling the police. Say, what is your name? Who are you?”
“I am Hank,” he said. “My name is Hank, and I used to come here. Me and Old Virg. We came here a lot. I got a Model T out in the lot if you want a lift.”
“Sure, why not,” said the girl. “We are coming with you.”
He led the way, and they came behind him, and all piled in the car, and there were more of them than he had thought there were. They had to sit on one another’s laps to make room in the car. He sat behind the wheel, but he never touched it, for he knew the Model T would know what was expected of it, and of course it did. It started up and wheeled out of the lot and headed for the road.
“Here, Pop,” said the boy who sat beside him, “have a snort. It ain’t the best there is, but it’s got a wallop. It won’t poison you; it ain’t poisoned any of the rest of us.”
Hank took the bottle and put it to his lips. He tilted up his head and let the bottle gurgle. And if there’d been any doubt before of where he was, the liquor settled all the doubt. For the taste of it was a taste that could never be forgotten. Although it could not be remembered, either. A man had to taste it once again to remember it.
He took down the bottle and handed it to the one who had given it to him. “Good stuff,” he said.
“Not good,” said the young man, “but the best that we could get. These bootleggers don’t give a damn what they sell you. Way to do it is to make them take a drink before you buy it, then watch them for a while. If they don’t fall down dead or get blind staggers, then it’s safe to drink.”
Reaching from the back seat of the car, one of them handed him a saxophone. “Pop, you look like a man who could play this thing,” said one of the girls, “so give us some music.”
“Where’d you get this thing?” asked Hank.
“We got it off the band,” said a voice from the back. “That joker who was playing it had no right to have it. He was just abusing it.”
Hank put it to his lips and fumbled at the keys, and all at once the instrument was making music. And it was funny, he thought, for until right now he’d never held any kind of horn. He had no music in him. He’d tried a mouth organ once, thinking it might help to pass away the time, but the sounds that had come out of it had set Old Bounce to howling. So he’d put it up on a shelf and had forgotten it till now.
The Model T went tooling down the road, and in a little time the pavilion was left behind. Hank tootled on the saxophone, astonishing himself at how well he played, while the others sang and passed around the bottle. There were no other cars on the road, and soon the Model T climbed a hill out of the valley and ran along a ridgetop, with all the countryside below a silver dream flooded by the moonlight.
Later on, Hank wondered how long this might have lasted, with the car running through the moonlight on the ridgetop, with him playing the saxophone, interrupting the music only when he laid aside the instrument to have another drink of moon. But when he tried to think of it, it seemed to have gone on forever, with the car eternally running in the moonlight, trailing behind it the wailing and the honking of the saxophone.