"Pop" By M.C. Schmidt
- Roi Fainéant
- 5 days ago
- 21 min read
I.
Sunday morning, my elderly father murmuring into a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon, a brand of beer he especially hated, though he wasn’t keen on alcohol of any kind and hadn’t taken a sip in decades—this was what I walked in on. I had just finished carving our front hedge into the armadillo shape Laura had asked for (or my best approximation, based on the photo she had texted to me), and found him alone, head slung over our kitchen table. He didn’t acknowledge the ruckus I made wiping my shoes on the mat or swinging the back door closed behind me. As I washed my hands at the sink, I ran through appointment dates and anniversaries, but there was nothing I could think of that might have laid him low. I kept my voice jovial when I finally called behind me, “Something happen to make you get into my beer, Dad?”
“I’m not drinking it,” he said softly, “only holding onto the bottle.”
I forced a convivial laugh. “Well, if you didn’t want it, couldn’t you have left the cap on?”
“Aromatics,” he said. “I craved this miserable smell. Did you know, Sam, that Pabst won their blue ribbon in 1893? That’s an awfully long time to dine out on one award, don’t you think? Not that I blame them. I suppose if we live long enough, we all end up coasting on our former glory.”
I turned to regard him, drying my hands on my shirt. “What’s this about, Dad?”
He took a two-handed grip on the bottle but didn’t lift it. “Nothing my pungent friend here can’t fix.” A bubble had risen to the lip of the bottle. He extended his tongue and popped it. Noticing my look of concern, he smiled like I was a well-meaning simpleton who would never understand his despair. “You have a nice home here, Sam. And you took me in when I was in need. You’re the only one who hasn’t abandoned me—I lost my wife, my job, my truck, even my dog. I’m a husk. A broken-down, red-neck husk of a man.” He rested his forehead on the bottle mouth, revealing his neck to be porcelain white.
“Hey, Dad?”
“Hmm?”
“You were an attorney. You’ve never done one hour of physical labor in your life, and you’ve got, like, hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank. You came to live with us because we wanted to be close to you, not because you were destitute. And Mom left you in 1989 when you admitted to banging Ms. Kranitz next door. You’ve always said it was the best thing that ever happened to you. We never had a dog or a truck. You drive a Lexus. It’s in the garage. The keys are right there on the peg.” I pointed to the little armadillo-shaped keyholder by the kitchen door. “Is this some kind of low-key medical emergency I should be concerned about?”
My father snickered. “No, son, health is the one thing I’ve got. The better to prolong my suffering, I suppose.” He turned the bottle, grinding its glass bottom against the tabletop. It spluttered a trace of its contents onto his hand. “I don’t know what’s come over me today, but I feel so lonesome I could cry.”
When I didn’t respond, he stood and came beside me at the sink, where he proceeded to dump the PBR down the drain.
“What the hell?” I asked.
“It went warm on me, boy. It’s a cold beer that a troubled man needs; that’s what soothes him.” He rinsed the bottle thoroughly and, after placing it inside the recycling bin, went to the refrigerator for another.
“You better drink that,” I said.
“Sure thing, my boy. Sure thing.”
When I left him, he was searching his pockets for a pack of cigarettes he couldn’t find because he had never been a smoker.
I went upstairs to find Laura. I needed her to experience this for herself, my father mistaking his real life for some country music cliché. What if this was the beginning of something serious? I pictured him devolving into an adult child in boots with plastic spurs and six shooters, a tragedy in a toy store Stetson who called all his nurses ‘pardner.’ I stopped at the open door of our daughter, Stacy’s, bedroom and observed her crouching at her window, her face pressed against the glass. “Doing some spying?” I asked.
“God, Daddy!” she squealed, whipping around and holding her chest. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”
“Someone after you, dear?”
She giggled, a girl with a secret. “No, Daddy. I was just admiring the scenery.” A blush bloomed across her cheeks. She stepped away from the window when I approached to look. I saw nothing unusual other than the scrawny neighbor kid, pale and shirtless, edging the perimeter of their yard with a weed eater. I pulled my head out of the curtains and asked,
“Really? That kid?”
“The boy next door,” she moaned, sounding like a smitten bobbysoxer from a black and white sitcom. The effect was completed when she raised all ten of her fingernails to her mouth and made like she was going to bite them to steady herself. “He’s so gorgeous.”
“Different strokes, I guess. He has back acne. Look.” I held the curtain open, but she put out a hand as if to say she dared not take another bite.
“He’s a god.”
“Fair enough,” I relented, rationalizing that at least she hadn’t developed a crush on some toxic shithead. “Have you seen your mother?”
“Your guys’ bedroom, maybe? I don’t know.”
“Well, if you see her,” I said as I headed out, “do me a favor and tell her I’m looking for her.”
“Sorry, Daddy, but I am absolutely incapable of being trusted with this. There’s only one man I could possibly do favors for now.” She smooshed her cheek against the window glass, causing her lips to part. A torrent of fog blew across the pane.
I shuddered and closed the door, leaving her alone with her longings.
When I found Laura, she was lying in our bed, still in her nightgown. “There you are,” I said. “What the hell is going on around here?”
“Quick!” she said, breathless. “Come make love to me, Beloved!”
I stayed put. “You too, huh?”
“Me too, what? I’m only longing to feel the passions of my soulmate’s loins pressed into mine. Come lie down. Hurry!” She rose onto her knees and reached for me. I was well out of her grasp.
“Nah,” I said, taking a step backward just in case, “I need to run downtown for a minute. I’ll be back in a few.”
“Downtown? No! For what?” She slumped on the bed, crestfallen.
“Carbon monoxide detectors. There’s something screwy around here. I think the responsible thing is for me to make sure the house isn’t poisoning us all.”
She tilted her head and got a far-off look in her eye. “But what if something happens to you? A car accident or some violent encounter with a stranger?” Here, she turned her wild eyes on me. “I want you to know, Sam, that if you don’t make it back, you’ll forever remain my twin flame. I’ll celebrate our bond through all the love I make with other men.”
“Super,” I said, “thanks.” She was lost in her own thoughts, though, apparently
imagining my fatal trek to the hardware store. “Are you humming?”
“Hmm? Oh, yes,” she said absently. “Turn it up on your way out, would you?”
“Turn what up?”
“This song, my poor departed darling.” Her eyes were brimming with tears, but her smile was stoic.
I listened but heard nothing. “Right,” I said. “Well…I’m going to skedaddle.” She didn’t move to stop me, apparently having come to terms with my imminent death.
On my way out, I knocked on Stacy’s door before cracking it open. She was sitting in her windowsill, staring out and hugging her childhood stuffed rabbit to her chest, whispering confessions into its ear. “Hey,” I called, “do you hear that music?”
She cocked her head, engaging with the silence in her room. Soon, her body was rocking to some elaborate rhythm. “Of course, Daddy. It’s hot.”
“This is very strange,” I said.
“What is?”
I closed her door and went downstairs.
There was no way for me to ask the same thing of my father. He’d made it through three quarters of his beer and was now passed out at the kitchen table, his upper body curled around the bottle. I left him as he was, snoring and with that troubled look on his face.
II.
On the drive, I looked out for any strange goings-on, curious whether everyone in town had lost their minds or if it was only my family. Nothing seemed awry other than Wayne, my neighbor from the end of the block, standing in his yard, saluting the American flag that waved from the pole beside his driveway. He was wearing cargo shorts and sandals. His expression was one of intense anger, like he was disgusted none of the rest of us were sufficiently patriotic to join him.
Lowe’s, though, was uncanny. The store was largely devoid of other shoppers, and there was no music playing from the overhead speakers. When I arrived at the aisle where the carbon monoxide detectors should be, I found only an empty shelf. I walked up and down the row, searching, but ultimately had to call out to the kid in the vest who was decamped at the end of the aisle, sitting precariously on an upturned plastic bucket. He had a choppy haircut and black painted fingernails. There was jewelry poking out of his face. He stared at the floor tiles as if he hadn’t noticed me at all. “Excuse me,” I said.
“Carbon monoxide detectors?”
“Gone. Sold out. They bought them all.”
“Who did?”
“The sheep.” He bleated in imitation of the animal. I backed a few steps away from him. “Those who look to the outside world to heal the pain they feel inside themselves.
Those who don’t realize there’s no relief for our suffering, that joy and happiness are a scam invented by greeting card companies and the deep state to control us, to make us blind to hardship, which is the only certain thing this world can offer any of us.”
“The greeting card companies?”
“Among others.” Here, he finally looked up at me. “You’re one of them, the sheep. I can see it on your stupid face.”
“Hey, now—”
“But you’re too late. We’re sold out.”
“Could there be more in the back?”
He did a deep, ugly sniffle before saying, “Could be.”
“Well, can you check?”
“No, man. What’s the point? What’s the point of this?”
I was on the verge of asking to see his manager when a teenage girl, also an employee, came to the end of the aisle and stopped. To the boy, she said, “You look very handsome today, Arnie.” Her eyes were moony and earnest. “I guess I’d never noticed it before. Isn’t that crazy?” she giggled. “To not see something so obvious?”
He hung his head again. “You won’t love me when I’m old. You won’t love me when I’m incontinent and my mind devolves to the point where I think it’s still this year and I’m still a gorgeous stock boy at the Lowe’s in Murrysville. You won’t think I’m so hot when I need you to rub cream into my elderly feet to keep them from cracking, and I get Staph infections on my old, hunched back, and it’s up to you to lance the boils because there’s some other shit wrong with my arms that keeps me from being able to reach.”
I decided to just leave. Before I did, though, curiosity made me ask, “Hey, kids, what’s this music that’s playing?”
“Emo,” the boy said, “something good for a change.” Simultaneously, the girl answered, “A piano ballad. Isn’t it beautiful?”
III.
When I arrived at the coffee shop, Will Sheck was already there waiting for me with his young son, Siggy. Will was an old friend of mine from college who now ran a private psychology practice in the next town over. He was the only person I knew who might be able to shed some light on this thing, so I had texted him from the Lowe’s parking lot, asking him to meet.
“It’s more than just your family,” Will told me, gravely. We were sitting across from one another at a table by the big front window. Siggy was seated beside his father, staring into his chilled, besprinkled desert beverage. There were a few other patrons, but the shop was mostly empty. “I’m interested to see, in the coming days, just how far-reaching this is. On our way here, I had to navigate through a mob of fervent youngsters twerking in the street.”
I knew by then it was bigger than just my family. Honestly, though, they were my only concern. I didn’t say so only because Will was now making a clandestine nod toward little Siggy, suggesting that he, too, was afflicted. “What do you think is happening?” I asked instead.
“Heck if I know,” Will shrugged. “Some sort of mass hysteria by the look of it—like Strasbourg in the fifteen hundreds when all those villagers danced themselves to death.” Noticing my sour expression, he continued, “I strongly doubt it’s as serious as that. It could just be an innocent response to collective stress—pandemics, war, political upheaval. Some kind of socially transmitted release that will peter out once the stress gets back down to tolerable levels.” Here, he mouthed the words, watch this before asking, “What are you thinking about, Siggy?”
“Oh…the good old days,” the boy said.
“Good old days?” I said. “You’re, like, six.”
“I’m nine. Back when I was six, though…” He trailed off, leaving a nostalgic smile on his lips, the kind you might see from a broken man at a bar as he recalls his high school glory days.
Will raised his eyebrows at me, and I returned the gesture.
“Hey,” called a voice from behind me. Collectively, we looked to see a bearded man in a black t-shirt waiting in line to order. As soon as we acknowledged him, he walked over and joined at the side of our table. “Are you guys talking about the thing? The thing that happened today?” He appeared to be in his late twenties. He wore leather wrist cuffs. His beard came to his nipples, and he had a receding hairline. I imagined him working at a head shop or a vintage music store, the kind of hipster amateur pop-cultural critic whom I had always found insufferable. He didn’t give his name, so I instantly came to think of him as The Beardsman.
“We were just now discussing that, yes,” Will said with a grace I wouldn’t have extended to him.
“It’s the pop songs,” The Beardsman said. “That’s the key.” He tapped his short index finger on our tabletop. “Let me ask you this: what day is it?”
“Sunday,” Siggy said, then to his father, “Remember Friday, Dad? Gosh, Friday was a good day.”
“Right,” The Beardsman agreed, importantly, “Sunday. And what day of the week has pop music beaten to death for decades? Sunday. Think about it—‘Easy Like Sunday Morning,’ ‘Pleasant Valley Sunday,’ ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday,’ ‘Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,’ ‘Sunday Kind of Love,’ ‘Every Day is Like Sunday,’ on and on. See what I’m saying?”
“No,” I told him. Turning back to Will, I said, “He’s right that it has something to do with music, though. Laura and Stacy each told me they could hear music when no music was playing. The kids at Lowe’s, too. And my dad, I think.”
“How interesting,” Will said.
“It’s bananas,” The Beardsman agreed. “Look, pop songs in general—not counting much of Dylan’s work, of course, and the myriad bands he influences—can be broken into a few main themes: puppy love, sex, heartbreak, discontentment, friendship, coming of age and death. And how are people acting today? Lovesick, horny, despairing, overly friendly, or reflective, right? It’s the pop songs. They took us over, man.” He took a deep breath, staring at us like he was waiting to be praised for cracking it.
To me, he sounded like a conspiracy theorist. Possibly, it blinded me to the point he was making. Will, too, seemed unimpressed. With the tact of a man who was accustomed to dealing with psychosis, he said, “Thank you, sir. That’s a useful theory. We appreciate you sharing it with us. Now, if you’ll excuse us…”
“Nah, bro, don’t blow me off like that,” The Beardsman said. “I can see it in your eyes, you’re unaffected. You’re just about the first ones I’ve found all day. We need to stick together here.” To Will, he asked, “What music do you listen to?”
“Opera.”
“Not popular enough. It has no cultural power. And you?” he asked me.
“Nothing,” I said. “I don’t care for music. I’m tone deaf.”
“For real?” He clapped his hands, delighted. “Oh, my God, you’re like a superhero then. That’s awesome.” When he turned his eyes, finally, to Siggy, his face fell. “What about you, little man? What’s your favorite song?” There was a newfound delicacy in his voice.
Without hesitation, the boy said, “‘Nothing New’ by Taylor Swift.”
The Beardsman narrowed his eyes. “Taylor’s version? The one with Phoebe Bridgers?”
Siggy nodded and asked, “There a different one?”
“Yes, from her debut album.”
“Boy, that sounds great. She used to be so good.”
To Will and me, our unwanted guest said, “That’s a coming-of-age song.”
“So?” I asked.
“So, it’s got our little buddy here all gauzy and nostalgic. He’s into a song about growing up, so that’s how it affected him. That’s how it works, I bet—your illness, or whatever, is tailored to your taste. God, that’s insidious. Mainstream pop is evil, man; I’ve been saying it for years.” He shook his head, apparently remembering every sad soul who had ever ignored his elitist chiding of their personal taste, a modern-day Cassandra.
“What about you?” I asked him. “You seem to know everything. You know all this music too. Why aren’t you affected?”
“Um,” The Beardsman said, clearly offended, “I hate-listen, actually. I’m like a scholar, bro. None of it gets in here.” He tapped his heart. “I’m only into pure shit. Shit that could never take over like this. Shit you’ve never even heard of.”
“Remember when grown-ups didn’t use to curse in front of little kids?” Siggy asked no one in particular. “Gosh, those seem like good days.”
“Sorry, kid.”
He caught me rolling my eyes at Will and opened his mouth to chide me, but then something seemed to occur to him. He looked from me to Will to Siggy, and then he lowered himself onto one knee, resting his arms on our tabletop and tilting his head to get eye level with the boy.
“What are you doing?” Will asked. “Not so close to my kid, please.”
The Beardsman waggled his fingers without taking his eyes off Siggy, a gesture which told us to relax and let him try something. “Hey, little man, did you know the original version of that song came out way back in 2012? Were you even born then?”
“No, I wasn’t born yet, but 2012 sounds wonderful.”
“Yeah. The version you like came out in 2021.” Siggy nodded and started to speak, but The Beardsman continued, “It was produced by Aaron Dessner. He also played guitar, bass, keyboards, piano and synthesizers on the track. Isn’t that cool?”
“Um, yeah,” Siggy said. I noticed a slight change in his expression. At first, I couldn’t place it.
“Dressner, incidentally, was a founding member of The National—that’s an indie band that’s kind of cool, but a bit too mainstream IMO. He also has an even lesser-known band called Big Red Machine with Justin Vernon from Bon Iver.”
“Uh-huh.” The boy’s little face was tightening, closing itself off. He’s getting annoyed by this know-it-all, I realized. He’s having the correct, rational reaction to this man’s unsolicited bullshit. Will and I stole a glance at one another, before returning our attentions to The Beardsman.
“The name Big Red Machine is probably a reference to the Cincinnati Reds—that’s a baseball team. Dressner is from Cincinnati. Anyway, Taylor first approached him to work on Folklore, during the pandemic. It went well, and so—”
“Can you stop talking, please?” Siggy asked, then to his father, “Dad, can he please stop talking. All his words make me feel mad. His words make me not even like that song anymore.”
“Goddamn, Beardsman,” I said, “you did it! You’re a genius.”
As further proof of this, Siggy didn’t balk at my cursing. In fact, it made him giggle. Our hero, though, looked at me, puzzled. “Beardsman?” he asked, self-consciously fingering the wiry ends of his facial hair. “My name is Jerry, yo.”
“Well, Jerry,” Will told him, “you’re clearly onto something.” He riffled Siggy’s hair and said, “Welcome back, son.”
“This is boring, Dad. Can we go?”
Upon hearing the boy whine these words, Jerry’s eyes darted all around him, a gesture of paranoia.
“What?” I asked.
He listened for a moment longer before saying, “Nothing. It’s just that if this were a sitcom, that would have been the perfect last line—the cute kid being scampish, letting the audience know all was well, the point where the episode would end, and we would all freeze in place to credits and applause. I just thought—if the pop songs have taken over…maybe the sitcoms had too.” He smiled at me, embarrassed but relieved.
“I can’t believe you knew all those facts about a song you don’t even like,” Will said.
“It’s a duty as much as a curse,” he shrugged.
“Hey,” I asked him, “are you doing anything right now? I’d like to introduce you to my family.”
IV
We parted ways with Will and Siggy outside the coffee shop, and then I drove Jerry the Beardsman, our unlikely savior, to my home. He made me drive slow through my neighborhood with all the windows down while he blared unusual, growling music, which he programmed to my car radio from his phone.
“Why are we doing this?” I had to yell for him to hear me over the din.
“I want to see what happens when the afflicted are exposed to good music. This is Tuvan throat singing. It’s wild, but the singer actually produces two simultaneous tones—”
“I get it,” I said, cutting him off, “pop music makes zombies, so maybe this nonsense is a cure.”
“Just a theory,” he said, clearly hurt by my characterization of the music.
As it turned out, his theory proved untrue. When I moved through the intersection leading to my block, Wayne was still in his yard, peering longingly up at his flag. He turned to the sound of the music and instantly rushed us. “Slow down,” Jerry said, “let’s see if this gets him out of his trance.” I did as he said, crawling to a stop at the end of Wayne’s driveway.
“What in the ever-loving hell are you up to with this ethno-music?” he screamed into my open window, his spittle flying. “Maybe you can get away with playing this crap in the big city, but you’re crazy to try it in a small town.” He looked very much like he might hit me.
“Drive,” Jerry said. I didn’t hesitate. He turned the music down and sighed, “Well, that was a bust. The guy’s clearly a modern Country fan, all that ‘virtue of small-town living stuff.’ He might be surprised to learn about where and how Jason Aldean really lives. I’ll get him on the way back, after we take care of your family.” When I pulled into my driveway, he saw my hedge and said, “Oh, cool. Is that a dog?”
“It’s an armadillo. My wife has a thing for them.”
“Ah,” he said, “yeah, okay. Sure.”
I ignored his criticism, getting out of the car and leading him around the side of the house to the back door. I found I was hesitant to open it, anticipating the chaos inside.
After a breath, I peeked my head into the kitchen and scoped it out. The room was dark and empty. The mostly empty PBR bottle remained, but my father was nowhere to be seen. Jerry stayed right on my heels as I started through the kitchen, and I had to turn and swat at him to get him to back off. “Sorry,” he whispered, “you’re walking so gingerly, I thought we were doing a Scooby-Doo kind of thing.”
“I wasn’t walking gingerly,” I shot back. “Gingerly is not how I walk.” I was too loud. Stacy heard me and called out to me from the other room. I turned back to scowl at Jerry for causing me to give us away, and then the light came on, and I turned to see my daughter standing in the doorway. She was a cartoon image of fat hair curlers and a muddy facemask. In each hand, she pinched a single cucumber slice, having just removed them from her eyes.
“Daddy, I—” She began, but then stopped when she noticed Jerry behind me. The mud mask kept me from seeing her blush, but there was a recalibration in her body, a visible shift from a daughter into something more worldly and disturbing. “Hello there,” she cooed, “and who are you?”
“This is Jerry,” I told her in a tone I had often used with her when she was little, a tone of don’t touch that.
“Mom,” Stacy called behind her, “come see. Daddy brought Jerry. He’s very dreamy.”
Jerry stepped forward, grinning like a fool. He cleared his throat and used his fingers to do a quick comb through his beard.
“She’s sixteen,” I told him.
“Seriously?” he asked, deflated. “Fuck.”
Laura appeared in the doorway. She was dressed in funeral black. She looked past me to Jerry, giving him a once-over. To Stacy, she sniffed, “He is dreamy, I suppose. Not as dreamy as your father was.” She crossed herself.
“I’m not dead!” I yelled.
“Dude?” Jerry asked me.
I pulled him to a corner of the kitchen for a sidebar. “I have no idea,” I said. “She’s into old R&B, Barry White and that—”
“Baby-making music,” he interrupted, “nice.” He presented me with his fist to bump.
I pushed it down. “When I first found her today, she seemed to be all, you know, hot and bothered.”
“Horned up. Yeah, that would make sense.”
“Right, well…then I mentioned I was heading out for a few minutes, and she got it in her head I was never coming back. And now here I am back, and she still seems to think I’m dead.”
“Hmm.” Jerry scratched his eyebrow as he thought this through. “That doesn’t make sense for seventies R&B. Does she listen to anything else?”
“Oldies?” I said.
He rolled his eyes. “Bro, can you be more specific? At this point in history, oldies can mean anything from the fifties through the early nineties. Granted some of the latter period is simultaneously categorized as classic rock, but I still—”
“The really old stuff,” I said, cutting him off. “Fifties and Sixties, I guess.”
He thought for a second and then began to nod. “Fifties and Sixties ballads about pining for dead lovers. Yeah man, that’s nearly a genre unto itself—tear jerkers, death discs, splatter platters. I got this.” He stepped forward, toward the women. Stacy tensed, looking like a tightly wound spring of unmentionable urges. Laura, lost in her grief, barely noticed him at all. To her, Jerry said, “Did you know that after Jan and Dean recorded ‘Dead Man’s Curve,’ Jan actually had a car accident on that very stretch of road? He lived but was never the same again.”
“Yes,” she said, trying to recall it, “yes, I do think I’ve heard that before.” I kept a close eye on her expression. She looked only mildly irritated.
“Yeah, that’s a pretty famous story,” he agreed. “Some scholars think it was the death of James Dean in his Porsche Spyder that started the teen tragedy genre, but Leiber and Stoller actually began the trend a few months prior to his accident when they wrote, ‘Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots.’ Of course, that’s not the most popular tragic motorcycle song. That honor goes to ‘Leader of the Pack’ by The Shangri-Las.”
“Mm-hmm.” She was shaking her head now, visibly annoyed.
“If you ask me, though, the most notable of the genre is ‘Last Kiss.’”
“Oh, I do like that one. It’s so sad.”
“Isn’t it? You know, it was originally recorded by Wayne Cochran in 1961 – he wrote it too – but it flopped. He actually rerecorded it a couple years later, and it flopped too. The hit we all know – besides the more recent Pearl Jam cover – was recorded by J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers. It was a top 100 hit for them, and now, obviously, a classic. Interestingly, that group has a real-life automobile tragedy too – ”
“I’m so sorry,” Laura said to him, “can you please not tell me any more about this? I don’t mean to be rude, I just…well, I just really don’t care.” To me, she asked, “Why is he here, Sam? Is he a friend of yours? Is he staying?”
Jerry slapped me on the back. His moustache tickled my ear when he whispered,
“Nailed it.”
We turned our attention to Stacy, but, unexpectedly, she was fixed too. I suppose it was enough of a lesson for her to learn not every boy is crush-worthy. Sometimes, even the dreamiest ones turn out to be pop culture weirdos.
He fixed my father next with some facts about Hank Williams Sr. We found him sleeping off his drunk on the living room couch. He took a few minutes to rouse, but from there the process was the same.
Interestingly, once they were cured, none of them had any memory of being overcome by the pop songs. Stacy rushed off, horrified to be seen by a stranger, even one as uninteresting to her as Jerry, in her beauty mask. Laura appeared confused by her getup but took it in stride. My father stayed on the couch, smacking his lips and holding his head.
“Well,” Jerry said, beaming a smile at me, “I guess that just about does it.”
“Not quite,” I said. “I think you have a bit more work to do.” I nodded to indicate the street outside our home. “The Beardsman,” I said with a certain reverence which made him sound like a superhero. I had no doubt he was into superheroes.
Pleased, he nodded and said, “I guess I ought to get on that. Here, give me your phone.” I did as he asked. He had earned my trust. When he gave it back to me, he said sheepishly, “I programmed my number in case you want to catch up when this is over or hang out or whatever.”
“Oh,” I said, “thank you.” I think we both knew I would never call. “Do you need a ride or something?”
“Nah, I’m good. I’ll Uber home after I’m done out there.”
“Right.”
“Whelp,” he said with a final wave, “be seeing you.” Then he turned and walked out through the back kitchen door.
Laura and I watched him until he disappeared down the sidewalk. “What a strange man,” she said to me. “How do you know him?”
“I met him when I was out today.”
She furrowed her brow. “Did you go out? I almost recall…” she began, trying to make sense of whatever she was remembering. After a moment, she said, “Sam?”
“Hmm?” I was unsure how to answer whatever questions she would have, how I would explain any of this to her.
“What do you want for lunch? Somehow, the day has gotten away from me.”
It was a moment that made me think of Jerry—the perfect place for the show to end, the characters freezing and the studio audience applauding. It made me glad, if only for an instant, that he had left me with a way to stay in touch.
“Why are you laughing?” Laura asked.
“No reason,” I said. “Make whatever. I’m going to have a beer, assuming Dad left me
any.”
She flattened her lips as she tied a half apron over her funeral gown. “Don’t blame your father if you’re low on beer, Sam. You know he doesn’t touch it. And only have one,” she said, eyeing the bottle on the tabletop. “It’s early. You’ll be a zombie all Sunday afternoon, and I have no interest in dealing with you when you’re like that.”
I had been wrong, I realized—this was the line that would lead to the freeze frame. I kissed her on the forehead, prompting her to smile.