‘God,’ Steve muttered.
‘Worst sports disaster in UK history.’ Nearly whispering now. ‘Horrible. Fans trying to climb on top of everyone else, people jumping over the wall. One minute alive, then snuffed out. I don’t know how they died. I guess suffocation.’
‘Compressive asphyxia, they call it,’ Dance said.
Stuart nodded. ‘It all happened so fast. Ridiculously fast. Kick-off was at three. At three-oh-six they stopped the game but almost everybody who died was dead at that point.’
Dance recalled that the deaths at the Solitude Creek roadhouse, though fewer, had taken about the same amount of time.
Stuart added, ‘And you know what was the scariest? Together, all those people became something else. Not human.’
It was like they weren’t people at all – it was just one big creature, staggering around, squeezing toward the doors …
Stuart continued, ‘It reminded me of something else I saw. When I was on a job in Australia. I—’
‘We’re hungry!’ Wes called, and he and Donnie charged to the table. Several of the adults jumped at the sudden intrusion, coming in the midst of the terrible story.
‘Then let’s eat,’ Dance said, secretly relieved to change the subject. ‘Get your sister and the twins.’
‘Maggie!’ Wes shouted.
‘Wes. Go get your sister.’
‘She heard. She’s coming.’
A moment later the other youngsters arrived, accompanied by the dogs, ever optimistic at the possibility a klutzy human would drop a bit of dinner.
As Dance, Maggie and Boling set the table, she told those assembled that her friend, country crossover singer, Kayleigh Towne, who lived in Fresno, had sent her and the children tickets to the Neil Hartman concert taking place next weekend.
‘No!’ Martine hit her playfully on the arm. ‘The new Dylan? It’s been sold out for months.’
Probably not the new Dylan but a brilliant singer-songwriter, and ace musician too, with a talented backup band. The gig here in town had been scheduled before the young man’s Grammy nomination. The small Monterey Performing Arts Center had sold out instantly after that.
Dance and Martine had a long history and music informed it. They’d met at a concert that was a direct descendant of the famed Monterey Folk Festival, where the ‘original Dylan’ – Bob – had made his west coast debut in ’65. The women had become friends and formed a non-profit website to promote indigenous musical talent. Dance, a folklorist by hobby – song-catcher – would travel around the state, occasionally farther afield, with an expensive portable recorder, collect songs and tunes, sell them on the site, keeping only enough money to maintain the server and pay expenses, and remitting the profits to the performers.
The site was called American Tunes, a homage to the great Paul Simon song from the seventies.
Boling brought the food out, opened more wine. The kids sat at a table of their own, though right next to the adults’ picnic bench. None of them asked to watch TV during the meal, which pleased Dance. Donnie was a natural comedian. He told joke after joke – all appropriate – keeping the younger kids in stitches.
Conversation reeled throughout dinner. When the meal wound down and Boling was serving Keurig coffee, decaf and cocoa, Martine cracked open her guitar and took out the beautiful old Martin 00-18. She and Dance sang a few songs – Richard Thompson, Kayleigh Towne, Rosanne Cash, Pete Seeger, Mary Chapin Carpenter and, of course, Dylan.
Martine called, ‘Hey, Maggie, your mom told me you’re singing “Let It Go” at your talent show.’
‘Yeah.’
‘You liked Frozen?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘The twins loved it. Actually, we loved it too. Come on, sing it. I’ll back you up.’
‘Oh. No, that’s okay.’
‘Love to hear it, honey,’ Stuart Dance encouraged his granddaughter.
Martine told everyone, ‘She has a beautiful voice.’
But Maggie said, ‘Yeah, it’s that I don’t remember the words yet.’
Boling said, ‘Mags, you sang it all the way through today. A dozen times. I heard you in your room. And the lyric book was in the living room with me.’
A hesitation. ‘Oh, I remember. The DVD was on and they had the, you know, the words at the bottom of the screen.’
She was lying, Dance could easily see. If she knew anything, it was her own children’s kinesic baseline. What was this about? Dance recalled that Maggie had seemed more shy and moody in the past day or two. That morning, as she’d tipped her mother’s braid with the colorful elastic tie, Dance had tried to draw her out. Her husband’s death had seemed to hit Wes hardest at first but he seemed better, much better, about the loss; perhaps now Maggie was feeling the impact. But her daughter had denied it – denied, in fact, that anything was bothering her.
‘Well, that’s okay,’ Martine said. ‘Next time.’ And she sang a few more folk tunes, then packed up the guitar.
Martine and Steven took some leftovers that Boling had bagged up for them. Everyone said goodbye, hugs and kisses, and headed out of the door, leaving Boling alone with Dance and the older boys. Wes and Donnie were now texting friends as they sat around their complicated board game, gazing at it intensely. At their phone screens too.
Ah, the enthusiasm of youth …
‘Thanks for the food, everything,’ Dance told him.