“You’re toasted right now,” Mason told him. “We’ll be all right. It’ll be hot for a while, but Ross, we’re tough. We’re from Oakpine.”
Saying the word Oakpine sent Ross into the Oakpine cheer, a martial chant that was picked up in the meadow and carried to its whooping conclusion. When the calls had subsided, Ross shook Mason’s hand. “Okay, sounds good. Just so you’re fireproof.” Ross went on. “Gimme a drumroll, and we’ll get this party under way.”
Craig started with a low simmer, which he built up in a blur, which he threw to his bass drum and then held up again in a floating snare. The drums quickened the night, and the circle of a hundred boys and girls with their cups of beer tightened around the site. Craig now ran a classic drumroll, and Frank plucked the first dozen notes of the theme to The Twilight Zone.
“All right, Oakpine!” Ross yelled to the crowd.
“All right, Oakpine,” Frank deadpanned into the mike.
“Oh, there’s a mike,” Ross said, turning. He spoke into it then: “All right, Oakpine. Let’s have Matt Brand, Matt Three-Touchdown Brand, start what we call the official fucking fire! We won, and we won’t leave without a conflagration!” Ross jumped forward and ran to Matt, pressing a book of matches into his hand.
“Quite the speech,” Mason said.
“Get ready, guys,” Jimmy said. “The Rangemen are about to play their second American date.”
“Wildfire,” Frank said.
“Whatever,” Mason said. “I am ready.”
Matt Brand, obviously full of beer, held the matches aloft and then dropped them to great laughter. Then, resupplied and with another flourish, he struck one. He stepped forward and threw it at the lumber, falling as he did. Ross and Doug Leeper pulled him back, standing him braced against Kathleen. Then Ross rolled a tube from one of the paper flyers and lit it, and when it flared, he went forward and thrust it into the thatched stack of wood. Instantly a bright yellow spearpoint of fire arose and slipped through the mass, rising until inside of a minute there was a four-story blaze standing in the meadow. The kids backed and then backed again as the heat registered, their faces two-dimensional in the strange moment.
In the sudden light flashing against the side of everyone, Jimmy Brand said, “My friends: one, two, three . . .” and the band kicked into “Be True to Your School,” a song they were shaky on, but it was simple and loud enough to carry. The speaker and the amplifier filled the mountain with ten tons of sound, enough to go with the ghastly fire, and the figures in the firelight pulsed to the hard beat, their shadows dancing distorted and gargantuan on the wall of trees in Bear Meadow. The party had begun.
The band knew nine songs well, four fairly well, and two were rocky possibilities, and so their plan was to play each with an extra chorus or two. They were worried about running out of stuff, but there was no need to worry. Before they were halfway through the third song, “Let Him Run Wild,” that Beach Boys tune, the night had fallen into an easy pattern for which the band was a steady background. They worked at furnishing each room in all the songs completely, overdoing it, taking all the corners wide and coming together in the performance better than they’d ever done in the garage. They’d never had this much room, and they’d never let go like this, played so loud. It seemed to Jimmy that they were playing slowly, but it was right on tempo. The meadow teemed with kids, a circle around the fire as it flared and collapsed once and then rose again as a real fire, not a temporary tower. A lot of the young people lined the stage, some dancing, though only a few, and the rest coming and going from the woods and the cars and the groups of four or five in letter jackets, and smaller groups in conspiracies of mischief and affection.
The band worked, rising above themselves, into the music. After the first few songs they felt no longer like the center of attention, and it was all like a big open rehearsal, fun. They didn’t pay any attention to the party, because it seemed that the party was out there, remote. Even the half-dozen kids dancing seemed to be part of something else. Between songs they could hear kids calling for more, clapping, whooping for this song or that, as if taking requests were even a possibility. From where he stood, Jimmy watched it all, and Mason saw him take it in. Jimmy had words for things and Mason could see his friend formulating his overview. When they looked at each other, pounding out “Wendy,” the look sparked, and Mason’s faced closed up in a smile, and Jimmy came across and hugged his friend with an arm around the neck, brushing faces. The moment, the happiness, was choking.