“Well, my friends, there’s trouble, and I’ve been dropped. During the next few days, I’m sure you’re going to hear lots of rumors about me. Evidently, someone connected with the show has been selling drugs, and the backers are convinced I’m part of it. I’m not, but I don’t suppose I’ll be able to change anyone’s mind. As far as they’re concerned, once a druggie, always a druggie.
“So tonight is my farewell performance. There are probably a lot of you who don’t know that I started out singing solos in the First Baptist Church of Jasper, Texas. Back then, my name was Mary Lou Gibbon, and what I wanted more than anything was to get out of Jasper and stay out. Right now, Jasper is looking pretty good to me.
“During the next few days, when you all are hearing all those rumors and reading all those stories that they write to sell newspapers, I want you to remember what I’m tellin’ you.” A soft Texas drawl had somehow drifted into Jasmine’s pattern of speech. It fit her like a warm glove.
“There’s no sense in me tryin’ to stop all those rumors, because lies have a life of their own. But I want to tell you right now that I gave up drugs two years ago, and I haven’t touched them since. And I’d die before I’d be a part of selling ’em and sendin’ somebody else into the hellhole I’ve spent the last two years trying to climb out of. And no matter what they say about me, I’m not a part of any murder either.
“So tonight I’d like you all to help me say good-bye to Jasmine Day, whoever she is.” She reached up then and tugged at the blonde wig, peeling it back from her head like a cabbage leaf and tossing it off stage, where Alan Dale caught it. She reached up and rubbed her head, scratched it, and laughed.
“There, that’s not so bad, is it?”
A few bits of nervous laughter drifted through the audience, but mostly the huge room was silent.
“Jasmine Day started the concert tonight, but Mary Lou Gibbon is going to end it,” she continued. She turned away from the audience and spoke briefly to the piano player, who nodded in understanding. Then she swung back around on her stool.
“The two songs I’m going to sing aren’t on the program, and the orchestra may not know them, so we’ll do them with just the piano. They’re songs Mary Lou Gibbon used to do back home in Jasper.”
The audience was now totally silent. No one coughed or moved or cleared a throat. The pianist hit a chord, and Jasmine’s bell-like voice soared through the auditorium, filling it with an old gospel song, “It’s Always Darkest Before the Dawn.” When she finished, the place was still silent. People didn’t know what to do, whether to applaud or cry.
I happened to glance at Alan Dale just then. He seemed to have gotten something in his eye. I was suffering from the same problem. I doubted there were many dry eyes on the other side of the curtain either.
Before the audience had time to recover its equanimity though, the piano player bounded off into another song. Jasmine picked up the wooden stool by one leg and tossed it off stage. They could have been rehearsing it for years. Alan Dale caught it one-handed.
“You all know this one,” Jasmine was saying into the microphone. “And if you know it, help me with it: ‘Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the waters…’”
The second time through, the orchestra picked up the tune, and by the third pass, the audience was on its feet, singing along and clapping. The sound must have rattled the huge crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.
I’ve never had much luck with Billy Graham or Jerry Falwell, and I’ve lived my whole life without ever having attended an old-fashioned revival meeting. But that night, in the Fifth Avenue Theater, Jasmine Day took the place by storm. I felt I’d truly been revived. When the music finally stopped, the applause was thunderous.
The standing ovation wouldn’t stop, so she went back out front and did one final chorus. Even then, there were three more curtain calls after that. As Jasmine came off stage for the last time, Alan Dale started out to meet her, but Roger Glancy cut him off at the pass.
He was waiting by the curtain with an open pair of handcuffs in his hand. “I’m Roger Glancy with the DEA, Miss Day,” he said. “I have a warrant for your arrest on a charge of possession of cocaine with the intent to distribute.”
She gave him an appraising look. “My name is Mary Lou Gibbon,” she said. “You didn’t say anything about the two murders. Did you forget those?”
“I wouldn’t know anything about murder, ma’am,” Roger Glancy said. “That’s his department.” He turned and nodded toward me. I shook my head and said nothing. There was nothing to say.