Stars Screaming (3 page)

She didn’t answer. Her body was rigid, her mouth dropped open in fear.

“Mrs. Burk? Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“I think we should discuss this in person.”

“No.”

“But—”

“Stop it!” Sandra said, springing up from the bed. Her eyes were wide and her heart was beating in her throat. “There is nothing wrong with my son!”

Sandra was in the kitchen heating up take-out pizza when Burk came home from work that evening. On the dining room table, next to the
small section of clouds she had pieced together that morning, was a note that said,
I’m pregnant.

Burk looked at her inquiringly. “True?”

“Yes.”

“Wow.”

“Is that a happy wow or a sad wow?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I want this baby, Ray.”

“Okay. But—”

“I really do!”

That night, while he and Sandra lay side by side in the darkness with their bare shoulders touching, Burk replayed the conversation he’d had with Louie right before he put his son to bed.

“Mom’s sad,” he told Burk.

“She is? How do you know?”

“Because this afternoon, while we were driving home from nursery school, I looked over and saw a tear fall off her chin.”

“Did you ask her what was wrong?”

“No.”

“Then maybe she wasn’t sad, because sometimes people cry when they’re happy.”

“No.”

“Some people do.”

“Tears are what happens when the glass breaks behind your eyes. If you swallow them you can die.”

“Did your mom tell you that?”

“No. The bird did.”

“What bird?”

“The big black bird.”

“Where is that bird, Louie?”

“You can’t see him.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s inside my head, behind my eyes . . . behind the glass.”

“Is he always there?”

“No. Just sometimes. He’ll come tonight if Mom forgets to tuck me in and kiss me good night.”

* * *

Much later that night, his body fatigued but his mind too restless to let him sleep, Burk switched on the radio. From 3 to 4
A.M.
each morning on KMPC, late-nite talk show host Ray Moore invited his listeners to call in and “share a moment from your childhood, a story or anecdote that is either happy or sad. It doesn’t matter which, because we’re here to listen and open our hearts, not to judge.”

The first caller, a woman from Monrovia, spoke about a crush she had had on a boy in the fourth grade. “Donnie Randolph was his name. I sat right behind him at Warner Avenue Elementary,” she told Radio Ray. “No one ever called him Donald or Don. It was always Donnie. He was smart—but he was a cutup too, always turning in his seat to make faces at his friends or toss notes down the aisle. But he never looked at or spoke to me. Not once during the whole semester, even when I gave him a card on Valentine’s Day. Do you know how that made me feel?” the woman asked Radio Ray, her voice close to tears. “It made me feel like the ugliest little girl in the whole world.”

“Maybe he was just shy,” Radio Ray said. “What else do you remember?”

“All those weeks sittin’ there in class, hopin’ he would smile at me or say hello or even tease me. And I remember how my fingers ached to reach out and straighten his shirt collar so I could touch his hair. Sometimes I would bend my head forward and dare myself to kiss him on the neck—but of course I never did.”

Radio Ray said, “I suppose you were in love with him.”

“Yes, I suppose I was.”

“What do you think he’s doing now?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Selling insurance. I don’t know,” she said and paused. “Maybe he’s dead.”

“Maybe he is, but maybe he’s listening right now. I know this is a long shot,” Radio Ray said, “but if you’re out there listening, Donnie Randolph—”

“My name’s Margerie Willis,” the woman said, her voice brightening. “Warner Avenue Elementary, class of ‘forty-seven. I hope he remembers me.”

“I hope so too.”

A few minutes later a woman with a southern accent told Radio Ray that she once knew a boy named Donnie in Gulfport, Mississippi, the
town where she was raised. “But we used to call him Wonderhead, ‘cause his bucket was shaped like a loaf of bread. Get it? Wonderhead, Wonder bread.”

Laughing, Radio Ray said, “Was his last name Randolph?”

“His name was Donnie. That and his big-ass head is all I can remember.”

After a station break and a commercial for a weight reduction powder imported from Canada, Radio Ray took a call from a man who said he was using the pay phone outside the Vogue Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.

“My name is John Beal,” he told Radio Ray, “and I’m from Omaha, Nebraska. You familiar with Omaha, Ray?”

“As a matter of fact I am, John Beal. I worked at KKOW back in the summer of ‘fifty-two.”

“I was nineteen years old that summer,” John Beal said.

Out loud, Burk said, “Gene was twelve and I just turned ten.”

“I stayed at the Hotel Sherwood,” said Radio Ray, “right up the street from the Greyhound station.”

“I rode the dog a few times,” John Beal said.

“It’s a good way to travel across America. Cheap, too.”

“Ray, did you ever eat at Chloe’s?”

“Many times.”

“I used to bake their pies,” John Beal said proudly.

“I didn’t have much of a sweet tooth, John. But I sure remember that meat loaf.”

“Shoulda tried the pies. Then we would have something to talk about,” John Beal said, and the line went dead.

Burk put his hand on the receiver and left it there for several seconds before he dialed.

“Last call,” Radio Ray said with a regretful sigh. “You’re on the air.”

“When I was ten years old I didn’t make Little League,” Burk said, hearing the bed groan slightly as he stood up and moved the phone into the bathroom. “Neither did my older brother, Gene. The coach told my dad I took my eye off the ball and my arm was too weak. He said Gene was too slow. But Ricky Furlong made it,” he said, and his voice began to quaver. “He lived across the street, and we all tried out together. And when we drove home that day, he was in front with
my dad . . . and me and Gene were in back. I didn’t feel that was right. I felt we should’ve been up there with him, no matter how bad we did.”

“What about your mom?”

“She was gone. She left my dad when I was eight. She wasn’t around for anything.”

“That’s tough,” Radio Ray said. “I’m sorry.”

Burk grimaced. “Yeah,” he said, his voice sounding hurt, “so am I.”

After Burk came back to bed, Sandra tried to maneuver herself into his arms, but his shoulders tensed and he rolled out of her embrace.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him.

“I’m not in the mood.”

“Well, I am.”

“I’m sorry.”

Sandra let her hand slip between her thighs. Burk said, “Don’t, please.”

“Why not?”

“Let’s talk.”

“No. I don’t want to talk,” she said, and Burk could feel the bed move.

“Stop it,” Burk hissed.

“Then fuck me!”

“No,” Burk said loudly. Then, in the dark, he saw his son move slowly into the bedroom. “Louie? What’s wrong?”

“I’m scared.”

“There’s nothing to be scared of,” Sandra said, sitting up. “Go back to sleep.”

“I heard noises.”

“You were just imagining.”

“No.”

Burk said, “He was hearing us. We were loud. Weren’t you, honey?”

Louie shook his head. “Outside,” he said, pointing. “I heard noises outside.”

Burk heard Sandra sigh as he slid out of bed. Just below the window, in the moonlit yard next door, water spurted from the nozzle of a long yellow hose lying unwound in a flower bed. Several yards
away, in the center of the backyard, an empty swing squeaked as it moved back and forth on the rusty chains.

Louie said, “It was the man next door. That’s who I heard. That’s who woke me up. Right, Daddy?”

Burk squeezed Louie’s hand. “Right,” he said. “He was watering his lawn.”

Louie glanced over his shoulder. “Mommy?”

“What?”

“It was the man next door.”

“I heard.”

“I’m not scared anymore.”

“Good.”

“I’m going back to sleep.”

After Louie shuffled out of the bedroom, Burk remained by the window looking into the night, listening to the water running from the hose and the squeak of the swing set and the sound of the bedsprings, as his wife’s breathing grew faster and faster, and the distance between them grew wider and wider.

Two

Burk and Bonnie: Dream Lovers

December 5, 1969

Six months later Burk was drinking at Ernie’s Stardust Lounge toward the end of the day when he learned that his wife had miscarried after the running of the fifth race at Hollywood Park. During this same telephone conversation he also discovered that he had been fired from his job.

“Sandra’s at Brotman Hospital,” his secretary, Lorraine, told him.

“Is she all right?”

“Physically, she’s fine. You can pick her up after six.” Another phone rang in the background and Lorraine put him on hold. When she came back on the line, she said, “Charly feels you should take a few days off.”

Burk felt his chest suddenly tighten with anxiety. “What else did he say?”

“He asked me where you’ve been lately.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I didn’t know.”

Burk was silent a moment. “Lorraine?”

“Yes, Mr. Burk.”

“Am I going to be fired?”

“I don’t know.”

“But maybe I am?”

“Mr. Burk—”

“C’mon, be straight with me.”

“Mr. Burk,” Lorraine said, keeping her voice steady, “I think you should be worrying about your wife right now.”

“I
am
worried about my wife. I’m always worried about her. But I’m worried about my job, too.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Burk knew he was gone. There was nothing more to say, so he hung up the phone and walked back to the bar.

“My wife just lost our kid,” Burk told Miles, the bartender.

“He’ll turn up. How old is he?”

“Twenty-two weeks.”

“Twenty-two weeks? You mean—”

“He’s dead. She had a miscarriage at the track.”

“Jesus, you better get your ass out there.”

“Yeah, I know. As soon as I finish this beer,” Burk said, and as Miles gave him a quizzical look. “If that’s okay with you.”

Miles shrugged. If thirty years behind the bar had taught him anything, it was when to back off if he sensed that a conversation with a customer was beginning to sound peculiar. Burk usually acted like a normal guy, but then so did James Earl Ray, a regular for a while at the Stardust Lounge. Except to order a drink ("Another tall screw, bub"), Ray never uttered a word to anyone, and the only time he left his stool was to play “Tennessee Waltz” on the jukebox. But one day he didn’t show up, and the next time Miles saw him, James Earl Ray’s ice-cold eyes were staring down from the television screen above the bar. “Can you believe it?” someone said at the time. “All those hours he was sittin’ here, that crazy cracker was workin’ out how he was gonna bag that jig.”

Burk punched P-5 on the jukebox and checked his watch. It was nearly five o’clock. He knew he better get moving if he was going to have enough time to pick up his son, Louie, at nursery school and drop him off at his dad’s house for the night before driving out to the hospital.

. . .
Dream lover where are you

With a love that’s oh so true

With a hand that I can hold

And a love that’s oh so bold . . .

The panic that he’d been holding down swelled and washed over Burk like a black wave as he whispered the lyrics to the song playing on the jukebox, and for a brief but frightening moment it seemed that he had made a terrible mistake with his life. “Can this be really happening?” he said softly to himself as Bobby Darin’s velvety voice followed him out of the Stardust Lounge into the fading afternoon sunlight on Hollywood Boulevard.

The first time Burk heard “Dream Lover” was in 1959, ten years earlier, on a moonlit night in Palm Springs during spring break.

He and his best friend, Timmy Miller, had driven down to the desert right after school was out on Friday, and by the time they reached the outskirts of town—where traffic was backed up bumper-to-bumper with carloads of teenagers from all over Southern California—they knew where all the parties were that evening. The motel mentioned most often was the Regency Arms.

“A bunch of sluts from Santa Ana stay there,” a fat kid with greasy sideburns told them as he pulled alongside Timmy’s ‘55 Chevy on Palm Canyon Drive. “Last year this chick took on everyone in town. She called herself Daisy Crazyfuck. I’m horny as hell, so I’m counting on her showing up this year.”

But Burk never made it to the Regency Arms, or to any of the other motels that weekend.

“It was one of those lucky deals that just happened,” Burk told Sandra a few weeks before they were married. They were lying in bed, trading puffs off the same cigarette. “Timmy was up in our room, taking a nap, and I was out by the pool, catching the last rays of the day. I didn’t even notice her when she put her towel down next to me.”

“Yeah, right.”

“It’s the truth. Really.”

“What was her name?”

“Laurel.”

Sandra laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Burk asked her.

“Think about it, Ray,” Sandra said, sending a loop of smoke toward the ceiling. “The first time you get laid and her name is Laurel, as in victory. What did she look like? Wait! Don’t tell me! She had a face full of freckles, really pretty turquoise eyes, and a body that was close to perfect. Right? And you were sealed together forever the moment she asked you to spread Coppertone on her shoulders.”

“She made it all seem so easy.”

“Easier than me?” Sandra said, moving her hips closer to his. “I slept with you on the first date. Remember?”

“This was different.”

“How?”

“Sandra,” Burk said, as she rested her fingertips on his thigh, “I was in high school.”

That Friday night Burk and Laurel drove deep into the desert, into a narrow canyon, stopping finally to watch a sky filled with purples and reds. When the stars came out they opened a quart of rum and drank it straight from the bottle, passing it back and forth while they cautiously exchanged bits and pieces of their lives. Eventually they ran out of things to say, and there was a pocket of silence after a song ended on the radio.

“Laurel,” Burk said shyly.

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you think it would be all right if—”

Before Burk could get the rest of the words out of his mouth, Laurel leaned across the seat and kissed him softly on the lips. “You’re a sweet boy,” she said, and she put his hand between her cheerleader legs. “I’m really glad I met you.”

Later, while they were making love in the backseat of Timmy’s car, the deejay on the local station announced that the request line was open. A gentle breeze stirred the desert air, and a girl’s sleepy voice came over the radio. “This is Daisy,” she said, “and I want you to play ‘Dream Lover’ by Bobby Darin.”

“Who do you want me to send it out to?” the deejay asked her.

There was a long silence. Then Daisy said, “To . . . everyone.”

“Is that really a true story?” Sandra said to Burk as she pulled him close.

“On my life.”

“What else do you remember?”

“How deep the silence was in the desert after the song ended, how dead still it seemed. I remember the sounds of our breathing, and when I came I remember hearing the metal couplings of a wind-mill squealing on a nearby mesa.”

“Did you love her, Ray?”

“Yes, I think so. I mean I told her things that I never told anyone, except you.”

“Like what?”

“Like the time I plagiarized a term paper for my American History class.”

“What did she say?”

“She just laughed. She said she cheats on tests all the time. And then I told her about my dad, how he was screwing this woman on our block. I told her both those things.”

“Your two biggest secrets.”

“Then, they were.”

“Do you still love her, Ray?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Do you still love me?”

“Are you kidding?” he said, searching for her nipple with his mouth. “Yes, I still love you.”

It was nearly six o’clock, and Louie was still sitting on the front steps of the Goodtime Nursery School. He had his Dodger cap pulled low over his eyes, and his Fred Flintstone lunch pail was balanced on his knees. The rest of the kids had already gone home, but Louie
wasn’t frightened. No matter how late it got, someone always came to pick him up. But he wished they would come pretty soon, because today was not such a good day at the Goodtime Nursery School; all morning long, while he was supposed to be painting or learning to read or playing outside, that big black ugly bird kept popping up on the TV screen inside his head. The bird just sat there behind his eyes, squawking, making Louie squawk too, until his teacher finally told him to leave the classroom.

But that afternoon after the big black bird flew away, the number 232 came up on the screen, and for the rest of the day that was all Louie would say, repeating the number 232 over and over, driving all the kids crazy, until Mrs. Pincus, his teacher, called his mom. She wasn’t home, and his dad wasn’t at his office, so all his teacher could do was make Louie sit on the porch by himself.

“Daddy!” Louie shouted when he finally saw Burk’s car pull up to the curb. “You’re here. You’re finally here.”

“Yeah,” Burk said, as his son tore across the grass and hurled himself into his arms, “I’m finally here.”

“I’m very concerned,” Nathan Burk said, as he stood in his kitchen, watching his son chop vegetables for Louie’s salad. “I think there’s something mentally wrong with her.”

“Dad, don’t worry about it,” Burk said. “She’s been acting a little strange lately, but—”

“Ray, last week she attacked a woman at the supermarket because she took her parking place. You don’t do something like that if you’re sane. No wonder she lost the baby.”

Burk started to speak but stopped when Louie walked into the kitchen, holding a large stuffed frog. “I’m hungry, Grandpa,” he said.

“Just hold your horses, little man.”

“He can’t,” Burk said, “because he’s already holding a frog.” Louie laughed, and Burk lifted him into the air. “So how do you want your hamburger, Louie?”

“Rare.”

Burk reversed the Dodger cap on Louie’s head and kissed him on the nose. “Just like Daddy. Right, Louie Louie?”

“Right.”

“It’s Screwy Louie these days,” Nathan Burk said.

Burk glanced at his father. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Nathan Burk turned away from his son’s gaze. “That’s what the kids call him at nursery school.”

“Who told you that?”

“He did,” he said, looking over his shoulder at Louie.

“That’s not true,” Burk said. “They don’t call you that, do they?”

“Sometimes they do, Daddy,” Louie said.

“Why?”

Louie lifted up the frog to hide his face. “They just do,” he said.

Burk’s father brought the salad over to the table in the dinette. “Here,” he said to Louie. “Eat.”

Louie slowly lowered his frog. But when he picked up his fork, there were tears brimming in his eyes. “When is Mom coming home?” he asked Burk in a worried voice.

Shortly before Burk left for the hospital to pick up his wife, he slipped into the basement of his father’s house. Behind the water heater, protected by a tarpaulin, were two medium-sized cardboard boxes that belonged to his older brother, Gene. Inside each box were over a hundred vintage rock-and-roll records, all of them in mint condition.