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(cheers and applause) - This episode is brought to you by United Airlines. When you want to make the most of your vacation, book with United. They're an airline that cares about your travels as much as you do. United is transforming the flying experience with Bluetooth connectivity, screens, power at every seat, and bigger overhead bins to help fit everyone's bag. And with their app, you can skip the bag check line, get live updates, and more. Change the way you fly. Book your next trip today at United.com. - Rock is lit. - Rock is lit. - Rock is lit. - Rock is lit. - You're listening to Rock is lit with Christy Halberg, rock on, Christy. (upbeat music) - Rock is lit. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Rock is lit. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Hey there, lit listeners. Welcome to season four of Rock is Lit, the first podcast devoted to rock novels, and also the 2024 American Writing Awards podcast of the year in the categories of music and arts. Rock is lit is a proud member of the Pantheon Podcast Network. - Hey, I'm John Stewart, and you're listening to the Pantheon Network. - Rock is lit is hosted, executive produced, and edited by me, Christy Alexander Halberg, author of my own rock novel, Searching for Jimmy Page. Big shout out to this season's incredible team, social media intern kegeling clats, and our three production interns, Major Lagulin, Tyler Elcock, and The Air Lower. This season we're shaking things up with a fresh new format. Instead of our usual author interviews, we'll be rolling out a weekly reading series, giving you a deeper dive into the world of rock novels through curated readings and literary explorations. To keep up with all things Rock is lit, follow me on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube at Christy Halberg, and at Rock is Lit podcast on Instagram. For more info, head to ChristyAlexandherhalberg.com. Got a rock novel you'd like to see featured? Drop me a line at ChristyAlexandherhalberg@gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. If you're enjoying the show, please subscribe, leave a comment, and give us a five star rating on your favorite podcast platform. Wyatt, the Rock is Lit mascot, and I thank you for your support. (upbeat music) In this installment of the season four reading series, we're so excited to feature the winner of the very first Bill Halberg Rock and Bill short story contest in the category of general submissions. (dramatic music) ♪ I'm the winner, yes ♪ Congratulations to Mark Baumgartner on his story, last chance for a slow dance. (audience cheering) We at Rock is Lit are thrilled for Mark, especially because this story is also the title piece of his upcoming short story collection, set to be published by Jack Leg Press in 2026. Double congratulations Mark. We'd also like to highlight Mark's generosity. Instead of accepting the $50 prize for winning the Bill Halberg Rock and Bill short story contest in the general submissions category, he chose to donate it to the North Carolina Disaster Relief Fund to support Hurricane Helene victims. Now, without further ado, here's Mark Baumgartner sharing some insights on and reading his winning story. Last chance for a slow dance. (upbeat music) ♪ I'm the winner, I'm the winner ♪ ♪ I'm the winner, I'm the winner ♪ ♪ I'm the winner, I'm the winner ♪ ♪ I'm the winner, I'm the winner ♪ ♪ I'm the winner, I'm the winner ♪ ♪ I'm the winner, I'm the winner ♪ ♪ I'm the winner, I'm the winner ♪ ♪ I'm the winner, I'm the winner ♪ ♪ I'm the winner, I'm the winner ♪ - It's my pleasure to be with you today as a winner of this year's Bill Hallberg short story contest. I'm a writer and professor at East Tennessee State University where I teach fiction, world lit, and American lit. I'm also editor of Athlon the Journal of Sport Literature, which is maybe not too dissimilar to Rock Is Lit, only in book form and dealing with the intersection of sports and literature instead of music. I'm a writer and not really much of a musician. I'm always fascinated by the differences in the way musicians write music versus the rest of us who are merely obsessed with music. I've been around music my whole life. My father played saxophone for many years, a jazz musician, and an age of rock and roll. I think learning all the stories, all the history was a way to relate in the absence of having any actual musical talent myself. It's true though that musicians sometimes forget things. I remember watching a concert once and the singer didn't know it either. They recorded a famous song. I mean, he was off by like three years. I'm like, you were there. How do you not know what year it was that I think about it? And it seems likely they don't remember precisely because they were there. I guess someone has to write this stuff down. Someone has to take notes so history is preserved. But I do know what it is to sit there and play the same notes over and over again for hours, days, just in my case, I never seemed able to learn the whole song. Eventually I learned how to play the baseline to the Cures Fascination Street, all six notes of it, and a little bit of Iron Maiden's remember tomorrow. It was slow going. My trusty, slightly bashed in, knockoff, fender precision, now sits in a corner gathering dust, waiting, I hope, for one of my kids to steal it for themselves. I imagine one day I'll hear this ominous rumble. A little dust will sit from the light fixtures and the circle of life will continue. This is a story that's had a number of different titles and its earliest form it was called "Beast with Too Many Backs," which I thought was pretty funny and a bit on the nose given that the story's about a rather bizarre love triangle to quote the title of my favorite new order song. For a purpose is today I've titled it "Last Chance for a Slow Dance." After the story collection this piece appears in, that collection contains 11 stories, five of which feature this band and these characters. If you like what you hear today, there's more where that came from. The central plot of the story is pretty straightforward and it won't spoil too much by framing things here. Our narrator, a bass player in his band, have decamped to his uncle's trailer where they're trying to record their first album on a computer they don't know how to use. The music keeps getting faster and louder, tempers fray, and a storm is about to blow through this particular trailer park. The story is set in the late 1990s when digital recording was in its infancy. This technology was suddenly in everyone's hands and very few people knew how to use it convincingly, how to leverage this new tech to make art better instead of just cheaper. When I think of the 90s, I always think of the unconvincing floaty CGI jobs on films like the "Star Wars" movies of that period where everything seems somehow either more real than real or not real enough. Pretty maybe, but you can just put your hand right through it. That's how I feel about many albums recorded in the latter half of the 90s. Too shiny, too perfect, too thin, maybe just too much in general. A lot of the things I write have to do with the relationship between art and debt. It seems like as a culture we don't do a great job talking about these things. It goes without saying that the cost of entry into a life in the arts has gone up exponentially. Inflation hits the young and poor harder than everyone else. Healthcare, college, phone service, laptop or tablet. You can't even buy a car for less than 20K these days. We've all heard this before, right? But it seems like a hard sell to produce great musicians when a ticket to see your favorite band costs $100 or $150 or more. It's never been easy starting out. In 2024, it seems like it just keeps getting harder. How many albums did it take you two to become you two or Springsteen to become Springsteen? You hear the question, who is going to pick up the mantle of this next generation of artists? A better question might be who could afford to and what can we do to make that barrier lower? Art requires patience. Patience requires money. The stories that pertain to these characters in this band, including the story I'm reading today, have run out of both. I think that's most clear in some of the other stories in the collection, but it's part of the subtext here. This is the part of the tale where the money has run out and the good guys are getting ready to turn on each other. Because that's what always happens when the money runs out. Just look around. It sounds dark, but I guess it is. For me, though, it was a lot of fun following these characters who, in the face of common sense and common decency, march out into the long dark on an endeavor that's almost certain to fail. Here's the thing. The artists and musicians we love are rarely passive players in their own troubles. Often our heroes are their own worst enemies. Maybe there's something deeper underneath all of this, a propensity to push maybe, a desire for something more than the ordinary, a need to go a little further off into the dark than everyone else. Love too hard, consumed too much, the dream having been dreamt is sometimes too hard to let go of. Lennon and McCartney, when writing songs, famously said, let's write ourselves a swimming pool. Not, let's write ourselves a three bedroom, two bath ranch, and a suburb of Peoria. What do we make of people who want more than their fair share? Who push too far, feel too deep? Let Zeppelin famously put a fireplace in their own personal jet airliner. I remember an old legend that they wanted to put a pool in as well. We know how these kinds of stories end and they seldom end well. There are consequences for pushing too hard against established boundaries and what goes up must come down. We love these kinds of stories, or I do anyway, a long march into darkness, a fast rise, and a hard fall. While I have the chance, I want to say thank you to Christy Alexander Halberg for choosing this story for the podcast, as well as say thanks to all the journalists who published stories in this collection, Southern Review, Tampa Review, Silk Road, Fugue, Confrontation, Brilliant Corners, Phoebe, among others. Here's a story called Beast with Too Many Backs, aka Last Chance for a Slow Dance. Thank you for listening. - With AMX Platinum, you can really be in the now. Access to Resi Priority Notify? - Yes. - For a PM Checkout with Fine Hotels and Resorts book through AMX Travel. - We needed this. - And dedicated card member entrances at the left events. - Let's go. - You can focus on the present moment. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms apply, learn more at americanexpress.com/with AMX. Card member entrance access not limited to AMX Platinum Card. - I've got a lot of grand babies, like a lot, a lot. And when it comes to finding a gift for each other, you know, it could add up. But this year, while I was making my way through Walmart, I realized I don't have to spend a lot to get the gifts they'll love. - And OPI Mini Manny sets. I'm gonna do so much nail art. - Oh yeah, a Lego set. - My own a wall of water bottle. - Ooh, and that's just half of them. - Shop great gifts they're sure to love for $25 and under at Walmart. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) ♪ Come here ♪ ♪ Inside you come here ♪ - Last chance for a slow dance. A dark wall of clouds caught up with us in a trailer park a few miles outside Cuba, Missouri. The August sky dropped black buckets of rain. The wind was in the roof and the walls. It was in the floor. That was the worst part of it. The wind reaching like a hand beneath my uncle Olin's double wide trailer as if testing our weight. I worked feverishly recording a song that forked and forked like a garden maze. Wires and gears snaked across the back room of the trailer, all of it leading back to a single computer tower. I'd wasted whole days trying to find my way one path at a time, but in the computer, all things were possible. There was no need to agonize over a decision, no need for any decision at all. I could follow all paths in the garden simultaneously, dub one track onto another onto another until I had a whole choir shredding noise. I can make anything fit anywhere. If it clipped or popped or slipped, I could click an icon and on came the reverb, the flanger, the phaser, the chorus. I didn't have one song but a thousand. Gradually, I was mastering the machine and my band had lost interest. We'd been in Missouri six days. The band was becoming unstable. We'd started out as something perfectly presentable, a hory old stoner rock thing if the sort people sometimes listened to these days. We got heavier and louder. And at the point where the songs became nearly unplayable, some crooks had an indie label offered us $500 to give up all of our publishing rights and record a couple of songs. I'd blown the 500 and half of my savings on the computer. Then we relocated to Olin's trailer because he'd produced a few mediocre bubblegum pop things in the '80s and had some recording gear. We were on our way to something, I was sure of it. I had a stack of blank cassette tapes for the hipsters, a spindle of glittery compact discs for everyone else. Tonight, I was trying to record some drum tracks with our drummer, Denwood. See, look, that has to look like that. You have to visualize the sound. I pointed to two spiky graphs on the computer screen, one blue, one red. I wasn't shouting anymore, just talking loud. Denwood nodded, eyes red, a damp unlet cigarette dangled from his lip. That and that, come on, Denwood shit. We're both tired. We started again. The computer counted off four metronomic clicks and Denwood commenced his 33rd take. We'd been added for hours. Denwood had been to town, and he brought girls with him back to the trailer, and the girls brought a container of remarkably skunky pot brownies. He wanted to be out there with them, not in here with me. But we'd started out solid. I counted him in and he played through the first verse, about 24 measures, and it all sounded great. I got two good takes. In the first take, everything was perfect, except that the mics were too close and the cymbals were too clangy. On the second take, the mics had been fixed, but the toms dropped out. I pasted the good toms to the good cymbals, but the tracks were to slightly different VPM, and it had to squish one to make it fit, which changed the timbre slightly. So instead, I pasted good cymbals from a third track over the first, but each time there was a tiny clipping sound, a little pop, nothing much, but when taken together over 24 measures, it sounded like a little white worm gnashing its way through a mealy apple. I called Denwood back in for more takes, but he'd been out with the girls. He couldn't hit anything, and then the shouting started. I made him do all sorts of silly, precise things just to spite him. It was slow going. Music and weed go together like fishing and beer. They had nothing in common except boredom. Take 34 was the charm. That's the one, I said, because it was. Denwood was getting his second wind. I lined everything up on the screen, verse, chorus, verse. I listened to it on the speakers, on the headphones. There was no popping noise, no gnawing worm. Just a gorgeous, lively crackle. It sounded like a drum track recorded in a double wide trailer, and I was relieved. I've been worried it wouldn't sound like anything. Come listen, I said, Denwood listened. It sounds like the first take, or the 23rd. Certainly not. I'm tired, Russell, can I go? I'm sorry about the girls. You can go, but first I need a fill. Look, I pointed to the spiky graph on the screen and a little gap between the verse and the chorus. Something simple, a transition, boom, boom, bat. Just keep it on the beat. Denwood stared at me, his soggy cigarette came apart and made a little pile of damp tobacco on the floor. One fill. I counted him in, and Denwood went boom, boom, bat. That was good, but my sources are telling me a little slow. Also, when I said boom, boom, bat, I was speaking metaphorically, intending to signify one of several fills. Simple, tasteful, any of which might work here. Feel free to branch out is what I'm saying. I'm really sorry about the girls, Russell. I don't know, they wouldn't have to see an honest to goodness trailer. I pointed to the screen. It should look like this and fit in here. I counted off. That's good, I said when he was finished. You're done, go get some sleep. The fill was neither good nor done. I sat behind Denwood's kit. I spun slowly on his stool, fussed with his sticks. I'm a bass player, not a drummer, but still. I counted myself in and went boom, boom, bat, until I had what I needed. Sometime later, there was a knock at the door and I cleared the computer screen. I didn't want anyone to know what I was up to. If they knew how much I'd done, they would wanna hear it and that might prove troublesome. It was Randy, the band singer. He handed me the sock I kept on the door novel I was working. Hey Russell, we're having a party. I hope I'm not interrupting anything. Oh no, I said, always flat enough to indicate that I had. In fact, I've been interrupted. There's girls. Listen, I'm doing math here, algorithms, big numbers. Real girls, he said, from the college. His eyes are red and blurry. He rocked on his heels. I didn't like the way he was looking at me. And edibles, lovely, skunky brownies, get this. They wanted to know what a real trailer park is like. Just my type. Did Cecilia send you in here? Cecilia had been my girlfriend and now she was Randy's girlfriend. Together we made something of a triangle with me as the short, slightly crooked leg. She'd been putting up with both of us for too long, first in a van now in a trailer. Jazz and art rock, punk and metal. Cecilia had been there for all of it. She was like we were built from the same crud in noise, only she had escaped to some expensive private college out east. Randy and I had contrived to lure her back to the great unwashed Middle West under false pretenses. She was writing her thesis. Somehow we had convinced her to write about us. Cecilia wanted an example of what she called a debased quotidian aesthetic, but all we could offer her was fucking noise. Her thesis was a shambles. It might still have been all right, but we were both sleeping with her. Randy in front of God and everyone, me on the down low. Cecilia was winding up slowly, a bomb in a suitcase, a black clock ticking backward. She didn't handle disappointment well. Cecilia's gone, Randy said. What do you mean gone? We're done, split ski. She took off in the wagon here. We got a little high and she asked me to marry her. What did you tell her? I told her and here he paused and laughed a wobbly sheepish laugh. I told her I had to ask you. Get out, I said. He shifted from one foot to another. He wanted me to say or do something and he was too messed up to say or do for himself. High or not, I could see he was worried. I pointed at the door, just go. If he left, I played the new mix of the song through a few times, backed up the system, then followed. Everything was transformed out in the tiny living room. There were lit candles on every surface. A distinct cinnamon smell wafted from the kitchen where a kettle with hot cider simmered on the stove. My uncle's modular couches have been pulled together. Every blanket and sheet in the trailer have been draped from one end of the room to the other. They built a giant fort, suitable for a pre-teen slumber party. I couldn't think of a more appealing way to write out a storm than under a blanket with some frazzled girls. Serotonin and estrogen practically dripped from Olin's paste-on wood paneling. A peel of thunder cracked and the whole mass quivered and whispered and giggled. I needed to find Cecilia before she did something regrettable. I peeled myself away and stepped into the bedroom. Bowen and Francis were sitting all chummy on the bed. Their guitars out. They were stone sober and plugged in. Between them on the bed was a heap of paper wrappings and several brand new guitar magazines. They'd strung their stupid filthy guitars with my expensive, hard to procure flat wound bass strings. They'd wandered down to the crossroads when the party started looking for the devil. Instead, they found a filling station and the magazines and a bunch of new-fangled ideas about tunings. I need a key to the van, I said. Yes, the key, exactly. Bowen played the main riff to the song I'd been slaving over for the last six days. "We've been playing in the wrong key," he said. The song's an E, but we should have been playing in D. D is the new E, Francis concurred. He held up a magazine cover as evidence. We need to re-record our parts. Not true D, but drop D. It's mostly E, but the top string is D. We're strung up D-A-D-G-B-E instead of E-A-D-G-B-E. We used bass strings for half like so. Bowen played me the riff again. I need the key, I said, and held my hand under Vaughn's nose. D, said Vaughn. D, said Francis, giggling. Say D one more time. I was waiting for it. They giggled and squirmed, but they could see I was serious. Vaughn gave me the key. It was pouring rain. I drove as far as Sullivan, but there was no sign of Cecilia. I couldn't drive more than 30 miles an hour, and even then the van was planing all over. I pulled off at a drive-through. I ate a burger and listened to Garrison Keeler on the radio, rain pounding the van like a silver drum. I drove through a few hotel and bar parking lots, but everything was dead. It didn't seem to make any sense to keep searching. As Cecilia wanted to disintegrate someone or something, she would want an audience. On my way back, I flagged down our friendly neighborhood officer. A myopic old Irishman, go figure, I'd run into him a few times fishing down by the river on duty. Short pole, lazy cast, giant plastic lures, but he knew a few of the better spots. He was always drinking. I called him Old Mac. This was not his name, but I fancied I had something on him, and he always obliged with a smile and a wink. I pulled alongside Mac's cruiser and rolled down my window. I asked him if he'd seen an old shit-brown Jeep wagon near with the wood paneling on the sides, and a pretty blonde inside. He hadn't, but he promised to keep an eye out. She yours, he asked. I shrugged. Mac gave a hearty laugh and a wink. Back at the trailer, the quivering mass had grown to epic proportions. There was no one in the bedroom, no one in the kitchen. They were all beneath the blanket, skiggling and squirming. I imagined them all in there, wriggling like snakes. I heard a sound in the bathroom, and out came the neighbor kid, a freshman at the local university. He was never going back to school. He'd found his niche. He was wearing an unwashed mask and snorkel caked with old sand, and appeared a bit dazed. Periscope Deps, sir, he said, and snapped me a snazzy but uncertain British salute. This and the mask and snorkel had been really funny at one point in the night. I'd been to this party before. I knew every particular, the songs they'd played on the boom box, the currents of the girls beneath the blankets. I squeezed his shoulder, confiscated a can of beer from his hand, drink a few glasses of water before you turn in, maybe some juice, I said. When he disappeared into the kitchen, I scooped out a handful of the brownies and lifted a corner of the nearest blanket on nostalgia. There was no sense waiting up for Cecilia. I'd know when she came home, we all would. Meanwhile, I'd keep away from doors and windows. I warmed my way down to what I hoped was the earliest part of the pile. Although at Periscope Deps, it's probably all about the same anyway. Under the sheets and blankets, everything was soft and gentle and suffused in a pink ashew. Eventually, I found my way down to a hidden substratum of pillows and cushions and crews for a while beneath the murmuring bodies. I pushed my face up occasionally trolling for girls. I found Vaughn and Francis in one corner still talking about tunings. I found Deadwood getting his palm red, and I found Randy, eyes like blue marbles, head on knees, surrounded by girls, bruised heart, and all. He was telling a story and epic tale of a vulnerable hero, a brave maiden and a heartless villain, me. Even going for a long while, the whole time I'd been gone. He was telling the story of our crooked little threesome. I imagine he picked up the action around year ten or so, like Homer. His voice cracked as he spoke and the girls wailed a greek chorus at all the right parts. I poked my face up and listened to a stray fragment. The episode Randy was going on about involved me using the fair Cecilia as a mule for stolen cassette tapes. He had all the details down, like all great storytellers. The hipper than thou preppy record store clerk, tight rolled jeans, hair gelled, and slicked up into an epoxy hard faux hawk. The record coop, September of our freshman year in high school. You'd think I was some sort of Nazi devil to hear Randy tell it, goose stepping up and down the aisles while pizza sauce in my teeth. He lingered over the sort of details, me slipping a used late period Van Halen cassette down the front of his girlfriend's panties. No one used Cecilia as a mule. If she had Van Halen between her legs it was because she wanted them there. It was my birthday and she'd stolen it of her own free will as a present. I was there, I remembered it clearly. I opened my mouth but all I got out was an incredulous, Van Hagar. I realized my mistake too late, Randy had turned them all against me. He pointed me out like a pervert and a line up in the whole complex of blankets and pillows, seethed with feminine outrage. They grabbed me by the head like a turn up and pulled me out of the pile. I was dragged into the bedroom where they held me down and were with the names of all the cockrock bands they could think of all over my body and permanent marker. I had Van Hagar on my face, winger on my arms and back, wore into my ass cheeks. Such are the wages of bad taste, I guess. One girl wrote the cure on my inner thigh. I think she meant the cult but these weren't the most cultured ladies in the park. It was late and everyone was coming down but me. The girl slid back under the blankets and Randy and I were alone. I decided to hazard the truth. If you weren't such a coward you'd sober up I said, you get in the van and go out and find Cecilia before she finds you. All I want for everyone is love and happiness. Get married, go someplace quiet and far away. Start a farm or something, make babies. Randy laughed. You'd steal them like rumble stiltskin out of boredom or loneliness or just for spite. He picked up his ball cap and stuck it on his head. There was nothing else to say. I shimmed lubly up under the blankets. There were girls strewn everywhere, bare legs and whispers. I mean, girls, groupies almost, like something out of an 80s movie, a dream. They were here to seem honest to goodness trailer park, not us, but still. I turned left, clam wring over a short hill of rocky throw pillows towards the softest, curviest part of the pile. Randy turned right, down a quilted field of green, and I lost sight of him in the drift shortly thereafter. Cecilia arrived a few hours later, bright and clean and sober as Christmas morning. Francis hurt her in the driveway, even held the door for her. Light was just coming in the windows when I heard her come in. I poked my head out from between a girl's pretty knees and froze. Cecilia looked through me without seeing anything. She had a nine iron leaned against her thigh and was very nearly smiling. When she swung, she wouldn't swing like a girl, but when handed like Alex and a clockwork orange with a jaunty joy to veave and a weird Malcolm McDowell half-smile. She walked right to where Randy was hiding and yanked away the blankets. The girls scrambled away, but Randy just laid there in his dirty, tinted boxers. Good morning, he said, and Cecilia made her first decision of the day. The potted ficus plant in the entryway disappeared in a cloud of atomized dirt and ceramic. She went for the TV cable box next, a cheap plastic crunch and it sliced down the hallway to the kitchen. A swipe and another potted ficus, a thrust at the curio shelf over the cheese lounger, bye-bye little blue precious moments angel. She made three hard downward strokes at the boom box a few inches from Randy's right foot. Crunch crunch crunch. There was no sound but her breathing and a trickle of residual grit from the light fixtures. Everyone except Randy scurried back into the far huddled corner of the blankets. She disintegrated a Miller light mirror, another angel. The boom box, the boom box, the boom box. She moved with jaunty and an exorable grace to the front door and out into the yard. Randy and I went with her and the rest followed. The morning sky was pink as it was in the beginning of time and would be again. Using her way down the drive, she bashed a windshield and a side mirror on the nearest car. We fanned out behind her as she went. She bashed the mirrors on an old SUV, the antenna, the bike rack, the car alarm on a Hyundai sounded like a NASA alarm clacks on. A girl got out her key fob and shut it off, eyes never leaving Cecilia. She bashed the mailbox, the post, the mailbox, the post, the mailbox, stubborn fucking wooden mailbox, debris floated into the air as if taken by a tornado. Cecilia glided down the street, down the hill bashing. She obliterated the neighbor's plastic big wheel, maybe the only toy they owned. From then on, she focused mostly on cars parked at the curb. Randy followed a safe distance and I trailed her down the hill through backyards, watching her at the gaps between the trailers. Everyone else stayed in my uncle's front yard. At the end of the street, she worked her way around a powder blue Chevy Nova, the windows, the fenders, the hood, everything. A huge crescendo of noise, like a July 4 finale, and she was done. She sat down like a wind-up toy whose spring is sprung, slumping into the grass at the curb, nine iron across her knees, legs akimbo. Randy took the iron from her gently, he tried to coax her to walk with him up the hill but she was done in. He sat next to her until Max Cruiser pulled up alongside them, lights flashing weekly in the morning light. I stayed out of sight at the corner of the trailer. It took a long time for Max to get out of the cruiser. There was a long trailer breakage all the way back to Olens, but he didn't seem particularly troubled or interested. He was fresh out of bed, not even in uniform, just black sweatpants, black t-shirt, red ball cap. He licked his lips, breathed heavily through his nose. Well now. Max removed the cap and ran his fingers through his greasy, gray hair. I hear there's a pretty blonde out here with an early morning tea time. Have you seen anything? Randy handed him the iron. It was all me. I had a fight with my girlfriend. Things got broke. She has nothing to do with this. I did all the smashing. I said a pretty blonde. Randy took off his hat. He hadn't had a haircut all summer, and his dirty blonde curls spilled out to his shoulders. It was all me. Max leaned the iron against the fender of the cruiser and looked up the hill. As of seeing the swath, Cecilia had cut for the first time. The girls had all disappeared. I've seen worse of a Sunday morning, he said. This'll be easier on my back if you both stand up. There was only one set of cuffs, so he had to make a decision. He cuffed Randy and went back and sat down in the cruiser, door closed. He took a sip of coffee, said something into his radio, cycled through some paperwork. When I looked back to Randy and Cecilia, they were standing about three feet apart and whispering heatedly. Randy was telling her to go, run, but she seemed intent on staying. I stepped out into the open and waved her over. She had only a few seconds to make a choice. She kissed Randy on the mouth and walked slowly in my direction one foot after the other. Cecilia and I made her way back behind the trailers to my uncle's place. She didn't say anything the whole way, except that she was tired. Back at old when the girls all took care of her, even though their cars have been trashed, they tucked her into bed. I stepped out on the porch for some air and to check on Randy. Max was already there. He had his gun belt on now, cinched high over his sweatpants. He smelled like weak old beer, and seemed disappointed in the world. I looked for Randy, but he was just a lump in the back of the cruiser. "What's that on your face?" said Max. I was confused for a second before I remembered that the girls had written all over me. "Vandhegar," I said. "You must be from St. Louis." "I have a girlfriend who's a fan. Don't we all? She in?" He looked from me to the street and let his eyes wander down the trail of wreckage. He hiked his belt up to keep the gun from sliding off his hip. He was smiling, and I was smiling. Only, I was very afraid. There didn't seem to be any rules governing our conversation. There was a man wearing sweatpants and a gun standing on the front stoop. It didn't seem to matter if Cecilia was in or not. "No, she isn't," I said. I gave Max a statement that was word for word what Randy had told him. It seemed to me that Randy had done something slightly brave and also very stupid. There's no jail built that could hold Cecilia, no jailer who would keep her, only she was out here, and Randy was in there. When I was through, Max hiked up his gun belt one last time, walked down to the cruiser, and drove off. Randy was gone. Back at the station, a modular building up back at the IGA, Officer Max tallied up the damage and filed his paperwork. I'm sure Randy was very polite about the whole thing, even apologetic. As it turned out, one of the cars Cecilia had bashed was a Shelby Mustang. Metallic green, poorly maintained, rusted at the fenders and doors to the point of disintegration, but a Shelby nevertheless. In putting out the Shelby's window Cecilia had, on the follow through, deformed the door frame such that you couldn't get in or out the passenger door. A little over a thousand dollars' damage to a single vehicle, or in the language and Missouri state jurisprudence, a misdemeanor Class A. By noon the girls had all departed. They had classes to get to, and insurance claims to fill out. They'd come for a storm and a trailer park, and I guess they were leaving satisfied. I've watched as a long line of mashed up sports utility vehicles and coops rolled down the hill and out of the park. At three o'clock Cecilia, Francis and I went down to try and spring Randy. They were very polite. Missouri was a reasonable state, they seemed to say. Those people went off the chain and smashed things. There was a protocol for this sort of thing, a book on a shelf in an office somewhere that laid it all out and clear unambiguous terms. The forces of justice would deal with the situation in due time. Bond was set at $2,000, or about $1,900 more than we could cover. Even if they'd take plastic, the amount was over my available limit. There was a license bondsmen up the road in Cuba, they said. He'd be happy to help us out, although he was probably gone for the day. We called my uncle Olen on the payphone at the corner. He was vague and unsympathetic. He was most concerned that Cecilia had messed up his cable box. Never one for confrontation, he explained in so many words that he wanted us gone immediately. I went back inside and asked a few more questions of the clerks, but everyone spoke in a kind of polite lawyer speak that seemed like English but wasn't. They assumed that we were old pros at this, proficient and smashing and incarceration. The three of us sat in the parking lot until everyone left for the day. When they were gone, Cecilia walked around the side of the building and sat down beneath the window where she imagined Randy to be. This would have been romantic if the city had provided more imaginative architecture for their jail. It was just a giant prefabricated modular box built as a temporary replacement on a cheap government contract. The windows were thick, tinted plastic, and hardly discernible from the walls itself, a dismaying, ominous cube. You couldn't get outside a place like that. The building was airtight like the laws it was built on. I imagined Randy moving around inside this giant empty cube, two stories tall and just as wide. Indirect lighting, stale air, instant grits for breakfast, rehydrated noodle soup for lunch and dinner. I imagined him searching with his fingers for the seams and not finding any. Eventually Cecilia came back to the van and we drove to Olens. I explained about bail and the misdemeanor charge. The more I talked, the bigger the thing seemed. When it was clear we weren't getting anywhere, I walked to the filling station down at the crossroads and bought a plastic jug of whiskey and two one pound packages of bacon. I wanted to cook something on the grill and bacon was the only meat they had. I put on the most grating, evil sounding music I could find, some frantic Norwegian death metal opera, we crunched bacon between our teeth and danced like Vikings around the coals. The bacon ran out soon enough. I took Cecilia by the hand and led her to the back of the trailer. I shut us up inside the studio, careful to put the sock back on the knob. I felt like I owed her something. I thought maybe I could still help her write her paper. I played the track through once then again. I wanted her to listen to it to really hear it. I turned the volume up higher, then I brick walled the whole thing, turned up every level until it was just one vicious crackle. Volume is the great equalizer of our graceful sage. When in doubt turned everything to eleven, every knob and slider on the board. Better that than to hazard the truth. She was in love with two people, and neither of us were worth her time. Cecilia's lips were moving, but I couldn't hear her. Finally, I shut everything off. This is absurd, Cecilia was saying. There's no guiding principle here, nothing. The whole thing is an exercise in cynical primitivism and controlled ugliness. "No, no," I said. There's nothing cynical here, nothing controlled. The doorknob jiggled, and then would appeared. He had something he wanted us to see. We followed him out of the trailer and down a short rise to the power cut. Other folks from the trailer park had gathered now, and it couldn't help but notice the festive mood. It made sense, since the insurance adjuster had been around earlier in the day, and we liquidated some small part of the trailer park's collective assets. Everyone was staring up at the sky, where a pink inflatable chair was caught in the power lines. It skittered and sparked in the evening breeze. The wind must have carried it there in the storm. The vinyl chair danced a short way down the lines and back again, popping and snapping like a sharp mouth filled with a thousand tiny teeth. "That's it," said Denwood. "That's the sound." "D," said Vaughn. "The key is D." I didn't hear it at first, and then I did. Beneath the popping and snapping, there was a deep, sibilant thrumming I could feel all the way from my teeth to the balls of my feet. It was pure tone. It was perfect. We'd bring the mics and gear out and make a reference tape. If we were fast enough, we might catch it whole, or as much of it as we could swallow down. It slipped an arm around Cecilia's waist, because I could see she was hearing it too, or hearing something. I gave her a squeeze and a shimmy, and pretty soon we both started a giggle. I mean, we'd get Randy out eventually. The vocals usually get laid down last anyway, in my experience at least. I'm changing the colors before my eyes, yesterday's sorrows, tomorrow's what lies. Thanks for tuning in Lit listeners. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and leave a rating and comment on Good Pods and Apple Podcasts, links in the show notes. Wyatt, the Rock is Lit mascot and I really appreciate your support. Until next time, keep rockin' and readin' and gettin' lit. Rock is lit! Thanks! a lot. a lot. a lot.
Congratulations to the winner of the first Bill Hallberg Rock ‘n’ Roll Short Story Contest in the general submissions category, Mark Baumgartner! Listen to Mark read his winning story, “Last Chance for a Slow Dance,” in this episode.
Mark D. Baumgartner’s fiction has been published in many literary journals, including ‘The Southern Review’, ‘Confrontation’, ‘Best of Ohio Anthology’, ‘Bellingham Review’, ‘Silk Road’, ‘Yemassee’, ‘Wisconsin Review’, ‘Phoebe’, and ‘Tampa Review’, among others. His story, “The Great Siwash Shoe War,” won the 2014 ‘Fugue’ prize in short fiction. His writing has twice been nominated for inclusion in the Pushcart prize anthology. His story collection, ‘Last Chance for a Slow Dance: Stories’, is forthcoming from JackLeg Press in 2026. He teaches creative writing and American literature at East Tennessee State U.
MUSIC IN THE EPISODE IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE:
Rock is Lit theme music
[Guitar Instrumental Beat] Sad Rock [Free Use Music] Punch Deck—“I Can’t Stop”
“Fascination Street” by The Cure
“Last Chance For a Slow Dance” by Fugazi
“Remember Tomorrow” by Iron Maiden
[Guitar Instrumental Beat] Sad Rock [Free Use Music] Punch Deck—“I Can’t Stop”
Rock is Lit theme music
LINKS:
Leave a rating and comment for Rock is Lit on Goodpods: https://goodpods.com/podcasts/rock-is-lit-212451
Leave a rating and comment for Rock is Lit on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rock-is-lit/id1642987350
Mark Baumgartner on Facebook: @MarkBaumgartner
Christy Alexander Hallberg’s website: https://www.christyalexanderhallberg.com/rockislit
Christy Alexander Hallberg on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube: @ChristyHallberg
Rock is Lit on Instagram: @rockislitpodcast
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