Her Wild Oats Read Online Free PDF Page B

head—the reason he always wore a Chicago White Sox baseball cap. Dave always wore T-shirts and shorts, no matter what the temperature outside the bus.
    Next came Gary G., the sound man. Although his official title was sound engineer, Gary did a little bit of all the roadie tasks and was truly indispensable. Oats’ parents had taught him that it was just as important to be nice to the roadies and tech guys as the stars. Roadies are the ones who make or break how a performer looks and sounds on stage—and crew members are also often nicer and more fun to hang out with than the performers. Once he’d greeted Gary G. with proper Pixlie-Carson respect, it was time to meet the band.
    “Take a look at that motley crew,” Bobby Lee said as he pointed toward the men on the bus, “and tell me which one is the drummer.”
    “Hmm.” Oats thought a minute before pointing to Willie Jones, a large man with long brown hair and a beard. Long ago, Oats had learned that there’s a little bit of crazy in every drummer’s eyes, and that guy had it. Once on the road his mom had pointed out how when you see bikers roaming around, like Hells Angels, there was always a big huge guy teamed up with a little wiry mean-looking one. It seemed to Oats that drummers were also either wiry or huge. They were also either exceptionally considerate or bad-ass mean.
    “Right. That’s Willie Jones. It’s a certain kind of person who wants to bang on things all day long,” Bobby Lee replied. “Willie’s all right. His bark is worse than his bite.”
    Clarence “Rascal” Roscoe was the bass player. He had straight brown hair and a handlebar mustache; as Rascal grabbed onto the edge of one of the bunks to keep his balance, his face twisted in a rubbery grimace. Bass players often have the best sense of humor in the band and this one appeared to be no exception.
    “I’m just hanging around till they figure out how to replace me with a computer,” Rascal said. “But lucky for me they’re having trouble inventing a gadget that can chew gum and look bored at the same time. Welcome aboard, kid.”
    A man who looked an awful lot like Bobby Lee poked his head out of a lower bunk. Oats had heard about Bobby Lee’s brother, Billy Crenshaw; he was one of those multi-instrumentalist wonder guys who could play everything. He covered a few bases in this band, mostly keyboard and accordion. But Bobby Lee explained he was sometimes known to pick up a fiddle or mandolin, and that Oats should be ready for anything. Billy was also the only one who seemed interested in the harmonica, asking Oats a lot of questions about his harps—bending and overblow techniques and such.
    “You better hold on to that suitcase, kid,” Bobby Lee advised, “or pretty soon Billy will be the harp player, too. And here’s the rest of the band.”
    A couple of guys sat around the little fold-out table behind the driver’s seat, cracking open a brand-new deck of playing cards.
    Jeremy Farren was the pedal-steel player. Oats had always thought of them as being a slightly different species from other musicians; there was this guy Lloyd Sanders back home, for example. He was really tall and thin and almost never said anything, but his playing went right to your heart without spending any time near your head. Oats believed that Lloyd put so much expressiveness into his playing that he didn’t feel a need to communicate the rest of the time. Anyway, Jeremy seemed true to form. He was a short guy with longish brown hair, and to make conversation Oats asked him if he knew Lloyd.
    “Yup,” he answered.
    “Uh, he’s a nice guy and a good picker, don’t you think?” Oats continued.
    “Yup,” said Jeremy. Oats soldiered on.
    “Have you ever heard him play at the Dewdrop Inn?”
    “Yup.”
    Talking to Jeremy was turning out to be kind of like talking to a shower curtain (or for that matter Lloyd Sanders), so Oats gave up. But the others hit him with high-fives and the kind of