The Dancer
Chapter 7
Johnny once again stood in the doorway of the family home.
“Are you sure you want to sell this place?” Madge Evans said. “This house has been such a good rental. My assistant in the office handles our rental properties, and we have at least five clients interested in this tomorrow. However, as you mentioned in your last phone call, we’ll honor your request and put the 'for sale' sign up. It won’t be on the market long.”
Two weeks ago, Johnny was ready to sell. Now, it’s the same old story. He can’t get the words out. The simple words — “Go ahead and put it on the market.”
Madge saw the confusion on Johnny’s face. She was aware of her client’s past. Everybody did. Was he having second thoughts? If he was, that was fine with her. Madge didn’t achieve her success in the business by being pushy, especially when it involved the son of Marsha and John Fallon. No way.
Her mother, bless her heart, had sold the home to Marsha and John in 1943.
Her mother was gone now. She passed away in ’79. But she was sure her mother was looking down on her right now. “Madge, don’t you dare!”
After all, if it hadn’t been for her mother, Gladys Evans, the top producer in Forest Hills for Century 21 in the late 60s and early 70s, she’d have never driven to Phoenix and taken the real estate test at Arizona State University. But she followed her mother’s advice, aced the test, and here she is all these years later, standing in the hallway of the Fallon home, maybe on the verge of talking Johnny Fallon out of selling his house.
Johnny opened the screen door and walked onto the makeshift dance floor. He folded his arms and turned toward Madge. “I think I’m going to stay at the motel for a week or so. I’ve got a lot going through my head right now.”
“I understand,” Madge said. “You take all the time you need.”
She kissed him on the cheek and hugged him. “Call me and let me know one way or the other.”
Johnny watched her pull out of the driveway. He thought he heard his mother calling him. “Johnny Fallon, don’t leave the screen door open.”
Chapter 8
The Forest Hills library, constructed in 1910 and remodeled in 1955, is a source of pride for all residents of the town. If so inclined, an inquisitive person could spend hours, or even an entire day, reading up on the history of the city and its surrounding area.
The library also housed every newspaper ever printed in Forest Hills from 1940 to the present time. If the library didn’t have the printed version of the Hilltop Gazette, they certainly had it on microfilm.
Reluctantly, Johnny turned off Main Street, cruised by the town square, took a left on First Street, and found an available metered parking spot. He tossed enough dimes in the slot for the dial to jiggle its way to the 90-minute mark, enough time to complete his journey back in time — a journey he was now discovering could no longer be avoided.
Ninetta Parsons lowered her reading glasses and struggled to get the words out as she looked directly into the young man’s eyes.
“Young man, are you Johnny Fallon?” she said with a slight grin.
“That’s me, Mrs. Parsons. But I’m not a young man anymore. A long time ago, I struggled to get through your English class.”
“Oh, my! What are you doing standing here in my library?”
“I’m back in town for a few days. I need to conduct some research. I need to see the local papers from March 1961.”
“Oh, I see.” Mrs. Parsons said, now with a concerned look. “Give me a moment. I believe we have the Hilltop Gazette on film for all 1960s issues. I’ll set you up in the corner.”
She pointed to the cubbyhole at the far end of the library.
“I appreciate that,” Johnny said, feeling more comfortable, happy his former teacher didn’t follow up with an array of questions. The hard part was over…or so he thought as Mrs. Parsons handed him the microfilm, labeled 1960 through 1962.
He placed his forehead into the viewer and focused on the pages. He turned the dial slowly and ran across a photo with the caption: Forest Hills ballroom dancers reach finals in Miami, Florida. He took his right hand off the dial. He eyed the photo, remembering every move on the dance floor. Betty Lou was remarkable that day… perfection. They glided across the floor…the crowd, cheering.
Johnny placed his fingers back on the dial and came across a full-page ad: Fallon Dance Studio, sign up for the Winter Wonderland Dance — members $5.00, non-members $10.00.
He continued to turn the dial. January 1961…February…March. He stopped. Frozen. The headline: Two Killed in Brighton Canyon Drag Racing Accident.
Johnny read the first paragraph: Betty Lou Johnson, 20, and Richard Rivera, 23, were pronounced dead on arrival at Forest Hills Community Hospital…
Johnny stared at the black and white photos — one of Rivera’s demolished hot-rod Chevy, the others — Rivera’s high school photo from 1956 and Betty Lou’s 1959 graduation picture. Johnny had seen enough.
Mrs. Parsons quietly said, “Goodbye, Johnny,” as she sat down in the cubbyhole and turned back the dial. A beautiful photo emerged on the back page of the Wednesday issue, 1961 — Betty Lou Johnson and Johnny Fallon to Wed, Sunday at the First Methodist Church, 2 p.m.
She heard the roar of Johnny’s ’57 Chevy. She glanced out the window. He was gone.
Johnny drove back to the motel once again, splashed water on his face, and stared into the mirror. Leo would be arriving soon. His third day in Forest Hills wasn’t even half over, and he was exhausted — ready to call it a day, but Leo would be arriving soon, and he needed to down a couple of pills Dr. Smith had prescribed for him and then head over to the motel lobby.
The motel's owner, Sally Rosenthal, was pleased to have a guest for another week. The business was slow this time of year. “I thank you for your business, Mr. Fallon.”
“Why, thank you, Sally,” Johnny said, reading the name tag on her blouse and okay with the fact that the motel owner was young enough to have no clue who he was.
A two-door red Jeep Cherokee entered the motel parking lot. It was Leo Johnson in the driver’s seat, and a tall, younger man exited on the passenger side. It was Bobby Joe Gorman.
Gorman walked briskly toward Johnny. All those years between them. The last time Johnny hugged Bobby Joe, the two best friends were all 20 years old. Johnny left the only world he’d ever known on that day. He noticed Bobby Joe’s hair was still dark and wavy, but he also had a spot or two of gray at the temples, and his mustache, along with those huge eyebrows of his, confirmed the fact that he wasn’t a young man anymore.
“Bobby Joe, look at you. You’re getting to be an old man,” Johnny said, looking for some words to say, unaware of what he had just uttered to his best friend from years ago.
Johnny shook hands with Bobby Joe and Leo.
Leo gestured with the palm of his right hand. “I thought I’d bring along some added support.”
“I sure need it,” Johnny said as he climbed into the front seat, and Bobby Joe nudged his tall frame into the back seat. Leo put both of his hands on the wheel, took a deep breath, and said, “I guess we’re ready.”
The three men remained silent, alone in their thoughts. Leo spent most of the 1960s visiting the site where his daughter had perished. By the mid-70s, he had cut his visits in half, maybe 20 times a year…and now, as the 80s are quickly coming to an end, his trips were reduced to a handful of pleasant Sunday afternoons during the spring, summer, and fall when the weather was good.
He would bring a chair. He’d sit and converse with Betty Lou while listening to the birds and the sound of the wind whistling through the Aspen trees.
Bobby Joe stays away from Brighton Canyon for the most part. If he comes at all, it’s usually with his dad, for when he is there, he doesn’t hear the sound of the wind. Instead, he can only see the face of Ricky Rivera, a white-tailed deer standing in the middle of the road, followed by the horrible, heart-wrenching sound of metal twisting its way down the stretch of blacktop.
Johnny looked back at Bobby Joe as if he knew exactly the image his best friend was seeing. Johnny, on the other hand, had just heard the scream of the love of his life, the front right tire of Rivera’s Chevy, rolling toward her, gathering speed…
“Are you two all right?” Leo said as he made the turn onto Brighton Road.
They both nodded their head and stared out the window as if they were expecting the ghostly images of Ricky and Betty Lou to suddenly appear, float by them, and disappear back into the forest line.
Leo didn’t have to ask, but he did. He’d been through all of it so many times before. He had close to thirty years on the two boys — two men, actually, who at the moment weren’t men, but two boys stuck in a time warp in the early spring of 1961.
Leo was an old man. Too many years had gone by. Now, he dreamed more softly…more at ease in his thoughts. He could see a young, blue-eyed blond child entering her first day of kindergarten. He could see a little girl struggling with the piano chords — wishing she were outside playing in the rain. He holds in his heart a vision of poetry in motion as she glides across the dance floor, her smile lighting up her face when she stands at the podium alongside a young man named Johnny Fallon and hears the applause echo across the ballroom.
“We’re here, Johnny,” Leo said. All three car doors slammed, and the sound of a barking dog could be heard deep in the forest.
The three men walked up the side of the road. They stopped suddenly, crossed the blacktop to a small clearing, and viewed the small, square granite memorial located no more than four feet off the northern side of Brighton Road. A covey of quail, startled by the visitors, emerged from a nearby bush and flew east in search of a safer haven — knocking over a planter Leo had placed there last Sunday.
Leo quickly turned the planter upright.
“That’s nice, Leo,” Johnny said — his voice barely audible. “I’ll be back tomorrow with some roses. I know she loves roses. Every time we…”
“I’m sure that would be fine,” Bobby Joe said, with his right arm clutching Johnny’s right shoulder.
Johnny took another look at the stone and read the words: Betty Lou Johnson 1941-1961. The trio glanced at each other and walked the two hundred feet to the next clearing, another marker — Ricky Rivera, 1938-1961, and a toy hot rod, turned on its side atop the gravestone.
Bobby Joe dropped to his knees and placed the toy car, wheels down, on the top edge of the stone. He looked and smiled at Johnny. “The old man comes by now and then and switches the toy cars. It’s amazing. He always comes up with a different color.”
“You mean Manny Rivera?” questioned Johnny. “He must be in his early 80s by now. Does he still have that old cabin down the road from Crawford’s Sugar Shack?”
“He’s still there,” Leo said. “The Crawford place burned down years ago, but Manny still lives by himself in that old cabin of his. He still has his wits about him, but he certainly took it hard when he lost his son.”
Johnny shook his head. “We all did, Leo. I’m beginning to realize I wasn’t the only one in pain. I wish…Well, I wish for many things. I might visit old man Rivera. It’s time.”
Leo smiled. “Let’s be on our way.” The trio returned to the Jeep Cherokee and headed down the road…away from Brighton Canyon.
Chapter 9
Johnny and Bobby Joe spent the next day together, much like they had when they were high school classmates. The duo, for the most part, stayed out of trouble during their teens, but when they did venture off on an adventure, chances were good that it would be a journey worth remembering.
Their first destination today was a thirty-minute jaunt up a winding gravel road to the old Crawford place. Johnny had left his Chevy at the Gorman Automotive Center for servicing. Why he still kept the old jalopy around — other than the fact it was worth a buck or two — was unclear to him.
After all, he had well over 100,000 miles on the white and yellow two-door sedan. Of course, people have asked him many times. “How many miles you got on this baby?” The person asking the question would lean over and say, “No way,” as the mileage meter on the dash would click and jiggle, showing a shade over 5,000 miles.
Johnny did give in last month and presented “her” with a new set of tires, but “she” was in dire need of a tune-up. There was no one better suited to tackle the job than the shop’s head mechanic, Randy Wade, an old high school buddy of Johnny’s father who has been with Gorman Automotive for over 25 years.
The Gorman family business had been around since the 1930s, starting as a one-lane Texaco station, and now, some fifty years later, it had blossomed into a half block along Center Street, near the front entrance ramp to Highway 4 on the northern edge of town.
In the summer of 1967, old man Gorman expanded his business to the southern end of Forest Hills. He opened up a new station and named Bobby Joe the manager.
It was good for Bobby Joe. He had, at one point, been wandering around with little direction, similar to his best friend, Johnny Fallon, although maybe on a slightly smaller scale. The accident up on Brighton Canyon had come close to landing Bobby Jo some jail time, but a sharp lawyer from Phoenix got him off with two years of community service, and it was Judge Haskins who finally brought the gavel down and uttered the words, “case closed.”
Bobby Joe made a positive impact in town with the young people. For the first five years after the accident, he volunteered his time. He spoke at schools in Forest Hills, even traveling around the state to speak on highway safety and the importance of being a responsible driver.
As for drag racing, it was no longer tolerated. Still, the Gorman family took it upon themselves to buy twenty acres of land west of town, adjacent to the facilities where the county fair sets up shop every August. There, they set up a one-mile oval dirt race track, hosting races on Friday nights for the young and old alike — complete with training classes for novice racers and a focus on safety first.
Events are held throughout the year for midget racers to professional stock car racers, who converge on the Forest Hills Race Track for yearly sanctioned events.
“When did this place burn down?” Johnny said as he followed Bobby Joe to the entrance of what was left of the Crawford place.
“I think it was in ’79. I think they might have been brewing something on the property, if you know what I mean,” Bobby Joe said as he walked through the rubble and into what was left of the kitchen.
Johnny shook his head and remembered his last visit to the Sugar Shack. After the initial visit to Crawford’s place with Bobby Joe and prankster Clay Hutchins, it wasn’t long before the young Fallon became good friends with Willie.
Willie, much like Bobby Joe, had been born with two left feet, referring not to physical normality but to the fact that they were just plain poor dancers in the eyes of Johnny Fallon.
Johnny remembers the day Bobby Joe walked into the studio and signed up for country dance lessons. Bobby Joe was finally ready to change his priorities from hot rods to the ladies. He wanted to learn the basics of a “slow dance,” and maybe a little bit of “rock and roll,” so he could at least get his foot in the door with the gals around town who always seemed to be miles ahead of him when it came to dancing.
As for Willie, he owned the tavern in the woods but couldn’t dance a lick. One day, in hopes of surprising his wife, Lillie Mae, he walked into the studio and signed up for Foxtrot lessons. Six weeks later, he surprised his wife on her birthday when he grabbed her by the hand, walked onto the dance floor at the Sugar Shack, and lasted, without a missed step, to a three-minute tune, which felt more like an eternity to Willie. His lessons paid off as Willie and his wife walked off the dance floor — with huge grins on their faces.
“Where are Willie and Lillie Mae now?” asked Johnny.
“Johnny, they both passed away five years ago. Willie during the winter of ’83 and Lillie Mae in ’84.”
Bobby Joe started up the engine of his 1982 Ford pickup and headed for their next stop. Johnny glanced back at the remains of the Sugar Shack. “I bet they’re both dancing in Heaven.”
A song echoed through Johnny’s mind. He thought back to an album his parents had played for him in the early 1950s. He couldn’t remember all the lyrics to one particular song, but he remembers the melody: I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man.
Bobby Joe glanced down at Johnny’s feet. “You’ve got another one of those songs in your head, don’t you?”
“That I do, Bobby Joe. That I do.”
The Rivera cabin was a mile south of the old Crawford place, and Johnny noticed as they pulled into the half-moon, dirt driveway that nothing had changed. Five or six rusted-out cars were scattered across the property. Two planters hung on the wooded porch, both in dire need of water. An empty rocking chair was still moving back and forth.
“Looks like we scared Sammy off,” Johnny said.
“No, he’s in there. I see him peeking out the window,” Bobby said as he closed his car door. “Sammy, it’s Bobby Joe and Johnny Fallon.”
Old man Rivera set his .22 rifle down, butt first, and placed it just inside the doorway. He grabbed his spectacles from his shirt pocket and said, “Well, I’ll be. Aren’t you two a sight for sore eyes?”
Bobby Joe returned to his pickup and took a package out of the truck bed. “Here, Sammy. I brought you some models and some new paintbrushes.”
The two visitors sat on the porch for hours as Rivera welcomed them… glad for the company and a chance to talk to someone once again about his only son, Ricky.
“You know Ricky would have loved to be on your track right now, racing around that final turn and blasting through the checkered flag.”
Johnny was stunned. He was looking at a man who had been carrying his grief for close to thirty years as well. Johnny decided right then and there. Enough was enough.
Bobby, Joe, and Johnny said their “goodbyes” to Rivera, watched him offer a slight smile as he looked inside the bag, and then closed the cabin door behind him.
There was one last stop in town and one more drive up to Brighton Canyon. They stopped at Alice Walton’s flower shop.
Fifteen minutes later, they turned onto Brighton Road and pulled over near the site of the crash. Bobby Joe watched as his friend placed the flowers on the top of Betty Lou’s gravestone.
Bobby Joe waited by the truck as Johnny relayed to Betty Lou his private thoughts and, in some small way, said his final goodbye to the love of his life. Oh, he’d be back, but it was time for him to move on…time for him to return to Los Angeles…time for him to get his affairs in order.
The two men put their arms around each other and headed back down the hill. Bobby Joe turned on the truck radio. The DJ’s intro: “And here’s a fan favorite from 1972. It’s Elvis and Always on My Mind.”
As Bobby Joe steered his truck down Brighton Road, Johnny listened to all the lyrics of the song as if he had never let the words sink in before. He knew he had never taken Betty Lou for granted. He never went a day without telling her he loved her, and from the very first day he laid eyes on her, she had always been on his mind.
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