below sea level you could feel the absence of light in your mind. And then Zoot and Ray came in: “Oooh-oooh, ooh-oooh,” with Leroy humming under, and then Slim stepped out and began to lead the tenor part of “Sincerely,” by the Crows. And they went through that one perfectly, flawlessly, the dark night and the dock walls throwing their voices out to the whole breathing city.
“Wow,” said Ray, when they finished, but Leroy held up his hand, and Zoot leaned forward and took a deep breath and sang: “Dee-dee-woo-oo, dee-eee-wooo-oo, dee-uhmm-doo-way.”
And Ray and Slim chanted: “A-weem-wayy, a-wee,-wayyy.”
And then Leroy, who had a falsetto that could take hair off an opossum, hit the high notes from “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” and it was even better than the first song, and not even the Tokens on their number two hit had ever sounded greater.
Then they started clapping their hands, and at every clap the city seemed to jump with expectation, joining in their dance, and they went through a shaky-legged Skyliners-type routine and into: “Hey-ahh-stah-huh, hey-ahh-stuh-uhh,” of Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs’ “Stay,” and when Leroy soared his “Hoh-wahh-yuh?” over Zoot’s singing, they all thought they would die.
And without pause, Ray and Slim started: “Shoo-be-doop, shoo-doop-de-be-doop, shoo-doop-be-do-be-doop,” and Cornelius was going, “Ah-rem-em, ah-rem-em, ah-rememm bah.”
And they went through the Five Satins’ “(I Remember) In the Still of the Night.”
“Hey, wait,” said Ray, as Slim “woo-uh-wooo-uh-woo-ooo-ah-woo-ah”-ed to a finish, “I thought I saw a guy out there.”
“You’re imagining things,” said Zoot. But they all stared out into the dark anyway.
There didn’t seem to be anything there.
“Hey, look,” said Cornelius. “Why don’t we try putting the bass part of ‘Stormy Weather’ with the high part of ‘Crying in the Chapel’? I tried it the other night, but I can’t—”
“Shit, man!” said Slim. “That ain’t the way it is on the records. You gotta do it like on the records.”
“Records are going to hell, anyway. I mean, you got Motown and some of that, but the rest of it’s like the Beatles and Animals and Rolling Stones and Wayne shitty Fontana and the Mindbenders and . . . ”
Leroy took the cigar from his mouth. “Fuck the Beatles,” he said. He put the cigar back in his mouth.
“Yeah, you’re right, I agree. But even the other music’s not the—”
“Aren’t you kids up past your bedtime?” asked a loud voice from the darkness.
They jerked erect. For a minute, they hoped it was only the cops.
Matches flared in the darkness, held up close to faces. The faces all had their eyes closed so they wouldn’t be blinded and unable to see in case the Kool-Tones made a break for it. Blobs of faces and light floated in the night, five, ten, fifteen, more.
Part of a jacket was illuminated. It was the color reserved for the kings of Tyre.
“Oh shit!” said Slim. “Trouble. Looks like the Purple Monsters.”
The Kool-Tones drew into a knot.
The matches went out and they were in a breathing darkness.
“You guys know this turf is reserved for friends of the local protective, athletic, and social club, viz., us?” asked the same voice. Chains clanked in the black night.
“We were just leaving,” said Cornelius.
The noisy chains rattled closer.
You could hear knuckles being slapped into fists out there.
Slim hoped someone would hurry up and hit him so he could scream.
“Who are you guys with?” asked the voice, and a flashlight shone in their eyes, blinding them.
“Aww, they’re just little kids,” said another voice.
“Who you callin’ little, turd?” asked Leroy, shouldering his way between Zoot and Cornelius’s legs.
A wooooooo! went up from the dark, and the chains rattled again.
“For God’s sake, shut up, Leroy!” said Ray.
“Who you people think you are, anyway?” asked another, meaner voice out there.
“We’re the Kool-Tones,” said Leroy. “We can sing it slow, and we can sing it low, and we can sing it loud, and we can make it go!”
“I hope you like that cigar, kid,” said the mean voice, “because after we piss on it, you’re going to have to eat it.”
“Okay, okay, look,” said Cornelius. “We didn’t know it was your turf. We come from over in the projects and . . . ”
“Hey, man, Hellbenders, Hellbenders!” The chains sounded like tambourines now.
“Naw, naw. We ain’t Hellbenders. We ain’t nobody but the Kool-Tones. We just heard about this place. We didn’t know it was yours,” said Cornelius.
“We only let Bobby and the Bombers sing here,” said a voice.
“Bobby and the Bombers can’t sing their way out of the men’s room,”