"There are those moments when things you've already known about yourself become so crystal clear, so loud, so up in your face, that it becomes a pure and inalienable truth. One of my greatest ones came when I was ten." -- David Dawn, from Reluctant Legend: the first official biography of David Dawn. By James Katt. (New York:Riddenhut, 1999).

It's the first day on the stage of Sgt. Pepper's new TV show John Bach, Super Cop. Sgt. Pepper makes a million dollars a show. The shows are getting made only a couple weeks before they go on the air. Usually, TV shows get made way before they go on. So the first show in September, when the kids go back to school, is made way before that. But Sgt. Pepper just did that long world tour. He couldn't get home to Hollywood until late August.

           Sgt. Pepper sits at his famous picnic-table- shaped piano and plays his summer hit "Lady Madonna" for the other actors and a few pretty girl fans that are allowed to watch it all if they behave themselves. The director talks with some production guys about something important. Sgt. Pepper's new wife, Michelle, is there, too. She's a French model who looks like Jane Asher, Paul McCartney's girlfriend. Michelle's maiden name is MaBelle and she uses it when she's at work getting her picture taken. Girls that are models and movie stars get to use their maiden names. Sgt. Pepper wrote a song about her called "Michelle" on his new album, Rubber Soul. He sang it to her for the first time when he proposed to her. He and the Lonely Hearts Club Band recorded the album during breaks on the big tour. The album will be coming to a record store near you in about a month.

           Sgt. Pepper hammers the last of the piano chords of "Lady Madonna." The director walks over and says they're ready to make the show. It'll be a two-hour TV movie, which really means it'll be about an hour-and-fifty- minutes of the real show. The other ten minutes will be commercials.

           The alarm clock next to John Bach's bed rings. He yawns. He's so tired because he'd been out late at a dance bar with his go-go girlfriend, played by Sgt. Pepper's ex-girlfriend, Barbara Feldon. Showbiz is like that. John Bach slumps into his bathroom and shaves with his electric razor, shaped like a plastic soap carrier.

           They do the office scene next. The cameramen move back and forth to get Sgt. Pepper and his co-star, who plays his captain. It's the actor that played Wally on Leave It to Beaver but is an older guy, now.

           "Got bad news for ya, Bach."

           "Yeah, Captain? What's that?"

           "The Russian's kidnapped your girlfriend Sally. Got her after you dropped her off last night."

           "What! Oh my god! Sally!"

           The camera gets up close to Sgt. Pepper's face. This is where super-dramatic orchestra music gets added in. Then a commercial break.

           So the first show, the TV movie, will be about how John Bach rescues his girlfriend, Sally, from Russia.

           John Bach isn't a cop, he's a spy. It's, John Bach, Super Spy.

           "D'j'ya hear about Kelly Smith?" Willy walked in. He didn't even say, hi. The tan roll of his belly and sides hung over the top of his white boxer trunks.

           "What?"

           "She got killed in a fight," Keith said.

           L.D.'s stomach sank. "Nuh-huh." He shook his head no.

           He knew if Kelly got killed in a fight it was because she was a Negro. He'd heard about it a lot after Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder. People got killed in riots. But it was all far away, even though it scared him. No one had got killed in the Dayton riots, even. But if Kelly was killed it would be here, it would be scarier. L.D. didn't want Darbey to have a sister that got killed. Darbey should not have a sister that got killed because she wasn't a white girl.

           "Yep-so!" Keith said, "Some high school girls from Stivers seen her walking down the street and beat her up."

           Stivers High School was close to Downtown right before Skid Row and was a rough school.

           "Then they killed her with a knife," Willy said.

           "Where'd you guys hear this?"

           "Max Schweiter told us at the pool," Willy said.

           "Yeah, and Sue Wilson and Marty Cautrell."

           Maybe it really was true.

           There was a knock on the door, then Mom opened it, "You boys want some lunch? I'm making hot dogs."

           At the table in the kitchen Keith and Willy asked Mom if she'd heard about Kelly and told her about it.

           Mom put relish on her hot dog. "Now Boys, you need to be careful about repeating everything you hear. Kelly Smith didn't get killed by high school girls or anybody else. She did," Mom paused for a second then said, "She got, well, she got, hurt, sort of, but she's very much alive."

           L.D. felt better. But still she got hurt.

           "She got hurt because she was colored, didn't she?" L.D. said.

           Mom didn't wait for more than a second, but in her eyes L.D. could see maybe she didn't want to answer him. "No, Honey." she waited again then said, "The important thing is that Kelly really is alive and she'll get better. But I don't think she'll be around much for a little while. And maybe you boys should all just leave Darbey alone about this."

           Now L.D. didn't feel better anymore, at all.

           "Do you boys know who your teachers will be?" Mom asked the other two. School started in only a week and a half.

           "I have Mr. Davidson," Willy said.

           "Oh, well so does L.D. You two are going to spend your whole academic careers together it seems like," Mom said.

           L.D., Keith and Willy had been friends since first grade. Willy lived just over a few blocks by Wilbur Wright High School. Keith lived a lot of blocks away over on the other side of Washington Park. In first, second and third grade they'd always been in the same class. Last year Keith was in Mrs. Milhouse's class. L.D. and Willy both had Mrs. Snowdon.

           While the guys finished and Mom cleaned up around them, L.D. knew she was about to go into her studio to finish the clay sculpture bust of the first Grandma Cooper, Dad's real mom, who died a long time ago. It was called a bust because it was only the head and the shoulders. After she finished it she'd put it in her kiln and bake it for hours to make it get dry and hard. It was Dad's present for his fiftieth birthday, which was on Saturday in two days. Grandpa sent Mom a bunch of pictures of her so Mom could sculpt the bust. Grandpa and the second Grandma Cooper, the one L.D. knew, were coming for the whole weekend for Dad's birthday.

           L.D. loved to watch Mom sculpt more than anything. When she did, she stayed quiet, except sometimes she breathed heavily. She would take a loud, deep breath, hold it, then she'd give a loud sigh. Then she'd do it all over again. It was when she tried to get something, a nose, a shoelace, the fluffy hair on a dog's tail, exactly the way she wanted it to be. Anything in the house was okay to use to get the right thing from the soft clay. One time she used a toothbrush to shape hairs in the thick eyebrows on an old man's face in the clay. Sometimes she chipped, chiseled and sanded marble and granite to make sculptures. That stuff was more expensive, though, so she didn't do that as much. Plus it took a lot longer to sculpt with them. She had a white marble sculpture of a man at a grand piano that she was about half done with, but she hadn't worked on in months. She said she was taking a long break from it.

           "Let's do something in the back yard," Keith said.

           "Yeah. Let's play Time Tunnel," Willy said.

           "No. Star Trek," Keith said.

           L.D. wanted to watch Mom finish the sculpture and play Star Trek. Plus, later in the afternoon, Dark Shadows would be on TV and he never missed Dark Shadows. It was so cool to have a soap opera about vampires and werewolves and ghosts. Quentin Collins, the werewolf, was L.D.'s favorite. David Selby was the actor and he looked so cool with those thick sideburns. And like Barnabas Collins didn't want to be a vampire, Quentin didn't want to be a werewolf. L.D. liked the idea of monsters that didn't want to be monsters.

           In the back yard, L.D. was William Shatner, starring as Captain Kirk. Keith was Mr. Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy. Willy was the guy who played Scotty. L.D. thought of ways to explain why Mr. Spock and Mr. Scott only had on swimming trunks. Nothing he thought up was good enough so he decided to pretend they had uniforms. Besides Captain Kirk wouldn't have a t-shirt and blue jeans on.

           In this episode, the Klingons attacked Earth and it was up to the starship Enterprise to save the world. The metal swing set was the TV stage. Just then it was the bridge of the Enterprise. Frisky pranced around the boys. They ignored her. She pranced anyway.

           The middle swing was the Captain's chair. From it, L.D. said, "Mr. Scott, we need more power."

           Willy was crouched underneath the slide, the dylithium crystal chamber. In what L.D. decided was the worst Scottish accent ever, he replied, "Ah-eem givin' hair all Ah-eeve got Cap'n!"

           Keith stood at one end of the swing set, his back to the other two. As Mr. Spock, he said, "Captain, we're going into a space warp!"

           That was a good idea so L.D. said, "Ohh-kay, everybody hold on!"

           The three boys shook and vibrated their bodies, caught in the great gravity forces of the space warp. The back door to the house opened.

           "Hey, Spud!" Aunt Linda stood at the door. She was back!

           "Hey! Aunt Linda!" L.D. said.

           "Oh, cool!" Keith said.

           L.D. ran to his aunt. She leaned down and hugged him, "What'cha doing?" Her skin was dark from a cool-looking tan.

           "Playing Star Trek. Are you staying for dinner?"

           "Oh," she stroked his long hair, "probably not. I just stopped by to see the bust of the first Grandma Cooper. Plus, I got you something."

           "Cool! Is it from your trip?"

           "Well, no. I'll wait for those gifts until Bean's here, too. You didn't go to Fantasy Farm with her?"

           Silly question. But L.D. knew she was teasing. In a dopey voice he said, "No." Like he was going to spend a day anywhere with Lisa and one of her little-kid friends when he wasn't made to. And Fantasy Farm was just a little-kid place. Next door was LeSourdsville Lake. It was more big-kid. It didn't have a petting zoo or any of that junk. There was a real roller coaster and the Tom Sawyer Cave to go through that was really cool with all these little rooms with mannequins set up as scenes from the story.

           Willy and Keith walked up. "Hi, Linda," Keith said. "Hi, Linda," Willy said.

           "Boys," she said, "Playing Star Trek, huh? Looked like you guys were having heebee-geebee seizures to me."

           All three boys laughed. Aunt Linda was so cool. She was twenty- one-years old so she was a real grownup, one that didn't treat L.D. and his friends like kids, at least not the way other grownups did, like she was their boss. Aunt Linda was beautiful like Mom. She was thin and model- shaped with flowing, silky strawberry-blonde hair that went halfway down her back. She usually wore t-shirts, jeans and sandals or other groovy clothes.

           "No," L.D. said, "the Enterprise was in a space warp."

           In the living room Aunt Linda leaned over the sofa and searched in her big, beaded purse and pulled out L.D.'s present and handed it to him. It was a 45 record. The paper sleeve was black and on it in cursive green writing it said "Apple." The sleeve had a round hole in the middle just the size of the record's label. That label was a green apple on one side. The other side was the white of the inside of an apple. It was like the apple was cut in half. It was a new record by The Beatles. The green side was called "Hey Jude." The white side, the half-apple side, was "Revolution."

           "Wow! Cool! A new Beatle record! Thanks Aunt Linda!" He hugged her tightly.

           "Well you're very welcome."

           Aunt Linda kissed L.D. on the top of his head. L.D. led his friends to his bedroom and his stereo. Aunt Linda went toward Mom's studio. In the hallway upstairs, L.D. heard her knock on the door downstairs. "Hi, Birdy," she said.


Almost from the very second Paul McCartney started to sing, with no instruments before his voice, it was like L.D. got caught in a tractor beam from the starship Enterprise. He had never heard a song like it. The singing pulled him in. There was something almost perfect about it. Paul's voice was smooth while it moved on the wave of the notes.


           "Heyyy Jude...."


           The way Paul sang the words made them true, like the line where he sang how the movement Jude needed was on his shoulder. Chills ran through L.D. while he listened to the music, the words, Paul's voice. Just after the build up of the last verse, as they sang "Better, better, better, better, ahhhh!" each word a higher note, just after Paul shouted, "Oh, Make it! Yeahhh! Yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah yeah," L.D. whispered to himself, "Whoa." It was the best song ever made. He felt the art of it in his bones. He felt like lightning. He knew he would never like a song better for the rest of his life.


           "Na, na, na, na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, Hey Jude"


           The Beatles, with John's voice the loudest, sang the na-nas over and over and L.D. looked at his friends. He could tell they thought it was a cool song, too. He could also tell they didn't get it. They didn't have the lightning in their eyes. L.D. felt like he would cry. He felt a deep, warm flow inside himself. It was like hope.

           It was like Old Mrs. Chaney getting The Spirit every Sunday at church. Especially when Tabitha Brice sang "The Old Rugged Cross" at alter call. She ran up and down the aisles, waving her handkerchief, bawling and shouting, "Praise the LORD!" Her wailing was like powerful music, and though it was loud and almost wild, it still had this soft feeling to it, maybe way down inside it. This must be what she feels like, he thought.

           Then a full orchestra came in, very big and dramatic. Paul shouted, "Jude-Jude-a-Jude-a-Jude-a-Jude-a-Jude-ah!" then sang more stuff, in a shout, he probably made up as he sang it.

           L.D. fell deeper into the heat, into the greatness, into the beauty. He couldn't say the words to his friends because the words wouldn't mean anything to them. So who? He wasn't even sure if Aunt Linda or Dad or anyone would know, would understand him, his need. He wasn't even sure Mom would understand, at least not understand all of it.

           So in his head he said the words to himself because he had to say them. He felt the muscles of his lips form them but his lips didn't move. He felt his tongue and his throat move the words but he didn't make a sound. He knew he was the only one who had to hear his words.

           I have to do this.


"Man!" L.D. said to his friends, while the last of the long fade-out faintly came from the speakers.

           "Let's hear the other side," Keith said.

           He played "Revolution" only because Keith asked. At the start, the guitar was loud and maybe dirty or something. It shot from the speakers with an explosion of fast, hammered strokes, like a tommy gun. Because the song was "Revolution," L.D. decided the tommy gun sound was on purpose. Then Paul, it sounded like Paul, screamed and then the main song began with the strong beat of the guitars and the thick bass booming from the speakers. John sang it. The words were about how a revolution, with fighting and killing and stuff, isn't that good of an idea. The words were important and L.D. thought it was a cool song. He only cared about "Hey Jude" right then, though.

           When L.D. put the needle back on "Hey Jude" for the fourth time, Keith said, "Are we gonna just listen to that song over and over?"

           "I am."

           Just when the song came again to the na-na ending, Keith said he and Willy were going to leave. L.D. half noticed them. He was glad they left. When he wanted to listen real close on songs, he didn't like anybody around. He was on about his seventh listen when Aunt Linda came in. He lay on his bed and held the speakers to his ears, listening to everything.

           "Like it, huh?" she pulled him up and hugged him.

           "Yeah," he said, "it's really cool."

           Aunt Linda kissed his forehead and left. He thought she had left the house but he heard her and Mom down stairs after "Hey Jude" was over again. He decided to go down.

           He heard Mom and Aunt Linda talking in Mom's studio.

           Just before he opened the door, Aunt Linda said, "So what's going on with this arts center?"

           He stopped for a second but then went on in while Mom said, "They're going to open enrollment on the fourteenth. There's a seventy-five-dollar annual tuition fee for houses with our income but it's worth it. I'm still at an impasse with Art on it." She was dipping her hand in a bowl of water then running her fingers and her palms over places on the bust of the first Grandma Cooper, making it as smooth as she could. She looked at him as she said, "And L.D. wants to go very badly." Then she said, "Hello Sweetie." She looked at Aunt Linda again. "Have you ever heard this young man singing along with his records?"

           "Yes," Aunt Linda said, "He's good." She winked at him.

           The bust of Grandma Cooper was the size of a real person's head. It looked just like the pictures Grandpa had sent Mom. In the pictures, Grandma Cooper was only a little older than Mom was now. She was pretty, too, like Mom.

           While she looked close at the sculpture's forehead and used her thumb to smooth a place out, Mom said, "He's very good, and for a boy his age." She went to her work counter and pulled out another bowl and some packets of staining color. She looked through them, "Off white," she said, really, to herself. Then as she opened a can of underglaze, she said, "He sings better than a lot of people on the radio."

           "You've been up there studying that new record, haven't you," Aunt Linda said, "Bet you have it down pat before you go to bed."

           A little embarrassed, L.D. sort of smiled at the floor.

           "Oh, count on it." Mom emptied a packet into the undergalze and used a flat stick to mix it.

           "Well, he sure could be an actor, too, if he wanted," Aunt Linda said, "I watched him play with his friends today. He's not just playing make believe, he's a little thespian out there."

           "Thespian or author." Mom opened a cabinet with brushes hanging on nails on the inside of the door. She looked at the brushes, making a decision about which one to use. "That imagination of his. When he's pretending he's one of his TV characters, he makes up new stories, he doesn't copy plots from episodes he's watched." She took one down and went back to the table and the bust. "And, thank god he's through with his Batman phase. It was about to drive Art crazy."

           "Yeah. The center could be just the thing for him," Aunt Linda said. Then she tussled his hair, "Could get those grades up, maybe even."

           Mom dipped the brush into the glaze and started brushing it on Grandma Cooper. "That happens to be my thought. Art sees it as a distraction. I think he's wrong and I have made no secret. He wants L.D. to be at three-oh average first." The watery paste was sort of a dull white. Mom was putting on real light amounts. That was so it wouldn't run too much. L.D. wondered how many coats she'd use this time. He knew different coats and even different temperatures made different stuff happen to the colors, the shine, and even how the surface of the sculpture felt when it was done.

           "Think that'll happen?" Aunt Linda said,

           "I don't know. I'm not even sure grades tell you anything about a kid like this one."

           Dad would not be happy if he even knew Mom said something like that around L.D.

           "Montessori?" Aunt Linda said.

           "That is a bad word to Art Cooper. And I don't know, there's something else. Last week we came close to a rather big disagreement about this all. We were certainly not arguing wisely, as Father Bartholomew always says."

           "You heard Father Bart is stepping down."

           "Oh?" Mom stopped brushing the bust.

           "Father Michael takes the perish in February."

           "Maybe I'll go to Christmas Mass," Mom said, a little sadness in her voice.


Finally, he felt sure he had a lot of the words memorized. He played "Hey Jude" more and sang. With a thick voice he matched Paul's. Sometimes he sang the notes wrong or messed up on the way to say the words. Lots of times he got the words wrong. But he did it again and again. Each time was better. L.D. forgot about Dark Shadows and other TV shows. He didn't even mind that the Democratic Convention took over most of the night on TV. He used the rest of the day, except for meatloaf at dinner, to learn to sing "Hey Jude" like Paul McCartney. He felt like he dared to copy Paul's vocal, that he almost sinned. But he had to do it.

           Then, after a while he lay on his bed and held a stereo speaker to each ear and listened to all his Beatle records. He closed his eyes and listened to Sgt. Pepper's. All the sounds floated inside his skull. Each instrument and voice was in a certain place, then sometimes might move, get softer or louder. Dad said this was the stereo mix. And like always, he listened close to all the vocals, all main vocals, all harmonies. And that bass guitar. There was something about the bass, especially in "Lucy in The Sky With Diamonds" and "A Day in The Life." In those two, even more, the bass sang back to John. The words The Beatles sang were always groovy, too. The Beatles were the coolest. Later, L.D. listened close to the flute in "The Fool on The Hill," the second song on Magical Mystery Tour.

           Looking at the ceiling he thought about American soldiers killed in Vietnam. They were grownups, but new grownups. And what about when he was old enough to have to be a soldier? L.D. knew the government made guys be soldiers. When he got out of high school they might make him be one. He could get killed in Vietnam like the guys from Dayton he always heard about on the news. And if L.D. really was ten-years older, like when he played Sgt. Pepper, they might make him be a soldier in Vietnam right now. Though he kind of wanted to be in the army since Dad was a big hero in the army. Still, he was afraid he'd get killed, even though he didn't want to be afraid. Plus what if he wasn't a hero like Dad? It was bad enough he'd never won even one fight he'd ever been in, except with Lisa or one of his littler cousins. But with guys on the playground, he pretty much lost. He kept playground fights from his parents when he could so Dad wouldn't know.

           Last year Dad showed him how to box, after he came home with a black eye and bloody lip from Daryl Stringer. Mom was not happy about it, either. Dad and L.D. were in the back yard. Dad showed L.D. where to put his hands, how to keep his guard up.

           "Art?" Mom called from the back door, "May I have a word with you?" Whenever she said that, she was mad.

           A few minutes later Dad came back out to finish the lesson. Mom didn't act very nice to Dad the rest of the day. She wasn't mean but she wasn't nice. She ignored him pretty much.

           The lessons went on for a few days. When L.D. didn't do very well Dad got this disappointment in his eyes. He tried to hide it but L.D. saw it. What if Dad found out L.D. ran from a few fights?

           While the dancing piano chords of "The Word" on Rubber Soul came from the speakers, L.D. wondered, what would the youth arts center be like? Maybe it'd be like that retreat Mom had slides of, where she went before she married Dad. It had all those cool-looking castle-like cabins called bungalows. There was the forest, the brook and the flowers, and the sidewalks and steps made out of stones. Artists were everywhere making paintings, drawings, poems, stories and songs. Mom made her groovy sculpture of a hill that was outside her bungalow. It was the first sculpture she ever sold. L.D. hoped the center would be like the retreat.

           He had to get to go. L.D. clinched his eyes shut tight. It was a magic spell to make Dad's "yet" real.