“He seems a little crazy, but he’s all talk. I think we’ll be okay,” I heard Will say. Wait. What? Will explained there were three men in the barn; it appeared they’d been drinking. One of them had been yelling at them. “I don’t think he wants us in there,” Will explained. I asked if the boys had told them they had permission from Si and Dorothy to practice that day. They had, he assured me.
“He didn’t really worry us until he went and got the shotgun.” Wait. What?
It took me all of a split second to park the car and head into the barn. When I walked in, there was a tractor in the middle of the floor, that hadn’t been there the day before, and a truck parked inside. The three men were sitting around a wood stove, and one was yelling, complete with a slew of profanity, about his displeasure with the boys being there. He wasn’t looking at us, or directing his comments to us, but we could hear enough to know he had no intention of letting the practice, or the concert, take place. The other two men with him were trying to calm him down, which was only making things worse. When I heard him say, “I don’t give a fuck, I’ll kill anyone I fuckin’ want to,” my mama bear instincts kicked in full force.
“Let’s go,” I told the boys. Sensing the panic I was feeling, the boys grew somber, quickly packed up their equipment and loaded it into their cars. “Go to the house,” I told them. “I’ll follow.” With the boys safely on their way, I went to talk to Dorothy and Si.
They told me the man was their grandson. He wasn’t supposed to be in the barn. He wasn’t supposed to have a key. They told me he was bipolar and only got that way when he drank, which he wasn’t supposed to do. I told them the part about the shotgun, and they assured me he wouldn’t ever hurt anyone, he’d just been trouble since he was a little boy. Uh . . . not assurance I could go on when not only my son and the other band members were at risk, but so was every other person who planned to attend the show. While I was still there, Dorothy called her son, the man’s father, and told him to come and get him out of there, and if he didn’t, she’d call the police. When she hung up she told me it wouldn’t be the first time she’d called the police on her grandson.
If my head reeled with stress over the train-track incident, these events had me holding onto the chair next to me so I wouldn’t topple over. We had to cancel. That was all there was to it. I drove home feeling sick to my stomach, knowing how much I was about to disappoint the boys.
Once I told Doug the story, he agreed. We had to cancel. I asked him to give me a few minutes to think about it. He did. Very reluctantly. I called Claudia and asked her opinion. She told me not to cancel, that Dorothy wouldn’t let this guy within five miles of the place after this. Okay. Still not convinced. Doug and I talked again. “Let’s ask the other parents,” he suggested. Good idea. That way, if we collectively agreed cancellation was necessary it would come from all of us, not just Doug and me.
I went downstairs to where the boys were rehearsing and told them what they had to do. “Each of you explain to your parents what happened today. After you have done so, I need one parent from every household to call me and tell me their opinion. We’ll decide then.” Crestfallen. It’s what I expected. It’s what I got. My heart broke a little for them.
Less than thirty minutes later, I got the first call. The dad and I had a long talk, and his opinion was we should let the show go on. We talked about the kind of security measures we’d put into place, and he agreed to talk with the other parents as well. When I went downstairs to tell the boys about the first call, they told me that right after I talked to them previously, they stopped rehearsing and each called their parents. “We wanted to get it over with,” they told me.
Within an hour, I had spoken to all but one parent. All were in agreement that we let the show go on, and all agreed to be here to help. The boys were overjoyed, but there was one more parent who hadn’t weighed in. And she wasn’t likely to agree with the consensus. It was all or nothing, I’d told them initially, so if she said no, the concert would be off. It was another tortuous half hour for them before she called. She was reluctant, but she agreed to let the boys have their show.
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