The buses were parked overnight at a rest area parking lot somewhere in Maryland, three hours drive west of our next concert venue in Washington, D.C. Filled with the nutritious offerings of the rest area’s Perkins Restaurant, we trudged back to our sleeping berths, Bobby and I climbed onto separate buses.

I lay awake well past midnight, my mind filled with our surreptitious plans to remain north of the border in Toronto after the tour moved on Monday, August 1st. Bailey, in the berth directly across from me, peered at me in the semi-darkness the moonlight allowed.

“Can’t sleep? Too excited about seeing the nation’s capital for the first time?”

I guess I needed to tell someone, and I trusted Bailey more than anyone except Bobby in the entire troupe, so I lowered my voice, hoping everyone else was safely asleep. “Bobby got his draft letter last week. He’s supposed to report next Monday.”

“Oh my lord, no wonder you seem so preoccupied the last few days. So, is he leaving after the concert Thursday?”

“No, we’re going to Toronto this weekend.”

“But we have a concert on that Monday evening. He’s got to report on Monday, you said.”

“We’re staying in Toronto. He’s not going to report.”

“We? You’re staying too?”

“He’s my life, Bailey. I’m not going to be a widow before I’ve even graduated from high school—”

Bailey laughed out loud but stopped when she realized her guffaws could wake up the others. “Nonsense, Shuggie. You’re not married. And not everyone who’s drafted is even sent overseas. Think this through, girl.”

“We’ve decided. We can have a good life in Canada. At least we’ll both be alive.”

“Like I said, Shuggie, really think this through. Not only what’s best for Bobby but what’s best and sensible for you, your future, your…uh…situation.”

“I have thought it through. Anyway, sorry for keeping you awake. Let’s both get some sleep. It’s going to be a long week.” I turned toward the window and closed my eyes. Sleep came, not quickly but soon enough.

We played The Washington Coliseum, selling out two concerts at the 6,500-seat capacity venue. There had been some buzz in the papers and on radio about our appearance at the Newport Folk Festival and our recent concerts in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Boston. “Heaven Must Have Sent You” was climbing the charts and it must have been a surprise to concertgoers when they heard me singing it live rather than Honey. Hopefully, it was a pleasant surprise. Billy kept adding to and subtracting songs from our set-list, almost on a daily basis, which made soundchecks more intense than they were meant to be.

The last 15 minutes of our shows in Washington were the debuts for three of Billy’s newest arrangements. It was his vision of the future of The Hank Hutch Band. The audience response was thrilling as it rose to a crescendo along with our performance. It was Bailey’s idea for me and the Honeys to change outfits for the final leg of the concert. After Hank and the band rocked the crowd with “Soul Galore,” the girls and I returned to the stage in balloon sleeve silver sequin mini-dresses and white go-go boots.

We lined up like a classic Motown girl group and I followed Billy’s instructions explicitly in doing a rendition of “Yes, I’m Ready” to an expectant, hushed crowd.

The lights came back up full blast as Hank and the band brought most of the audience to their feet to shake and two-step to the beat of “S.O.S. (Stop Her On Sight).” Bobby threw me a tambourine as I shimmied to the half-time groove laid down by our drummer. I’m sure Billy chose this number to mirror Hank’s anxious feelings about Honey’s absence. Whatever the case, the crowd exploded in applause and cheers at the end of the song. Then, the spotlight centered on me as I sang the finale to our concert, “As Tears Go By.” Another instance of Billy reading our minds and monitoring our moods?

After two rousing encores, we would scatter to various late-night spots in the D.C. area, mostly in the Georgetown neighborhood. Bobby and I wandered into The Shamrock, a country music bar on M Street in the northwest corner of the city. We picked at our orders of burgers and fries as we waited for the house band, a bluegrass outfit called The Country Gentlemen, to start the late show. Someone was dropping coins into the jukebox, and we were serenaded by artists like Jimmy Dean, Roy Clark, Ernest Tubb and Patsy Cline. The conservative nature of the bar’s clientele and their favorite music was underlined by someone in a Cummins Diesel cap plunking down a quarter to play Dave Dudley’s “Vietnam Blues.”

After listening to Dudley’s talk-song about draft protestors and resisters, Bobby’s mood changed from placid, after-show decompression to restlessness and distance. We hardly exchanged two words as we finished our meals and Bobby pretty much zoned out during The Country Gentlemen’s set. We hailed a cab back to where our tour buses were parked and silently parted. I wanted to ask him what he was thinking but, in the end, just kissed him good night.

Bright and early on Friday morning, we embarked for Toronto, girding our loins for the nine-hour bus ride. We would be checking into our hotel rooms by dinner time if all goes smoothly. We passed time in the morning by doing what musicians do when facing a stretch of downtime. We jammed. Playing favorites, swapping new songs one of us had recently discovered, or just riffing on our instruments. The girls and I even made up song lyrics off the cuff. Most of it was rank gibberish but, every once in a while, I saw Billy jotting something down in a composition book he always seemed to carry around.

But it was Hank who came up with a complete new song. He had been working on the lyrics for weeks and had gotten some help from Billy on the music. Predictably, given his situation with Honey being A.W.O.L., it was a song about lost love. As Billy would say though, those types of songs are ‘commercial.’ By noon, we could’ve gone straight into the studio and recorded it. Hank titled it “I’ve Gotta Find Her.”

We were so absorbed in our workshopping that I didn’t notice we were in New Jersey, heading toward New Milford, which is a 6-minute drive from my house in Bergenfield. To make the best time, we should’ve stayed west of New Jersey and taken the direct northern route through Pennsylvania and Western New York. This detour through New Jersey will cost us up to two hours in travel time. I asked Billy why we were driving through New Jersey. He said we were stopping for lunch, which didn’t exactly answer my question. I turned toward Bobby to share my confusion about the matter when I noticed he was climbing the steps to the upper berth. Hank asked me, “You’re from around here, Shuggie, what’s good to eat in New Milford?”

“Oh, it’s got everything from soup to nuts…except for soup or nuts.”

Bobby asked me to wait for him in the Subway Sandwich Shop. He stayed on the bus after everyone left for Roman’s Pizza next door to Subway. It was kind of odd, but I found a booth in the back of the shop with a direct sightline to where our buses were parked. Bobby was standing by the side of the bus as our driver handed his saxophone case and suitcase to him. Circling them were Billy, Hank and Ray, our road manager. Bobby shook hands with each of them and then turned to walk toward the Subway Shop. I knew it was bad news. I watched with tearing eyes as he ambled toward our booth.

“So that’s why we detoured through New Jersey? You’re not going to Toronto?”

Sitting down, he averted my eyes and stared at the ceiling. “Yeah, I’m going to report on Monday.”

“You can’t, Bobby. You and I, we decided to stay in Toronto. Start a whole new life in Canada. I want you alive, Bobby. Don’t do this to me!” The dam broke and I covered my face with my hands so the rest of what I said was probably unintelligible. He reached out to cover my hands with his.

“I went back and forth in my mind about this and I can’t do this to you or myself. You need to see where your career can go. With Billy and Hank behind you, you could be a superstar. And…and your other dream could come true. You’d have the money to…”

“Bobby, I can’t do it without you. It makes no sense without you—”

“Come on, Shuggie. I’ll be back in 2 years. I promise I won’t get killed. Okay?”

“Don’t joke about this! Thousands of soldiers have already been killed this year in Vietnam and we’re only in August. What about your mom and dad? They’ll lose their only son…”

“Look, they’ll end up putting me in some kind of military band. I’ll probably never see combat. I might never even go overseas. Stop crying. Don’t worry about me. Think about your own future. The sky’s the limit for you.” He leaned over the table and kissed my forehead, the only part of my face he could see.

“Just promise you won’t die. Promise!”

Holding his right hand up with three fingers pointing to the sky, he pledged, “Scout’s honor. I promise. Now let’s eat. My bus leaves in 15 minutes.”

We held each other the entire time we waited for Bobby’s NJ Transit bus to arrive. When it finally came, I cried into his chest uncontrollably. He kissed my wet lips, nose and eyes and mumbled “Goodbye” before he climbed the steps onto the bus.

I had a shouting match with Billy on the bus after we resumed our trek to Toronto. I was angry he had acquiesced to Bobby’s request to drop him off in New Milford without bothering to let me know. So angry, in fact, I swung at him, but my attempted punch was blocked easily by Hank, who is so much stronger than me. Billy retreated a couple of steps and tried to reason with me. “He did the right thing, Shuggie. And he did it mostly for you. The audience loves you. If you go to Canada, you’ll throw away potentially a tremendous career.”

“What? They don’t have entertainment in Canada?”

“You know what I mean! It’s two years. He might not even be sent overseas. Meanwhile, you could be hitting the top of the charts, getting on TV, touring Europe—”

“You’re a real sentimentalist, Billy.” I went toward the back of the bus and found a seat. I didn’t want to keep talking about it. Hank and Billy didn’t have a clue what Bobby and I had between us. Practically our whole lives we were together. That’s why I came with Bobby this summer in the first place. Not to become the next Diana Ross or Petula Clark but to be with Bobby. And now, I won’t see him for two years…or maybe ever again. I thought about jumping off the bus. But the bus was moving too fast. It would have really hurt if I jumped.

In order to cross the border, Billy had Bailey pick out the smallest size men’s clothes from her wardrobe for me to wear. Sans wig, without makeup, and splashing some aftershave lotion on my peach fuzz-less cheeks, I passed muster when they looked at my driver’s license photo and choked on my aftershave. The rest of the band just thought I was deeply depressed by Bobby’s sudden exit. It was Chubby who sidled up to me afterwards and remarked, “I don’t think you could pass for a boy if you tried. Not with that face and that booty. Pardon my French.”

With all that had happened that day, I wanted only to sleep until noon the next day and not allow my conscious mind to play ping pong with all the depressing thoughts. However, Bailey had other plans for me and practically dragged me to see some singer named Jackie Shane who was in residence at The Holiday Tavern, a jazz club in the heart of Toronto’s black neighborhood at the corner of Queen and Bathurst.

The manager obviously knew Bailey because we were immediately shown to a ringside table close to the stage. We arrived after the early show had just finished so we had time to order drinks and some food before Jackie would return for the late show. I looked at the fairly crowded room and noted that most of the patrons were black. There were some white women with black dates. And then there were me and Bailey, an unlikely pair, if only they knew.

“So, tell me about Jackie Shane. Who is she and why was it necessary to pull me out of an air-conditioned hotel room to traipse through a hot, muggy Toronto summer night to hear her?”

“When I told her about you, Shuggie, she was quite anxious to meet you.”

“Really? Why me?”

“To compare notes. You see, she’s a he.”

“I’m not a drag queen, Bailey. I thought you could tell the difference—”

“Jackie’s not a drag queen either. Like you, she was born with the wrong equipment, so to speak. She was born in Nashville and grew up poor, black, and the wrong sex. A pretty awful start to life, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, that would suck, no doubt.”

“Anyway, as soon as she could, she ran off with the circus, kind of. Ended up in Montreal and Frank Motley discovered her and made her the singer for his group, The Motley Crew. A couple of years later, they moved to Toronto and established themselves as a popular act here and in the clubs on Yonge Street. They even got scouted by some New York record label and put out a couple of singles. Billy met Jackie back then. He was just a studio gofer basically back then, but he really liked Jackie’s style and even tried to get Jerry Wexler to audition her. But—”

“They found out she wasn’t a real girl?”

“Ed Sullivan wanted her to appear on his show but insisted she come on as a guy. Strictly a guy. They thought she could be accepted by audiences as a latter-day Little Richard. But she wouldn’t give in. So, she’s here in Toronto mostly. They tour around the chitlins circuit and Canadian TV actually has her on pretty often.”

“She’s probably going to tell me to drop the whole thing. I mean, they wouldn’t accept her for who she really is. They won’t accept me either.”

“No, she’s not a bitter person. Disappointed in life so far but…look, you’ve got advantages she doesn’t have. First off, you’re completely convincing as a girl. Look at you, for chrissake. And secondly, you’ve got boy genius producer Billy Schechter backing you. He’s already recorded more sides of you than Jackie ever got to do when she was officially signed to a label. You know, Billy’s got half a dozen tracks by you in the can. He didn’t put you on tape just for shits and grins, girl.”

I was about to marshal an argument to refute Bailey’s sunny take on my future singing career when a gentleman in a threadbare but freshly pressed dinner jacket and tie grabbed the microphone on stage to introduce The Motley Crew featuring Jackie Shane.

As the band was settling in on stage, Jackie saw us in the front table and winked at Bailey. When she caught sight of me, her eyes got large, and she shook her head. She smiled and gave me a thumb’s up. I felt silly but I responded with a little finger wave. The band went full volume and Jackie jumped right into their first number, “Walk the Dog.”

Afterwards, Jackie invited us into her tiny dressing room. She was freshening up her makeup. She took my hand and bade me sit down next to her on the only other chair in the room. Poor Bailey had to stand, leaning her back against the dressing room door, puffing away on her usual L&M Super Slim cigarette.

“Child, tell me, are you a girly boy or a boyish girl?”

“I was born a boy but I’m really a girl. My mother says she knew I should have been born a girl when I was just three years old. I was always playing with my older sister’s dolls and wearing her clothes.”

“Hmmm. Sounds familiar. When I was your age, I left town on the first thing smokin’. Came up here to Canada and people here let me live my life the way I want to. So far, it’s been a day in the park. But, south of the border, they’re not ready for me. I assume that’s true for you too.”

“Well, I’m not really after a career in showbiz. I only joined Hank’s band so I could be with my boyfriend. He plays alto sax—”

“Be careful with them musicians, girl. They’ll use you and break your heart at the drop of a hat.”

“He just got drafted. He went home earlier today. We’re from New Jersey.”

“That’s too sad. But, I hear from Bailey that you’re the apple of Billy Schechter’s eye. And you scared off Honey Hutch. You’re someone to be reckoned with, alright. My advice? Watch that Billy. He’s a smooth operator. He thinks he’s all that and you know? He just might be.” She laughed and asked Bailey to toss her a cigarette. “You got a light?”

“No, I don’t smoke. Sorry.”

“Anyways, I gotta go meet someone in about 15 minutes. It’s been a real pleasure to meet you, Shuggie. Best of luck to you. If we meet on the road again sometime, I’d love to hear you sing. Bailey says you’ve got some pipes.” She stood up and that was our cue to leave. Bailey exchanged pecks on the cheek with her and I shook her hand. She was singing “Send Me Some Lovin’” as we left her dressing room.

Despite being down in the dumps because of Bobby’s absence, appropriately I soldiered on, conducting myself as a true professional, giving our audiences their money’s worth. Even Billy and Hank were pleasantly surprised that I seemed to keep my spirits up as we meandered around the eastern United States, 12 tour dates in the next 3 weeks after Toronto. Of course, only Bailey knew I would go back to our bus or hotel after each concert and cry myself to sleep. But, on stage, I was a dynamo. I never missed a cue, flubbed a line, or took a misstep for those 90 minutes under the lights. When the audience gave me an ovation, the dark clouds in my life seemed to part for a brief moment. The smile I returned to the crowd was genuine.

August rolled on through Buffalo, Hartford, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Dayton, and Memphis. We played to mostly full houses, and we could hear “Heaven Must Have Sent You” being played on the radio along the way, climbing the charts, threatening the Top 10.
Our penultimate tour stop was Atlantic City, where we were booked for three concerts on the 23rd through the 25th of the month at The Steel Pier, a 1,000 foot long promontory jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean. I had just settled into my hotel room at The Claridge Hotel when the front desk phoned to tell me a letter had arrived for me the day before. When I returned to my room with the letter in hand, I found a letter opener in the desk drawer and quickly sliced through the envelope, shaking out the paper inside. It was from Bobby, sent from Fort Dix in New Jersey where he was undergoing basic training.

Dear Shuggie,

P.S. I love you, baby. Don’t forget me.

I threw my head back against the headboard of the bed and burst into tears, the letter still in my limp hands. There was a knock on the door. I quickly wiped my eyes and, straightening out my clothes, opened the door.

There, standing with Billy and Hank behind her, was Honey Hutch, the last person I’d ever expected to see again, at least until the summer tour ended.

“Hey, Shuggie, I’m back!”