Veteran's Hospital Music Festival, a riptide fanfic

Veteran's Hospital Music Festival

By Janet Brayden

The sun shone brightly, that Saturday morning in mid-July. The Riptide swayed gently at her moorings while the three residents, Cody Allen, Nick Ryder and Murray Bozinsky, cleaned her up from top to bottom and stem to stern. The boat was looking pretty good by ten o'clock and by noon the guys were hungry and ready to pick up their mail and some lunch at Straightaway's.

Cody handed the mail to Nick while he closed the box and locked it again. Nick flipped through it finding the usual assortment of catalogues, bills and junk mail but also a note from their "little sister" Cayce McKenna.

"There's a note, here, from Cayce," he told his friends. "Looks like she's on the road again and didn't have access to a phone or she would have called."

"What does she have to say?" Murray asked.

"She says she, Colonel McKenna and a bunch of others are putting together a music festival, or a concert, at the VA hospitals around the state. The colonel just got transferred to Fort Irwin but they're doing the festival at the VA hospitals where the grounds are nicer and more hospitalized vets can enjoy it. 'I hope you guys will come to one of them. I think you'd enjoy yourselves and think of it as a way of doing something for your fellow vets – just by being there to support the project and maybe push some of the wheelchair bound out around the grounds. I look forward to seeing you guys and plan to surprise you – I hope – when I appear. Love Cayce.'"

"Boss! A free concert, Cayce singing and we get to help brother vets!" Murray was all for it.

"I agree with Murray," Cody said. "We ought to go. We haven't visited any of the VA hospitals since you and Peggy broke up – and that was only in the course of our investigation."

"I think it's a good idea, too," Nick said. With a puzzled look on his face he added, "I wonder what the 'surprise' is?"

Two weeks later the three detectives arrived at the Veteran's Administration Hospital in King Harbor. Colonel McKenna, a tall man in his forties with the same light brown hair and green eyes as his niece, greeted them when they arrived.

"Lieutenant Allen! Ryder! Colonel Bozinsky! Good to see you fellows," the officer said as he shook hands with them.

The other three men returned the greeting gladly. Nick and Cody had served under him at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio when they were MPs. Murray had met him when the trio had helped solve the mystery of who had tried to kidnap Cayce and keep her out of contention for the big prize money in the pole bending and barrel racing events on the local rodeo circuit. Old acquaintances had been renewed and a new friendship had been formed. Colonel McKenna was quite fond of these three men whom he tended to think of as younger brothers.

"Where's Cayce?" Cody asked as they made their way to the wards where they would pick up a wheelchair bound vet to take them to the festival.

Their path wound past brightly colored tents where vendors sold everything from tee shirts and bumper stickers to food and hats to shade festival attendees from the bright sun that shone down. The smell of grilled burgers, hot dogs and sausages filled the air as well as that of popcorn, roasted peanuts and dust.

"She's with her cousins, Dan and Josh. They're doing a last minute rehearsal of their songs." He grinned as he looked at the two older men. "I think you'll recognize them even though you were in Nam, when the people they plan to 'cover' as they put it, were popular. They're really quite good and they've been well received."

The men made their way to the hospital wards where there were nurses and other staff members waiting with the patients. Each patient would have one volunteer and a staff member in charge of them – for safety's sake. They picked up their patients and headed out to the grassy field where the ambulatory patients were sitting on the ground waiting patiently.

Colonel McKenna then excused himself so that he could get ready to introduce the acts. He made his way to the stage, checked behind the curtain to see if the first act was ready and announced them.

The first act consisted of a quartet who did fairly good renditions of Beatles songs such as "I'll Follow The Sun", "It's Been a Hard Day's Night" and "Yellow Submarine". The group that followed them did some Carpenters songs. After that there were acts that did Desi Arnaz, short scenes from movie musicals such as The Sound of Music (the Navy vets appreciated that when they were told that Baron von Trapp had been a submarine commander during WWI) and Oklahoma. Cody and Nick were especially surprised that Cayce wasn't involved in that one being as she was a rancher and enjoyed what they called cowboy music. Her favorite singers, as far as they knew, were groups like The Sons of the Pioneers. They were in for a surprise.

"And now," Colonel McKenna began his introduction, "The McKenna cousins trio of Dan, Cayce and Josh will perform."

The trio consisted of Cayce, twenty-four, Dan who was twenty-six and their cousin Josh who was twenty-eight. Cayce wore her long, light brown hair straight down which was unusual for her. The young men had beards and moustaches that seemed real but from a distance it was hard to tell for sure.

Dan and Josh both had guitars. Cayce, who could play many instruments, did not have any instrument. The men wore suits but no ties. Cayce was wearing a frosty blue and gold pantsuit of satin. It took a minute before the detectives realized that the McKennas were going to do a Peter, Paul and Mary tribute. They started with Where Have All the Flowers Gone. Each one of the cousins sang one verse and encouraged those in the audience who knew the song to sing the chorus with them. After that it was Leaving on a Jet Plane with Cayce doing the lead.

Nick and Cody were really starting to enjoy it. Murray looked a little confused until the very end. By the time the McKennas had finished he had melted, as Cayce put it, into a big puddle of goo he was so moved by their music.

Cayce announced their next song with a brief history.

"Not too long ago," she said, "I saw an interview with Pete Seeger in which he said he'd written the tune to this song but it wasn't really popular when he sang it. Then Peter, Paul and Mary came along and worked on it and improved it. This is our rendition of If I Had a Hammer."

The guitars started playing a lively tune and the three cousins soon had everybody tapping their feet and singing along withthem.

If I had a hammer,

I'd hammer in the morning

I 'd hammer in the evening,

All over this land

I'd hammer out danger,
I'd hammer out a warning,
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

If I had a bell,
I'd ring it in the morning,
I'd ring it in the evening,
All over this land

I'd ring out danger,
I'd ring out a warning
I'd ring out love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

If I had a song,
I'd sing it in the morning,
I'd sing it in the evening,
All over this land

I'd sing out danger,
I'd sing out a warning
I'd sing out love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

Well I got a hammer,
And I got a bell,
And I got a song to sing, all over this land.

It's the hammer of Justice,
It's the bell of Freedom,
It's the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

It's the hammer of Justice,
It's the bell of Freedom,
It's the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land

The crowd loved it and roared their approval as they clapped with the rhythm of the song and sang along with the trio.

The McKennas were the last group to perform before intermission and they were the last group to perform period. When they came back on stage it was to sing one for the children.

"This last song, before we break up this wonderful festival," Cayce said, "is for the kids and the kids at heart."

Josh who was standing to her left started them off:

" Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee,
Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff,
and brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff. Oh

Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee,
Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee."

Dan, to Cayce's right, sang the next verse making faces to bring forth the image of a boat with the wind pushing at the sails. Cayce and Josh joined in the chorus just as Cayce and Dan had sung the chorus the first time.

"Together they would travel on a boat with billowed sail
Jackie kept a lookout perched on Puff's gigantic tail,"

Here, Josh picked up the verse again while Cayce and Josh did the backgrounds.

"Noble kings and princes would bow whene'er they came,
Pirate ships would lower their flag when Puff roared out his name. Oh!

Josh sang the last verse:

"A dragon lives forever but not so little boys
Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys.
One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more
And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.

His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain,
Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane.
Without his life-long friend, Puff could not be brave,
So Puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave. Oh!

When the cousins were through there was scarcely a dry eye among the children who were sad because Puff was sad and the adults who had felt the same way when they were children and still felt that way when they heard the song. However everybody perked up when the trio led them in the final round of the chorus. Cayce left the microphone to move out in front and, along with Josh and Dan, "conducted" the audience before rushing back to their places by the microphone for the final:

"Puff the magic dragon lives by the sea – present tense! And frolics in the autumn mist in a land called Honah-lee. Puff the magic dragon lives by the sea and frolics in the autumn mist in a land called Honah-lee!"

Josh and Dan hit a final two note chord and the song ended with the audience – all those who were able to – coming to their feet and cheering.

The festival was a rousing success. Nick and Cody tried to hide the fact that they, too, had been crying for Puff but they were caught between eagle eyed Cayce and Boz who refused to be put off. After all, these were the partners who had cried at the ending of a sad movie.

"Did you enjoy yourselves?" Cayce asked when she got to talk to her "brothers".

"We sure did!" Murray enthused as he removed his glasses for about the tenth time to wipe his eyes.

"You were great, honey!" Nick told her.

"How long have you guys been practicing?" Cody asked her. "You sounded just like Peter, Paul and Mary."

"A couple of months or so," she told them. "We got hold of some videos of their concerts and played them, and their albums, over and over again until we got it just right."

"You were wonderful," Boz told her. "Just wonderful. Weren't they guys? Wasn't Cayce wonderful?"

"Yeah, she was," Nick agreed with a squeeze of the young woman's shoulders.

For the rest of the afternoon the quartet, joined by Colonel McKenna, Josh and Dan, mingled with the patients in the ward. The cousins brought their guitars with them so that they could sing some for the patients who were too sick to attend.

Afterwards they all went back to Straightaway's for dinner where the cousins were prevailed upon – by Straightaway himself – to do a few appearances at the restaurant. They agreed but made it clear that it could only be for a couple of nights as Cayce had a ranch to get back to and the young men had jobs. Colonel McKenna was on leave and would go back to the Lazy M with his niece for the remainder of his time off.

Everyone had a wonderful time and the Riptide detectives were heard to be humming Peter, Paul and Mary songs for two weeks afterward – and nobody seemed to mind. Not even their arch nemesis Lieutenant Ted Quinlan.