The heart of the production was the reenactment of six legendary stage scenes, each compressed to eighty-five seconds and supplemented when necessary with tasteful bilingual narration. The final vignette was a soliloquy from Hamlet, which did not play well in the downpour; fans in the upper levels of the Orange Bowl could not clearly see Poor Yorick’s skull and assumed they were applauding Señor Wences.
Afterward all the performers gathered arm-in-arm under a vast neon marquee and, to no one’s surprise, sang “Give My Regards to Broadway.” Then the floodlights in the stadium dimmed and the slate rainclouds overhead formed an Elysian backdrop for the emotional climax, a holographic tribute to the late Ethel Merman.
The audience had scarcely recovered from this boggling spectacle of electronic magic—scenes from Gypsy projected in three dimensions at a height of thirty stories—when the lights winked on and John Davidson strode to midfield.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, with a smile bright enough to bleach rock, “if I may direct your attention to the east zone, it’s my great pleasure to introduce this year’s Orange Bowl queen, the beautiful Kara Lynn Shivers!”
In the stands, Brian Keyes went cold. In his obsession with the parade he had forgotten about the game, and the traditional halftime introduction of the queen and her court. It was a brief ceremony—a few of the prize-winning floats circling once in front of the stands before exiting the east end zone. As Kara Lynn’s father had griped, it was hardly worth getting your hair done for, eleven crummy minutes of airtime.
But eleven minutes was plenty long enough. An eternity, Keyes thought. A horrible certainty possessed him and he jumped to his feet. Where were the cops—where were the goddamn cops?
The mermaid float entered first, still trumpeting sperm-whale music; then came floats from Cooley Motors, the Nordic Steamship Lines, and the Palm Beach Lawn Polo Society. The procession was supposed to end with a modest contingent of motorcycle Shriners from Illinois, who had been awarded a halftime slot following the untimely cancellation of the entry from Bogota.
However, something foreign trailed the be-tasseled Shriners into the stadium: a strange unnamed float. Curious fans who thumbed through their Official Orange Bowl Souvenir Programs found no mention of this peculiar diorama. In their reserved box seats along the forty-yard line, members of the Orange Bowl Committee trained binoculars on the interloper and exchanged fretful whispers. Since the NBC cameras already had discovered the mystery float, intervention was out of the question, image-wise; besides, there was no reason to suspect anything but a harmless fraternity prank.
Though its craftsmanship was amateurish (forgivable, considering its humble warehouse origins), the float actually made a quaint impression. It was an Everglades tableau, almost childlike in simplicity. At one end stood an authentic thatched chickee, the traditional Seminole shelter; nearby lay a dugout canoe, half-carved from a bald cypress; steam rose from a black kettle hung over a mock fire. Grazing in a thicket, presumably unseen, was a stuffed white-tailed deer; a similarly preserved raccoon peered down from the lineated trunk of a synthetic palm. The centerpiece was a genuine Indian, very much alive and dressed in the nineteenth-century garb of trading-post Seminoles: a round, brimless straw hat, baggy pants, gingham shirt, a knotted red kerchief, and a tan cowskin vest. Somewhat anachronistically, the nineteenth-century Indian was perched at the helm of a modern airboat, gliding through the River of Grass. A long unpolished dagger was looped in the Seminole’s snakeskin belt and a toy Winchester rifle lay across his lap. His smooth youthful face seemed the portrait of civility.
Brian Keyes sprang for the aisle the moment he saw the Indian. Frantically he tried to make his way down from the stands, but the Nebraska card-flashers (Irish Suck!) were embroiled in a heated cross-stadium skirmish with the Notre Dame card section (Huskers Die!). Keyes pushed and shoved and elbowed his way along the row but it was slow going, too slow, and some of the well-fed Cornhusker faithful decided to teach this rude young fellow some manners. They simply refused to move. Not for a semicolon, they said; set your butt down.
As the floats trundled past the stands, wind-whipped rains lashed the riders and sent the ersatz Broadway actors scurrying off the field for cover. Kara Lynn was drenched and miserable, but she continued to wave valiantly and smile. Through a pair of field glasses (and from the dry safety of a VIP box) Reed Shivers assayed his daughter’s bedraggled visage and noted that her makeup was running badly, inky rivulets marring impeccable cheeks—she looked like something from a Warhol movie. Reed Shivers anxiously wondered if it was time to buy the lady from the Eileen Ford Agency another drink.