Just Shelby

by Brooklyn James

  “But you can find guitarists. Professional ones. Ones who’d give their left nut to play for you.”

  “I don’t want them. I want you.” Emotion snuffs intensity. His eyes tear up like they did that night in Knoxville when I told him about Shelby. He’s trying to make up for something he can’t.

  “What about making my own name, my own way. Isn’t that a basic rite of passage for any musician worth their salt?”

  “It ain’t a handout. You’d be doing me a favor. Getting me back on my feet, getting some experience yourself. Then you’re free to beat your head against the wall, make your own way,” he says, having beat down that road himself.

  “You don’t have to do this.” It’s not right. I get the privilege of skipping steps, not paying my dues, because on paper I’m his son? No epic rock ’n’ roller’s biography ever started like that. “The results don’t change a damn thing.”

  “It ain’t the fucking results,” he lies. “It’s you, kid. I knew it that night. You got something special. Hell, you play better than me. You play like Mason.” He’s looking right at me. But it feels like something more. Like he’s looking for Mason in me.

  Mason in me? The gossip was just that. Mason and Maisy did have a child together. Is that what the results proved? It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to know.

  “You already know my catalog,” Johnny continues. “That’s a timesaver right there. Results or not, you are the musician for the job.”

  “I would just be playing. In the background.” I couldn’t pay for better experience.

  “That’s up to you and the crowd, whatever you wanna give and whatever they’ll accept. You’re basically me eighteen years ago. They might eat that up.”

  The gossip was true, then. But I saw the insert. Miss Piper said it: Johnny and Mason could pass for brothers. Am I Johnny eighteen years ago or am I Mason eighteen years ago? Stop!

  “And if you’re ‘worth your salt,’ you might even expand my fan base.” Again, he makes it out that I’ll be doing him a favor. Was Pop right when he said Johnny is only supporting me because it can benefit him.

  Shelby’s rubbing off on me. Stop overthinking shit! It makes no difference if it benefits Johnny. It benefits me, too. But what if I let him down. What if I can’t keep up and his concerts and fan base go south. Is this what it feels like to be in that big beautiful brain of hers?

  “What about school?” I say instead, masking self-doubt. I’m four months away from graduation. It’s not exactly the best time to leave.

  “Hell, just take the GED and be done with it. Or we’ll get ya a tutor. Shelby, take her. She’s smart, into books. Maybe she can keep you into ’em, too.”

  Shelby. She can go! But would she. “Is it any environment for her?” Is it any environment for me. I could be the one to go south.

  “It ain’t like the old days. Man, did we have some fun.” His face lights up with a grin—now that it can be seen without competing facial hair—the memories the furthest thing from a shaved head, a broken body, and physical rehabilitation. “I’m the only stag left.” He hangs on that fact for a moment, somewhere between relief and regret. “The rowdiest it gets these days is when the wives bring the ankle biters to see the band. It ain’t just about the music anymore, kid. We gotta get it while the gettin’s good.”

  “How is it that none of your bandmates got hurt? In the wreck.”

  “We had a four-day break between Pittsburgh and Lexington. They flew out to be home with family, and flew back in,” he says, a bit mystified at the change in lifestyle the band has seen or maybe mystified at the concept of managing both family and music. “It was karma, ya know. For what my bandmates do that I never did. I was gonna make good on that promise, go see Maisy and Shelby. Then I pussied out, only to find my nerve a little too late. It was my fault we were driving like a bat out of hell through the night. I’m just thankful it didn’t kill my driver.”

  I’m thankful it didn’t kill you, I want to say. I should say. Instead I go with, “I’m sorry about your guitar.”

  “Ah, just gives us the chance to make another one together, I reckon,” he says, as though I already agreed to the tour, to spending time with him. “We still got Mason’s. And rightly so. He was the one who started it all. I still can’t believe he’s gone.”

  Yep, he’s trying to make up for something that he can’t by giving me the chance he took away from Mason.

  “You backstage at my concert, the guitar, the wreck—it’s all ‘kinnected.’ Old man Walker, Maisy’s daddy, used to say that when he hitched up his horses for logging.” Johnny chuckles, splinting his rib cage with the pillow once more.

  Apparently “old man Walker” still says it, explaining Shelby’s copycat vernacular the few times I’ve heard her say it.

  “This had to happen to me. Amazing how almost dying can teach you a thing or two about living.” His head tilts to the side; his index finger pops into the air. “Write that down. There’s a song there somewhere.” And back to his thought he goes. “Everything Contra Band is…was built off the back of Bootleg, off the vision of Mason Lynn. It’s too late to make it right with him. I wanna make it right with Shelby and Maisy. You have any idea how I might go about that?”

  Wren whirls in the door, five minutes late.

  Ever since the results—the ones I immediately smudged but did not read—came in, she calls Enisi’s ever so often “just to chat” with me.

  Apparently she read them.

  “I’m so sorry. I hate being late. With the traffic out there, you’d think it was Derby week,” she says, before noticing my company. My dapper, college-aged company. She is surprised.

  “It’s perfect timing. We were just finishing up,” I say.

  Grayson stands. So I stand, too.

  “Grayson, this is my…” Friend? Biological mother? Boyfriend’s mother?

  “Nice to meet you, Grayson, I’m Wren,” she takes over, extending her hand.

  Instead of shaking it, he takes it lightly in his and lifts it up.

  Please don’t kiss her hand. Overkill, Grayson, overkill.

  “Oooh!” Wren muffles a giggle, as he does some sort of bow thing to her lifted hand.

  At least he didn’t kiss it.

  “Wren, the pleasure is mine. Shelby, you never told me you had a sister,” he says.

  There it is—overkill. He can’t help himself. And I can’t help myself from noticing the similarities—same round face, same pale complexion, same short nose. Even the pale blue of her eyes when mixed with green make the turquoise color of mine. Who needs results when you have those features staring back at you. Funny we never noticed before.

  “Grayson gave me my internship with UCAN,” I say, clarifying that our meeting is not personal. “Not only a student, he is also an employee of UK. He’s given me more pointers on how to get in than my guidance counselor!” There are the nerves, manifesting in voice inflection. She knows you’re not cheating on Ace. Who would cheat on Ace. If he and I are still a thing.

  “A Wildcat who’s interested in more than partying,” Wren says, impressed.

  “If only I hadn’t done my fair share of that before finding a purpose,” he says, unable to fully accept the praise, then transitions back to pleasantries. “How do you and Shelby know each other?”

  Don’t answer that. Assuming she read the results, I do not want to know.

  “She’s my son’s girlfriend,” Wren says proudly, purposely.

  Although relieved by her answer, my cheeks blush. I don’t talk about that sort of thing with Grayson. And why don’t I? Because he never thought of me as “girlfriend material”—why would he believe anyone else would. Maybe I’m still amazed that Ace does.

  Even more amazing, “Lucky guy,” Grayson says. “Well, I won’t keep you.” Again with a bow in Wren’s direction and the usual side hug for me, she and I watch him saunter on out the door. He holds it for a group of seniors, bowing and hello’ing and top-of-the-morning-to-you’ing
.

  “If I were your mother, I’d say don’t let that one get away,” Wren says, still studying him all the way to his car.

  Is she saying she is my mother? And what about Ace? This is the confusing part about results. She wouldn’t have said that before the results. But now she feels like she has to? Consider what’s best for me as equally as she does him.

  I slide into the booth. She slides in across from me. I don’t know what we could talk about that we haven’t already talked about during our chats.

  “So I don’t want to put the cart before the horse,” she prefaces. “But I did some asking around. If you’d like, you could transfer schools. I know it’s midyear. But they would honor the transfer. You would have your pick…public, private, or charter. The school around the corner from us has an excellent running program. I mean, if you’ve even thought about it. If you want to, of course.”

  “I would stay with you?” And Dr. van den Berg. I haven’t thought about it as a realistic option; I’ve fantasized about it. Ever since the first night I stayed there with Ace after dislocating my shoulder.

  “Steph is totally on board. How ‘lovely,’” she says, playfully mocking his fondness for the word. “I thought maybe it would help you acclimate to the change in culture, the change from small town to big city, before you tackle college in the very same big city.” Her chuckle matches my heartbeat—fluttering.

  Is this really happening? The silver spoon that I took a dig at Grayson with is coming around the table? Everything I’ve always wanted. All because of a DNA test I never wanted. After my heart just disclosed a genuine interest in my community, now magically appears an honest-to-goodness one-way ticket out of that community? A one-way ticket that I have been stalking, literally attempting to run down.

  Yes! Say yes! But the words won’t come. It’s Appalachia—the Mother of the Mountains. A hundred miles away, she’s not even here. Yet she’s up to her tricks. Her talons plucking at me, she pecks away at opportunity.

  “I know it’s all abrupt, probably overwhelming.” Wren starts talking with her hands, like Grayson had moments earlier, attempting to make sense of what must be mind-bending. “Don’t feel pressured. Take all the time you need. Consider it. If I can be of any help, I want to be. I just…I would like to get to know you…outside of being Ace’s girlfriend.”

  “Have you talked to him about this?” About my moving in with her.

  She nods. “He thinks you should.”

  I should? When he never did. “He’s leaving, isn’t he?”

  “Possibly.” She shrugs, as conflicted as I am about wanting him to go—wanting him to chase his dreams—but wishing he might stay.

  An envelope from the testing lab occupies the kitchen counter where UK’s application packet used to linger. All the times that damn packet dared me. The lab envelope, addressed to Pop, doesn’t dare me. I wonder if it dares him.

  I think about putting it where it belongs. Into the trash with coffee grounds and watered-down dark chocolate, the same place that application packet went. Before Pop rescued it and mailed it off out of spite.

  I walk by the results instead, respecting his choice. Especially since I am about to ask him to respect mine.

  The sound of plastic rattling and bottles clanking guide me to the living room.

  “Spring cleaning?” I chuckle, nervously.

  “Something like that.” He chuckles back, chucking bourbon bottles and wine from the Koronette into a heavy-duty trash bag.

  “Kickin’ the habit, huh.” I guess he’s finally taking the doctor’s—or Mom’s—advice seriously.

  “My lungs ain’t never gonna be what they used to be. The damage is done. Supposedly, giving all this up will keep ’em from getting worse.” Into the bag go cigars and pipes as well. “Figured I’d jump in the New Year’s Resolution pond, and doggy paddle like hell!” He laughs.

  And so do I. On par with dancing and kindling a fire, he never could swim for shit.

  “The Koronette’s going too. Unless you want it.”

  I shake my head. It’s about time he lets her go. “I’ll keep the records.” The sounds that remind me of who they used to be. “I can take the Koronette back to Miss Piper’s.” She’ll see that it goes to a good home, hopefully carrying a different fate for the next family it graces.

  “I don’t care where you take it so long as it’s out of here.”

  “What’s this?” I notice a few planks of curly maple sitting across the Ottoman.

  “Another resolution—live a ‘kinder, gentler life,’” he mocks self-help advice. “I thought we’d try our hand at rebuilding that guitar. Do something together that you’re actually interested in, for a change.”

  “That’d be cool.” I get my first dose of having two father figures in my life. Funny they each had the same bonding idea.

  “That curly maple ain’t cheap.” He shakes his head. “Guess I should’ve thought about that before I let jealousy get the best of me. Look, I’m sorry, son. Not just about the guitar, but about a lot of things.”

  “It’s okay, Pop.” Apparently the thought of competing with someone else—a biological someone else—for my time and affection has brought to mind how he could better spend his time and affection with me.

  “No, it ain’t okay. The only way I’m ever gonna make it right is to show you from here on out. If you’ll let me.”

  I’m not going anywhere, I want to say. But that would be a lie. “And what’s this?” I divert once more, noticing a sticky note with a woman’s name and phone number attached to the landline phone on the end table.

  “You know Adelaide, the secretary from the mine. She’s been hinting at a date for some time. Guess I’ll jump back into that pond too.”

  “That’s good, real good.”

  “I don’t know, guess I’m just trying to find myself again. Find a way to be happy and move on. Be someone you want to be with, not because you feel like you have to. Not out of obligation, you know.”

  “About that…” I pause, getting up the nerve. “I’m never gonna outgrow you, Pop. But I am growing up. I have to start making choices that are good for me, or at least what I think are good for me. And I want your support…even if they aren’t choices you would make for me.”

  “Go,” he says. No jealousy, no guilt trip, no anger in his tone—he is unusually even-tempered. Like he already knows what I am about to say: I’d like to go on the road with Johnny.

  “Really?” I hide my exclamation with a question.

  “Yes, son, gooo,” he holds it out in a whisper, nothing but pride in his eyes—maybe as much for himself as me.

  Fuck, yeah! I hold my hand out to him, pulling him up from his crouched position by the Koronette. We shake and hug and slap each other’s backs before he pulls me into an embrace that I can barely breathe beneath.

  “Go get it. For you, for me, for everyone in this holler.” Snuffling and clearing his throat, he releases me with a rough pat on my shoulder. “And while you’re at it, go get that damn envelope off the counter.”

  From the kitchen I hear him say, “One more, for old time’s sake,” followed by the needle drop of the Koronette. “If you’re gonna be playing for ’em, guess I gotta support ’em,” he continues, drowned out by the cowpunk intro of Contra Band’s latest lead-off track.

  He throws the envelope on a pile of kindling in the fireplace and hands the matches to me…because he actually wants it to burn. We laugh. I start the fire.

  With the man who raised me—the man who may not have given me his blood, but gave me so much more—we fly in the face of biology and watch it go “Up in Flames.”

  Same gray sky. Same gray fog. Same gray gravel. Same gray air expiring from the draft horse’s mouth.

  I do not count steps.

  This run is not for training.

  Even Appalachia—the helicopter mom—leaves me alone. She knows she’s got me on a wire. Keep my eyes up, I’ll make it to the other side. To college. To the ci
ty. Anywhere but here. Am I seriously considering looking down. Willfully falling off? Plummeting right into Appalachia’s wide-stretched arms, immersing myself here, in her, in some way.

  Why?

  Because like Ace, I like the fight? I must know what I am made of, earning the things that come to me.

  It’s too easy to have it all laid at my feet. Running just to run, running from nothing and toward nothing—where is the satisfaction in that?

  Even this run has a purpose: to test whether a body can be exhausted enough not to think. I pay no mind to the minutes or hours, simply running long enough to see stars. Possibly hallucinating, that looks like Mr. Cooper jogging toward me.

  “Nothing like a morning run to get the blood pumping, huh,” he wheezes, doing a one-eighty and falling in line with my stride.

  Is this real? Is he talking to me. Purposely? I stop running and walk, saving him another trip to the ER.

  “It’s okay.” He smiles, patting the pocket of his eyesore windbreaker. “I got my inhaler. Ain’t as good as your grandmother’s mullein, but it’ll do in a pinch.” He smiles again.

  Oh, great. What I feared about those results must be true. Why else would he be giving me the time of day.

  “Believe it or not, I used to run like you.”

  Yep, it’s real. The stars are gone from my vision, but he isn’t. “You ran faster than me,” I finally say something, begrudged by the fact that no matter how hard I train, I’ll never have enough testosterone to compete with boys my age. “I’ve seen the records.” One of them remains unbroken, commemorated on the plaque that hangs in the hallway between the gym and the cafeteria.

  “I might’ve beat you for a stretch,” he says of his undefeated performance in the eight-hundred-meter dash. “But judging from what I’ve seen, you would’ve left me in the dust ’round about the mile mark. I tried to catch you when you first started this morning. You’ve lapped me ten times over, running out of the holler and back.” He laughs, the sound reverberating off the mountains.