Man Gone Down

by Michael Thomas

  “Lien.”

  “A lien on this building if I don’t pay. They say they ruin my credit. They say I can lose my house. Sonny, he charge five thousand dollars. They say I have to pay it all. He never make one payment. I don’t have that kind of money.”

  I wave for her to stop. She won’t.

  “I promise I pay you back. Every bit. It’s a lot of money, I know, but I pay it—five dollars a month if I have to. I pay it all.”

  “It’s okay.”

  She peeks up at me again. “You not gonna sue me—no?”

  “No, Marta. I’m not going to sue you.”

  “I know it’s hard times for you, too.”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  She smiles again, this time with her mouth open. She has lipstick on her teeth.

  “You should never have left.”

  I shrug my shoulders and start to go.

  “I’ll call you . . . soon.”

  I wave back to her without turning.

  11

  I change my guitar’s strings and play, but the new ones sound too bright, so I put the old ones back on. I play scales, moving up and down the neck. I’ve never been very good at them. My fingers aren’t precise. I blame this partly on genetics; there’s always seemed to be an interruption between hands and fingers, as though the nerve bundles were suddenly terminated at the calluses and then the builder used cheaper, less conductive wire. My hands are good for hammering, or crushing beer cans. I’ve always tried to be careful with my hands around Claire and the kids, especially their faces. They seem to disappear in them. Claire has always marveled at my hands, thought that they were beautiful—copper and ash—not hammy but far from fine. The boys have hands like mine, enormous, but they’re children’s hands, still soft, pink for X, russet for C, and they seem better integrated, more so than mine, which look like the contract between beast and man hadn’t been agreed on.

  I learned when I was able to buy my own guitar and cheap electric keyboard, that there was so much to do. I had to learn how to play—a song, songs I’d heard and loved as a boy. I wanted to play and I don’t know if I sensed that my paw-hands would never move with the requisite dexterity, or if I was just lazy, but I skipped it—and then I wanted to sound the beautiful, individual note, but the older I got, the less my beast hands would learn. So I play strangely but with confidence, an odd strum-pluck, like an awkward athlete, a stumbling runner. It doesn’t look good, but I get there. I make the song happen. And there are random notes, occasional buzzes and misses, but as a whole, it becomes its own thing, and I’m not sure if it’s me, if it’s my ear that’s grown accustomed to what may be either music or discordant slop, but to me, in my private room, it sounds like something. It has a place.

  I need to work out a play list. I should begin with something familiar, not obvious, but something a few in the audience will recognize, if not by name, then, at least, by tradition. Something that will situate, like an epigraph, what will follow, in a context. It has to be the blues. I want to make people sad, sad for me and sad for themselves, and then sadder still that they never realized that there are people so sad—that they have a connection to that sadness. I want to let them know what they’ve missed, to mourn it, then, in the booze-haze and their collective sorrow, have it be reborn. I want to make them happy, then have them see and feel the gap between the two emotions—have them see that the distance they assume is an illusion, a lie told to them, but not have them feel guilt or shame but celebrate the other half—the blues.

  The blues—“Baby, where were you last night?” Thomas Strawberry has never had a woman fish, at least not one that I know of. He’s bright today. His fins are high and proud. His good form makes me realize how ill he must have been. It’ll be a shame to leave him. C only thinks of him in passing; X likes to empty containers of food and drop alien objects into his world. My girl is respectful, but her kisses won’t sustain him. Claire will be overwhelmed, on her own with three kids. What if she remarries—a white man? Some high-wage earner, taciturn but gentle, raising my brood, feeding my fish. The blues. I strum a chord to dispel any image that may be forming of Claire rebuilding her life with someone else.

  Thomas bloops to remind me that I owe him a song. Pisci—I play music to the fish. I hear words in my head, which I sing out—“This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine . . .” It comes out of me strangely, with a hillbilly twang and cadence that I’m sure most purists would find ungainly. I like it. The country shuffle is a good beat for walking—plucking the bass notes to mark footsteps. “Everywhere I go, I’m gonna let it shine . . .” I invest a bit more into the words, let the last of each line hang out there, bright but warbling in the gravel.

  When I finish, I see Marco in the doorway. He looks ashamed. I think he wanted to slip away unnoticed.

  “You sound great, man.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No, really, you should so something with that. Let’s take that out on the road. I’ll quit my job. I’ll be your manager.”

  “I’d advise against that. Besides,” I gesture at the fish, “that was a command performance.”

  He laughs for a moment, genuinely. But when he stops, there’s too much silence. He doesn’t know what to do in the doorway, so he backs out. He looks uncertain of his place in his own house. His face falls, and I realize that I’ve never seen him sad—hurt. And I can’t help but think that in an ice cream shop a quarter century ago, some wisp of a girl from another town whom he was sweet on came a breath away from calling him a wop to his face. Poor Marco—Mahr-coh! I still can’t play him a song—can’t make him forget through remembrance—not even for a friend.

  “You going to coach this season?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Is Segundo going to play?”

  “I don’t know.” I look at one of the pictures of his boy on the bookcase. Handsome kid. Another half-breed, but he looks all his father. I wonder what he tells him in private moments. Marco looks at me as though he thinks I’m considering his question more deeply. I need to give him more. “I don’t know if he’ll buy into the team concept.”

  He snorts, shakes his head.

  “Dinner?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Oh, yes—messages: your wife and then some guy . . . Kevin?”

  “Gavin?”

  “Probably. It was hard to understand him. He had a thick accent.”

  “Sounds like him.”

  He waves good-bye and thumps down the steps. I wait to hear the front door close before I start again.

  “Everybody is a star . . . ,” I fumble through the changes, trying to remember them, but while playing, I remember that there are four singers to account for—I can’t get that out of my head. It would sound ridiculous—one fool, switching voices after every line. I need something else, perhaps an original, but I haven’t played one of my old songs in years. I wasn’t on very good terms with them back then, anyway. They seemed to miss the point.

  Marco creeps back into the doorway. I startle. I’m surprised he could be so quiet. He tries to explain.

  “I walked out without a dime.” He offers a smile as an apology. He can’t seem to keep it from dropping to a frown. Then he brightens suddenly. “I’d completely forgotten about that song. Who is that?”

  “Sly.” I pack up my guitar and begin checking the case for things I’ll need.

  “That’s a great one. I never thought you could do it acoustically.”

  “You can’t.”

  If you’ve ever been broke—really broke—there are two things you know about being so: The universe is constantly conspiring to keep you that way: job interviews that require new ties; parking tickets on borrowed cars; late fees on just about everything; the need for legal representation to keep creditors at bay; the cosmic shame in your gut of showing your face in the light.

  The second thing you learn is that the universe is plotting your redemption as well: when all fortunes are reversed. And s
o you get to split time in your mind between being vengeful and being good—doing things for those who stood you well, doing things to those who didn’t. Making payback the rank and rabid Über-hundin. Lists have been made. Names have been taken. It’s all been arranged.

  And since it’s all been arranged—my ascension—I find somewhere in the rising adrenaline that sometimes comes with a fantasy the guts to go out. I will go play in that bar, the one I’ve never entered, because I can’t help but think there’ll be somebody there. Who, I can’t say specifically, but somebody who will listen. I will go play in that bar. Bars really don’t bother me, and depending on what’s going on, they actually feel quite comfortable to be in—as long as there’s good light, good music, and enough people to blot you out. I used to write my college essays in bars. If Claire was a drinker, I’d probably spend more time in them. But I haven’t really frequented any on a regular basis, which is why I forget that they can make me feel at home.

  Al Green is on the box. “I’m So Tired of Being Alone.” There’s smoke and low light and chatter, the clinking of glass and ice—cheer. It’s a long, thin room, lots of dim wood and brass. On one side the long bar runs from front to back, and on the other an equally long banquette with small tables butted together in twos and threes. Opposite the bench are mismatched café and schoolhouse chairs. Everything stops about three quarters of the way back just before a low platform, a makeshift bandstand, on which is an electric keyboard, in profile. Center stage there are two stands, one high, one low, both equipped with microphones. Tall PA speakers flank either side of the stage. Two men, teenaged from their leather and denim garb, middle-aged from their gate and grayness, take the stage. One, very thick, tries to squeeze his thighs under the piano. Then he stretches his short arms and flexes and extends his fingers. The other man, much smaller, nuzzles up to the mike while strapping on an acoustic guitar. “Check, check.” He turns to someone I can’t see, gives him the thumbs-up. Al Green gets cut off, replaced by a wordless hum.

  A gangly, pony-tailed man bounds up on the stage. When he turns to face out, I’m surprised by his youth. The small man makes way for him at the mike.

  “Evening, everyone!” he offers in the fake country drawl that northern hippies tend to adopt. “You all know me—Craig.”

  “Yeah, Craig,” comes the response.

  “Yeah,” he points in the general direction of the voice. “Hey, dude.” He moves his hands as though he should be holding something—from his thighs to his chest, then down again. “So most of you know what’s going on—what we do here. First off, I wanna thank everyone for coming—making this night what it is. It’s not easy getting folks out like this in the middle of the week.” A murmuring arises. He waits for it to end. He points to the ceiling. “Now, remember, this isn’t, I repeat, is not a competition. We’re here to support artists—that’s first of all.” He looks at his empty hands. “Oh, shit, I forgot my clipboard.” He spins to look for it, then gives up. “But we’ve got some great people here tonight, so they’ll play and you’ll vote in the end. And vote for the best—not just because it’s your friend. You know, try to be objective. All right?” He extends a hand to the guitarist, who has been fidgeting up there the whole time. “You all know Ed and Pete?” There’s a whoop, a yell, and some applause. Craig claps, too. “All right, let’s get this thing started.” He flaps his arms, palms up. The crowd responds with anticipatory chatter. He turns to the men. “You guys ready?” They both nod. The pianist grandly extends his arms out in front of him, raises them over his head and lets them part back to his sides. “Then start us off right! Ed and Pete everyone—come on!” Craig gangles off the stage and makes his way behind the bar. The talk fades. The small man steps to the mike.

  “Good evening. How are you?” There’s a muted response. “I’m Ed and this is Peter. We’ve been working on some new material.” Ed’s voice is deadpan—almost lisping. “The first song is an original, one we wrote ourselves.” He picks the individual strings, strums a few chords. Peter matches him on the piano, hammers out the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth. He stops, lets the last chords ring out. Some of the audience force out laughter.

  I make it over to the bar. The bartender’s an enormous and hairy man, like someone you’d expect to find on a mountain—thick salt-and-pepper hair, tied back, and a full dark beard. He would seem completely wild save for his bifocals.

  “What can I get you?”

  “Oh, a Coke, please.” The order doesn’t seem to bother him. He squirts out my drink and places it in front of me.

  “Are you playing tonight?”

  “If that’s all right.”

  “Fine with me. Did you sign up?”

  “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t.”

  “No need to apologize.” He smacks Craig on the shoulder and gestures for the clipboard. Craig complies without looking.

  “Put your name at the end.”

  Ed finishes retuning, mouths a count-off to Peter, and cuts it off.

  “I just want to tell you a little about this song.” Peter smiles and nods. “I wrote it one night—Peter knows—it was when we started bombing Afghanistan.” There’s a collective moan and sigh from the crowd. Craig nods his head, tries to catch the bartender’s eye, doesn’t; then someone at the bar to commiserate with, but everyone’s either paying attention to the duo or their drinks. He finally looks to me, but I can’t give him anything except the fish eye. He looks away.

  “I had so many different emotions when I realized we were at war. The first, of course, was anger. I was outraged. I mean, I wasn’t asked. There wasn’t a vote.” He steps back and exhales. “But part of me was . . . relieved. You know, I’ll admit it. I was scared of terrorism and I wanted to act—because I was angry at them, too. So that’s how it began. So I plugged in my electric and turned it up, started playing power chords because I wanted to make an angry song. And Peter will tell you, it just wasn’t coming, and he said,” he turns to Peter as though he’s going to let him speak. He doesn’t. “He said, ‘I don’t think you’re really listening.’ And I yelled at him, something, I don’t remember. He said, ‘You need some space.’ So I just sat there and didn’t do anything. I just sat there and then I put down the electric and went to the piano and played a little. And what I heard was so sad. I needed to put words to it. I just grabbed some scraps and a pencil. And I wrote like a madman. And when Peter came back, I didn’t say anything to him. I just showed him the—hah—scraps. And he told me to get up. He sat down at the piano, and we worked on it well into the next day until it was just perfect—you know.”

  He backs up again, shoots a quick look back to Peter. Strums a chord, lets it ring out.

  “It’s a song about war, I guess—a war song. But it’s about the sadness of it all, which is something people don’t really see. People get so wrapped up in their anger, both sides, that’s all they know how to express. But there’s more. So here it goes.”

  He starts his count again. Mute Peter stops him with a quickly raised finger.

  “Oh, my god, the title. The song is called “The Lonely Night”—and two, three . . .” Peter hits a minor chord and holds it—lets it ring. Ed picks the arpeggio slowly, awkwardly, as though he’s searching for the strings for the first time. They find each other’s tempo, agree on a common pace—a slow, rolling egg waltz. “Ooo . . .” They’re both tenors. Ed’s singing voice is lispless. They hold the harmony for two bars and stop for two beats. Ed closes his eyes and sings:

  Why do they drop two-ton

  Bombs on the heads of the old?

  It makes me so lonely.

  Why do they drop two-ton bombs

  On the heads of the babes?

  I hear them fall.

  And the change:

  I’m so far away

  Why do I feel this way?

  I leave—back out the door like I’ve left something burning on the stove. I slow up a block away and then stop. Ed’s voice comes up in my head—the first line, “
Why do they drop two-ton bombs . . .” I start walking again and it lets up. The faster I go, the more it diminishes until, near running, it’s finally gone. I stop. It comes back full tilt—the limp, high, cloaked exhortation. I try to dispel it. Where was Al in his song before he was so rudely interrupted? The overlapping descending chorus of ooos. I’ve always wondered, marveled, at how he, in that song, in that moment where there should be some crescendo—some answer, manages every time I hear it, to avoid bathos in the anticlimax. “Hmm hmm hmmm-mm . . .” The tone, so low and mellow. Maybe just an organ hanging on, mirroring the backing vocals. And then the blade-with-balm shriek, which throws up image after image for me: Gavin and his beer can litter; Shake’s gently dancing shoulders; Brian’s idiotic stoned grin; Lila’s twist of the knob up to the end of the AM dial; my father’s record stacks; the books he’d leave lying around the house, open. Sometimes when I was walking by, he’d stop me, “I love this part—listen.” Read what was to me an incomprehensible passage. It would knock me into a stupor. The words seemed to fly around the room with disparate half-formed images. I’d try to cling to something: “Seawrack” blah blah blah. “Seatangle.” All I really took with me was how the words behaved—explosives stashed in everything—the sofa, the television, his face—condemned structures awaiting implosion. “Seawrack” and “seatangle.” Watching something else grow in the destroyed face. His eyes, darting from the page to my face, regarding both with equal, unguarded affection. Standing there he was—what little chest he had puffed out—powerful, as if he’d just unlocked the secrets of some ancient tome, an unknown benevolent incantation so potent that merely thinking it dispelled all impotent and childish notions of magic and power.

  I go back. There’s a young woman on the stage. She has crazy, long blonde ringlets that spill over her shoulders and onto her guitar. I don’t recognize the song, although it does sound familiar—open tuning, droning unfretted strings. Her voice spirals up from a strained and wavering tenor to a light, easy soprano like a big bird searching for a thermal strong enough to lift it. I can’t make out the words. They don’t seem to matter to her except for giving her a reason to sing.