If Rock and Roll Were a Machine

by Terry Davis

  Four serving twelve: another good lob Z, and another well-hit but strategically stupid return by Bert. Lawler takes it knee-high and puts it away.

  You can’t get it by him, Bert thinks. Don’t try to get it by him. Move him off the service line.

  Five serving twelve: another good lob Z, but there’s room to return it. Bert takes a breath and waits. He hits a smooth backhand to the ceiling. Lawler goes to the ceiling, Bert goes to the ceiling, Lawler goes to the ceiling. But Lawler’s shot is a little hard and he doesn’t tuck it in close enough to the wall. Bert sets up a forehand from near the backhand corner. He watches the ball drop down off the back wall, and when it’s maybe six inches from the floor he swings. That’s the line the ball travels to the front wall. “Fuck,” Bert hears Lawler mutter. Let’s open that book again, Bert thinks.

  Twelve serving five: Just play the game, Bert tells himself. Go with what’s working. So he hits the drive. Lawler’s return is way up. It comes off the front wall about shoulder-high. Bert can let it go to the back wall and take it on the rebound. But he cuts it off. The ball hits the front wall and is down before Lawler can take a step. He was forty feet away. He couldn’t have gotten to the ball in a car. But Lawler is steaming into forecourt, anyway. His momentum carries him to the front wall where he leans to get his breath. He’s still facing the wall when he says, “What the fuck kind of racquetball shot is that?”

  Bert doesn’t consider that Lawler’s question might be rhetorical. “The books say to cut off the ball if your opponent’s at the back wall,” Bert replies.

  Lawler walks up to Bert and stands close. “You’re still a smartmouth,” he says. “You still think you know everything there is to know.” Bert steps out of his way.

  Thirteen serving five: If they were anywhere but on a racquetball court, Bert would be intimidated. He’d be jelly. But they are on a court, and here it doesn’t matter what the asshole says. This world revolves around the blue ball. The blue ball makes the rules, and the blue ball plays no favorites. What Lawler thinks of Bert doesn’t mean shit. Bert makes sure he’s in the middle of the service zone. Plenty of room for a drive up the right side. Plenty of room for Lawler to see the ball. So Bert drives the ball into the right corner. It’s not a great serve, but it doesn’t matter because Lawler is nowhere near it. “Screen serve,” Bert hears him say.

  Bert doesn’t think. He just turns. “Screen?” he says. “I’m in the middle of the fucking service zone. That’s not a screen.”

  “That’s it,” Lawler says. “I’m not playing with a foulmouthed kid who doesn’t even know the game.”

  “What?” Bert says.

  “Get a ref, I’ll play,” Lawler replies. “Get a ref and give me a call.”

  “What?” Bert says. But Lawler is walking out the door. In all Bert’s dreams of their match it never ended like this.

  * * *

  It was another frenzied Saturday at Shepard’s Classic and Custom. Bert stewed about the match all morning. He’d been beating Lawler’s ass. He could have won. But he didn’t win. When Lawler quit he took away Bert’s chance to win.

  As the day wore on, though, Bert began to realize he didn’t feel all that bad. It was like he was supposed to be mad or sad or crushed or something. But he didn’t feel any of those things. He just felt a little let down. He’d gone there to play a match, and he didn’t get to play one because his opponent had been a poor sport. Bert had played great up to thirteen points, though, and he now knew beyond a doubt that Lawler was the prick he’d always thought he was. The morning hadn’t been wasted. It was amazing: After all the time and all the work, Gary Lawler just didn’t matter that much anymore. Bert looked forward to playing him again. Maybe he could shut him out.

  When a guy came in looking for used Commando parts, Bert took him back to the shed and forgot all about Gary Lawler.

  They didn’t get to eat till after closing. Dave, who dealt with machines a lot more comfortably than with the motorcycling public, went home with a migraine. Bert and Scotty sat in back with a bag of fishwiches and ignored all knocks on the door.

  Scotty drained his Coke in one long pull, then burped. “So how’d your match come out?” he asked.

  Bert grabbed a bottle out of the machine and tossed it to him. “I was up thirteen–five in the first game and he quit,” Bert said.

  “He quit?” Scotty said. “Was he hurt?”

  “I served to his forehand and he called it a screen. It wasn’t a screen and I told him so. He called me a foulmouthed kid who didn’t know the game, and he quit.”

  “Why, that chickenshit motherfucker,” Scotty said. “But you know,” he said, “it doesn’t surprise me. Lawler played B for years. He stayed there so he could beat everybody. Now he runs into a real player and he fucking quits. That doesn’t surprise me a bit.”

  “He said he’d play if we had a ref.”

  “Ref?” Scotty said. “Anybody who knows racquetball and knows that asshole too would disqualify him before he got on the court. It’d be a matter of respect for the game.”

  Bert smiled. “I think I can beat the guy.”

  “Beat him?” Scotty said. “Lawler wouldn’t last three games with you if we locked him in the court.”

  Bert smiled. Now here was something that felt good. Having a Coke and a fishwich after work with Scotty. And feeling that he respected you. And feeling that he liked you. Beating Lawler three straight wouldn’t feel as good as this.

  Chapter 31

  If Rock and Roll Were a Machine

  Scotty had told Bert not to bring anything to the party except a pair of shorts for the hot tub. On the advice of his mother, however, Bert was bringing some eats and drinks. He’d bungeed a milk crate to his luggage rack, and in it he stowed a bag of Cheetos, two liters of Hire’s root beer, and a jar of sliced jalapeños, along with his shorts and towel. Bert liked the milk-crate look. It was understated, functional, workmanly. And so was he. As long as you didn’t count schoolwork.

  Scotty and Rita lived northeast of town off Mt. Spokane State Park Road. Bert passed wheat and alfalfa fields where rows of young plants swayed in the spring breeze like eelgrass at the bottom of a stream, and he passed thick stands of pine and fir that cast the road in cool shadow. After the farms thinned out and the road began to climb, Bert caught sight of the big SHEPARD-DIXON mailbox and took the turn Scotty’s directions—which Bert had taped to his gas tank—indicated.

  Trees grew so thick along this lower road into the property that Bert was only able to see glimpses of the house on the cliff above. The slope steepened for a ways, then the trees thinned, then he was rolling onto the level concrete driveway lined with motorcycles.

  Bert nosed the Norton between a 500 Triumph and an Ariel-sidecar rig and swung down the kickstand. A lot of the bikes belonged to people who visited the shop, and he recognized others from the club. He heard Rita’s voice and looked up. She stood at the rail of the deck that ran from the house to a rock outcropping among the trees. “Come up through the garage, Bert,” she said.

  Bert stood for a minute. It was neat to see people walking around up there against a background of pine and fir boughs and blue sky. A kid four or five years old was sitting with his arms and legs stuck out between the railing supports straining to touch the end of a bough. He couldn’t quite reach it.

  On his way up the stairs Bert passed Camille’s bedroom. Maps of the continents covered the two walls he could see from the doorway. Pinned between Europe and North America was a big green-and-gold Thompson High pennant. It surprised Bert and it touched him that a kid as sophisticated and accomplished as Camille would have a school pennant on his wall.

  When he climbed another set of stairs and entered the kitchen Bert saw he was in a trailer. A mobile home. Or what had been a mobile home before most of one side had been removed and a house built around it. He also saw out the kitchen windows the cars parked up here on top of the cliff. He knew all these people couldn’t have come on motorcycles. Ri
ta took the Cheetos. “You kids and your Cheetos,” she said. “The Cheetos company ought to put Jim Zimster on salary.” She was wearing a baggy blue sweatshirt with cut-off sleeves. The gold letters on the front had about faded away. FBI ACADEMY, QUANTICO, VIRGINIA they said.

  Rita took Bert’s arm and led him through the big living room and out onto the deck. On the way Bert saw the guitars, amps, drums, piano, electronic keyboard, mikes, and other music stuff at the far end of the room. The prospect of live rock and roll was a thrill. And so was the prospect of a burger.

  Scotty was at the grill and Zimster sat nearby cutting tomatoes and onions on a cutting board on his lap. Krista James and a college girl Bert recognized from aerobics were mashing hamburger patties at the picnic table. Krista said hi and Bert said hi. The college girl looked up and smiled. “Racquetball,” she said. “Aerobics,” Bert replied. “How ya doin’?” He set the root beer and peppers on the table.

  Scotty handed Bert the spatula. “Hope you don’t mind working on your day off,” he said. Bert smiled, and Scotty was off into the house. Bert looked down. The burgers and hot dogs on the grill were just starting to sizzle. He felt a pull on the leg of his jeans. It was the little boy who’d been reaching out for the tree. Another boy and a girl stood at his sides. He held a tiny green pine cone in his hand.

  “We’re hungry,” the little guy said.

  Bert looked down at the three. “Dogs or burgers?”

  “Hot dogs!” his pals shouted.

  “Burgers!” the kid screamed.

  They tried to outshout one another.

  Bert menaced them with the spatula until they were quiet. “Okay,” he said. “You guys get the first ones when they’re cooked.”

  The three threw up their arms, screamed, and began banging into one another like tiny wide receivers after a long TD pass. They whirled away, but the one kid circled back and approached the grill. He stood on his tiptoes and peered down into the coals. Then he tossed in his pine cone. It sizzled for a second. The sound was audible above the sizzling meat. Then it burst into flame and was gone. There was nothing left. The boy looked up at Bert with a conspirator’s smile, then dodged off through the forest of legs.

  Scotty had returned by the time the meat was getting close. Bert hunted up the kids and brought them back to be the first ones served.

  It was fun to serve with Scotty. All they did was put burgers and dogs on buns for people, but it was fun to be there with him and to be of use. Bert knew a lot of the guests and greeted someone by name. It was funny that such a simple thing as calling a person by name felt good. But it did. A lot of men and women from the leagues and from team racquetball were there. Bert allowed himself to take pleasure that Gary Lawler was not among them.

  * * *

  Bert, Jim, Krista, and Mike Jackson ate on the floor in front of the instruments so they’d have good seats when the music started. Camille and Rita were distributing ear protection—the earmuff kind that shooters use—to the little kids, and Bert overheard Rita tell a woman with a baby that this would be a good time for her to walk down the trail and spend some time in the hot tub. The woman said she wanted to hear the guys play, and Rita told her not to worry, that people for miles around would hear them.

  Bert turned and looked at the amps. They were old and scuffed, but they were big. A tall amp stood in each corner, and on top of the tall amp sat a smaller one. The stacks reached nearly to the ceiling. The name on them was MARSHALL. They looked like they could produce some heavy decibels. Some serious sound.

  Bert was surprised to see Steve settle onto the stool behind the half-circle of drums. He wondered if there was anything the Shepards couldn’t do.

  Camille had his guitar strapped on, and Scotty was picking up a bass when the pine-cone kid, his pals, and Dave’s two little girls wriggled their way up front. Scotty asked Willa and Sara where their ear protection was, and they pulled back their long brown hair and showed him the twisted hunks of toilet paper in their ears. Camille gave his dad a look of apology and said they’d run out of the shooters’ earmuffs. “You kids sit right up by us,” Scotty told them. “The loudest place is back there where your folks are.”

  Bert turned and saw Dave and his wife, Verna, sitting on the raised fireplace hearth at the far end of the room.

  “Dave!” Scotty hollered. “Put your sunglasses on!”

  As Dave reached into his shirt pocket, Scotty, Steve, and Camille turned and reached to the floor. When they faced the room again they were Billy Gibbons look-alikes: sunglasses, shoulder-length hair, beards to their belly buttons. They looked just like Dave.

  Verna covered her face with her hands. Dave shook his head, the rest of the guests hooted, and Steve banged out those first drumbeats of “Sleeping Bag.”

  At first Bert was fascinated by the idea that these guys he knew could do this amazing thing. Then he was swept up in the thing itself, the rock and roll, the controlled explosion of sound that pulled you to it as it knocked you back, that drove you like a piston and took you for a ride.

  Then when Camille took his guitar break, a part of the ride that Bert had been on since back in September ended. This guy played guitar with a greater ease than Bert breathed. Here was the gift exposed in its fullness, and it was so far beyond Bert’s imaginings of himself that he couldn’t even envy it.

  Then Bert saw that look pass between Camille and Scotty again. It was different than on the football field. Then Camille had been looking up, and his expression contained a quality of aspiration. Now he was on the same level as his father, and both their expressions suggested a long journey ended and a destination attained. The beards they wore didn’t cover this. Their sunglasses didn’t hide it. Bert saw it all over them.

  Everyone clapped and yelled when the song ended. The Shepards took off their glasses, false hair, and beards and smiled. The pine-cone kid grabbed the stuff from Camille and put it on. The beard reached to his tennies.

  The kid accompanied Camille on air guitar through Bob Seger’s “Her Strut,” “Fire Lake,” and “Roll It Away.” Bert watched the little guy and understood what it was that Lawler had taken from him back in fifth and sixth grades. It was part of his childhood. It was the quality in healthy kids that allows them to act without self-consciousness, that allows them to develop a sense of who they are before they start caring so much about what the world thinks of them. This is what was taken, and Bert knew it was gone forever. But he also knew that much abided, as Tanneran’s quote said. He wasn’t empty. He was full. He just wished he could give a name to the fullness.

  * * *

  The Shepards played for a long time, then took a break, then they played a long time again. Scotty and Camille traded around on guitar and keyboard. They played some great tunes Bert knew and some he was hearing for the first time: George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone,” Eric Clapton’s “Old Love” and “Running on Faith” from the Journeyman CD and “Sunshine of Your Love” and “Badge” from his Cream days, the Eagles’ “Life in the Fast Lane,” John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Cherry Bomb” and “Shama Lama Ding Dong,” Leon Russell’s “Tightrope.”

  The sun had fallen below the trees by the time they finally gave it up. The light flooding in from the deck was tinged with the blue of dusk, and the air was moist and cool. Bert saw the pine-cone kid being carried out asleep on his father’s shoulder.

  Bert thanked Camille, Steve, then Scotty for the great music and the great day. “It’s not over yet,” Scotty said. “We’ve gotta take a soak in the tub.”

  “Club closes early tonight,” Bert replied. “I’ve got to hustle to make it. I didn’t realize things would go this long.” He had his workout bag packed and sitting on the porch at Gram’s.

  “Next time, then,” Scotty said. “I’ll walk ya out.”

  “Next time,” Bert said.

  They stood beside Bert’s Norton. “It’s all coming down to the end,” Scotty said. “You never think it’ll come, but then you look up and see it’s a
ll about over.

  “I left my wife and son sixteen years ago,” Scotty said. “But Camille grew up a happy kid, his mom is a hell of a lot better off, and Rita and I have a sweet life here. Seems like it all worked out for the best. But you know something, Bert?”

  Bert kept his eyes on Scotty’s face.

  “I haven’t forgotten an ounce of the heartache I caused or the heartache I felt. I still feel it. People think the past goes away, but it doesn’t. Not the stuff done to us or the stuff we do to others. A guy carries that shit on his back forever. We can get strong enough so it carries easier,” Scotty said. “But we carry it till we die.”

  Bert knew Scotty was talking about himself, but it felt like he was talking about Bert’s life too. But how could he be? How could Scotty know?

  “You’re strong, Bert,” Scotty said. “You’ve got strength and you’ve got desire. Look at you now. You make a deal with yourself to go work out, and that’s what you by God do.” Scotty tapped him on the shoulder with the side of his fist. “Go get ’em,” he said.

  * * *

  Bert rode his Norton through the cool blue shadows toward the golden streaks of setting sun. So there was the name for what abides: strength. Strength and desire. What more could a guy need? What more could he ask for?

  I could be a rock-and-roller, Bert said to himself. I could be a guitar hero. But chances are I won’t. He smiled into the wind. But if rock and roll were a machine, it would be a motorcycle, he said. And I’ve got one of those.

  He turned his throttle and the volume rose. He lost himself in the music.