Adios, Nirvana

by Conrad Wesselhoeft

  Except me. I stand there, paralyzed. In the past year, no one, except Mimi and me, has set foot in Telly’s room. But Nick has just done it. Broken the invisible seal. Walked right in. He shoves his face in mine. “Don’t you think it’s time?”

  If anybody else said that, I might explode. But it’s Nick talking. So I let it sink in. And what he’s just done feels right. Not in my head, but in my cells.

  “Dude,” Kyle says in a loud voice. “How ’bout that song ‘Nature Is a Whore’?”

  “It’s called ‘In Bloom,’” I say.

  “Well, whatever it’s called, let’s do it.”

  Kyle was born with percussive hands. He passes the bass to Ryan in exchange for the drumsticks. Javon plays a better bass than acoustic, swaps with Ryan. Jordan would rather play harmonica, rummages in my desk for my Hohner blues beginner kit, tests a chrome back, key of G. Only then does he yield the Fender electric to Nick. But Nick can’t tune a guitar, so he hands the Fender to me, taking Ruby for himself.

  It’s entirely appropriate that I’m left playing electric lead, because I’m the only one with any real guitar chops. But it’s Telly’s guitar, and I shudder and breathe deep.

  Kyle is setting up drums in the form of a cardboard box, the metal edge of my desk, a lampshade, a set of bongos, and a half-full coin jar.

  We tune up, all shaggy.

  Javon cranks the bass. The house shudders, and a hanging photo of Grandpa crashes to the floor.

  Thank god Mimi’s out tonight.

  “In Bloom” is an old Nirvana tune. The chords are mostly half barres, which you want to shred, then play hiccupy. I show Nick and Ryan how to do this, but they’re pretty hopeless. That’s okay, because on acoustic nobody’s gonna hear ’em anyway.

  “Man,” I say, “let’s do it.”

  We suck ourselves quiet. It’s been a long time since we’ve made noise together. Till now, Telly’s always been the frontman.

  I tap my foot. “One, two . . .

  “. . . one-Two-THREE-FO’!”

  We crash open in a monstrous frenzy of power chords and frantic drumming. Kyle is everywhere, jumping up and down with his drumsticks, then he thrusts out his chest and screams. Raw and ragged. Even though he’s not miked we can hear him over the amplifiers. Javon plugs the holes with an unrelated bass line. I have no idea where he’s coming from, but by being out of sync, maybe he’s finding a new sync.

  Normally, “In Bloom” takes about four minutes to play, but four minutes into the song we are barely warmed up. Not even sweating. Nick bends over and pops my cable into the distortion box. I try a lead. Make it sound like a drunk bumblebee. Then I buckle that bumblebee into a roller coaster.

  Whoa!

  I crank the volume.

  We do song after song—Chili Peppers, White Stripes, Cross-fade, Queens of the Stone Age—and everything sounds the same—fuzzy, sloppy, incoherent.

  But incoherence can be a form of coherence.

  Just as unhinged volume can be a form of silence.

  Just as jagged edge can be a form of butterfly.

  That is the lesson of art, whether music or poetry.

  Opposites blur and become one. If you open your mind, that is.

  After a while, everybody’s pink and sweaty. Kyle grabs a T-shirt off the floor, wipes his face. The house feels fragile, like maybe we’ve cracked some beams, tilted the floor a degree or two.

  Nick says, “Hey, man, do sumpin’ solo.”

  They look at me, wiped and smiley. “Yeah, yeah, just you.”

  I hand the Fender to Nick, who hands me Ruby.

  I sit on the bed. As I ponder what to play, I noodle on my Telly tune, my own little bit of Beethoven, which starts high on the tenth and twelfth frets and hops like a bunny down the neck and which is held together with an E-F#-G bass stitch.

  Jordan says, “Yeah, yeah, play that.”

  So I do. I play my Telly piece. No lyrics. Maybe someday, not yet.

  It’s just a few motifs and configurations that remind me of him, sewn together. Among them are the transition from D to E minor, and from C to A minor, and the haunting quality of F#7, especially when you hammer the middle finger.

  “Tune to Telly” starts a train, and I jump on board. In my mind, we’re eight again, rushing down the trail to Longfellow Creek, Grandpa limping and cussing behind us. Then we’re in our toddle days, flying the zip swing at Lincoln Park.

  Days of aching perfection.

  Glimmering immortality.

  Because the tune is still under construction, I stitch in a bit of “Here Comes the S-O-N.” I still can’t play the run-up or rundown, but I can play the intro, which is a nice mix of chording and picking. At first, I play these clean. No bend, fuzz, or hammer, because that’s how Telly played it, unshowy, like a saint. Then I slow it down, deepen it, bend a note. Hear an echo. Circle back. Hear the echo louder this time, a golden truth. Just what that truth is, I can’t say. But I could do a thousand drafts of a poem and still not get as close to the truth as that one bent note.

  When I glance up, I see their eyes shining. Tears are running down Jordan’s cheeks.

  Something’s happened to me, too. I’ve just played better than ever, and all I did was play from my gut.

  Whoa!

  It’s too much.

  So I plant a fuzzy E. Pick up the pace. Crunch it. Sugar it with pinkie M&M’s.

  It’s time we stopped being so sad and started talkin’ the blues.

  I sing:

  “Just sittin’ here strummin’ Ruby,

  Got taurine on my mind.

  Just sittin’ here strummin’ Ruby,

  Got taurine on my mind

  Gotta getta good night’s sleep.

  Or soon I will go blind.”

  “Oh,” Ryan says, “I got one.”

  He leaps up, puffs out his chest, sings:

  “Just lyin’ on a beach down in Texas,

  Time is half past three.

  Down in Texas, lyin’ on a sandy beach,

  Time is half past three.

  Gotta bare-naked lady in my arms,

  Name of Angelina Jolie.”

  “Hey, my turn,” Kyle says.

  And he basically repeats Ryan’s beach rhyme, except he ends it this way:

  “Gotta bare-naked lady in my arms,

  Name of Sweet Mimi.”

  Quickly, everything descends and discombobulates into blues chaos, with everybody pitching in. On the spot, we compose a song of collective genius, all about eating grapes, flunking out, jacking off, and sleeping with moms.

  We call the song “Walkin’, Talkin’ West Seattle Four-Hour Hard-On Blues.”

  We call our band, for tonight anyway, “Erectile Dysfunction.”

  Between verses, Nick hands me a sleeping pill and glass of water. Later, I take another pill. And still later, a third.

  By now, though, it’s late—mystical trough late. I’m seeing halos around everything. My thicks are thinning out. One by one, they disappear.

  Nick and Kyle are the only ones left. Nick slips Ruby out of my hands.

  I weave into the bathroom, piss. The toilet handle is too far away.

  Nick flushes for me, and he and Kyle walk me into Telly’s room. Sit me on Telly’s bed. Nick pulls off my shoes. Kyle stands there, staring at me.

  “Dude,” he says, “your time has come.”

  Nick goes out of the room and comes back with the dildo-shaped Christmas candle. He lights the candle and puts it on the bedside table. They tug off my jeans, roll me into Telly’s bed.

  Tuck me in.

  “Think I’ll take off now,” Kyle says. “Sleep, dude. Tomorrow—today—will be history.”

  Now it’s just Nick and me. Everything is all jagged and fuzzy. Nick has dragged in Ruby’s rocking chair. He curls up in it, blanket over his shoulders.

  But he gets up one last time. Takes a picture off the dresser. A picture of Telly and me. Taken at the Puyallup Fair three years ago. We’re wearing matching
straw cowboy hats. Telly’s holding a deck of trick cards.

  Nick puts the picture on the bedside table, moves the candle so Telly’s and my faces glow.

  Then he goes to the closet. Slides open the door, reaches up, and lifts down the black box that holds all that’s left on this earth of my brother. Telly the physical being, that is. Just a few spoonfuls of gray, gritty dust.

  He places the box on the table beside the picture. Beside the candle.

  Then he wraps himself again in the blanket. Curls up in the rocking chair. Folds his arms around Ruby.

  Flickers out.

  Chapter 33

  The window in Telly’s room is wide open. Bird chatter breezes in. But also clanking wrench sounds. Banging the bars of the scaffolding.

  I’m trying to wake up, but my heart isn’t beating.

  Molecule by molecule, twitching knuckle by twitching knuckle, I come to life. Feel a pimple form on the flat line of my brain.

  I inch out of bed. Poke my raw face out the window.

  The scaffolding has been set up on the north side of the house. Nick is on the high platform swiping purple paint. Javon stands on the ground, trimming a basement window. His Zoom LeBron VIs stand primly on the back stoop, safe from dripping paint.

  Jordan is banging and cussing the scaffolding.

  I step into the shower, crank it hot. Soap up, shampoo.

  Standing there, all sudsy, I remember the day.

  Fuck!

  I have no idea what time it is.

  I open the shower door and jog, foamy and drippy, to my bedroom. It’s 3:11 p.m.

  Graduation is at five.

  I’ve slept something like twelve hours.

  Thanks to the Celtic poetess and Angelina Jolie, compressed into whispering pills, I have slept my first real night’s sleep in months.

  A dreamless, dungeonless, dragonless sleep.

  All night long these two beauties have patched holes in my brain. One night’s work can’t patch all the holes, but they have patched some of the big ones.

  I jump back into the shower. Shave my seen-only-from-a-certain-angle-in-certain-light mustache. Rinse off. Towel dry.

  Rub Old Spice Red Zone—“The Official Scent of Confidence”—on my pits.

  My phone is bbbrrrackking.

  Kyle.

  “Get your ass movin’, dude!”

  Mimi barges into my room wearing a short-at-both-ends cocktail dress. You can see the freckles on her boobs. It’s not really appropriate for graduation, but then I’m not graduating.

  “Oh. My. Gawwwdddd!” She surveys the wreckage of last night. Pivots. “ZIP ME UP!”

  I zip her up.

  “Wear this!” She yanks out my charcoal suit and a white dress shirt. “And brush your dang hair. It looks like a wet mop.”

  I brush my dang hair, put on my charcoal pants and dark shoes. But no way am I wearing a white dress shirt. No way am I wearing that suit jacket.

  I snap open Murchison. Gaze upon the folded black Navy uniform. Last worn by David O. H. Cosgrove II. Probably in the waning days of World War II, after he saw the shimmer and broke through.

  I lift out the jacket. Unfold it. Flap it loose. Dust it off. Put my nose to the mothball-soaked fibers. Two gold stripes on each sleeve. Double-breasted. Brass buttons.

  I go into Telly’s room, open his closet, riffle through his yellow T-shirts, choose a Tony Hawk, strawberry trim.

  Classic Telly.

  I put on the yellow T-shirt, then slide into David Cosgrove’s Navy jacket.

  I check myself in the mirror. The jacket fits, basically. A little loose maybe. The yellow T-shirt and gold stripes kind of match.

  As for style, who the hell knows.

  My eyes lock onto the black box on Telly’s bedside table. I open the box and slip the plastic bag that holds the last of Telly into my jacket pocket.

  Chapter 34

  Taft High School has one of the best jazz bands in the city. Led by Clarence P. Tillmann Jr.

  Mr. Tillmann played with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Dizzy Gillespie back in the golden days. Played trumpet for Billie Holiday in the Seattle jazz clubs, in the smoky-blue days before World War II. Roomed with Ray Charles on Jackson Street. Played in the famous Frank Sinatra band, Quincy Jones conductor. Played echo trumpet to Miles Davis’s solo on “Bitches Brew.”

  Mr. Tillmann is the only person at Taft who outranks Gupti. Not in title, but in reputation. He’s a shriveled prune of a man. Wears a signature bolo tie that says “Count.” Whether that means “Count time,” “Count Basie,” or “Count Dracula,” nobody knows.

  When Mimi and I get to the Kenny G, Mr. Tillmann is rehearsing “Pick Up the Pieces” with the jazz band. Waving his wand. Grooving his shoulders. He catches my eye as I come down the aisle.

  It’s 4:27 p.m.

  “Good luck, baby,” Mimi says, and kisses my cheek.

  She shudders again at the sight of my Navy jacket, then wanders off to find a seat. I climb the stage stairs. Kyle pulls me into the wings.

  “Dude,” he says, fingering my gold stripes. “Whoa! History—history!”

  Above us, Kong looks stoic and bewildered. It’s sad to think what we put animals through. The indignities we thrust on them. As Kyle babbles about technical details, I transmit a little message to Kong telepathically:

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  I’m starting to shake. Not just my hands, but my whole core. All the weeks and months pondering today, not quite believing it would happen. Now it’s here. People are walking into the Kenny G. Student ushers are passing out programs. My name is in those programs. Soon everyone will be staring at me.

  And where will I be?

  Standing in the cupped hand of the Velcro Kong.

  Playing a cherry red guitar.

  I watch the people filter into the auditorium. Frank Conway wanders in. He’s wearing a dark necktie. A green leather jacket. His guitar philosophy echoes in my head:

  Learn the rules . . . then break them.

  Don’t take shortcuts.

  Practice a thousand times.

  Frank shambles up the aisle, looking for a seat. Spots Mimi. Hesitates. Turns down the row, speaks to her. She looks surprised. Flashes all her lights. He sits beside her.

  Good. Good.

  “Dude,” Kyle says, waving for me to follow.

  Nick and a couple of sound techs have the mikes ready. Mr. Takakawa is there, too. He’s classically trained. Doesn’t usually deal with guys like me, who can’t read music.

  The sound techs show me how to wear the wireless headset. The mike is dinky—no bigger than a golf tee. The Ric, too, will be wireless. But unlike me, Ricky will be wearing a safety harness.

  “This is a very unusual setup,” Mr. Takakawa says, surveying the Velcro Kong. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  “Absolutely,” Kyle says, nodding vigorously.

  He wraps an arm over me, pulls me away. “Dude,” he says, “Javon and I have made some minor alterations to the program. We’re gonna pipe you through Fat Phyllis and Big Bertha.”

  Whoa! These are the Ford- and Toyota-pickup-size amps used at Taft football games. Together they can carry a whisper to the ears of thousands.

  Or enough volume to loosen the bolts on the walls of the Kenny G.

  Fat Phyllis and Big Bertha have been rolled into the wings. One on each side of the stage.

  I shake my head. “Way too much volume. Just use the regular sound system.”

  “No worries,” Kyle says. “Javon can modify and modulate. We’re going for a slightly rawer sound, you see.”

  But it’s not a raw song.

  “True,” Kyle says, “but the dude playing it is raw.” He slaps my back. “Just don’t hit any sour notes.”

  When I glance out again, the front half of the auditorium is jammed. People are climbing the stairs and flooding the balconies. It’s beginning to feel like the USS Gabriel Trask. Bow going up, stern going down. Ready to plunge to the bottom.


  Then I see Katie. Gary Death is with her, pushing Agnes in her wheelchair. They roll up the aisle. Katie is wearing her tickle-the-ass Beyoncé wig and a little skirt. Guys are cutting eyes.

  An usher guides them to a wheelchair parking space about two thirds back. Katie gestures toward the front of the Kenny G. The usher shakes his head.

  I go down the stairs and up the aisle. Katie says, “She can’t hear anything from way back here.”

  I tap the two gold stripes on my sleeve. “I’ll take care of this.”

  The usher backs off.

  I’m a bit awed, because here’s Katie looking healthy and normal, and I know it’s not true. Twice in four weeks, she’s been hooked to tubes.

  That’s the way it is, though. It comes and goes. Good days and bad. Today must be a good day.

  Gary Death smiles, shakes my hand. “Good luck, lieutenant.”

  Agnes beams. “Float a turd.”

  “I plan to,” I say.

  I expand my shoulders, for authority, and we roll up the aisle. The Navy jacket helps me look official, but the yellow T-shirt might throw folks.

  I push Agnes up the ramp onto the stage. Park her in the wings. It’s gotta be one of the best views in the house. Fetch folding chairs for Katie and Gary.

  “You sure this is okay?” Katie asks.

  “It’s okay with me,” I say.

  Then I’m gone.

  Slipping backstage and out the door into the corridor. Needing to sit down. Breathe. Maybe throw up.

  Or maybe just bang out the exit and keep on going. Cross the baseball field, hop a bus, and be gone, all the way to some foreign country. Like Greece, with its whitewashed houses above the blue sea. Or the Sierras, and live in the woods, in a hollow tree.

  But instead I go into the music room, which Mr. Takakawa has left unlocked for the moment, and then into the storage room, where all the instruments are kept. A forest of hanging trombones. Vast mesas of kettledrums. A regiment of violins and violas in stenciled black cases. Hooded double basses.