by Joel Arnold
The next night at the roadhouse, the crowd was smaller. John doubted if he’d clear fifteen bucks. He started to play an old Leadbelly tune, but had to stop halfway through the song when his hand seized up. It stiffened and hurt. Felt like a skewer had been jabbed in his palm.
He grimaced and bit back the pain. Started over, but only got through the first few bars when the pain worsened. “Sorry folks. I’m takin’ a short break. Be back in a moment.”
He set his guitar down and stood from his stool. Pain shot up his spine. He doubled over, coughing.
“You all right?” the bartender asked.
John nodded, hacking up a wad of phlegm into his handkerchief. He walked to the men’s room, feeling his muscles quivering beneath his skin.
He sat in one of the stalls and leaned over, his face hot in his hands. Another coughing fit overcame him, his lungs feeling like they were covered in mud, and this time when he spit, there was a tinge of red to it.
So many ways of paying for your sins, he thought. And when does it end?
Finally he was able to stand again, but he still felt weak and dizzy. He looked at himself in the mirror. Looked at his big ugly stain of a birthmark. Maybe some people are made for paying. Make up for all the ones who never have to pay a goddamn dime. Cause I been paying since the day I was born.
He couldn’t play like this. Not tonight. He shuffled out from the bathroom. Went straight to the bartender.
“Sorry, man, but I feel like shit. I can’t play tonight.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Fever I guess.”
The bartender looked him up and down. “Can you make it home okay? Need a shot of whiskey before you go?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Let me know about tomorrow. If you can’t make it, I’ll send Lydia over with some chicken soup.”
“S’alright if I leave my amp here?”
“Course. I’ll stick it in the basement.” The bartender winked at him. “Sucks getting old, don’t it?”
The life of a musician.
When John pulled up to his trailer and yanked the Gibson out of the back of his pick-up, part of him expected to see Chryse waiting for him at the door. But there was no one. He went inside and looked around just to make sure. He sat down on his couch and laid the guitar across his lap, closed his eyes and began to play. At first, he plucked nimbly at the strings, quick staccato notes that disappeared into the trailer’s crevices. Then he strummed the strings with the tips of his fingers, tossing the pick aside. He saw Tom Pike’s face as he improvised, saw Chryse’s face, both of them part of an audience in his mind.
The notes stretched, grew louder as he culled the vibrations of the instrument into a long series of sustains. His emotions were a hurricane in the hollow of the guitar.
As he played, his eyes shut tight, he relived the night he killed Tom Pike, relived the feel, the sickening, satisfying feel of slicing him belly to throat with his father’s fish scaling knife. Relived the warmth of blood on his hands as he strummed chords that weren’t meant to be, chords of disharmony and pain.
The warm feel of blood. A momentary satisfying feeling. An eternal painful feeling, and he could not forget it, could never forget that feel, even though as he cut through Tom Pike’s skin, the revenge was so damn sweet. Because even without him around, life never became any easier.
He opened his eyes. Looked down at his hands as they froze in mid-strum. He’d been playing so hard, his own fingers, fingers that were hard and callused from years of pressing steel string into wooden frets, were bleeding. The strings dripped with it, with his memory, his passion. His blood.
He stood. Held the guitar by the neck. Faced the television. He saw himself reflected on the screen, an obsidian shadow teetering back and forth on scuffed black boots. He raised the guitar. Held it in the air. This was his lifeblood, the thing he earned his meager living with. But wouldn’t it feel good, wouldn’t it feel just goddamn fantastic for one incredible instant—
He swung the guitar, felt it smash into the TV screen. There was an explosion of wood and glass. Smoke poured from the ruined set. John’s irises danced with the image of a small flame forming in the electronic components. The smell of burning plastic made his eyes water, made the snot loosen and drip from his nose. He clenched and unclenched his right hand, trying to hold onto that feeling, that momentary feeling of the guitar exploding into the screen.
There was a knock on his door.
He forgot for a moment that he still held the broken
neck of the guitar in his left hand. He looked at it as if he wasn’t quite sure how it had gotten there. He dropped it onto the floor. Knew who would be there even before opening the door. A tremor ran through his body. A tremor that wouldn’t stop.
“I’m sorry,” Chryse said as she stood on the front step. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“What did you do to me?”
She looked down at her feet. Her face was so pale, so white it almost glowed within the frame of her stark black hair. Her eyes glistened, two bits of shiny hard coal pressed into her face. John reached out and tilted back her head. Looked deep in those glittering eyes. The blood from his fingers smeared across her chin.
“I want you to finish it,” he said.
He stepped aside as she entered his trailer.Followed her into his bedroom.
The room smelled of sweat and mouthwash and cigarettes. John quit smoking over a year ago, but some things never seemed to go away. They undressed in silence.
“Close your eyes,” Chryse whispered. John lay on his back on the bed, his one pillow thin and hard beneath his head. He sensed her standing over him, could smell her skin, the dim light beyond his eyelids blocked by her form. He felt her squatting over his face, could feel the short soft wisps of her tiny black hairs on his forehead. He opened his eyes as she spread herself for him.
And he saw it. It shined inside of her. A swirling bright red river full of clots and pieces of bone. Her ribs glowed through it all like the framework of a cathedral. She squatted closer, squatted onto his eyes. Forms floated inside of her. Forms of men. So many of them.
He understood.
“We all pay a price,” she said. “Just for being who we are.”
She began to bounce.
“I’ll take the pain away.”
So many of them. All the old blues men, the rock ’n’ rollers, the jazz musicians, all of them dead and gone to the world, all of them overcome by the pain of their world.
And she bounced faster. Harder. The bucking movements, the weight crushed John Baxter’s skull, broke his windpipes, snapped his neck. Yet he was still aware.
He understood.
John Baxter knew where he was going and where all the others had gone before him.
Chryse groaned.
John Baxter, his music, his soul, his pain, was sucked inside.
Scorched Earth
“Burn, baby, burn.”
The forest looked surreal. Ann Leroux lit a cigarette and inhaled. “Guess it doesn’t matter too much if I toss my butts wherever I feel like it.” She blew a wavery ring of smoke that dissipated over the slow moving vinyl of the Wakkamungus River.
Patchouli rolled his eyes.
“Just kidding. Geez,” Ann said.
Charred skeletons of pine trees stood black and velvety against the early morning sun. Jagged stumps protruded from a thick layer of ash like rotted teeth. Renegade clusters of cinders floated on the river’s surface. It was only a week ago that the inferno had swept through the area. Small patches on either side of the river continued to smolder on the forest floor. The smell of burnt wood was thick.
Jay set down a cooler full of beer and soda on the river’s edge. “Will you look at that. It’s like we’re on another planet. Are you sure we’re allowed to be here?”
Patchouli shrugged. “I don’t see any signs that say we can’t.”
Kelly Lambert pulled back her auburn hair into a pony t
ail and secured it with a purple binder. She handed a bottle of sunscreen to Jay. “Rub this on my back?”
He shook the bottle and squirted it directly onto her skin. Kelly flinched.
He wanted to tell Kelly over a month ago that it was over between them, but he couldn’t do it. Whenever he tried, he imagined her breaking down, crying, yelling at him, throwing a fit. Hell, he didn’t know. He just couldn’t bring himself to find out. So instead of saying the things he wanted to say, he swallowed the words and let inane things bubble up from his mouth instead.
But not today. Today he was going to tell her. He couldn’t keep leading her on like this. Especially when she was already talking about things like engagement rings and bridesmaid dresses. He didn’t want to waste his last year of college on a dead-end relationship.
He smeared the lotion on her back and rubbed it half-heartedly into her skin.
“Come on, put a little muscle in it,” Patchouli said. He pushed up his sunglasses and grabbed a beer from one of the coolers. His skin was tan and smooth under a tie-dyed tank top. He helped Ann tether the inner tubes together between gulps of beer.
Damn. It was hard not to look at Ann bent over the tubes in her bright orange bikini. Jay felt his heart pump an extra liter of blood each time he glanced her way.
Kelly jabbed him in the ribs. “Stop drooling.”
Patchouli, you lucky bastard, he thought. Kelly was good looking, too, but it wasn’t all about the looks.
Patchouli held up an inflated pink flamingo about the size of a terrier. “What’s with the kid’s toy?”
“That’s Ju-Ju,” Kelly said. “My good luck charm.”
“What’s it do? Ward off the spirits of good taste?” Patchouli looped the remaining rope around the flamingo’s leg and dropped it in the water where it floated on its side behind the make-shift raft.
They loaded the two extra tubes with the cooler, towels, sunscreen, and Patchouli’s boombox.
“Make sure the box doesn’t get wet,” Patchouli said.
Ann blew him a kiss. “You can get my box wet anytime.”
Patchouli bowed to the others. “You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen. I’ve got dibs on Ann’s wet box.”
Jay barely heard them. Why did I agree to this? Why is it so hard to tell her no?
“Hey. Earth to Jay.” Patchouli cracked open a beer and handed it to him. “What’s up, bud?”
Jay took the beer. “I don’t know. This place gives me the creeps.”
“I think it’s the coolest,” Ann said. “Now how about we get our asses in the water?”
They drifted with the current, the water murky with sand and grit. But it felt cool and good on their butts and on their dangling feet and hands, while the rest of their bodies soaked up the sun.
They had followed the progress of the fire on the news for weeks as it cut a huge swath through the Calistoga forest. Bright orange flames consumed hundred year old trees in a matter of seconds, jumping from canopy to canopy spurred on by hot winds. Smoke jumpers were called in, the National Guard flew helicopters over the inferno, dumping loads of fire retardant. Fire ditches were dug.
At least a dozen vacation homes were destroyed and one small town had to be evacuated when the flames got too close. But before the fire reached the town, the winds changed direction, there were a few much needed rain showers, and eventually the fire wore itself out. What remained was one hell of a lot of ash, large splotches of it still seething.
Patchouli clapped Jay on the shoulder. “Nature’s way of cleaning up the forest. All that deadfall was like kindling.”
“Okay, nature boy.” Jay turned over on his tube. “Ya goddamn hippie.”
They all laughed.
Eventually they closed their eyes to the world and let themselves be pulled gently along by the river. Patchouli even turned off his boombox.
Okay, fuck, Jay thought. What am I gonna do? One year left of college. Then it’s off to the real world.
Hah, the real world. Doesn’t seem so real now. Who says I have to get a job right away? Why not take a year or two off? Hitch-hike across the US. Backpack across Europe. Things Kelly would never understand.
Kelly.
Shit.
“Earth to Jay.” Patchouli again. He handed Jay another beer.
Jay cracked it open and glanced at Kelly, her eyes hidden behind sunglasses, a smile on her face.
Patchouli gave him a wink and turned his face back to the sky. Silence felt right out here. When they spoke, it was like breaking the silence of an empty church.
Kelly sat up, her skin squeaking on the tube’s rubber. She pushed her sunglasses onto her forehead and squinted at the forest. “What was that?”
“What?” Jay followed her gaze.
“I thought I saw someone.”
“So?”
“I mean it looked like somebody — all covered in soot or something.”
Jay lifted his ass out of the water and scanned the decimated trees. “I don’t see anyone.”
Kelly looked up and down the shoreline. “Huh.”
“Just a shadow,” Jay said.
Kelly’s sunglasses dropped back on her nose and she settled into her tube again. It was hard to tell behind the dark gray lenses what she was thinking.
The sun inched its way up into the sky. It was hot for early September, but there was hardly anyone else out here. In July and August — at least before the fire blew through — the river was packed with tubers. College kids, high-schoolers, parents with children, oldsters — anyone and everyone took advantage of the chance to float leisurely down the cool, clean river on a hot, sunny day. But now it was deserted. The only sound was that of water swirling over the rocks and roots protruding from the muddy banks. It was as if they floated in a bell jar.
The river flowed like blood through snow. Ann slid quietly off her tube, not wanting to break the silence, and swam to the shore. Should’ve just peed in the damn water, she thought.
She slipped on a pair of sandals she carried with her and trudged over the ash. With each step, it rose from the ground and coated the tops of her wet feet. Not a lot of cover here, all the foliage having been burned away, but she squatted behind a charred tree trunk. She leaned forward to see if the rest of the gang was still in view, but they had already floated out of sight.
“Burn, baby, burn.”
She closed her eyes, swatted at the few flies circling her head, and when she opened her eyes again, she realized there was a hand sticking out from behind a blackened tree stump only three yards away. She yelped and fell backward, jumped up and yanked her bikini back up.
“Hey,” she called out, her voice shaky. “Guys?”
She stepped carefully around the huge stump and saw the rest of the man’s body.
His eyes were coated with soot, his nostrils filled with ash.
“Somebody!” She stepped quickly to the bank, and saw that the others were already a good hundred feet away. Their laughter echoed hollowly through the still forest. She cupped her hands over her mouth, took in a deep breath and yelled as loud as she could. “Hey!”
Patchouli’s head turned. He waved. Held up a can of beer.
“Patchouli!”
“What?”
“Come here!”
His voice reached her a second later. “Okay!”
Satisfied he was coming, she stepped back to the dead man. A breeze blew across her shoulders and raised goosebumps. She shivered. Forced herself to look.
What happened to him?
He was dressed in hunting gear, his exposed skin gray, blending in with the ash around him. The nozzle of a rifle stuck out of the ash next to him. Did he get caught in the fire? But she’d seen pictures of burned bodies on CNN and this guy — well, he didn’t look like he’d been burned. Looked more like he was coated with powder.
Ann lifted her sandaled foot. Touched the body lightly with her toe. The man’s skin made a rustling noise as her toe connected. When she took her foot
away, he split open like a pricked balloon, his skin falling away on both sides, leaving a pile of loose ash in its wake. Ann jumped back. A scream stuck in her throat like a chunk of ice. The wind blew the ash, and the shape of the man’s body disintegrated.
She stared at where his body had just been. Jesus.
Burn, baby, burn.
“I’ll go see what she wants.” Patchouli rolled off his tube into the river and splashed his way to shore.
Jay’s eyes were closed. Kelly nudged him. “Wake up.”
“Why?”
She didn’t answer for a moment, then said, “I’ve got a surprise.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
Kelly shifted in her tube and wrapped her arms around him. She rested her head on his shoulders. “I’m pregnant.”
It took a moment for the words to sink in. His throat grew dry, his skin went numb. He felt like he was shrinking in a vast ocean. Just him, the ocean, a blank white sky.
Ju-Ju, the pink flamingo.
“Jay? I’m not joking. Say something.”
“You didn’t just miss your period again like last time?” The question sounded ridiculous — callous — the moment it left his mouth.
“Nope.” Kelly’s eyes were bright with tears. There was a tremor in her voice. “I took the test last night. Took it again this morning to be sure.”
Jay opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it. What happened to his voice?
“Wow,” he whispered.
“Okay, what is it?” Patchouli hovered over Ann, dripping water.
She hugged her knees close to her chest and studied the river.
“What’s wrong?”
Ann looked up. “I don’t know. I thought — I thought I saw something…”
“Like what?”
She shivered, then looked back to the river. “I don’t know.”
Patchouli knelt next to her. His knees sank slightly in the warm, soft ash. He put his arm around her shoulders.
She was no longer sure if she did see it. How could she have seen it? It wasn’t possible for a body to just disintegrate like that, was it? Like a balloon stuck with a pin? But she saw it. She did.
