After seeing his friend’s pathological condition—from the sheer volume, end-stage alcoholic seemed about right—Billy, the triumphant, returning soldier, a would-be Captain Willard, but this time returning with the mad recalcitrant Colonel Kurtz, captured alive and ready for court-martial and debriefing and mental health counseling and a return to patriotism and sanity and fit for duty to command troops in the field. Once again morally fit to do so.
And to Creedence, Billy, a hero. She would be grateful beyond measure. Willing to do anything in return.
He hadn’t stopped thinking about her and believed it would come to pass, but also feared the eventual moment of coitus; that he’d need more control than he’d ever mustered so as not to have an accident.
All of it, stoking his desire. Billy; hangover hornies. Soon as Ruck got out of the shitter, he’d need to pop in there and rub one out, a hard ugly dry mean jerk that’d leave him sore enough until he got some proper tail.
With the man’s own sister, if it all worked out.
Fuck yeah. A plan.
As for Ruck, the more Billy recalled, his buddy had been fine last night. Profane, disgusting, an inebriate—brothers in arms, Billy thought with a modicum of chagrin—but not a threat. They hadn’t discussed much of substance, only the raising of the wrist, Ruck’s Olympian prowess in this regard, the missing years. Impressive, but sad.
Billy’s hangover, intensifying.
While Devin made all manner of interesting sounds in the bathroom, Billy dialed up room service and tried to figure a way of sneaking out without running into anyone he knew. Fuck this conference and fuck the paper, which had been some lame-ass shit about reading The Big Lebowski as political metaphor. He’d only wanted to get away from Melanie, obliterate some fresh pussy, maybe have an accident or two far away from home where it’d be easier to blow off steam, get evened out. Accidents, easier to deal with, theoretically, with a stranger. The ones he’d known, eh—those had always been the ickiest and stickiest. Besides, who knew how many bodies the opaque waters of the canal already concealed.
Billy, ravenous and determined to beat the hangover with food, ordered eggs, potatoes, a rasher of bacon, fruit assortment, breads and pastries, coffee, two kinds of juice, a pitcher of ice water with lemon. A lumberjack breakfast, a shower, a wank, and the two of them, BOOM, to the airport and home in three hours.
The situation: Ruck claimed to drink like this all the time. Not good. He needed to be in the hospital, if they could find one willing to detox a case like this far gone.
Hell—Billy, detoxing Devin himself if needed. Getting him smoking some grass and chilling out and living the high life instead of all this soul-sick, ruinous tippling. Billy: a savior machine. Forget killing Devin’s ass. Forget Libby. Forget accidents. He had to help his buddy. The past was still the past, but it wasn’t worth the trouble. Not with a problem like this on his hands. Right on. Time for Billy Steeple to do some good. The change-of-heart moment on the hero’s journey. About time.
Eighteen
Devin
Squinting against the Texas morning sun, Devin eructed with such violence his sunglasses slipped down his nose. The whole-wheat toast he’d managed to choke down, not sitting too well. No sir. But he done it for Bill. He poked the aviators back into place with a finger he had trouble making work right. He looked forward to his impending beer-breakfast, and the beginning of the long march to steady hands.
Billy, trying all through breakfast to talk him into flying back, but Devin, not abandoning the Jetta, not after all this time. He’d get home when he got home. What bullcrud, he’d said. “Like I can’t drive a day or two.”
Billy, though appearing stricken by the idea, finally saying fuck it—they’d drive back together! Through Texas and onto the bayous of Louisiana, and Alabama and Georgia and finally home to Columbia, the jewel of the Carolinas, the Paris of the southland. A road movie. Devin and Billy, in a car for a couple of days. Somehow it fit; somehow it all made sense.
Devin, finally giving in and saying, WTF, hells yeah, beau. They could stop in New Orleans. Halfway home. A place to get a couple of drinks if there ever had been one.
“You ready, Freddie?” Billy, impatient, his bags piled at his feet, head on a swivel. “Where the heck is that valet?”
“Probably rifling the ashtray for roaches. Little greaser looked like a damn refugee from a Cheech & Chong skit.”
The engine knock-knocking, a pall of diesel exhaust in its wake, the dented silver Jetta appeared from behind a huge round concrete column. The valet, getting out, held a troubled look.
In English halting and broken he cautioned, “Had a hard time to getting it to start, sir.”
“What are you talking about.”
“Better to have it checked. The ignition.”
Billy waved it away. “As long as it’s running right now, we’ll be fine. I have comprehensive roadside assistance, platinum elite status. The kind of coverage where you get your dick sucked while they change the tire.”
The valet laughed. “Very nice, sir.”
“Well, hot damn. But there ain’t a goddurn thing wrong with that car anyway.” Devin, chucking his backpack in the back seat, threatened the bellman. “And be careful putting them bags in the trunk, ace. I got important shit stashed back in yonder.”
Billy eyeballed the horizon. “Which way’s east? Or rather, the freeway out of town, toward Houston?”
The valet shrugged and pointed in the direction of the rising sun hidden by skyscrapers. “The bell captain, he can forgive you directions.”
“Forgive? What the hell you talking bout, Willis.”
“Directions—the bell captain. He can give them.”
“Ah.”
“We’ll figure it out, dude. Relax.”
Devin, stretching and popping his neck and picking his nose, struggled to flick the bloody, stringy booger onto the sidewalk. Three, four good shakes to lose it.
Billy, groaning and gasping at the leg room, squeezed his bulky frame into the compact vehicle. “Jesus, I hope this seat goes farther back.”
Devin, hopping into the back, said, “I’m right tired, Bill. Sure you don’t mind driving?”
“I live for it, Ruck. Going to need tunes, though. What you got in here?”
Devin, not listening, digging around for a smoke.
Billy, squinting into the rearview. “Tunes?” asking with insistence. “Cassette and CD capability, I see. So we have that going for us.”
Seventy-five degrees outside, yet Devin’s body shook as though the temperature below freezing. He mumbled about a tape in the deck, the cassette all that he had, as well as filling up the cooler.
Billy, popping the eject tab, held the Maxell XL-IIs up to scrutiny, a heavy, hearty shell and quality of tape offering top drawer high-bias recording capability.
When he saw the label, Billy gasped, but tried to play it cool. “Maybe we’ll save this one for later.” He stashed the tape in the glovebox. “We have much time to fill.”
Devin, not giving a shit and saying so. “Wind-whistling’s enough entertainment for me, but we got to get some ice. I got beers in the trunk.” Adding in a tremulous, weak voice. “And listen to that tape. Eventually.”
“You sure?” Billy asking more about the latter request than the former.
Devin, managing a wry smile. “Sure as I am about anything.”
He cracked the window and smoked and stuck his snout out like a dog. Sitting back, drumming his fingers on the dirty knees of his jeans, holding Billy’s reflection in the review, he started with more small talk. Before they got to the big talk, which was how they were going to handle the Libby and Dobbs situation back home—whether he knew it or not, Billy would be helping him straighten out those two cheating motherfuckers once and for all. “Nice day for it.”
“Yes—here we are on the road.”
“That’s where we are, all right.”
“Speaking of roads, you know which ones to take?”
“Roads.” Billy, gunning the engine, merging into traffic, slipstreaming a big rig, a mocking laugh like a super-villain. “Oh, dear Ruck—don’t you realize?”
“Do tell.”
Sticking his arm out the window, waving at the trucker, getting the big bleating horn-blast in response, Billy yelled: “Where we’re going, we won’t need roads.”
Nineteen
Billy
Opening scene slug-line, screenplay format, which Billy struggled to master:
EXT. CAMPUS SPORTS ARENA — DAY
* * *
A Handsome Lad — BILLY STEEPLE - shorn of hair but long of wallet-chain, waits in A LONG line to buy concert tickets for his friends. He’s handsome and tall and with big feet, and you know what that means.
* * *
The sun is bright. He’s outside a columned cube, a basketball shrine: the revered, sacred Southeastern Redtails basketball venue of that championship season of ’78. Blah blah blah.
But if what the screenwriting teacher Max de Lisle taught held true, here Billy would need a title card. No way to convey all that information from a master shot, however elaborate, of a punk kid waiting in line with a bunch of hippies.
That’s right—today, the hallowed basketball ground defiled by the spirit of rock’n roll: these specimens queuing up were not the hoops faithful, instead a motley and unusual collection of music lovers—hippie kids standing alongside professors in suits, houndstooth mixed with tie dye, all awaiting the moment to buy Grateful Dead tickets, a ritual in itself …
But one figure in particular knew that he, by design, cut a most unique and incongruous presence. Billy Steeple—skinny, shorn of hair, and with a pair of gold hoop earrings in each ear—rocked back and forth with hands jammed in the pockets of his greasy, ripped blue jeans. Scratching at his chest through a threadbare Dead Milkmen T-shirt, he waited to buy tickets to see the hippie band.
The punks, having discovered acid.
He didn’t belong.
Consumed now more with movies than popular music, Billy, skipping from one Doc Marten to the other and imagining a smash-cut in from a high angle, a swirling Chapman crane shot zooming down upon him Him HIM, “I Am (Superman)” blasting out of his small headphones, a fuzzy-guitar powerpop soundtrack to a scene of a punk bass player buying tickets to seeing the most lumbering dinosaur act of them all. Weird and incongruous. A thing. But to what end? He knew not. Only that his intuition said, do it do it do it.
Not cool seeing the Dead, right-right, but so long as Billy maintained his chosen image—he hadn’t listened to too much hardcore, but had a shelf of LPs and CDs to prove his bona fides—it didn’t matter, and he didn’t give a flying fuck, what people thought. He liked what he liked, consumed and absorbed it at his discretion and pleasure, and put out whatever image was necessary at the moment to be noticed, yet invisible. Paradox Man, his alter ego. If he ever ran into himself, the universe, collapsing and sucked down a swirling blue cosmic drain, like in Disney’s 1980 critical and financial disaster The Black Hole.
Billy, boning up on movie trivia like the other cool kids in Mass Communications seemed to have at their fingertips. A filmmaker. Directing, and scriptwriting, of course, was Libby Meade’s concentration. And having her had become the ultimate goal. This week, anyway. That’s what he was to be, now—a filmmaker.
It’s been decided.
Billy, pleading with his Meat Mallet bandmates to work up a punk version of the new favorite self-reflective alt rock anthem, but to a member they accused Billy of being out of phase with the edicts and ethos. Suggesting a stupid pop ditty by old men like REM, establishment richie-riches nearly ten years into their lame-ass mainstream superstar career? Bullshit Rolling Stone cover boys with money sticking out of every hole? “Fuck those assholes. And their little ditties.”
“We’d be subverting convention by adding covers like ‘I Am (Superman).’” Billy had taken off his bass, made to leave yet another unsatisfying Choking Hazard practice. “So far all we’ve achieved is utter ossification. How far is scream-rock supposed to take us?”
Frontman Mucky Turnbull had replied, “What the fuck is ossification, brainiac?”
“We’re turning to stone.”
Mucky, calling bullshit. “If you ain’t serious about the scene, then here’s my advice: quit.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“You got stage presence, man. Give you that. We ain’t gotta be best pals. Or see the same way. Don’t quit.”
Mucky, a local scream rock demigod and legend, made for a true frontman who had brought fans. With his prior band Horselick, he’d opened for names like GG Allin. Drew some water in the town. It got them bookings, but he lorded his exalted status over Billy. Worst of all, here had a point. “Appreciate the compliment.”
“But, don’t forget we can get any number of nimrods to thump their way through this slop. So like, shelve the REM dream, bro. Stuff it back in that ear of yours, the one that first heard it.”
“You dumbshits. I was only fucking with you cats.”
“That’s more like it. Now get that axe back on and let’s play.”
“Aye, captain.”
Mucky grabbed his microphone. His voice, raw and ragged, echoed in the rented storage unit where the band rehearsed, a row of them taken over by hardcore musicians and in constant conflict with the surrounding neighborhood regarding noise, garbage, excrement, called out the countdown right as Billy had plugged his bass back into the amp. “Save the paradigm subverting for our breakout art-rock album one of these days, Steeple. For now, just scream.”
This whole ticket deal, a generous outlay of cash and time, but Billy, eager to please. What real friends had he had in his life? Few. None he could point to as people who could be fully trusted. Who knew the real Billy.
Not that the Carolina crowd knew the real-real him.
Billy, hoping the accidents at prep school in New Jersey lay behind in more ways than temporally. Also the ones in New Hampshire. And outside DC. The variety of schools through which he passed. The bothersome nature of his adolescence, an issue. But dealing, finally.
Best of all? Never caught.
Still.
Wouldn’t be here, otherwise.
As for the kids he’d started hanging with, locals, Billy, feeling a particular kinship with Rucker. Ruck, the only other person he’d ever met who, like Billy, carried himself as unafraid of anything or anybody.
Rucker, morbid and mordant, a deep well. Always seemed to be looking around corners. Acting as though he knew some arcane secret. How his eyes seemed to mock his human brethren loping about in blithe ignorance; his, a bad-assed attitude. Billy’s brand of no-bullshit, thoughtful spunk. A guy to have on your side in an argument.
Or help in dumping a body in the wee hours on some future night. Should such an awful and quite accidental task ever again need doing.
Billy had gone so far as to make Ruck the star of a documentary for his first video production class.
Billy asked his few subjects only the heaviest of questions; showing his fellow students how intellectual and sophisticated he would be one day as a professional filmmaker mattered to the budding artist. Ruck’s answers, by far the most probing and serious:
Billy, off camera, as though one of the 60 Minutes interlocutors, asked, “What is truth?”
Ruck, puffing a smoke. “That which is verifiable.”
“And how do you verify truth?”
“Through what they call the empirical method.”
“What does empiricism mean?”
Laughter, mocking: “Beau. You ain’t got me here to define empiricism for you. What is it you’re scratching around at?”
“What happens to our consciousness when we die?”
Ruck, blinking and thoughtful. Shifting in his chair, face going halfway out of frame. “I think we wink out of existence, and that all you knew and all you were is just gone. Poof.”
“So you don’t think there’s such a
thing as a spirit world? Or a soul.”
“I think that’s equally as likely.”
But which one do you believe, Billy had pushed.
“If I had any real insight, I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it.”
Billy, screening the piece for the class with a hard cut to black following Devin’s last response. Perfect.
The professor, a lesbian named Hedda Gamble who hadn’t cottoned to Billy’s charmer of an alpha male vibe, had proffered measured praise. “The smash-cut to black has become a familiar trope, but Mr. Steeple, that one gave me goose-pimples. Very nice work.”
In that moment Ruck had made Billy a star, if only an ersatz wunderkind who’d yet to produce anything else of merit since then, now almost a year in the past. Billy owed his friend, big-time.
And yet, planning to snatch Rucker’s girl from him.
Hell, it wasn’t like he was planning to have an accident with her. This one Billy actually liked. As a person, and all. Libby.
After scoring decent side-stage tickets Billy loped back up the hill from the arena box office with a twinkling of anticipation. Grateful Dead—the name, always holding a portent of immense, dark mystery, one he couldn’t yet define. No question, however, about the possibility of admittance—with the stack he’d secured, he, and all his friends, were inside.
Fuck the tickets—his lust, personified and magnified to exponential critical mass in a sudden, horrifying wave of bothersomeness by the appearance of one Libby Meade hurrying ahead of him. Distracted, face a mask of annoyance, she seemed a million miles away, hadn’t noticed him.
Billy, heart leaping into his throat, butterflies in the gut, knew the moment had come: Clear kismet, running into her like this.
Undeniable.
Fate.
But: Ruck’s girl.
His buddy.
Mansion of High Ghosts Page 15
