“Listen, Juanita just got hold of me. Said some kid had been trying to get in touch. I thought it might have been you.”
“Thought it might have been me? Didn’t you know? Isn’t the phone, like, your speciality?”
A bit of a snort came up the line, but nothing more.
“What? Aren’t you Mr. Call Display anymore?”
“Listen, do you have someone you could call?” Mick asked, sounding flat and tired. “A friend who might swing over and keep an eye on you?”
“A friend? All my friends are either dead or dying.”
A long, stern pause, then, “Yeah, well, that’s sort of why I was calling. Feel like talking about it?”
“I never feel like talking about it,” I said, but it was all slur and no edge. Still, I wasn’t too tanked to switch topics. “Hey, so where are you, anyway?”
“Texas.”
“What, witchin’ for oil now?” An idiot laugh. My eyes slid shut. The chandelier disappeared. The world went still. I felt safer in the dark. It was a place I could be braver. With one palm, I anchored myself to the floor. “So, listen, since you called, I have a question for you. Did you know your father was going to die, or what?”
I didn’t get an answer. What I got was a bunch of heavy breathing in my ear.
“Hey, Mick? I’m talking to you, man. You’re the one who called. You want to talk, or what? Did you know your dad was going to fall off the roof and die?”
More silence, more heavy breathing, but I didn’t really mind the wait because, even though I was drunk, even though I wasn’t a huge Mick fan, I really, really wanted him to answer that question.
Finally, he spoke. “I had a feeling, Luke.” Just hearing him say it put a quiver in my belly. A flutter in my chest. A pound in my heart. “I had a strong feeling something bad was going to happen.”
“Strong enough to make you bail on your whole family?”
“Yep.” He was getting mad, it was him yepping me now, but I was used to mad. Mad didn’t scare me.
“You think if you’d stuck around you might have saved him?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
I huffed up a sad, little snort. “I haven’t saved anyone, yet.”
For a while there was nothing but telephone hum holding us together. I could feel my body softening into the floor, my mind getting weak, the darkness getting scary, the booze turning from mean to messy. A flash of Stan. A flash of Bernoffski. A flash of bird. I opened my eyes and stared at a hundred cuts of crystal sparkling overhead.
“Listen, Luke,” Mick said quietly, “maybe it doesn’t work like that. Maybe it’s not about intervening. Maybe it’s just fate momentarily revealed.”
“Maybe it’s not.” A flash of Fang. “And you think about it, right? What might have happened if you’d stayed?”
“Every day. Every day of my life.”
Another long pause, stretching from Michigan to Texas and back again, was finally broken by my next dangerous question.
“Have you ever heard music playing inside you?”
“Music?”
“Like, when someone dies.”
“No.”
“Not even when your dad—”
“NO.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t run away, maybe if you hadn’t …” A drunken, mystery tear slipping from my eye, unharnessed, unhinged, running into my ear. “I hear music. I hear music, and it’s so fucking beautiful it’s terrifying.” The receiver fell from my hand.
“I understand fear.” Mick’s voice crept across the carpet. “I understand terrifying.”
I SHOULD HAVE BEEN completely bagged the next morning, but I wasn’t. The blanket of Southern Comfort had hardened into a killer headache, a raunchy gut, but neither one was anywhere near big enough to touch the panic. When I scraped myself off the floor that morning, I was right back to wild. And I knew I had to get to Fang because, Jesus Christ, if either one of us was going to survive this fucking ordeal, people had to quit dying on me. I staggered out of the house in yesterday’s clothes, with only one thing in mind: No matter what, no matter how, I was going to make sure my buddy didn’t wrap a rope around his neck that day.
Still, it must have been fate that made me grab my jean jacket—untouched since the Detroit road trip—on my way out the door that morning. I was halfway to Delaney’s, body wired, brain tripping, when I slipped my hand into the pocket and found the forgotten Gandy’s Rock flyer, tucked inside the denim folds. Yeah, I guess it was fate, because when I opened the pamphlet and saw the picture of the jagged, towering rock sitting alone in the middle of my glacier-flattened state, the plan was revealed.
I changed course, retreated to my house, looked up an address, pounded my way out again, this time headed in a different direction.
I pushed right past the getaway car parked in the driveway. I ripped up the front steps, raised a fist and rapped on the door, shining under a fresh coat of ruby red paint. A green-eyed, mocha-skinned woman opened the door. She looked a little troubled at finding a strange, anxious boy darkening her front porch.
“Yes?” she said. Her voice was low and worried.
I said I was there to see Faith, that I needed to see Faith.
“Are you Luke?” she asked.
I nodded. She hesitated for a second before disappearing inside, and it took a minute for the beautiful daughter to show up. When she saw who was paying her an early Monday morning visit, she stopped well back from the door. She crossed her arms over her chest. I could tell she wasn’t impressed. But she didn’t mention the rumpled shirt, the dirty jeans, the unbrushed hair, the unbrushed teeth, the crazy eyes. A flat “What?” was all she said.
As I stood there staring at Faith in the hall, the high tide of emotion that had carried me to her place kind of trickled away and I sounded nothing but weak and whiny when I told her I was in trouble and needed help.
“Phone 911. That’s what they’re for.”
“I really need a ride somewhere.”
“Call a cab, Luke.”
“Are you working for the phone company now, or what?” It was lame, I knew it, it was the wrong time for humor, but I so wanted to see her smile. She didn’t. And I thought about yesterday, how I’d needed her to stop pretending I was someone I wasn’t and how I’d watched her walk away and how I’d thought I was going to fucking die right there because my heart was so pierced and my hope was so pierced and my life was so pierced and making her walk away was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.
And there I was, one day later, standing on her front porch, desperate for her and her help. But Faith just reached for the door and it looked like she was going to close it and that had me spewing frantic words all over her until finally I managed one clear, crisp sentence.
“I think Fang is going to do something really stupid.”
She paused and stared at me intently then. I stared right back.
“You think he’s going to do something stupid … or you know he is?”
I put a hand over my eyes and squeezed my temples hard. “I know,” I whispered. Then, louder, “I know.”
“Like you did with Stan?”
Behind my hand, I nodded.
FAITH GOT THE KEYS. When I asked her what she’d told her mom, she looked at me and sighed and said, “The truth.” I handed her the Gandy’s Rock pamphlet, told her that’s where we were going, and we drove the rest of the way to Fang’s in silence. I went around back and banged on the sliding door leading into the basement, screaming for Fang to let me in until I thought to actually check the door. It was unlocked. It practically slid open on its own.
I stepped inside and let my eyes adjust to the dim basement light. The place still reeked of smoke and beer and forgotten snack food, but there was no one dangling from the chin-up bar. I pushed Fang’s bedroom door open. There was just a lump under a ragged-looking bedsheet. Everything was still. Everything was dark. My hand shook as I yanked open the curtain. Sunlight painted the walls, flo
oded the bed.
And the lump, why, the lump threw an arm across its beautiful, ugly, pinched-up face and all my fear over Fang dying, about him being dead, turned to disgust instead of relief. Lying on that bright, dirty bed, he looked so skinny and white and squinty and scared, I could practically hear his silent screams about having nothing to live for. I stepped close to the bed and jerked my elbow back. I slammed my fist into his shoulder. Knuckles crunched bone.
“Get up.”
“What the—”
I hit him again. As hard as I could. “Get up.”
He was all eyes then, the sun wasn’t bothering him then. He watched me carefully as he swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up, cradling his shoulder. “Is it just me, or is someone in a shit mood?”
Fang could be really fucking funny, but I ignored him. I issued another command. “Get dressed.” We shared a long, steady look that told me Fang and I were reading from the same tragic script. He pretended we weren’t.
“What are you doing, Luke?” he asked. He sounded tired. He kept rubbing his shoulder.
“You know exactly what I’m doing. Are you so fucking stupid you thought I wouldn’t know? You fucking idiot.”
He dropped his eyes to the floor and wrapped himself in his own arms and started rocking back and forth. His weakness, his distress, only made me surer.
“You were here when I told everyone Stan was going to die. Remember? Remember that? But still, you’re so stupid”—I jabbed my finger into his chest—“you thought you could just go ahead and kill yourself and I wouldn’t know about it?”
Fang swung his eyes from the floor to me. “What are you talking about?” he asked quietly, but I wasn’t really listening. His talking wasn’t part of my plan.
“You think this is a joke? You think life is a fucking joke? Get dressed!”
He didn’t move, so I kicked him in the side, real cool, real kung fu–style. My shoe skidded off his ribs, hit the soft spot below. He fell sideways on the bed.
“Get dressed!”
Fang slowly picked his jeans off the floor, finally realizing we’d be doing things my way.
I dropped down beside the bed and shoved one arm under the crippled box spring. I swung wildly until the tips of my fingers brushed against a smooth surface and I heard the soft rub of cardboard on carpet. I pressed my head to the floor. In the tangle of balled-up socks and dust and ratty magazines sat the Converse shoe box—the glimmer of red star on the lid, the march of thick blue letters along the side.
I didn’t even want to know what Faith might be thinking as I pushed Fang toward the Sunbird, my hand slamming into his bony back every time he tried to stop or ask a question. I squeezed the cardboard box and I squeezed Fang’s skinny neck as I shoved him into the car. Inside, I locked the doors with a sharp electronic snap.
Once we were on our way, I thought I’d lighten things up by pulling the lid off the shoe box and trying to get the old Christmas vibe happening right there in the car. Of course, I found a stash of dope polluting the box, so I hit a button and threw all Fang’s problems right out the window. The Ziploc, a dirty camouflage green flashing glassy sparks of pipe, tumbled along the highway before being obliterated by the car behind us. Fang laughed at that. Since he was enjoying the theatrics, I swiveled round to face him and started whipping the pictures at him, one by one. I’d take a picture, a smiling, happy picture, a former-Fang-at-his-best picture, and I’d put one corner between my knuckles, and with a snap of my wrist I’d make the picture fly. I’d make it spin through the air, make it crash into Fang’s miserable face, screaming at him to “Look, just look at yourself.” I sensed Faith shifting around beside me and I could see how white her knuckles were against the black steering wheel, but I didn’t look any further. I needed all my energy for Fang.
It was pretty obvious he was no longer amused, but, surprise, surprise, he didn’t fight back. The stupid prick didn’t even put his arms up to try to stop the flying photos or the empty box I threw into the back seat. He just sat there with his head against the seat and his eyes closed, ignoring the proof of better days that littered the floor and the seat and the crotch of his jeans.
The rest of the ride to Gandy’s Rock wasn’t great, either. I’d run out of party tricks, so I just concentrated on keeping everything simmering inside. I stared straight ahead, glued my eyes to the road, and if I felt my anger trying to morph into something else— fear or panic or doubt—I’d throw a little lighter fluid onto the glowing embers. A splash of Stan dying on that sidewalk, a swallow of Faith whispering in my ear, a page of dead people fucking up my life, using me, using me. My eyes would narrow until all I could see was the blacktop racing under me, and I’d hold on to the rage. When we exited the highway, you can bet I pretended not to see the old Red Carpet Inn, scene of my latest, greatest mistake.
I had no idea what Faith and Fang were thinking. We were like three separate spheres jittering through space, not touching, not talking, for fear of knocking our little red capsule off course, having it crash, ignite, burst into flame. It was a bit of a shock, then, when Fang jeopardized our fragile flight pattern by leaning forward and slapping a picture against my left cheek. He jammed it in hard, ground it into my face for a couple seconds, before dropping it onto the front console, below the gearshift.
“Look at this one, asshole.” He spat the words out before fading into the back.
I couldn’t help myself. I stared at the picture. Baseball cap already on backwards, shaggy blond hair already poking from under the rim, the kid who danced in the living room with his mom grinned up at me. His smile cut ear to ear. His smile said complete happiness, total abandon. Unquestionable faith.
My throat tightened. I knocked the Polaroid to the floor.
But Fang wasn’t finished. There was more unsettling shit coming from the back seat.
“You’ve got no clue what’s going on, Luke,” he said. He caught my eye in the spacecraft’s rearview. I could see he was just as scared as I was. I knew Faith was, too. Fang shook his head at me. “No fucking clue.”
FAITH SWUNG THE SUNBIRD into the parking lot and cut the engine. We all ducked forward, craned our necks and stared. The rock dwarfed the car, blackened the windshield, killed the sun. Fang was the first to get out. Faith moved next, but when she tried to escape I reached out to stop her. Her arm was warm and soft under my hand.
“Don’t touch me,” she said, jerking away. Her shoulder banged against the door before she centered herself in the driver’s seat.
“You have to stay in the car.” I said it as firmly and evenly as I could.
“Luke, what’s going on?” Her voice was desperate.
I gave her a bold smile. It was tight and phony, stretched Saran wrap thin. I knew I probably looked like a crazed maniac, but I kept smiling. “Listen, I know what I’m doing, okay? But this is something between Fang and me. Something we do, okay? Just stay here. Everything will be fine.”
“But I thought, I thought …” She looked from me to the rock to Fang, standing off to the side of the car, his back to us, hands on his narrow hips.
“Everything will be fine. This is going to help.” I looked her right in the eye. “This is going to be good.”
Faith put a trembling hand over her mouth. “Oh God, are you sure?” Her voice rose to a high whisper. “Are you sure?”
I steadied my gaze and, because I was such a good liar, because I had so much practice lying, it was easy to tell her, “I’m sure. Just stay in the car.”
“I don’t want to stay in the car.” She choked on frustrated tears. She rested her forehead on the steering wheel and closed her eyes. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything anymore.”
I tried to convince her that I knew what I was doing, but she was still clinging to the steering wheel like some wilting life raft when I got out of the Sunbird. It was pretty fucking troubling to see what a couple months with me had done to her, but I had to slam the door on that thought if I
was going to do what came next.
Things were calmer outside. The sun was shining, fields of grass surrounding the parking lot swayed in a light breeze, bright little bird chirps ruffled the air. Fang seemed relaxed, happy even, as he stared up at the rock. I pretended he was formulating a strategy, planning his ascent, and when I stood beside him I could almost feel the energy building between us, like it used to when we were younger and we’d stand at the bottom of the next big thing. As we walked across the field, Fang and I kept our eyes on the ground, watched our feet kicking up dust and trampling down grass, so when we reached the rock it felt like it had sprung from the earth to block our path.
Fang looked up the hard gray wall, damp and dark at the bottom where the sun hadn’t hit. Ribbons of white cut across the face, going up, across, down, disappearing suddenly. I watched him kick off his shoes, tug off his socks. He picked up a handful of loose soil and rubbed it between his hands. The dirt fell to the ground with a sharp, dry rattle.
“So, this is it, then?” Fang asked. “This is how it happens?”
“No. NO.”
I told him to concentrate, to pick a route, but he just tilted his head up and arched his back until it seemed like he was staring at the sky, not the rock, not the rock, but I wasn’t even sure about that, because I was looking at the rock, man, and the fucking thing was high, way higher than anything Fang had ever climbed. I tried to focus on the mission, but the whole thing suddenly seemed blurry and illogical, as if we’d skipped a couple critical planning steps along the way.
But when Fang finally turned around to ask a few questions, he looked calm.
“So, what do you want, Luke? You want me to fall? From, what, halfway up? The top? What? You want me to jump? You want me to jump from the top?” He swung from me to the rock. “Yeah, that would be pretty fucking spectacular.” He was smiling, sounding friendly, but his eyes were tight slits.
“I want you to climb up.” I could barely hear myself over the bang of my heart. “Then I want you to climb back down.”
Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet Page 23
