by Lewis Shiner
He exited in Waxahachie and pulled into a parking lot. He sat there for ten minutes, shaking, then he drove 25 minutes back to North Dallas, to Alex’s father’s house. He rang the doorbell and Alex’s mother opened the door. “Cole?” she said. “What’s wrong?”
“I need help,” Cole said. “Help me. Please.”
*
The last-ever show of the Armadillo World Headquarters was scheduled for New Year’s Eve, 1980. Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen would co-headline with Asleep at the Wheel. It was the end of not just one era, Cole thought, but all eras. John Lennon had been gunned down on the streets of New York, the Middle East was at war again, and they were shooting nuns in El Salvador. The future was Ronald Reagan and high-rise office buildings, short hair and fraudulent family values. A good night for the two-step and a bad night to be sober.
Yet sober was what Cole had been for four long months. No booze, not even beer. No marijuana, no Percodan, and most of all, no white powders. Montoya had paid for six weeks in Baylor’s rehab unit, and Cole had been determined not to waste his money. He’d gone through the initial detox, and then made it to all the group sessions, in spite of the God talk and the devotion to the 12-step doctrine, in spite of the casual dopers who were there for the attention and the hardcore junkies who were scoring from the hospital staff. He spent his free time in the hospital gym, which had the side benefit that it helped him sleep through the endless lectures and films.
Gradually the periods when he felt close to normal got longer, from minutes to hours to most of a day. He understood that the craving for oblivion would never entirely leave him, that his best defense lay in good habits and eternal vigilance. When he felt confident that he could handle it, he checked himself out five days ahead of schedule.
Montoya drove to Austin with him and helped him clean the apartment of booze and drugs. His presence alone was enough to keep Cole from holding back a couple of beers or a few pills. He got rid of his works and the spoon he’d cooked the junk in and the candle he’d used to heat it, for fear the smell would make him nostalgic. They opened the windows to air the place out and cleaned the spoiled food out of the fridge and went to heb to restock, and then Cole made them Portobello mushroom burgers and baked sweet potato fries for dinner.
“You’ve done so much for me,” Cole said hesitantly, “and I paid you back by turning into a junkie. I feel ashamed.”
Montoya spoke even more reluctantly than Cole. “I don’t mean this in a critical way, but… it is hard. It’s hard for me to understand. God knows we gave Alex everything he wanted. Even if your father didn’t have the luck that I had, he kept you well fed and sent you to a good school. Compared to where I came from, it seems like you and Alex both had incredible advantages. But now they look more like liabilities, the way both of you have struggled so hard.”
“It does seem crazy. And the happiest I’ve been, I think, was when I was on the commune, working ridiculous hours and not having much of anything that was really mine.”
“I don’t think that’s crazy,” Montoya said. “You can’t get something like that again?”
“It didn’t… it just wasn’t built to last, that’s all. But I think I am going to go back to construction work for a while. Being in bars, hanging out with musicians, it would be a constant temptation.”
“I think you’re going to be okay now.”
“You’ve always believed in me. And look where it’s got you.”
“Well, tonight it got me a good meal.” He smiled. “Even if it didn’t have any meat in it.”
The next morning Cole put him on a plane to Dallas, and within two days had landed a job on a remodeling crew, steady indoor work through the coming winter.
On weekends he cruised the pawn shops, and near the Army base at Fort Hood he came up with a 20-year-old Martin D-35 in decent shape with a sweet sound and a good price. He found a luthier who rebuilt the bridge and leveled the frets and put on new machines, and Cole bought it a nice hardshell case to ride around in. He named it Palestrina after the line in Under Milk Wood where Organ Morgan goes on and on about Bach, “It’s Bach every time for me… and then Palestrina.” He’d had a running joke with Alex where Palestrina was synonymous with second best, make-do, and consolation prizes. If the guitar’s feelings were hurt by the comparisons to the lost Pelirroja, it didn’t let on.
By New Year’s Eve he’d put on some weight, a fair amount of it muscle. He’d experimented with a Van Dyke beard and a Fu Manchu mustache and in the end had shaved it all off and put his hair in a ponytail. He’d turned 31 the previous Tuesday, and celebrated with vanilla ice cream and chocolate cupcakes from the heb bakery. That night he intended to bring somebody home with him from the Armadillo and not be terribly fussy.
It turned out that Valentina was doing a solo slot at 11 pm. Cole saw her backstage and thought what the hell. He wandered over and said, “The new records sound great. I mean that sincerely.”
She looked him up and down. “Thanks, Cole. You look good. You doing all right?”
“Better now than I have been. How do you like the big time?”
“I love it. I absolutely, totally love it. Hey, you want to sit in with me at the end?”
“If you can find me a guitar.”
“I’ve got a spare.”
At 11:55 she finished “Take Me with You” and said, “I’d like to bring up an old friend to help me kick off the new year. He started my band with me, and he’s a great singer and guitar player. Jeff Cole!” The audience clapped and yelled and it didn’t sound like they were just being polite. Cole was grateful, and yet he wanted so much more. Valentina hugged him and handed him a guitar and together they counted down to midnight. The reception for the New Year was less enthusiastic than the one Cole had gotten, but then the Armadillo was dying as they clapped.
Cole and Valentina led the crowd in “Auld Lang Syne,” and then Valentina called for “Cielito lindo” and everybody sang along on the choruses. The crowd brought them back for an encore and Valentina announced Cole’s song “Time and Tide.” He was amazed she remembered it.
When it was over and they walked backstage together, Cole said, “Thanks. That meant a lot.”
“For auld lang syne, Cole. It was good playing with you again. Take care.” Then she was borne away by admiring fans.
Asleep at the Wheel came on and when Cole went looking for a dance partner, he found Charlene. He hadn’t had any contact with her since his od. If she was still a bit heavy, her bustier made the most of it. She’d colored her hair a dark brown with red undertones and she was wearing her cowboy hat and boots and skin-tight jeans. “How you doing, Charlene?”
She shrugged. “I’m here. You want to dance?”
They two-stepped to “Miles and Miles of Texas,” a Bob Wills chestnut, and Cole remembered that they’d danced to Asleep at the Wheel the night they’d met. She was wearing the same perfume, and though he knew it was a dangerous and unhealthy idea, Cole couldn’t get away from images in his head of the two of them naked together.
The song ended and Charlene said, “Buy a girl a drink?”
They walked to the bar together and Cole bought her a Lone Star. “You look different,” she said. “I guess I never seen you without the beard before.”
“I’ve been clean now for four months,” Cole said.
“It won’t last.”
He felt like she’d backhanded him. “Well. I hope you’re wrong.”
“You can change your hair and drop all your old friends, but you’re still the same person you was. You got the same demons you always had, and they ain’t going to let go that easy.”
“Thanks for the dance, Charlene. Happy New Year.”
She raised her paper cup in salute. “Good luck, Cole. Good luck to us all.”
Commander Cody hit the stage at 2:30. A few songs in, Cole caught a dance with a petite blonde with a big, happy smile. She clearly knew how to two-step, though she was somewhat the worse for al
cohol and unsteady when she came off the fast spins. After the dance she threw her arms around his neck and gave him a smacking kiss on the mouth. “You’re a great dancer,” she said.
“Thanks,” Cole said. He gave her a squeeze and let her go. Six months ago he wouldn’t have hesitated to take her home. Now he saw that the counselors at Baylor were right. If he lay down with drunks and junkies he would get up using again. He’d hoped it wasn’t going to be that hard. Where was he supposed to meet women, church socials?
As the sun came up on 1981, he was sitting outdoors with Jim Franklin in the Armadillo Beer Garden. Somebody from the kitchen had brought them nachos, saying, “We got to use this stuff up somehow.”
Cole’s sweat had dried in the damp morning chill and Franklin looked exhausted, as if the ten-year struggle to keep the place open had caught up with him all at once. Through the gaps in the wooden fence, they watched the last of the crowd stagger out to their cars.
“What now?” Cole said.
1984
From the day he was born—Bastille Day, 1982—Ethan had been dark mystery to Ava’s golden splendor, shy where she was fearless, inward-facing where Ava always looked to others. Ethan’s happiness was undeniable, and also private; his smile was keyed to some inner secret thought.
He was the result of an extended thaw during which Paul had spent more time at home, had helped Madelyn in the brutal cramming for her oral exams, and had renewed his campaign for “a child of our own.” Unfortunately his attentiveness barely outlasted the pregnancy; Ethan’s neediness drove him back into a colder country even as it melted Madelyn’s heart. Ava, eight years older, was captivated by him too, and fiercely protective. She took charge of his stroller from the first and was ever alert for dogs, threatening weather, and strange persons.
Ethan gave Madelyn an excuse to stop torturing herself over not having begun her dissertation, and because of Ethan she had time to read for pleasure again. As long as she was willing to be constantly called away, reading was the only activity that let her feel her boundaries as an individual human being. Ava still loved libraries and loved to show Ethan around; she was especially fond of the Gelman, and she was on Christmas break from the third grade that January day when Madelyn had agreed that they could all go there together.
The afternoon was dry, cold, and blustery, and Madelyn had heard the wind pop the banner above the table near the library, but she hadn’t looked at it until Ava said, “Isn’t that what Daddy does?”
The banner read international monetary fraud—leash the imf! Madelyn was more amazed than anything else; she had gotten used to having to explain what the imf was, and had never imagined that they might be anyone’s anathema. She stopped at the table to peek at their handouts and got drawn into conversation with a young woman whose multicolored dreadlocks poked out at odd angles from the hood of her parka.
Twenty minutes later, armed with scrawled notes on the back of a flyer, she dropped the kids off at the encyclopedias and hit the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature.
Over dinner, ignoring the ice cube of fear in her stomach, she said, “They were protesting against the imf on campus today.”
“Seriously? Do they not have anything better to complain about?”
“I’m not sure they do,” Madelyn said. “One of the things they were upset about was the ‘Chicago Boys’ and Pinochet and the imf in Chile.”
Paul was quiet for a long time. “Not our finest hour, I admit.”
“I’m not trying to pick a fight here. I’m just saying, this is giving me some real anxiety about what you do every day. And to say Pinochet was ‘not your finest hour’ is a bit of an understatement.”
“He was not a nice guy. But he was a pro-US guy, backed by a popular uprising against a Communist government—”
“Paul. Pinochet was put in power by a cia-sponsored coup. Allende, whom he replaced, was a socialist, not a Communist, and was enormously popular. If Pinochet had been popular he wouldn’t have had to fill all those stadiums with political prisoners and terrorize the people who were left on the streets. The ‘Chicago Boys’ were former students of your man Friedman, and they systematically looted Chile’s economy, so the imf could step in and dictate terms favorable to the US.”
Paul put his silverware down and looked at his lemongrass chicken.
“This is not you,” Madelyn said softly. “You’re the guy who went up against Reagan at Berkeley. You’re the guy who believes in the underdog, who spoke up for Trotsky on the day we met. You tell me all the time you’re still that same guy. So help me understand how you can be that guy and support Pinochet too.”
“The… the imf… it’s not the same. It’s not the same organization that it used to be.”
He looked up, and Madelyn nodded sympathetically, afraid that if she said anything at all it might block the words he’d been holding back for so long. In her peripheral vision she saw Ava start to squirm and play with her food, so she slipped an arm around her to calm her.
“At first…” Paul said, “it did what it was supposed to do. It helped poor countries through a crop failure or a trade imbalance. Then Nixon…”
“‘Then that bastard Nixon,’” she urged.
“Well. This one was probably not Nixon’s fault. Which is why this is all so incredibly complicated. Nixon singlehandedly took the US off the gold standard in 1971. Which he had to do because the postwar boom was over and our balance of payments had gone into the toilet. So it ended up that a lot of things we… the imf… used to do, like keep exchange rates stable and consult on monetary policy, that all went out the window. All that was left was lending money and setting conditions for the payback. And the conditions… sometimes the conditions were…”
“Invasive?”
“That might be a little strong.”
“Forcing Britain to cut social programs and get rid of all their import controls? Forcing austerity programs on Mexico and dictating where they can go to buy food and machinery? There was a long list.”
“Okay. Okay. I have problems with that. But look at Africa, all those countries that fought their way to independence in the sixties and ended up broke. We rescued pretty much every one of them. Kenya, Uganda, Chad, Swaziland, you name it, literally dozens of countries.”
She forced herself to keep her voice gentle. “And where did most of that money end up? In the pockets of crazy murdering dictators like Idi Amin? Buying guns and cattle prods for the death squads in Argentina?”
“What am I supposed to do?” Paul said. He was clearly in distress. “Give up? Go to work for some ngo that’s smuggling a few bags of rice across the border into El Salvador? Give up this house, the nanny for the kids, our trips to Europe, so we can live like college students again in some ratty apartment? And still not change anything?”
Madelyn was barely paying her own way through school with scholarships and grants and teaching assistantships. Without the money that Paul brought in, she would have to give up her dream too and go back to work. How much of this was her own fault, her own willingness to look the other way for so long?
Ethan, emotional barometer, began to whimper. Madelyn took him on her lap and hugged him. “I don’t know what to do,” she said.
Paul pushed himself away from the table, his dinner only half eaten. “Yeah,” he said. “Me either.”
She listened to his heavy footsteps climb the stairs. “Mommy’s sorry,” she whispered to Ethan. “Mommy is very, very sorry.”
*
Though Madelyn had skipped her morning coffee out of respect for her nerves, the sacrifice was in vain; she was literally shaking in her waterproof boots by the time she’d crossed the February slush to the new English Department offices in Rome Hall. She was, according to the neatly typed chart on Dr. Willcott’s door, his first meeting of the day. A legend at the bottom read, “If you believe this document to be in error, you have incorrectly noted your appointment. Please adjust your schedule accordingly.”
S
he set her watch to the wall clock and waited until precisely nine before knocking. Willcott’s high, asthmatic voice said, “Come in, Ms. Brooks.”
Willcott was believed to be in his early 70s, though some argued that his origins were more likely prelapsarian. He was a man of enormous girth whose fringes of white hair surrounded a pale, veined pate, and joined at the ears to a white prophet’s beard. His office was furnished with a Persian carpet, a floor lamp, and custom oak bookcases from a William Morris design, one of which was filled to capacity with a single copy of each of his publications. He also had an industrial coffeemaker filled with French Market chicory coffee that came oily and purple from the tap.
Madelyn spent two careful minutes asking after the Hawthorne seminar that was the only class he still taught, the health of the two large Bassett hounds that were his only companions, and his plans for what he would be planting in the spring in his raised garden beds. The length of time that Willcott spent on pleasantries was a measure of his respect for his favorite students, whose number was about to decrease to the tune of one.
When the allotted time was up, Willcott said, “This is about your dissertation, you said?”
“Yes, sir. As you know, I’ve had some trouble making my deadline.”
With the faintest of sarcasm he said, “It’ll barely be three years overdue in May.”
“Yes, sir. I think I finally understand why it’s been so hard for me to finish.”
“Indeed? In previous discussions you seemed reasonably sure your pregnancy was to blame, followed by the demands of caring for your son. Who would now be two, if memory serves. How is Ethan, by the way?”
“He’s very well, sir, thank you. The thing is, I think one of the reasons I got pregnant was to avoid writing the dissertation.”
His silence let her know that she was the last person in the room to have arrived at that conclusion.
“And the reason for that,” she said, “is…” She had begun to perspire, and the heavy sweater she’d worn under her coat was suddenly suffocating her; she tried not to show her panic as she struggled to get out of it.
