Blackburn

by Bradley Denton

  The Dead Gilmores ended whatever song they were playing—all of their songs sounded alike—with an apocalyptic crash, and then their leader announced that they were taking a ten-minute break. The house lights, six yellow bulbs suspended from the corrugated-tin ceiling, came on. The crowd applauded and yelled “Wooooooo!” Blackburn’s ears ached. The crowd was almost as loud as the band. The girl he had been dancing with bumped against him and laughed.

  He leaned down and yelled into her hair. Did she want a beer? She raised her eyebrows and nodded. In the improved light, he saw that she had a lot of pimples. Her face gleamed with oil and sweat. She was gorgeous.

  The bar was being mobbed, so Blackburn told the girl that she should wait while he plunged into the maelstrom. He used those words. The girl laughed. Blackburn was pretty sure that he had it made.

  He struggled through the crowd, turning one way and then another to slip past the clumping bodies. It took awhile. When he came up against the particle-board bar, he found himself standing next to the Dead Gilmores’ leader. The musician gave him a sidelong look and nodded. Blackburn nodded back. The musician wasn’t wearing a shirt under his tuxedo jacket, and his pale stomach moved in and out as he breathed. His skin was streaked with sweat tracks. The hollows under his eyes were blackened with what looked like charcoal. It was running down his cheeks.

  “How’s it goin’?” the musician shouted.

  “Okay,” Blackburn shouted back. “You in line?”

  The musician nodded. “Bartender’s slow.”

  Blackburn nodded back again, then glanced around at the crowd. He could feel that the musician was watching him. He tried to ignore it. But the bartender was taking a long time, and the musician kept on looking at Blackburn. Blackburn gave up and returned the stare.

  “That chick you were dancing with,” the musician said. His eyes didn’t blink.

  “What about her?” Blackburn asked.

  “I fucked her.”

  Blackburn said nothing.

  “I fucked her yesterday,” the musician said. “You can have her tonight, though. Got my eye on the one in the pink.” He jerked his head to the left.

  Blackburn looked. Several people away, a blond girl in a pink halter top was listening to a scrawny boy in denim. She looked bored.

  “Looks like she’s with someone,” Blackburn said.

  The musician glanced at the boy in denim. “No contest.” He looked back at Blackburn. “No matter who. You. My drummer. The best-looking guy in here. Wouldn’t matter. She’d leave with me.”

  Blackburn wished that the bartender would hurry the hell up. He liked the Dead Gilmores just fine, but their leader was going to sour him on the whole band in about two seconds.

  “Know why?” the musician asked.

  Blackburn said nothing.

  “It’s because of my eyes,” the musician said. “The music gets them interested, but then it’s my eyes. I’m not bragging. This is just what they tell me, man. There’s something about my eyes. Something about the way I look at them. Some kind of hypnotic light in there, you know? That’s what they say.”

  Blackburn looked hard at the musician’s eyes. The irises were pale blue, and wet. The pupils were like small black olives. The whites were oiled plastic. The capillaries were so red that they stood out in relief.

  “They just look stoned to me,” Blackburn said.

  The musician sneered. “See your chick? She’s looking over here right now. She’s looking at me. She’s trying to see my eyes.”

  Blackburn didn’t turn to look for the girl. He stayed focused on the musician’s eyes. They weren’t anything special. Fiber and jelly.

  “Yeah, you’re afraid to look,” the musician said. “You don’t want to see. Better learn to play guitar, man. Your eyes ain’t got it. Most don’t. That’s why guys are always ripping me off for shit. My last bass player stole my amp. Same old story. I was cool, he was a dork, and his girlfriend wanted me. So he stole my shit and took off. But I fucked his chick before they left.”

  Blackburn laughed. The musician had started out as irritating, but he had become funny. Blackburn turned away and gestured to the bartender, who finally took notice and came over. Blackburn ordered two Shiners.

  “Hey, man!” the musician yelled. “I was here first! My break’s almost over!” The bartender had already turned away to get the beers.

  “He’ll be back in a second,” Blackburn said.

  The musician glared. “Same old shit,” he said. “You feel threatened, so you rip me off. Just like the guy who wouldn’t let me back in his cheap-ass nightclub because he said I bothered the women. Hey, man, I fucked the women. That’s what pissed him off. He felt threatened. And he didn’t pay me for my last gig. Fuckin’ ripoff. All because the girls like my eyes.”

  “They just look stoned to me,” Blackburn said again.

  The musician jabbed a finger into Blackburn’s chest. “All right, man. You watch.” He turned and shoved people out of his way until he reached the blond girl in the pink top. He gazed at her and said something that Blackburn couldn’t hear. The girl frowned.

  The bartender put two bottles of beer on the bar, and Blackburn looked away from the musician while he paid for them. When he looked back, he saw that the girl in the pink top was heading for the door. The musician was following her. She said something over her shoulder to him. She didn’t look happy.

  The musician caught up with her, grabbed her arm, and pulled her through the crowd toward the stage. “Time to party!” he cried. “Time to dance!”

  Blackburn took a sip from one of the beer bottles and watched. The blond girl was trying to pull free of the musician’s grip. The crowd parted for them as they neared the stage. Some of the males cheered and hooted. Some of the females did too. Blackburn started squeezing his way through the packed bodies.

  The blond girl was furious. Her face was red. She was screaming at the musician. He pulled her up onto the stage with him.

  “Let’s hear it for this sweet little rock-and-roll mama!” the musician shouted into his microphone. The crowd bellowed.

  The musician pulled the blond girl to him and stuck his tongue in her mouth. Then he shoved her away and picked up his guitar. He and the drummer kicked off the next song while the blond girl struggled toward the door. She passed right by Blackburn, who was heading the other way. He saw that she was crying.

  The yellow light bulbs went off, and the strobe started again. Blackburn found the girl he had been dancing with and handed her one of the bottles.

  She pointed toward the door. “Sorry, but I’m gonna take off,” she yelled. “I’m too pissed to stay. That guy’s a good player, but he’s a shit.”

  Blackburn nodded. The girl started through the jumping bodies toward the door. Blackburn started toward the stage.

  When he got there, the Dead Gilmores were cranking fast and loud in a final frenzied bridge. The noise from the amplifiers was like an extended bomb blast. Blackburn’s skull rattled. He jumped onto the stage at the crash of the final chord and headed for the drum kit. As the sound decayed, Blackburn grabbed the sticks from the drummer’s sweat-slick hands. The drummer yelled.

  The band leader’s right arm was still raised from striking the chord. Blackburn came up behind him and crouched. The musician stepped back from his microphone and toppled. The amplifiers squealed.

  Blackburn climbed onto the musician and knelt on his belly, just below the guitar. The guitar was glitter-specked lavender. In the light of the strobe, each speck was a different color. The musician stared up at Blackburn.

  The strobe flashed, and the drumsticks were poised above the musician’s face. The strobe flashed again, and they were sticking up from his eye sockets. The crowd squealed with the amplifiers.

  Blackburn leaped from the stage, and the people began clapping and cheering. “All right!” someone yelled. “Alice fucking Cooper!”

  Blackburn glanced back at the Dead Gilmores. The bass player, rhythm guitaris
t, and drummer approached their leader in stop-motion animation. One of them squatted beside him and touched his face. The strobe gleamed from it. It was like oiled plastic. The drumsticks pointed toward the corrugated roof, toward heaven.

  The strobe stopped as Blackburn reached the door, and the yellow lights came on. The voice of the crowd started to change. Blackburn went out and ran for his car.

  As he unlocked the car door, a voice behind him called “Hey!” He looked back and saw the long-haired girl he had been dancing with. She came up beside him.

  “You got tired of the Gilmores too, huh?” she asked.

  Blackburn nodded.

  “Yeah,” the girl said. “They kind of suck.”

  Blackburn smiled. “Yeah. They did.”

  The girl seemed to be studying his face. “You have a nice smile,” she said.

  “How about my eyes?” Blackburn asked.

  The girl laughed. “Well, they aren’t hypnotic.”

  He opened the car door, and she got inside. They drove out of town and spent the rest of the night in the country, where it was quiet.

  TWO

  BLACKBURN FLIES A KITE

  The south wind sang through the catwalk. Jimmy lay on his belly with his head hanging over the edge, listening. He worked up a gob of spit and let it ooze from his lips like syrup. When it fell, he closed one eye and watched. It curved away from the tower’s east leg and stayed airborne almost ten seconds. Then it burst on the Potwin road, just missing a motorcyclist coming into town from the north. Better luck next time, Jimmy thought.

  He stood and walked around to the north side of the water tank, sliding his hand along the rail. In the field below, Jasmine sat apart from the others, playing a five-year-old’s game in the dirt with her Doll-Baby. She showed no interest in the brown paper kite he had made. It was lying in the weeds beside her, its shop-rag tail coiled. That was fine with him. As long as Jasmine was all right, he could stay up here awhile longer. Mom had told him to watch her, but she hadn’t said to stay close.

  The other three kids were flying their own kites, or trying to. Chrissie Boyle and Kyle Thornton were struggling with a green batwing, but it never rose higher than eight feet before diving. Jimmy wasn’t surprised. Chrissie and Kyle were only seven, and they didn’t understand what was necessary for a kite to fly. Kyle kept trying to throw it, and Chrissie kept running with the wind.

  Chrissie’s brother Todd had his kite soaring high. With nothing to do now but hold the string, he was spending his time laughing at Chrissie and Kyle. Todd was almost twelve. He was more than a year older than Jimmy, and liked to think of himself as Boss Stud of any group. Being Boss Stud meant having the right to ridicule everyone else.

  Jimmy didn’t mind. Compared to Dad, Todd was an amateur. Besides, Jimmy preferred solitude over groups. It was only when Mom made him look after Jasmine that he had any use for other kids.

  He looked up, squinting at the July sun, and watched Todd’s kite for a minute. It was a shield-shaped piece of plastic decorated with the face of a roaring tiger. Below it, a knotted black tail lashed. The tail looked as if it were brushing the top of Clay Hill a half mile away.

  Jimmy headed west around the tank, reading for new graffiti beneath the letters that spelled WANTODA. Ever since he had realized that there was no useful truth in either religion or textbooks, he had relied on the water tower and other popular media to teach him what people really thought was important. DRINK MORE WHISKEY, the tank said. ’68 RULES. WORLD’S BIGGEST SPITTOON. A-BOMB THE GOOKS. CHERYL SUCKS TO THE HILT. FORD = FOUND ON ROADWAYS DEAD. JOEY + HOLLY. SKOOL DONT TEECH DIK. ’70 IS BEST YEA! LARRY + JULIE. KING GOT WHAT HE DESERVED. TOMMY + SUSIE OOOH! SALLY WARDERS IS A CARPENTER’S DREAM (FLAT AS A BOARD). EAT SHIT. DAVID P. + SAM O. = QUEER BAIT. DORIS IS A PIRATE TREASURE (SUNKEN CHEST). KILROY WAS HERE & CHERYL SUCKED HIM. SO LONG BOBBY K. DOPE IS GOOD. KILL ALL COMMIES NOW! GARY + MELANIE. FUCK NIXON. ’69 FOREVER! Last weekend, Jimmy had put a sandwich and some notebook paper into his army surplus backpack, and he had come up here and copied everything down. He was sure that if he took it all to heart, he would know how to live in the world.

  But he wouldn’t add anything to the jumble. Placing his own words among these would be like placing himself among their authors. He had to live in the world, but he was also separate from it, as if he were a starship crewman beamed down and left behind. Or, as Mom had told Mrs. Boyle last week at Nimper’s IGA, as if he were a devil child swapped at the hospital for the real thing. Jimmy guessed that meant there was a kid his age stuck with a bunch of demons in hell. Trade you, he thought.

  He had almost decided there was no new graffiti when, on the south side of the tank, he found something written along a seam. This was in magic marker instead of spray paint, and it was too small to be seen from below. It said:

  JIMMY BLACKBURN IS A PUSSY.

  He rubbed the words with his thumb, and they smeared. A thunderstorm had come through yesterday evening, so the insult had been written since then. He began to have suspicions. Chrissie, Kyle, and Todd had all been goofing around beside the tower fence when he and Jasmine had come to the field. But neither Chrissie nor Kyle had the guts to climb the ladder.

  Jasmine’s voice rose to Jimmy in a shriek. He returned to the north side of the tank and looked down.

  Todd had pulled in his kite, and now he was standing over Jasmine and thrusting the tiger face at her. He roared as the plastic touched her skin, and then he yelled, “I’m gonna eat your baby! I’m gonna eat your baby!” Jasmine held Doll-Baby close to her chest and bawled.

  “Hey!” Jimmy yelled. “Big man!” The metal wall behind him rang. His words echoed from Clay Hill, and it was toward Clay Hill that Jasmine looked.

  Todd held his kite in one hand and snatched Doll-Baby from Jasmine with the other. He rubbed Doll-Baby’s head against the tiger’s mouth. “It’s eating your baby!” he cried. “It’s eating your baaaabeeee!”

  Jasmine, screaming, lurched to her feet and reached for Doll-Baby. Todd danced away, mimicking her cries. Chrissie and Kyle continued to try to launch their batwing.

  Jimmy walked to the hole in the catwalk over the south leg. He wouldn’t hurry. If he hurried, he might make a mistake going down the ladder. Besides, no matter how quickly he got to the field, Todd would be sure to stop torturing Jasmine before he arrived. Then, if Jimmy tried anything, Todd could claim self-defense.

  Todd thought he was smart.

  But if Todd were smart, he wouldn’t be messing with Jimmy Blackburn.

  * * *

  When Jimmy walked into the field, Todd was back to flying his tiger. Jimmy only glanced at him on the way to Jasmine, who was sitting beside the paper kite again. She was kissing Doll-Baby.

  “You okay?” Jimmy asked.

  Jasmine looked up. Her face was wet. “He tried to eat Doll-Baby.”

  “No, he tried to bug you. You need to act like you don’t care.”

  Jasmine glared. “He took Doll-Baby.”

  “You’re getting too old for Doll-Baby anyway.”

  Jasmine stood and kicked Jimmy in the leg.

  “Want to go home?” he asked.

  “And never come back. I hate Todd Boyle.”

  “Waste of time.” Jimmy looked down at the kite he had made. There was a hole where he had drawn the eagle, and the support sticks were broken.

  “Todd Boyle stomped it,” Jasmine said. “And he threw the string.” She pointed at a white line that zigzagged off among the weeds.

  “I can make another kite,” Jimmy said. “I can make a hundred.” He looked across at Todd, who was ignoring them. “Did he do anything else?”

  “He said you wouldn’t fight and he called you a pissy.”

  “‘Pussy.’ Say it right or you’ll get made fun of.”

  “Are you?” Jasmine asked.

  Jimmy picked up his broken kite. “Am I what?”

  “Are you going to fight Todd Boyle!”

  “No.” He started walking.
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  Jasmine toddled beside him, dragging Doll-Baby by one arm. “But he was mean to me.”

  “Lots of people are mean.”

  As they passed Chrissie and Kyle, Kyle said, “Jimmy, our kite won’t go up.” He sounded as if he were about to cry.

  Jimmy stopped to help. As the batwing ascended, Chrissie said, “We have a new baby at our house.” She spoke with defiant pride, as if the baby made up for not being able to fly a kite. “Her name is Tina, and she’s only four weeks old.”

  “So?” Jasmine said.

  “Be nice,” Jimmy said, helping Kyle pay out the string.

  “So my mom says Tina is the prettiest baby in the state,” Chrissie said.

  “Me and Jimmy saw her at the store,” Jasmine said. “She looks like a mashed turtle.”

  Chrissie shoved Jasmine. “You take that back!”

  Jasmine swung Doll-Baby at Chrissie’s head.

  “Chrissie, look!” Kyle shouted. The batwing was almost as high as Todd’s tiger.

  Jimmy pulled Jasmine away from Chrissie, and Chrissie begged Kyle to let her hold the string. Things blew over fast when you were little. When you got older, they didn’t. Jimmy guessed that someday, they wouldn’t blow over at all.

  After Jimmy and Jasmine crossed the Potwin road, Chrissie and Kyle cried out behind them. Jimmy looked back and saw that the tail of Todd’s kite was smacking the batwing. Kyle was trying to pull the batwing away, but it only bobbled in place. Todd was going “Moo-hoo-HA-HA-HAAAA!” Chrissie and Kyle began yanking on their string together.

  Jimmy knew what would happen. The batwing’s string snapped, and the kite tumbled backward until it crashed on the road. A farm truck ran over it. Kyle began to cry, and Chrissie screamed at her brother.