Lead Belly

by David Donaghe

table.”

  “That wasn’t me. I swear,” the older version of Lead Belly said. “It was Cheri.”

  “I guess you’re going to pay for your old lady’s sins,” Chico said. Tiny and Dirty Dan man handled Lead Belly into the kitchen and threw him down in a kitchen chair at the table. Chico turned on a burner on the stove, took a butter knife from the cluttered kitchen sink and heated it up over the open flame. Once the blade was red hot, he stepped to the table. “Hold his arm out.”

  “No please!” the older version of Lead Belly screamed.

  While Dirty Dan and Tiny held him down, Chico burned off the Road Dogs tattoo on his forearm. He had to make several trips back to the stove to reheat the blade before he finished the job. The stench of burning flesh, and Lead Belly’s screams filled the room. Cheri made herself scarce and didn’t interfere. Finished with their grizzly deed, Chico, Tiny and Dirty Dan took Lead Belly’s cut, and loaded his bike onto the bed of the pickup truck. The older version of Lead Belly stood on the front porch cradling his arm. Tears streamed down his face. “This ain’t right man,” he said.

  “This bike was on loan from the club. We’re taking it back.”

  “You seen enough?” I asked the younger version of Lead Belly, the one standing next to me.

  “Hell yeah. This is damned depressing.”

  “Then let’s take a trip forward a few years.”

  The air around us rippled, reality shimmered and we stood on Lead Belly’s front porch. A stench of rotten meat wafted from inside the trailer. An ambulance pulled up out front. We followed the ambulance attendant inside. The attendants couldn’t see us. Lead Belly lay sprawled on his Lazy Boy, dead as a can of corn beef. A needle hung from his right arm. Trash and other debris littered the floor.

  “Where’s Cheri?” the Lead Belly standing next to me asked.

  “She’s in the bedroom. She’s dead too. You both went out together.”

  “What about the boys?”

  “The state took them a year ago.”

  We watched the attendants remove the bodies.

  “What’s next?” Lead Belly asked.

  Reality shimmered once again and we stood at the back of the chapel in the Walker Brothers Funeral Home. A small crowd gathered in the front near the two coffins.

  “Good Lord, I thought more people would have showed up. At least a few more of the Road Dogs,” Lead Belly said.

  “If you’ll look up front, Chico’s there. He’s the only one, though. Look at his face. Notice the tears in his eyes.”

  “By the way he acted; you would have thought he hated me.”

  “He hated what you had become. As far as he’s concerned, he failed you. He thinks it was his fault.”

  “Where’s Dirty Dan? We were tight once?”

  I shrugged. “He died out on the highway. He was riding alone and crashed his bike. There was no one there to call 911.”

  “Let’s get out of here. I’ve had enough of this shit,” Lead Belly said.

  Once more reality shimmered and we found ourselves on Lead Belly’s front porch.

  “None of that shit really happened,” Lead Belly said.

  “In some other reality, it did. That’s what would have happened if Cheri had lived.

  “What now?” Lead Belly asked.

  “Let’s see what happens if you do kill yourself,” I replied. “Let’s ride.”

  Climbing onto the spirit bikes, we headed down the driveway, took Main Street through town and rode about a mile and a half down the highway. I pulled over to the side of the road near a curve and we climbed off the bikes. “We’ve traveled about four years into the future,” I said.

  “What are we doing? Why are we here?” Lead Belly asked.

  “Just watch.”

  A few minutes later, we heard the rumble of a motorcycle. Dirty Dan came round the curve; his back tire hit gravel and slid out. The sound of scraping metal filled the air as Dirty Dan slid across the highway. His head bounced off the pavement and he slid into a ditch. Blood pooled up under his unconscious body. I ambled over and Lead Belly followed.

  “Oh God, man. Can’t we do something?” Lead Belly said. We knelt down next to the dying biker.

  “No, we’re just spectators right now. He’s gonna lay there for another two hours before he dies.”

  “Why are you showing me this if I can’t do anything about it?” Lead Belly asked.

  “Because, if you wouldn’t have killed yourself, Dirty Dan wouldn’t have been alone. You two were supposed to be riding together on your way out to the clubhouse. You would have called the medics and he would have lived.”

  Lead Belly turned away from the downed biker. “All right. I’ve seen enough.”

  “Let’s get back on the scoots and head down to the clubhouse,” I said.

  We climbed back onto our scooters, rumbled on down the road and pulled into the gravel parking lot of The High Noon Saloon. “We’ve gone back in time, from when Dirty Dan crashed. We’re back to the day after you commit suicide,” I said. We climbed off the bikes, stepped up onto the boardwalk and entered the biker bar. The music was off, and a somber crowd gathered at the bar. Chico held up a glass of beer.

  “Let’s drink one for Lead Belly,” he said. The prospects tending bar poured everyone a drink.

  “God, why’d he have to do it?” Dirty Dan said, barely able to keep his voice from cracking.

  A tear rolled down Chico’s face. “I don’t know man. It was that Cheri. I guess he couldn’t live with out her.”

  “Listen to the pain in their voices. You can see it in their eyes. They love you man,” I said.

  “Yeah, yeah” Lead Belly said, but I heard a catch in his voice.

  “Check out the old ladies. See that young girl with the dark hair? The one crying her eyes out. That older woman is crying to console her.”

  “Yeah. That’s Janet from Subway. She’s a hang around.”

  “She hangs around this place because of you. She’s crying for you, bro.”

  “She’ll be all right,” Lead Belly said.

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  Once more reality shimmered and we found ourselves out front of the Walker Brothers Funeral Home. Motorcycles lined the curb. We stepped inside and stood at the back of the chapel watching the services. Tears filled everyone’s eyes while the minister spoke the eulogy. He went on about God giving and God taking away.

  “He’s wrong about that, this time,” I said. “God didn’t have anything to do with it. You did. You caused all this pain because of your selfishness.”

  “Lighten up man. This hasn’t even happened yet,” Lead Belly said.

  “But it will, if you don’t man up and go on with your life.”

  We watched the rest of the services. When it came time for the people to walk down by the coffin and pay their last respects, Janet, the girl from the Subway broke down and burst into a sobbing fit. “She loved you, man,” I said.

  “Yeah, yeah. Okay. Let’s get out of here,” Lead Belly said.

  We sauntered out the back door; I climbed onto my scooter and said, “Let’s Roll.”

  “Where to now?”

  “We’re gonna take another little trip into the future.”

  Time rippled, the scenery flashed by for several seconds as if we were traveling over a thousand miles an hour. Things returned to normal a few seconds later and we pulled up in front of a small blue house in a run down neighborhood.

  “Where are we at now?” Lead Belly asked.

  “We’re on Honeysuckle Court. I used to live down the street.”

  “Who lives here?” Lead Belly asked.

  “Janet, the girl from the Subway.”

  We parked the scooters, crossed the lawn and climbed up onto the front porch. Lead Belly hesitated, but I grabbed his arm and we stepped through the door and passed right through with out opening it.

  “How’d you do that?” Lead Belly asked.

  “We’re not part of this reality. The normal laws of
physics don’t apply right now.”

  Lead Belly looked about, taking in the middle-aged woman sitting on the couch knitting a shawl. A fat, baldheaded man in a dirty white shirt sat in a Lazy Boy watching TV. Two chubby little boys played with toy cars on the floor and a thin girl sat next to the woman coloring in a color book.

  “They can’t see us can they?” Lead Belly asked.

  “No and they can’t hear us either.”

  “God is that Janet?” Lead Belly said, gazing at the woman. “She’s had to have put on at least a hundred pounds. She looks old. How long’s it been?” Lead Belly asked. “And that fat bastard. I recognize him. He’s the guy who used to manage the Subway where she worked.”

  “He still does. It’s been ten years since you killed yourself.”

  “Ten years? She looks like she’s aged at least twenty-five or more.”

  “That’s what happens when you live a life filled with depression.”

  “What’s she got to be depressed about?” Lead Belly asked. “She has a nice house, three kids and a man to take care of her.”

  “A man she doesn’t love. She settled for second best. The man she really loved killed himself ten years ago. Look at the sadness behind her eyes, and the bruise. You can barely see it under her make up.”

  “The fat bastard beats her? Why I ought to knock the shit out of him right now!”

  I laughed. “If you tried, your hand would just pass right through his head and he wouldn’t even know it. He only hits her every now and then, and then he acts like a whipped dog begging for her forgiveness. He loves her, in his own selfish kind of way. He knows that she doesn’t love him. That’s why he drinks. He settled for the wrong woman too. She was his eye candy, his dream girl and all the while, working right