John drove through his old neighborhood, headed to the old family house to break the news about Larry to Mike. Back in the seventies, when his parents moved here, Applewood Drive was the main corridor through a historic section of town that for generations had been where the upwardly mobile of Holt City settled. The houses, built in the early twentieth century, were all large, imposing, and as sturdily constructed as the lumpish German food that sustained the immigrants who built this small Wisconsin town.
It remained the well-kept and serene heart of Holt City, but more hardscrabble neighborhoods were squeezing in from all sides. The town had suffered mightily with the shutting down of the GM plant in nearby Jamesville, followed by the domino-like collapse of seemingly half the businesses downtown. While John’s old neighborhood remained crisply Caucasian, he never failed to note that in the ethnic face of the town was shifting dramatically.
As he turned onto Abbott Street, he saw the cozy house where he had grown up. It was grand but not ostentatious: four bedrooms, spacious living areas, rich cherry woodwork throughout, and a covered porch that looked out over what had once been a large, neatly landscaped yard. In its day it was a blond brick showplace, but when Rose’s finances began to suffer it never made sense to pay a regular service to keep the place up. John—and Mike, almost never—tried to make it over to mow the lawn and repair window casings and door frames that were finally giving up the fight to nearly a century of Wisconsin winters.
John tried numerous times to get Rose to consider moving to an apartment, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Besides, the house was the largest investment she had. Unloading it while the town was in the dumps would be foolish. All the family could do was hope that Holt City would grow healthy again.
As he approached his old driveway, he heard the familiar, muddy rumble of live rock and roll played way too loud. Inside the steel and glass of his car, he suspected its source. He just could not believe he was hearing it.
* * *
He hit his head on the low ceiling leading down to his mother’s basement, as he did every time he went down there as an adult. His skull aching, he was primed to explode when he rounded the corner into the rec room to find Mike, shirtless and shrieking into a microphone. A doughy guy with thinning hair cranked out a stiff-but-credible rendition of the Crüe’s “Kickstart My Heart” on a cheap Strat copy, while a kid of about fifteen laid down a forceful beat on the drums. His mind already scrambled by the events of the day before, John could only stare uncomprehendingly for a moment.
When Mike saw his brother, he threw himself into the song, invigorated in a way John hadn’t seen in ages. His voice wasn’t as strong as it had been in his glory days, but it had earned a convincing rawness with age and hard living.
The song came to a clumsy finish, and Mike and the guitar player hooted and high-fived proudly. John saw the teenaged drummer behind them twirl his sticks idly while he rolled his eyes. He was young and ferociously talented. These old farts he had somehow fallen in with were a joke.
Mike beamed at John. “Whatja think?”
The silence—during which John did not say a lot of things, including, “Hey, guess who’s not dead anymore?”—stretched on forever.
John finally reacted. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Check it out,” Mike said eagerly, handing John a flyer. “Theatre of Pain, the hottest Crüe tribute band in Chicago, is looking for a new Vince Neil.
“Their current guy killed a kid with his car, but his blood alcohol wasn’t that bad and the kid was high and the singer has a good lawyer, so he might skate. But if he’s sent up, they’ve got gigs booked through the end of the year, and they’ll need someone to step in right away. Can you believe it?”
“What?” John asked, reasonably enough.
“Their manager was a huge Gravel Rash fan back in the day; he says we got high together once in ’91. I got him on the phone and I said, ‘Hey, my name is Mike Husted, I used to be…’ and the dude just freaked. ‘Mike Husted? From Gravel Rash? Fuckin’ A!’”
“What?” John strained irritably.
“They did almost fifty gigs last year. They’re bringing down almost a grand a show!”
John clucked doubtfully. “A piece?”
Mike’s enthusiasm faded slightly. He had no idea.
“Dunno. Think so. So, hey, you dissin’ Taggert, or what? He’s helping me work on my chops.”
John squinted in the dim basement light and stifled a cruel laugh. Jay Taggert, Mike’s primary partner throughout his rocker days, was now almost completely bald, with a paunch and apparently a bad knee that forced him to plop down painfully on his amp. Unlike the leather and studs of the past, he was wearing a Dave Matthews Band tour shirt and sandals.
John had nothing but foul memories of Taggert, who treated him like shit every time he was anywhere near the band. Once, when he was sixteen, John came down the basement to find a girl giving Taggert a blowjob while he sat on the washing machine. John was late making his shift at Taco Bell because he had to wait to get his uniform in the dryer.
“Hey,” Taggert snickered at John. “You got old.”
John said nothing, just looked to the drummer with curiosity.
“That’s Todd. He’s some kid from the neighborhood,” Mike explained. “I’m paying him with beer.”
“And pot,” the kid added.
“Yeah, right,” Mike drawled. “Got you covered, junior.”
He turned to John. “So, sweet, right? You’ve been on my ass about gettin’ a job, so how cool is this?”
“But only if the current fake Vince Neil killed a kid,” John said dryly.
“Well, yeah. But, you know…” Mike crossed his fingers.
It was a coping device, John allowing himself to be distracted by this idiocy instead of breaking the news about Larry.
“They’re not going to pay you a thousand dollars a show,” he insisted. “That has to be for the whole band. You could probably get the actual Mötley Crüe for two thousand dollars.”
“Hey,” Mike protested. “Don’t fuck with Mötley. Nikki Sixx is clean now and they’re gonna go back into the studio. Mick Mars had some health things goin’ on but—”
“Shut up!” John finally could hear no more. “Come upstairs, we have to talk. You guys go home.”
Taggert started packing up his guitar with a scowl. “Jesus, when did you become such a dick?”
“When do I get my pot?” the kid demanded.
“He’ll leave it with your mom. Get outta here!” John snarled as he headed upstairs, bumping his head again.
* * *
The TV was on when John entered the family room ahead of Mike, his mind so thoroughly distracted from what he had come to lay on his brother that he wasn’t sure he could refocus. It didn’t help that a typical Jerry Springer freak show blared from the set (today’s topic: “I’m Happy I Cut Off My Legs!!!”). John knew that this was the sort of crap Mike sat around and watched all day when he was supposed to be out looking for a job. Except for Days of Our Lives, which Mike watched with his mother while she made him grilled cheese sandwiches and soup.
John sat on the La-Z-Boy and reacclimated himself. On shelf after shelf, new family pictures fought for space among decades of old snapshots. The same snazzy photo of Larry in his blue suit that was on display in the hospital’s lobby peeked out from behind a drawing of a unicorn Katie had done in first grade. A class picture of Mike at age seven showed him beaming behind a gap-toothed smile, achingly angelic.
Rose hadn’t redecorated the room since John left home. The carpet was wearing well but was outdated. The ornate, textured wallpaper was pulling away in spots, and the cherrywood trim was dusty and cobwebbed up along the ceiling. John hated sitting in here, not just for the complicated memories it contained but for the decline it represented.
Mike sauntered in with a cigarette and an unrinsed can of SpaghettiOs for an ashtray. He flopped himself onto the couch with the weariness of a coal miner back from the mines.
“Don’t smoke in here,” John lectured.
“She doesn’t mind.”
“She wouldn’t tell you if she did. She just puts up with stuff more and more rather than bother anybody.”
“You know, she’s a lot tougher than you let on,” Mike said. “You baby her, so she plays up a lot of this memory stuff. I talk to her like an adult, and she holds it together fine. You and this doctor of hers, you gotta stop being in such a hurry to write her off.”
“She has an appointment in a couple weeks,” John said through grit teeth. “You can take her, tell him yourself.”
“Yeah, well,” Mike said as he picked cigarette ash out of his chest hair. “Unless I’m out with the band or something.”
“Do you even know where she is right now?” John asked with irritation.
“She’s at lunch, with one of the ladies,” Mike shot back, proud to be caught paying attention. “The one with the big ass and the mole.”
John stood abruptly, determined to not have this fight right now. He opened a window to clear the air of cigarette smoke, and then sized up the room for some sort of setup to the revelation he had come to wallop his brother with.
He pretended to idly peruse the bank of family photos until he got to the formal portrait of Larry. “Do you remember when this picture was taken?” he asked casually.
“I don’t know,” Mike shrugged. “There was some kind of hospital brochure or something they were doing. The morning they took that picture, he was struttin’ around here like he was fuckin’ James Bond or somethin’.”
John smiled, perhaps sensing slight nostalgia in Mike.
“You know, I’ll bet he was around forty-five in that picture.”
“Yeah?” Mike replied aridly.
“And now you’re forty-five,” John said slowly. “So, like, there’s some emotional connection there. If you think about it.”
Mike rolled his eyes. “Whatever, dude.”
John pushed on. “He’d be almost eighty now, can you believe it?”
“Yeah, and probably still ridin’ my ass every fuckin’ day,” Mike yawned, his attention drawn to the TV. The Springer show went to commercials, where an oily lawyer intensely promised millions for anyone lucky enough to have a lawsuit to bring.
“When my job fired me illegally, Jackie Gergleman got me one-point-six-million dollars!” one of the lawyer’s satisfied customers boasted.
“That’s the way, man,” Mike sulked bitterly as he poked his cigarette toward the television. “Get the right fuckin’ lawyer and the right fuckin’ corporation to sue, and you could never have to work another fuckin’ day in your life.”
Mike was so worked up he dropped his cigarette into the can. He fished it out and took a drag, despite the spaghetti sauce. “Win me a lawsuit like that, and I could tell the whole world to kiss my ass.”
John processed this, and his universe shifted as he cradled the picture of his father. Across town there sat a hospital with a secret in its dark corners, and a decent, if crazy old doctor who broke any number of laws to sustain it.
Would it move Mike—as it had John—that their father was still around to radiate some kind of indefinable touch? Or would he be on the phone to TV’s Jackie Gergleman in a flash, looking to sue for millions? He’d have a slam-dunk case, no question, and it would outrage Larry Husted to the core—John felt confident of that. For no other reason, John knew he would share nothing with Mike that day.
Suddenly, there was no point in John being there.
“So, what? You kicked my band out so you could ask about a picture?” Mike asked.
“Uh, yeah. Katie’s doing a school project, about the family. This was the last good picture we had of him, so she needed some detail.”
“Whatever,” Mike said as he stood languidly and walked to the mirror across the room to study his long, thinning hair. “I’m gonna have to dye my hair blond, like Vince. Maybe get some of those extensions. You know anything about that?”
“Um, no.”
“Maybe Robin does. Think she’d help me with that?”
“She’d love to help you with that.”
“’Cause, you know, it’s for my job.”
“Your thousand-dollars-a-night job.”
“Fuck you,” Mike grumbled as he headed back down to the basement.