Over the ten months following Larry’s stroke, Screw Tool became Raz’r Gash then BitchBlade (for a week and a half), before falling into what would become Gravel Rash. Mike and Jay Taggert remained the only constants as new players came and went, either kicked out by Mike for lack of commitment, or hobbled by parents unwilling to let their sons practice and party at the Husted house at all hours.
It was a small town; everyone knew that Rose Husted had been keeping a sad, seemingly endless vigil at her husband’s bedside. Left alone, their oldest son Mike was running wild.
As the months stretched on, talk around town was that Larry could not survive, but Rose was resolute. Even if Larry finally died never regaining consciousness, she knew that some believed that coma victims were capable of hearing those around them despite their impairment. She knew this, because Larry had told her, reading as he often did from a medical journal he had brought with him on a flight to Phoenix a few years earlier. He believed it was possible.
If there were even a chance that her husband was hearing life going on around him, Rose would not allow the darkness he was trapped in to go silent.
A second bed was rolled into Larry’s room, testament to the power he wielded at the hospital, and Rose moved in.
Her sons fared the best they could. Friends and neighbors made sure John, who turned fourteen during the crisis, got to school and ate regularly. Otherwise, he was on his own to keep his grades up and ride his bike on wintry streets to see his father and—more and more—to care for his mother.
Her friends all worried about her, and one by one they took John aside and spoke to him soberly. If he could, they said, he should try to get her to go home and sleep in her own bed. No one wanted to see any more harm done to her. Despite his youth, John was charged with luring her home.
“Mom, let me stay over with Dad again,” he would plead. “The Andersons want to have you over for dinner, then you can go home and get some sleep. Dad’ll be okay till tomorrow.”
“You never talk to him,” she protested wearily.
“I will,” John insisted, producing his backpack. “I have a speech due in speech class, so I’ll practice it on him. I promise.”
“What’s it about?”
“The three branches of government.”
She scoffed and settled in. “He’ll never sit still for that.”
“Then I’ll turn on the basketball game. We’ll watch the game together, he’ll like that. Me, too.”
“Well…”
“Mom,” John reasoned, “if you were sick and couldn’t move, would you want Dad talking to you all the time?”
She scrunched her face.
“So give him a chance to miss having you around. You’ll walk in tomorrow, and he’ll be really happy you’re back.”
She smiled wearily. She walked to her husband’s bedside, and pulled the covers up to his chest.
“You boys don’t stay up too late,” Rose whispered to her husband. “Lights off as soon as the game is over.”
She kissed Larry on the forehead.
“I’ll call Jeff,” John said as his mother grabbed her purse and turned to him. “His mom can swing by and get me to school.”
“Make sure you shower.”
“They let me use the doctor’s locker room whenever I want. The security guards let me into the cafeteria if I get hungry. Don’t worry about me, just get some sleep.”
He hugged her and she kissed him on the cheek.
“I love you,” she said.
“Me, too.”
After she was gone, John sank into the chair at his father’s bedside and turned on the TV. He didn’t like basketball, but it wouldn’t distract him while he did homework. If something crucial happened during the game, he’d make sure his father got a clear description of what he was missing. Just to be on the safe side.
* * *
Mike, meanwhile, made the most of the ten months that his father lingered. Already a dismal student, he barely went to class once his mother lost track of him. He still put in his time at Pizza Hut to help keep up with band expenses, but otherwise he was living a rock-and-roll bachelor’s life for days at a time. From February to May, when he couldn’t convince the others to skip school and rehearse with him, he would give his voice a rigorous work out, singing along at stage volume to records. And a couple days a month, he would drive down to Chicago, developing relationships with the club owners who would be essential to Gravel Rash’s rise.
Every few weeks, Mike went to the hospital for sullen, obligatory visits. Taggert noted that there might be a heavy metal ballad in his situation, one of those treacly mood pieces that record labels were looking for with the recent success of the Crüe’s “Home Sweet Home.” So sometimes, Mike made up sad lyrics in his head while he stared down at his father.
Hard rockers couldn’t be caught giving a shit about their mothers, but even Mike had to recognize Rose’s pain. His mom had tried to be cool about the band. She let them practice in the house and insisted that some of what erupted from her basement was “catchy,” making Mike shake his head with a reluctant smile for her sweet, well-meaning bullshit.
At his father’s bedside, he would drape an arm around his mother and sincerely encourage the unlikely fantasies she was clinging to about her husband’s recovery. When she would unexpectedly show up at home, he would quickly kick the band out and keep the house quiet so that she could sleep.
He cringed to see the pained look on her face when she saw what he and his friends were doing to her home, but any resolve to keep the party confined to the basement wilted with the arrival of the next case of beer.