Wednesday, June 1, 2011

The telephone beside his bed would not stop ringing. The shrill sound ricocheted inside Kit’s skull, an angry yellow jacket trapped in a jar.

“Jesus,” he growled through a mouth that tasted like fire-dried clay. His flailing hand found the plastic annoyance and shoved it off the table. “Shut th’ fuggg…” he slurred.

The voice from the receiver sounded distant. “Kit? Kit, are you there? Come on, man. Can you hear me?”

Kit snarled at the stupid voice or thought he did anyway. It was hard to know with the yellow jacket thudding behind his eyeballs.

“Kit, it’s me—Harvey. Harvey Ashton. I need to talk to you.”

Kit forced himself up onto his elbow and picked the receiver up off the floor. The stagnant odor of his armpit struck him with all the subtlety of smelling salts. Jesus, when was the last time I showered? And where the hell am I? He looked around with bleary eyes as he raised the receiver. The stubble on his face scratched against the plastic.

“Yeah? What?” Kit demanded.

He recognized what was left of his hotel room. Three fraternities could have held their year-end parties in here at the same time, and it might have been an improvement. A mound of beer cans lay in the corner. Blankets and sheets from both beds were in jumbled heaps, half of them on the floor among pizza boxes and fast-food wrappers. Six liquor bottles were lined up across the desk like bowling pins that had forgotten to fall. Heavy maroon drapes kept out the light. The artwork on the walls hung at odd angles, or maybe it was just the way he was holding his head. Sideways. Maybe the yellow jacket would fall out.

“Kit? Thank God I found you!” the tinny voice said through the plastic.

“Whaddya want, Harv?” Kit snapped. The band manager’s voice cut through the fog in Kit’s brain, reminding him of why he was here.

“Look, I’m sorry. I really am. I told Kenny and Dwight this wasn’t the time. They should’ve waited until all the shows were over.”

“Or, I don’t know, maybe not at all! Christ, Harv, you’re the manager. They knew I had a history of episodes. It’s not like I choose when it happens.”

The voice on the other end sounded tense. “I know you don’t, but you had two of them last month—”

“One of those was during a rehearsal! Only the second was on stage—and that was during a sound check, not an actual show.”

“Maybe you should see a doctor?”

“I’ve already done that. Neurologically, there’s nothing wrong.”

“But twice—”

Kit sighed in frustration. “I’ve been to doctors ever since the damn blackouts started and the answer is always the same. They can’t find any cause for them.”

Harvey’s tone was a mix of firmness and paternal care. “Are you still using?”

A pregnant pause followed.

“I’m fine,” Kit said, his voice like hammered steel.

“Listen, you’re a damned good guitarist. Southern by the Grace of God was lucky to have you these past seven months, but—” A heavy sigh escaped from the receiver. “Kit, you need help. The drugs and booze are ruining you.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“No, man, you’re not. Hey, I’m your friend, and I’m telling you that you need to get clean. You’ve got too much talent. I’ve seen too many good musicians destroyed because they thought they were fine. I don’t want you to be on that list.”

Kit sniffed. His nostrils were dry as beef jerky from the coke he’d done last night before that damned nightmare had woken him. He sat up and swung his legs off the bed. His foot knocked over two empty tequila bottles. “Lemme ask you this, Harv. Was the note your idea?”

“Note? What note?”

“What note?” Kit repeated sarcastically. “My fucking pink slip! My dismissal!”

“I don’t know anything ab—”

“They canned me by shoving a fucking go-to-hell note under the door!”

There was a slight choking sound on the other end. “Aw, shit, no… They didn’t.”

“They did.”

“Kenny and Dwight didn’t tell you to your face?” The manager’s surprise was genuine.

Kit stood up and stretched. He nearly dropped the receiver as the cord pulled to its limit and the base rattled across the floor. He set the base back on the table whose surface was gritty with the residue of thin white lines. Several beer cans stood on the table next to the base like mourners at a graveside. Kit tried to remember what all he had done last night.

“No,” Kit replied, “they didn’t. Just slipped the note under the door. They left me here in Memphis.”

“God, man, I really am sorry. They shouldn’t have—”

“Tell me about it. My usual shitty luck strikes again.” Kit fumbled a cigarette from the pack and lit it. He blew smoke into the uncirculated, putrid air. “So that’s why you woke me up? To find out how I got kicked out?”

“Uh, no, no…” Harvey’s tone grew somber. He hesitated. The silence grew awkward.

“What’s going on, Harv?”

Harvey’s long, low sigh was followed by a deep breath. “I-I’ve got some news. Bad news.” He hesitated again.

Kit snorted. “There’s no other kind with me.”

“The…the thing is—”

“Christ, spit it out.”

Another miserable sigh. “Kit, I hate to have to tell you this—and I hate to do it this way—but…it’s your mom. She’s dead. I’m so sorry, buddy.”

The cigarette dangled from Kit’s mouth, and the smoke stung his eyes. The yellow jacket was still there, pounding inside his head, but he tried to force his mind to work. It refused to comprehend what he’d just heard.

“Hey, you still here? Talk to me,” Harvey said.

Kit gently lowered his six-foot frame back onto the bed as if worried that his 240 pounds would snap it like a twig. “M-my…my mom is…”

“Yeah, the funeral home in—where was it, Black Rock? Yeah, they’ve, um…been trying to get in touch with you for several days.”

“Several days? W-when did she… When did it happen?”

“They said it was the twenty-sixth. Last Thursday. Her service was this past Sunday.”

Kit was aware of the room, of sitting on the bed and holding the receiver, but suddenly it all felt alien, like reality belonged to some other time or place. The cigarette trembled in his free hand. Numbness spread from his stomach and swallowed his heart. His head swam. He didn’t realize he was crying until the first tear hit the back of his hand.

“Jesus, I’m so sorry, Kit. If there’s anything I can do—”

“Yeah,” Kit replied in a daze. “Yeah, sure.” He dropped the receiver into the cradle, ground the cigarette into the ashtray, and laid back on the bed. Memories swelled like a flooded river. He tried to pick one and focus on it, but they just kept coming. Her smile, her tenderness, her protection—how she tried to find the positives in the worst situations. She always supported him—especially when it came to his music. Because God knows his father—

Kit sat up. He wasn’t numb any longer. His body was suddenly trembling with rage. “That son of a bitch!” He hurled the words at the litter-strewn room. “He didn’t even have the decency to tell me.”

With the fury came a fresh wave of tears. He kicked the other bed so hard the mattress flopped against the wall. Stumbling to the desk, he knocked bottles aside as he searched for one that wasn’t empty. Several broke, scattering shards onto the dingy blue carpet. He found a few mouthfuls left in one bottle and swilled them down.

He let the heat of the alcohol sink into his chest, muting some of the anger. His stomach churned. How could he not tell me? What the hell is wrong with him?

Kit knew only too well what was wrong with Albert McNeil. At the top of the long list was the fact that Kit had always been a disappointment to his father. Nothing he had ever done was good enough. Albert had seen him as a pansy—not like the real men who worked under Albert at the factory. Kit had kept his head focused on comic books, plastic models, and his guitar, which his father had repeatedly told him would ensure his place in hell. Christ, the man had even killed Kit’s puppy one day while he was at school.

Kit’s gut cramped. He staggered to the bathroom. Tequila and bile raked his throat as it surged out of him. His tears mixed with the vomit in the bowl, and his body shuddered.

When his stomach was empty, Kit stood on rubbery legs, brushed his teeth, and found his suitcases. It took him thirty minutes to gather up his scattered belongings, and another ten to load the suitcases, his guitar and amp, and his tour bag into his dinged-up 2002 Honda CR-V. He pulled onto the highway, the summer sun bright even through his sunglasses. He took I-40 toward Nashville—and beyond that, Scarburn County and his hometown of Black Rock. The air conditioner blew in his face, but he was still sweating like a pig.

He drove alone but didn’t lack for company. His conscience rode shotgun like it always did. When was the last time he had seen his mother? He couldn’t remember and hoped that was because of the drugs and not because it had been so long.

The old familiar guilt stabbed him in his heart.

It had been longer than he thought—just before this bar tour with Southern by the Grace of God. When was that—five months ago?

Five and a half, actually.

He reminded himself that his mother had known he’d be on the road a lot. That was the nature of the business. She had encouraged him to follow his dream. When he’d passed the audition and landed a spot in the band, she’d been ecstatic.

Still, he knew she’d been getting worse, and he’d kept right on touring. Couldn’t spare a weekend for your old mom, could you?

Kit jabbed the buttons on the radio as a distraction. He ran through the band twice, finally settling on a country station he didn’t really like.

He hated what country music had become over the past twenty years. You didn’t hear Marty Robbins or Patsy Cline or Hank Williams on the radio any more. Now it was all scruffy corporate Chippendale models who sounded like pop stars in boots. This generation didn’t have an Alabama or a Restless Heart.

Kit’s thoughts returned to his situation. How was he going to handle things with his father? What was he going to do when he got home?

Something distasteful rose in his stomach at the word “home.” He dreaded being around Albert, and he was afraid he might hit the old bastard for not telling him what had happened. But he had nowhere else to stay. After paying off his hotel bill—with a sheepish apology for the cleaning lady who’d have to venture into the disaster area—he had only seventy-one dollars in his pocket. Unless he wanted to sleep under the stars, there wasn’t any other option.

Of course, Kit had no intention of staying long. He hated Black Rock and its glut of narrow-minded, redneck good old boys. There had been too many of them when he was growing up, and somehow, he didn’t figure things had changed much in the past eighteen years. The plan was to say goodbye to his mother and then get back to Nashville. Maybe the reason for his dismissal from the band hadn’t made the rounds. Perhaps he could snag work as a studio musician, at least until something better came along.

It was the same old pattern. Kit was always waiting for the next best thing. He looked back now and saw how he’d wasted every chance that came his way. Between the booze, the blow, and his history of lousy relationships, he really had become what Albert had always said he would be.

That thought made him depressed and sick to his stomach. He tried to think of something else. He roamed across the radio band again, but his mind kept bringing up the hurtful truth. His past was littered with two failed marriages, twice that many band firings, and his ongoing habit. He didn’t believe he had a habit, but wasn’t that what addicts always claimed?

He glanced at himself in the rearview mirror.

He looked older than his forty-two years. It wasn’t just the dashes of gray in his black hair or the crow’s feet around his blue eyes from squinting into too many stage lights. The lines on his face were more pronounced, those on his forehead deeper. Too much drinking had left him with chubby cheeks, not to mention the gut.

He sighed and wondered for the thousandth time how his life had become such a mess. He knew part of it was his fault. Well, more than part—maybe most of it. But Albert was responsible too. The belittling, condemnation, and beatings Albert had dished out weren’t Kit’s fault. He’d had no say in the matter. He was just a kid.

As the radio played something by Brooks & Dunn, Kit thought more about his childhood, and it was as if he’d opened a door in his mind. He still had a few good memories of Black Rock. Albert’s oppressive, hypocritical presence hadn’t been able to ruin everything. As Kit’s gaze roamed the rolling hills along the interstate, the sweltering heat and music and a longing for better times caused a particular memory to crystallize.

A warm smile spread across Kit’s face as he remembered summers spent with Troy. God, I haven’t thought of him in years!

He’d met Troy Wallace in 1977 when they were in third grade. He always remembered that because he had seen Troy drawing a Death Star in his notebook, and from that moment on, they were like brothers. But it was Kit’s memory of the summer of 1981 that remained the sharpest and best even though a shadow lay over it.

 

Seventh grade was behind them. They would be kings of the middle school in the fall, but they had three months of freedom until then. The lazy, humid days would be spent playing Dungeons & Dragons on Troy’s porch, camping out in his backyard, and riding bikes. They might even go to the town pool since Stacy McCormick’s sister worked there, and she filled out her swimsuit nicely.

For weeks the boys had been scheming a way to slip into the drive-in theater in August if Heavy Metal was going to be shown. They’d snuck glimpses of the magazine at the Hop-In convenience store, hiding it inside Sports Illustrated so the clerk wouldn’t catch them. If the movie showed as many boobs as the magazine did, they were in for a treat.

Kit’s smile slowly faded as the memory darkened. Despite all the firefly-lit nights and reruns of The Greatest American Hero, there remained a shadow over that summer because of the secret he and Troy still carried.

It had been early June, the first day of summer vacation. Troy had ridden his bike over and found Kit and his mom, Paula McNeil, working out back in the garden.

“Hey, Mrs. McNeil,” Troy said as he rounded the corner of the house. “Hey Kit. Wanna go ride bikes?” The sun turned his thick blond hair into shimmering gold. His bowl cut had grown out, and his hair tumbled down his forehead. He was constantly raking it out of his eyes.

Kit’s hair was nearly the same except that his was black, but there the similarities ended. Troy wore glasses. Kit didn’t. Kit was a little taller than Troy but twice as wide. Both got their share of torment from the Dunleys. Kit was dubbed “Butter Butt,” an allusion not only to his size but to the imagined homosexual relationship they accused him of sharing with Troy, whom they nicknamed “Pencil Dick.”

“I can’t,” Kit said. “I promised Mom I’d help her in the garden.”

“How long is that gonna take?”

Kit shrugged. “I don’t know. Not long.”

“Troy, how are your parents?” Mom asked. She brushed a strand of auburn hair from her face with the back of her floral glove.

“They’re all right,” Troy replied

“Well, you tell them I asked about them,” she said.

Troy nodded, his hair flopping forward.

Mom stood up from her kneeling position. “Chris, you go on if you want. I can do this.” She smiled.

“I still don’t get why you wanna have another garden,” Kit said. He looked at the small patch of neat rows that would hopefully produce potatoes, carrots, green beans, and tomatoes. “The blight got it the last two times you tried.”

“Well, you know how the blight is around here. It hits someone’s land one year and somebody else’s the next. Maybe we’ll get lucky this year. Now go on, get out of here.” She waved him away with the garden trowel.

“You sure, Mom?”

“Come on, Kit. Let’s go,” Troy said, encouraging Kit to leave before she changed her mind.

She was hoeing the dirt and didn’t look up when she said, “Where are you boys going?”

“Just riding around town. Nowhere special,” Troy said. He poked Kit in the shoulder. “Hey! Wanna go to Bennett’s and see if the new Famous Monsters has come in?”

The pharmacy on Main Street was the only place in Black Rock that carried the boys’ favorite magazine. It also had the only spinner rack of comics between here and Spring City.

“Sure, but I ain’t got no money,” Kit said as they walked around the house.

“Kit! Be home for lunch,” his mother yelled.

“Okay!”

Troy climbed on his blue Raleigh Rampar. “We’ll just see if they got it. After that we can go hang out at the old school.”

Kit wheeled his green Schwinn Scrambler with the banana seat out of the garage. With the sun on their faces and the wind in their hair, they pedaled into the summer that would change them forever.

 

In 1924 the old Black Rock school, located near the southern base of Blackpoint Mountain, had mysteriously burned down. Three stone walls were all that remained, and their eroded surfaces were decorated with graffiti. Inside the walls, rocks and logs were arranged around two fire pits. Plenty of weed-covered debris and beer cans lay scattered across the ground. Lots of teenagers came here to party.

Kit swatted at the cloud of gnats that kept pace with him and Troy. They navigated the well-worn path through weeds and underbrush until they reached the school. Troy dug into the pocket of his blue jeans and produced a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Both boys lit one. They smoked for a few minutes in the shadow of a wall.

Bees droned among the wildflowers.

“You learn any new songs?” Troy asked.

“I’m working on ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and some blues.”

Troy jumped up. “You should learn something by Journey.” He wrapped his arms around his skinny body and pretended to make out as he wailed the chorus of “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’.” Kit pitched a rock at him and laughed.

“Seriously though”—Troy picked up his cigarette off the rock—“why the blues?”

Kit shrugged. “I dunno. Just like the sound of it, I guess. It’s…lonesome. Makes me feel like somebody else out there knows what I’m going through.”

“Your dad still being an asshole?”

“Of course. He don’t know how to be anything else.” Kit finished his cigarette and tossed the stub into the ash-filled ring of stone. “Shit, man, I hate this place.”

“What’s wrong with here?” Troy gestured at the sentinel-like walls.

“Not here here,” Kit said. “This damn town. I can’t wait to get out of Black Rock.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“It’s like everything here is cursed, you know? Bad shit happens all the time. I don’t wanna stay here and end up like my dad or like that Billings guy in town. He’s what? Like forty or something?”

“Yeah, forty and wanderin’ the streets, talking to himself. I wanna go live on a beach like Destin or Myrtle. That way I could watch the chicks in their bikinis all day.” Troy grinned.

“Anywhere would be better than this deadass place.”

Troy flicked his cigarette butt into the fire pit. “You wanna camp out in my backyard sometime this week?”

“Sure, if it’s okay with my mom.”

“We can ride our skateboards down the middle of the street at, like, three in the morning!”

Kit grinned. “Hey, we could go to that old graveyard by the church and tell ghost stories. Maybe pretend like zombies are coming to get us or something.”

“Yeah, that’s cool,” Troy said. He walked around the fire pit, kicking beer cans. “I’m thirsty. It’s hot out here.”

“Let’s ride to the Hop-In. We could pool our change and split a Coke.”

Troy was about to reply but instead clamped his mouth shut. “Shh!” Troy hissed. He was looking between two of the walls at the other footpath that meandered through the weeds to the parking lot.

Voices and coarse laughter came from that direction.

Kit and Troy looked at each other in shock.

“Shit, it’s the Dunleys,” Troy said in a low voice. “They’re headed this way.”

“Let’s get the hell outta here.” Kit leaped to his feet.

Both boys crouched and scurried back the way they had come. They straightened up once they were in the taller bushes but kept glancing behind them. There was no sign of pursuit. Kit exhaled and wiped the sweat from his forehead. That was a close one. They stopped halfway up the hill. Only bits of the school’s walls could be seen through the foliage, but the laughter and loud voices confirmed Troy had been right about the Dunleys.

Breathing heavily, Kit asked, “Which ones do you think it is?”

“How the shit should I know? There’s like a hundred of them.”

It was true. The Dunley family had been in Black Rock longer than anyone could remember. Nobody liked them. They were course, clannish, and dangerous, and no one seemed to know just exactly how many of them there were.

Identical twins Garrett and Johnny Dunley were two years older than Kit and Troy. They were responsible for most of the bullying that the two boys endured. The twins had a cousin, George, who was the same age. He wasn’t right in the head and went to special classes.

But it was Greg and Jeff, the other set of identical twins, who terrified everyone. They were cruel and spiteful, and despite being only seventeen, both had already been in juvenile detention. Greg had pulled a knife on a teacher. Jeff had stolen a car and taken it for a joyride. The twins were following in their older brother’s footsteps. At the ripe old age of twenty, Ricky Dunley was serving a five-year prison sentence for aggravated assault, rape, and burglary.

As Kit and Troy walked back to their bicycles, they heard more laughter as female voices mixed with those of the Dunleys.

 

Kit exited I-40 at Lebanon, just east of Nashville. He only pumped five gallons of gas because of the cost. He now had fifty-four dollars to his name.

He pulled into the parking spot farthest from the front door and rummaged through his tour bag. When he was sure no one was watching him, he slipped a plastic bag into his pocket and went inside the convenience store. Even after all these years he still thought of stores like this as Hop-Ins.

In the bathroom Kit made sure the door was locked. He opened the bag, scooped up some of the white powder on one of his keys, and snorted it. He inhaled deeply and held his nose as his eyes watered. After carefully removing any residue, he relieved himself and washed his hands. Then he was back on the interstate, heading toward his rendezvous with home.