Have Mercy (Have a Life #1) (17 page)

The rooster woke everyone up at four thirty.  Nobody complained, though.  They just picked up big metal cage-like baskets that had appeared by everyone’s cots during the night and headed to the chicken coop like in a zombie movie.

   Tim and I followed, thinking we had missed some key programming somewhere along the way.  No sign of Captain Kirby.

              “So that’s what these baskets are for,” Tim said.  “I thought they were weird hats or something.”  He put one in front of his face like a catchers’ mask. 

              Everyone put on long suede work gloves that were hanging on pegs at the entrance of the chicken coop and immediately began confronting the yellow-eyed devil birds sitting on the shelves.  I watched as one girl moved a hen aside with one gloved hand while gathering the eggs beneath the hen and gently placing them in her cage basket with the other.  The hen was pecking her the entire time, but she couldn’t feel it through the suede. 

             
“So that’s how they do it,” I said.

              “Look,” Captain Kirby came running up to me holding her basket which was already full. 

              “I didn’t even see you,” I said.

              “I was up for a while and got a head start.  This is so cool.”

              I stood in front of a chicken who I swear to God was glaring at me. 

              “Do you want some help?” Captain Kirby asked.

              “Do they make us do this every day?”

              “There’s no better thing to wake up to than fresh eggs,” she said.

              She expertly maneuvered my chicken then the three chickens next to it off their broods, making a clucking sound that made them seem to like her, and put their eggs in my basket.  Across the coop, Tim held up his full basket and headed outside.

              “I find this soothing, don’t you?” Captain Kirby asked as we joined the parade to the mill’s kitchen. 

              Jonah had already made coffee in a giant samovar, which I had to admit smelled pretty good, and there were six cast iron frying pans on his six-burner stove.

              “Who’s up?” Jonah asked cheerfully.

              A couple of people jumped to claim a frying pan. 

              “Not you?” I asked Captain Kirby.

              “Nah, I’ve made a zillion omelets.  Let someone else have a chance.”

              “Did you get the wild chives, Janet?” Jonah asked.  Kirby pulled out a fistful of pungent smelling greens from her overall’s pocket and put them on the chopping block table.  “Here you go, kids,” she said.

              “Someone chop those,” Jonah commanded and six knives came out of sheathes and people got to work on the spring bulbs. 

              Jonah gave a short demo on making a fool-proof omelet, cracking three eggs into a big clay bowl and tossing away the shells with one hand.  He was wearing a white chef’s jacket and a white cap.  He tossed a big glob of butter into a pan, turned the gas up to the max, fast stirred his eggs, poured them into his pan while with his free hand he cracked three more eggs into the bowl.  I was looking at a born performer. 

              “Lots and lots of butter in the
very hot
pan, eggs
ferociously
whipped, and… ” He sprinkled some of Captain Kirby’s chopped chives in the middle of the eggs, wiggled the pan while scraping the egg from the sides with a wooden spatula.  “Hurry up, fold it,
fold
it, and
voilà!
”  He slid the omelet onto my plate.  Kirby slapped two fat slices of olive bread she’d toasted on a four sided tin contraption that fit over one of the burners next to my omelet and slapped hands with Jonah.

              Everyone applauded and one of the students stepped up to the stove to try to replicate Jonah’s performance.

              “Great, huh?” Captain Kirby said, taking a bite of my toast. 

              Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Clarisse talking earnestly to Tim. “Unbelievable when you think about it,” I said.

              “I called my dad this morning,” Captain Kirby said.  “On Jonah’s phone.  I woke him up. About the pilot.  I think my dad’s going to go for it.  This is a huge opportunity for me.  For us, if Zina decides to include
Have Mercy
.  Which I haven’t told her about yet.  But I think she’ll dig the idea.”

              “They
know
about your dad?” I asked.  “Who he is?”

              “Of course they know. How do you think things happen?”

              “They happen because you’re good at what you do.  Cream rises to the top, etcetera, right?”

              Captain Kirby looked at me as if I were an alien.  “My dad and what he can do for Jonah and Zina is a big bargaining chip to get me included.  That doesn’t mean I’m
not
good at what I do.  You think
Have Mercy
would get a shot if your dad wasn’t The Griffin? There are thousands of good garage bands out there.”                                                                                         

              “Eight million,” I said.

              “Okay, eight million.  You wouldn’t even be thinking about it.  And you know it.  You’re his kid.  His name gives you creds.  It opens doors. ”

              “That’s not true!” I said and then realized everyone was looking at me because I’d shouted. 

              Captain Kirby pulled me by the shirt out of the kitchen, down the stairs and outside.  “Then why,” she asked me, “are you in such a big hurry to get to Houston to see him?”             

              “Because he’s my
father
.  I have a right to see my father.”

              “Excuse me for noticing this, but you don’t even know the guy.”

              “I know enough.  We’re both musicians.”  I thought for a second.  “We both know Jane.”

              “Yeah, Jane has a lot of influence with The Griffin.  As soon as he hears Jane is in trouble he pulls up stakes and moves the wagon train out of town.”

              “You don’t know anything.”

              “You don’t even know if he thinks you’re a good musician.”

              I stared at her, horrified. 

              “But, he’s still willing to help you, isn’t he?  That’s what dads do.  They have no choice.  Especially if they’ve been pricks.”

              “The Griffin is not a
prick
,” I said.

              “Yeah, right,” Captain Kirby said.  “He knows he’s been a bastard and deserted his little girl, and like my dad he’ll jump at the chance to make it right, professionally anyway, because he
can’t
do what you
really
want him to do.”

              “And what do you think I really want The Griffin to do?” I asked

              “You want him to be a part of your life.  Not be a drive-by father.”

              I thought of The Griffin’s home in Texas which I was allowed to visit only on Google Earth and the Wikipedia entry where I wasn’t even a link, no matter how talented and special our family was.

              “All this pure stuff, all this authentic stuff, it’s all just bullshit, isn’t it?” I asked.   “It’s just a way to get on a television show.”

              “So what?  Getting on a television show would be a way out for me and my mom.  It could restart her career and give me one.  Can’t you see that?”

              “But what about your real self?  Are you a chef or are you a TV wannabe?”

              “What does it matter?  Whichever one works.”

              “Don’t you have to find yourself?  Isn’t that what Jonah’s always harping on?  Finding your authentic self.”

              “You don’t
find
yourself.  You
create
yourself.  And you can put anything in the stew you please.  What?  You think you can keep all the different parts of your life closed up in like little
boxes
or something?”

              As a matter of fact, that’s
exactly
what I thought.    

              “Everything that’s ever happened to me, and everything that’s been done to me that I didn’t have a say in, and every stupid thing I’ve ever done to myself, I know it will all keep happening, all of it, and I don’t give a shit because that’s who I am.  I’ll keep on being me and walk through any door that’s open to find out what’s on the other side.”             

              I felt like crying.  Keeping everything separate was the only thing that let me keep
me
under control.  ”Listen,”  I told Captain Kirby, barely able to talk.  “I’m not like you. You can be in my band, but from now on I want you to keep your nose out of my business.”

Captain Kirby spent the rest of the day chopping and dicing with the paying students, the students with full knife sets, while I was sent to milk goats with Tim in the far barn.  Milking goats wasn’t as hard as milking cows—something I actually did once at a county fair when I was 10—mostly because goats are smaller.  I filled a pail with milk then dumped it into a huge stainless vat, over and over, feeling like Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and it wasn’t even eleven o’clock yet. 

              “So,” Tim said, “Clarisse thinks we should go to Nashville to make a demo.  So we don’t go empty-handed to The Griffin.  And then, if Jonah and Zina decide they want a band for the show, we have it for that too.”

              Ever since Tim started talking to Clarisse all he could talk about was making a demo.  I looked on-line, and even a bargain basement studio setup in Nashville—where all the demos in America seemed to be made —cost at least two thousand dollars.

              “Well, maybe Clarisse would like to chip in,” I said snidely.  “You can’t just go to Nashville and announce you’re here and expect people to just do it for nothing.”

              “Actually, she says she knows people there who would do it for her as a favor.  She says she can arrange it so they wait for their money till we hit something.”

              “If we make a demo don’t we want it to be ours?  We buy the studio time and the mix.  Nothing owed later.  No one else involved.” 
Was that wanting to keep everything in little boxes?
I asked Captain Kirby in my head.  I knew the answer of course.

              “Anyway, how does Clarisse know so much about it?” I asked.  “Is she like a musician or a groupie or what?  What
is
she?”

              “She has money, that’s all I know,” Tim said.  “I think she’s a trust fund kid.  She said she was backing Jonah’s show, too.  Part of it anyway.”

              No wonder Zina didn’t kick Clarisse out for having the hots for teacher.  “And I guess she’s planning to back you, too.”

              “Not me,” Tim said.  “Us. 
Have Mercy
.”

                  “Well, why isn’t she talking to me, then? 
Have Mercy
is my band.”  I laughed sarcastically and peered under my goat’s belly at Tim, who stopped pulling on his goat’s udder and looked back at me thoughtfully. 

              “I think we should play tonight,” he said.  “We need to play.  When a band doesn’t play together for a while it falls apart.”

              Captain Kirby wasn’t at lunch, which was kind of a relief.  I didn’t know what to say to her.  She wasn’t at dinner either, which was five fabulous courses.  I had never tasted food so delicious and I was sorry she missed it.  One of the other students served everyone—including Jonah and Zina.  We were sitting on hard benches at a long wooden slab table.  Jonah kept up a running commentary on each course, how it was prepared, how he tasted little adjustments the chef had made in the recipes, and he was raving about the strawberry puree with chocolate sauce and whipped cream when Captain Kirby came out of the kitchen, took off her apron and took a bow to enthusiastic applause.

              “Captain Kirby’s an amazing person,” Clarisse said to Tim. She was sitting on the other side of him.  “I don’t know why she doesn’t like me.”

              “You know,” Tim turned to me. “Kirby told me she only drummed one time with a cousin before the night she auditioned with us in the Trap.”

              I didn’t know any such thing but kept quiet. 

              “She says you have to try everything when you get the chance because you never know how it’s going to end up,” Tim said.  “That’s really cool, don’t you think?”

              “Where’s it gotten her so far?” I snorted. 

              “Are you kidding?  She’s
Have Mercy’s
drummer.  She’s going to be in a cable network food show.  She’s captain of a champion hockey team.  And she’s only going to be a senior.  I think you can learn a lot from her.”

              “
I
can learn a lot from
her
?”

              “No, not just you. I mean,
anyone
can. I can.”

              The other students were clearing the table to get ready for an evening of music.  Jonah was putting a record on the turntable when Tim said, “JW, can we plug our guitars in?  Can we?”

              Jonah shrugged.  “Why not?”

              “Wanna?” he said to me.

              “That would be
awesome
,” Captain Kirby said, appearing out of nowhere and looking around for something to drum on while Tim ran to the barn to get our guitars. 

              “You guys are a band?” Jonah said to me.  “That’s cool. Why didn’t you tell me?”

              “Can I use these?” Kirby asked Jonah, fingering a row of glass tubes suspended from the ceiling by wires that I guess were supposed to be a sculpture. 

              Clarisse saw me looking at them and whispered, “Bertoia.”             

              “
Bertoia
? What’s that supposed to mean?”

              “Bertoia is the artist who made them.  B-e-r-t-o-i-a,” she whispered again, pronouncing each letter like she was helping me cheat on an exam.

              Captain Kirby went into the kitchen and came back with two oversized wooden spatulas.  She tapped the tubes.  “This will work.  We just need mikes.”

              Which Jonah had, of course.  While he was setting that up and Captain Kirby was plinking the glass tubes, Tim brought up our guitars, hooked them up to the speakers and we started going through our repertoire. 

              It’s a funny thing about music.  Once we started playing I didn’t feel down anymore. Captain Kirby made the glass tubes sing like bells and I was thinking that she’d invented a whole new vocabulary in sound that we could take on the road that would make us famous and was for real and not a gimmick.  Tim was answering Kirby’s vibes and I was following Tim. 

              Jonah was smiling at us appreciatively, Zina had recovered from her migraine and was sitting on the loft stairway, and the other students were sitting on the window ledges and floor.               

Captain Kirby yelled, “Come on, let’s do
Hole in the Sky!
”  It was her favorite song in our

repertoire. 

              Tim gave the key, E flat, and played through it once.  I took the mike and began to sing, intoxicated with my own voice.  I gave Tim a we’re
smokin’
look, then I looked at Kirby.  She grinned and nodded back at me.  I looked around the room at the faces that were digging us until I came to Clarisse.  I stopped singing and dropped the mike.  Tim and Captain Kirby stopped. 

              “You okay, Mercy?” Tim said.

              “I know who you are,” Clarisse said, unwinding herself from her window seat perch.  “You
do
live in Milltown, don’t you?”

              “No.  Akron. I told you.  Sometimes Texas, though, I’m on my way there now...”

              “No, you’re The Griffin’s
daughter.
”  She came up and stared into my face then turned around to address the little audience.  “You were playing this song the night The Griffin came to Milltown, weren’t you?  In the garage?  I was there.  It was
you
,” she nodded at Tim, “and you,” she walked up to Captain Kirby and poked her in the chest—Kirby looked like she was about to punch her—“and
you
.”  Her face lit up.  “That was the night your
mother
…..”

              I closed my eyes.  Here, in the middle of nowhere, in some New Yorker’s fantasy of farm life, with chickens that laid blue eggs and perfect omelets and peacocks with hen harems and goats whose milk was better than your mother’s and ground hogs who freeloaded, and stuff that was authentic just because it was old, in this place where nothing was really real, at least not real the way I understood real, Jane and The Griffin—even though they didn’t give enough of a shit about me to even answer my phone calls or give me a ride out of town like Jonah gave his ground hogs—had managed to reclaim me and make me pay for the only thing I couldn’t help being, their daughter.

              Everyone was looking at me.  It was like that day at school—could it only have been three days ago?—but even worse because in front of this tiny audience what was happening felt even more personal. 
You Can Run but You Can’t Hide,
the Girl Thing song was playing in my head and I was crying.

              Clarisse was giving Jonah an up close and personal.
“The night her mother”
she was saying looking over her shoulder at me when Zina grabbed her by the braid. “Shut up, you slut,” she said and tugged her across the room to me.

              “And you, you little lying twit.  I knew your name wasn’t Darcy.  And what about you,
Karl
?  Who are you?  This is a culinary arts school not a hostel for trash.  All of you, out of here.  Right now.” 

              “Whoa, Zina,” Jonah stood up.

              “I’m tired of it, Jonah,” Zina screamed. ”I’m tired of it.  It’s your sycophants or me.”  She ran up the steps to the loft, her perfect face all red and twisted, and believe it or not what I was thinking was how cool it was that I hadn’t paid her yet.

Jonah sank back on the sofa, spread his hands apart, made a face at us and shrugged.

              Tim blasted a chord through the speakers.  He hummed a couple of bars through his mike.  It was the song we’d started the night before and he sang:
             

The night is dark

But I can see

A path lit up                              

In front of me             

I moved in to share the mike:               

I’m lost and sad

I’m out of time.

I’m scared to death

My light won’t shine

Tim answered:

Then, my sweet friend,

You’ll borrow mine