Lit Riffs (10 page)

Larry and I had been best friends for almost two years. He had a lot more freedom than me, and a wild streak that I really admired. He was always pushing me to go one step further than I wanted to, like that day we climbed into empty trash barrels and rolled down the sledding hill at Indian Park over and over again, making ourselves so dizzy we could barely stand up, or that day we let ourselves into his nextdoor neighbors’ house with a key they kept under the welcome mat and made ourselves turkey sandwiches.

Larry’s mother had died when he was in second grade, and his father worked a lot of overtime at the sheet-metal factory.

His father also happened to have a pretty large collection of porno magazines—not just
Playboy
, either, all different kinds, including the really disgusting ones you could only buy in New York—and he didn’t seem to mind if Larry and I looked at them from time to time. At Larry’s insistence, I borrowed a copy of
Swank
and kept it stashed in my bedroom closet, cleverly buried—or so I thought—in a stack of Richie Rich and Sad Sack comic books. I don’t know how my mother sniffed it out, but one day I came home from school and found the magazine—it had a picture of a blond woman sucking her own enormous breast on the cover—sitting right out on our kitchen table, along with my usual snack of cookies and milk. I lied and said I’d found it in the woods behind the Little League, but my mother didn’t believe me.

“Tell me the truth,” she said. “You got it from Larry, didn’t you?”

“It’s his dad’s,” I said. “Larry let me borrow it.”

My mother shook her head.

“I feel sorry for Mr. Salvati,” she said. “It’s terrible what happened to him. But I never liked him, not even when his wife was alive. That man has such a dirty mouth.”

I couldn’t argue with that. Mr. Salvati was one of those guys who said
fuck
in normal conversation, as if it were a perfectly ordinary word, and seemed to think
shithead
was a term of endearment.

“He’s always nice to me,” I told her.

“I’ll tell you what,” my mother said. “I feel sorry for his son. He’s not getting the kind of adult guidance he needs.”

My parents didn’t exactly force me to stop being friends with Larry. But they did bar me from going to his house after school and weren’t as nice as they used to be when he came over to ours. They encouraged me to spend more time with my other friends, nice kids like Mark Hofstetter. Slowly but inevitably, Larry and I drifted apart, a separation that became more and more pronounced as he started running with a pack of tough older kids, troublemakers like Craig and Bobby.

I must’ve been unusually quiet over supper that night, because my mother reached across the table to feel my forehead.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Fine.”

“You’ve barely touched your food.”

“Something bothering you?” my father wondered.

“Actually,” I said, “I’ve got a little stomachache. Can I be excused?”

I went up to the bathroom, locked the door, and sat down on the closed lid of the toilet. My legs felt weak and my heart was beating fast, but I knew what I had to do.

I took a deep breath and clenched my muscles. I strained with all my might, but nothing happened. I scrunched my face and tried again. For a second, the word got trapped in my throat, but I managed to force it out in a harsh, barely audible whisper.

“Shit.”

I laughed at the sound of it, then felt myself relax a little. It was easier than I thought.

“Shit,” I said again, this time a little louder.

I opened the bathroom window and poked my head out. The sky was blue-black, speckled with nameless stars. I must have said my word a dozen times to the crisp October night, and each time I felt a little lighter, a little less burdened by my conscience. I only wished Larry had been standing there with me, so he could hear my apology.

When I was finished, I shut the window, flushed the toilet, and washed my hands. Then I headed back down to the kitchen and rejoined my parents, both of whom were watching me with worried expressions. I smiled and picked up my fork.

“Mission accomplished,” I told them.

author inspiration

I’ve always loved the Tom Petty song “I Won’t Back Down.” It’s an anthem full of exuberance and defiance, which are two of the great rock ‘n’ roll emotions. I also love how vague it is—you have no idea who wants the narrator to back down, or what particular principle might be at stake—as if it were somehow the human condition to be under pressure to compromise yourself and your beliefs. It was certainly easy for me as a teenager to hear the song and believe that it was somehow about the pride and pleasure that are the emotional payoffs of resisting authority—parental, governmental, whatever. A few years ago, though, Johnny Cash did an amazing cover of the song that made me think about it in a whole new way. Cash’s version has none of the brash energy of the original—it’s weary and mournful, as if Cash understands the cost of not backing down, the isolation and weariness that come with a lifetime of trying to be true to yourself. I was hoping to capture both aspects of the song in “Dirty Mouth,” to celebrate a moment of youthful defiance and inner strength, while also acknowledging the mysterious sadness that the narrator feels afterward.

tanker dane

I
t is no longer, this instrument they played. Though not in its final resting place, for it will be found again, just not by the well-intentioned or inspired, nor by the suitable, even the capable. But it matters not. Anyone is invited to find it this time, provided they can: corroded and covered in algae, the neck warped, frets rusted and the double truss rod buried in sediment. The ivory bindings around the soundboard split from the time spent submerged, the acoustic body once hollow, now flooded and the adopted dwelling of a flathead catfish.

A guitar having wept, bled, screamed, and soared lies on its side. All at once splashed down, adrift, sunken, and silent since the incident. Infamous and extraordinary, never anything less than sublime. To be strummed once more near impossible due to its wretched condition, yet this guitar, having been responsible for one musical miracle after another, just may and must be the subject of its own divine rescue. The age unknown. Its intial purpose unclear, but assuredly simple as compared to its eventual calling and final catastrophe.

This unassuming lute first handed down, then inherited, bartered, bought and sold, gifted, won and lost, then finally found. The most innocent way its most glorious. Nicked and scratched, smashed and cracked, the instrument wrecked and repaired as often as it changed hands. And changed shape. The lute was the shape of a pear, then a circle, then a square, before it got in the hands of the man who split it in half and played it in two. Went unrecognized for an extended time as a table, then a toy. Picked out of the trash and given away by a man to a boy, who gave it a name. Then stolen twice: first by a thief, then by the boy who stole it back from the thief, who renamed it the same.

The name never stuck, as no name would after several hundred years. A gitarer, a quintern, a guitarra … with each owner it became anew, in name, in shape, in sound, in song, but never in string.

The strings never changed, never snapped nor allowed the instrument out of tune. The string gut wrapped tight on the original lute remained, even now, underwater. Each string shimmering in the stabs of sunlight cutting through the kelp layered above, tempting and taunting the schools of sunnies and the stubborn rainbow trout who pass every half moon. The strings are neither prey, nor predictably attached to a rod and reel, but bare prints. Fingerprints. Multiple fingerprints, tens of thousands on each of the five strings, perhaps more. The G almost double the D, the E less than a quarter more than the A, all of them unable to compete with the the C. Whether solo or strummed in a chord, all of them intact, unable to be wiped or swept away with the changing times or tides. Equally apparent, but hardly in importance. In fact, only a minute fraction stand above the rest. The most recent fingerprints, played just minutes before the instrument was befallen, would remain the most recent. Played by the hand stripped of flesh and flopped on its side in bone beside the instrument. The hand, along with the other in bone behind the instrument, responsible for the fingerprints. Once bound in flesh making the most important fingerprints. Prints producing the finest notes. The most natural notes, notable notes, notorious notes. The notes responsible for the refrain.

“The final refrain!” and the accompaniment. “The accompaniment at last!” and the tempo. “The exact tempo!” and the melody. “The perfect melody!” This guitar, crafted by the hand of a carpenter, crafted for the composition, the perfect composition, the only composition. The possibility the right notes would be played, the proper chords struck? A near impossibility, no doubt. But not for one, the destined one, the defiant one …

Never a note or notes ever played to compare to these. For all of its time, all of its music, all of its solos, improvs, freestyles, riffs … this guitar never sounded so grand yet ghostly, so harrowing and haunting; so hallelujah. The hand of the man to play the part, to fulfill its intent of truth, is to be saved as soon as it ceases, sacrificed as soon as his gift is given, with one final breath—his song to the world … to save the world.

author inspiration

Playing on the streets and down in the pipes of New York is both a dangerous and daunting way to make a living. At least that’s how I felt in the beginning. Song after song yielded no tips. My guitar case was changeless for four days and four more hours before three quarters finally splashed down. “Hallelujah” was the song I remember playing at the time, or it could have been the one before … I’m still not sure which tune struck the right chord, but I like to think it was “Hallelujah.” It has been part of my street list ever since.

lisa tucker

I
’m a Vietnam vet wannabe. That’s what I told my parents last Friday night, when they started in on how sad it was that I was watching
The Deer Hunter
for the twelfth time instead of going out with friends. I told them they were right, but
Platoon
was checked out again. My mother bit her lip; my father laughed nervously. The next morning, when I came downstairs in my thrift-shop army jacket, my mother got up and left the kitchen table. Dad acted like he had to go do something in the garage, after he mumbled yes when I asked if I could borrow volume seven of his Time-Life series
The Vietnam Experience
.

It’s Wednesday afternoon, and I’m on my way to the community center downtown to attend a support group for Vietnam vets. Luckily, my parents know nothing about this.

I called the guy who runs the group and said that my uncle died in Vietnam. I told him that I’d never known Uncle Johnny, but I wanted to understand more about his life. The guy was cool; he said I could come to the meeting for the first half hour or so and ask questions. He said I should be prepared because, on occasion, these support group sessions can get intense.

I smiled then in what my mom calls my “sardonic way.” She says I could kill someone with that smile, “metaphorically speaking of course,” she always adds, too quickly, like she’s trying to convince herself that her daughter’s not
that
kind of crazy.

I didn’t think this support group could be any more intense than the ones at the hospital where I was. The guy on the phone said the point of the meetings was to make the vets feel better. To give them some sympathy, let them know they’re not alone. Not alone, rather than completely alone, with everyone forced to watch while they break you down, make you admit you’re nothing but a messed-up kid.

I should make one thing perfectly clear: I don’t really want to be a veteran. And I’m pretty sure I’m not crazy either.

There are only three guys at the meeting, plus the moderator, Ken. I’m not surprised; I read some stupid article that claimed Vietnam is “over” now that it’s the nineties. Ken tells them why I’m there and asks if they are okay with it. They all say sure, and then Ken says I can start whenever I want. First, I ask if they knew a guy named Johnny Thomas. None of them did, no surprise, since Johnny doesn’t exist. Then I ask them to tell me what it was like during the war.

A bald man in a wheelchair introduces himself. His name is Andy; he’s big, fat, with a long red beard and pale blue eyes. “I want to get this straight,” he says, smiling at me, tapping the arm of his wheelchair. “This contraption has nothing to do with Nam.” I assume he’s saying something deep and I make my face look serious so he’ll tell me the rest. But he goes on to say that he was in a skiing accident twelve years ago and severed his spine. He says the worst he got in Vietnam was just rashes and diarrhea. “I lived through three years over there just to come home and fall down a hill. Not even a mountain for Christ sakes. Is that shit-ass luck or what?”

Ken looks a little uncomfortable; I figure he’s thinking I’m a little young to hear words like
shit-ass
. I want to tell him that
fuck
is like a mantra for me; sometimes I say it ten times in a row, sometimes more, just to get myself back to my center. Whatever that is.

Another guy, Jeff, speaks up. He’s tall and keeps crossing and uncrossing his legs. “It’s all luck, that’s true. Some dudes would get so short they could smell home, only to have their guts torn out. And I used to think there was some kind of reason, but there wasn’t. Just bad luck.”

I don’t say anything but I nod my head. There was no rhyme or reason to who got to go home at the hospital either. Jessica had been there more than two years, and yet I got out instead of her.

Ken asks the third man, William, if he wants to tell me anything about his experience as a prisoner of war. William is thin and pale, with short, very dark hair. He seems out of place in the navy blue suit he’s wearing. He doesn’t look up, just shakes his head. I stare at William, and I get the feeling he could tell me something I need to know. How long it takes to get over it. If you get over it.

Ken tells William that he doesn’t have to speak if he doesn’t want to. Andy says that’s right and uses his hands to move his wheelchair farther back against the wall. Farther away from William.

Jeff uncrosses his leg again. “Where was your uncle Johnny? What company in Nam?”

I shrug. “My mom won’t talk about it. It’s almost like she wants to forget about Johnny.” Which would be true, I’m sure, if Johnny were real. My mom is good at forgetting. She hasn’t mentioned the hospital once in the two months I’ve been home.

Ken leans back and says, “We don’t believe in that. One of the goals of our group is to remember and tell other people what happened.” He folds his hands. “It’s not a political thing. We’re about personal recovery. And finding peace.”

It hits me that Ken is a vet, too. I wish my parents would find me a shrink who was a vet. Someone cool like William maybe, instead of old and boring like Dr. Simpson, my current shrink, who told me last week how encouraged he is by my performance in school, but who sounded almost as nervous as my father when he asked what was going on with this “Vietnam business.”

I lick my lips and ask if they’ve found peace. I look at William when I say this, but Andy answers me.

“I guess if we had, we wouldn’t be wasting our time here,” he says, laughing. “But I know I’m a hell of a lot better off now than five years ago, when I started coming. I don’t have the dreams anymore and that alone is worth the price of admission.”

The group is free; Ken told me that on the phone. I decide I like Andy.

“What kind of dreams?” I ask him.

He smirks, but not at me, at the wall. “The usual, I guess. Blood-and-guts type of things. No glory, that’s for sure. Always enough guilt to feed an army.”

William is looking down at his shoes. Wing tips, just like my dad’s, but scuffed up, with one of the laces unraveling at the top.

Jeff rolls his head on his shoulders until his neck cracks, loudly. Then he looks at Ken, as though he is waiting for him to say something. Ken looks back and asks Jeff if he wants to talk about his current nightmare.

“I don’t think the kid needs to hear about that,” he says. “You have to protect them. It’s the one thing I did right with mine. Kim and Jeff junior have never had to deal with any of this.”

I wonder if his kids are really as out of it as he thinks. I ask him how old they are and he tells me Kim is nineteen and Jeff junior, seventeen. I want to ask if they’ve ever been in trouble, but I don’t.

William looks uncomfortable; he’s leaning forward and pulling the back of his jacket down with both hands; his forehead is oily with sweat. It’s at least eighty-five degrees in here; the community center air conditioner is broken. I wish I could think of a way to get him to take off that jacket.

I look at my watch; my half hour is almost over. I wish I could get one of them to tell me about those dreams, especially the guilt part.

I dream about Jessica almost every night. I see her the way she was that last day, sitting in the activity room slumped on the floor, banging her hand quietly against the green wall.

Ken looks at his watch, too, then at me. I know he wants me to go now; he probably wants to give Jeff a chance to talk about his nightmare and William a chance to talk, period. But I still don’t move. I have to ask them one thing.

I lower my voice and pick at the skin on top of my hand—a nervous habit they couldn’t break me of in eight months at the hospital. “Did it ever get so bad you felt like killing yourself?”

Jeff flinches, Andy shakes his head, and William just stares at me. It’s up to Ken to say what they’re probably all thinking, especially Jeff, whose face has turned blotchy, angry red. “The point was to stay alive,” Ken says softly. “That was the whole point.”

I pull up more skin on my hand until I can clearly see the outline of the bones underneath. I’ve been misunderstood; I have to explain; I have to tell them I know, while you’re there, you just want to make it through and out. But what about afterward? What about when you’re home?

I’m not a vet though. I get up and leave. Only after Ken shuts the door behind me do I realize I’ve forgotten to thank them.

My parents are pleased because they think I’ve given up my Vietnam “phase.” They’re glad I don’t watch all those depressing movies anymore. Instead, I lie on the couch and think about the dreams I’m having about William. He’s right there, next to Jessica, sitting in the activity room, and he’s telling me something I can do to help her.

I call Ken two weeks after the group and tell him I have a question for William. I say my uncle Johnny was a prisoner of war, too, and I have to know what it was like. Ken is less friendly this time; he says he can’t give out any information about group members. He says William’s privacy has to be respected. He says I should probably ask some relatives for more information about my uncle.

I do my fuck mantra when I hang up the phone but it doesn’t help. I can’t stop thinking about William. A guy who might be older than my father. A guy who I know almost nothing about. A guy who I saw once, sitting in a grade-school chair, saying nothing, sweating in a too tight businessman blue suit with torn-up shoes.

I wonder if I am going crazy.

I kept hoping I would run into him somewhere. Where I live is pretty small (Grandville, Illinois, only 36,814 people, according to the highway sign); things like that happen. But not this time. Not at the bank or the mall or the post office. Not even outside the liquor store, which I thought was a damn good place to try.

So I have to lurk outside the community center on Wednesday afternoon and wait until he comes out of the session. I didn’t want to do this because I’m afraid Ken might see me. Ken could even call my house, since he knows my last name. Then he’d find out there’s no Uncle Johnny, for one thing. Also, my parents would find out what I’ve done and think I’ve lost it again.

They’re very conscientious parents, according to Dr. Simpson, my shrink. They just want what’s best for me. When they checked me into the hospital last year, they felt like they didn’t have a choice. The doctors told them I was depressed, possibly suicidal; my mother, and later my father, agreed. I felt a little sorry for them when they wanted to visit me and Dr. Michaels, the head shrink, told them they couldn’t. When they did get to visit, they always cried about how messed up I was, especially when I would do my fuck mantra and refuse to talk to them the whole time.

It became so easy to cut myself off from everyone. I’m thinking maybe William will understand that.

I see Andy roll his wheelchair down the handicapped ramp and then get lifted into a special white van that’s waiting for him. I see Jeff walk slowly, head down, across the parking lot, and then get into a blue station wagon with a bumper sticker that says, “Proud Parent of an Honor Student at Grandville High.” My parents have that sticker; they put it on the back of our Volvo at the end of my sophomore year, two months before I went to the hospital.

Finally Ken and William come out together, talking quietly. I hunch down behind the steering wheel of my car: a brand-new red Toyota; it was waiting for me in the driveway the day I got home.

“Isn’t it beautiful, honey?” my mom said. Her smile was so forced it looked painful. “Now you can just zip over and pick up Karen and go out for pizza or head to the mall whenever you want.”

Karen was my best friend before. I haven’t seen her except in the halls at school since I got out. She seems nervous around me, even though she, like everyone else, was told by my mother that I was away at a boarding school. Karen invited me to a party a few weeks ago; I told her I was too tired to make it. I know my mom must have found out—Karen’s mother is a receptionist at my mom’s medical office—but she never mentioned it.

Ken stays with William until they get to a blue Chevy parked only five spots down from me. William gets in the driver’s seat. Ken leans his head down and says something to William through the window; then, as Ken walks away, William turns on the engine and starts to back up.

I wait until Ken is about ten cars away, and then I turn on the Toyota and quickly catch up to William’s car, which is just leaving the parking lot. He heads right on Stenton Avenue; I follow about one car length behind.

I lose track of him twice during the drive, but both times I’m able to speed up and find him. I have my radio on full blast, one of my favorite bands, loud guitar, drum taking over the beat of my heart, guy screaming why we have a right to be angry. I love music again. Sometimes I’m almost grateful to the hospital for giving me that.

William pulls into a big apartment complex, the Strafford Arms, a run-down place on the north edge of town. I’ve never been here before. My family lives on the west side in what Realtors, and my mother, call an upscale neighborhood. Instead of a rich neighborhood, which is what it is, comparatively speaking. We’re a very rich family, at least for this town. My mother says that’s because she works and always has, but I know several other kids whose parents both work that don’t have the money we do. My mother is a doctor, my father, an electrical engineer.