The Devil's Metal (5 page)

“Well, maybe next year will be your last
year. You’re good at the horsey stuff but you’re better at the
writing. You’re twenty-one, not twelve. I know your goal in life
isn’t to marry a horse anymore, thank god, cuz that was getting
weird.”

I sighed, wishing this whole thing could
have happened at a better time. Preferably not one that made my
head swell with the heat.

“So, then what else?” She handed me the
beer, which was already growing warm. Beads of moisture ran down
the can and made my hands slick.

I pursed my lips, pretending I was thinking
when I wasn’t.

“Oh, seriously?” Mel caught on. “Ryan?”

I shrugged. “I’d be on the road for who
knows how long. They say a couple of weeks but if I don’t get the
story, that might turn into three or four. I might be there for the
whole tour, I don’t know. So what if I come back here and Ryan has
already left for Seattle?”

She palmed her face and shook her head.
“You’re crazy, woman. Crazy fucking city, that’s what you
are
, that’s where you
live
.”

It
was
crazy city. But it was the
truth. The sad, pathetic truth.

She sighed and snatched the beer back from
me. “So, you’re considering not going on tour with one of your
favorite bands. With one of your favorite musicians, the man you
call the musical genius of our time, Mr. Sage Knightly, who happens
to be one fine piece of ass. Because you’re afraid that your loser
creep ex-boyfriend might be gone?”

I cringed and opened my mouth to defend
Ryan. Sure, he didn’t break up with me in the nicest way, and I had
caught him cheating on me (though it was only a kiss, he swears),
but Ryan had my heart for the better part of my life and—

“Turn off your brain!” Mel yelled,
interrupting my deluded thoughts. “I know what you’re thinking! And
guess what, he is already gone. I’m sorry girl, I hate to sound
mean but you really ought to get it through your thick skull that
you and Ryan are dunzo. And because of that, your life is about to
get awesome. You’re going to let some boy who wasn’t even good
enough to stay with you, you’re going to let him prevent you from
actually reaching your dream?”

“No,” I told her. I wasn’t.

“What was that?” she asked.

“No!” I repeated.

She cupped her ear with her hand. “I can’t
hear you.”

“I said no!” I yelled. Moonglow snorted from
down below.

Mel grinned. “That’s better. Now slap me
some ace.”

We high-fived. She brought out another beer
from the cooler and tossed it to me and we clinked bottles over
floating dust and summer sweat.

“So, back to my question…which one of them
are you going to shag?”

I laughed. “Oh, Mel. You know me.”

She watched me carefully, deep in thought.
“Actually, I don’t think
you
even know you right now. But
you’re about to find out exactly who Dawn Emerson is. And you might
find that after being on a bus with some of the hottest, most
virile men in the USA, you’ll be coming back a whole new woman. And
the only way you’ll get there is by being shagged to death.
Preferably by more than one man.”

She finished that off by wagging her brows.
I giggled, my face going uncharacteristically red. I knew there
wasn’t going to be any “shagging” going on, but I didn’t doubt for
a second that I was going to come back a whole new woman.

The question was: What kind of woman was I
going to be?

~~~

“First time flying?” the woman next to me
asked.

I looked at her kind face, fear flashing in
my eyes. My hands were gripping the armrests until they turned
blue, the safety belt tightened across my stomach as far it would
go. Gee, how could she tell?

I nodded, swallowing hard. Suddenly, I
wanted nothing more than to tear off the belt, run down the aisle,
and jump down the emergency slide. The bus back to Ellensburg had
to still be waiting outside the Seattle airport. I could use my
return ticket, hop back on, and within a few hours I’d be back in
my father’s arms and squeezing Eric to death. I’d never left home
before. I’d never been on an airplane before. Today was full of way
too many firsts and my queasy, panicking body wasn’t having any of
it.

On top of that, I was sad and already
missing everyone. Mel was right when she said that my brother and
dad would be fine with me leaving. But it didn’t make it hurt any
less. And it definitely didn’t ease the pressure. That morning I
saw the sorry sense of relief in my father’s face. It made him look
years younger. He was happy that I was going, knowing I was
fulfilling a passion, and relieved that I’d be bringing home a
check at the end of all of it. His salary as a repairman was barely
enough to keep us going in this recession and it was peanuts
compared to the farm when the cattle were grazing and the hay was
growing. My contribution would help us out a lot, financially and
mentally.

As for Eric, well I could tell he was
putting on his brave face. But he could never fight the tics that
came with emotion, and that’s what eventually gave him away. Plus
he was my brother. He was as close to me as anyone could be and I
would have done anything for him. If he had opened his mouth and
said, “Please, Dawn, don’t go,” I wouldn’t have gone. But he
hadn’t, because he loved me too and he wanted to prove that he
could take care of Dad, even if Dad couldn’t take care of him. He
told me to do good, to write every day, that he’d take Moonglow out
on walks in the field to keep her active, and that he’d listen to
Hybrid albums and send good vibes. I knew he would too. He was a
good kid like that.

Then there was Mel. I’d never seen the girl
cry in the eleven years I’d known her, but damn if I didn’t see
some extra moisture welling up in those big brown eyes of hers. Of
course she had to send me off with a few extra things that she
shoved in my suitcase. One of them was her favorite t-shirt, white
with stars on it that said “Mel Rocks Your Socks.” She had picked
it up in Portland once at some funky shop and wore it at least once
a week. She said she was giving it to me for good luck, “like a
lucky Mel’s foot—except a shirt instead of my foot.”

She then proceeded to give me a blue dress
with wide sleeves and a deep v-neck in both the front and back. I
had only three dresses: a light cotton one that reached the floor,
my tacky rodeo queen one, and the one I wore to prom. Those
definitely weren’t coming with me on my trip and Mel knew it.

“You might have to look like a woman,” she
said with a wink. “I thought this was a bit rock-ish too.”

I held up the dress against me. It would
reach my knees at least but the top was a bit too risqué for my
liking. But I thanked Mel anyway, brought her into a big embrace,
and I was off on the Greyhound, looking down at the three of them
as the bus left the station, wondering what I had gotten myself
into.

I spent most of the bus ride earlier trying
to busy myself and keep my mind occupied from the pangs of sadness
that hit my heart, and the fright that fluttered around in my
stomach as I took on the unknown. I decided the best course of
action would be to prepare myself as much as I could for Hybrid. I
started by looking back at what I had written, including the piece
that examined the evolution of their sound.

Hybrid. According to Webster’s, it is
“anything derived from heterogeneous sources, or composed of
elements of different or incongruous kinds: a hybrid of the
academic and business worlds.” In the music world, Hybrid is a
bastard combination of sexual prowess, chugging guitars, and
swaggering bass with delicate hints of country blues and Latino
flavor. It is a mess of a band, who, with their upcoming third
album, are already pushing the envelope with their energetic live
shows and intense fearlessness.

Yeah, it was a bit cliché to have that
dictionary definition, but whatever. Hybrid won me over with their
sound, the way they took a band like Led Zeppelin and made it roll
like a freight train. They wanted to take on
anything—
anything
—and do it louder. Harder. Better. I loved
them for that.

Sitting beneath the ominous shadow of the
snow-capped Mount Shasta lies the Northern California town of
Redding. There’s not much to it. Dry, rolling hills spread lazily
about on both sides of the interstate, dotted with farms and
orchards. It’s a slow pace of life here, good, honest and humble.
So where the hell did the band Hybrid come from as they clawed
their way out of Redding’s dusty belly? How did that town produce
the heaviest, most groundbreaking band to ever grace American
soil?

I had often wondered that. That was one
thing I hadn’t seen in many interviews with the band—how everything
really got going, what inspired them all as individuals?

To answer this we have to look back to where
it all started. Imagine a fifteen-year-old Robbie Oliver strutting
about in his parent’s garage to Mickey Brown’s thunderous guitar
and Mickey’s brother, Austin, on bass. On the lead guitar they had
Bill Watkins, a skilled guitarist who was a friend of Robbie’s
father. They’ve even got a neighborhood kid on the drums just
trying to keep up. Fast forward a few months, and the band has
gotten rid of the neighborhood kid and put in Sage Knightly
instead. Yes, little Sage started on the drums but it wasn’t long
before things were shaken up. Bill suffered a mild heart attack,
and Austin Brown came down with a good ol’ fashioned case of mono.
Sage jumped at the opportunity to do lead guitar—not a far stretch
since he was the key songwriter and could play any instrument—and
Noelle Clark, Mickey’s girlfriend, took over the bass. Soon, Graham
Freed answered an ad in the Redding classified section, and they
had a new drummer as well. This was the real start of Hybrid, a
band that mixed genres and their own musicians.

My own obsession with the band started with
Ryan, actually. We were into a lot of music together, and though
his tastes leaned more towards the blues and country, he picked up
Hybrid’s first self-titled album on a whim while visiting San
Francisco. There had been no radio play for the album at all, so no
one had really heard of them. But for whatever reason, Ryan bought
the record, took it back home to Ellensburg and played it for me in
my room. I wasn’t hooked right away. Sometimes it sounded too loud.
Other times, too weird. But it got its claws in me, and pretty soon
I was learning everything I could about the band.

Which, at the time, wasn’t much. With no
radio play, they also had no press. I’d written a fan letter to the
address on the back of the record but never heard back. They were
reclusive and mysterious. It made me love them more.

Then the second album,
Asteroid
, was
released on Elektra Records and things exploded. Their first
single, “Red Blues Sun” got airplay everywhere. It was the song for
the summer of ’73. They started touring and making appearances on
The Midnight Special with their quieter numbers like “Pieces of
Ash” and “The Deal Fell Through.” Robbie and Sage became the focus
of the band. Robbie for his extraordinary voice, his manic,
monkey-like behavior on stage, and his foxy Californian good looks.
Sage for being a 6’3” powerhouse of pure talent, the driving force
behind the band, and the one code the press couldn’t crack. Where
Robbie loved nothing more than to talk about himself and the music
(and the women), Sage never said much of anything at all.

I was going to have to change that.

The roar of the airplane engines coming
alive shook me out of my thoughts. We had coasted up the runway and
now we were headed for the sky.

I looked over at the lady next to me. She
had a book out and was thoroughly engrossed, not paying attention
at all to the fact that we were about to be launched into the air
in a metal tube with wings. I had brought a book too,
Carrie
by some new author, but there was no way I’d be able to concentrate
on it while 35,000 feet in the sky. I didn’t even know why I’d
picked that book as it looked kind of scary and scary stuff wasn’t
really my thing.

I wasn’t sure if it was because I was
thinking of the book, or because we were now in the air and I was
terrified of us falling to our deaths, but an incredible chill
passed over my body, causing every hair on my arms to stand up. My
eyes had been squeezed shut for the last few minutes so I opened
them to the circulated air and fluorescent lights.

The chill intensified.

In the narrow space between the seats in
front of me was the shadowed face of someone staring in my
direction. I could barely make out that it was a little boy, maybe
around six years old. He kept his dark eyes on me. He opened his
mouth to grin.

My breath caught in my throat.

It lasted only a second, only a flash of
white teeth, but I could have sworn his teeth were fanged. Sharp as
razors and entirely inhuman.

Then the smile vanished and the boy turned
around.

I spent the rest of the plane ride with my
eyes locked on the back of his seat. I didn’t fear the airplane
anymore—I feared something else.

It wasn’t until we were getting up to get
our bags that I got another glimpse of him. He was smiling,
perfectly normal teeth, chatting to his parents, a cute young boy
overall. He didn’t look my way once, and by the time I was walking
into the airport, dragging my carry-on behind me, I’d come to the
conclusion that it was all in my head.

Why on earth had I just spent a couple of
hours on an airplane focused on some random little boy when I had
more pressing things to think about? Was it just a distraction for
my mind? Because it had worked.

Now, as passengers dispersed in the arrivals
terminal, I had to look for a man carrying a sign that said Dawn
Emerson on it.