Fifteen
Back at Stratofortress’s house, I show the band my torn blister. I show I can still play through the pain. They all grin, and Max claps me on the shoulder. And I’m grinning too, even though it’s stupid.
But you know what, Holly? I sort of get why you were impressed with Ultimate Steve that night he cut off his finger and finished the gig. Sometimes there’s nothing keeping us going except mule-headed cussedness. It’s not pretty, but it’s respectable.
Then everything changes in an instant. Stratofortress gets ready for practice. Ultimate Steve sits down behind his drum kit, then whips around to look at me. “What … what did you do?”
“Nothing.” I sit on the couch beside Britney. “What are you talking about?”
He tips one of the cymbals toward me, light from the ceiling fan reflecting off its bright yellow surface. “You cleaned them.”
“Well, yeah. Just … so?” I can feel everybody staring at me.
“How?” Steve snaps. “What did you do to them?”
“Nothing! I shined them a little. Vinegar and, and aluminum foil.”
I glance at Tyler for support. Tyler tugs on his hair and says, “Jane, we have a gig tomorrow! Tomorrow!”
“So what? They’ll look nice for the show now.”
“They’re not supposed to look nice !” Steve yells, twisting the word “nice” into a barbed fishhook. “They’re supposed to look like crap. That’s how you know they sound good. They’re supposed to look scuffed and scratched from every song they’ve ever played. You clean them, you mess with their mojo.”
“Their huh?”
“Mojo! Their magic.” Leaning close, he taps the cymbals with his drumstick, then pushes the pedal that makes the two little ones clap together. “These aren’t pots and pans, okay? I’ve had these cymbals since I was sixteen. I traded my entire comic book collection for them, everything, even my Wolverine and Deadpool stuff, like my entire childhood for them.”
“But I didn’t do any—”
Steve cuts me off. “I’ve played them every day since then. My sweat is in these things. My blood is in these things. That gives them mojo. That makes them more than what you can see or hold.”
I start. It’s almost exactly how Auntie Peake described the river earlier today. “I … I’m sorry,” I mumble. “I didn’t know.”
“They still sound all right,” LeighAnn says. “Come on, Ultimate.”
“They’re not all right! The overtones are thinner now, listen.” He keeps tapping the cymbal.
Max says, “Come on, Ultimate, we have to get ‘Cheers’ down tonight.”
Ultimate Steve straightens up, but he’s still not happy. “Spend years getting them sounding just right, years pouring my heart and soul into them, but sure, stick them in the dishwasher. They’ll be fine.”
I decide to make myself scarce during practice, so I take Max’s acoustic out onto the back patio. I try to play, but my hand is cramped into a claw. Instead, I listen to the band and turn the guitar over and over. Its top is blond wood, and the reflection of the plastic skull lights overhead wobbles across its surface.
Of course instruments have mojo. It’s plain as day once you really think. The guitar is just wood and steel wires and empty holes. It’s mostly just air. But you used a guitar to fill people with joy, drop them to their knees as quick as any rifle. Of course instruments are magical, of course they’re more than what you can see and hold.
And of course the river has its own mojo. We’ve felt it before, Holly, swinging out over Swallow’s Nest Bluff. And that winter afternoon when the frozen pines sang in the crisp, clean air. And all those fishing trips in Dad’s boat, the never-still surface of the lake rising and dipping like the chest of sleeping Leviathan. Those waters have a deep, slow, quiet power older than any human soul. We’ve always known that, we just never had a name for it.
I don’t notice the band taking a break until the glass door slides open and LeighAnn steps out, cigarette in hand. She says, “Hey. Doing okay?”
I nod and force a smile. “Steve still mad?”
“Oh, yeah. He’d burn your house down if you weren’t staying here.” She sits on the concrete steps beside me and whistles. Her dogs trot up to get petted. “Don’t worry, though. He’ll get over it.”
“You guys are sounding better tonight.”
She shrugs. “It’s coming together, coming together. Now you’re coming to the show tomorrow, right? Even if we totally bomb—”
“You’re not going to bomb.”
“Even if we bomb, Against the Dawn is amazing. Jessie, the singer, we were in a band together back in college. She pulled Against the Dawn together, like, a year ago after moving down to Atlanta, and they’ve already got a record contract.”
“Wow. That’s cool.”
“Yeah, they’re not huge yet or anything, but if this tour goes well, they really could be. You like … what kind of music do you like, anyway?”
“Contemporary Christian. Mostly Christian rock.”
“Oh.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just, ‘Oh, okay. That’s the music you like.’”
“Nuh-uh, that wasn’t an understanding ‘Oh.’ That was a sympathy ‘Oh.’ Like the ‘Oh’ you give somebody after their grandma dies. That ‘Oh’ was dangerously close to an ‘Aw.’”
She’s grinning. “It was just an ‘Oh.’”
“Not all Christian stuff is lame. I mean, some of it is, but there are lots of bands that are really good.”
“I like some of it. I love some old gospel stuff. But Christian music … ” Her gaze floats around the backyard, searching for the right words. “Christian music isn’t really a style of music like rock or the blues. It’s really more of a song theme, like love songs.”
“So?”
“So listening to it all the time, and nothing else, it’s like listening to love songs all the time and nothing else.”
“So? Would that be so horrible?”
“Yes. Because nobody’s in love all the time.”
“So? Maybe we would be in love all the time if we listened to love songs all the time.”
LeighAnn laughs and shakes her head at the same time. “Just so you know, I hated girls like you when I was in high school.”
“Girls like me how?”
“The smiley, sunny Jesus dorks who think that if anything’s wrong in your life, it’s because you aren’t praying hard enough.”
“I don’t think that.”
“Who think life is clear-cut, and if you say it’s not, they decide you’re just on drugs or a sinner.”
“I do not think that! LeighAnn, my best friend drowned and turned into a river ghost. I watched her kill her pa-paw; she almost killed me. You seriously expect me to tell you life is clear-cut?”
“Yeah, well … maybe you’re not that bad. But you can still be pretty obnoxious.”
“Naw, you like me despite yourself. Admit it.”
“I like you despite yourself.”
We both chuckle, then fall quiet. I slide my fingers up and down the guitar strings. It sounds like some creature yawning and stretching itself awake. LeighAnn says, “I got kicked out of church for having blue hair.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’d just broken up with this guy … okay, he cheated on me, and I told him I was ready to forgive him, then he dumped me.”
“Ouch. Sorry.”
“Definitely not my best moment. But anyway, I was angry and, I don’t know, I wanted to be different. So I dyed my hair blue. Then at church, Deacon Andrews—jackass—pulled me aside and said I couldn’t come back until it was a normal color. That just made me even madder, so I just never went back.” She grabs a stick and throws it for Cookie. I get the feeling she’s waiting for me to say something. She’s daring me to say anything.