Beneath the Stain - Part 7 (8 page)

“I’m a grown-up, and the little kids need her. I’ll see her at Christmas. Anyway, what’d you want?”

“Can we do a setup in the garage? There’s fuckin’ room in there—”

“Mackey?” his mother said, playing with her melting bowl of ice cream. “Do you really have to swear that much?”

“Fu—”

“No, seriously. It’s one thing to use it for emotion, but it’s like every other word. Do you really need to go to the fucking store to buy some fucking ice cream to fucking eat?”

Mackey took a deep breath. “Mom, I just went to a fucking house of doom to see my fucking ex-boyfriend because he’s fucking dying. Yes, and that’s why we need to fucking practice, because if I don’t get some of this fucking shit out of my chest, I’m gonna
fucking
lose it. Okay?”

Oh God. He’d killed it. They’d been doing okay—they’d been dealing, but he’d just yelled at his mother and brought it all out to the surface and—

“Ah-fucking-men,” Jefferson and Stevie said together, their voices coming from low and inside.

“Anything you want on the playlist?” Jefferson asked.

Mackey grinned at him, suddenly loving his brothers so much it hurt. “Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution,” he said, “‘Badlands,’ ‘When They Come For Me,’ ‘Johnny Guitar,’ ‘We Will Rock You’—”

“Further On Up The Road,” Kell added, since it was clear they were doing covers.

Mackey nodded. “Fair enough. Any other requests?”

“Come Out and Play,” Stevie said, at the same time Jefferson said, “The Kids Aren’t Alright.”

Mackey had to laugh. “Offspring it is.” It figured they’d both pick the same band.

“Stairway to Heaven,” Blake said, and they all met eyes.

“Wish You Were Here,” Trav said, and a sigh riffled through the room.

“We’ll close with that,” Mackey said. They all knew the songs—they were practice favorites. They’d even done some of them on stage. But they weren’t Outbreak Monkey songs. Just this once, they were going to let someone else’s words, someone else’s pain, speak for them. It was pretty damned clear the band didn’t have words of their own. That was okay. Sometimes that’s what rock’n’roll was for.

He looked up then, conscious that he was a grown-up, and he needed to mend his fences as he busted them. “And I’m sorry, Mom, for swearing at you in your kitchen.”

His mom grimaced. “And I’m sorry, Mackey, for picking the wrong way to parent at the wrong damned time. Go shower. I’ll let Briony set up the garage.”

“Sure thing, Ms. Sanders—just let me talk to Mackey first.”

Briony met him in the hallway just as he was wondering if he was really going to need some Motrin for a little bit of weed. No. No, because the hangover, the letdown, was important. He didn’t like this feeling. He should remember that.

“How are you?” Briony asked as Mackey grabbed the handle to his door.

For a moment Mackey let his shoulders sag. “Trav ain’t talked to me since we left,” he said, letting her see it. “I… it’s complicated. But I was tender with Grant. Sweet. I think Trav saw. I woulda told him, but….”

“He’s not the forgiving sort,” Briony said softly.

“I had to,” Mackey said, believing that. “God, Briony. It don’t matter what we were to each other when no one was looking. He was a boy I grew up with—
the
boy I grew up with. It’s….”

Trav walked in, and suddenly Mackey couldn’t talk. He had no words. None. He walked away abruptly, heading for the shower.

Ah, God, water was supposed to purify, wasn’t it?
Help me, Jesus, wash away my sins, wash away my past, ’cause I wouldn’t trade a thing, but it wasn’t meant to last.

He started singing, loud, louder, the rhythm of the water nothing on the rhythm inside him.

Help me put shit into boxes, help me ship it all away, ’cause I don’t want to trade the home I built for the shelter I built yesterday.

Oh God. God, Trav’s eyes searing into Mackey from across the hallway. Mackey didn’t know what it meant.

Help me read the grown-up runes carved in my skin and bone. Help me keep my lover while I learn to stand alone.

He could. He
could
stand alone.

Help me make amends, oh please, ’cause it sucks to be alone.

It’s hard to take the memories, hard to put them on a shelf

Even harder when I’m by my fucking self.

’Cause I put the dishes with the clothes and

Clothes with the magazines

And none of the labels I got for shit

Are really what they mean.

And I’m working hard on frameworks

And I’m starting to break a sweat.

’Cause every box that I’ve unpacked is labeled with regret.

I’m fucking tired of regret.

Break that fucking box, destroy what’s all inside.

Until there’s not another regret to fucking find.

He screamed the last part, screamed it hard, the melody conforming to the words as he sang. He wanted percussion
here,
and he wanted guitars, both of them,
here
, and he wanted them real, in his ears—

I need the water off my body,

Let it cleanse my fucking
mind
!

He stood naked in the shower, panting, barely aware that Trav reached inside and turned off the tap. The shower curtain whisked back, and Mackey realized he was naked, literally, in body and spirit.

Trav handed him a towel and gave him a hand out of the tub. He needed the hand; his knees were shaking.

“What’re you doing?” Mackey muttered as Trav wrapped another towel around his shoulders and started drying him off.

Trav closed his eyes and pressed his temple against Mackey’s. “This shit in your head, it’s here to stay,” he said softly. “Give me some time, but don’t worry. It’s not anything I can’t live with.”

Mackey closed his eyes, felt Trav’s warmth against his face, felt his heartbeat even out a little, and some of the fight drained out of him. “That is so fucking good to know,” he said, at ease for the first time since they’d left for Grant’s that morning. “Are the guys set up?”

“I told them to give it twenty minutes. Write the song down. I dug out your notebook and everything.”

Mackey smiled a little and pulled away. “It’ll make a good single before we go on hiatus.”

Trav grunted. “It’s fucking brilliant, McKay. It’s going to make you all a lot of money—but that’s not going to make up for what it’s going to cost to sing it.”

Mackey sighed and shrugged. “Isn’t that art?”

Trav grimaced. “Thanks. I’ll never envy you again. Now come on out. I dug out some old sweats and stuff. Get dressed.”

For over a year, they’d shared a room. Once they had to get dressed in a minute and a half because the hotel had forgotten the wake-up call and their plane left in an hour. Even then Trav had touched his bare bottom in passing.

“Trav?” he asked, grabbing his clothes with one hand and toweling his hair with the other.

“Yeah?”

“If you’re not mad at me, could you, you know, do me a favor and rub my ass? Or my back? Or my shoulders? Or—” His voice shook. He remembered Grant’s plea.

“What’s wrong?” Trav at his back, sliding his hand across his stomach, was enough to make him shake.

“Grant hadn’t been touched in two weeks. Nobody hugged him. I don’t think he got any before that either. Two weeks, Trav. I shake just—oolf!”

Trav engulfed him, warmth from top to bottom, those big anaconda arms around his shoulders, the hard line of Trav’s body along his back, even Trav’s chin resting on top of his head.

“Thank you,” Mackey sighed, leaning his head on that cannon-size bicep.

Trav’s breath whispered in his ear. “Welcome. You can have more after you practice. You need it.”

“Yeah. Move, Goliath—time for me to write.”

S
TEVIE
DIDN
’
T
have the drum set there, but Briony had brought two drum pads and a keyboard, and then, in a stroke of genius, she scrounged up a couple of pots and boxes, as well as some wooden spoons. Stevie cackled when he saw it, and by the time the guys had tuned their acoustic guitars, he was playing with all the toys, as gleeful as a kid playing rock band.

For all their experience, for all their fame, Mackey had a moment to realize they
were
kids playing rock band.

And that thought made him really fucking proud.

They riffed for a minute, the garage door open so they’d have more room. Mackey kept his guitar slung around his neck, because some of the songs they’d picked had guitar solos, and he missed doing that work. When he wasn’t doing the worm on stage, he loved getting a chance to play.

“Stevie, you ready?” Mackey asked, grinning.

In response, Stevie started pounding out the drum riff from “When They Come For Me” on the top of three plastic cat litter boxes. “Try to catch up, motherfucker!” he crowed, and everybody howled.

By the time they reached “Stairway to Heaven,” the band was hoarse and swimming in sweat. Mackey would need another shower before he slept, but he didn’t care. His body ached because he’d thrown himself around on his mother’s driveway just like he would have on stage, and he had the scrapes on his elbows and knees to prove it. He didn’t care. None of them cared. Kell, Blake, and Jefferson had done knee drops, and Stevie had sliced his hand open banging on the side of the garage for “Come Out and Play,” but none of them were stopping.

Mackey played every song to their small audience—Trav, Shelia, Briony, his mom, Walter, Debra, and a collection of neighbors who had wandered in when the cacophony reached them.

But now it was the second-to-last one, and it was time to settle down.

“You know what pisses me off about this song?” Mackey mused, not really riffing to the crowd but talking to his guys.

“What?” Kell asked, tuning up. His practice guitar was his old Walmart model, and it fell out of tune with almost every song. It was worse because there was frost on the air tonight, and the sky had turned black as they played.

“It’s not just women who do this shit. Man, it’s fuckin’ everybody. Briony? Shelia? You guys hum the flute part, okay? Stevie’s keyboard isn’t doing the high notes.”

“Got it, Mackey!” they said together and lined up behind Jefferson, huddling, their breath coming out like smoke.

Mackey picked out the opening notes, and the entire neighborhood stopped rustling, stopped panting, stopped moving in the reverence that riff inevitably brought.

Briony and Shelia didn’t have bad voices, either, and their sweet counterpoint soared out of the garage just like the song said, a bridge of notes, a stairway to heaven.

Mackey twisted a smile at his band and winked. “There’s a gay-be who’s sure all that glitters is gold….”

Everybody laughed quietly, even people who, Mackey was sure, had no idea who Outbreak Monkey was and that Mackey was talking about himself. That was okay. Trav made the grimly ironic face he wore when he knew Mackey was making a joke at his own expense. Well, fine. Trav didn’t have to like his jokes as long as he kept loving Mackey.

The song wailed, soared, exploded, and distilled into the haunting finale. Mackey closed his eyes as the last note died, and his audience, such as it was, let the silence hold.

For a moment in the cold country October in the Sierra Foothills, everything was silver frost and hard, bright gold.

Then the smattering of applause made him open his eyes, and he smiled, his whole body sagging. He was exhausted, he realized. The band probably was too. But they’d promised one more number, and Mackey was going to go over the new song he’d written in the shower.

Well, the song was written down and could wait until tomorrow, but he didn’t want to disappoint Trav.

He made eye contact with Trav and knew him well enough by now that he could tell that Trav was about to let them off the hook for “Wish You Were Here,” but he didn’t get a chance.

A pre-turn-of-the-century Oldsmobile had just parked in front of Mackey’s mom’s house. The top was burgundy, but the wear from too many autowashes had dulled it, and it was starting to smoke.

It was in almost
exactly
the same condition it had been the last time they’d been practicing at Stevie’s house, and Stevie’s dad had come home early.

They all knew the drill. Stevie and Jefferson stood up and grabbed Shelia’s hand. “Mackey?” Stevie’s voice shook.

“We can’t do this,” Jefferson said matter-of-factly. “We’ve had our closure—we’re not engaging with this asshole now.”

Mackey nodded, unslinging his guitar and setting it carefully inside the garage.

“You guys go on in,” he agreed. The last time they had done this, the Olds had pulled up and the five of them had simply taken off running for Grant’s minivan, instruments over their necks, Stevie’s sticks held tight in his hands. Jeff and Stevie had never told them why, but they hadn’t needed to know. The fear was infectious—it always had been. The two of them must have stood up to him at some time, because they weren’t afraid now. They were just bone-tired.

Mackey understood that. He was tired too. But it was always easier to deal with shit when it wasn’t yours.

“Who’s that?” Trav asked as a pudgy, balding middle-aged man wearing a cheap polyester suit and a tacky tie got out of the car and strode up. He had a broad, clueless smile on his face, like he didn’t see what all the fuss was about.

“Stevie’s dad,” Mackey told him grimly.

He was completely unprepared for what happened next.

Trav was wearing a soft navy sweater, and he literally rolled up his sleeves with definite intent. Then he hauled ass down to meet Stevie’s dad with an expression on his face that Mackey could only describe as murderous.

“Trav?”

“Get out of here,” Trav growled, his very presence pushing the older man backward. “You are not welcome here.”

“Now, I’m Stevie Harris’s father—”

“I know
exactly
who you are and I’ve got a fair idea of what you’ve done, and my boys don’t need you.” Trav poked a sharp finger into Mr. Harris’s sternum. “They”—poke—“don’t”—poke—“need you!”