Moody Food (8 page)

Home—the car refuelled, washed, and returned to the garage, Mr. Bowman paid by Selma for his morning's labour—Thomas and his sister go to their respective rooms, Becky slowly, the sheen on today's purchases already beginning to fade, Thomas quickly, having to remind himself twice on his way up the stairs that running is not allowed in the house (his father, when he's home, with the belt and temper to confirm it). First Thomas's and then Becky's bedroom doors shut tight. Selma, in the kitchen downstairs washing fresh strawberries for dinner tonight, softly hums to herself an old gospel song, apart from the sound of cold running water and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the front room, the old house's only noise.

Thomas locks his bedroom door and heads right for the record player. Placing the first disc on the turntable, he carefully sets the needle down and sits on the floor cross-legged in front of the speakers and waits.

First he just listens, lets the record play, allows the music to engulf him like the foaming wild August waves he wades into every summer at the family cottage at Myrtle Beach.

Song done—Thomas's absolute favourite of the moment, Hillbilly Cat Elvis and his “That's All Right Mama”—he puts the arm back at the beginning and this time tries to really hear all that's there, to get a feel for how the whole thing manages to fit together so magically, so completely, to sound so unbelievably reined-in reckless.

Before picking up his Fender from its case to begin the long task of attempting to work his way through Scotty Moore's electric guitar lines, Thomas takes a short break and sits studying the picture of Elvis on the record sleeve. Eventually he sets the needle back down again and stands in front of the full-length mirror hanging on the door to his walk-in closet with his acoustic guitar strapped over his shoulder waiting for the sound of Moore's sharp Fender trebling to get things started and his own body stirring. He doesn't have to wait long.

Bill Black's steady stand-up bass-slapping starts right in soon after Scotty does and straightaway Thomas is swivelling his hips and shaking his hands and knees and snarling at the girls in the front row just like Elvis himself did last spring when Thomas saw him at the City Auditorium.

“That's All Right Mama” finishes up with Thomas on the edge of the stage staring deep into the adoring eyes of Debbie McDonald, the prettiest girl in his grade seven class, Thomas pitching his guitar over his shoulder and leaving the crazed audience dying for the favour of just one more.

 

For the next who-knows-how-many hours Thomas is back on the floor in front of the hi-fi, cradling the unplugged electric white Fender in his lap and working away on the lead to the song as best as his eleven-year-old fingers will allow. A little after six o'clock Selma knocks softly but insistently in steady little rap-taps on his door.

“Thomas.”

Thomas lifts his head from the guitar.

Selma doesn't bother knocking again, knows that he's listening.

“Thomas, your daddy called from his club and he'll be home any minute now so you put your records and things away and start getting ready for supper now, you hear? You don't need to wear no tie tonight, your jacket and good pants'll do, it's just gonna be you
and Miss Becky and your daddy. Your momma's still not feeling too well but she's gonna be just fine so don't you worry.”

Thomas goes back to his guitar.

Not wanting to raise her voice for fear of disturbing Mrs. Graham resting in her own room at the other end of the hall, Selma comes closer to the bedroom door, her cheek pressed right against the wood.

“You know how your daddy don't like for you children to make him late in getting his supper, now.”

Thomas presses the strings of the guitar harder.

“Thomas, you know how he hates it.”

His little fingers flying up and down the fretboard now, desperate for the secret of how Scotty does it, Thomas begins to scat along with Elvis as the song reaches its end for the umpteenth time that day, his own picking and singing almost managing to drown Selma out.

“Ah da-da-dee-dee-dee-dee.”

“Thomas ...”

Both of them hear the crunch of hot gravel under the tires of Thomas's father's Cadillac tearing into the driveway.

“Thomas ...”

“Dee-dee-dee-dee-dee.”

AND WHAT A HAPPY ragtag crew we must have made! Learning to play together, learning how to get along, learning all about that most elusive of lost chords, life. Ta dah! And weren't we all on the way to Interstellar North American Music worship right out of the gate, right off the bat, just like that? Sorry to disappoint.

More than a week after we'd first toured the studio, Christine still didn't know she'd been conscripted into the band, Thomas still didn't know she didn't know, and I was still too petrified to let anyone hear me play the drums. But at least I was playing. I knew I didn't have a clue what I was doing, but it felt good to do it anyway, too good to stop. All I could hear was the thunder of the musical gods, not my own puny little hallelujahs.

Somehow I always managed to find an excuse not to be in the studio whenever Thomas said he would be—overtime at work, I'd plead, or girlfriend stuff, or fighting off the beginning of a bad cold, or whatever other untruth happened to be lying around and handy. Then Thomas himself actually got sick—the flimsy leather jacket he'd been wearing since the fall no match for his first real sample of Canadian winter—and at least for a little while I didn't have to listen to him gripe about how the band hadn't started rehearsing yet. To try to provide a little cheer, I lied to him over the phone and said I'd made an extra studio key for Christine and that she was there almost every night working away on improving her chops on the bass, an instrument it turned out she'd played in her high school's senior band. Thomas sneezed and said she should be, that we had a lot of work ahead of us.

Through a plugged nose, “Next week we start, Buckskin. Rain or shine, the ball gets put in play next week.”

I said I couldn't have been more excited and told him to drink lots of liquids and get plenty of rest.

WHEN I SAY THAT no one heard me play, that's not quite right. Maybe Scotty was deaf and didn't actually listen to me, but he was there in the studio almost every night I was, hunched over the rickety green card table Thomas had set up in the corner as a sort of break space for the band, working away as usual on his poetry. Here, he'd carry on not that much differently than he did at the Riverboat, where he rubbed wrinkled elbows with us hippies, or at his own favourite watering hole, the Palm Grove Lounge, the downstairs drinking arm of the Embassy Tavern.

Ramming open the door of the studio with the rubber end of his cane, Scotty would nod/scowl at me behind the drums like he was reluctantly bestowing permission for me to continue playing and without a word shuffle off to the card table. Impeccably slovenly dressed as always—antiquated suit jacket, egg yolk–spattered tie, beat-up black Oxfords—he'd carefully unpack his out-of-tune violin and the contents of his paper sack onto the table. Today's
Toronto Daily Star
; a wide variety of different coloured pens, each for performing a different editorial task; and paper. Lots and lots of paper. And every long, legal-sized piece covered top to bottom with Scotty's indecipherable chicken scratch poetry. Only his customary glass of draft beer was missing. He managed to make do with a small silver flask full of cheap scotch from which he'd periodically nip before returning to the inside pocket of his jacket.

The first time he burst into the room while I was practising I froze in mid–drum roll, caught in the act, like there I was with my dick in my hand and half the world was watching. He barely even acknowledged me, merely undid the bottom button on his suit jacket, sat down at the table, and got down to work putting his portable office in order. He finally turned around in his grey metal chair.

“You think you're going to disturb me or something?” he said.

I knew he was expert at reading lips. “How'd you know I wasn't playing?” I said.

Slapping the sole of one of his Oxfords against the hardwood floor a couple of times to make his point, “I'm deaf, not dead, you know,” he said. “And don't you or anybody else ever forget it, either.”

With that, he swivelled back around and began to furiously scratch out line after line of apparently unworthy verse. Run or drum? The ball was clearly in my court.

I played.

It was like when I was a kid and it was two o'clock in the morning and I was downstairs in the family room with the
Late, Late Show
turned way down low so my parents wouldn't know I was awake, wondering why Ellen Simpson liked Jack Tate better than she liked me. Although Snowball, our family Westy, had never, as far as I knew, known the triple-heartburn package of lust, jealousy, and complete and utter self-doubt that makes up a fourteen-year-old's definition of love, having him beside me at the other end of that couch felt good. Even if he was sound asleep on his back with all four white furry legs stuck straight up in the air. Snowball was
there
. And sometimes that's not only enough, that's exactly what is needed.

So I played. And Scotty slashed with his red pen. And I played. And Scotty scribbled with his blue pen. And I played. And Scotty pulled from his flask, wiped his mouth on his coat sleeve, and read what he'd just written. And I played.

A half an hour in he swung around in his chair.

“Slow that down a little and you might actually have something there,” he said.

Naturally I stopped playing. Of course he let me have it.

“If that's your idea of slowing it down, Thomas is in a lot worse shape than I thought.”

“You can feel it that much?” I said. “Just through the vibrations?”

“Enough to know that a waltz doesn't sound like a goddamn jackhammer.”

I stared down between my feet at a black boot smudge on the floor and wondered how many drummers have ever been bawled out by a deaf guy. While I sat there trying to figure out a way to tell Thomas that he'd have to find another percussionist, I looked up to see Scotty's feet moving together to some sort of rhythm.

Left Oxford tap tap, right Oxford tap; left Oxford tap tap, right Oxford tap.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I realized it was me—me—making those old shoes move. Imagine. Go on, try.

BY THE TIME THOMAS got over his cold it was almost Christmas and the Duckhead Secret Society was just going to have to wait. Phlegm-free and vertical again, with both cowboy boots firmly planted on the ground, Thomas didn't take the news that his entire rhythm section was going to be spending the next several days at the homes of their respective relatives in quite the generous spirit of the season I'd hoped. It was the day before the night before Christmas and we were at the nearly deserted Riverboat for what I, at least, was calling a goodbye cup of coffee. We'd agreed to meet at two that afternoon and he'd showed up a half-hour late. He must have been at it since early that morning because he was already as juiced as I'd ever seen him. I ignored the coffee he bought me spiked with his own whisky. Drunks at Christmas-time always depressed me. Still do.

“Don't think I don't understand that you and Miss Christine have obligations that have got to be fulfilled,” he said. “Don't think
that because of my unfortunate orphaned condition I'm not sympathetic to the duties of kin. Because I am, Buckskin, believe me, I am. Let there be no misunderstanding between us on this point.” He laid five cold fingers across my hand and leaned across the table, obviously his cool-headed feverish old self again. I nodded back as heartfelt as I could muster in the hope of breaking free of his cadaver's touch and getting one step closer to the door.

Because it was Christmas! In spite of how counter-culturally uncool it sounded, well ... it was Christmas!

I wanted to taste my mum's hot mincemeat tarts with a plop of homemade whipped cream on top and see her in her old blue cardigan, the one with the bottom button missing, the one she alway wore around the house whenever she was in a serious baking state. I wanted to drink hot apple cider and watch
Bonanza
and
Gunsmoke
and
The Fugitive
on TV with my dad and get bugged at the smog of cherry smoke from his pipe filling up the downstairs rec room. I wanted to sleep in my old room again and not get up until noon and wear my green leather high-school football jacket and take long walks with Snowball after lunch and leave tracks in the freshly fallen snow down by the creek and maybe afterwards take a nap on the couch in the basement in front of the fireplace. I wanted to go home for Christmas.

“All of these family matters are legitimate and true,” Thomas said, “all of this I admit to you as absolutely valid, one hundred percent, all of it. But I ask you this, here's the thing I want you to really, really think about: Even if there are unavoidable responsibilities that you two have, why should this mean that what we've got going here has to go to hell in a handbasket just because of it?”

Thomas stopped his pitch just long enough to turn around and two-finger motion to the waitress for another couple of coffees, although I'd barely touched mine and he definitely didn't need another. In deference to my dad picking me up at my place in less
than an hour, I waved the order away behind Thomas's back. The girl, tie-dyed and long-haired and maybe nineteen, smiled at me and seemed thankful for the change in plans. Mincemeat tarts and pipe smoke and a childhood dog pal of her own, I thought.

“Listen,” he said, “here's what you do, here's what you and Miss Christine both do. Tomorrow night, each of you shoots on up there to your parents' place and drops off your presents and has a glass of eggnog with the folks and kisses your mama on the cheek and shakes your daddy's hand and does what every good boy and girl is supposed to do. That's only what's right and proper, and you're going to do it, and that's the way it should be. Okay. That's settled. But that's tomorrow night. Tonight, well, tonight—”

“I already told you, Thomas, Christine's gone.”

“But she'll be back. I mean, she's—”

“She left this morning on the train with her mum and dad and little sister to spend the holidays with her brother and his wife in Montreal. She won't be back until sometime late next week.”

Thomas opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but his lips fell shut before anything managed to come out. He took a long, greedy pull from his coffee and whisky. I felt bad for him, saw how disappointed he was, but Thomas always seemed to get what he wanted and maybe not getting it for a change might not be such a horrible thing.

“Look, thanks for the caffeine,” I said. “But I've still got to pack before my old man shows up.” I took a last drink to try to make some kind of appreciative dent. Our waitress was busy piling chairs on top of tables.

Thomas looked up from the empty cup still in his hand. In a quieter voice than I was used to, “But what about us?” he said. “What about the Duckhead Secret Society?”

“We're coming back, Thomas,” I said. “We're not going away forever.”

“Sure,” he said. He looked like a miserable little boy being left behind for summer vacation by all his neighbourhood buddies.

“Are you going to be all right?” I said. I knew he wasn't going back to Mississippi for the holidays—“No money to get me there, and now that Uncle Pen's gone, not much reason to go”—and I worried at the idea of him hanging around Yorkville feeling sorry for himself with too much time on his hands. But I had to go. My dad would be honking the horn of the station wagon in front of my place any time now. I really had to go.

“I'll be okay,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“I'll be fine.”

All of the chairs except ours up on the tables now, the waitress was making time wiping down the counter area waiting for us to finish up.

“Hey, I've got an idea,” I said.

He lifted his eyes.

“Come home with me.”

He looked back down at his cup. “That's your idea?”

“Sure, why not? You'll eat some home-cooked food for a change, sleep in a nice clean bed, and we'll both just kick back for a few days. Do us both some good. By the time Christine gets back we'll be all charged up and ready to go. What do you say?”

Thomas managed a tiny smile and stood up; put his hand on my shoulder.

“Thank you,” he said. “I appreciate the offer. I do.”

“But no?”

“But no. But thank you, Buckskin, I mean it.”

“What are you going to do then?” I said. “Nobody wants to spend Christmas all by themselves. And Yorkville's going to be a ghost town. C'mon, come home with me. It'll be fun.”

“No,” he said. “Thank you, but no.”

He slowly pulled on his jacket.

“Don't you worry about me,” he said. “I'm going to be fine. I'm going to be just fine.”

 

 

Mississippi born and raised there, Memphis boarded and schooled there, Harvard, Massachusetts, one semester and too much of Professor Leary's LSD dropped and dropped out there, sunny, southern California where anybody who knew anything knew it was all going down down there. The new music. A new way of relating. A new way of being. New age ...

Yeah Yeah Yeah. Far out. Out of sight. Groovy. Although, to be honest, some interesting sounds and even a few soulful souls if you can manage to avoid the peace sign–cramped fingers poking in your face everywhere you turn. But no twangy promised land, that's for sure. And this a good lesson to remember. For the kingdom of Interstellar North American Music lies within you, Thomas, not anywhere out there anyhow. Remember to remember this.

But Joshua Tree. If he'd never come to L.A. he never would have heard of Joshua Tree. From a guy at a hoot night at the Troubadour between tokes of a shared joint between sets.

“If you want to get out of the city for a while and blow your mind, man, drop a tab and dig the desert sky at night. Go on out to Joshua Tree, you've never seen anything like it. Take 105 east for, like, two hours, then wait for the sun to go down and get out there in the middle of the desert and see something you've never seen before. Blow your fucking mind, man.”

And it did. It does. It still does. Even just imagining it. Even this far away and a bunch of freezing Canadian months since the last time there.

Getting ready to go, it always goes like this: score, fill up the tank of the Harley, and cruise by Ciro's to see who wants to be this weekend's old lady. Thomas is no player—not yet, anyway—but he's got a nice smile and is six-foot slinky good looking in those spacy neon cowboy threads of his, and yeah, the guy can play, no doubt about that. What the women dig most, though, is that Thomas is such an absolute gentleman, a real psychedelicate courteous cat right smack dab in the middle of Freakville, USA, the Sunset Strip, insisting on having whoever ends up riding on the back of his bike out to the desert for the weekend with him hold on to his entire stash, saying, as he helps her put on her helmet, “It's just easier this way, darlin'. Trusting somebody is just so much easier.”

Thomas has called ahead and reserved his usual room at the Joshua Tree Inn, room #8—double bed, no TV, $13.50 a night—and he and she check in, get their key, and share the shower and a bar of soap to scrub the road out of their pores. Afterwards, don't bother dressing, roll a doobie or two, and kick back on top of the sheets passing the joint back and forth waiting for the sun to go down and the moon to come up and the stars over Joshua Tree to begin to do their thing.

And if nodding off for a bit, only for a bit, eventually waking up in a panic like it's the first morning of the first day of an eight-year-old's holy grail of a summer vacation. Whip on your clothes, jump on the Harley, and race off into the night in search of a place to get close to the earth next to an honest-to-goodness Joshua tree with only a single headlight to get you there and every one of the billions and billions of stars and planets God has breathed so alive tonight spearing holes of burning silver in the map of blackness behind them. Ride right into the middle of the desert darkness looking for that perfect spot in the sand. Ride and ride like you know exactly where you're going.