Preston Falls : a novel (16 page)

"Hey, you want to do that?" Reed says. "We should be doing that— that's a fucking fabulous song."

"What about Air Bag?" the drummer calls.

"What the fuck does that mean?" says the bass player. ''Air Bag? I mean, what is that about}''

"I was just thinking, you know, about these cars with air bags," the drummer says.

"Air Bag," says Reed. "Done deal. Objections?" The bass player only shrugs.

"Hey, the new guy," calls the drummer. "What Stones shit you do?"

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"You fuckin' burnout," says the bass player. "You can do my stones."

"So are we going to play this thing or what?" Mitch says. He checks his low E. "Fuck, I'm out."

"What? What are we doing?" says Reed.

"Well, I can see where this shit is heading," the bass player says. "Sparky, man, will you fuckin' get up off the fuckin' floor?"

"Fuck him," says Mitch. He turns on the drum machine, hoom boom ba-doom-doom-DOOM.

"I thought we were doing 'Wild Thing,' " Reed says.

"Well, could we fuckin' do something?'' says the bass player.

"Hey, I know. What about we do a line?" says the drummer, still down on the floor. "Shit, that could be like a saying: 'You want to do something, do a line.' I feel like if I did a couple lines I could really get into some playing."

"So get up off your ass," says the bass player.

"That's the problem, man," the drummer says. "I think I might be too fuckin' ripped."

"Shit," says the bass player, taking off his instrument. "What am I, your fuckin' servant?" He brings the stuff over, and the drummer rolls back onto his side while the rest of them circle around.

After these next two lines, Willis finds he's gotten up to a place where it seems a long way back down. He sits on the carpeting and tries to work out a theory about how the mountain landscape could be encoded in microminiature into the molecules of the coca plant, which would account for this steep lofty feeling. Like what is that thing— ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny? Maybe this is a little specious; he's sure it is. Still, it's cool to have come up with the word specious.

"Fuckin' Charlie Watts," the drummer's saying. "I love that motherfucker. Hey, the new guy. You do any Stones?"

"You know something? We should be doing some real biker shit," says Reed. " 'Born to Be Wild,' shit like that."

"What's your point, man?" says the drummer. "Fuckin' Stones ain't biker shit? Man, a biker stabbed some son of a bitch to that shit, so you don't know what the fuck you're talkin' about. I seen the movie of it, man, several fuckin' times."

"What are we, onto the sixties now?" says Reed.

"That wasn't the sixties, you dick," the bass player says.

"Altamont," says Reed. "Nineteen sixty-nine."

I 0 9

"Well, that's a fuck of a lot different from the «xties," says the bass player.

"Oh really?" Reed says. "That's an interesting remark. How is it that 1969 isn't the sixties?"

"Shit," says the bass player. "Will somebody tell fuckin' Perry Mason here what the fuck I'm tryin' to get across?"

"Danny," Reed says, "you're stretching my sense of camp to the breaking point."

"Yeah, whatever the fuck that means," says Dan.

"Hey, are we gonna play or what?" Mitch says. "I'm really pumped to play, you know?"

"I've been trying to mobilize you people to play for two hours now," says Reed.

"Hey, I don't think I can make it, man," the drummer says. "I feel like I might be too wasted to play."

"Well, if we ain't gonna play," says the bass player, "let's fuckin' get ripped."

"Listen, speaking of ripped," says Willis. "I'd be glad—I don't know if this is tacky, but if people are like chipping in or something."

"Yeah, I don't think you have to sweat it," Mitch says. "Old Calvin just—"

"Hey, Mitch?" says the bass player. "Why'n't you shut your ass?" To Willis he says, "Don't worry about it, man."

"What the fuck?" Mitch says. "I thought this guy—"

"Mitchell," says Reed. "C'm'ere. Talk to you for a second?" He takes off his Les Paul, walks over and parts the plastic sheeting, holding it open; Mitch takes off his Strat and follows him out. The bass player puts his bass back on and flips his amp off standby.

"They're bringin' in a new drummer, man," the drummer says from down on the floor. "I'm not fuckin' stupid. See, I get too fucked up to play."

"That ain't what they're talkin' about," says the bass player.

"Yeah, sure. Then it must be the latest stock quotations, man."

Willis can make out the two blurry forms on the other side of the cloudy plastic. The bass player begins to play what sounds like the hook to "Start Me Up." Willis guesses it would be politic to make some noise too. "Cool, you want to do that?" he says. "What Keith does, he takes off the bottom string and tunes to G. That's how he plays all that stuff."

"No shit," says the bass player. Willis absolutely can't tell if he's

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genuinely surprised, or putting him down for saying something everybody already knows, or just doesn't give a fuck.

"Are we in tune, gentlemen?" Reed's back; he and Mitch are slipping guitar straps over their heads. Willis knows Reed's looking at him. But when he finally can't stand it and looks back. Reed's checking his watch. "Night's still young," he says. "So. Enough of this shit."

Drops of rain on the windshield. Then more drops. Willis turns the wipers on, and the rubber blades fart against the glass. You need either a higher intensity of rain or a lower frequency on the wipers; as it is, it's just a fucking disaster. Chuck D is rapping about how they Got got got got got me in a cell, some infantile fantasy about a jailbreak, and the wipers are going this way and that way and this way and that way, supremely out of sync with the drumbeats.

Willis is headed home, crashing like a motherfucker. Gray daylight now, but he keeps the headlights on because the speedometer and all the dashboard shit look cozier lighted up, like having a fire going. But this music's irritating the fuck out of him. Even the name. Public Enemy: like it's some big irony. He flips up the little handle on the tape deck and yanks it out of the dash, and that by Jesus shuts the son of a bitch up. He rolls down the window, heaves the thing backhanded right across the road and into the brush, then the bag of tapes after it, plastic cassette boxes flying open in the wind, clattering on pavement. In the mirror he catches them scattering in an instant of red taillight.

This road should be familiar; it's just that the rain and fog are fucking everything up. And it really pisses him off, because he is not lost. He thinks about stopping the truck and getting out and chucking the God damn guitar and amp over the side too. But he's sort of out of that mood now and on to money worries. Up ahead he sees a billboard with the Marlboro Man slinging what looks like a pair of leg braces over his shoulder. Shit, so he's somehow crossed over into New York State? Vermont has that billboard law. Actually, they must be branding irons. Leg braces, Jesus. Willis himself used to be a Marlboro Man, in the sense that he used to smoke Marlboros. Oh, years ago. He could do with a fucking Marlboro right now. Maybe he'd better pull over somewhere.

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put the guitar and amp in the cab out of the wet and see if he can't nap a little.

Sometime after the billboard he passes a picnic area: green-painted tables, green-painted trash barrel with a crow perched on the rim. He finds a driveway to turn around in and doubles back; the crow flies away when he pulls in. He shuts the engine off, his ears still roaring, gets out, smells the good piney smell and lets rain soak his hot head. He starts to shiver. He wrestles the amp out of the back and sticks it on the floor of the cab on the passenger side, then tilts the seat-back forward to put the guitar case in the space behind. And there's the duffel bag he never remembered to bring into the house, with the .22 inside.

Now the rain's pinging on the metal and bouncing off the windshield. So it's hail, actually; can that be possible? He locks the doors and lies down on the seat, knees bent, face jammed into the woven seat-back, heavy feet hanging off into space. He closes his eyes: white sparks seething.

When he finally makes it back to the house, he just leaves all his shit right in the truck and slinks inside like an evfl thing exposed in daylight. The rest of this day is nuked out for sure. Though he's proud to have a day nuked out by drugs again after all this time. He reads Dombey and Son until he falls asleep on the couch, then wakes up with his head hurting. Takes Advil, makes coffee, finishes Dombey. Starts Our Mutual Friend. In the chapter about the R. Wilfer family he falls asleep again, then wakes up from a nightmare he can't remember. It's dark outside.

He steps into the bathroom to piss in the toilet like a civilized man, and down goes his left foot through the fucking floor and up goes the other end of the board like a seesaw. It's just crawl space under there; his bare foot touches wet, cold earth. Great: so now we've got a hole in the fucking floor. Plus he's scraped the living shit out of his calf and shin, right through his jeans. He works his leg free, goes outside onto the step-stone and pisses into the grass, which is what he should have done in the first place. Big skyful of stars. He feels guilty for not having spent more time looking up at them during his life. Christ, the fucking stars and you're not impressed?

Okay, better get back in there and start dealing. He yanks that floorboard out, kneels and shines the halogen flashlight in underneath: sure enough, got two floor joists rotted through. And why have two floor

joists rotted through? Because there's a pipe down there and the son of a bitch is leaking. And what does this mean? This means ripping up enough floor to get down in there to patch the fucking pipe, and then doing something about those joists. Maybe cut away what's rotten— looks like a foot or two of each joist—and piece them back together with pressure-treated two-by-six.

He gets the pinch bar and wrenches up a couple more floorboards to make room to work, then plugs in a droplight so he can see what the fuck he's doing. Yep, there's your problem right there: little bulge in the copper pipe, with water pissing out of a quarter-inch slit. Son of a bitch froze and split down in there, maybe last winter, maybe the winter before. Or the winter of '72—^who the fuck knows? Okay, so the next step is to shut off the water to the bathroom and hunt around for the plumbing shit.

He gets that section of pipe cut out, cuts a piece to patch in there and steel-wools the ends. Only then does he discover that he doesn't have any straight fittings. Son of a bitch. So this means he's got to go into town. For two fucking thirty-five-cent pipe fittings. Except everything's probably closed anyway at this hour. Okay, fine: tomorrow. He can make it one night without a bathroom.

So back to Our Mutual Friend. When he comes to where Silas Wegg tries to buy the bones of his amputated leg, he gets up and starts more coffee. And of course forty-five minutes later has to shit. He takes the roll of toilet paper and the flashlight, gets the shovel out of the woodshed and heads out behind the house. In a stand of sumac he's been meaning to cut down he sets the flashlight on the ground; by its light he digs a hole, takes down his pants and squats over it like a fucking aborigine. The Robert Blys was a good name and not too obscure.

He takes three fingers of Dewar's up to bed. This puts him under, but an hour later he wakes up quaking from some dream about the devil. He turns on the light and reads awhile. Goes downstairs for more Dewar's. Sleeps again, sort of. Eventually it's gray outside the window, then blue. He goes down and starts coffee.

He makes it into town in time to have the morning bowel movement in the rest room at Stewart's. Front page of the Rutland Herald says it's Friday; so a week ago he was in his office in New York? Not possible. He remembers to get Calvin Castleman's $150, then hits the post office

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for the first time since he's been up here. Bunch of junk mail, and bills for fucking everything. Then to True Value, where he picks up four fittings—couple extra just in case.

In Calvin's dooryard, he pulls up behind that big-ass Ford F-250, with the homemade stake body and the deck of rough-sawed lumber where Calvin's piled his woodcutting shit: two chainsaws, peavey, gas can, jug of bar-and-chain oil. He finds Calvin out by the Cadillac; the engine's suspended above the gaping hood by block and tackle rigged up to a branch of a maple tree, and yellow leaves are plastered on the windshield.

"Look like you're raising holy hell," says Willis.

"Yah, had to pull the fuckin' engine." Calvin sets an extra-long wrench down on the fender.

"Thought I better come pay you for that wood." Willis gets out his wallet. "Td have come by sooner, but I guess you heard about my little— adventure." He was about to say contretemps. No response. "Hundred and fifty?"

"Yup." Not quite an ayup. Calvin wipes hands on pants and works his bulging wallet out of his hip pocket.

Willis counts out the bills. "By the way. I also wanted to thank you for putting me onto your lawyer."

Calvin nods. "He will get the job done." He takes a pack of Luckies out of his shirt pocket. "So you and him hit it off, did you?" He lights the cigarette with a pink plastic lighter.

"Yeah. He seems to be an okay guy." It feels like a bad idea to teU Calvin about going over to jam. Though why, exactly?

"I had an idea you and him probably hit it off," says Calvin. "Him playing in a band, and I know you play some. Once in a while I'll hear you if the air's just right."

"You're kidding. Shit, you have to let me know if it bothers you." He sees the pure white paper of the cigarette is grimy where Calvin's fingers touched it. Jesus, every once in a while the smell of a fucking cigarette.

"Nah, don't bother me. See, I had an idea you probably hit it off."

It's like every other conversation with Calvin Castleman: the subtext is that Willis doesn't know what the subtext is.