If You Were Wondering - Chapter Six

If You Were Wondering - Chapter Six

A Chapter by John Pollock

Chapter 6

Amy let me stay in her apartment that night when she found out I had nowhere else to go. I told her I could just stay in a hotel, but she wouldn’t hear of it. “If you’re going to spend an extra hundred bucks while you’re here, you should take me out to dinner.” That made me smile; she still had the same sense of humor.

I slept on the couch in the living room. “If you need anything,” Amy said, “I’ll be down the hall. There are extra blankets in the closet.”

“Thank you.” I said.

                Before she turned off the light, she smiled at me and said, “Welcome back.” And I felt more at home than I ever had in my life.

 

. . .

        “So what’s your story, morning glory?”

                Neil looked in the rear-view mirror as he drove. The road twisted and turned as it went on into the mountains. Costello was strumming on a ukulele in the front seat, and Aberdeen was playing with the flowers in her hair. I couldn’t feel their eyes on me, but I knew they were listening closely.

                “I don’t really know where to start.” I said.

                “Start from the beginning.” said Aberdeen, a smile spread across her face. That’s the first time I heard her speak, and I thought it was one of the most beautiful sounds I’d ever heard.

                “Okay.” I said, trying to laugh, “I lived in Laurens with my mother and her awful husband, and I ran away.”

                Neil nodded slowly, as if he were contemplating my story. “I get that, man.” he said. “Dads are a******s.” Everyone else nodded their heads in agreement.

                “No, Hugh wasn’t my father. My real dad left when I was six. I think he went to Nebraska or something.”

                “That only proves my point.” Neil said, stopping at a red light. “Your real dad left you when you were young, and then your new dad turned out to be a real jackass. That’s the way it goes; my daddy was like that, Costello’s daddy was too.”

                The light turned green, and the car was moving again. I looked over at Aberdeen; she was looking solemnly at her feet, and there was no trace of the smile that was on her face before.

                “What about you dad?” I asked.

                She looked at me with big, sad eyes. “He died when I was three. Leukemia.”

                “I’m really sorry.”

                “It’s not your fault.” she said, forcing the smile back, like nothing had happened.

                “You see what I mean?” Neil bellowed from the front. “Fathers ain’t worth nothin’. They always leave to go find something bigger somewhere far away, whether it be Nebraska or Heaven or anywhere else.”

                The light turned green, and the car was moving again. I wanted to defend him. I wanted Neil to know that my father was a good man. But that was when I realized that I actually had no idea who my father was. He always worked late, except on Sundays, when he’d take me to town for ice cream. We’d walk through Newah Park, and he’d tell me all these things about his job. “I get to help sick people get better so they can be happy again.” He’d say, and to me, that was the coolest job ever. He always told me that helping people was the best thing you could do in the world. But that was all he really ever told me, and that’s as far as my knowledge on my father really went.

                I don’t think I even remember a single time that Mom went with us. I don’t think she ever did, it was just me and Dad. I thought it was a father-son thing that everyone did, but now I know that’s not true. Mom took me places with her all the time, and no one said anything. It occurred to me then, in the back seat of the Misfits’ station wagon, that my father might not have even loved my mother.

               

                We were on the road for two months, sometimes stopping at motels and dive bars for gigs. We took turns driving on the highway by day, pulled over and slept by night. We didn’t have much money, so we slept in the car most of the time. When we got further west and the weather was nicer, we’d build a bonfire out in the fields , smoke some pot, and we’d all sing songs and tell stories. Neil was really good at the guitar, and Costello was an amazing singer. He never talked much, but when he did, everyone listened.

                Aberdeen would sing too, and her harmony would intertwine perfectly with Costello’s voice. Sometimes, I’d close my eyes and just feel; feel the wind blow softly through me, the fire warm on my skin, feel Costello and Aberdeen’s voices in perfect harmony, filling the night sky with their sweet sound. I don’t think I could ever forget what they sounded like.

                There was one song they sang that stays with me even today. After I left the Misfits, after I went to Nebraska, I heard that song again in a bar. I don’t think I’d ever cried as much as I did when I heard that song in that bar, a thousand miles away from the people that shaped my life for two years, and a million miles away from the people that drove me away in the first place. I never forgot the words they sang, the way their voices sounded. The way it made me feel.

The wheel it settles in my hands
This is the measure of the man
I point the car at north at you
My Route has scarred the country through

               

So I... get on the road and ride to you.

 

Sometimes, after the fire died and the guitars were put away, I’d sit on top of the roof of the station wagon while everyone was asleep and look at the stars. Out in the Midwest, the air was always fresh, and unless we were near a big city, there was never any light pollution. The sky was always clear and pure and full of stars.

                One night Aberdeen climbed on with me, and we just marveled at it together. We lay there in silence for I don’t know how long, until she asked me, “What do you think of when you look at the stars?”

                I stared at her. The flowers in her strawberry blonde hair waved in the wind, her grey eyes shined in the moonlight, and she looked perfect.

                “I don’t know.” I said, “I just look, I guess.”

                “Do you know what I think?”

                “What?” I asked.

                She looked back up at the stars, her eyes sparkling. “I look at the stars and think that there are so many. That they’ve always been here because they have a purpose. They’re so big and beautiful and far away. And it makes me feel so small.”

                I felt those words run deep through me, like they were filling my soul. That could’ve just been the pot, but I didn’t care. The words sounded right. They felt right.

                “I looked at the stars a lot when I was little, and I thought my dad was up there. I thought he was smiling at me, telling me he was okay, and I wanted to see him so bad.”

                She held my hand and I took it.

                “I wanted to be a star.” she said. “I wanted to be big and beautiful and far away. I think I just wanted to find my dad.”

                “Is that why you’re here?” I asked.

                She nodded slowly, her eyes shining brighter. “I lived in Pasadena until I was twelve, when I found Neil. He was so nice and clever, a real sweetheart. He told me he was going to New York City to be a songwriter, and he asked me if I wanted to come. I didn’t tell my mother or anything; I just packed a bag and left.”

                “I wish it was that easy for me.” I said. She looked at me with a twinge of sadness.

                “No, you don’t.” she said. “It was easy at first, but I grew up fast. I knew that my dad wasn’t coming back, and that’s when I wanted to go home. But when Neil took me back to Pasadena, my family was gone. They moved away and they never told anyone where they’d went. That’s what hurt the most; it didn’t hurt enough to say goodbye.”

                Tears filled her eyes, and I squeezed her hand tighter, wanting to do something, say anything, to make her feel better. But I knew I couldn’t. I could never understand what her pain felt like, not on that level. The most I could do was hold her tight, on the top of that station wagon, and try to protect her from the pain.

. . .

“So you were a hippy?” Amy asked, sipping her coffee.

                We were sitting at a table outside the Latte Lounge, eating breakfast while I told her my stories. Main Street had settled down since the night before, but the sidewalks were still crowded. No one seemed to notice me, even if I’d noticed them.

                “Not exactly.” I said, taking a bite of my bagel. “We were kind of a band for a little while. We’d stop at dive bars and gas stations and play when we needed money, but we didn’t keep it up for long.”

                “Did you have a name?”

                “What?”

                Amy nodded. “Yeah, a band name. Did you guys have a name?”

                I thought for a moment; we never really established ourselves, and I never asked. But something popped in my head, and before I could stop myself I said, “The Misfits.”

                Amy smiled wide. “That’s perfect. I would listen to a band called the Misfits.”

                “You would?” I asked.

                “Yeah! They sound like they’d be really good!”

                I blushed. At least we had one fan. “Yeah, we were okay.”

                We sat in silence, drinking our coffee and eating our bagels. I made sure that Amy ate her own this time, which she laughed at me for. Then she asked, “So why’d you stop?”

                “What? Playing?”

                “Yeah.”

                “Because it seemed like everyone else was doing it too. They were just more successful.”

                Amy nodded, as if she was trying to understand, but couldn’t. I didn’t really understand it myself.

 

. . .

 

       The truth is that we were good. At least a good deal better than most of the other start-up bands out there. On the road, we’d play at the bars, and some people liked us, but then they’d move on to whoever was playing in town, and pretty soon they’d forget about us entirely.

That didn’t mean that we weren’t successful. When we got to San Francisco, we’d play at the Golden Gate Park everyday outside the Music Concourse, and people took notice. Costello put his hat out in front of us, and people dropped money into it. We usually made up to thirty dollars a day, most of it in change, which was okay by us; we needed to eat somehow.

                We’d play for a couple hours a day, and then we roam around the park. It was a nice set-up: the park itself was a long rectangle, about a thousand acres long, and it was beautiful.  We had our lunches in Marx Meadow, which looked hauntingly perfect in the early morning fog, and played there for a little extra cash. Disc golfers would stop and listen and give us a dollar and a nod, and sometimes they’d talk to us; about what kind of music we play, how they’re musicians themselves, how they wish they knew how to play the banjo, etc.

                We each had our favorite spots; Neil liked going to the Fly Fishing pools and watch the people throw their lines back and forth. “It’s therapeutic.” He said to me, when I asked him why he walked all the way there from the Concourse. “To watch those people throw their lines all day and sometimes not catch a thing, it shows a certain patience and love for what they do.” His eyes turned a darker shade of hazel, and his voice trailed off, as if he was deep in thought. “Sometimes I wish I had that.”

Costello would walk all the way to the Buffalo Paddock and sit for hours, looking at the buffalo grazing in the field. Sometimes he’d bring his notebook and a pencil, and he’d sketch all day. He let me see them once, and I honestly thought he was an art student before he met Neil. They were so clear and detailed, I wanted to stroke its fur. I thought I saw the steam come out of its nostrils.

Aberdeen’s favorite place was the Shakespeare Garden. We went together once, and I immediately understood why. We walked along the paths, the poppies and violets blowing in the wind, and it felt like we were in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the faeries hiding in the flowers, waiting for us to turn our backs so they could come back out and dance again.

“I used to love Shakespeare.” Aberdeen said, studying the lilies. “Even before we started reading him in high school, I loved reading his sonnets.”

“I never really got into him” I said. “I could never understand what his characters were saying.”

Aberdeen looked hurt. “You mean you never liked anything he wrote?”

I thought about it. To be honest, I didn’t pay attention enough in English class to know what was going on. “I liked Macbeth.” I said. “I liked the fact that he didn’t want to kill Duncan at first, because he was loyal to him, but then his wife made him do it, and he saw that bloody dagger, and once he’d done it… once he had that power, he was unstoppable.”

I turned to Aberdeen, and she had a concerned look on her face. It looked like she was trying to register what I’d said. It almost looked like the look on my mother’s face when she saw me standing above Hugh, his face bloodied like mine. Hugh was my dagger. I finally had the power. But why did I still feel so fragile?

 

                But Aberdeen smiled, like she’d gotten that I’d just had a rare moment of vulnerability, and she’d understood. “Well then, maybe I’ll have to read As You Like It to you. It’s my favorite. It’s about people who run off into the forest and find love.”

                “That sounds kind of familiar.” I said. “Except for the love part.”

                She laughed and leaned on me. We walked around a little more, me asking about the play, and her telling me about Celia and Rosalind fleeing to the Forest of Arden. But I stopped paying attention altogether when she slowly reached down for my hand and wrapped her fingers in mine.

It turned out I wasn’t entirely right after all. As You Like It was now more familiar than I thought. And, feeling the warmth of her skin, the way her fingers fit perfect in the spaces between my own, I realized that was how I liked it.



© 2014 John Pollock


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Added on June 13, 2014
Last Updated on June 13, 2014


Author

John Pollock
John Pollock

Laurens, NY



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