Annihilation Day, page 5
“We’re not bored,” Alice said.
“What did they think of your music?” Hamilton said pointing to a group of more conservatively dressed family members.
Teresa smiled. “Not fans. It was weird because we were outsiders among the other punks and outsider among our own people. It’s like the Chicano moratorium. It was inclusive as long as you toed the line. They had trouble seeing I could be both part of their movement and do my own thing. It’s like you. You’re Misshapes but that’s not all that you are.”
“I feel like you’re saying that we need to take our band to the next level,” Johnny intoned.
Teresa laughed. We all joined in. Out of everything she said that that was his takeaway was funny.
But he persisted. He looked like he was going to explode with happiness. It was a rare look for him. “I mean, we have a band. But a better band.”
“Although if you don’t want to, you don’t have to,” Alice said.
“What are you talking about? You’re always saying we need a lead guitarist,” Johnny said.
“Your tia said you can play guitar,” Hamilton said to Rosa. “Any they do need a better guitarist. Johnny kind of sucks.”
“Hey,” Johnny protested.
Alice looked annoyed by the exchange. I couldn’t figure out what she had against Rosa.
“I’m not that good. And you know, with the powers, I can’t play.”
“Oh, nonsense,” Teresa said to Rosa. “You should see her play,” she said to us, then back to Rosa, “If you use the chair you’re fine.”
“What chair?” Hamilton asked. Rosa took us to the basement. It was your standard basement but in the center there was an elaborate chair made of wood and metal bars. It looked like one of those space ring rides you find at an amusement park. A chair in the center enmeshed in a web of wooden reeds that looked like a nest. The wooden reeds were suspended by taut metal cables that attached to three concentric solid metal rings. The rings were attached to a pivot that was held in place by a rigid square metal frame. It was a giant gyroscope with a chair in the center.
“It’s called an aerotrim,” Rosa said, shrugging. “My dad built it. He’s really handy. It’s modified to disperse any vibrations I cast off so I don’t inadvertently start an earthquake. He built me one in Mexico before we moved up to here, when I had no way to control my powers and no one to teach me.”
She sat down in the center and asked for us to hand her an acoustic guitar hanging on the wall. Next to it was a refulgent green electric guitar that sparkled like dewy grass at sunrise.
“Sure you don’t want the Gibson?” Johnny asked.
“This thing isn’t that strong,” Rosa said. “I haven’t been able to play that in years.”
Rosa strummed the strings on the guitar and the wooden reeds began to vibrate as well. The vibrations were dampened by the device and by the time they got to the metal frame were dead. But it gave the effect that Rosa was playing the chair and aerotrim as well, which gave off a low warbling hum.
After playing a few more chords and tuning the instrument—I guess creating tremors probably knocks guitars out of tune quickly—she started playing a song. I was expecting something quite and gentle, but it was fast and raucous. She sang along with it but looked down at the guitar, trying not to watch us as she played. Alice tapped her feet.“El clavo de noche/Nos habla con bote/Nos hablan sus manos/Noche tras noche, noche tras noche,” she sang.
The chair was shaking. The wheels started to spin, and by the time she finished I could swear she was going to knock the whole house down. But it worked, and the outside only vibrated mildly.
When she handed Alice back the guitar any annoyance or animosity was gone from Alice’s face. She looked at Johnny in the eyes and said, “Okay. So when do we start practice? And where do we get one of those things?”
THE BAND had collected at my house, so I went into town. I wasn’t really up for the early garage sessions of Nicholas Cage Fight. School was about to start up and I needed to stock up on supplies anyway.
“Sarah! What’s up?” Hamilton said. He was walking down Main Street, probably en route to Boscoe’s.
“Absolutely nothing,” I replied. I wanted to get to the bookstore. But Hamilton pulled my hand, dragging me over to a telephone pole with a large poster on it.
“Did you see this?” he asked. I looked. It was a large poster stapled to the telephone pole, advertising an art show. It was a painting in a classic Saturday morning cartoon style of Freedom Man surrounded by adoring women, with the words “Another White Hero.” Above the image was an announcement for a retrospective on the N.W.C. collective at Mass MoCa. Mass MoCa was a giant art museum an hour away in northwestern Massachusetts in an old industrial park.
“First I saw, man. Seems cool,” I said, “but who are they?”
“It’s a group of black artists. Musicians, writers, painters, and designers who focus on American hero culture,” Hamilton said. “And its limitations.”
“What does NWC stand for? New White Capes?” I asked.
“Niggas With Capes,” Hamilton said. “It’s meant to be provocative.”
Oh. The word stood in the air, uncomfortably. There weren’t a lot of black people in Doolittle Falls. It was the first time I had heard someone say that word aloud. It should’ve been okay since Hamilton said it, but I didn’t really know what to say in response.
Hamilton, not wanting to be distracted by my inability to navigate racial semiotics, got back to the point. “Stop thinking about the word. I’ll play you A Tribe Called Quest song if you want to know more.” He paused. “So we’re going, right?”
I smiled. “Absolutely nothing is happening. The band is practicing. Let’s get the troop together tomorrow or so.”
Hamilton gave me a big smile, and I went onto the bookstore with a spring in my step.
THE NEXT day, a big group gathered for the road trip. We split up into two cars: Johnny, Butters, and Hamilton in one, Alice, Rosa, Betty, and me in the other. I was a little afraid whether Alice’s car could handle the trip, but she assured me it was fine. Her car was not doing well. At sixteen it was almost as old as me and was held together with duct tape and bolted-on parts her brother had rigged up. The muffler, as it was, whinnied when the car was in neutral. She didn’t like to drive it any farther than the next town over, and on the journey west, we had to hold our breath a few times when there were any hills.
Alice, having gotten over her lingering annoyance with Rosa, chatted with her about the band the whole times while Betty texted Butters on her phone and asked me about different karaoke-related performance questions he was sending her way. I felt left out. Shouldn’t Alice have been trying to talk to me more than Rosa, anyways, as my best friend?
Betty interrupted Alice during one spiel. “Why can’t Butters be in the band? Add Butters and you get a whole chorus.”
“I’m not sure we’re going for the big wall of sound thing,” Alice said.
“Punk band,” Rosa added. “But maybe.” She didn’t want to disappoint Betty.Not getting the hint, Betty kept going. “You should totally take him in. Besides, what classic album doesn’t have good back-up singers? Stones, Bowie, all of them. ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want,’ ‘Gimme Shelter,’ ‘Young Americans… ‘” She trailed off.
Alice said, “Let’s see if we can write a few good songs before adding a big chorus.”
Rosa grimaced. I think Betty was wearing them down. “We have to talk to Johnny, too, Betty. The band is a democracy.”
Rosa turned around and looked at me trying to change the subject. “How’s Freedom Boy, Sarah?” I was glad to be included, but I didn’t want to talk about him.“Making his Freedom documentary. I think he’s in Malta. What have you heard?” I asked.
“Academy gossip. You know how it is,” said Betty.
“I don’t know how he is,” I replied. “Flies in. Offers me a dream job. Flies off. I barely see him. And when I do, he’s on T.V. arm-in-arm with Dangerous Chest.”
“Stop reading the gossip rags,” Alice told me. “And forget about that guy.”
“Well, whatever. He’s not my boyfriend and I could care less if I ever saw him again,” I said, not even believing it myself.
“His dad’s docs have a much better ring in Spanish. Hombre Libre,” Rosa said. “That last one he did was the top grossing film in Mexican history.”
“Well, if Freedom Boy’s off limits, then what’s up with Sam?” Alice asked.
“He is so hot.” Betty and Rosa said in near-unison.
“Maybe. If he ever sticks around long enough. Doesn’t anyone else in this car have a love life that’s interesting besides me?” They all turned and glared at me.
“Sorry, I just don’t want to talk about Sam or Freedom Boy,” I said. I looked outside and the wind seemed kind of gusty. If there was one thing I didn’t feel confident about, it was boys.
The car went silent. It seemed like Rosa and Alice wanted to say something but held their tongues. After a long minute, Alice said, “Hey, I think that’s it up there.”
WE MET the boys in the parking lot. I’d never been to the museum before and it was really cool. Large brick buildings sprawled out in every direction, some crumbling into the ground holding the remnants of rested iron machines, and others pristine and washed. Large signs directed us to the galleries.
Inside the main building there was a large spacious hall where children ran around while their parents looked at books and ordered food at a corner snack bar. They kept some of the old machines scattered around the main hall: a large metal seesaw, enormous cogs attached to axels in the walls, circuit boards with glass tubes and thick, unused cable spooling out like a flower.
Once we got inside the gallery, we circled the art like cats around a new toy, not sure about how we were supposed to interact with it. I got more interested in the way Hamilton looked at art. He walked right up to every piece and thrust his nose into it, like he was sniffing it out. He examined each brushstroke, plaster or stone statute, and hanging metal doodad like he wanted to get inside of it.
There were enormous paintings, elaborate graffiti murals on the walls, and sprawling sculptures made out of everything from used Coke bottles to gold leaf sculptures. An enormous mural that was one hundred feet long took up one large wall. It had a series of Misshapes of all sizes, shapes, and colors with their backs to viewer, their power labeled in a cloud over their head. I looked closer and realized that all the Misshapes were in handcuffs or pushed up against a wall, a stark juxtaposition with the smiling Heroes posing every ten feet or so, looking straight out of a 1950s advertisement. The piece was labeled Broken Windows = Broken Youth.
Hamilton spent an extra amount of time in front of this piece. There was a lot to take in. For him, there was meaning in every corner. “See the materials?” he said. “The Misshapes are in oil whereas a lot of the Hero pictures are literally 1950s advertisements, taken from LIFE Magazine. He melted some Freedom Man action figures for this piece.”
He paused and glanced beyond me toward a shadowy figure at the end of the gallery. I saw his jaw go slack and his cheeks drop. The last time I saw such naked hero-worship was when Freedom Boy walked down Main Street.
“What is it, hambone?” Johnny said.
“It’s him.”
“Who?” Alice asked.
“NOYO.”
“Who?” I said.
He pointed to the name. At the bottom right, in large letters, was the word NOYO in blue letters.
“He founded N.W.C. He was, like, one of the first graffiti artists.”
“Your hero,” Johnny mocked. “He’s your hero!”
“Shut up, man,” Hamilton said trying to hide in his embarrassment.
“Go talk to him,” I said.
“I can’t,” Hamilton blushed.
“Of course you can,” I replied. I pointed at a particularly destroyed Freedom Man figurine on the mural, whose entire lower half dripped off the canvas. “You shot a paintball at the kids of Doolittle Falls’ most famous Heroes. You’ll have tons to talk about.”
He thought about it for a second, squared his shoulders, and said, “You’re right.” He walked down the gallery up to NOYO, and Alice said, “Go get him!”
I could faintly hear Hamilton yell “Shut up.”
I surreptitiously watched Hamilton out of the corner of my eyes. He sheepishly introduced himself to NOYO and started a conversation. It started out awkward, but once I moved on to another gallery, I saw Hamilton’s posture improve, and he pulled out his phone to show NOYO pictures of his work, nodding eagerly while the artist talked.The next gallery was an enormous room the size of an airport hanger covered from floor-to-ceiling in multicolored fabric with fake Hero logos on them. It looked like a massive amount of capes just lined up like soldiers. Something whizzed past me. It was a sculpture of a Hero, made out of mirrored glass, attached to a track flying around the room. It was easy to get lost in all the capes, and I was soon separated from the group. I decided to cut out and head someplace a little less overwhelming. I walked through a few passageways and ended up in a smaller room with a bench in it. Hamilton was sitting on the bench. He looked deep in thought, though with his glasses on he could have also been deep into a nap.
“Hi Hamilton,” I said quietly, in case he was asleep.
“Hey,” he said.
“Enjoy the show?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s really cool.” He seemed quiet. Lost in thought.
“So how’d it go? With NOYO I mean,” I asked.
It took him a while to find the right words. “Weird. Good I guess. I don’t know what to make of it.” He looked out into the distance.
“Why, what happened?”
“Well, he was really nice. Like super nice. Though it took him a while to realize I was serious about wanting to be an artist. And when he did, he looked at my work, said it was all crap but I had some promise, and that I should stop with the graffiti nonsense.”“Wait, but isn’t he a graffiti artist?” I asked. That was the opposite of encouragement, I thought.
“That’s what I said. And he said no. He was an artist first. That was just a medium he used.” Hamilton’s hand tapped on his thigh.
“What’s so wrong with graffiti, though? He has this super cool show,” I said. It kind of made no sense to me.
“Look, NOYO is the real thing. He apparently disavows all his former work. Says it only got big because when he was coming up, galleries wanted work not because it was good but because he seemed dangerous. It was authentic: street art from a black kid.” He stopped. “Then when NOYO started selling, his friends were pulled off streets tagging, put in galleries, and the owners made millions off their work.” His voice got quieter. “After the black graffiti trend passed, they were let go and went back to being punks. Some of them joined N.W.C., but most disappeared.” Hamilton mentioned that he wanted to track some of them down. So many great graffiti artists had their moment, it passed, and then they were just spit back into the world. Maybe they’d have advice, too.
“That’s screwed up,” I said. “Did he give you any actual advice?”
“He was real. He was honest. He said get a studio. Or a closet. Or a shack. Something where I can focus on the work. Paint anything. Canvas if I can get my hands on it, discarded wood boards if I can’t. And study. The greats and the hacks. That way, even if I get big, I’ll still be tied to some crazy art market but at least it will be for the work and not the racist nonsense of my image. The work will be better.”
“That’s amazing,” I said.
“I know. I still can’t believe it. He also said, whenever I graduate, I have to move to NY, and when I do, I should look him up.”
That was big. I knew that was big. Hamilton was going to get to leave Doolittle Falls. I could see it happening. “Are you going to do it?” I asked.
“Yeah. I have to.” He paused. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“Making me talk to him.”
“I just nudged you. You impressed him.”
“I guess. But the support was nice,” he said. “I mean it might seem like I’m fooling around, I do a lot of fooling around, but real support, well… it means a lot.”
He took off his glasses. I had known Hamilton for a long time, years even, but I had never seen him without his glasses. I had wondered sometimes what it looked like under there, whether he was hiding something from the world, but mostly I just imagined Hamilton as a guy who was constantly wearing glasses.
To my surprise, he looked perfectly normal, except for his irises. I had never seen anything like them. They were multi-hued filled with swirling clouds and skeins of purple, pink, green, blue, yellow, orange, colors in brilliant hues and infinite variations circling each other around a dark black pupil. My brother’s punk friend—a kid who was barely above a class clown to me—had very pretty eyes and was looking at me earnestly. It was enough to send a shudder down my spine. I smiled back and I got up to see another piece of art.
HAMILTON AND Johnny had plans to go see some haunted mill or something so Alice drove the girls home from Mass MoCA. Once she got back to town, Alice went a weird, circular route. Instead of dropping me off first, she let off Betty, drove all the way to the edge of town to let off Rosa. After we said our goodbyes to Rosa, we were alone in the car, and she drove all the way south to Marston Heights, which was completely out of the way. It was, however, the first quality time I had with Alice, real quality time, since I had returned.
“Hi,” I said. “How are you? It’s been so busy since I’ve gotten back,” I said.
The Germs played on the stereo. Alice’s hands were tight on the wheel. “Look, Sarah, I wanted to drive you home last,” she paused. Taking a breath, the next words came out in a rush. “I had something to say to you.”
When people make sure to say out loud that they need to talk to you, it’s not a good thing. It’s a buffer for bad news, sad news, weird news. It was like that with Mom. I felt a hole in the pit of my stomach. I felt my body go tense. I looked outside at the sky and the town appearing below us as we descended from The Heights. The sunny, clear, blue color blinked at me, slowly moving toward purple.
