Sour Notes, page 3
But unlike Blake, Dean usually didn’t start the fights. He enjoyed making friends more than enemies.
From the time we were six and boarded the brightly colored school bus for the first time for the long ride into town and the county schools, Dean had made friends fast. He’d been the clown in the classroom, making others laugh. On the sports fields, he’d been the star who made everyone stare in awe.
Me? I’d preferred the back row of desks so the teacher wouldn’t call on me. I knew the answers, but I didn’t want to bring attention to myself. During recess, I blamed my allergies and snuck off with a book to avoid the scrum of sports on the playground. My discovery of the school library made my solitude a heaven. By isolating myself, though, I made for easy prey.
One day, as recess began, the rest of the class filed outside, and I made my escape down a hallway. Thinking I’d gone unnoticed, I got halfway to the library before I heard the squeak of tennis shoes approaching. Blake and two of his pals had followed. I looked for Dean to come to my rescue, but he’d gone outside to play. I was alone with the trio, each bigger and stronger than me.
I tried to run, but their hands were on me before I made it far. They flung me against the wall, knocking my breath out of me. Two of them pinned my arms, leaving me face-to-face with Blake. He jabbed a finger into my rib cage and demanded my lunch money.
Without Dean, I was helpless. The tears flowed easily and rolled down my cheeks. I felt the spreading warmth of my pee soaking the crotch of my pants. I put up no resistance.
One little goon let my hand go free long enough for me to pull my cash from my pocket and hold it out with my shaking hand. Blake laughed, snatched the coins, and punched me in the stomach. They left me on the floor, crumpled and humiliated. As I lay there sobbing, all I thought was that at least Dad hadn’t witnessed my cowardice.
When lunch rolled around, I sat alone at a table, friendless and without food. Dean, surrounded by his buddies, saw me. He came over and demanded to know where my lunch was. My answer infuriated him. No one messed with a McDougal—not even the scrawniest member—without risking retaliation.
Dean didn’t hesitate. He balled his hands into fists and marched across the cafeteria to the table where Blake and his pals sat. I expected him to demand the money back, get into an argument, and maybe escalate the situation into a fight, but Dean was in no mood to talk. He wasted no words. He slugged Blake without warning.
The other two boys came to Blake’s defense, and the fight turned into a three-against-one brawl. Despite being outnumbered, Dean held his own. He didn’t exactly win, but he didn’t lose either. By the time the teachers broke it up, all four boys were bloodied and bruised.
About an hour later, Dean returned from the principal’s office. He sported a nice shiner but was grinning triumphantly. He slapped my money down on my desk without saying a word. Then he turned and sat down with his new pals—Blake and company. They’d bonded while waiting for their punishment.
I resented that he could be nice to the guys who had bullied me, but at least it was over. Or so I thought. The worst came later.
When Dean and I stepped off the bus the afternoon of the fight, Mom took one look at his bruised face and knuckles and demanded to know what had happened. When the story was finished, Dad turned to me, lifted my hands, and examined them for marks. Seeing none, he said, “You gotta stand up for yourself, son. Dean ain’t always going to be there to protect you. If you defend yourself, they’ll leave you alone.”
He might have been right, though I wasn’t sure Blake would’ve broken a sweat if I had fought back. It wasn’t my fault I wasn’t big, tough, and brave like Dean. I wanted Dad to see that, but he was too busy tending to Dean’s injuries. He pulled a bandanna out of his back pocket, wrapped it around a few cubes of ice, and gently touched it against Dean’s black eye.
Dad’s next question hung in the air ever since that day. “Why can’t you be more like your brother?”
I’d like to say I took my father’s words, no matter how hurtful, to heart and learned to stand up for myself. That would be a lie, though.
Blake and company had promised Dean they would leave me alone. They kept their promise and never picked on me again. But that protection didn’t extend to everyone. Blake was merciless to anyone smaller and weaker, and that included the few friends I’d had growing up.
In a way, that was worse. He would confront them right in front of me. I couldn’t do a thing when he pushed them, ridiculed them, or humiliated them. I watched the tears well up in their eyes and could never take away their hurt.
I’d hated him for it then. Seeing him again caused those memories to bubble up inside me. The hate seethed through my body. I no more wanted to deal with Blake Torrence as an adult than I had as a piss-soaked six-year-old.
So when Blake’s expression changed in that parking lot, when the glimmer of recognition flickered through his eyes, and when he pushed himself off that truck and moved toward me, my name on his lips, I did what I do best. I got back in my garish SUV and drove away.
5
Once Beckett’s dwindled to a receding dot in my rearview mirror, I pounded the dash in frustration. Coming back to Millerton was a mistake. Too many Blakes tormented me in this place. People didn’t change. They couldn’t. Once a bully, always a bully.
But as Dad had tried to teach me while tending to Dean’s wounds, I couldn’t let the Blakes of the world dictate my life. I wasn’t like Dean. I wasn’t brave enough to confront Blake, but I could avoid him for a few days. Avoidance was one skill I had mastered.
I’d come this far. I would drive to the safety of my old home and stay there for as long as I needed. When things were done, I could drive back to Charlotte and catch the first available flight. Get back to my real life. Back to being Mad Maverick McDougal, rock star. Or whatever it was I’d become.
I might not have ever achieved the superstardom I’d fantasized about as a kid, but at least out there on the road was better than living here, where I was nothing more than Freddie McDougal, little brother of Dean, Little Mac to the Big Mac.
Fighting back tears, I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white. Little Mac. How do I let these things haunt me all these years later?
The quickest route to my childhood home took me through the familiar streets of the center of Millerton. In the distant past, the three downtown blocks had bustled with activity, though that was long before I was born. Half the storefronts had been vacant when I was a kid.
Things had only grown worse since. If it weren't for the county government building—complete with the sheriff’s department and volunteer fire department—on one end and Sammy’s Pub on the other, little would be happening.
Halfway through the center block, a hand-painted sign on a window caught my eye—Stewart’s Consignments. A pair of glass doors was propped open, inviting passersby inside, not that any pedestrians were in sight.
I slowed and peered through the doors. The store had been one of my few refuges when I was a teenager. It had served as the rehearsal space for the Wicked Centipedes.
If anyone was more of an outcast than me at school, it was Xander Stewart. I, at least, had Dean as a protector, even if he was only interested in the family name. Xander had nobody, so Blake and his minions made his life hell. I hated it, but it was better than me being the target.
Geeky, quiet, and prone to tell weird jokes, he was always out of step. That quirkiness made us the best of friends. We bonded over our lowly status.
Plus, we shared a love of music. For most kids in Millerton, the music selection was limited to what played on the Asheville radio stations. Cell phones hadn’t become widespread, and only a lucky few had home access to the internet. Streaming music was beyond comprehension.
But we had a secret weapon—Anna Stewart, Xander’s mother, and her consignment store. In addition to an assortment of used clothes, furniture, and books, she carried an eclectic collection of records and tapes. She let us pick over the selection and take things into the back of the store to listen on an old stereo.
One day, when someone brought in a drum set to sell, Xander begged, and Anna bought it for him. He hauled it into the back of the store and taught himself to play. I did the same with a used guitar, which I paid for by hauling furniture around the store. We imitated the songs we listened to, playing for hours in our hideaway, dreaming of being rock stars.
I’d never thanked her for giving us a safe space. The Blakes of our little world couldn’t touch us there while we learned about music of all types. And I ate almost as many meals at her kitchen table as I did at home.
If one good thing could come from this miserable trip, seeing Anna Stewart would be it. Plus, she could tell me where Xander was living. It would be good to catch up with my old friend. Besides, I still needed a sweatshirt. It was as good an excuse to stop as any.
I parked in one of the many empty parallel parking spaces in front of the store and went inside. An electronic chime announced my arrival. No customers were in the store browsing the rows of merchandise, but it looked the same. Used furniture cluttered the center. Aisles of knickknacks and racks of clothes took up the rest of the floor space. Shelves of books, records, CDs, and DVDs lined one wall. The other wall had always been my favorite—used musical instruments.
In the center of the back wall, a curtain covered the entrance to the storage area. A muffled voice—a man’s, not Anna’s—floated from beyond. “Feel free to look around. I’ll be right out. Trying to grab my lunch real quick.”
Maybe they’d sold the business but left the name on it. I still needed a hoodie, so I flipped through the racks until I found what I wanted. Solid black. No logos. No stains. A reasonable amount of wear.
With my mission accomplished and my purchase in hand, I scanned the store while I waited at the cash register. An acoustic guitar hanging on the wall grabbed my attention and drew me across the store. A quick strum brought a grimace to my face, but I tuned it quickly enough. The neck and frets were in decent shape, though it needed new strings. It didn’t sound the greatest but was far better than the one I’d learned to play on.
Ever since I was a kid, the magic of music had mesmerized me. As an adult, I felt no different. My fingers moved, my toes tapped, and I lost myself in the melody. The world and my problems faded away as they always did. I never heard the man emerge from the back, so I was surprised when I looked up. He was standing frozen, a napkin in his hand, a smear of errant mustard on a cheek.
As soon as we made eye contact, a smile broke across his face. “Holy moly, is that really Freddie McDougal, the legendary guitarist of the Wicked Centipedes?”
A sense of buoyancy hit me for the first time since the phone call the day before. Xander’s long hair had been cropped close and was peppered with premature gray. A bit of a beer belly betrayed his wiry frame. A day’s stubble covered the formerly smooth cheeks. Glasses perched on his nose fixed his perpetual squint. Despite the changes, I knew my old best friend at a glance.
I embraced him. “Didn’t know you would be here. I stopped to ask your mom how to get in touch with you.”
“She passed a few years ago.” Xander glanced down at the floor but just as quickly looked up and spread his arms wide. “I’m the king of the Stewart retail empire now.”
After I offered my condolences and we chatted about her for a few minutes, I asked, “You still playing? Have your drums in the back?”
“Yeah, but I don’t play much anymore. The Wicked Centipedes was my last band. When you disappeared without telling anyone, including me”—Xander narrowed his eyes—“there wasn’t much of a band left.”
I avoided his glare. “You and Sarah. You could’ve found another guitar.”
“Sarah? She never really wanted much to do with me. Barely talked to me after the funeral.”
Even all these years later, I heard the heartbreak lingering in his voice. He had been in love with her for as long as I could remember. His infatuation made things awkward between us from the first day we saw her because I fell for her too. We used to laugh about it with each other, pretending we would compete for her affection. We both knew it didn’t matter, because neither of us stood a chance with her. Half the guys in our class felt the same way. Probably all of them.
Whenever she went on a date with one of them, Xander became despondent. He agonized over whether he’d lost her, even though he’d never worked up the guts to tell her how he felt.
Still, it surprised me to hear the pain in his voice after all these years as he looked up at the ceiling and said, “Next thing I knew, she married Russ Caldwell.”
Sarah was one of those people who could easily float from one clique to another in high school without upsetting the social rules. She simply didn’t think the rules should exist, so she ignored them. She could hang with Xander and me, the geekiest of the geeks, without damaging her reputation one iota. She’d just as easily spent time with Dean and the popular kids without letting it go to her head.
When I’d heard she married Russ, I was surprised because I’d never known them to date. More, though, it shocked me because she had always said she was leaving Millerton. It was one of the things we shared. She wasn’t from here. I didn’t want to be.
But I’d never heard why she married him. Xander shrugged. “Oldest Millerton story in the book. She got preggers. Just whispers, of course, but they eloped in the fall and the kid was born before spring, so you do the math.”
I didn’t want to talk about that. Maybe I still had some lingering feelings myself. “You could’ve formed a band with some of those guys down in Asheville.”
“They were your friends, not mine.” When I tried to protest, he cut me off. “Didn’t matter, because Mom got sick the fall after you pulled your disappearing act. I had to keep this place running.”
I hadn’t known and tried to explain, but my clumsy explanation sounded weak. The only people I spoke to from Millerton after I left were my parents. My mother’s opinion that Xander was an “odd duck” must have prevented her from sharing the news.
Xander waved off my apologies and motioned me through the curtains to the rear of the store. I turned to hang the guitar back on the wall, but he told me to bring it on back. Maybe we could play for old times’ sake, he suggested.
When I came through the curtains, I realized how little the place had changed. Stacked boxes waited to be unpacked alongside old furniture in various stages of repair before hitting the sales floor. The scent of wood stain mingled with the damp, mildewy odor of warehouse space. The chilly air made me shiver. I warmed myself with the space heater beside Anna’s old desk pushed up against a cinderblock wall.
On the wall hung a series of pictures of Xander growing up, mostly annual school photos. Anna had proudly added one each year. Beside them, she—or maybe Xander—had added his high school diploma. A cheap chain draped over one corner of the frame held a dangling Millerton High School class ring. The gold was dented but polished. Tucked to the side of Xander’s wall of honor was a photo of Anna’s old Camaro, a car we both coveted, parked in their driveway.
A collage of photos of the Wicked Centipedes drew my focus. Some were taken when just Xander and I were practicing in this warehouse. Later ones included Sarah. I’d seen most of them before, but not the ones of our final show. The best night of my life. Before Dean got himself killed the next morning.
Xander followed my eyes to the photos and smiled. “Those were the days.”
He went into the back corner of the warehouse space—our old rehearsal hall—and dusted off what remained of his drum set. He motioned me to my old stool still bearing my carved initials.
Our music was rusty and disjointed. I’d never stopped playing, and he had. We hadn’t jammed together in seventeen years, not since that fateful night.
Despite the cobwebs and the sporadic interruptions from the occasional customer, the next couple of hours were the best I’d had in months. Maybe even years. Music didn’t always have to be good to be rewarding. What’s a few sour notes between friends?
6
Asheville was the forbidden city. Dad would tsk as we sat in the front parlor, watching the TV news blast images of crime scenes. On Sundays, the preacher railed about temptation and sin, most of which seemed to come from our big-city neighbor, according to his sermons.
As kids, we only ever went there with my father for specific errands for the farm. He drove white-knuckled and ranting about the crazy drivers. Cars whipped past our old truck like we were on a racetrack. They would honk as we puttered along, hauling hay or tractor parts.
When I was sixteen, Anna gave me the first taste of how magical the place could be. One summer Sunday when the store was closed, Xander and I squeezed into her Camaro and took off to a street festival in downtown Asheville. Not just in sin city but the heart of sin city. I couldn’t have been more excited.
And since we didn’t have school, I was staying the night at Xander’s. That saved me from having to tell my parents where we were going. They assumed Xander and I were playing music in the back of the consignment store.
Once we finally found a place to park, blocks from the event, we walked along the sidewalk, chattering excitedly. The distant music echoed off the buildings, muffled by the din of the mob of people moving in our same direction.
The smell of food hung in the air, tempting me the same way our county fair did every fall, but it wasn’t mingled with the scent of livestock. This was city life.
We walked past the street barricades and entered a sea of tents lining the sidewalks. Vendors displayed their wares. Paintings. Sculptures. Jewelry. Clothing. Most of it was ridiculously expensive, far more than I could afford with the measly few dollars in my pocket, but tourists snatched the stuff up.
