No Names, page 11
I have to wait till the ten o’clock news to get more details. There’s a theory, though little evidence to support it. It goes that my father was only nine months shy of thirty years at the refinery when his supervisor fired him, which would have made him ineligible for full pension. There’s no paperwork to confirm this, a spokesman from the refinery says. Mom shouts at the TV one of the curses she picked up in the German neighborhood where she grew up. “Scheisse bastard!” It’s not clear who it’s meant for. The announcer? The spokesman? Dad? They interview several employees who add a twist. They say Dad and the victim were close friends. I never knew Dad had any friends at all, much less a close one. Apparently, they ate together frequently in the cafeteria or sometimes went out for a beer after a shift. His name is Leonard Dodge, a name Dad never mentioned. A grainy black-and-white photo of Leonard Dodge appears on the screen. I don’t recognize him. He’s posed by what looks to be the lake, halfway smiling, his thinning light hair blowing in the wind. Then suddenly I do recognize him. Something about the deep corners of the mouth and the way his head is tilted back a little. It was a long time ago. I was maybe in second grade and stayed home from school with a fever. The other kids were at school and Mom left for work knowing Dad would soon be getting home from his shift to look after me. I heard something in the living room and crept out of the bedroom in my pajamas. There on the couch sat Dad and Leonard Dodge, both looking relaxed. They appeared surprised to see me and straightened their backs. Dad stood, sort of chuckled, and introduced me. Leonard Dodge seemed maybe flustered and said he had to get going, and Dad led me back to bed, took my temperature and got me some ginger ale from the fridge. That was the one and only time I saw Leonard Dodge. Were the two of them as tight as me and Pete? In any case, this friendship changes how I’ve always thought of Dad. It also makes the crime all the more horrible. It’s grotesque to even think this way, I know, but the tragedy somehow makes my father more human while at the same time making him inhuman.
The news goes on to report that Dad went home for his meal (something he almost never did) and returned with a pistol. There’s a picture of the pistol. I didn’t know he had one. He then walked into Leonard Dodge’s office and shot him in the head. My guts tighten around what I’m guessing may be my soul. I feel like I’m going to puke. I can’t handle the thought that Leonard Dodge is no longer a thinking, breathing, feeling human being. And somehow—I don’t know why—I feel implicated.
The chronic sadness I’ve always felt over the fact that I barely know anything about who my father is now becomes so acute I can’t stay here with Mom and the girls. As I rush out of the room, Mom again wails, “Scheisse bastard!”
Huddled on the floor next to the rollaway, I start convulsing. This has never happened to me before. For a long time, I can’t stop. There, in the dark basement, I’m barely conscious for a long, long time. Eventually, I’m able to start thinking again. I think about one of the few times Dad and I have been alone since John died. It was maybe three years ago. We were walking along the river on a Sunday afternoon, picking blackberries, when all of a sudden, he stopped. He stood there for the longest time, silent, looking out over the water. When at last he spoke, he said he would like a job as a lookout in a national forest, living up in one of those fire towers. That was all he said. I didn’t think much of it, but now it suddenly means so much. It was pretty much the opposite of the work he did, enclosed by pipes and machinery. I try to make some sense—any sense at all—of how the situation he’s now in came to be. Unlike how I feel about not knowing Mom, even if I didn’t know Dad, I at least thought I knew the ghost of him. I only now realize he’s way more complicated and angrier than the ghost I’d created in my head. There’s something sentimental to the point of being obscene about how I’d imagined his life as one of Thoreau’s lives of quiet desperation, when it has now, for all intents and purposes, ended in a most unquiet way. I used literature to shield myself from reality. As I start putting a few of the pieces together, what’s so strange is that I’m feeling his story becoming mine. I have become a murderer’s son.
It’s warm for an April night when I finally leave the house. I had to get out. The news about Dad has stopped, and I’ve given up hoping he’ll contact us from jail. His silence has made Mom crazy, which is understandable, but I can’t take another day of being confined with her rage and the girls’ sorrow. I haven’t seen the guys or the Lacs for over a month. Pete stopped by the house a bunch of times. I saw him from the window but didn’t go to the door. I did the same with Lisa. On like her third time, she left a card I never opened and a tin of brownies. I feel bad about that, about ignoring her and Pete. None of us answered the door for anyone. Or the phone. Now I head to Dreamland with my guitar, sure that’s where the guys are. And I hear them before seeing them, before even pulling into the parking lot. The fact they’re here somehow makes it almost okay for me to enter the world again. I walk up to the pavilion, trying to calm the chronic jitters that have plagued me these past weeks. The band’s riffing on the Stranglers’ “(Get a) Grip (on Yourself),” which is really pretty ironic because I definitely don’t have one on myself. I enter from behind, plug in while they’re still playing, not sure they’ve even noticed me yet. Without a signal to them or from them, I join in, tentative at first. Bobby looks surprised when he turns his head and sees me, but he gives an alright! grin as he beats out an even wilder rhythm than the one he’d been riding. The other two look over. Matt nods to me in time with the music, Mona Lisa-ing a smile. But Pete studies me, even as he’s putting out a series of monster chords, he studies me. A look of sympathy. Or is it empathy? I try to remember the difference. There’s maybe also hurt in his eyes, hurt because I never called him, closed myself off from him. Before the last chords fade away, I raise my hand, giving the old a-one-a-two-a-three, and play the first measures of our “Strong, Silent, and Loud.” The guys come right in. They’re looking at me kind of funny. Maybe they’re noticing I’m feeling kind of funny. Something has changed. In my playing, in my singing. This something scares me. All three of them are staring at me as we travel into the song, like they’re also scared but also like they want to come with me to wherever I’m going or maybe to where I’ve been. I have no control over what I’m doing, and I have full control. Like a shock, I know it’s Dad. All that’s been silenced in him for so long is now flowing through me and finding voice. I’m a ventriloquist’s dummy, I’m a voodoo doll. I take in all his pain and anger and shame and send it out through the world. This song—that Pete and I wrote—starts sounding unfamiliar. All the songs, one after the other, seem changed. I’m burning up. I tear my T-shirt off. The girls at the edge of the pavilion stare wide-eyed. They take a step back. My father’s pain pours down my face and chest. I climb onto one of the concrete picnic tables and, standing there, legs spread wide, feel my eyes roll way back in my head. A trembling begins through my whole body. Now the girls look even more frightened. I feel strong, stronger than I’ve felt in my entire life. We play and play. We play hard, until nothing’s left, until our voices are raw and we’re drooping over our instruments. I curl up on the table, guitar shrieking with feedback. Bobby’s leprechaun-green eyes glitter with glee. Matt knocks back nearly a half pint of whiskey in a few long swigs. Pete gets down on his knees by my side, whispering, “That’s it, man! That’s it!” I don’t say a word, but I do know that whatever it may be, Pete’s right, this is it, and yet I’d easily trade all my music for my father’s redemption. Everything’s changed inside and outside of me, and these changes are definitely what’s pushed the music majorly.
Like a lot of guys starting bands, we’re influenced by all the new music coming out. Big-name punkers like the Ramones, Blondie, the Clash, and Iggy Pop, but also less famous ones like the Boys, Dead Boys, the Dictators and lots more. But influence isn’t everything. As Bobby says, you enter a genre and you develop a style, for sure, but there’s life, and what it does and does not do to you makes the music not just music but art. Wise man, that Bobby.
Every day our practicing gets more and more intense. Word gets out and people flock to the park to watch us, only now it’s mainly guys. The girls have all but disappeared. Guess I scared them off. One girl saw Bobby at the mall and told him as much, that I seem violent. He loved that. Not so sure I do. The guys who come nod their heads and shake their fists to the beat. Even with a crowd, though, we try to keep it practice and not so much rehearsal. Bobby says rehearsal implies an impending performance, but we’ve got to get things exactly right musically before we arrange anything like that. He stops to talk about this chord or that note, this measure or that phrasing. He’s great.
As usual in the month since I reemerged, we’re at the pavilion practicing. Tonight, the sour air from the refinery drifts all the way down here. In my peripheral vision an old guy’s standing by one of the pillars. Kind of a beatnik—goatee, dressed in black, wearing wraparound shades even though it’s dark out. He stays for the whole session. As we’re unplugging and packing up, he approaches Matt, maybe because he’s the tallest of us and is a little older. He introduces himself, Jimmy Ryder, owner of the River Club. It’s probably the coolest venue in town, though not a place any of us from the Flats go because there’s a cover. Jimmy Ryder lights a joint, passes it around. He growls, “Dig your sound, fellas.” He’s heard rumors we’re out here at Dreamland and that we’re wild, so he came down to check us out. He takes a long toke. On the exhale, he murmurs, “Had a cancellation. Can you cats play tomorrow night?” He pauses. “If it works out, I’ll get you another gig later in the month.”
Pete and I look at each other like we’ve just won the lottery. Bobby looks at us cautiously. It’s Matt who, without even glancing at us, nods and tells Ryder, “That’d be cool.” He says it in a cool way, too, not acting at all excited. The rest of us follow Matt’s lead and nod. “We’ll be there, Mr. Ryder,” Matt assures him.
It occurs to me for the first time that this delusion of ours might actually turn into something real.
“By the way,” Ryder asks, “what do you cats call yourselves?”
Once again, Matt’s the one who answers. “We don’t call ourselves anything. We don’t have a name.” He doesn’t add yet.
The posters plastered outside the River Club read No Name Band, which is, Matt suggests, sort of a name. We just might keep it because the more Ryder asks us to come up with one, the worse any other sounds.
The River Club’s not a small place—a converted ’30s bus terminal—and it’s packed with guys. Just a few girls in the back, leaning against the wall or their boyfriends. Some rich girls from high school days I recognize. Though no one I know. I’m hopped up on nothing but adrenaline as we’re about to go on. Our first show ever. My compadres have taken speed. I’ve never given a performance before, and Pete’s only done cello recitals in elementary school, so we’re lucky to have Matt who’s played every dive in town and Bobby who’s performed a ton at school. They steady the band.
As Bobby’s always reminding us, it’s kind of useless to try and describe music in words, let alone a performance, but I know that both sets rock the house. For the last song, I find myself moved. I mean moved the way I hear people are moved by religion to do things they might not otherwise do, like shake on the floor or handle poisonous snakes. My body starts vibrating, vibrating but no shaking or twisting hips like Elvis. The crowd goes nuts. They want me, I want them. They start grabbing at me, pawing me, hitting me. It’s crazy, it’s like those ancient Greek cults Pete talks about, the ones that rip their god apart. Like that, except the god part.
Before we knew it, we were on the road in this ’67 Twilight Green Econoline Jimmy Ryder loaned us, on a tour arranged by him. He’s become our de facto manager, which is cool because, except for Matt’s experience booking local bars, we don’t really know the ins and outs of the business. For two months total, we’ll be on the road. Forty gigs, twenty-five cities. So far, it’s been mostly dives. We’ve played a Chinese restaurant after hours, a strip club between shifts, a burned-out supermarket, a bunch of apartment building basements. Some legit clubs, too. We drive and drive through interstate sameness. The landscape looks so far away. We sleep and eat fast food in the van, which very soon begins to stink of four guys who’ve been partying too much and haven’t showered or brushed their teeth. Most nights we earn not much more than beer money. Despite the shitty conditions, I’m loving performing. For most people, I suppose, performance implies acting a part that’s not yourself. But not me. I never feel more like myself than when I’m singing and playing guitar, offering myself up to the crowd. Maybe it’s entertainment for the audience, and that’s cool, but for me it’s ritual, it’s resurrection.
I’m not exactly sure how people hear about us. There’s Ryder’s publicity, of course. He has clubs put posters up and place announcements in weeklies, but without a record I just don’t get it. I’m trying to think if I’d go see us if I hadn’t heard a song on the radio. There’s what Matt calls the buzz, I guess. He talks about how sad it was playing in bands without the buzz, in bars where the crowd won’t shut up and doesn’t seem to care about the music.
I’m afraid to think of what life would be like without music, without Pete. I kind of see Pete as the music. He once called me his muse and explained that the word comes from music or vice versa. I think it’s more like he’s mine, though. It’s not as if Pete and music make me only happy, but they do make things make sense, at least a little. They give meaning, even if that meaning’s awful, ambiguous, cryptic, or just plain confusing.
It’s kind of hokey, but Pete and I like doing touristy things in the towns we hit. That is, if we manage to drag ourselves out of the van after a hard night’s playing and partying. I’ve never been anywhere so really want to see something of the world. Matt and Bobby aren’t really interested.
Today we’re at Niagara Falls, me and Pete. We took a tourist jitney because Matt and Bobby were wasted and still snoozing in the van in Buffalo, where we played last night. The couples with us in the jitney all appeared to be honeymooners. They seemed none too happy to find freaks along for the ride, like our presence was somehow a downer to their newlywed bliss. Not that we were in their faces. No, not at all. It’s like black jeans and T-shirts do the trick. Well, and that don’t-fuck-with-me look Pete says I can get, or how sometimes his lip curls above that prominent canine of his like he’s about to snarl. Think mean Elvis.
The two of us are hiking the rim above the Canadian side of the falls. Once we’re away from all the tourist traps, it’s easy to get high on the bigness and the beauty of it all, like what in Romantic times, Pete says, they called the Sublime. The feeling probably comes from all the charged electrons, ions, or whatever they are that get generated by falling water.
We’re sitting right on the edge of the rushing river, about a mile above the falls, when Pete says, “More than anything, you know what I’d like to do?”
I don’t so much as nod or shake my head because I know what he’s going to say.
“I want to dive in there, swim with the current, then go flying gloryizingly over that motherfucking cascade of the ultimate!”
He leans forward on his haunches, and for a second, I swear he’s actually going to do it.
He laughs, “And you, mio Orfeo, would have to gather up the pieces smashed on the rocks and sound the elegiac lay on high. Or, if you’d prefer, you can just say, ‘Fuck him!’”
Just to be safe, I suggest we hike further upstream. As we’re moseying along, I ask, “What is it with you and water?”
He doesn’t pause a second before answering. “Sometimes I think I was born into the wrong element. If I’d gotten to choose, I’d have gone with water. Or maybe fire. Possibly air. Definitely not earth.”
Late afternoon, we get back down below the falls to take a ride on the Maid of the Mist. It’s expensive but we want to get right up under the monster falls. The water pounds more and more intense the closer the boat gets in. The force penetrates every cell of my body. My brain tries to measure the power, get the music of it. Impossible. Too big, too complex. When we’re almost all the way in, Pete starts shouting like a maniac into what’s probably the greatest of all white noises on Earth. He shouts for the sake of shouting, so I start shouting along with him. The other passengers look scared. They move away from us, huddling together on the far end of the deck. When the ship stops momentarily at the farthest point under the falls before spinning back around, we start laughing into each other’s mist-blurred face.
Our hike’s made us incredibly hungry. For the first time since beginning the tour we decide to eat something besides the usual junk—burgers, wings, chips—and head into a fancy restaurant, not so much because it’s fancy but because it’s all glass and overlooks the Horseshoe Falls. The maître d’ is very sorry, but gentlemen must have dinner jackets. And the customers are dressed up. Suits and ties, nice dresses, even a mink stole or two. But when Pete flashes his gayest smile, the persnickety old guy responds with a wry grin. “One moment, messieurs,” he says before disappearing. He returns with two navy blazers. He’s beaming as he holds them for us to put on. Perfect fits. The other diners look askance as our newfound champion leads us to what appears to be the best table in the house, the one directly facing the falls. He even pulls the chairs out for us. Our waiter (who happens to look a lot like us, except clean-cut) comes over and opens our menus for us. Never had that happen before. We’re grinning at the ridiculousness of us. We order surf ‘n’ turf because it’s something we’ve never had, something rich kids eat at nice restaurants on prom night.
