Ziggy, Stardust and Me

by James Brandon

He looks down. “I don’t know, man . . . Being here . . . with you . . . I’m usually so lost in my head, but when I’m with you . . .” He picks at the frayed hole in his jeans. “My thoughts just kinda float away, and things . . . make sense again—even now. It’s hard to explain . . .”

  I lift his chin. The second my fingers touch his skin, a volt zips through me. My breath shudders, but I do not flinch.

  “I missed this,” he whispers.

  “I . . . missed this, too, Web . . .”

  “I wish . . . we could just . . . I don’t know . . .”

  “I know . . . me too . . .” His lips are so close I can smell the sour-cherry candies and I want to taste them in my own mouth, feel his breath in mine, but . . .

  I can’t.

  “I have to get back,” I say to the woven heartbeat rug. Easier that way.

  “Oh . . .”

  “I mean, I want to stay, but it’s not safe for me to be here—” I carefully slink back into my shirt and start walking toward the door. I feel tears brimming my eyes, but I will not let any more escape.

  “Hey . . . Bowie boy.” He stands, holding himself like I wish he could be holding me. “Maybe you should come back tomorrow . . .”

  I don’t move.

  “We can hide from those assholes together . . .” he says.

  “I . . . can’t, Web.”

  “Yeah . . .” He tucks some hair behind his ear, shuffles his feet on the wood floor. “You remember that recording we did in your room?”

  “Of course.”

  “We can always go there, you know? To the moon. It’s safe at least . . .”

  “Yeah . . . yeah it is . . .”

  “I’ll see you there, then?”

  “Yeah . . . okay . . . I’ll see you there . . .”

  He lifts his dimpled smile. “I’ll just . . . wait on the balcony first. To make sure you get across okay . . .”

  I nod and walk out the door, just before the tears start rolling down my cheeks.

  * * *

  —

  So Einstein says, “The universe is always conspiring for your greatest good,” huh? If that were true, we wouldn’t be living here. Not in this broken time, not in this broken city, not on this broken planet with my broken Ziggy cross pieces. No. We’d be on our caravel ride through the stars. Together.

  When I finally reach the trailers, I turn back to wave.

  But he’s already gone.

  40.

  Sunday, July 1, 1973

  THE NEXT MORNING, I’m burning up. I lift my head from the pillow. Oh. It’s like the sunburn’s burning me alive. I must have a fever . . . or something. What happened to me last night? What was in that aloe goo? Every nerve in my body is a solar flare and the world’s wavy, like entering a dream sequence on TV. No doubt, instant karma for seeing him last night, as Aunt Luna would say.

  I. Don’t. Care.

  “Hey. Son. You alright? You don’t look too good,” Dad says, shaking me. It comes out real slow. Like someone pressed Play halfway down on my tape recorder.

  “I think I have a fever,” I try to say, but the words melt on my tongue.

  “Get some rest,” he says. “I’ll get you a cold towel.”

  I flop back down, close my eyes, and swim far away,

  back to my dreams . . .

  I’m standing in the middle of the lake again. Alone.

  “Web? Where are you? Help me! I’m stuck!”

  Ziggy on the Cross rises from the water. Waterfalls rush on either side of him. He unhinges his wrists and jives to the music. “Come on, Starman, remember what’s in the middle of space and time? You gotta let yourself go. You gotta go back to him.” Then he inhales and bursts into a million red shimmering stars—

  A muffled voice in a distant galaxy calls my name: “Jonathan.”

  I try to answer.

  “Jonathan.”

  Someone’s shaking me.

  “Jonathan!”

  I jolt up. It’s Dad.

  “Am I dreaming?”

  “No.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Five or somethin’. You’ve been sleepin’ all day. You okay, son?”

  “I guess?” I lean my head against the trailer wall, slap my palm on my forehead. I’m sweating and trembling and a wildebeest is scratching to get out of my lungs, but I’m back. I think. And my fever’s cracked. I think. I grab a few PeterPaulandMary poofs, towel my face with my T-shirt. Doesn’t do any good; it’s soaked.

  Dad cracks open a bottle of Bud, hands me a glass of water. “You look like hell. Drink this.”

  The door’s open, and a quicksand of air swelters through. Hal and Heather stand together, arm in arm, plotting my tragic demise.

  “We’re goin’ a few trailers down for a barbecue,” says Dad. “Some cat’s just got back from Vietnam. Comin’?” He sloshes beer down his chest, swipes it with the back of his hand. “You hear me?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m going to stay. I need to rest.”

  “You remember why we came here, right?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “Uh-huh. Fine. I’m givin’ you this day, son, but tomorrow? You do what I say. Got it?” He slams the trailer door.

  I slink out of bed, stumble over to the kitchen sink, and slop my head under the faucet to let the water cleanse me like a rain shower.

  Okay, I’m back.

  Sort of.

  I dig through my satchel to find the book Ziggy talked about in my dream—Jonathan Livingston Seagull. And I read the quote aloud. To Web.

  “‘Overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don’t you think we might see each other once or twice?’”

  I look through the binoculars.

  “Yeah,” I whisper. “I think we just might. Once or twice . . .”

  41.

  Monday, July 2, 1973

  THE NEXT DAY, DAD wakes up with the same fever I had. Or something like it. He’s beet red, covered in sweat, and can’t stop coughing. At one point he wobbled to the bathroom to pee and told me to “Stay put!” Then he fell back asleep, swimming away in his own fever dreams.

  Fine by me.

  I spend the morning alone whispering into my tape recorder:

  “This is Jonathan Collins coming to you live from Creve Coeur Lake. This just in: A Literal Watergate. Reports have been flooding in that one step on the Broken Heart Lake will singe your soul and destroy your mind and leave you running back and forth across the waters like a starved madman. No survivors have been reported. Stay away. Far away.”

  I seriously might be losing my mind. All I can think about is how to get myself back across the lake, but every scenario ends in destruction. And the impossibility of seeing him again is worse than being strapped down to the Electric Box of Shame. I swear it’s ripping me apart inside . . .

  I grab my chest, twist my T-shirt . . .

  Lift the binoculars from the wall and peer through.

  Still. Nothing.

  * * *

  —

  Hours later, Dad wakes me. He has his usual props: bottle in one hand, cigarette in the other. He’s hunched over himself, huffing, his thin hair splotched against his forehead. “Come on, get ready, we’re going over to the barbecue.” He looks pale and gray. Like someone forgot to paint him in a paint-by-numbers.

  “There’s another barbecue? Didn’t you just—”

  “Yeah, there’s another one. The guy’s a goddamn war hero. We should be celebratin’ him every day.”

  “You sure you’re okay, Dad? We could just—”

  “I’m fine.” He grabs a towel from the sink and wipes his face. “Come on. Get movin’. Heather’s already over there. Don’t wanna be late.” Sure don’t. Damn
, no getting out of this one. I need to put up a few thousand force fields. My powers have severely diminished since being here.

  I throw on the Pink Floyd shirt for added protection, but apparently Dad’s fever dreams have also made him a fashion columnist for Field & Stream, because he makes me change. Over and over again. Jesus, what’s the big deal? Nothing I choose is right. After three costume changes—

  1) favorite turquoise polo and white tennis shorts (“You’re too rich-looking.”)

  2) Cardinals T-shirt and matching red cotton shorts (“You look like a Popsicle.”)

  3) yellow tank top with cutoff denims (“You look like a goddamned girl.” UGH.)

  —we settle on my Eagles album T-shirt because it has an eagle on it, and we’re back to the white tennis shorts.

  SweetBabyZiggy, didn’t know we were going to a Trailer Park Cotillion Ball. Dad goes shirtless with a ratty pair of denim shorts he’s worn for the past three days to present me. He hands me a six-pack to take as a gift for the guy back from Vietnam, and off we go. Me: clutching my Ziggy on the Cross pieces, safely stashed in my shorts pocket. Can’t be too prepared.

  The sky is a brighter purple tonight, like someone left the black light on. It makes the water glow extra-blue and the trailers gleam extra-bright and the bonfire ahead extra-blazing and THWOOP, my clothes instantly stick to me like a sponge.

  A burst of “Heyheyhey”s and “Whatitbewhatitbe”s claps the air. Hickory smoke billows from the bonfire and the redneck revelers are already in full-on party mode. Dad’s instantly swarmed by a few of his new beer-guzzling belchers, with Heather locked on his hip, leaving me standing there like an idiot. At least I’m dressed appropriately.

  I drop the six-pack off on a card table and weave through the fast-building crowd of bikini-clad rats and shirtless beasts who all seem to stop mid-cackle or mid-belch to stare at me. Heather’s boy races Hot Wheels in the rocks, slamming them into my shoes.

  Keep walking. Don’t make eye contact. Navigate the negative. Just go.

  I stop at the edge of the shore, a good few yards from anyone nearby, and watch the crying waterfall gushing in the distance. Man, is she wailing right now. Yeah, I feel ya, sister.

  “Hey there.”

  I whip around. Forgot about rats being sneaky and fast.

  “Hello.”

  She’s my age, maybe younger, not sure. Never saw her at school before. She’s wearing a hand-knitted bikini top that only covers her nipples and denim strings for shorts. Oh boy.

  “Whatchoo doin’, cutie pie?” she asks, dangling a bottle of Bud between two fingers and smoking a Virginia Slim. She sounds like a meerkat.

  “Oh, I was just looking at the—” Crying Princess Waterfall? Uh. No. “Nothing,” I say. Her hair’s shagged like Jane Fonda from that movie Klute and her face is painted like Jane Fonda from Barbarella, so I say, “You look like Jane Fonda.”

  She blinks. “Huh?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re weird.”

  “Yeah. That’s what they say.”

  “Lookin’ for someone?”

  “What? Oh, yeah . . .” I crane my neck from side to side. Where is that . . . someone . . .

  She slops her arms around my neck. “You’re cute,” she says. Her breath smells like rotted cabbage. “You ain’t like them other boys.”

  “Nope. No I am not.”

  “You’re Jonathan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Not what I pictured. So you live in the city.”

  “Oh. Well not—”

  “I live right there. In that trailer.”

  “Oh. Cool.” Okay. It’s been a trip; gotta run. But I can’t. Her arms squeeze tighter. I giggle, look around for . . . someone . . .

  “There’s somethin’ different about you,” she says.

  “Oh? Not really, no.”

  “Yeah, yeah there is.” She scrapes her fingers on my cheek. One of her fake nails chips off. “Shit,” she says and burps. “You ever kiss a girl before?”

  “What? Yeah, of course. Why?”

  “You wanna kiss me?”

  “Oh, no. But thank you.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Oh, well, I have—”

  “Think you’re too good for me? S’at it?”

  “No! No, not at all. I . . . have a girlfriend, so—”

  “So what?”

  “So I just don’t want to hurt her feelings?”

  “What the hell your daddy send me over here for, then?”

  Bingo. Okay. Got it now. The girl who’s going to fix me. At least she could’ve brushed her teeth.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “To talk maybe?”

  “Talk? What the hell we gonna talk about?” She pushes herself away. “How purty the sky is? How del-i-cate the lake looks? How you readin’ some big book I ain’t ever heard of?”

  “No. Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “You and your fancy-boy self. I don’t need you. I don’t need you . . . Who the hell you think you are anyway, huh? Huh? HUH—”

  KA-BLEWIE. Her head explodes in a million pieces of rage and splatters all over me. I try to calm her, but she’s lost in a cacophony of obscenities being hurled in every direction. People have turned to see what the ruckus is about. Nothing to see here, folks. Just keep . . . doing whatever it is you’re doing out here. My body’s caught in her cyclone of fury. Dad’s definitely going to kill me now.

  “Hey hey, Tammy, what’s going on here?” Hal pushes through some oafs in bib overalls. He slithers between us, gripping her shoulders.

  “This fancy boy thinks he’s too good for me!”

  “Hey, that’s not true. This here’s a friend of mine,” he says, giving me a wink.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you,” I say.

  Hal shakes his head and turns back to Tammy, who grabs some wadded-up tissue from under her bikini top to wipe her nose.

  “I’m pretty, too, goddammit!” she yells to Hal.

  “Of course you are.”

  “You ain’t no better than me,” she screams, looking over his shoulders to me.

  “You’re right. I’m not.”

  “Listen, Tammy, why don’t you go get yourself cleaned up,” Hal says. “Get yourself another beer, and when you come back, the fiddlers will be here again and I’ll get to steal you away for a few dances. How’s that sound?”

  She snorts in her tissue, smears black makeup across her face, and stuffs it back in her bikini.

  “You would?” she asks.

  “Yeah, for sure. Sound good?”

  She flicks his hat off and squishes it on her head. “You’re always such a tease, Hal Loomis,” she says. “I’ll see you on the dance floor.” She pecks him on the cheek and stumbles off. I think she’s already forgotten about me.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Thanks.” I start to walk past. He steps in front of me.

  “Don’t mention it,” he says. “She’s a loose cannon, if you know what I mean.” He whistles and twirls his fingers by his ears. His teeth are yellowed and pointy. Without his hat on, he looks like Mr. Clean’s brother who did hard time and escaped Alcatraz, roughed-up and disturbed in the eyes, as Grandma used to say.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why don’t you join me? I was just about to roast a hot dog.”

  “Oh, I can’t, thanks, my dad is—”

  “In a trailer with Heather.”

  “Oh.”

  “Come on.” He leads us to the bonfire, now flocked by the Three Hillbillies and a handful of other extras from Deliverance. I barely glance up, deciding it is much better to focus on whatever is currently being twirled on the spit.

  “Well, well, well, if it ain’t Robert’s boy,” BillyBob says. Turns out he’s one of the oafs in bib overalls. His f
ace is voltage red and dripping with sweat; his long beard shoots off him like fried corn silks. “Get yourself in a little Tammy trouble there?”

  “Oh. Yeah . . .”

  Hal pulls me down on a log to sit by him, then hands me a stick with a hot dog piercing the end.

  “Don’t worry, boy,” Five-Teeth Terry says, smoking. His head glows as bright as the end of his cigarette. “You ain’t nothin’ special. Ain’t nobody here escaped the wrath of Tammy.”

  A round of cackles, grunts, and other indecipherable noises.

  “What y’all laughin’ at?” Porky Joe booms. He stops whittling a piece of wood with that unusually large knife of his. “That’s my goddamn daughter you’re talking about—”

  “Hell, she even tried to get that Injun boy across the lake,” Terry spits out.

  Joe suddenly thrusts his knife at him. “Say it again! Say it, you got-damned bumpkin! I’ll cut you so hard you’ll wish those Indians would’ve scalped you instead. Say it!”

  No one in the circle moves.

  “Come on, boys,” BillyBob says, mopping his head with a handkerchief. “I’m sick a yer shit. We’re here to honor our friend, remember?” He gestures to the man sitting across from him, probably not that much older than me. A cigarette with a three-inch-long ash dangles from his fingers. And like me, he hasn’t blinked or stopped staring at the fire since I sat down. Probably stuck in his head somewhere in Vietnam, still fighting a never-ending war.

  Guess we all are.

  “He knows not to bring them up, Billy,” Porky Joe yells. “He knows how I feel about them redskins.” His knife hovers inches from Terry’s neck. “Bring up my daughter again in the same breath as them, and I’ll slice you in two. I ain’t even kiddin’ here, you ugly trailer trash hick. Got it?”

  “Got it. Jesus, man, it’s a damn joke.”

  “Goddamn hillbilly.” Porky Joe thwacks the side of Terry’s head. So hard I’m sure he broke something. He turns back to the fire, huffing and puffing and blowing it ten feet higher in the air.

  Everyone’s quiet.

  I twist my hot dog in the fire.