Lost Boys

by Darci Bysouth

  I ended up sitting on a driftwood log watching the fog roll in. The jagged rocks receded like shadow puppets behind a gauzy curtain, and I thought of the sailors drawn to the shore, mesmerized.

  “Wonder if she found her starfish pool?” Eric eased himself next to me and stretched his legs out in front of him.

  I couldn’t quite read his tone, so I said nothing.

  Eric smiled. “Don’t worry about the vibe. Happens when you’re on tour; too many people, too little space. Another day, and we’re rocking out at Winterland.”

  “I’m not worried. About that.”

  “We’re here. Oregon beach, checking out the waves, freezing our asses off.”

  “We have to go back.”

  Eric was silent. He tapped out a cigarette from his pack and offered me one. I shook my head.

  “You know I’m gonna get you out of there, Jude. Soon as we start pulling the bigger gigs, soon as I put aside a bit more money. I never told you this, but I got my eye on a little place next to the lake. Well, a trailer, but a nice one. Two bedrooms. Enough land to have a dog, maybe put in a garden.”

  And I could see it, my brother and me and a dog, could see the little trailer with yellow curtains and my mom’s blue vase on the kitchen table, filled with daisies from the garden. The surf rolled in, sh sh all things come to pass and I could see it all so clearly, while the fog funnelled our voices into each other’s ears. While it was just us, cut off from the rest.

  The fog followed us like a dog all the way down the coast until we crossed into California, where we took a wrong turn at Crescent City and somehow ended up back in Oregon. Karen was moody and silent, but Sheri thought it was hilarious. Eric parked the van next to the state sign, and he and Dave sat on the road barrier, the map spread between them. A cold wind blew through the van, along with a few snowflakes, until a gust snatched the map away and sent it flying into the gulley.

  Sheri screamed with laughter.

  “Don’t worry,” I said to Karen. “Eric’s a good driver. He can find his way anywhere.”

  “Except out of Oregon, sweetie,” said Sheri.

  Dave opened the front door of the van. “Scoot,” he told Karen. “Man’s job, navigating outta this wilderness.” Karen slunk into the back.

  Eric climbed in and grinned back at us. He picked up an empty cassette case and spoke into it, in a rich and oily tone. “Good evening, ladies, this is your captain speaking. Weather’s fresh with a hint of snow, so sit back and enjoy the ride, while Captain Eric and his trusty co-pilot Dave deliver you through the backwoods of Northern California, straight back to the lights of civilisation.” Dave whooped and did a drum roll on the dashboard.

  And I wasn’t worried, even when we travelled through an endless chain of canyon and forest, mountain and stream, with the only signs of a life a few ramshackle houses appearing at the side of the road and once, a chained dog missing an ear. Dave wanted to put on the Born to Run tape but Eric stopped him, saying we weren’t in Springsteen country anymore, so we listened to Fleetwood Mac instead. Something about the hillbilly thump suited the landscape. Karen forgot her mood and waved her arms in the air, undulating prettily like a little hippie girl. Sheri remarked it was crazy how it felt just like Hope, what with the closed-in hills, and Dave said oh man, oh man until Eric told him to shut up. I let it all wash over me, knowing Eric would get us out of this.

  When the lights of Crescent City appeared, we all cheered and no one complained about the overpriced and smelly motel room we got there.

  Eric called our cousin Larry from the payphone the next morning, stuffing in dimes until the money ran out. When he jumped into the van, he was grinning. “We’ll meet him at Winterland when we get in. Couple of local bands playing, Greg something and some guys called the Heartbreaks? Larry says they’re good.”

  And it didn’t matter if no-one had heard of either. Sheri and Karen and I sat in the back seat and did each other’s hair, applying and reapplying lip gloss, while Dave and Eric discussed how to best meet Bill Graham and which demos to give him first, how to play it cool and not sound like some small town Canadians with cow shit on their heels.

  We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge in the dark and it was all lit up like a fairy tale. And it didn’t matter if we got lost in the steep hills and narrow turns of San Francisco, if we had to stop and ask for directions, if the city up close was dirty and run down and the fog rolled over the people slumped in doorways. Winterland itself was a huge ugly block, more like a factory than the palace its name suggested. Lines of ragged people were camped outside, rolled in sleeping bags under makeshift cardboard or garbage bag tents. The stink of weed and stale pee was strong in the air.

  “Deadheads,” sniggered Dave.

  Eric did the talking when we reached the front doors. No one seemed to have heard of Larry and they laughed when Eric asked for Bill Graham. The concert had started; we could hear the muffled roar and thumping bass coming from behind the closed auditorium doors. We stood outside shuffling our feet while the Deadheads eyed us suspiciously.

  “You looking for Larry? The Canuck?” A big man with a beat up face approached us.

  Eric nodded.

  “You the other Canucks?”

  Eric tried out his slow grin.

  “Jesus God. How’d you even find us? They have cities where you’re from? Flew over the prairies once on the way to a gig in London and fuck a duck, that’s a whole lotta nothing, pardon my French, ladies. You folks come with me, I’ll take you to Larry.”

  He turned and we scrambled after him, past the Deadheads and around the corner and through a rabbit warren of trash and dumpsters. The night air thumped with distorted bass and still the man kept yelling — shitty weather, you guys bring that with you? — until we reached a large set of doors propped open. The sound coming from them was deafening, a mix of thumping bass and jangling guitar, the roar of the crowd.

  I thought it was one of the Deadheads at first, coming towards us gaunt and grinning, clothes flapping as he spread his arms in greeting.

  “Larry?” Eric was first to realize.

  There were hugs and back-slapping all round, and everyone commenting on how much weight Larry had lost; had he taken up jogging? Gone on one of those West Coast diets? We had to scream to be heard.

  The big man stomped off — five of them, Larry? Goddamn, this is coming out of your paycheck — and Larry kept twitching towards the open doors, glittery-eyed and nervous. “You missed Greg. Tom’s doing his thing.”

  “Tom?”

  “Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Been kicking around a while, didja catch them at the Commodore? No? Man, you gotta get out of the sticks! Band’s tight and Petty’s got something. Yeah, they’re gonna be big, big like a nuclear bomb, like a runaway train, like hell I don’t know what, and when they hit, you can tell everyone your cousin Larry told you so.” He giggled, twitched at the door again, and I realised he was high on something. “I can slip you guys in. I know the guards, they’re great guys, real straight up and laid back, you know?”

  Larry led us through the doors and into a wall of sound and smoke and heat. The crowd was packed solid, rippling and closing over us like waves. Larry palmed Eric something before he pushed his way back.

  “Let’s go,” yelled Eric and jerked his thumb at the stage. He wrapped his arm around me while Karen clutched at my elbow. I pressed close, feeling the crush of the crowd, and Eric winced. Too late I remembered his bruised ribs. Karen stumbled, and Sheri and Dave were swallowed up behind us. Then we were there, a few rows from the stage. Stabbing keyboards and swampy guitar reached a crescendo before cutting out to the roar of the crowd, before the stage went dark.

  A few chords on the piano, and the singer emerged into the light, striding the stage with his white shirt blazing, mike dragging in his wake and intoning like a Bible-belt preacher. He paused and scanned the crowd, called to us and waited for our reply, reached out his arms and welcomed us in. He hung his head and told us we ne
ver had nothing and we would never get anything. That all of us would be betrayed. He clutched the mike and stared into crowd, and gave us a slow grin that said love me, love me now.

  “He’s got them hooked,” Eric yelled in my ear, “and he’s not even singing.”

  “He’s gorgeous. I think?” That was Karen, pulling at my arm.

  Another song came through, and another, more swampy guitar and jangly keyboards, and the singer’s voice travelled from low and confiding to a reedy plea. It must have been the heat or the smell of weed everywhere, but I felt my body let go, my shoulders unknot and my head float, my stomach unclench for the first time in days. Karen nestled between Eric and me, swaying, and I could smell the motel shampoo she had used earlier that day. Eric swung his head down to say something in her ear, and I felt a flicker of unease, but no more than that. The keyboards and drums switched into something low and hypnotic and the singer stood in bathed in light. The crowd went wild. Growling, pleading, and then head hung low again, almost incoherent; he gave us permission to love him, to leave him, to hurt him. Again I had that lick of unease. I looked up and saw that Eric and Karen were gone.

  The crowd closed in on the space. The band went to intermission and somebody passed me a warm beer that tasted musty, and a joint. I took both and inhaled deeply before Sheri’s arms wrapped around me. She didn’t know where Eric and Karen had gone, washroom maybe, but Dave had found some guys with excellent Acapulco Gold. The band came back on with a new tone, bright and jumpy, and we pumped our arms with the crowd. Then the singer got pulled off the stage.

  It happened fast. One moment he’d been telling us how much he loved rock and roll, the next moment he was gone. Sheri whooped. The bass carried on, the crowd rippled and pulled and we were shoved backwards. Someone screamed. I saw Larry at the edge of the stage, arms reaching, and then the singer emerged, stunned and white shirt hanging off him. His eyes met mine for a second and I recoiled. Something hard and sour curled in my gut at the sight of him under that spotlight, beaten and exposed, and not what he was supposed to be. Then he flung off Larry, and wheeled around the stage, clapping his hands, urging the band to drive harder, faster. Sheri screamed with laughter. “Totally faked, what a con!” And he gave us a slow grin and finished the song with the same swagger and he’d put into the rest of the show.

  But I saw the glassy stare, the skinny ribs, the weakness. The bruises coming to bloom under the light. And I had to get out of there before I hit someone.

  I watched the rest of the show from the exit door we’d come in from earlier. The security guard glanced at me a few times but let me alone; I probably didn’t look like anybody who could hurt someone. The night air chilled my sweaty skin, and time slowed right down. The music split into tiny shards and each flew into my ears on the beat of an insect wing.

  My memories of the rest of that night are fragments only, sound bites and snapshots: somehow getting to the parking lot and Dave announcing he was tripping but that loud guy, the one that let us in? Pretty sure that loud guy was Bill fucking Graham and did Eric still have our demos? Eric incredulous, saying no, he’d given them to Larry. And Larry was nowhere to be found and we were supposed to crash at his place, we had to crash at his place because we were out of money. Karen clutching for Eric’s hand and his fingers wrapping around hers. Sheri holding my hair back while I puked against the van’s tire, saying okay sweetie, let it come up. The lights of the Golden Gate bridge, wobbling and blurring, while Eric said that he was okay, Larry had passed him some speed and that should keep him going at least until Portland and Dave better damn well be straight by then. Karen plugging in the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers tape she’d gotten off some guy who was all over her, or so she said, until Eric came along and saw what was going down. Snatches of music stabbing at me, heart-hurt and swampy, like time looping back in on itself, like we’d never left that place and we were never going to.

  Waking some time later to complete dark and silence.

  “Hey. You okay?” Eric was shaking my knee. “We put you up front. You were so out of it, Sheri was afraid you were going to choke on your own puke. Real rock star way to go, eh?”

  I could hear snoring coming from the back; the seats had been put down and the others were crammed together in a mess of limbs and hair.

  My brother talked until we reached the lights of the interstate, then until those lights dimmed under the morning sun. His voice came at me fast and fragmented, and I fell asleep and woke to another idea spooling out of him, or sometimes a different thread altogether. The guitar, what did I think of that guitar? Tight and precise, and those keyboards, wish Rob had been there to hear those keyboards! The drums dragged but maybe it was better that way, laid back and casual, balanced out all that heartbreak stuff. You could swear you’d heard those songs somewhere, you knew where the music was going even if you couldn’t quite place the tune. But it wasn’t Springsteen, not quite that. Now Tom Petty, he didn’t have much of a voice and he wasn’t much to look at, no, definitely not Springsteen, but holy shit was he cool. Total confidence. And he talked to the audience, really talked to them. You could see they lapped it up, you could see they all loved him.

  He was going to do that, my brother told me. When we got home. He was going to stand on that stage and deliver, throw it out to the audience and reel it back in. That was the key, the thing he’d been missing. The connection. The love.

  We made it to Portland with Dave still passed out in the back. Sheri offered to drive but Eric waved her off and popped another pill.

  They arrested Eric at the Canadian border, right after the guard looked at his license and barked at all of us to get and spread our arms against the van. Eric was next to me and I saw his legs jittering, the way he shifted from foot to foot. I knew his eyes were bloodshot and he had a few days of stubble lining his face, that he looked like the guy in a cartoon ‘Wanted’ poster. The cop patted me down and I saw my dad behind my closed eyes. The vomit rose in my throat. I felt the thud of the bottle echoing up my arm, the pretty shatter of glass, I saw the blood oozing like jelly from a donut and how my dad’s stringy hair knotted with it. I saw Eric feeling for a heartbeat after we dumped him on the sofa. My voice came out in a shaky hysterical whisper, “It was me, I did it. He started in and he wouldn’t stop, and I thought this time, this time he’s going to kill Eric.”

  The cop looked at me. “You talking about abduction of a minor, miss? Cuz if you aren’t, I suggest you shut your mouth.”

  “Oh my God.” That was Karen. “My mom is such a bitch.”

  But it was Karen’s mom who came and got us, after they took Eric away and impounded the van. Karen screamed at her for most of the trip back and I pieced together most of it, in between the threats and cajoling. That Karen had been seeing my brother. That he had called it off, and I had brought it on again. That Karen’s mom didn’t want her near Eric, or me, or anyone like us.

  “And I do not mean that in an uncharitable way,” she said, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. “I know you’ve had it hard, with your mom and all. But Karen has a future, you know?” She tried to hug me when she dropped me off in front of our house.

  My dad barely looked up when I walked in. The TV was blaring and there was a half-empty bottle of scotch by his elbow. Later, he came to my room and stood in the doorway for a minute, swaying a little. I saw the ugly black cross-stitching on his temple and my stomach turned over.

  “You’re home,” he said. “Christ.”

  When I next looked up, the doorway was empty.

  We were all called into the police station to be interviewed about Karen and what Eric had done to her, and I guess we all told pretty much the same story, minus the speed and weed. Eric was out by the end of the week.

  He showed up at the house to get his stuff.

  My dad stood with his arms crossed, blocking the hall.

  “Get out,” he said.

  My brother gave him that slow grin. “I am.”

&nbs
p; My dad swore, but he stepped aside.

  “Stay cool,” Eric said to me, before he left. “I’m coming back for you, soon as I can.”

  My dad and I passed the rest of that year in silent dinners and separate rooms. I stayed late in the school library and studied, and I hung out with Eric on the weekends, doing my math homework while the band rehearsed. At the end of Grade 12, I was given our school’s biggest scholarship. The paper made a big deal of it because I was a girl, the first girl so awarded in our town’s history, and one of the reader letters wondered at the wisdom of that given that I was just going to get married and have babies anyway.

  Eric stayed with Dave for a while, then Mike and Rob, until they got the van back and went on tour. Little interior towns mainly - Ashcroft and Cache Creek and Quesnel, west to Chilliwack and east to Castlegar - playing dingy pubs and hotel lobbies and once, an Italian wedding reception. They did covers of the Stones and Springsteen and the Steve Miller Band, and a few of their own songs, and my brother flashed his grin and got some press. A Vancouver agent called just before Karen announced she was pregnant. The baby was his, or so she said.

  I went away to university, and Eric took Karen to the trailer on the lake. Eric taught guitar at the rec centre, and still gigged from time to time, but money was tight. Karen’s parents helped out with the mortgage and bought the baby things, and put a down payment on the new house when the next baby came. I never knew how Eric felt about this. His voice was drawled and casual when I called, and I could hear the slow smile before he answered any kind of personal question. Then Karen would get on the phone and I’d hear the milky minutiae of baby life, interspersed with how good the newest Tom Petty album was, and how gorgeous was he anyway? Could I believe that we’d gone to see him before all this? By then, I was at my first job at a brokerage firm and the trip seemed like somebody else’s story, the kind my boss told over drinks to parade his misspent youth.

  Sometimes Karen said other things, things about Eric, that made my heart break. How he couldn’t sleep. How she was always after him about the weed, seeing how she hated the smell of it in the house and it was no good for the babies. How he spent long hours in the garage, listening to his records and picking along on the guitar. How they’d been the only ones at our dad’s funeral and how afterwards, Eric went on a three-day bender. How Dave was the manager of the mill now and Eric had begged him for a job. And what Dave had said to Eric, about moving forward or going under and he’d better decide which.