Fast Lane

by Kristen Ashley

He’s in my band, and he’s sneakin’ my little sister out of her bedroom window at night, takin’ her somewhere and bangin’ her?

  [Shakes head]

  Penny told me before she told Mom and Dad.

  I sat there, holding her hand when she told Mom and Dad.

  But Penny told me something she didn’t tell Mom and Dad, and that was that she told Nick she wanted him to use a rubber and he said he wouldn’t, and if she didn’t, he’d find someone else who would, without a prophylactic.

  And she was into him. She really liked him. Convinced herself she was in love with him.

  But he told her a guy couldn’t get off if he had to wear a rubber. Told her he needed it wet.

  I’m serious about this shit.

  She was fifteen, she believed his ass. Part, I figure, because she’d do anything to keep him. Part, I figure, because she was fifteen and hormones fuck you right up.

  Nick told her, he pulled out, it’d all be good.

  No problems.

  Told her that’s the way everyone did it.

  Yeah.

  Nick.

  A real peach.

  He didn’t share that shit wide either.

  [Shakes head]

  And you got folks who don’t want sex education in schools.

  [Scoffs]

  [Quietly] Fuckin’ lunacy.

  She told me, we told our folks, then I took off and told Preacher.

  And we found Nick.

  I knew what Preacher would do, that’s why I found him.

  [Smiles]

  Preach, he grew up down South, you know? He can be a gentleman.

  He let me get my licks in before he took over.

  Pileggi contends Preacher McCade broke all the fingers on both of his hands and this is why he can no longer play guitar.

  Got no comment on that.

  But you don’t deny you and McCade sought him out to assault him.

  He knocked up my little sister.

  Pileggi’s later lawsuits were dropped. He says he dropped them because Tommy Mancosa and Preacher McCade himself found him, threatened him, and he was forced to back down.

  Got no comment on that either.

  Pileggi—

  [Leans forward]

  Listen, I was there. I’m not even sure you were born yet. But I was there.

  I know, when we hit it, Pileggi did everything he could to take his piece of flesh. I know it ’cause it was my flesh he was stripping.

  They made her have him, or Mom did. Penny wanted to get an abortion. Mom made her have it and give it up. She wasn’t raisin’ another kid.

  Big fight, no surprise. Dad was for an abortion, and if not, helpin’ Penny raise it. He wanted what Penny wanted, however that was.

  Mom said no. Adoption.

  And what Mom said went.

  So, Penny had him, and gave him up.

  Nick didn’t care about any of that shit.

  No.

  He wasn’t involved in that. He had nothing to say about that. After Preacher and me got done with him and shit got real, couldn’t get the fucker on the phone. Went to his house, he was with “cousins” in Texas.

  He was a ghost.

  His old band starts making massive cake, suddenly, he’s there.

  Got lots to say.

  I’ll tell you this, and that’s the last we’ll talk about Ricky and Nicky fuckin’ Pileggi.

  A week ago, just a week ago, I’m sittin’ next to my sister at dinner, and she’s off her head, yeah?

  It started back then, you know?

  She hid it and then she came of age and didn’t hide it so much and lived her life, and she can set it aside to go to work. Set it aside to get shit done. But the witching hour starts, the wine comes out and all bets are off.

  And that part’s on me. Yeah? On me and Mom and Preach and Tim and my baby sister Lana.

  Preacher though, he saw it, called it and said it more than once, “We gotta get Penny in hand, brother.”

  He said it but even he didn’t do dick about it.

  We all danced around it like…

  [Trails off]

  So, she’s drunk and chatty and gettin’ loud like she’s been doin’ for, oh, I don’t know…thirty some-odd years.

  Then she gets quiet and I know it’s gonna happen, man. I know it.

  I know it because it’s happened so many damned times, there’s no way to count.

  Each time, sister, hear this.

  It’s a knife in the gut.

  For me.

  So, if I feel that, you gotta get what she feels and how she’s been drownin’ that in booze for decades.

  But I gotta give it to her because she’s my sister, yeah?

  So, I do. I sit next to her and it happens.

  She says, “He’s in his thirties now. He could be married. I could have grandbabies. I wonder if he knows. I wonder if they told him he wasn’t theirs. I wonder if he’ll ever find out his uncle is famous.”

  That was a good one.

  There were good ones. “I wonder if they sent him to college.” Or, “I hope they weren’t too hard on him during potty training.”

  And there were bad ones. “You think he’s okay? I hope he didn’t get sick. Dad got sick. Nick might have something in his family. You think he got sick?” Or, “What if he’s like Nick? What if he does some girl like Nick did me or worse?” Or, “What if he turns out like Ricky? What if he’s dealing drugs to kids? They should know about that. They should know to look out for that and help him around it.”

  Got a million of ’em, sister.

  A million what ifs.

  Torture.

  Pileggi opened his mouth and I lost track of how many people came forward, sayin’ their kid was Nick Pileggi and Penny Simms’s kid. Paid for so many fuckin’ DNA tests, ’bout bankrupted me.

  Every one of ’em, she’d have hope. Every one of ’em, she’d get crushed. She can’t go lookin’ for him, signed that right away.

  She has to wait for him to come to her.

  If he does.

  I could probably pull some strings. Hell, I’ve got the money.

  She won’t let me.

  “It’s gotta be him,” she says. “If he doesn’t know, I don’t wanna mess up his life.”

  It’s taboo, talkin’ about it. No one can take a stand without gettin’ piled under shit.

  And most of the people with the loudest mouths about it have no connection to it. They’ve made up their minds and decided how it’s gonna be for everybody, on both sides.

  I’ll tell you what, you gotta have no heart in your chest, you sit a night with my drunk-ass sister who used to be beautiful, used to laugh a lot, now looks like she spent her life at the bottom of a bottle, looks twenty years older than she is, twenty years older than me, and I spent over thirty years in a fuckin’ rock band.

  Sit next to her and hear her talkin’ about the kid her mother forced her to give up, and not get it. At least a little of it.

  Just a little.

  Don’t get me wrong. If my nephew is somewhere out there havin’ a good life, bein’ a good man, loved by his folks, his friends, his woman, if he has one, or his man, whatever…good.

  Good.

  But I’ll never know that.

  Penny’ll never know that.

  A woman’s gotta have a choice.

  And it’s gotta be her choice.

  ’Cause it’s gonna be her, not the guy, not some white man behind a pulpit, not some other white guy with a senate seat, who lives with the consequences, either way.

  Or it’s gonna be her who doesn’t figure out how.

  So, yeah.

  Band started with me, Timmy, Nick and Rick Pileggi.

  We went on the road, still as Zenith, and we were Preacher McCade, Tim Townes, Dave Clinton and Jesse Simms.

  We picked up Tommy on the way.

  Later came Josh.

  And we were gonna take rock by the balls.

  And then came Lyla.

  Je
sse Simms, bassist, Preacher McCade and the Roadmasters, formerly Zenith:

  You seen the movie Roadhouse?

  [Off tape]

  Yes.

  [Laughs]

  Well, in the beginning, that’s the kinda gigs Preach and Dave could find us.

  [Shakes head]

  I still don’t know how Dave and Preacher found the money to buy that old truck-bed camper shell and pickup.

  I know they both had cars and then they both didn’t, but we had that truck with the camper shell on it. The kind that went up and over the cab of the truck.

  We rolled out, fittingly they picked me up last, so we did this outta my parents’ driveway, heading to our first gig, which was outside Cincy, and Dave slipped a tape into the deck and the opening theme from Star Wars played.

  Preacher is behind the wheel and he’s bustin’ with laughter.

  Never seen him laugh like that. By then, I’d known him near-on a year.

  Never seen him laugh like that.

  We were on our way, man.

  We were on our way.

  Now, I sensed Preacher was a serious dude when he stared down three drug suppliers.

  And I was pretty impressed with what he did to Nick, but Nick was an eighteen-year-old fuckup.

  Still, Preach was six foot four and a powerhouse.

  Back then, you could stand him up and ask a hundred people, “What’s this guy do?” and not a soul would say, “Lead singer and guitar of a rock and roll band.”

  I’d bet there’d be a lot of answers of enforcer, though.

  I mean he was tall and packed and ripped.

  You know, Rocky-style ripped.

  We had no money to go to a gym, you hear what I’m sayin’?

  But he’d put on that Rangers baseball cap backwards, his cutoff sweats and you didn’t talk to him.

  The man could do pushups from his fingertips.

  [Shakes head]

  Yeah.

  His fucking fingertips.

  But, until we went on the road, I had no idea Preacher was a bruiser.

  And Dave?

  Dave was a crackpot.

  [Chuckles]

  So, they weren’t big fans when people threw their beers at us just because people can be assholes, especially when they’re rednecks and drunk.

  Because we did not suck.

  We weren’t awesome, but we didn’t suck.

  No reason to throw your beers at us.

  And in order to play those bars, me, Dave and Tim had fake IDs. Wet behind our ears. We’d barely been out of Mooresville, Indiana, and when we were, it was with our parents to go to Florida to hit Disney World when we were kids or a beach when we were older.

  You know?

  So yeah, right now I will confirm the lore. In the beginning, there were brawls. And there were a lot of them.

  And yeah, right now I’ll confirm that Preach was protective and he didn’t allow shit to fuck with the band.

  And last, another yeah, the second Dave saw Preacher’s arm go up to pull off his guitar, he’d jump his kit and be all in.

  And since those two were in, Tim and me had to wade in because, man, these were our brothers. You took their backs.

  But then…

  [Pause]

  We met Tommy.

  By this time, we’d been on the road, I don’t know, four, five months.

  Summer was over, I know that.

  Felt like we’d been on the road four, five years, I know that too.

  And we were outside Chicago.

  I know that too.

  I’d have to look up my notebooks to know exactly when it was, but it doesn’t matter.

  I was pissed as shit because we were in that camper where we rode and slept, and they all fucked chicks.

  But I wasn’t pissed about that.

  It was cold as fuck, and Dave was alternately smoking a bong—and we barely had enough money to eat, and Dave got his hands on weed, probably using our money, which did not make me happy—and holding ice to a fat lip.

  And Preacher’s knuckles were all split and he was lying on his back with his long-ass legs up the side of the camper, his head hanging over the bench of the table that turned into a bed ’cause his nose wouldn’t stop bleeding.

  Two of my knuckles were split and I had a tooth loose.

  And before we even left the joint, Timmy had a shiner.

  That was when someone hammered on the door.

  Preacher was on his feet in a flash and Dave was mumbling shit like, “Fuck, I can’t fight. I’m high,” and Timmy had his head bowed and was staring at the crappy-ass carpet of that camper, probably hoping what I was hoping. That no one had come to kill us after we got out of that last brawl that included Preacher having to deliver a beatdown to the bar manager who didn’t wanna pay us.

  And after that, we had to haul ass.

  In a camper.

  When that knock came, I was in the middle of delivering a lecture, something I did a lot before Tommy, something that made me feel like I was my mom, which I fuckin’ hated.

  I was doing this reminding Preach and Dave we kinda needed all our fingers to work so we could play music.

  I’d learn, you know, later, where that shit came from for Preach.

  I’d think about it a lot.

  Hell, I still think about it a lot.

  Wondering…

  [Pause]

  You know, if I should have let him…

  [Trails off]

  If he’d been able to get more of it out. If he’d have been able to work it out of his system.

  If we hadn’t met Tommy.

  Needless to say, Preach shoved me out of the way and opened the door.

  Tom was outside.

  I think Tommy said something like, “You’ll wanna let me in and listen to me.”

  Now, Preach was a brawler and Preach had shit he was dealing with but Preacher was far from dumb.

  Tommy Mancosa, as you know, was five foot eleven. Preach had five inches and probably fifty, sixty pounds on the guy.

  But Tommy was also a former marine, still had the buzz cut, no neck, and he did not get the nickname “Bulldog” for nothin’.

  There never was a Preacher versus Tommy smackdown.

  From the beginning, total simpatico with those two.

  But if it had happened, I wouldn’t lay money on either of them, ’cause honest to Christ, I’d have no idea who’d come out on top.

  So, what I’m sayin’ is, Preach did not get up in his shit.

  He just said, “I’m listenin’, but I’m not lettin’ you in.”

  Tom said, “Fair enough.” Then he said, “I’m gonna make you guys the biggest rock band there ever was.”

  I was standing behind Preach.

  At that, Tim and Dave pushed up close and we all stood there, behind Preach, looking down at this five-foot-eleven hunk of muscle with a fighter’s face and mean eyes wearing a beat-up leather jacket who looked maybe five years older than Preach.

  “You a scout?” Tim asked.

  “Nope,” Tom answered.

  “You a manager?” Tim asked.

  “Not until now,” Tom answered.

  Seriously.

  That’s what he said.

  Guy had big balls. Huge. Enormous.

  Not until now, he said.

  [Shakes head while chuckling]

  “You sayin’ you wanna be our manager?” Preacher asked.

  “Yup,” Tommy says.

  Preach shut the door in his face.

  He turned to us and said, “Vote.”

  Dave was the first to say yes, which came as no surprise.

  “He doesn’t know dick,” I pointed out.

  “We don’t know dick either,” Dave reminded me.

  “We don’t know dick about this guy,” I kept at it.

  “We don’t get paid dick by anybody,” Tim reminded everybody.

  Preach turned and opened the door and Tommy was still standing out there, in the cold.

>   “Until we make cake, you don’t get paid,” Preacher told him.

  “Deal,” Tommy said.

  And that was how we hired Tommy Mancosa.

  It wasn’t Tommy but Preach who took me in hand.

  Tom had found us some gig in Michigan City and he and the other guys were out with their posters and staple guns, papering the city with band shit, this Tommy’s new thing. We’d never had posters before Tom.

  I’d slept in the cab. I was cold, pissed I’d had to sleep in the cab and in no mood to wander around Michigan City, putting up posters.

  And Preach was fucking some chick in the bed over the top of the cab.

  When I heard he was done and took the time Preach took before he rolled her out—because even if it was a one shot, Preacher was not a slam-bam man—I got out of the cab and went to the camper at the back.

  He was standing at the little stove, frying bacon.

  I barely climbed in when he asked, eyes on the bacon, “You gay?”

  “No, I’m not fuckin’ gay,” I told him, backed to pissed but now pissed because, you know, it was the eighties. You didn’t ask a man shit like that in the eighties and ever get a yes or make the man you asked pissed as shit.

  Even so, I’m not gay.

  That was when Preach looked at me. “Why don’t you get laid then, brother?”

  “Look at me,” I told him.

  He was looking at me, so he just repeated his question.

  “Pizza face,” I said.

  He had a fork in his hand, lifted it my way, and said, “That’s the last time I hear shit like that from you.”

  That was it.

  He made us bacon and eggs and we ate them at the table where he’d been bleeding a few weeks before.

  That was Preacher McCade too.

  He knew he was a good-lookin’ guy with a good body. Straight up, he was full of himself. Totally vain.

  It was confidence, sure.

  But it was also vanity.

  [Laughs]

  Sayin’ that, he could have been ugly as fuck, and he would have thought he was the shit.

  That was just how he was. That was just how he thought everyone should be.

  Knowin’ his story, I don’t know how he got there, took himself there, got to that place in his head where he was at one with himself, and I never asked.