A Song for the Asking

by Steve Gannon

  “A-rafting we will go, a-rafting we will go, heigh-ho, the derry-o …”

  Soon Travis could make out the dim forms of Kane and Arnie marching exuberantly toward the fire, arms around each others shoulders, Kane struggling to support his inebriated friend. As they drew nearer, Travis caught snatches of their conversation, mostly involving which of the two men had a greater abundance of hair on his ass.

  “You pussy,” Kane taunted. “I say we swim out there right now.”

  “You goin’?” Arnie asked.

  “Are you?”

  “I asked first.”

  “Yeah. Damn right I’m going.”

  “Then I’m goin’, too!”

  “Great! Who else here has balls enough to brave those dark, shark-infested waters?” Kane shouted, spotting Travis by the fire. “How about you, kid?”

  “I don’t think so, Dad.”

  “Afraid of getting your panty shield wet, eh? Come on, Arnie. Let’s see whether we can talk that lard-ass Banoswki into going. Maybe we can drown him on the way out.”

  “That’s the first good idea you’ve had all night,” said Arnie, executing a wobbly one-eighty and heading off with Kane toward the house.

  “I’m full of them,” Kane boasted, clearly in a good mood.

  “You’re fulla somethin’, all right.”

  “Up yours, amigo. Hey, let’s find Tommy. He’ll want to go. It’ll probably take all three of us to sink that fat polack Banoswki anyway.”

  “Such foresight. I’m speechless.”

  “Damn right,” said Kane, embarking once more on his off-key chant as they disappeared into the darkness. “A-rafting we will go, a-rafting we will go …”

  “You obviously didn’t inherit your musical ability from your father,” Petrinski observed after they’d gone.

  “I guess not,” said Travis, smarting at his father’s taunt but half wishing he had agreed to go along.

  As though reading his mind, Petrinski asked, “You care very much what he thinks of you, don’t you?”

  “No!” Travis protested, surprised at his own vehemence.

  “I think you do,” said Petrinski gently. “I think you’re stuck between two worlds, Travis.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Instead of answering, Petrinski studied Travis for several seconds. “Tell me something,” he said. “Do you think you’re intelligent?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Just answer. Or maybe you would rather swim out to the raft and prove your courage to your father?”

  Travis scowled.

  “Travis, let it out. I would rather hear ‘Drop dead, Alex,’ than nothing at all.”

  “Drop dead, Alex,” Travis blurted, immediately regretting it.

  “Well, that’s a start. Now, answer my question.”

  “Okay, I’ll play your game,” said Travis guiltily. “Am I intelligent? Not especially. I get A’s and B’s in school, an occasional C.”

  With a sweep of his hand, Petrinski wiped his doodles from the sand and made two vertical lines in their place. “Look. Verbal competence here, and here, mathematics, the cornerstones of most current tests of mental ability.” He drew a line connecting the marks he’d made with a circle he labeled “IQ.”

  Travis squirmed, realizing from past experience that his mentor’s labyrinthine lectures always wound up having some cogent point, the sharp end of which often being directed at him. As he let his eyes travel the faces ringing the fire, furtively searching a way out, he noticed his sister’s friend McKenzie watching him. She quickly looked away.

  “What’s wrong with this picture?” Petrinski asked, poking the drawing with his stick.

  “Well, for starters the circle’s lopsided, the lines are crooked, and the whole thing’s out of proportion.”

  “Funny, Trav. No, what’s wrong is this.” Petrinski drew a series of parallel lines alongside the first two he had scratched in the sand. “Verbal and mathematical reasoning aren’t the only faculties of the human mind. There are others as basic and distinctive: a sense of spatial relations, for example, or a so-called knack for foreign languages, or the ability to communicate using paint, music, poetry—or even the kinesthetic sense your brother Tom so aptly displays.”

  “You’re saying Tommy’s a genius because he got voted All Western Offensive End?”

  “I’m saying the kinesthetic sense is a type of intelligence. As for Tommy, we’ll talk about genius if he makes it to the NFL.”

  “And me?” Travis asked reluctantly. “I take it that’s where this is leading.”

  Petrinski paused, his brow furrowing in thought. “I don’t know about you,” he said. “I suspect you have the potential to be … unique. Instead, I see an unhappy, confused boy.”

  “I’m not confused. I just don’t—“

  “Listen to me, Trav,” Petrinski interrupted. “I believe that part of finding happiness in life involves discovering where one’s abilities lie—your domains of intelligence, if you will—and then making the commitment to exploit them to their fullest. You have yet to do that.”

  “I work hard …”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “Then tell me what to do.”

  “I already did,” the older man said softly. “I know you have feelings, Trav. If you won’t express them in your daily life, at least let them show through in your music.”

  Travis fell silent once more, staring glumly into the fire. Petrinski rose. “It’s getting late,” he said. “I have to be going. Please think about what I’ve said. And, Travis?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re going to have to do this on your own. No one can help you. Just remember that you aren’t Tommy, and you’re not your father, either. You’re Travis Kane.”

  Travis continued to gaze into the glowing mountain of coals long after Petrinski had gone, resentfully pondering his teacher’s final statement. A number of times during his fruitless meditation he felt as if he were being watched. Finally looking up, he found McKenzie’s eyes on him once again. As before, she quickly glanced away. Then she looked back shyly. Travis nodded and returned his attention to the fire, groaning inwardly when he saw her rising to join him.

  “Hi, Trav,” she said with a smile when she arrived.

  “Uh, hi, McKenzie.”

  She dropped down on the sand beside him, curling her long, coltish legs neatly beneath her. “It’s a beautiful fire, isn’t it?”

  Travis shrugged, in no mood for company.

  “Notice how yellow the flames are? That’s from salt in the driftwood.”

  Travis stared into the fire without responding, absently noticing that the flames were more yellow than usual.

  “It’s the sodium in the sea salt that gives it that color,” McKenzie went on quickly. “You know, like when we did the flame test in chemistry lab—dipping a wire in different solutions and sticking it in a flame. Sodium burns yellow, copper blue, zinc has a greenish tinge …” Her voice trailed off. Confronted by Travis’s monolithic wall of silence, she sat quietly, unable to fill the glacial void.

  “I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I didn’t mean to jabber on about some stupid chem class. You look like, well … is something wrong? Who was that man you were talking with?”

  “Alexander Petrinski. My piano teacher.” Travis tossed a piece of driftwood into the fire, sending an angry storm of sparks spinning into the darkness. “After ten years he drops me as a student and then tells me to call him Alex,” he added bitterly.

  “He dropped you? But why? What did you do?”

  “It’s what I didn’t do—play as well as he thinks I should,” answered Travis, feeling small and mean for his simplistic explanation.

  “But you play beautifully. I can’t imagine why he would—”

  “What the hell do you know?” Travis lashed out. “Look, I know my sister sent you over to bug me, and you’ve succeeded. Now take a hike. Get lost.”

  McKenzie rose
slowly to her feet. “Is that what you think?”

  “That’s what I know,” said Travis. He glanced up, surprised to see tears shimmering in McKenzie’s eyes.

  She turned to go. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Wait,” Travis said, feeling more despondent than ever. “I’m the one who should be sorry for taking out my problems on you. Please don’t leave.”

  McKenzie hesitated.

  “Please? Can we start over?” Travis smoothed the sand beside him in a gesture of conciliation.

  After a brief moment of indecision, McKenzie wiped her eyes and sat back down. Both stared uncomfortably into the flames, not knowing what to say.

  Finally McKenzie ventured, “It really is a beautiful fire.”

  “It is,” Travis agreed. “See how yellow the flames are? A reliable source told me the color comes from sea salt in the driftwood. You know, sodium burns yellow, copper blue, zinc green—like in chem lab.”

  “If you’re trying to impress me with some stupid trivia you picked up at school, it won’t work,” McKenzie chuckled, her laughter rising like a lovely bird into the night.

  In the glow of the fire Travis could just make out her features: intelligent brown eyes, high cheekbones, a strong jaw framing a mouth slightly too large to be called beautiful, a smattering of freckles accenting the bridge of her nose. Her long ebony hair, parted in the center and worn in a thick French braid for the party, seemed to shine like silk in the darkness.

  McKenzie stared into the shifting coals for several moments, then looked up to meet Travis’s gaze. “I meant what I said,” she said quietly. “About your music. I think you play beautifully. I want you to know that.”

  “Thanks,” said Travis, embarrassed by her unexpected sincerity. “But I don’t remember ever playing for you. When was it?”

  “Oh, I’ve spent hours listening to you,” McKenzie confessed. “Up in your sister’s room. Ali listens too. She’s your biggest fan, next to me.”

  “Are we talking about the same Allison?”

  “The very one.”

  “I didn’t know you liked classical music. Do you play?”

  “A little,” McKenzie answered self-consciously. “Flute. I’m in the school band. Nothing like what you do.”

  “Maybe we could play something together sometime.”

  “Oh, I’m not good enough for that,” said McKenzie quickly. “I’d rather just listen.”

  “Okay.” Travis hesitated, running out of words. Then, “McKenzie? You know something?”

  “What?”

  “It’s just that, uh …”

  “What, Trav?”

  Travis opened his mouth, intending to say something about not expecting to find that he actually liked one of his sister’s friends, and that he regretted never giving her a chance. But when he finally spoke, what came out surprised him nearly as much as it did McKenzie.

  “Would you like to go out with me sometime?”

  14

  Like clockwork, every morning at 11:45 a.m. the aluminum-sided lunch truck with elaborate indigo lettering on the side reading “Arturo Domingo” made its appearance on the job site, and Monday was no exception. Travis had spent the morning helping one of the older men nail exterior siding and, from his position high on the siding scaffold, was the first to spot it lumbering to the top of the hill. You can almost set your watch on Arturo, he thought, his stomach rumbling at the prospect of food.

  Over the weeks on the job Travis had discovered that Arturo’s truck boasted a delicious and diverse selection of heart-clogging options: deep-fried chicken, half-pound burgers dripping with juice, a tantalizing selection of tempting Mexican dishes, Polish dogs smothered in chili, cheese, and onions, and a huge inventory of junk food—cupcakes, Twinkies, Cokes, chips, and Ding Dongs. Travis had also discovered that he couldn’t get enough. Although health purists might have condemned some of his dad’s dinner extravaganzas as unhealthy, for the most part Catheryn’s routine cooking in the Kane household consisted of low-fat, high-carb meals. Arturo’s lunch wagon had proved a revelation for Travis: He loved grease.

  Travis grabbed his T-shirt from the safety bar and pulled it on. During the long, hot days of summer he had been laboring in boots and shorts only, and the past weeks had turned his skin a deep, ruddy brown. “Chow time,” he yelled over to Pete Wilson, the grizzled carpenter with whom he’d been working.

  Pete looked up from the other end of the twelve-foot scaffold plank. “About time,” he said, abandoning a clip of galvanized nails he had been about to shove into the pneumatic gun. “Let’s get ’er down. I hate being last in line.”

  Using the toe of his boot, Travis began ratcheting down his end of the scaffold plank, carefully matching his movements to Pete’s at the other end as they slowly descended the scaffold’s metal support columns. Getting too far out of sync could cause the scaffold jacks to bind, or worse yet—slip. By the time Travis and Pete had descended to within jumping distance of the ground, the lunch truck had already opened for business and most of the crew stood queued up beside it. As he joined the line, Travis found himself behind Tony Stewart, the owner of the construction company. “Hey, Kane,” said Tony, touching a match to an unfiltered Camel. “Great party Saturday.”

  “You were there?” said Travis. “Somehow I missed you.”

  “Not surprising, considering the crowd. I saw you, though. Sitting by the fire with a cute little number with a long braid.”

  “Uh-huh. She’s one of my sister’s friends.”

  “Looked like you were working on making her one of yours.”

  “Well … yeah.”

  Tony grinned. “Can’t say as I blame you.” Then, noticing Travis’s flush and deciding to let him off the hook, “How’s work going?”

  “Great,” Travis answered. And it was. With houses in various stages of completion, plenty of variety existed on the job—especially for Tommy and Travis, who filled in now wherever needed. For the past two weeks Tommy had been working on Ron Yeats’s framing crew, and Travis had recently joined Wes Nash’s smaller finish unit, running siding on one of the nearly completed buildings. The system they were using was simple. Wes cut the prestained tongue-and-groove cedar on a table down below, beveling the ends and varying the runs so the joints wound up staggered. Using a length of ½-inch rope, Travis pulled up stacks of cut siding to the scaffold plank, then assisted Pete in nailing. At first Travis had only been hauling and holding; lately Wes had begun letting him use the gun—a vote of confidence that hadn’t gone unnoticed by the rest of the crew.

  “Shot yourself with that nail gun yet?”

  “No, sir. Not yet, anyway,” answered Travis, realizing that not much on the job got past the boss.

  “Good. Keeps the insurance premiums down. I like that. How’s your brother doing?”

  Travis spotted Tommy near the front of the line ordering his current favorite: a huge burrito stuffed with cheese, beef, and beans and buried beneath a mound of sour cream and guacamole. “Fine, except he’s gained about ten pounds since starting here.”

  “We probably aren’t working him hard enough. I’ll see what I can do to correct the situation. Thanks for the tip, Trav.”

  “Anytime, boss.”

  By now the line had shortened. Tony stepped under the aluminum flap and grabbed a plastic liter of Coke, two Ding Dongs, and a fresh pack of Camels. Like most of the crew, Tony was an inveterate smoker. For some reason Travis couldn’t fathom, carpenters seemed a subculture that had somehow never received the word on lung cancer. Nevertheless, with few exceptions, everyone there looked lean and trim and glowing with health, ostensibly thriving on a daily ration of carcinogen and grease.

  “Art, my man, I think I’ll have the special today,” Tony announced as he arrived at the head of the line.

  Arturo flashed a gold-filled smile from beneath the bill of his Dodgers’ baseball cap. “Extra bacon?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Travis checked the small blackbo
ard listing the special of the day: grilled pastrami and fried egg on a French roll with bacon, tomato, jalapeño peppers, melted cheese, and fries on the side. “Make that two,” he said.

  Minutes later Travis joined Pete and some younger members of the crew who were eating on a stack of 2x6’s. He glanced around as he unwrapped his sandwich, spotting his brother talking on a pay phone beside the equipment trailer. Tommy had his burrito balanced on top of the phone box, cooling and apparently forgotten. Twenty minutes passed before he finally joined Travis on the lumber pile.

  “What’s up?” Travis asked.

  “Nothing.” Tommy stared glumly at his lunch, poking the now-glutinous burrito with his fork.

  Travis shrugged and dug back into his sandwich, looking up after several bites to see Tommy wadding up his food, uneaten. “Not hungry?”

  “Not really.”

  “Better watch out, bro. Keep skipping lunch and that Arizona line’s gonna eat you alive.”

  “Never happen.” Tommy checked his watch, then rose and arced the remains of his lunch into a metal rubbish drum ten feet away. “Catch you after work.”

  Shortly afterward, as he finished the last of his fries, Travis heard the high-pitched whine of Wes’s Skilsaw rising into the heat of the afternoon. He balled up his trash, tried to match Tommy’s toss, missed, made the second shot, and headed back to work. When he arrived, he found Junior Cobb standing on the scaffold plank.

  With a surly grin, Junior looked up from toying with the nail gun. “Well, well, lookit who we got here,” he said, enchilada sauce from lunch still smeared on his chin. “It’s Howdy Doody.”

  Wes, who had just finished beveling a stack of cedar, laid his saw on the cutting board. “Knock it off, Cobb. Kane’s working with you this afternoon. Let’s get to it.”

  “Where’s Pete?” asked Travis.