by Nora Decter
JOLENE, NAMED AFTER THE GIRL in the Dolly Parton song, is from a long line of lowlifes, but at least they’re musical lowlifes. Her mother works a go-nowhere job and believes she can channel her karaoke habit into a professional singing career. Jolene’s dad, a failed bass player, has gone back to the family demolition business, living by the company motto: “We do not build things; we only tear them down.” It’s Jolene and her big brother, Matt, who are the true musicians. When they write songs together, everything Jo hates about their lives matters less.
Then Matt up and leaves in the middle of the night, and Jo loses her only friend, her support system and the one person who made her feel cool. As it becomes clear that Matt is never coming back, Jo turns to music to navigate her loss.
Copyright © 2018 Nora Decter
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Decter, Nora, 1986–, author
How far we go and how fast / Nora Decter.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4598-1688-6 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1689-3 (PDF).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1690-9 (EPUB)
I. Title.
PS8607.E423H69 2018 C813'.6 C2017-907554-3
C2017-907555-1
First published in the United States, 2018
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933723
Summary: In this novel for teens, Jolene copes with her brother’s disappearance by playing his guitars and shutting herself away from the world.
Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper.
Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Edited by Sarah N. Harvey
Cover design by Meags Fitzgerald and Teresa Bubela
Cover image by Meags Fitzgerald
Author photo by Nicholas Lefebvre
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To my dad, who first told me about time.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AN EXCERPT FROM “RODENT”
ONE
PROLOGUE
This is a travel story. About a trip I take in my head.
When I need to get away, I go back to 2001. I was eleven, and my brother, Matt, was sixteen, the age I am now, except when he was my age he knew everything. He knew normal things, like how to drive and how to make conversation with his peers. But he also had specialized knowledge, like how to get onto the roof of the parking garage downtown where you could see for days in any direction, how to avoid getting jumped waiting at the bus stop or walking down the back lane and how to handle Maggie, our mom. He knew everyone on the block and everyone knew me, because I was his sister.
We were in the middle of a cold snap when Matt got the call that his guitar was ready. The kind of cold snap that comes so late in winter, everyone tries to deny it’s happening because spring is so long past due. Times like that, prairie people refuse to put their good boots back on—they leave the extra layer of wool at home and then suffer for it. Matt hung up the phone and reached for his coat.
I know now but I didn’t know then that a guitar maker is called a luthier. Our luthier was named Sven, and his workshop was an hour north of the city, in Gimli, an Icelandic town on the shores of Lake Winnipeg. Matt had been up there a few times over the course of that winter to consult on the type of wood the guitar would be made of, the shape it would take. He came back buzzing from these meetings, all lit up. I imagined they were building something holy, saw Matt’s drives to the workshop as pilgrimages.
Maggie was out with the car the day Sven called, but it didn’t matter, Matt said there was a bus from the station downtown that went out there. In the name of nothing better to do, I went too. We listened to his Walkman on the bus, one headphone each, the cord jerking out of my ear because Matt couldn’t keep still.
Having a guitar built is an insane extravagance for a teenage boy. But Matt never spent—he just saved and saved. All the money he earned working at the pizza joint over by the casino, where he spent nights sprinkling low-grade shredded mozzarella over dough painted with tomato-sauce brushstrokes, it all went to the guitar.
Sven’s place was a few minutes’ walk from where the bus dropped us. Matt led me around back to the workshop, which was taller than the main house and nearly as large.
Snow had been falling all day but slowly, with persistence. It traveled unrestricted across the fields beyond the yard. We had to lift our knees high to clear the drifts. Sven ushered us into the space, which smelled of sawdust and metal. Shelves climbed the walls like bunk beds, guitars in various stages of completion resting in the shadows.
Matt had three guitars already. The first was a little acoustic our dad, Jim, gave him for Christmas when he was nine and I was four, old enough that I remember him without a guitar in his arms, but barely. Then there was Shredder, a red electric that some guy named Bud left behind after a party. To Maggie’s credit, when Bud came looking for it a few days later she was like, Guitar? What guitar? And then she got him drunk. Meanwhile, Matt was in the basement with Shredder, getting to know new kinds of noise. When he was fourteen Maggie had some kind of windfall and came home with the Gibson. I was nine and just a little jealous of the hours he spent playing guitar. Music was always his thing. I listened, loved every new song he wrote, but by then I was starting to want to be a part of it.
They were all good instruments, he had explained on the bus ride out to Sven’s, but the new guitar would be his blues guitar, the one he’d take when he went d
owntown to jam with the old men at the Windsor.
When Sven handed Matt his new guitar, he reached for it like a father reaches for his newborn child. Even in my ignorance I could see it was a beautiful thing. Warmth emanated from the surface of the wood, like fire from behind a fogged-up window. Dark lines of grain flowed down it like a fingerprint. For a few minutes Matt could not be moved. He tuned the strings and struck a first careful chord, then another and another. Sven told me quietly that the rosewood had been chosen for how well it spoke. I thought he meant he could hear voices in the wood. I only realized later that there are ways of testing wood for resonance, of measuring the different qualities of sound.
Matt played until Sven’s wife appeared at the door in a housecoat and a wool hat to say dinner was ready and would we like to stay. Matt said no, thank you, we had to get home, but he didn’t stop playing. Sven patted him on the back and told us to turn the lights off on our way out.
“We should probably go,” I said eventually. He looked up, startled, even more so when he saw the clock. Before we left, Matt took off his sweater and tucked it carefully into the guitar case he had brought. I wound my scarf around the long elegance of the fretboard. We ran along the road in ruts left behind by a truck, our heads down, laughing. At the station I stood by the doors with the guitar while Matt went to get tickets. He returned pale beneath his wind-burned cheeks.
We’d missed the last bus. There was another going to the city that night, but it only made a flag stop on the highway. The station attendant said he’d radio the driver and tell him to look for us. Then he said we’d better hurry.
Our cold is dry. It sears your skin, so that you don’t feel the pain you’re in until you begin to shake with it, a shaking that takes you over, that’s more than a shiver—it’s a shudder.
At first we sang as we waited at the side of the road in the whistling dark. This song Jim liked to blast in winter. Matt and I would sing it when we took the dog out on short walks that felt like death marches.
“Let’s go to fucking Hawaii,” Matt sang.
I jumped in. “Go get drunk in the sun.”
But the song died on our lips after the first verse.
“I’ve also heard fucking Cuba is nice this time of year,” Matt said, his shoulders up around his ears. The words barely escaped his clenched jaw before the wind whisked them away. He only had a T-shirt on under his jacket, and he’d begun to shake so fiercely you could have mistaken it for a seizure if you didn’t know better.
“Fucking Cuba sounds good,” I said.
Soon there was nothing to say that wasn’t a comment on the cold. On the prairie you’re raised to respect the winter. You’re told stories of children who die of snowball hits to the head. Of teenagers who lose fingertips to the frost and of drunks who lie down to rest on a snowbank and never sober up again. As we stood in silence at the side of the road I became aware of how cocky we’d been. We weren’t dressed for such an expedition. Matt wrapped his arms around the guitar and pulled his hood down low.
Ten minutes passed. Or was it half an hour? Darkness obliterated the highway. The wind blew, and snow fell sideways. I couldn’t feel my toes. Orbs of light appeared and approached like angels, but none of those angels was our bus.
And then a pair of headlights emerged from the black, brighter than the rest, so bright it took a moment to register it really was a bus shuddering to a halt fifty feet down the road. We ran for it on clumsy, leaden legs, climbing the steps into warmth that set my flesh on fire.
“Is it okay?” I asked as Matt popped open the case to check on the guitar.
“I think so. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Snow melted down my face like a sudden onslaught of tears. He rested the guitar case on an empty seat, and we rubbed our hands together to get the feeling back. The bus drove on through the weather, and from the seat in front of us came the terrible, tuneless twang of guitar strings snapping, one by one.
We got home giddy, our cheeks chapped with wind, but we burned with something else too. The feeling we’d survived something. That we’d been brave.
Maggie was still out, so we took over the kitchen. Matt laid the blues guitar down on the table and began to tend to it, his hands stiff from the cold. I filled a pot with milk, spooned in hot-chocolate powder and stood at the stove stirring, so it wouldn’t get that skin on top. When it was ready, I sat on the counter, legs swinging, watching Matt work. He checked the guitar for damage and then began to put on new strings, patiently threading each one through its peg hole, pulling it taut and then tightening it. Finally he tuned up, tilting his head as he plucked the strings and listening as if for an answer. When each one rang true he smiled, then remembered the hot chocolate and took a long drink. “See?” he said. “No harm done.”
He strummed, gently at first and then harder, and as the rhythm unfurled into a song, I sang along. I usually only ever sang when we were walking, when we were goofing around, and that was more like hollering anyway. I didn’t know how it sounded now or if he wanted me to shut up, but when the song concluded Matt looked up and said, “That sounded good. Let’s do it again.”
So we played it again, and I wasn’t outside the music anymore, I was in it.
When I need to get away, that night five years ago is where I go. I go back to it. I turn around. Go back to it again.
ONE
In the morning there are bodies on the floor. Facedown, three of them, which isn’t half bad. One among the shoes kicked off at the door. One cozy in the slot between couch and coffee table. And one half on the floor, half on the loveseat that we carried home fifteen blocks three years ago.
That’s Cory at the bottom of the stairs, using a boot for a pillow. He’s some kind of cousin of Maggie’s, and I don’t worry about waking him—he won’t wake easily. And that’s Roxie, Cory’s on-again, off-again, wedged behind the table. I recognize her hair extensions. Loveseat lady must be new, or at least I don’t know her from this angle. Howl is waiting in the kitchen. Her tail thumps the linoleum when I walk in, but otherwise she’s quiet. She knows the routine as well as I do. We’ve been running it for a while. She won’t get her walk until I’ve made the rounds, made sure everyone has a pulse. Until then she watches, because she’s a watchdog. She sees everything we do and everything we don’t do. She sees me chuck a filter in the coffee maker and fill it with a few shakes of the hazelnut shit Maggie keeps around. (The coffee is a concession to the drunks. I don’t hate them. I just want them to go.) She sees me crack the window an inch and let in the cold. (To help wake them, clear the air. It reeks in here. Good thing I hold my breath so well.) And she sees me go into the hall to suit up for outside, which must be done with care, so that outside doesn’t kill me. All Howl needs is a leash, but I’m a mere mortal, so on go the sweaters, the hat and the scarves. My snow pants are not cool. I wear them anyway. Maggie makes fun, but then, I don’t put much stock in Maggie’s opinions. She wears high heels to wade into two feet of snow.
One more thing before we go. Smoke raid. Creep around the living room, shaking packs. The table packs are empty, the jacket-pocket packs have too few to spare, but on the floor beside loveseat lady I hit the jackpot. Pack of du Maurier, three-quarters full. I take five. Risky, but there are empty bottles everywhere, and that’s just what they drank after closing down the bar. No one’s gonna have a solid count on how many smokes they should be waking up to.
Stealing is stealing, says Howl from the doorway. Doesn’t matter if they notice or not.
Not true, I say. There are different degrees of stealing, and this kind doesn’t count at all.
She harrumphs, keeps casting judgment with her eyes. I ignore her.
Howl is Matt’s dog, one of the many things he loved that he forgot to take with him when he left last year. Other items on this list include his amps, tambourines and harmonicas. All of his guitars—except for the blues guitar—as well as his entire record collection, which ranges from bluegrass, rockabilly
and country to blues—both Delta and Chicago style—’60s psychedelic, Motown, early Lower East Side punk, early British punk, grunge and electronica. And, of course, me. He found Howl one night on his way home from a jam. A huge gray mutt with human eyes. He said she had the soul of an old bluesman and named her after Howlin’ Wolf, even though she’s a girl dog.
Together we made Howl a bit mystical. When we needed guidance, we’d ask her and try to divine the answer. It was like What Would Jesus Do but for pagan music nerds who lacked strong parental figures.
With Matt gone, treating the dog like an oracle has lost some of its charm. Since he left I fear my sense of humor has atrophied. All my jokes are old and only made sense to him.
Loveseat lady slides closer to the floor, then all the way onto it. I wait for her to settle, then take the whole pack.
The loveseat is ugly. Itchy and orange. I don’t know why we wanted it, but we saw it on the sidewalk and did. Want it, I mean. It was so heavy we couldn’t go more than half a block before we had to put it down. We’d put it down until we felt we could go on and then lift it up again. Me tall and strong for my age, and him for any. That’s how we carried it the whole way home.
Last thing, for real this time: a wake-up call. I tune the radio to that station that exists in between the morning news, Top 40 and total static buzz. Tune it to that and then go.
Matt was the one who told me to always steal in odd numbers. Nab one or three beers from the fridge, but never two or four. Less likely to get caught that way.
At the river I flop down where no one can see me and light a stolen smoke. Howl is above and behind me. I only leash her for the walk. She doesn’t really need a leash, but I kind of like the feeling of being pulled in one solid direction.
The snow is a better bed than the one I have at home. It fits my back right, and I don’t feel the cold through the fabric of my layers. I think my best thoughts here.
Or my clean, clear thoughts. The ones I think at other places are all muddy.