Shotgun Lovesongs: A Novel

by Butler, Nickolas

  Cecil held out a five-dollar bill and Marilyn took it, then walked over to stand in line for a dance with Henry, dozens of women ahead of her.

  “Well, boys,” Cecil said, “there they go. Two of your best friends marrying each other. You ask me, that’s how you do it. Marry your best friend. Let me tell you, the sex will eventually run dry, it will, and then you’re stuck looking at each other. May as well find someone who can hold a conversation. Who seems to genuinely care about you.”

  Ronny and I stared at his father.

  “Look, I know how you feel,” he said, sipping his beer, pulling up a chair. “I know how it is.” He nodded, drummed his fingers against the beer can. “You don’t know that your dad’s watching you, but he is.” He stroked his mustache, hitched up his belt and pants. “Everyone’s getting married but you two. And now, look at that. Either of you probably could have married her. Shit, you’re her friends too. Henry’s just brighter than you two. More determined.”

  “Dad—” Ronny said.

  “I remember coming to one of your school talent shows. She sang a song … I think it was ‘California Dreaming.’ And I just, I remember sitting there, thinking, That girl is special. That was her, wasn’t it?”

  I’d actually forgotten that Beth was a wonderful singer, because she didn’t sing that much, she kept it to herself, wasn’t even in the choir, but sometimes you’d catch her, at a party, or riding in the car, and she’d forget herself and let loose and out came this voice, this beautiful, sweet, self-assured voice. Had I been a smarter man, I would have asked her to record a duet with me, but maybe, for Henry’s sake, it was a good thing I never did.

  Cecil rose, touching his mustache and brushing back his hair. We watched him stand and gather himself. He straightened his tie and smoothed his lapels, brushed dust off the fabric of his sleeves and shoulders. He took a final drink of his beer and looked toward the dance floor, where Beth and Henry were busy dancing with all comers, the best man and maid of honor holding hats already brimming with cash.

  “I don’t know what your problem is, Lee,” he said, more sternly now. “But you’ve been pouting all afternoon long. Hell of a way for the groom’s best buddy to be acting, and now, Jesus, you got Ronny back here sulking with you. I ain’t your daddy, but I know if he was here, he’d say quit being a bunch of assholes and get out there and dance with your friends before they go join the real world.” Then he went without waiting to hear our rebuttal, though in truth, we had nothing to refute. We hung our heads like little boys, took a last few sips from our beers before following Cecil to the line of men. Ronny first, me following behind, forming the tail end of the dollar-dance line.

  We inched forward over the next twenty minutes, the playlist shuffling between love ballads across various decades of American popular music. I saw that Ronny had a few wrinkly singles in his hand and I reached into my pocket, found a fiver. It was all I had after almost two days of straight drinking. Then it was Cecil’s turn and he handed the maid of honor some money and went out to dance with Beth, who swept some hair away from her face and then began clapping delightedly when she saw it was Cecil Taylor come to dance with her in his black polished cowboy boots.

  We watched as Cecil paused before he reached her out on the dance floor. Then, he bowed deeply to her, a thing I’ve never seen duplicated at any wedding, and such a regal gesture you’d never have expected it from Cecil, the construction worker and Skynyrd fanatic. Beth placed a hand on her chest, then went to him, helped him up off his knee the way a good queen might help an old knight. And as they embraced and moved into the dance I noticed for the first time the look of love on his face. I watched him dance with Beth, and it was enough to break my heart all over again, into a million little pieces. A grown man who perhaps had always wanted a daughter, dancing with a grown woman—one of his son’s good friends.

  I looked at my hands, remembered the weight and feel of those rose petals.

  I don’t remember Cecil’s dance with Beth ending, or Ronny’s dance with Beth beginning. I just remember standing in line, waiting, so lovesick and sad. When my turn came I handed my five-dollar bill to the maid of honor and then moved out onto the scuffed parquet in a kind of trance. I took Beth’s hand in mine, and she placed her other hand on my shoulder and my right hand found her hip, and we slowly began to circle each other the way you do when you slow dance, the way you do at a prom or homecoming. I hadn’t felt her touch in a year or more, and we moved a little haltingly at first, before at last slipping into a slow-circling groove, our hands damp with perspiration, my eyes on her face, her eyes here and there, not unhappy but not happy either, and finally, if only out of exhaustion, her head very lightly on my shoulder.

  “You all right?” she asked. “You don’t seem yourself.…”

  “It’s okay, I mean. I don’t know what it is. The important thing’s that you look just so beautiful tonight.”

  “Hey.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t get weird on us, all right? Henry and I have always been together. You know that.”

  “I know that.”

  “You’re part of our family, all right, Lee? Come on now. Look happy.”

  “I know it, I get it.”

  I wanted to kiss her, to stop the music, the dancing, the champagne flow. I wanted to tell everyone, everyone in attendance, that Beth and I had shared something—something special and real—and that maybe, maybe, I was still in love with her, and she with me. But I couldn’t of course, and wouldn’t. I held her tight to my body, looked her straight in the eyes. I was aware of some people watching us as we orbited the floor, our abdomens touching, faces like Cecil’s and Ronny’s staring at us, no doubt thinking, My word is he holding her close.

  Her hand fit so perfectly in mine and I allowed myself the briefest reverie: lying together in a white bed, our limbs entangled, her chestnut hair, morning sunlight and the joy of making a baby together. I saw her hair growing white in intervals: first a few fibers, then waves, and finally her whole head of hair, until finally it became fragile, brittle, flyaway. I saw her face now, and then imagined it far off, inscribed by the sun, the cold, the prairie winds, her squinting and laughter. God it made me sad, to pull away from that reverie only to see my own future as it lay ahead, decades without this woman, decades watching her with my best friend. But there it was.

  “Maybe what I should say is, ‘I’m sorry.’”

  She looked at me. “Sorry about what, Lee?” We had stopped.

  “No,” I said, “please, don’t stop dancing with me. I just mean, look. I don’t even know how to say it. I just … I’m sorry about that night. I’m sorry about what happened.”

  She had returned her head to my shoulder and I could no longer see her eyes. “Lee, I don’t know what to say,” she said. “I haven’t even thought about that night in months now. We’ve been so happy. Everybody’s been, you know, just so happy.”

  “I haven’t been happy.”

  “Well I don’t ever want to talk about it again, okay? I don’t even want to think about it.”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t want you to ever think about it again. Okay? Lee? It’s done,” she said, “and now here we are.”

  “Beth?”

  She looked up at me.

  I wanted to say, I love you. “Nothing,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  And then we were quiet, just the steady shifting of our weight, foot to foot, our tiniest movements: the traffic of blood in our veins circulating, pumping, our lungs at work and the lightning of our brains, the smallest currents of air and breath pushing strands of our hair and our sad eyes blinking, taking in light, taking in darkness. The parquet flooring of the rundown Palladium Ballroom below us sinking and rebounding ever so slightly. I thought of a night, many, many years ago, when Henry, Beth, and I were just kids, and we’d erected a canvas pup tent beside Lake Wing. I thought of that night now, the dance of our flashlights and the sound of midnight laughter
.

  The song ended, and an elderly man much wrinkled and leaning on a cane was suddenly beside me, tapping a finger against my shoulder and smiling broadly. “I apologize,” the old man said, “but you’ll forgive me for cutting in. I don’t get too many chances to dance with young women these days.” And then he handed me his cane, as if I were a coatrack, a hat tree. Beth kissed me fleetingly on the cheek before curtsying politely at the old man. They began to dance, and I returned to the bar, where I ordered a beer and stood beside Ronny and Eddy.

  “Got to watch those geezers,” said Eddy. “They’re cold-blooded.”

  I stayed until the end, until the lights came on and everyone groaned for more: more music, more beer, more dancing and fun. Beth and Henry waved at us as they left the building and climbed back into their limousine, bound for a hotel in Eau Claire. I waved good-bye along with everyone else, waved at them until I could no longer see the red of their taillights.

  And then I went home with Ronny and his parents and lay on their couch, gazing at the ceiling fan as it turned, not even the slightest bit sleepy.

  * * *

  Four o’clock in the morning, and my right hand was in the air, my knuckles poised millimeters away from the door of the hotel room where Beth and Henry slept, newly wedded and without a care in the world. The hallways of the hotel were abandoned, the night auditor watching a little six-inch television screen behind the front desk. The only sound was the ice machine.

  But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t knock. Because time had passed, because we were all adults, and there are boundaries that adults don’t cross, and this was one—two people fairly married, and what reason, what possible reason did I have now to ruin it? And why? Why at that moment? Why not a year ago? Or two? Or five? Cecil was right: she had lived within five miles of me my whole life, and now, here I stood, in a stale hallway, a peephole staring blankly back at my sorry face, my fist raised in announcement of what? Of love? Of friendship?

  I thought about the future, my future, my life, and I could see it now spreading out before me as surely as I knew every line of topography around Little Wing, the hills, valleys, sloughs, coulees, ridges, country roads and cornfields, railroad tracks and game trails. I could see it all: that I would keep writing and playing music and touring and soon, things would take off. The magazines would begin to print reviews, and then stories. I’d be commissioned to write songs for television shows and movie soundtracks, until one day, I’d be standing up on a stage, holding a little golden gramophone and talking to an auditorium of my heroes. I could see it, because I believed in the music, believed in my own voice, in what music I heard the world make. I could see that Henry and I would slowly grow apart, at first by increments of weeks and months, and then by years, until when I called him, he would no longer even recognize my voice. My friends would have families, children, and comfortable homes—homes with tired, comfortable furniture. While I would date and marry women who loved and then loathed me, who didn’t understand the first thing about me, who were bored by me, who detested my hometown and no more than tolerated my friends. And then, one day, there would be nothing to come home to. No more friends, no family, no smiling faces and no hellos or good nights. I saw myself buying a big penthouse, maybe a beach house, a place along a coast, a place with a massive selfish view, and I saw myself roaming that floor plan, restless as an old dog.

  I lowered my fist to my hip and exhaled years of love. I walked down the hallway, out into the early morning, and climbed in Ronny’s parents’ car, and drove all the way back to Little Wing.

  H

  WE THREW NO DUST as we rocketed toward Lee’s schoolhouse over those dewy midnight gravel roads. Fireflies rose up in the ditches and fields like tiny lanterns. Moths to dust the windshield.

  “Hope you’re not bleeding too much on that bench seat,” I said.

  “Just on your damn garbage bag. For shit’s sake, Jesus, it hurts.”

  “We’re close now,” I said. And we were, Lee’s mailbox coming into the cones of the truck’s headlights, and beside it, the taxidermied bull, its red glass eyes reflecting our arrival, and now the bumpy driveway, the potholes with their miniature ponds of water and the night frogs leaping for safety, Lee hanging on for all he was worth, hanging on to that seat belt, grimacing, muttering something about a new asphalt driveway and then there—his pasture, a dozen deer or more turning their doleful muzzles to stare at our approach and the lights of his house and garage and outbuildings. I drove us as close to Lee’s front door as we could get, shut off the engine, and came around the truck. Already he was stepping down gingerly, draped an arm around my shoulder, and together we stumbled inside.

  “Just get me to the bathroom, okay?” he said. “Put me in the shower. Less mess to clean up.”

  “Good thinking,” I said, though I couldn’t have cared less about any blood trail. This mess was Lee’s, all Lee’s.

  We peeled his pants off, then his underwear, and socks. Untied the shirts that were acting as a tourniquet.

  “Christ you’re pale.”

  “I’m throwing it all away,” he said, “burning it. Worst night of my life.” He lowered himself into the bathtub, and I began to draw him a bath, testing the water with my hand until my fingers went pink, then red.

  “You want it hot?”

  “Sure, burn me all to hell. Stupid fuckin’ pickled eggs.”

  Soon the bathroom was filled with steam. I sat on the toilet and listened as the water filled the tub, holding my head in my hands, Lee making small childish noises with every little readjustment of his body.

  “Henry?” he asked.

  My drunkenness was receding, even the pounding within my head was beginning to diminish. But I was tired, God was I tired. Ready to fall into my own bed. Ready to cuddle Beth. Ready to push Leland’s boat clear away from my shore, ready to push him far out into the foggy surf. “Yes,” I said.

  “Mind checkin’ my medicine cabinet? See if I got any of those Vicodins left? Or codeine? I need something.”

  “Sure,” I said, “hold on for a sec.”

  I went through his medicine cabinet, rattling empty orange pill canisters, spinning them around to read the prescription notes. And there it was—Vicodin, recently expired, twelve pills left. I handed two to Lee, then turned on the bathroom sink and filled a palm with cold water, swallowed two myself for good measure.

  “Think that’ll do you?” I asked.

  “Maybe some whiskey too,” he said. “Something hard and quick. Something to help me swallow. I feel all dried out.”

  In the bathtub, the water was turning pink now, and I stared at the wound in Lee’s thigh, the hole there wisping out a feathery stream of blood, the slug of a bullet still somewhere inside him. I went into the kitchen, found the whiskey, took a sip from the bottle, and then poured out a shot for him. Walking back toward the bathroom, I passed through Lee’s dining room, and nearly ignored the new painting hanging above his sideboard. It was mine—the missing St. Vincent’s painting. I just stood there.

  “Henry!” he called out in irritation, desperation really.

  “Yeah!”

  “I’m dying here!”

  “Shut up. I’m comin’, I’m comin’.”

  He was writhing in the tub when I walked back into the bathroom, eyes pinched shut with pain. He pounded at the wall with his fists.

  “Here you go,” I said, holding out his shot.

  “Thanks,” he said, and tossed it back in a gulp. Closed his eyes and clenched his fists.

  * * *

  We sat together a long time, lulling off into intermittent sleep, Lee in the bathtub bleeding, and me on the toilet. I stood to shut the tap off at some point and looked down upon my friend, stretched out as best he could, bleeding, in the bathtub, his arms and neck tanned a deep brown and the rest of him white as the porcelain that held him. I saw Lee’s thousands and thousands of hairs blowing gently in the tub, as if seaweed.

  “You got a new painting,”
I said casually.

  “Yeah. Got it at the St. Vinnie’s of all places.” He opened one eye and peered at me. “Why?”

  “It’s ugly as sin.”

  “I like it.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged, closed his eyes again. Then we were quiet again for a while.

  “Henry, I have to tell you something about me and Beth.”

  I shut my eyes, wincing against whatever he might say.

  “It wasn’t like you think it was, Hank. Or, hell, I don’t even know what you think it was like. But it wasn’t like that. And what I have to tell you, it’s not an easy thing, but it’s the truth, okay? And so I’m going to tell you, and then you’ll know and we can be done if you want to.” He was clearly in great pain, his teeth bared as he looked up at me sitting on the toilet, the shower curtain pulled far off to one side, the air between us gauzy with a condensing steam that must have held molecules of his blood.

  “Look, we’re well past wherever we used to be, buddy. I don’t know as anything you could say now’s going to make it better or worse. So I’m going to just close my eyes again, but I’m listening.”

  “I’m sorry, man,” he said. “I’m so sorry. You’re like my brother. You’re better than any goddamned brother, and I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “I have to tell you.”

  “I told you I don’t need to know any more,” I said, squinting at him, my eyes tired and probably bloodshot, my body so weary.

  “I’ve always been jealous of what you have. But I only used to love her. But I don’t feel that way anymore. And look, I’m sorry for what I’ve done to you. But I did what I did and said what I said only really because I’ve always basically wanted what you had. She’s the best. You know? Beth is the best.”

  He took a deep breath now, and allowed his body to sink beneath the water, little bubbles rising from his nostrils.

  I counted the seconds he was submerged until I lost track and then replaced my head in my hands, so exhausted, and said, “I forgive you,” though I’m sure he could not hear me. But maybe that didn’t even matter. With Lee, the important thing was always that he heard himself.