by Jamie Ott
“The best darned musicians of all time!”
He grabbed the broom and stuck the wide end with the bristles into the largest cobweb that was attached to the couch. Jack twisted the broom, rolling the web into a huge wad. When he got as much of it as he could, he used his fingers to pry it off, and dropped it into the trash basket.
Jack didn’t meet his father until much later. His mother told him they’d met up in a moment of fiery rock ‘n’ roll passion.
That was about all he needed to know. He was fine without his father. Never, did he ask any other questions about him or why he wasn’t around, until one day when he got a letter in the mail.
‘Dear Jack,
I’m your father.
I’m dying. Come visit me.
Your Dad,
John’
That was it; that was all it said.
No I’m sorry for being absent; sorry I never sent you a card; sorry I never bothered.
Nevertheless, his mother insisted he go. She printed him a ticket, packed him a lunch and took him to the train station.
“In case of an emergency,” she said as she shoved a wad of cash into his front jeans pocket.
When he arrived at his destination, his father stood there looking like a grim reaper. He was dirty, wheezy-breathed, and sleazy looking.
John moved Jack into the spare room that would have been his nurses, but he didn’t need or want around the clock care, yet.
Every day with his father was torture. Jack tried not to fall asleep as he rambled on and on.
On more than one occasion, he wanted to tell is father to shut it, so he could have some peace and quiet. The man could talk for hours, going over the same details, repetitively.
Jack said nothing, though, out of respect for his dying father. But in all the days, he never stopped talking about his time as a musician.
Two weeks after Jack moved in, his father got worse. Instead of just dying, like Jack anticipated, he wasted away. He got skinnier and skinnier, until he couldn’t walk.
Jack, then, stayed by his side, and listened to his ramblings as he lay in his hospice bed, which had been moved into the living room.
“Buchanan made his distortions without a pedal,” he remembered his father shouted at him, over the television commercial. “These days, musicians have it too easy; these days, guitars are made of tin and fiber board,” he’d scoff. “No wonder they can’t make music worth a darn. They don’t have to work for it!”
One night, his father told him that no one in his family liked him very much. They called him a bum, reckless and impulsive, only cared about making music and nothing else.
“They’d say different if I was Mick Jagger or Mc Cartney, or Lennon,” he coughed through phlegm. He grabbed a tissue and wiped his mouth.
“People, they love music, but they don’t want to suffer the sight of a musician. They turn on the radio, but they don’t hear the music. Most of the time, it’s just words they hear, and they don’t even understand them, not really. They hear a real musician playing next door, trying to perfect his craft, and they tell him to shut it – even call the cops. People are fakers.”
He reached over for his smokes, and tapped one out.
“Oh but son, that night in the Ozark, we knew we were headed for success. We knew we were good. The people loved us, but then Roy showed his true colors. He showed what a traitor he was, and it ruined my life.
Me and Roy, we were best friends, but he was half wolf-half man, just like they said. Roy didn’t get along too well with others, neither.”
He took a deep inhale.
“HOOOOooooo,” he blew loudly. “Roy had one guitar: a 53 Telecaster nicknamed Nancy. It’s in a museum, but what most people don’t know is that he had another: A 52 Tele.
Sure, Nancy was nice, but 52 was as perfect as it got. That was the year they perfected it. The year after, they cheapened the Fender Telecaster. Not only does the 52 allow both pickups to be used at the same time, but look at this: Slot heads, not screws!”
He stopped a moment, as Jack examined the guitar.
“Anyway, Roy got into it with one dude over creative differences. He felt they should have been doing what he told them.
Now, I was just protecting my friend. Roy wasn’t much of a fighter, like he thought he was. He was just scary looking, that’s all. This dude was more than I could handle though. So while I was getting the crap beat out of me, he made off with this.”
He indicated the guitar by tapping it with his finger.
“That was the night I went to jail. The dude was real well known, real respected; the law was on his side from the get go. He was a church goer, and it was the Bible belt. I was just protecting myself; I wasn’t drunk and messing up my life, like people like to say.”
He paused a moment, to wrestle back the emotion in his voice.
“Seven years, I did over that. Should’a been ten, though. Still, I never got back on the train after that. It was like my time was done. No one wanted to give me a second chance.
And, yet, sometimes I blame myself for never making it. I was broken, when I left prison. Hell, I didn’t even touch a guitar the entire time that I was in there.”
He took another drag and said, “Many years later, I caught up with Roy at the Rockaplast show. He thought I just wanted to say ‘hi.’
All he wanted was to get away from me because he knew that if he hadn’t left me, I’d have never killed that guy and gone to jail. We were supposed to be tight. Roy knew he’d betrayed me.
Anyway, he pretended to be glad to see me, and then he made some lame excuse and left the room.
That was the night I stole my ‘52 tele from him, haha. I thought it was the Nancy, and I didn’t realize it wasn’t until later. Still, I heard that he was downright angry, and that he was gonna find me and put a bullet in me. But he died instead.
Oh but it was me, the Potato Peeler, and Roy. We were good and we were tough. But that was back in ‘52. Waaay back when.”
…………….
Jack listened to his father’s incessant ramble for several weeks, until the cancer took him into a coma.
When he didn’t wake after several days, the nurse said it was probably permanent.
Relieved and thinking he could finally go home, he called his mother that very night. To his surprise, she insisted that he stay with his father until the very end.
Violent anger welled up inside him. He didn’t want to spend another moment in that house.
She didn’t understand what a torturous experience it had been for him to spend each day with the foul scents of his dying father.
He knew he should be ashamed for feeling the way he did, but he’d have given anything to be anywhere else.
When Jack protested, she insisted that he needed to be there for him, in case he woke.
“He’s your father!” she shouted at him. “How could you be so selfish?”
He was going to do as his mother wished.
His mind changed when a few a days later, the nurse came in and started instructing him on how to change his diaper and sponge bathe him.
He just couldn’t do it.
The man was a stranger to him. Why should he do for his father, what he never did for him as a baby?
So that night, Jack grabbed the 52 Fender Telecaster, and left.
Every day, he felt guilty about it, too. That first night away, he wandered to the Pickley Hills Park.
Sitting on the moist, wet bench, he pulled the telecaster from its ugly brown velvet case.
It was obvious that the guitar was old. The alignments were funny; the spacings were off.
He ran a chord. It felt nice and warn, the way the strings resisted and pulled back.
Unimpressed, he put the guitar back in its case. He never touched it again.
A whole week passed with him sleeping at the Pickley Hills Park, and wandering the streets. Nights later, he ran into Bruce, w
ho used to spend time there, too.
They’d talk and watch the families come to the park and have parties. Sometimes, other teenagers would come by, too, though not for good times: more or less, good time trouble.
Bruce was the first person he’d talked to about his father. He was a good listener, too.
After Jack had finished talking, Bruce said, “Jack, you have to go back. Your father is not you, and you have to be better than him. He ran away, and now you’re running away.”
Bruce gave Jack the kick in the pants that he was looking for. It gave him the courage to go back to his father’s cottage at the hospice.
He intended to apologize. From that point on, he was going to do whatever to make his death easy.
But when he got back to the cottage, it was empty. He knocked on the door, repeatedly.
Finally, he walked to the side of the house and peered through the sliding glass window.
No one was there. The living room was completely emptied of all furniture.
At that moment, a buzzing feeling erupted on the hair line of his forehead, and traveled down his face, back and body.
A ringing noise in his ears deafened him.
In a zombified state, he walked blindly, but with eyes wide opened, through the neighborhood.
Eventually, he made his way back to Pickley Hills Park, where he met up with Bruce again.
Nearly every day, Jack remembered the crackle sound the tobacco in his cigarette made, as he dragged on it. Anytime he heard anything like it, or saw smokers, he thought about his time in the hospice.
Even as he worked in the attic, he tried to forget those weeks with his father, but the images and conversations played themselves over and over again, in his mind.
It was late in the afternoon before he finally sat for a break.
He’d cleaned out most of the cobwebs, and swept up all the animal droppings.
So deep in the last memory of his father, Jack was that he jumped when Tatia walked in.
“Wow, this place is looking good!”
Jack had pushed all the boxes to the left side of the room. All the stuff he’d pulled out were in piles on the right.
In the lower corner on the floor, he’d piled old clothes. Just up from that were old raggedy toys, and, up from that, a couple of old jewelry boxes.
Immediately, Tatia walked over and lifted some of their lids and pulled out their tiny drawers.
She found a couple old rings and necklaces.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Looks costume to me, but some of them have the little stamps on them though. So they’re real gold, though it’s old. We just need to clean it up a bit. Toothpaste will do it: that’s what Maggie at school always says.”
“Who?”
“Just some stuck up rich girl.”
She walked over to the pile of toys. She picked up a doll with bright red hair. “Wow, some old ugly toys, but someone might want them.”
She stood up and walked to a large stack of 10 lb cans that said “Bully Beef.”
“What in the world are these?”
“I think they’re rations from the army.”
“Wow, 1949, it says. Well, I guess that means you didn’t find much. I hate to say it, but I don’t think these necklaces will fetch much. You know how pawn houses are.”
“Are you kidding?” he asked, looking at her like she was crazy. “These cans; this green helmet and clothes are vintage stuff. Someone will buy these. Trust me. Plus, I’ve still got another dozen boxes to go through.
We’ll sell what we can to the pawn shop. With the rest, we’ll take it to the swap meet on Saturday.”
“How are we gonna get these cans to the swap meet? They’re humungous.”
“I don’t know; I need to think about it.”
“Whoa!” said Bruce, who had just walked in. “I can’t believe all this stuff.”
Jack smiled and said, “It’s great, isn’t it. Maybe I’ll get my guitar back sooner than later.”
“Did you get any food?” asked Bruce. “I’m starving.”
“Yeah, I got quite a bit, but I don’t think I’ll be able to go back. The cafeteria guy saw me.”
~~~
That evening, they sat on the couch, eating ham and cheese sandwiches.
“Did you see the ghost at all today?” asked Tatia.
“No but I felt him.”
“Weren’t you scared?”
“Heck, no! I told him to go away, and he did.”
Just then, as if he knew they were talking about him, the sound of a whiney brake entered the room.
This time, they didn’t panic. Rather, they waited for the noise to abate.
When his white form didn’t appear, Bruce said, “What’s up, jerk?” to the air.
Waaaaahhhhhhhh!!
The couch rumbled and shook.
“Bruce, shut up! Don’t call him names,” said Tatia, trying not to drop her sandwich as she held onto the back of the couch.
“Aww, what? Did I hurt your wh’ittle fee’ wings, aww…”
The ghost appeared directly in front of him, looking him straight in the eyes. Tatia gagged as more black sludge spilled down his front. Then, fast, he flew into Bruce and disappeared.
He screamed and jumped off the couch.
“That was cold!”
Bad Side of Town
Chapter 4
That night, they slept, together, in the living room again; afraid that to split up would give the ghost easy advantages.
But Bruce just couldn’t sleep. Gently, he rose from the mattress.
After putting on his shoes, he tip toed to the door. As he reached for the handle, the ghost appeared.
Bruce drew back his hand, not wanting to feel the icy cold again.
The ghost lingered, looking him in the eyes, almost as if it were asking him where he was going.
“None of your business! Now, move!” he whispered.
Wah! Said the ghost, and then it disappeared.
He closed the kitchen door behind him. All was dark in the alley, except for a tiny light in a window on the second floor of a house, a few rooftops over.
Bruce flinched. He thought he saw someone in the window, but when he looked again, there was no one.
Along the dark streets, he went, through Pickley Hills and past the midnight labor line.
Twenty minutes later, he was on the other side of town. He entered a retirement trailer park community.
His grandmother wasn’t allowed to have permanent residents under the age of 65.
He wasn’t sure how old his grandmother was, but she sure was deaf. Sometimes, she tried to talk to him, but it was hard to move her mouth around her dentures. They were too big for her shriveled mouth.
Bruce didn’t know if she understood that her daughter had gone off with her man, leaving him in the house that was, later, sold off at a foreclosure auction.
She was just too old.
She didn’t have any other visitors, except grocers, so Bruce tried to visit her a few times a week.
Bruce got the key from under the plant’s pot, in the bed next to the step.
Inside smelled just as musty as always.
From the room in the back, came the sound of her snores.
He tip toed into the kitchen.
Though he looked in the cupboards and the refrigerator, he had no intention of taking food from her. She barely could afford to feed herself. In fact, Bruce had skimmed money meant for him, Tatia and Jack to buy her groceries, from time to time.
For the moment, she appeared to be doing alright.
Bruce turned to the kitchen sink, which was where she kept all her medications.
Though he never told Jack and Tatia, sometimes the cash he got was not from mowing lawns, but rather from selling his grandmother’s pain medications. He could get $10 for each of the little blue ones.
Bruce pulled out ten and left th
e rest. He hated to do it, but he had to get Jack’s guitar back from Joey.
After all, it was his fault that Tatia got hurt. If he wasn’t so hungry, he would have never persuaded her to steal food from her father’s house.
His grandmother’s arthritis would be fine, he told himself. The pharmacist would chalk it up to senility, like he always did, and give her the extras that she’d need.
He put the pills in a sandwich bag and pocketed them. Then he fell asleep on the couch.
The next morning, his grandmother woke him with the sound of her hearing aid, like a high pitched radio frequency.
“Hi,” she managed to mumble.