by Rob Rufus
M - U - S - T - A - N - G
“Wow, it’s a ragtop too,” Dad said. “Looks like a ’67, maybe a ’68.”
“I’ve never seen anything this cool in my life, man!”
I looked at all that black leather inside. I checked the price that was written on the windshield—$5,200.
“How much you got saved up?” Dad asked, reading my mind.
“Not sure. A little—but not this much. I could start saving, though. You think they’d still have the car by the time I could get the money together?”
“It’s junk,” Dad scoffed. “If they’re starting at five grand, she probably doesn’t even run. This must be a piece-of-shit car.”
“No, no, no,” I said. “No way. This car is perfect.”
Dad crossed his arms and stepped back, looking at me beside the Mustang.
“You really like it that much?”
“I do,” I said. “It’s rad as hell. It’s straight outta a fucking Bruce Springsteen song.”
3
I didn’t get a big welcoming committee. But Nat was at home, and that was enough. He and Mom were sitting in the living room, watching TV together. Mom hugged me hello, and it seemed like the entire house let out a collective sigh.
It was done. It was over. We were safe.
Now I needed to rest.
Nat followed me into the kitchen. “Hey, man, I want to talk to you about something.”
I shook my head. “Not right now. I feel like the walking dead, dude—I just want to sleep.”
I turned away from him and dragged myself upstairs.
* * *
Nat opened the door to my bedroom without knocking.
“Sorry, I know you’re tired, I just figured the sooner we deal with this, the better. I didn’t want to bring it up while you were in the hospital.”
I groaned and swung my feet onto the carpet. Nat leaned on the wall across from me.
“Bring what up?”
“The band,” he said. “We need to talk about the band.”
“What about it?”
“You remember the shit that went down when we took the new press pics?”
“Of course I do,” I said.
“Yeah—well, I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. I’ve barely talked to Brody since then. I just can’t stop thinking about it.”
“So what?” I asked. “You want to tell me that y’all are gonna start doing shows without me? Now that I’m done with chemo, and you don’t feel so guilty about it?”
“Nononono,” Nat said. “I wanted to talk to you about kicking Brody out.”
“Seriously? I know that he was being a dick, but he kinda had a point. I mean, y’all already have a drummer on deck—you can play shows without me, but not without a bass player. It seems nuts to kick him out.”
“Fuck that,” Nat said. “This is our band—you know it, and I know it. If anyone is leaving, it’s him. After that blowup, I can’t even stand to be near him.”
“Well, shit.” I hadn’t been expecting this. “Where do we find a new bassist?”
“I already got one on lockdown.”
“Who?”
“Doyle.”
“My fill-in drummer?” I asked, confused.
“Yep.”
“He plays bass?”
“Fuck yeah he does—a little bit, at least. It’s the bass, dude! How hard can it be?”
“Point taken.”
“Brody’s an idiot for obsessing over playing shows. We don’t need to play local shows. I don’t care if we ever play this town again. It’s small-time bullshit. What we need to do is record an album—we could play a show at the Y every single day and no one outside the city limits would ever notice.”
He sat down on the bed beside me.
“I say, let’s scrap all the old material. I have tons of new songs waiting to be arranged. If you start working on your drumming soon, and Doyle practices his bass, I figure we can take the entire winter to work out the new stuff. Then, we can pick the best of them to record—not another demo—but a real album, in a real studio.”
“Fuck yeah!” I said. I started getting stoked.
“We can go ahead and map out a tour for the summer, and start calling clubs sooner, not later. If we get our record done by the end of spring, we can send copies out to every magazine and website there is. We can get reviews, maybe even interviews—build a buzz, you know? People will come to the shows that way, and record labels might actually notice us.”
I was sold.
“By the time June rolls around, we’re gonna have a new band, new songs, a new record, and a new tour booked to promote the shit outta all of it. I think that the day after graduation, we just hit the fucking road—and this time, we don’t come back without a record deal.”
“Hell yes,” I said loudly.
I was breathing harder, and my chest felt tight. I had to steady myself on the bed.
“What are we gonna tell Brody?” I asked. “He is going to freak.”
Nat shrugged. “I dunno. I don’t care, honestly—I can’t play music with him anymore. The second he gave up on you, I gave up on him.”
We sat beside each other in silence.
“When do we start?”
“Whenever you feel ready,” he said. “While you were in Columbus I spent the week demoing all of my new songs. It’s just me and a guitar—I recorded it with the old Dictaphone we used to use. They don’t sound great, but still. I thought maybe you could go ahead and start brainstorming arrangements while those chemo drugs run outta your system.”
“Sounds good,” I said.
Nat stood up and opened the door.
“Anyway, I just figured you’d wanna get the ball rolling. I put the demo tape in the other bedroom. You know, the one with all the drums in it. You sneaky fuck.”
He laughed and walked into the hall.
* * *
I woke a few hours later, sick. I walked to the bathroom and puked as quietly as I could. I flushed, and stood above the sink until my breathing slowed. My stomach wouldn’t quit rumbling. I took a few pills.
Until the meds kicked in, I would never be able to get to sleep. There was no point getting back in bed. So I walked across the hall, to the other bedroom.
Nat had placed his demo tape in the middle of my practice pad. How long had he known that all of this was up here? Probably the whole damn time.
My old Converse sat beside the drum stand. Nat had rewritten FUCK CANCER on the white rubber tips, even bigger than the original sentiment. I grinned and picked them up along with the tape before shutting off the light.
I put my headphones on and inserted them into the stereo jack. I flipped the tape to side A—I pressed rewind till it clicked. I cranked up the volume in advance.
I pressed play.
I closed my eyes.
This was my brother as I had never heard him. Without the accompaniment of a band, his punk sneer sounded softer, more vulnerable. It was jarring to listen to, but for that exact reason, it pulled me in.
The first song was called “Never Stop Fighting.” It was balls-out fast, a punk rock fight song with a chanting chorus hook.
The second song, “No Tomorrow,” was a little slower. It was a song about living for the moment while an uncertain future lies ahead. I could imagine it with drums pounding, pushing the music to be as heavy as the lyrics.
The next song was “Brothers Forever.”
Then there was “H-Town Angels.”
The one after that was called “Terminal.”
It was unnerving, how raw they were. They were nihilistic, heartfelt, brutal. They were totally and completely ours.
Every song sounded like a revelation. All these things that he wouldn’t—couldn’t—say to me, my brother was sayin
g to me now. He was telling me he loved me, in a language that he knew I’d understand.
4
The weather was getting colder. Stronger winds blew the few remaining leaves from their branches, and all the colorful yards of the neighborhood began to turn a dull gray. But as the temperature dropped, my own life finally began to thaw.
I still struggled physically. Many of the side effects I’d experienced lingered, some even longer than I could’ve imagined. But I was able to manage them decently enough.
I wrapped my drumsticks and even my fork in hockey tape to help the ruined nerves of my hands grip. I sang songs in my head to mute the ringing in my ears. The chemo brain slowly faded away, though I still had blank spots now and again.
The pain was the hardest thing. It was constant and unrelenting. I told myself that all my exercising helped, and maybe it did, but any amount of relief I felt was more likely coming from the five or six hydrocodone I popped daily.
But regardless of it all, I truly felt like I was getting better—mentally, emotionally, spiritually—I didn’t cling to dark feelings anymore, and I no longer felt the grip of resentment and fear.
For the very first time, I felt like I had begun to heal.
* * *
A lot of my positive energy came from watching the burden of that year ease down off my family’s back. It was like a curse was lifted from my house or something. It didn’t happen overnight—but slowly, things went back to normal.
Better than normal, even.
Nat kicked Brody out of the band within a week of our decision. It wasn’t the long, dramatic scene I’d expected; Nat simply threw his bass equipment out into the street and told him to come pick it up. Brody never argued or tried to work things out—I guess my brother’s strategy made it clear there would be no reconciliation.
The vibe in the basement became warmer, the way it was before life had complicated the simple joys of rock ’n’ roll.
Nat set up camp down there again—but this time, it was permanent. There were no more groupie girlfriends, there was no more running away. He and Mom finally called a truce—he went back to school, and she stopped arguing about his tattoos, or about his goals. In fact, she seemed to give up arguing altogether.
My mom had finally regained her focus. With me out of the hospital, she was devoting her free time to raising money for cancer research. She participated in charity walks and golf tournaments; she was even thinking of entering a marathon.
Her fund-raising helped her as much as it helped the cause—she wasn’t drinking much anymore, and now she stayed too busy to get depressed. She and Dad spent more time together—they even started going on dates. The color finally came back into her face, and I started hearing her sweet laugh for the first time in months.
When it was time to eat dinner, everyone showed up.
* * *
Ali.
I saw her less. I thought of her always. I thought of us ditching school. I thought of us dancing in the hospital. I thought of her watching me drum. I thought of our first kiss—but it was just so different now.
Every time I thought back to that kiss, I couldn’t help but think of what came after. The heartaches, the fights, and the endless struggles—I couldn’t separate the past from the present. I didn’t know how to cherish those memories as singular experiences. The pleasure and the pain were all twisted up in my head with a sentimental clarity.
She wasn’t a lover; she was a battlefield nurse. She wasn’t a girlfriend; she was the weeping statue of Mary, crying rivers of tears for no one else but me.
She had transcended, in my mind and in my heart.
Ali Wilhelm was my very own saint.
* * *
I wish it could’ve been simpler, but I tried not to let it upset me. Mostly because I could tell that Ali was happier now.
When I came home from treatment that final time, she was as relieved as anyone—relieved for me, and relieved for her. Because it meant she no longer had to feel guilty for yearning to enjoy her life.
Now she spent most of her time out with friends. They went to college parties and bars throughout the week, armed with stolen beer and ridiculous fake IDs.
Sometimes it made me worry—but what could I say? She’d stuck with me, through everything, and I owed her a lot for that. I felt like the least she deserved was some space.
So after all of it, I was once again nothing but a silent observer, a lonely boy just grateful to be in her presence.
* * *
It was just a few weeks before I started drumming for real.
I played the same simple beats on my real kit as I had on my practice set. But the volume and tone of actual drums brought those repetitive movements to life. The stick cracks and cymbal crashes rang in my head for hours—God, how I’d missed those sounds!
It wasn’t much longer until I was jamming with Nat.
We played lots of old covers: Beach Boys, Misfits, Pennywise, the Descendents, Nirvana—any song we could remember. Getting back into the swing of it was exhausting, but that was fine—there was so much music, sososo much awesome fucking music.
Soon, we were hammering out the new material. We spent countless hours crafting arrangements, sculpting the songs from his demo into the most powerful shit we could. Doyle came by a few days a week, and he followed Nat’s chord changes on the beat-up bass he’d borrowed from a friend. He picked up the instrument relatively quickly, which wasn’t a surprise—there was just something in the atmosphere around us now, and I knew that anything was possible.
I’d never enjoyed playing music so much. Practice never got stressful, and the songs never got old. We would stay down there all day, riffing and talking shit while Paul hunched in the corner, reading a magazine or snapping photos. When I was with my friends and my music, I finally felt like my struggles were over. When I was back behind my drum kit, I finally felt like I was home.
* * *
The afternoon before Thanksgiving, I walked into the kitchen to find Mom prepping her fruit salad. Her current project was raising money for the Ronald McDonald House. I asked her how it was going.
“Fast!” she said excitedly. “So far I’ve raised almost four thousand bucks. Pretty cool, huh?”
“Incredibly cool! That’s so awesome. Seriously.”
“You know,” she said, “back in those first days, right when you were diagnosed, I felt so helpless. I remember sitting in that room with you, watching you sleep—so scared that I was going to do the wrong thing, make the wrong decision. Or not do anything, which seemed even worse.” She smiled sadly. “I just kept telling myself that if we could get through it, I was going to do something. Help somehow. Anyway, I’m hoping that this money helps somebody. Not everyone is as lucky as us.”
I envisioned her in the hospital, watching over my deathbed dreams. I didn’t have the words to tell her what that meant, or how much she had done already. I knew, right then, that I never would.
So I simply nodded and looked away.
* * *
Whenever night came down and there was no more music to play, my brother and I focused on the road.
So far, Nat’s plan was right on schedule. The songs were coming together nicely, and I couldn’t have been more stoked to record them. I was sure that we were about to make a record worth listening to, a record someone like me would love. We still planned to track the album in early spring and have copies sent out for reviews by May.
Then, it would finally be time to tour.
Let me tell you, the first tour paled in comparison to the one we were lining up—we were gonna tour until we’d played every fucking city in the country, and then we were going to tour some more. We were going to tour until the wheels fell off.
Once again, Nat taped a map up onto the basement wall. This America had so many red stars drawn on it that it was hard to tel
l where the tour even began.
So far, we had fifteen confirmed bookings. We were sure we could lock in the rest of the gigs before the weather warmed up and club calendars got packed. Summer was the busy season, when every garage band in America got hungry for the promise of the road.
We planned to start on June 2, in Louisville, Kentucky. From there, we would go to Cincinnati to Indianapolis to Fort Wayne to Detroit to Chicago to St. Louis to Kansas City to Omaha to Sioux Falls to Fort Collins to Denver to Salt Lake City to Boise to Seattle to Olympia to Portland to Redding to Reno to San Fran to San Jose to Fresno to LA to Hollywood to San Diego to Vegas to Phoenix to Flagstaff to Albuquerque to Oklahoma City to Dallas to Houston to New Orleans to Birmingham to Memphis to Nashville to Atlanta to Jacksonville to Gainesville to Orlando to Miami to Tampa to Savannah to Charleston to Charlotte to Richmond to DC to Philly to New York to Asbury Park to Pittsburgh—and from there, to the triumphant homecoming gig in Huntington, West Virginia.
* * *
Every night before I went to bed, I took off my shirt and stood before the mirror. I needed to track the changes of my body.
Ever since I’d gotten finished with chemo and off the breathing steroid, my relentless workouts had begun finally showing some results. My arms and shoulders were bigger; the muscles in my chest bulged lopsidedly above my scar tissue.
My hair grew in slower this time, but I saw the shadow of progress on my head, jaw, and stomach.
I’d already blown all of my savings on tattoos. It had been less than two months, but my arms were nearly covered. And although it wasn’t a conscious decision, each new tattoo was nothing but a remnant of that horrible year: a pinup nurse holding a needle, a death skull with my brother’s words—Never Stop Fighting—surrounding it, the stained-glass mural from the Children’s chapel, a daisy with a banner reading MOM in blue.
All of those experiences, relived in thick bright lines up and down my arms—as colorful as fantasies, but as permanent as a scar.