Little God Blues

by Jeffrey M Anderson

  “You know what? If I was thirteen I’d be knockin’ on your door.” If I was thirteen again I’d never stand a chance with this crowd. Natalie. Her friend Nicky, the willowy, elaborately bored blond. The packs of feral girls beckoning with sexual taunts, meretricious dress, either half-undone uniforms or short skirts, butt crack-cleaving track bottoms with ‘porn star’ written across them, other flags of easy, fake dalliance.

  We were interrupted by Frank, confirming the name of my airline. Off to the left now a vertical stabilizer over the hedgerows, a plane low, its landing gear feeling for land.

  “Do you still miss your father?” she asked.

  “I’m still completely bitter. Does that count as missing him?”

  “That’s gotta be a lot of years,” she muttered to herself, as if contemplating a long prison stretch.

  “Closing in on twenty.” Our eyes connected, dead serious.

  Well, time to say good-bye. She got out with me. It was cold and blustery, bright. She stood on the other side of the car, curbside, waiting for me, head down, hands in pockets.

  “Hey, don’t do anything stupid!” I shouted over the noise.

  “Okay, Dad.” She meant it as a light sarcastic jab. She was too serious, down even, to pull it off.

  I stood next to her for a long moment as our hair whipped at our faces. The whine of jets precluded talk. Then she hugged me, no irony, no stiffness, just a soft-shouldered and neutral connection. I patted her back a few times. Each one saying, Yes, I will come back. Each one saying, Yes, I will look for your mother.

  CHAPTER 22

  “Baby’s Revenge” from Back to Blank (Fifth Album) 4:17

  Mine. The one experimental track on Blank, a kind of rap poetry piece that already sounds dated, at least to me. The song’s all on me. The backing understated; a mumbled bass, a hiss of drums, and Kirk stabbing out chords at pivotal yet unpredictable points in our journey. The song looks at the world from the point of view of a new entrant into it. I try—and sometimes succeed—in making it more than a trite “how could they bring me into such a world” howl. I thought I had dialed down the self-importance and easy criticism, but hearing it now, I’m not so sure. There are lines I’m proud of though.

  I had gone over to Kirk’s well-maintained if anonymous house in the Sunset District, the day before he was off to London. He’d bought it from an estate, taking over most of the furniture, ‘60s California contemporary. Eerily, it was as if he had acquired a new set of parents and was staying at their house while they were off on a world cruise.

  “Look, why don’t we just cut back on the gigs, see how it goes?” I couldn’t help myself. A large part of me knew he was doing the noble thing by putting the Eyebeams out of its misery. I hated myself for not being able to stop. I was like the embittered lover who finally forces himself to shut up, but then just can’t help taking one more shot. Either that, or I had been working for so long to keep the Eyebeams going that it was instinctive by now.

  “Remember Sacramento, that first time we nailed it?” Here I went again.

  He smiled here, but mainly because it was called for. What was I trying to do? I needed to show some dignity, if only to myself. “Well, never mind. You’ve made up your mind, and I’ll respect that.”

  “Pink, I just can’t do it. You know?” Pink was one of his nicknames for me—a long story. Short form, an acronym for poetry in not knowing, one of my pronouncements now forever taken out of context. Of course with Kirk it had to be more complicated than that. Pink is also slang for methamphetamines. “It’s gotten so I don’t know who I am anymore.”

  He shot me a loose but weary smile. Yes, he was confessing, showing a side he had always kept away from me. “And you…” but he chose not to elaborate, and I chose not to pursue. We were poised on the verge of a confessional jag, but better to end the way we started, that emotional distance. He was going away; we were through. Who knew when we would get together again, and if we did, whether it would work? We had come a long way from those early days jamming on his porch, and we had reached the end of the line.

  “Why do I get a strong sense of some ambitious project? Solo album. Novel. That kind of nonsense.”

  He shook his head, deflecting the implied compliment. But let me tell you, Kirk was one of those limitless people who could be good at just about anything.

  He said, “You’re the words guy. You write the novel.”

  Those were his last words to me. We clapped each other’s back and that was that.

  Human air fills bright balloon; baby’s fist: oblivion

  Part II

  SAN FRANCISCO INTERLUDE

  CHAPTER 1

  I flew out of Heathrow on the Friday before Christmas. As we angled up from the wet plain below, wisps of gray mist trailing away, my foreign life, a first-draft work in progress, evaporated. Looking down on that flat, wet land, like some green ink pad, I felt like a rat above his maze. I sat among returning vacationers and businesspeople, all eager for their American homes, for shared excitement around lighted trees. Yes, I too was returning home, to that ease, to the light and familiarity. Yet back there—how quickly we were no longer over this island—back there, among that empire of wet bricks, was where the important things in my life were happening.

  Our approach to the Bay Area brought back memories of the Eyebeams. Another landing, another city to be conquered, guitar-licked into submission, crooned into swaying ritual celebration, built up to stay up. Our finale, an encore, another, they’re hanging onto our legs as we struggle to leave. More idolaters later at club or bar. Eventually we leave, owning it. The city rouses itself from sleep, props itself up on one figurative elbow. Look me up when you’re back in the area. Anytime. I am yours. Conquered.

  San Francisco—so light when it should be dark. That walk out to the taxis. The high sky vaulting in deeper shades of blue as if closer to the black of space. So impossibly high after the Tudor beam sky of London. The light so familiar, a tape running at optimum speed, rendering notes that even Kirk would have been happy with. The air so replete with oxygen, salt, kelp, eucalyptus scent. The psychic vibrations of seals, gulls, breakers. All that space and light, that sensory rhapsody defines an emptiness too, I now realize, like a mansion you rattle around in.

  Christmas Eve at the dinner table. Our family home in San Rafael, the only one I’ve ever known, is rented out for income. Mom is living with her new husband, C. Bradley “Brad” Sweltzer in his house in Greenbrae. It’s up a steep street off Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. The house looks out to the bay in the distance. I’ve never seen Brad, a tax accountant, pay the slightest attention to that view. To him it’s an asset that makes his investment more marketable. (Dad moved to San Rafael because he was captivated by views of Mount Tamalpais, especially at sunset. He would sit out on our deck, light up a cigarette—he was only an occasional smoker—and watch the colors come on and fade away.)

  I’ll be the first to admit that Brad is good for Mom. I don’t have the slightest idea how Dad and Mom worked, what they had in common, how they faced life together. Of course I only saw them as a boy, and at that age your parents are more like suns in your firmament than people. Dad was always busy, in a rush, preoccupied, except for those cigarettes looking out at the mountain. Whereas Brad makes time for Mom. He is attentive, will sometimes do what she wants to do. He naturally assumes Mom takes the housekeeping role but makes the odd foray into helping her, particularly, I suspect, when I’m around.

  I’ve never really understood Mom: she’s like a finely-designed appliance, bright, shiny and seamlessly functional—and her job is being a mom. She reads books, magazines and the paper, but they stay internalized. You can comment on current events and she’ll kill it in one emotionally-based pronouncement. The US intervention in Afghanistan: “Oh, I don’t know, haven’t enough people died already?” On Enron: “Those MBA guys are too clever for their own good.” You can try to open it up with an essay question. Wh
at do you think can be done to resolve the situation in Palestine? “Well, if the diplomats can’t figure that out, what chance does a poor old nurse have?” Only rarely do you get a glimpse of a brain that has taken in and retained the news. You might slip up on a statement about the Taliban destroying Buddhist temples and she’ll say, “I think that was a statue of Buddha, dear.”

  What were her hobbies and interests? She liked gardening in an intermittent way. The movies if they were at the Tracey/Hepburn end of the scale. She liked eating out. She liked the ballet, but lost interest after Molly died.

  I guess all sons feel guilty about their mothers. Mom had taken two knock-out blows; first the one-two punch of Dad skipping out and dying fourteen months later; then Molly. I was a problem child after Dad left. I took it hard; his rejection was all about me. I wanted to lash out, and did. Not often at Mom, but I got into my share of trouble. There were those two summers when she sent me off to her brother’s. It was only much later that I suspected she needed a rest from me and my rebellions.

  Mom has this spooky ritual of giving a present to Molly at Christmas. This year it was a perfume that Molly liked.

  “Now I know Molly can’t be with us, but I still wanted to get her a little something.” (Mom says the same thing every year.)

  The last year Brad had also bought a little something, a tasteful Hermes scarf. This year, finally playing this game, I wrote a song for Molly, but really for Mom. “Five Years in the Arms of Our Lord.” A blues spiritual designed to be comforting. Mom was raised Protestant; her line went back to the Huguenots who arrived in America to avoid persecution in France. She went to church like she did her gardening; sporadic, but total commitment.

  “So,” Brad started. “I hear you’re going back to London.”

  “Yes. I’ve got an apartment now. Several projects. One of which is a certain Greek lady.”

  “Oh, that’s nice,” Mom said. I didn’t usually talk about my romantic life.

  I said, “You know, Kirk Howell died there.” The Sweltzers had been invited to his funeral. They chose not to attend; I had never asked why. “There’s a few things that don’t add up.”

  “You’re not moving there are you?”

  “It’s only temporary, Mom. It’s like when I was fifteen. London’s a good place to be idle.”

  “Chip told me about those times.” She wagged her finger at me.

  “It was all good, clean fun; except the parts that were dirty.”

  “Is she a model or something?” Brad asked. When he grabbed onto something he stayed with it; Brad was still on the Greek lady part of our exchange.

  “She’s a theoretical physicist.”

  “Is that like Einstein?”

  I tried to explain.

  Brad said, “I still remember that picture of you and Claire Flood.” A model I had been out with as documented by the paparazzi.

  “You want her autograph…‌for Christmas?”

  “Where would she sign?”

  My mother gave Brad the visual equivalent of a light slap. He’d had some of the wine I’d brought for the occasion, but not that much.

  “She’s probably with her folks in Savannah. You want me to book a flight?”

  An awkward laugh.

  It was a bluff. I’m embarrassed to say I don’t remember her. I’ve seen the picture, though, of us leaving a New York hot spot, which I also don’t remember. It was only a little over a year ago. She’s on my arm like she’s lived there for years. By some miracle I don’t look wasted. We look like a young, vital couple on our way to the next important venue. Who knows, maybe we were.

  At some point hours later it was time to leave. It was a sore point with Mom that I never stayed over. She saw it as her house; I saw it as Brad’s. The thought of getting up, crusty from sleep, and running into Brad, up for hours, sharp and shaven, removed the last traces of any sense of filial obligation.

  We’ll skip over many of the other events back home. I saw friends, hung out with Cash and Hassan, formerly of the Eyebeams. I had an expensive lunch on the waterfront with Lenny Fox and finally shut him down on any hope of Eyebeams II. I visited with Al Fong Ting, a wealth management genius who had traded, compounded and multiplied my money as if the entire Western financial system was controlled by four bearded mah-jongg players in Chinatown, one of whom was Al’s confederate. His company, My Dream Returns, had started in Noe Valley, down from my house. I had been one of his first clients. That was the start of my MDR karma: my investments invariably multiplied like rats in a dirty cellar.

  It was foggy and cool at my mother’s, so I drove my rental car up Mount Tamalpais to get above the fog line to find some winter sun, and hit the pause button on hanging out with my mother. I was meeting that other mother, Kirk’s, in two days. I needed to give some structure to that interview.

  I had called Sunnydown Hills when I woke up, early due to jet lag. Mr. Hardcastle was still in ICU at the local hospital. He was stable, but hadn’t regained consciousness yet. (I hadn’t known he had lost it.) It was the endgame. I saw again that look in the hall when he came up short, face dark, brows tightened, and he strained his mental sinews to warn me of something. Even more I saw that frustrated stomp, so vague in this world. In his, however, it was a shout of supreme frustration, possibly his last eloquence. No, I told myself, not for the first or fifth time, you are not going to flail yourself with this one. He was on the way out; you acted honorably; you offered him a last, short companionship at the end. You tell yourself these things even though you know it’s pointless. How you feel runs independently; the rest is guilt management.

  It was still foggy up towards the summit, a bright fog that had a vague warmth penetrating through it. I got out my old all-weather Yamaha, sat out on a rock and played. I started with a simple blues progression, not thinking about anything in particular except, vaguely, Hardcastle; the words started coming. “Sunny Side Up, Sunnydown Blues.” There’s no acoustic out in nature; the notes bleed away, forcing a quicker rhythm. I was ad-libbing as if I were Mr. Hardcastle, lamenting my lack of memory, complaining about the way I was treated, my inglorious, undignified end. The choking off of blood to that extravagant brain.

  Now, on that mountain, I wasn’t writing a song; I was just noodling, half-paying attention, half-grooving on the weak warmth seeping into my chest. Every few lines the word blood appeared, tripping me up like an intermittent tap on my shoulder, interrupting my thoughts.

  Hardcastle. Blood. This took me back to that Post-it note in Hardcastle’s medical file. When I had seen it the first time I had tried to ignore it. Not the fact of it, but its impact. I had thought at the time it was because it was too personal. Now, that didn’t seem right. I had ignored it as inconvenient to something, which meant part of me had known this all along, known, yet didn’t want to. Looked away. The question was: from what?

  I played more songs, looking at the trees that bordered this high little glade. The songs didn’t conquer my lingering confusion over that Hardcastle blues number. The trouble is that the mind is such a mighty instrument capable of powerful deduction, yet equally capable of self-deceit, dreams, wishful thinking, creative connections, false memories, blind hopes, primordial urges, true memories, working theories, biases, and blind chatter. May as well spin the wheel, see what we land on.

  I knew not to force things. Better to relax and see what comes. I drove down the mountain, slowly. I pulled off the road at a long graveled turn-out with views out to San Francisco Bay, partially obscured by a row of eucalyptus trees. But I didn’t do this; the “I” driving that car, some other part of me did, like a ghost in the passenger seat saying, “Pull over here; there’s something I want to tell you.”

  I sat there for a while, looking at the bay. It was late morning; there was a mist over the water where the fog trailed away in the winter sun. Sailboats were starting to come out of their berths in Sausalito. My eyes wandered to a patch of sun on the water and up a gre
ening hill over by Belvedere.

  There are three blocks to hard mental progress. The first is an intellectual limitation: you don’t have the right tools, the firepower, haven’t worked hard enough from the right angle. The second is that you are not brave enough to throw out things which you think are essential. It’s like a baby taking his first steps. Physically he is more than ready, walking along a coffee table or chair seat with chubby hand only lightly and occasionally on it. Walking is the easy part; the hard one is the mental shift to a world that contains such upright motion. It requires a certain tenacity to commit to such a new world.

  The third is you are just plain wrong, forcing something that can’t come. As Confucius said, “The hardest thing to do is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat.”

  I only understood this later. I sat there at an impasse, waiting for this revelation, waiting in vain. Why did I pull over like that? All I can say is that I had a strong sense of knowing something, yet not wanting to know it. I sat there in a juddering but motionless car, one foot on the gas, the other on the brake. Yes, it was like these two parts of me, equally powerful, were at war.

  I fell back on logic, which I guess was the real me trying to outfox this other part of, well, me. If we assume moral bravery, this means a long, closely-held belief. What was it about Mr. Hardcastle that was close to me? I couldn’t answer that. I hardly knew him. Hold it to one side. Logic says it has to be about a person. Kirk? He’s someone close to me. In looking for him, he was connected to Hardcastle. That felt right, Kirk. Something new about him I wouldn’t like.

  I needed to concentrate. I turned the radio off, looked out at the bay. The fog was rolling in, thicker, the sunny patch out by Belvedere now gone, sailboats fading away too. I got out of the car.

  I took a short trail out past the line of trees toward the bay, breathing in that mentholated eucalyptus smell; the air sharper, more salt-tinged down here. Then it was there. I could feel it. Like a letter in a mailbox—one you have been expecting, dreading. It was as simple as walking over there, opening that box. I watched the thickening fog take away the scene as a mental one lifted. I was there, I just needed to retrieve the letter and read what I hadn’t wanted to know.