by Joel Arnold
It’s impossible now.
They started to jam.
A year earlier, after one of their live performances, Billy Ray confided to me, “It’s better than sex. It’s like I’m lost out there and floating on a giant wave.” The smile on his face was radiant. Sweat gleamed like pearls on his upturned face.
He was talking about that ultimate peak in music where everything works together, the notes blending, swooping effortlessly out of thin air, audible gifts from the gods.
“Damn, Billy Ray,” I said. “You must’ve been riding a big one tonight.”
He wiped a clean white cloth along the neck of his guitar. “It was a nice one, but not the big one.”
“How often do the big ones come?” I asked.
He winked. “Once in a lifetime, Sonny. Once in a lifetime.”
After ten minutes of playing, I thought they were ready to stop. The song reached an incredible plateau, then started it’s smooth descent. I knew I had something special on tape, the reels revolving as if spinning gold. I gave them a smile and a thumbs-up. Billy Ray shook his head at me.
They kept playing.
Five more minutes went by. The music swept me away. I closed my eyes and breathed it in, like it was something palpable, something you could ingest and carry with you for a lifetime. How long could this last?
When I opened my eyes, I watched as Jon broke a stick. He effortlessly grabbed a new one from a bag close at hand and kept on playing without missing a beat.
Colin’s face was in shadow, but I could see the drops of sweat falling onto the shiny blue surface of his bass. His hands flew across it as if possessed. It was amazing how they moved. Mechanical, yet brilliant.
Possessed. That’s how Billy Ray played. His solo cut into my soul, lifting the music into a new plane. The sounds seared. At any moment, I thought his guitar would burst into flames. Just listening to it, I felt ravenous. I didn’t want it to end. It was pure ejaculation. But just when I thought the solo was about to peak, it went in a new direction, soaring higher, the notes plugging directly into my brain.
A beatific smile spread across Billy Ray’s face. Sweat poured off it in a river. His eyes danced and sparkled.
Possessed.
Musicians, especially those who’ve played together for many years, have subtle signals. They know how to cue each other with the slightest nod or a barely noticeable lift of the guitar neck. They get to know each other’s signals, each other’s nuances, and in times when they gel, it seems there is some sort of psychic connection, where a player just needs to give a tiny mental push, and the band will start taking a song in a new direction.
But behind his drums, Jon’s eyes were more than subtle. It looked like something bothered him, like he was in pain. A grimace spread across his face. It was as if he was enduring the heat of a flame held under his wrists or trying to lift a car off of some crushed child. I figured he’d been pushing too hard. His chops were too damn tired.
I held up my hand, signaling them to wrap it up. If they kept up at this pace, Jon wouldn’t be able to last much longer. It would be a damn shame for the jam to just peter out like a train running out of fuel in the middle of a desert. Better to end on a high note.
That’s when Nick fell face forward onto his keyboard. The instrument buckled under his weight and crashed, causing a scream of clashing notes and feedback.
I stood up from my console, banged on the glass with my fist, but Billy Ray didn’t even look up. He kept playing. Jon and Colin glanced over horrified, but they too, kept playing.
This was ridiculous. Why wouldn’t they stop?
I pounded on the glass again, then tried to turn the mixing board off. When I flicked the switch, nothing happened. I dove beneath the console to unplug it, but when I touched the cord, I received a shock that sent red-hot daggers up my arm.
I crawled to the door of the sound booth. The brass door-knob glowed with a deadly red light. I was afraid to touch it.
I slowly stood. I turned to face the glass that separated me from the musicians. Billy Ray’s head was tilted back, his eyes thin white slits. There was a smile on his face, yet the sounds coming out of his mouth were screams. Howls. Bubbles of spit broke upon his chin, mixing with the sweat that glowed in the studio’s red lights.
The strange thing was that the cacophony of the keyboard feedback, the clash of all the notes pressed and screeching at once, somehow added to the overall effect, giving a new dimension to the music.
Music. Was it really music?
Or was it the tongues of Hell licking at my brain, pressing upon the areas of pleasure like an old prostitute?
Or was it the delirious cries of Niles Ordonez? Was he somehow contained in the electronics of the mixing board I’d so innocently cared for all those years? Was he jamming one more time through these hapless musicians?
Or was it something worse?
One stick after another broke in the drummer’s frenetic pounding, yet each time, he effortlessly reached down and produced another one from his bag of sticks like a magician. His hands were raw and bleeding, blood splatting on the drumheads, speckling his face. Tears dripped from his wide-open terrified eyes. Yet he still reached into his bag, bleeding hand clenching onto fresh stick. I couldn’t hear his screams over the music.
Shadows hid Colin’s face, but his right hand continued to move swiftly, mechanically, over the two bass strings that remained. The other two had snapped. Sweat poured onto the surface of his bass like rain. He no longer used his pick, and I realized that the skin of his thumb and forefinger had worn off while picking at the strings. The tiny bare bones of his fingers gleamed in the red light.
I looked over at the door. The knob glowed with that deadly red light.
When I looked back through the glass, Billy Ray stared directly at me. His smile beamed wide and bloody. His hands worked violently over his guitar. Three of the strings had broke and hung writhing off the guitar’s neck like snakes.
Colin fell forward onto his bass amplifier, creating a low throb of feedback. Jon crashed onto his drum set, sending the cymbals toppling over. He somersaulted over the toms and lay there twitching.
Billy Ray kept playing.
He walked slowly to the sound booth’s glass, his hands working over his hapless blood smeared guitar, screams issuing from his madly grinning lips. I couldn’t take it any longer. My head felt squeezed in a vice.
I closed my eyes, unable to look at him. I held my hands over my ears.
The music stopped. When I looked up, I saw that Billy Ray had collapsed.
A voice came over the sound system. A deep, sonorous voice. A voice I recognized from long ago.
“Did you get that one?” it asked. “Did you get that one, Sonny?”
My right ear received a seventy percent hearing loss, which I can correct somewhat with the help of a hearing aid. Other than acting as a holder for my glasses, my left ear is useless.
When I finally got up the courage to listen to the reel of tape, I didn’t know what to expect. I pressed play. There was a static hiss. I turned up the volume. There they were, the Blues Blasters, jamming like they’ve never jammed before.
The song ended after only ten minutes, followed by static. What happened to the rest of the song? The screams, the caterwaul of instruments and musicians possessed? Gone. All gone. The static continued. I thought I heard laughter in the static. Deep and sonorous.
For years I wondered who pulled me out of that sound booth so long ago, who saved my life from the smoke and flames that destroyed Niles Ordonez and his unfortunate band.
Now I believe I know.
I sold the Blues Blasters last recording session to Cathouse Music for two million dollars. They became instant legends, just like Niles Ordonez, just like all the musicians who died at the peak of their game.
I’ve been living high and mighty for the last three months in my house in Malibu. Every night I fall asleep to the sound of the ocean crashing outside my back door. L
ife is good. I did someone a favor all those years ago, and this is my reward. Perhaps I didn’t realize it then, perhaps I was an unwitting pawn, but the agents of Hell don’t forget a favor.
The mixing board is in a vault in my basement. A little smoke damage, sure, but it still works. Works fine, in fact.
I still record bands. A hobby now, more than a necessity. And I’m looking for just the right band. A band that wants to become legendary. A band that will give everything to reach that ultimate peak.
If you know of any, give me a call. My name and number are on the card. As for a reward?
It will come in due time.
The Apple Tree Man
I.
Let me tell you a little something about apples. They scare me. Scare the shit out of me.
Olmsted County Fair, little over a year ago. With my son, William, age nine. We’re walking on the midway and pass a booth selling caramel apples. I try to hurry us past, but they catch William’s eye and he stops right there in front of the booth, squeezing my hand tight. I give him a tug, but it’s like he’s stuck in cement.
“Dad?”
I close my eyes. Try to fight back an acidic bubble working its way up my throat. I try to find the courage to say no. I can say no other times. No when he wants an extra hour playing video games. No when he wants to watch some violent movie. But to say no to this? To a caramel apple? I don’t want him to grow up with a bunch of crazy little phobias like his father has. So I dig out my wallet, pull out a couple crumpled ones. Hand him the money and look away, look across the midway at a kid trying to break balloons with a dart, look over at a woman carrying her baby on her shoulders, the baby’s hands and face sticky with blue cotton candy.
My son comes back. I feel him at my side. I glance at the shadow the sun throws in front of us and look quickly up at the sky when I see the apple’s silhouette, the round fruit impaled on the stick like something from the dark ages.
I hope my son doesn’t notice how fidgety I’ve become. I want him to live a normal life. I want him to grow up healthy. Isn’t that the hope of every father?
He takes a bite and I hear the squish of his teeth in the apple’s pulp. As the nausea builds in me, the world swivels on one big spindle, and I can’t help but turn to look.
His face is covered with blood.
He takes another bite and I feel the world falling out from under me.
More blood spurts from the apple, splattering his chin, his neck, drenching his yellow tee-shirt with it.
He looks up at me. Smiling. Chewing.
I swat the thing from his hands, a good hard smack so it goes flying and smashes against an overflowing trash can. I gulp air, ignoring the stares from passersby, watching the apple as it falls stickily down the side of the trash can, leaving a snail trail of clotting fluid.
I look at my son. His eyes brim with tears, his mouth quivers.
There is nothing on his face. No blood. Nothing on his shirt, his chin. A few pieces of caramel but that is all.
“Sorry,” I mumble. I hate to lie to my son, but feel I have to in order to protect him. “Saw a worm. You almost bit into it.”
He’s still stunned, my words only beginning to register.
“I kind of over-reacted didn’t I?” I give him a chuckle. “Jeez, sorry Will. Didn’t mean to get you too.”
He accepts this with a nod. Looks back at the perfectly good caramel apple laying at the foot of the trash can, trying to see the worm I claimed was there.
“Can I get another one?”
“Shoot. That was my last couple bucks. I think it’s time to go home now. Mom’s going to be wondering why we’re taking so long.”
I put my arm around him. Ruffle his hair. Even as things are okay again between us, I think I see a small drop of blood on the corner of his lips. I ignore it. Look away.
II.
“Davy, I don’t know what to do. I can’t live like this. It’s eating me alive.”
My brother Spencer’s words only two days ago.
“I came so close to telling someone.”
I speak quietly into the phone. “But you didn’t.”
“I came so close, Davy. I even got in the car. Turned on the engine. I sat there in the garage. Even thought about shutting the garage door, and—”
“Don’t talk like that. You hear me, Spence? Don’t say things like that.”
“I gotta tell someone.”
“You can’t.”
“I have to.”
I hear him breathing on the other end. “I’m coming down there. I’ll be there tomorrow.”
I picture him shaking his head, the receiver pressed into his forehead.
“Spence? You hear me? I’m coming down. We’ll work through this. Okay?”
There’s one more sigh, then, “Yeah. Okay. Sure.”
III.
Spencer first told me about the Apple Tree Man when we were kids. It was the middle of October. I was twelve, Spencer fourteen. His friends, Paul and Jack, rode their bikes alongside of us down the gravel road to Nathan Hench’s farm. Hench owned a dozen acres of field corn, a few scrawny dairy cows, and two rows of apple trees.
Paul was short for his age, with a full head of black, curly hair. He often had bruises on his arm from where his dad hit him. Jack was thin and ropy; always on the move. Even when sitting, his limbs were in constant motion. Jack was Spencer’s best friend.
My brother Spence — what can I say about him? He was my brother, and I’ll always love him. That’s all you need to know about him.
It was dark. We wore sweaters, could see our breath wisp past us as we pedaled. We slowed at Hench’s long dirt driveway. Saw him within the golden glow of his kitchen sitting at a table, tending to a brown whiskey bottle. We heard the barking of a far-off dog. The wind rustled through the apple trees, carrying the faint scent of manure. We dropped our bikes at the side of the driveway, skirted around a barbed wire fence ’til we faced the side of an old barn.
We stepped through the fence. Paul and I held our backpacks open as Spencer and Jack plucked ripe apples and loaded us up.
When the backpacks were full, we pushed aside the dead and fallen apples beneath one of the trees and sat there, each sinking our teeth into the fruit. Nothing tastes as good as an apple picked right from the branch. They were crisp; felt good on the teeth. We licked the cold juice that dribbled down our chins, wiped our faces with the sleeves of our sweaters.
“You ever hear about the Apple Tree Man?” Spencer asked between bites.
We shook our heads.
“You’re supposed to leave the last apple of the season for him or else you’ll have a bad crop the next time around.”
“Yeah, right,” Paul said.
Jack threw his apple core at him. “Did you hear the story about the time I fucked your mama?”
Our laughter was cut off by the slam of a screen door. We looked toward the house and saw the silhouette of a man. The beam of a flashlight jerked violently among the trees.
“Who’s out there?” Mr. Hench coughed up something from his throat and spit it on the ground. “I said who’s out there?”
We scrambled to the fence. The beam of his flashlight caught us.
“Stop,” he said. “I got a gun.”
We didn’t stop. We’d gone through this before. Yes, he had a gun. We’d seen it; a WWII standard Army issue revolver. But it was just old Mr. Hench. He wasn’t going to shoot at a bunch of kids.
We scrambled through the fence.
“Goddamn it!”
We heard the strain in his voice. We stopped and turned. He stood on the other side of the apple trees, the beam of his flashlight pointed to the ground. He was doubled over, his breathing harsh and asthmatic. The smell of whiskey drifted toward us.
I know we should’ve left him alone. I know we should’ve hopped on our bikes and rode away into the night. But something about Mr. Hench brought out the worst in us that night. His vulnerability was a fuse to our anger.
>
Jack threw first. The core of his apple hit Hench in the knee. Paul reached through the barbed wire fence and grabbed a soft brown apple from the ground. His throw was perfect. The apple hit Hench in the forehead.
Hench lifted a hand in front of his face. “Stop it! Stop it, now!”
Spencer and I found our own rotten apples to throw.
Hench turned away as one after the other, the apples hit their mark. “You’re hurting me!” Hench fell to his knees. Crawled toward his screen door. “Please stop. Please.”
We kept throwing, whooping when they exploded across his back, laughing when they broke upon his skull.
He dragged himself to the screen door and fell inside, the door slamming shut behind him.
We kept throwing. At the windows, the door, at the rusty old pick-up sitting in the long dirt driveway. We threw until our arms ached. Until the laughter, the adrenaline left us and all that remained was the feel of the moon, bright and sharp in our eyes.
As the days passed, the legend of the Apple Tree Man grew. He became a skeletal old thing that lived in the canopies of apple trees, a skinny old pervert waiting in the cold autumn nights for children to pass below. He’d reach out a long bony hand, grab you around the throat with fingers strong as steel, and lift you up into the tree. He’d rip your heart out. Eat it as you watched. Throw your carcass to the ground as his laughter carried through the night in the blustery autumnal winds.
When we whispered to each other these tales of the Apple Tree Man late at night, we’d laugh. But there were nights when the moon threw perplexing shadows, nights when the wind rustled dry leaves, that we couldn’t help but look nervously over our shoulders, jump at the sound of creaking branches, the scamper of feet across tall dead grass, the thunk of an apple falling to the ground. We kept close together. Our eyes grew sore trying to penetrate the cloak of night.