by J. C. Geiger
Lance’s phone said it was 11:45 p.m. William hadn’t called back. Three missed texts from Miriam.
“Lost track of time,” Lance said.
“It didn’t lose track of you-uuuu,” Meebs sang. He was everywhere, rattling the broken latch on the window. Fingering the chain lock. Flipping through Lance’s book on OSU campus policies. Lance moved toward the door.
“What’s that?” Rocco said, nodding at him.
“My trumpet,” Lance said, clutching it closer. “I don’t like to leave it.”
“You’re bringing it to the bar?” Rocco said. “Meebs. Stop creeping around, you weirdo. Let’s go.”
And Lance was back like he never left. Pirate host with her dead wooden eyes and the enamel crack of pool balls. Lance followed Rocco and Meebs to a dark corner booth. People rose out of the murk. Déjà vu faces. Dakota. A boy with black eyes and a bandaged nose. A pretty girl with long blond hair. She stiffened and slapped Mason’s chest.
“Mason, you asshole,” she said.
“He has arrived!” Mason said, leaping up, clapping his hands. “Wildman, meet Breanna. Breanna, Wildman.”
The girl he’d pushed stood and stared. Her eyes were mean. Blue little bullets. She shoved her way out of the booth. Heeled shoes went tick-tick-tick all the way to the bathroom. SLAM. Stone was standing now. Big white bandages. Bright eyes peering out from their bruised caves.
“Lance,” James said.
“Wildman,” Mason corrected.
“I’m James.”
“Stone,” Rocco corrected.
“Shots?” Mason asked. “Who wants shots?”
A cheer went up, and Mason went to the bar.
“Appreciate your help, sir.” Stone extended his hand. “Apparently I had a brain bleed. I could’ve lost major motor skills. Shoe-tying skills. Whatever part of my brain prevents me from shitting myself twenty-four seven.”
“You still got that part, right?” Rocco said, taking a step back.
“Luckily, the accident only damaged his thinking centers,” Dakota said.
“Maybe.” Stone shrugged. “Little foggy. Kind of like being wasted.”
“Brain bleed,” Meebs said, like it was a soda flavor he might want to try.
“Man still makes some mean fries,” Rocco said, crunching into one.
“Shots!” Mason said. He set down a tray of glasses, golden liquid flashing inside. He picked one up, they all did. “To saving Stone’s life. And knocking Breanna on her ass.”
“To Wildman,” Stone said.
“Wildman!”
Lance took the shot. Whisky burned a hot trail down his throat and he choked back a cough, gritting his teeth.
“What’s your next adventure, man?” Stone asked him.
“Sugarville,” Mason interrupted.
“We’re going tonight?” Rocco asked.
“We’ll see,” Mason said.
“So, hey,” Stone said. “Have you talked to the cops yet?”
“No,” Lance said. “This guy, Officer Perkins, called. I haven’t called him back.”
“You heard the story, right? That I was driving?”
“Yeah,” Lance said. “But Breanna was driving.”
“You should’ve seen her last night,” Mason said, a fresh shot in his hand. “Maaaaaasssooon! They’re gonna arrest me! Let me in! Oh, please, Mason!”
“It wouldn’t have killed you to help,” Stone said.
“Fuck off, Stone,” Mason said. “I should eighty-six her ass. She keeps crashing daddy’s cars, she’s gonna get us shut down. Limits, son. Learn them.” Mason threw back his shot.
“Anyway,” Stone said, “if Officer Friendly gets ahold of you, it’d be great if you could back up our story. Tell him I was driving.” Stone looked at the bathroom. “Should I go check on her? Is that what I’m supposed to do?”
“That’s the drill,” Dakota said.
“But she’s in the girls’ bathroom.”
“Want me to go?” Dakota asked. Mason made a kissing sound.
“No,” Stone said. “I got this.”
“You could totally be a woman under those bandages,” Dakota said. “No one will know.”
“Good point.”
Stone left. Dakota scooted down in the booth and patted the empty seat. Lance’s chest tightened five clicks, and he slid in beside her.
“Whoa, Wildman,” Mason said. “Dakota’s never asked a boy to sit next to her.”
“Just never asked you,” she said.
Meebs and Rocco gave an oooooo, and Lance wished they would stop.
“I can’t sit because I have a job,” Mason said. “You know what a job is? I could teach you.” Dakota’s hair came forward a little. She looked away. Said nothing.
“Ice him down,” Meebs said.
“Frozen,” Rocco said.
“Let me know when that seat gets too cold, Wildman,” Mason said. “I’ll save you space at the bar.” The guys laughed. Dakota did not move.
“I don’t want Stone to do time,” Rocco said. “The fries will suffer.”
“He’s too gentle for prison. He’s got a soft face,” Meebs said, reaching for Rocco’s fries. Rocco slapped his hand. “Ah, shit!”
“Fucking Hamburglar,” Rocco said.
“I’m vegetarian,” Meebs said. “I don’t thieve burgers.”
“Yeah?” Rocco said, pointing his fry at Meebs’s face. “Fries have beef tallow.”
“Tallow ain’t meat.”
“You idiot.”
“Will he really go to jail?” Lance asked, watching the bathroom door.
“Probably,” Dakota said, looking at the table. “His record isn’t good.”
“So why not tell the truth about Breanna?” Lance asked. “She was driving.”
“She’s got a kid,” Dakota said.
“A future. She doesn’t belong here,” Rocco said. Dakota nodded.
“What’s so special about Breanna?” Lance asked. In the direction of the girls’ bathroom, the distant ring of raised voices.
“Breanna is Breanna,” Rocco said.
“So what part of the cow is the fucking tallow?” Meebs said.
“Tell you what. I’ll sell you this fry for a dollar,” Rocco said, holding one up. “Look at this shit. Tender. Golden.”
“Ten fries for a dollar.”
“You ever seen a fry this pretty?” Rocco said. “This fry is better than ten fries.”
“A dollar?”
“This is King Fry,” Rocco said. “King Fry costs a dollar.”
Lance had to check. King Fry looked pretty much like every other fry in his basket.
A door clapped open and Breanna, who was just Breanna, was leaving the bathroom with James, who was Stone. She was gesturing at him, still mad, jabbing her index finger as if popping invisible balloons. Lance was afraid she’d poke him in the bandages.
“Beer!” Mason said, returning to their table. Full pitcher, empty glasses. “No fighting. Free beer!”
They squeezed into the booth, which pushed Lance’s shoulder into Dakota’s and she pushed back a little, like she wouldn’t mind if he squeezed even closer. A shoulder! This shoulder and a whole incredible part of an arm, making him tingle. Somehow he was touching shoulders with a girl who wasn’t his girlfriend, drinking beer in public. And everyone at the table, even Breanna, was smiling and acting like this was perfectly normal.
“Wildman,” Stone said. “What’s your story?”
“Drink first,” Mason said.
Mason passed him another shot, and he took it. More alcohol, lighting him up in a golden way that made the edges of the room fuzzy so he kept tapping the corner of his hard case with his toe, like his horn might get slippery and somehow dribble down through the cracks in the floorboards.
The group fell into conversation. A party next weekend at Metzger’s and last week’s party at VanderJack’s. A raft of strange names and places: Cold Creek and The Back Field and The Point—vocabulary he didn’t understand. But he was learni
ng their cadence. Their rhythm and sections. Who got to solo, and when. And they were singing for him:
So Stone convinces everyone to pound energy drinks before the exam. He pukes all over the backseat.
The party at Breanna’s was the best. Classy. She had big ol’ ice cubes.
Then Dakota tells the guy “No.” Right there on the stairs, in front of everyone. So this dude shrugs, turns around, and drives all the way back to Seattle!
Bong water. All over his lap. Smelled like a dispensary.
Four guys. Just, boom. Rocco knocked them down. I’m pretty sure it was four guys.
Verses like stories, choruses repeating themes: Stone was the Dumb One, Breanna the Special One, Dakota the Ice Queen, Meebs the Burnout, Rocco the Badass. Lance paid attention, trying to learn the words. Then Dakota was looking at him with those eyes, and he hoped she’d forgotten everything he’d said to Joe. For one more night, his stories could be about evading police, pulling a knife, taking shots.
Right now, he was still Wildman.
“Let’s do a fire,” Dakota said, looking straight at him.
“Hell yeah,” Rocco said. “Let’s ride to Sugarville.” He shook Lance by the shoulder. “You’ll love this, dude. Right up your alley.”
“Wildman’s probably jumped a thousand trains,” Meebs said.
“He’s bored,” Mason said. “He could do it blindfolded.”
“No, that sounds great,” Lance said. “Let’s jump a train.”
Was this really him? Had he just said that?
Their conversation was a river, carrying them outside and past the dumpsters to the dark edge of the parking lot. He followed Dakota as she threaded through a wall of pines. She always knew how to move. The perfect way to pick her way down an embankment, sidestepping shrubs and evergreens until the scents of cedar and damp earth twisted up around them and he was time traveling, back with his father, camping, foraging mushrooms—hearing the songs they used to sing. He was drifting downhill, riding a warm current of memories until he spilled out of the woods into a moonlit pan of a field.
They crossed a loose ring of garbage and stopped at a circle of stumps and stones surrounding a pit of char and half-cooked logs. Most of the crew went out for wood and Lance found himself sitting across from Breanna.
“Where are you from, Lance?” she asked.
“Bend.”
“That’s a good place to be from.” She turned toward him and squinted, suddenly interested. She was pretty. Pretty in a way she couldn’t shake with alcohol or bitchiness. It just clung to her. “Mount Bachelor is cool. Smith Rock. Do you climb?”
“No,” he said.
Her eyes drifted over his shoulder, like he’d just gone transparent.
“I’m heading back that way,” Lance said. “I just got stranded.”
“That happens.” She looked at him again. “A little advice: Get out while you can.”
“Tomorrow,” he said.
“Popular day to go.”
“Monday?”
“Tomorrow,” she said. “Don’t you know, Lance? Everyone’s leaving tomorrow.”
He smiled, and he hadn’t meant to smile for Breanna. Then Dakota was back, building up the kindling. She was doing it all wrong. She pushed the biggest logs together on the bottom. Then a latticed pile of sticks, twigs. Tinder on top.
“What?” she said, looking back at him.
“That won’t burn,” Lance said.
“Oh yeah?”
“Your fire is upside down.”
“It’s all perspective.” She scraped up pine needles, nesting them on top. “You just have to light it upside down.”
Lance tilted his head, trying to turn it upside down. He tipped and fell. Soft ground. Lovely dirt. He rolled on his back and put his hands behind his head. Better than a bed.
Dakota laughed and struck a match.
The tinder went up—a puff of white smoke and yellow fire, burrowing into orange twigs that curled like broken guitar strings. Somehow, this thing had worked. The fire sank, swallowed by the surrounding wood, puffing gray smoke. Yellow tongues darted out between the logs and everyone was back and Lance was sitting next to Dakota. Fire builder. Cemetery Girl.
Who was she?
The group felt different in that way everyone changes around a campfire. The limitless feeling when walls fall away and the roof turns to stars and conversations can spool out for hours.
“Guitar, Stone,” Meebs said softly. There was a case beside Stone. It had materialized in the woods. “C’mon.”
“I’m damaged,” Stone said, pointing to his face.
They pleaded and Breanna leaned her head on Stone’s shoulder and whispered in his ear. All Lance heard was James. The word flipped a switch, and he unsnapped his case and pulled out a guitar. Lance felt a sharp twinge, like he’d forgotten something. But his wallet was in his back pocket. He had his keys.
Then Stone’s fingers came alive, and Stone was all there was.
He plucked and strummed and drummed his fingers on the guitar’s wooden body. Pulled on the strings so notes warbled and shook out into the darkness. He sang a little. Lyrics too soft to hear or understand, more like impressions of words. The music swelled and swallowed them. They swayed and sighed and no one spoke.
When the music was done, Lance could only stare.
With that guitar, Stone had peeled off his skin and stepped out brand-new. Like Dakota, sharing her book. It was almost too much to look at him. Stone did not match their stories. None of them did. This guitar player could not be stupid, and Breanna could not be worth it, and this girl beside him with the warmest shoulder he’d ever felt could only ever be warm. And then there was something crashing through the bushes. A shaking, shambling thing that made them sit up straight and look into the pines.
“What’s up, fools!”
Mason—three cheers for Mason, because he was carrying a box of alcohol and wearing a bright smile and the whole group lit up. Clearly a hero. The only role left, because everything else had been assigned. Mason brought liquor and beer and the smell of the fryer, clinging to his clothes.
Bottles made the rounds, and everything tasted good.
“So Breanna tells me you’re from Bend,” Mason said. “Is that where you’re heading tomorrow?”
“Bend is good skiing,” Meebs said. “Been there once with my folks.”
“Rich people there,” Rocco said. “The richest.”
“Sounds like Telluride,” Stone said.
A collective moan from the group.
“Here we go,” Mason said. “Jesus Christ.”
“Telluride!” Dakota sang, a high, keening note.
“How do you know it’s like Telluride?” Rocco asked.
“He doesn’t,” Breanna said. “He just wants to talk about it.”
Stone shook his head.
“What’s the deal with Telluride?” Lance asked.
“Finest place on earth, man. That’s where I’ll end up. They’ve got wild trails and this bluegrass festival and—”
The group protested: No, don’t ask, c’mon…
“Fine. Doesn’t matter,” Stone said. He was done talking, but they kept grumbling—Telluride, goddamn, fucking Telluride—and Stone just nodded along. Smiling. Rolling his eyes. Just taking it. In every group Lance had ever been a part of, there had always been a guy like Stone.
“So what brought you out here?” Stone asked him.
“I had an audition in Seattle.”
“Acting?”
Lance paused, wondering how that might be. Life as an actor. His identity felt so fluid around the fire. He could start any new life today, and they would let him.
“Music,” Dakota said. “He’s a musician.”
Yes. He was a musician. That was exactly right.
“Wildman plays an instrument too,” Breanna said. “It just never stops.”
Mason snickered, a strange, low laugh.
“What do you play, man? Guitar? Drums?�
��
“Trumpet,” Mason said.
“Yeah,” Lance said. He looked at Mason. Something about the way he’d said it.
“It’s a sexy trumpet,” Dakota said.
“Oooo,” Meebs said.
“I like trumpet,” Stone said. “It just reminds me of waking up at the ass crack of dawn. Can you play ‘Taps’?”
“‘Taps’ is more of a bugle song,” Lance said.
“But can you play it?”
“Yeah,” Lance said. “Since I was about eight.”
The group laughed—the first big laugh Lance had gotten, and it felt good. Everyone was smiling but Stone. His eyes narrowed, skin pinching around his bandages. He shouldn’t have said that to Stone. Why had he said that?
“I’ll play it for you,” Lance said. He reached down and grabbed smoke.
“What’s wrong?” Dakota asked.
Lance spun on the log, looked behind him. Scrambled up, standing.
“Easy, Wildman,” Rocco said.
“Wow!” Mason said. His eyes were wide, lit up by the fire. He clapped. “I wondered when you were going to notice.”
“You have my trumpet?” Lance asked. Relief, and a twist of something else.
“It’s locked up safe,” Mason said. “Don’t worry. You’ll get it tomorrow.”
“Can we get it now?” Lance asked, looking back toward the woods.
“Afraid not,” Mason said. “We’ve got a train to catch.”
The rails looked moon-polished and slick, but Rocco walked the left one like a balance beam and never once fell. Meebs skipped along the wooden ties. Actually skipped, but no one laughed or even seemed to notice. Mason was up near Dakota. Lance watched their shadows dance closer, farther apart.
His fingertips ached for his horn. The phantom tingle of a lost limb. Lance slowed down, letting Stone and Breanna catch up. He needed to make it up to Stone, for how he’d acted.
“I’ll play ‘Taps’ for you,” Lance said. “As soon as I get my horn back.”
“Sweet,” Stone said.
“Were you in the military or something?” Lance asked.
“Or something,” Breanna said.
Stone’s smile vanished.
“Why do you ask?” Stone said. “Do I look military to you?”