by Mercy Brown
“Easy, Montana,” I say. “We’ve got this under control.”
“Can you hold this for a sec?” Travis asks, all nonchalant, and then hands me his gyro and lemonade. Then he ducks and runs all Benny Hill–style across the field, and the entire soccer team tears off after him. Joey and Cole hulk out and go scorching across the field, but they’re musicians, built for carrying big awkward things up and down narrow flights of stairs, not chasing soccer players in broad daylight, and they’re still carrying their lunches. Carefully. Travis is so fucked.
“Run, Bean, run!” I yell after him. We’ve got a show to play and he knows another big rule of bandom: save all fighting for after the gig, and for God’s sake, don’t throw any punches before the show. Why? You might hurt your hand and then you can’t play your instrument. “No fighting before the show!” I call out to him. Just in case he needs a reminder.
I excuse myself to Montana and run after them myself, trying desperately not to slosh lemonade all over my Sonic Youth T-shirt. I don’t look back, but I assume Montana is still standing there, happily eating a Fat Elvis.
Now, there are plenty of other Hub City band types around, including Aaron and Mickey, who just watch the entire freak parade as it rolls by the sound booth. As Joey and Cole catch up to the soccer players, who have now grabbed hold of Travis by each appendage like they’re about to draw and quarter him, they’re joined by George, Ron and Dom, Bailey, all of Fester, and the entire women’s rugby team. But before anyone can intervene, the soccer team swings Travis and tosses him right into the middle of Passion Puddle. When he comes out, soaked in brown, putrid water, Eli sucker punches Travis right in the eye. What a dick!
“Fuck,” Travis yells, reeling backward, holding his face.
I run to Travis, and he’s not bleeding but his eye is all red and beginning to swell.
“What the fuck, Eli?” I yell at him. “I thought you were a stoner, not a fighter.”
“Yeah, but I’ve been drinking beer since ten a.m.,” he says and lets out a loud, disgusting burp. I guess he does have allergies.
A sunstroked melee now breaks out at the side of Passion Puddle, and then all these assholes are actually in the pond, sloshing it out, slinging mud at each other like a bunch of angry sows. Nick runs over and stands next to me, throws the devil horns high, and yells, “Fuck yeah, Scarlet Knights!” just as Montana, my mother, and my grandmother all arrive on the scene. The women’s rugby team and the soccer team throw the fuck down in the pond—I’m talking an epic wrestling match ensues, and the girls are riding the soccer players like they’re green horses being broke. The music scene people are so impressed they just stand back and clap.
“Your boyfriend looks nice in a wet T-shirt,” Granny says, as Travis attempts to throw Eli off of him again as he climbs out of the sludge. “He’s got nice shoulders.”
I don’t disagree.
Two Rutgers cops arrive (and they are state police, so we don’t fuck around when these guys show up). They’re standing there for several minutes, watching the entire thing. They finally get the bullhorn out and threaten to check IDs and do Breathalyzers, so the insanity disperses into the thick of the festivities.
“We haven’t been drinking,” I say to the cops.
“Now seems like a good time to start,” one of them says.
Eli hands my grandmother a Budweiser from the soccer cooler and she shotguns that shit, and now it’s a party.
Joey picks a gyro up off the grass and tries to put it over Travis’s eye, and Travis knocks it out of the way, yelling, “What the hell is wrong with you, man?” Joey explains it’s the closest thing we have on hand to raw steak, because Joey has learned everything he knows about first aid from reruns of Looney Tunes cartoons. Eli hands Travis a cold Bud in a can and Travis puts it over his eye and I think, great. If this is how our luck is going today, we should be back to playing in basements in no time.
Just before we go on, I’m holding an ice pack from Ween’s cooler over Travis’s swollen eye as he lies back in a lounge chair. I’m trying to get the swelling down because it’s puffy and he can hardly see out of it. It’ll look awesome in all the photos in the Targum.
“You look badass,” I try to encourage him.
“I hate soccer,” Travis mutters.
“Well, you really shouldn’t have Taekwondo’d a soccer player, then,” I say.
“Then you shouldn’t have made out with one,” he says.
“We didn’t make out,” I say, indignant until I remember that actually, I did make out with Eli. “Much.”
Travis yanks the ice pack from my hand and glares at me from his one good eye.
By two p.m., before anything else can go wrong, we are finally on. The lawn in front of the stage fills up with folks, many I know but more I don’t. We’ve never played in front of this many people, but I try not to think about that. I picture them all naked and painted in mud, because that’s not distracting at all. Joey and Cole and Travis are still wearing damp, pond-smelling clothes and have flecks of dried mud in their hair. I introduce us, and we start to play and it sounds weird because we’re outside and it always sounds weird when you play outside, but this is only the third time we’ve ever played an outside gig so we’re not used to it. I wonder how those dudes at Lollapalooza do it every year and make it look so easy.
It can’t sound all that bad because there’s a small but ludicrous core of drunken soccer players, women’s rugby team members, and Hub City musicians covered in mud, as well as Nick, going nuts and moshing right below us on the ground, and we’re not even playing something remotely mosh-pit appropriate. These assholes would be moshing to k.d. lang right now. Let’s not forget Jasmine, who’s exotic-dancing off to the side while Montana and my grandmother both watch in fascination. I can’t unsee this, no matter how hard I try.
The rest of the crowd is far back from us. Some are on picnic blankets and in lawn chairs (Hi, Mom!), and they are scattered on the field and there’s no way to tell if they’re even paying attention. We’re not much of a picnic-in-the-afternoon kind of sound, either, more of a heady, smoky, dark-night, black-light sort of vibe. So everything, everything is throwing us off. But we hold together.
Until the storm.
The sky darkens in the middle of our fifth song and we’re on this metal stage in the middle of the field in front of Passion Puddle when the thunder starts. Travis gives me a look, urging me, pleading with me not to freak out. But nobody can deny we’re here in an open field essentially wearing I don’t even know how many volts of electricity.
It starts to pour rain, and there’s nobody on the grass now to watch us. They’ve all moved to shelter under tents along the perimeter of the field. There’s another lightning bolt in the sky and I am cowering, I mean I am trembling I’m so terrified. I turn around to see Ween drinking beer behind us, under the tarp, completely unaffected. That’s what you get for being a national touring act and playing Lollapalooza, I think. Or drunk.
Carl and everybody standing around him look unconcerned, so I just pretend this isn’t happening and close my eyes and keep playing, but my voice is shaking as I sing and I can’t do anything about it and the more I freak out about that, the worse it gets. I’m now in a part of the song where I’m just hammering on my guitar, and I notice Travis is right next to me trying to get my attention. I look up and he says, “You’re all right, just keep playing.”
So I do. But then there’s an enormous bolt of lightning that looks like it’s going to crack open the sky right over Douglass campus. It’s so bright and the thunderclap is so loud that I shriek into the microphone and I jump. When I do? I land on my Big Muff and trip into the monitor in front of me, which is somehow not entirely on the stage, so I knock it right off the fucking stage and tumble down after it, into the center of the mosh pit. It’s pouring rain on me now and I’m still wearing my guitar, which is still miracul
ously plugged in. Gotta love the twenty-foot Monster cables. I scramble to take my guitar off and nearly go into shock when I see I’ve cracked the headstock off my Gretsch. It’s just hanging there by the strings. I don’t notice that I’m actually bleeding, but I’ve ripped a nice gash into my leg on the way down to the demise, the final destruction of any semblance of cool I ever thought I had.
The music has stopped and I look up to see Travis, Cole, and Joey staring at me in horror from the stage. Travis and Cole scramble down to help me. Joey is running around unplugging every piece of equipment because for whatever reason, Carl hasn’t cut the power from the generator. I hear, “Emmy, Emmy, oh my God!” from my mother, who is bolting across the lawn to me, sealing my humiliation into the annals of local rock history forever. I’m clutching my broken guitar, frozen, as another clap of thunder crashes over us. Travis is bent over me, brushing the hair out of my face.
“Say something,” he says, looking worried.
“My guitar,” I say, and I can’t help it, I can’t choke back the sob.
“Are you all right?”
“My guitar!” I wail.
“It’s all right, it’s just the headstock,” he says, trying to take it from me, but I’ve got an iron clutch around it. “Let me take a look, okay?”
I let him take it and then notice I’m bleeding. I’m trembling from the adrenaline, the thunder, the rain, and the realization that all of what’s remaining of the mud – and beer-soaked soccer-rugby-rocker crowd have gathered around. At least I’ve provided some entertainment. Up on the stage I hear Mickey on the mic telling the crowd that the show is being postponed until the storm stops.
“Emmy, you’re bleeding!” I hear my mom say. She and Granny arrive with Montana and they are all soaking wet. “Where’s the first aid tent?”
“Bring her around back,” Mickey calls from the stage. “We’ll bring the EMT over.”
Travis and Montana help me to my feet, and Nick grabs my arm and lifts it in the air so he can high-five me.
“You guys are truly badass,” Nick says. “Well fucking done.”
In the back, under the tent, I’m being checked out by the EMT, who declares that the gash in my leg is a bad scratch, but nothing that needs to be stitched. He cleans it with this stinging shit and then wraps it in a bandage. Once Mom is satisfied I don’t need a trip to the ER, I’m able to convince her to leave so I can proceed to drink myself into a coma and forget the whole day ever happened. Even if the storm passes and the show goes on, we’re not playing. I don’t have a guitar or the stomach to get back up there right now.
“You know what, Emmylou?” Mom says. “You really are good.”
“I am?”
“Yeah,” she says. “I always knew you had a pretty voice, but I was surprised how much I liked the songs. The ones I heard, anyway. But you need to get those guys to turn down so we can hear your singing better.”
I throw my arms around Mom’s neck and bury my face in her shoulder like I’m five, not twenty-one years old. I feel her kiss the top of my head, and yeah, I’m aware that all of Ween and their girlfriends are hanging out right there where we are, playing Frisbee with an old drumhead under the tent. But I don’t care who sees me getting a kiss from my mom. Not right now.
I look over and see Travis lovingly tending to the real casualty of this ordeal—my Gretsch. He’s hunched over it on a table with Montana, Mickey, and Cole, looking like a surgeon about to do a triple bypass. I hobble over there and he breaks away from the group and puts his hands on my shoulders.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“How bad is my guitar?” I say. “Answer that first so I can decide how okay I am.”
“You’re lucky, it was a clean break,” he answers.
This isn’t really what I want to hear, but at least I didn’t crush the body when I fell. That would have been the end of it. But my guitar is valuable, vintage, and this isn’t some Sam Ash hack repair we’re looking at. I let out a big sigh when I see it looking like a car accident victim all laid out on the table. Travis gently fiddles with it, showing me how the break will be relatively easy to repair.
“You’ll get it fixed and it’ll be as good as new,” he says. “Better, because it’ll have a badass battle scar.”
“Now you’re just trying to make me feel better,” I say.
“So?”
“So? It’ll never be the same,” I say like a bitch, choked up, stupid tears in my eyes. I look away before they fall. Travis takes my hand, but I pull away because I’m so keyed up again that his touching me, comforting me at all, makes me feel like I’m going to fall all the way apart. I don’t want to fall apart. I want to be strong. I want to belong with the big kids on the playground. Or be drunk at Lollapalooza.
The rest of the guys look awkward, so I just ask someone to please get me a beer or methadone or something and then I realize I need to explain to everyone there who doesn’t know me that I’m kidding, I don’t do methadone. Or heroin. Jesus. Travis walks off, shaking his head, muttering, and I know I’ve done it again, this thing that I’ve come to learn I’m very good at—hurting his feelings.
I also know that I am in love with him, but I just can’t seem to handle him.
Carl comes over and hands me a Red Stripe. I gratefully chug the entire thing. It’s no longer thundering and lightning, but it’s raining like we’re in the middle of a monsoon. Welcome to another lovely spring in New Jersey, the “Fuck You, Asshole!” state. Travis, Joey, and Cole are pulling our gear under the tent, stacking it into a corner, and pulling a tarp over it. I’m watching from a couple of folding chairs when Mickey comes and sits next to me. He’s got his Strat and it’s got little dents and dings all over the body when I see it up close. It’s been all over the world, after all. He starts noodling around and sings, “The world breaks everyone . . .” He has to be at least halfway to drunk. Drunk is what Ag Field Day is essentially about, after all.
“Hemingway?” I say. “Really?”
“. . . and afterward many are strong at the broken places,” he finishes.
He hands me his guitar and I take it, not sure what he expects me to do with it. I sure as hell am not playing it. The rock force is nowhere near strong enough with me for that.
“Turn it over,” he says.
I do, but I still don’t get it.
“Look here,” he says, and points to a giant black curve behind the headstock. A big-ass crack. “I did that at a gig we played at Red Rocks in ’91.”
“You did?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’ve got a guy in New Hope who can fix that for you. He’s the best.”
I breathe a big sigh and finish my second Red Stripe. I’m not expecting falling off stage during the biggest gig of my short career and busting my family heirloom Gretsch to somehow make my life better. But it feels like maybe it does.
That is, until I’m alone with Travis again.
***
We’re sitting in my driveway later that night. It’s somewhere around eight p.m. and I think we’re planning to head over to the Court to drink with Ween and watch their surprise set. They never do get to play Ag Field Day, so since they’re in town they decide to hop onto Red Five’s bill tonight. Red Five doesn’t care because the place will sell out on word of mouth in under an hour, and they’re all but guaranteed a CMJ showcase now. This is what I’m babbling on about and how we should maybe work up the nerve to ask Ween for a contact at CMJ when Travis stops me.
“I need to tell you something, all right?” he says, and he looks sick, really sick. So sick I’m worried he is literally sick, or about to be sick right in the van.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says. “No, actually, forget that. I’m not fine. Not really.”
“What’s wrong?” I’m terrified to ask.
He takes a dee
p breath and looks away, out the window. Then he turns to me, takes both my hands in his own.
“I’m leaving Stars on the Floor,” he says. “I quit.”
Chapter Sixteen
When I was fifteen and my mother came into my bedroom to tell me my dad died, I stared at her for a long time and said nothing. She’d been crying, I could tell. Her hair was a mess, mascara was all over her face, her nose and mouth were swollen. I realized that she needed me, so I put my arms around her and told her I was so sorry. I promised her we’d be okay. She agreed and she asked, how could I be so calm? I couldn’t explain it then, but I just didn’t have it in me to cry. I had nothing, not a thing left inside of me, because as soon as I heard the word “dead” come out of her mouth, this space opened up in my heart and consumed everything that was ever there.
I don’t tell this to many people, but before Dad left us, he was my hero. My everything. He was the coolest, funnest, sweetest guy in the world. When he was on tour I used to mark the days on a calendar until he would come back. I wrote him letters every day. He drank too much, but he used to carry me on his shoulders in the park and he loved to watch cartoons and make me and Mom pancakes on the weekends when he was home. I loved to watch him with his guitar in the basement, so lost in the sound of it that he didn’t even know I was there, hiding behind the corner, wishing one day I could be just like him. I was so proud of him back then.
For a long time, all through high school, I kept telling myself that one day Dad was going to come back. There was no way such a bright, shining star could just go dark like that without a trace. He must be lost in the sky somewhere, I used to tell myself. I kept looking for him. I kept waiting, but he never came back. It stayed real. And then I got angry.
But at least I’m not waiting anymore.
I’d tell you what happens right after Travis quits the band, but I don’t exactly know. All I remember is the world opening and swallowing me whole, crushing my bones in its unforgiving jaws, spitting out the shards, coughing what’s left of me up on the pavement to be scattered through Highland Park by stray dogs.