by Phoef Sutton
“Zerbe, are you there?” Crush’s dream voice was saying to him through the phone.
“I am, but you’re not,” Zerbe said.
“Zerbe. Is that you?”
“Sure, it’s me.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m locked in a van somewhere.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“I’m not calling you. You’re just a dream. Shut up and let me sleep.”
“Zerbe! Where are you? Listen to me.”
“To the dump, to the dump, to the dump, dump, dump,” Zerbe sang, to the tune of the William Tell Overture.
“Stop singing and tell me where you are,” Crush said.
Zerbe sighed. “First of all, I don’t know. Second of all, you’re not really there. This is just a dream.”
“It’s not a dream, Zerbe.”
“Well, you’d say that, ’cause you don’t know it’s a dream ’cause you’re in my dream.”
“Why do you think it’s a dream?” Crush asked.
“Because I’m in a phone booth and there aren’t any phone booths. Because you’re there. And because I heard the road sing.”
“You heard what?” Crush asked.
“I heard the road singing. When we were driving over it. Just before we stopped.”
“What did it sing?”
“To the dump, to the dump, to the dump, dump, dump.”
“Stay where you are. Stay right there. We’re coming to get you.”
“What are you talking about?” Zerbe was getting very annoyed by this hallucination.
“I know where you are,” Crush said. “I’m going to give the phone to your sister.”
“Oh, my sister now,” Zerbe said, grabbing the dangling receiver.
“Yes. Whatever you do, don’t hang up,” Crush said.
“Of course not,” Zerbe said. Then he hung up. This dream was getting really obnoxious. He wished he could wake up.
Crush told Gail about the phone call as they rushed out to the Buick. He got behind the wheel. Gail laid her hand on his arm. “You cannot drive, Crush.”
“We’re in a hurry,” he explained. “I drive faster than you.”
“You have to listen….”
Crush looked her dead in the eye. “Not this time.”
She gave up and got in the passenger seat. “So where are we going?”
“Lancaster.” Lancaster was a little desert community out near Palmdale.
“Why Lancaster?” Gail asked.
“Did you ever hear of the Musical Road?”
“Is that a fairy tale?”
“No, it’s a road. I heard about it at the Glendale Car Rally. It was made for some car commercial. A two-lane road with specially designed grooves in it. When you drive over it, it plays the theme from The Lone Ranger.”
“Why would they build that?”
“Hell if I know. They do that in some places. There’s a road in New Mexico that plays ‘America the Beautiful.’ I hear there’s one in France that does ‘La Marseillaise’ and one in Korea that plays ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ for some reason. I guess people have a lot of time on their hands.”
“So Zerbe’s not crazy?”
“I’m not saying that. But the road is real.”
“And he’s there?”
“He’s close to there.”
“How long is the trip?”
“The way I drive? A little under an hour.”
A phone rang loudly. It was Crush’s cell, in the back pocket of his jeans. He shifted a little. “Could you get that? What does it say?” Gail reached into Crush’s back pocket and pulled out his phone. “It says, ‘Unknown Caller.’”
“Answer it. Put it on speaker,” Crush told her.
She did so and a voice came from the phone. “Would you accept a collect call from…”
“Yes,” Crush said without waiting for the operator to finish.
Zerbe’s voice came over the line. “Crush! Is that you?”
“Yes, we’re…”
Zerbe cut him off, exultantly. “I remembered your number! I actually remembered your number!”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I dreamed you were at my house.”
“I was at your house. We’re coming to get you. Just hold tight.”
“How do you know where I am? I don’t even know where I am.”
“It’s okay. I know.”
“How do you know?”
“On account of the Musical Road.”
There was silence on the line. Then Zerbe said, “Oh shit. I’m still dreaming.”
“This isn’t a dream, Zerbe. I’m really here,” Crush said. “Stay on the line. I’ll find you, I swear.”
Crush glanced over to Gail as he drove. Over her shoulder, through the passenger window, he saw it. The Devil’s Gate Dam. They were driving right by it, and it didn’t look ominous at all. It looked like an ordinary Army Corps of Engineers project, circa 1920.
Nothing at all like the entrance to Hell.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was January 21st, 2001.
Crush was walking down the narrow concrete steps from the top of the Devil’s Gate Dam to the bottom of the Arroyo Seco, all the while wondering why in the world he was doing this. For the other kids, he knew this was an adventure, something to break the dull monotony of their lives. Crush’s life had had little monotony, and the adventures he’d taken part in would put their little nocturnal camping trip to shame.
But who was he kidding? He knew why he was there. She was walking down the steps in front of him. His flashlight was playing on her raven-black hair, dipping down occasionally to illuminate her distractingly beautiful rump. Renee Zerbe was the reason he’d let himself get talked into the excursion. She was the reason they were all going on this adventure. To get her mind off her recent tragedy.
Since her father’s suicide, they hadn’t seen her much. She’d come over to the Zerbe mansion last night, but nobody knew what to say to her or how to make her feel better. Oddly, it was Noel who seemed to comfort her most, or at least to distract her from her grief. Perhaps it was because he was the least tactful of the bunch. While everyone else was tiptoeing around her tragedy, he just came out and asked, “Why do you think your father shot himself in the middle of the parade?”
She said she didn’t know. Then Noel just changed the subject and started talking about his latest obsession: local hauntings and spooky places. He spent a lot of time talking about the Devil’s Gate—he’d been going on about its history for the last few months. This time Renee said, “Why don’t we explore it? Tomorrow night?”
Since this seemed to be the only thing Renee was interested in doing other than drinking and staring at the wall, they all agreed to make the trip. So here they were.
In the months that Crush had been living in the Zerbe mansion, he had gradually, in spite of his best efforts, become entwined in the household. The Zerbe children had become a part of his world, or he had become a part of theirs. They were not his siblings exactly. Certainly not his friends. What then? His extended family? Like cousins you visited on tedious holiday vacations, put up with, and eventually kind of enjoyed?
He went to school with them, for one thing. Crush had gone to school as little as possible. Blaz Kusinko didn’t believe his sons should waste time in classes when they could be out learning things like how to break bones and sell drugs. Crush found that he liked school. He liked the regularity of classes and homework. He didn’t do well on tests, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t going to be there long enough to worry about his GPA anyway.
K.C. Zerbe had told Crush that he didn’t like school. He did well in classes and got along well with the teachers, but he was picked on by his asshole classmates. The bullies. Crush had little patience for bullies. He knew that anyone who bothered to tease and belittle smaller kids or outsiders was just too much of a dick to be tolerated. When he caught them beating on K.C. in the gym one day, he put a stop to it then and
there.
That got Crush in trouble at school, but it made K.C. his friend for life. Really. And though this gratitude made him a little uncomfortable at first, he had to admit that he enjoyed K.C.’s company. He taught Crush the pleasures of comic books and grade-Z movies and classic rock ’n’ roll, all things that Crush hadn’t had the time to enjoy.
He also invited Crush into the inner circle of his siblings’ friends. That, he didn’t enjoy as much. Angela was like a self-centered five-year-old in a grown woman’s body. Noel was a thinking machine with no empathy for his fellow humans. Evan Gibbard and Sonny Kraus and the other hangers-on were just predators who hadn’t found their prey yet.
And then there was Renee Zerbe. Crush knew she was damaged far beyond her years. He knew that after what had happened to her, she couldn’t ever be normal and whole again. She laughed a lot and sang a lot, but through it all there was a sadness that cut right into his soul and made him want to try to protect her.
Years later, when Crush discussed this with his AA sponsor, Bill Ingol, while going through the endless fourth step, Bill brought up the obvious. “She reminded you of your mother.”
That had never occurred to Crush, and the fact that it was so clearly true made him angry. “You’re saying I wanted to fuck my mother?”
“You said that, I didn’t.” Bill was endlessly, infuriatingly calm. “I said you wanted to protect your mother.”
“Sure,” Crush had said bitterly, “I wanted to protect my mother. I wanted to protect Renee. I didn’t do either of them a damn bit of good.”
“Is that why you became a soldier? And a bodyguard? To protect people? To make up for what you couldn’t do when you were a kid?”
“No,” Crush said. “That’s why I became an alcoholic.” And to prove his point, he went on a bender that lasted three weeks and ended up in a whorehouse in Ensenada.
But that was years later. At the time, all he knew was that he couldn’t stop thinking about Renee. He even thought, sometimes on warm winter nights, that he might actually be in love with her. That is, if love was a real thing that someone could be in.
And even if he was in that thing-people-called-love, there wasn’t anything he could do about it. For a lot of reasons. For one, she didn’t love him, she loved Evan Gibbard. The fact that Evan Gibbard treated her like crap didn’t make a difference. The fact that she threw herself at Sonny Kraus to make Evan jealous, and Sonny took joyful advantage of that, didn’t make a difference either.
There was also the fact that Crush didn’t know how to put himself out there, to express his feelings in a non-sleazy way. Oh sure, he knew how to hook up with a girl. He’d hooked up with plenty of them in Kusinko’s bratva. But to tell a girl that he really cared about her? He didn’t even know what that meant. To “have feelings” for someone? That was just TV-show talk. Stuff they said on Melrose Place and Dawson’s Creek. Nothing to do with real life.
And then there was K.C. Zerbe.
K.C. had come to mean something to Crush. Not as a friend exactly. Both from his mother and father, Crush had learned to mistrust friends. Friends were liable to betray you, and to use your weaknesses against you. If they were stronger than you, they’d try to beat you. If they were weaker, they’d resent you.
But K.C. was different. He didn’t seem to want anything from Crush. He just liked to be around him. Even the protection Crush provided was just a bonus, not expected. He seemed to actually like Crush. Go figure.
Crush knew that K.C. was in love with Renee. In Love with a capital I and a capital L. In love without any of the complicated reservations that plagued Crush. He knew this was a taboo love, one that broke any number of state and ethical laws. K.C. knew that, too. He just couldn’t help himself.
So Crush couldn’t help but think that K.C. had “been there first,” and that it would be breaking some kind of bratva friend-bro code if he moved in. Or maybe he was just using that as an excuse to not do anything about his feelings for Renee.
But as he followed Renee down into the Arroyo Seco, he knew he was at the end of his “doing-nothing” rope. Tonight he’d make his move. Whether he was rejected or accepted didn’t really matter. He’d already been defeated. He was caught up in this family and its circle. He’d always told himself he could hit the road whenever he wanted. Now he knew he couldn’t pick up and leave without leaving a little piece of himself behind.
He cursed his mother for bringing him into this house. Then he cursed himself for cursing his mother. It had been so easy for so many years. Just the two of them, Toni and Caleb, against the world. Now these others had been brought into it. Could you really care about more than one person? Wouldn’t you eventually have to choose between them?
By the time he reached the bottom of the stairway, he was in a foul mood and wasn’t talking to anybody. The others didn’t notice, because he didn’t talk too much when he was in the best of moods. Angela called him “the stupid silent type.” He didn’t mind. He supposed he was stupid in some ways. He knew he was smart in others.
They gathered in a circle, smoked some weed, and talked some shit about school while Noel gathered some dry brush and started a little campfire. They didn’t perform any ritual and they didn’t summon any demons. They just complained about school until the conversation lagged. Then Noel and Evan closed their eyes and fell asleep.
No one knew quite what to say to Renee. Did she want to talk about her father? Or did she want to talk about anything but her father? During the awkward silence, Angela, who’d had a little too much gin and a little too much pot, peeled off and started to make out with Sonny, which Crush thought was kind of crass. After all, Sonny had just dumped Renee rather rudely two months earlier. And that was a month after Evan had dumped her and handed her off to Sonny, like a regifted Christmas present.
A little over a year ago, Crush had been a part of the Russian Mafia: collecting gambling money, selling drugs, and worrying about being whacked by rival gangs. He found himself missing that comparatively peaceful life. Pasadena Prep was a serialized drama that made The Sopranos seem tame.
Crush slid over to talk to Renee. He didn’t know what to say, but he felt like he should say something. “How are you?” As soon as the words left his lips, he was appalled by them.
She turned and gave him a withering gaze. “Did you really ask me that?”
“I couldn’t think of anything else to say.”
“Then don’t say anything.” She glanced over at Angela and Sonny embracing in the dirt. She looked back at Crush. “Do you want to kiss me?” she asked.
Crush did. But from the corner of his eye he could see K.C. sitting quietly, watching them. He couldn’t move. When he hesitated, Renee got up and walked away into the darkness. Crush started to go after her, but K.C. moved more quickly.
Crush stayed where he was.
“Why don’t you go after her?” Angela asked. He hadn’t noticed Angela come up next to him. That bothered him. He usually had a sixth sense about people coming on him from behind. He must have been distracted.
“He can handle it,” he said, nodding toward the darkness.
“K.C.?” Angela asked with a drunken laugh. “You know what they say. ‘Vice is nice, but incest is best.’”
“Shut up. What happened to Sonny? I thought you were getting busy with him.”
She just smiled a wicked smile. “I like to keep him guessing. I know you’ve been mooning after Renee for months. Why don’t you make your move?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“She just lost her father.”
“Exactly. What better time?”
“I see,” Crush said. “‘Sorry your father killed himself. Want to fuck?’ Like that?”
“You could just offer her some support. A kind word. A shoulder to cry on,” Angela said. “Sometimes people need a little physical comfort, you know.”
Crush felt a little ashamed of himself. “Okay.”
“Then ask her if
she wants to fuck,” Angela added with a laugh.
Crush laughed too, although he felt sure he shouldn’t. She moved uncomfortably close to him. “Where’s Sonny?” he asked.
“Oh, he’s smoking dope and nodding off. Can you believe it?” Angela was very close to him, and the night air was filled with her jasmine fragrance and her warm breath. Maybe it was because he was tormented by his feelings for Renee, maybe it was because he was seventeen, but for whatever reason, he kissed her. Or she kissed him. He was never sure which.
They were both teenagers, which doesn’t excuse what came next, but it does partly explain the fumbling of hands, the rustling of clothes, the mad unbuttoning and unfastening and unzipping. The rush of skin on skin and the not-caring-what-part-of-the-body one was touching for the sheer glory of touching it.
Whether it went on for five minutes or a half-hour, Crush couldn’t say, but they hadn’t gotten very far through the labyrinth of clothes and limbs and hair when K.C. came up to them.
“She’s gone,” he said.
It took a while for the words to register. It took longer than that for Crush and Angela to untangle themselves from each other and ask what he meant.
“She went down the tunnel,” Zerbe said.
The tunnel was set into the wall of the Arroyo below the rock formation that everybody said looked like the Devil but that, to Crush, looked more like one of the jagged cliffs Wile E. Coyote used to stand on and push huge boulders onto the speeding Road Runner.
And, in fact, the tunnel itself looked like one of those illustrations of tunnels Coyote used to paint on cliff faces, in order to lure the Road Runner to a particular X-marked spot. A big arch going off into nothingness with an iron fence across it. A disaster just waiting to happen.
“I was talking to her and she just ran away.” Zerbe pointed frantically down the tunnel. “We have to find her. She was upset. She might do something.” He didn’t have to say what he was afraid she would do. They all knew.
“The gate is closed,” Crush said. “Are you sure she went down there?”
“Yes!” Zerbe shouted. “She climbed up the gate and jumped over it. Then she ran down the tunnel. We have to stop her!”