by Ash Parsons
And then we talked about that. About perception and narrative in poetry. About loss and the difficulty of being vulnerable, of asking for help. Of being authentic, or trying for authenticity.
All these elevated concepts, camouflaging a genuine struggle.
Like all we were talking about was that damn poem. Because no one wanted to say what we were really talking about.
The grind of the machine.
Being Joshua Blackbird.
* * *
• • •
Time continues to stumble by.
“You need to get out,” Grandma says. “Get out of the house. Go for a walk. Anything.”
“You too, then,” I say.
She hardly ever leaves the house. It’s a whole big scary sky out there, and she has to pull her oxygen tank everywhere.
Grandma frowns at me. “I’ll get my coat,” she says.
I suppose that’s love.
I yank on black tac pants and peg them over my Docs. Pull on a ripped T-shirt and knot it at my waist.
We walk to the end of the driveway and back. It doesn’t change anything.
Back inside the house, Grandma falls back into her chair.
“Good work,” I say. “We did a lot today.”
“Smart alec,” she snaps. “Get out of my house and don’t come back until you’ve broken a sweat.”
I walk back outside.
The setting sun casts a golden glow across the dead grass. It feels a little warm but mostly ineffectual, like words on a condolence card.
But it feels good, being outside. For some stupidly pointless reason. I sit on the dead grass, feeling the cool of the earth through the stiff black pants. I lie back, stretching my arms out, the prickling of the grass along my bare arms like the scratching of a memory, tugging at your attention.
The ground is cold. The earth is dark and deep. Or something like that. A line from another poem.
What the hell with all the poems? Every poem Ms. Kearney tried to teach us. Why are they all coming back to me now?
I swipe at my cheeks and get up. Start walking. Fast, up the driveway, down the cul-de-sac, down the road. When I’m not looking at the computer, at the BlueBirdie blogs, the world is too present—I’m too alone—and—
Everything’s too real.
My phone vibrates.
Tyler. His daily attempt to reach me. He’ll be expecting my voice mail—my daily refusal to be reached.
“Hey,” I answer. Surprise.
“Hey! Roxy!” he says back. And he doesn’t sound mad that I haven’t been answering the phone these past months. He just sounds—like someone happy to hear my voice.
“Hey, Ty,” I say.
He sighs, and then we don’t say anything.
“So,” he finally says, “Artie sent me a rough cut of the tribute album. And a disc that goes with it—like a featurette. And. I want to watch it. I want to hear it. But—I don’t want to. You know?”
I laugh, a dark, sniffling loss-cough. “Yeah. I get it.”
I hear the shivery breath he takes. Can picture him, how he does, hunching skinny-wide shoulders, slouching his head low. Trying to stop it. Not being able to.
Trying to need less. Take up less space, be a shadow.
Ty always wanted to be his big brother’s shadow. Now there’s no one for him . . . certainly not Livie, who was barely there in the best of times.
I glare back up the street at Grandma’s house.
“If I start walking now, I should be there in forty minutes,” I say, with no real idea how long it will take, but just striking out anyway. It’s a goal. It’s a destination. It’s one step in front of the other.
“Forget that. I’ll come pick you up,” he says.
“You and your mom? I don’t think so.”
“Whatever. I’ll come get you.”
He hangs up.
I shrug and walk back home. I sprawl in the grass again. It’s starting to feel a little colder, with the sunlight stealing from the sky.
It takes about fifteen minutes before I hear a high, buzzing engine, so there’s no way my walk estimate was even remotely accurate.
Joshua bought his mom one of those ridiculous, giant SUVs that petite women love to drive.
The double-stroke engine whine turns the corner onto my street. And I start to laugh.
Ty is riding his dirt bike.
You can take the boy out of the county, but you can’t take the county out of the boy.
He pulls around the dead-end loop and pops the bike out of gear, doing a typical final rev. He’s wearing faded farm jeans and a red T-shirt advertising the local dirt track. With his sneakers braced wide, he unhooks a spare helmet from the bungee strap. He doesn’t take off his own helmet, black and red with a visor and face mask.
It’s disconcerting, seeing only his eyes, so much like Joshua’s, staring out at me.
“Here!” he shouts, and lobs the helmet at me.
It’s all so country it hurts. But it’s also perfect: the sleek black and red, with helmets matching the bike.
Joshua bought it—a whole kit. I remember hearing him talking about it with Ty over the phone.
I remember him telling Ty, “Don’t break your neck.”
I wonder if he ever even saw the bike or the gear.
Tyler glares at me through the helmet. “Any day, Roxy.”
“You’re going to double me. You.” I’m standing beside him now. It’s shocking, actually, how long his legs are, sprawled out to hold the bike.
His eyes narrow. Who is this kid? Ty used to laugh off our teasing, mine and Joshua’s.
Before the YouTube video happened, before Artie came, before any of it.
“I’m only a year younger than you,” Ty says. “You can drop the wise-old-lady act.”
I shrug and mash the helmet on. My fingers poke at the edges of the eye gap, stuffing spiky chunks of hair underneath.
The engine is still running. Ty holds out a surprisingly broad hand to help me lever myself onto the back.
The bike is a narrow muscle, not really made for doubling, but I straddle behind him.
Ty revs an all-clear signal. I grab on to his shoulders, but he pulls out fast enough that I have to clutch at him.
We’re a bottle rocket up the street and down the road.
The bike is built like Ty is—all length and angularity. Skinny. No, not skinny. Lean—the lean of rawboned growth, of becoming.
The night is growing cold, but I don’t feel it riding on the back of Ty’s bike. We’re weaving through back roads and residential developments, trying to stay off the busier route, since the bike isn’t street legal.
It feels good leaving the world behind.
15
A SONG FOR JOSHUA
Ty pulls up to the gate at the bottom of the driveway. There are no Birdies this late at night, and no cameras. His connection to his brother is only as good as the latest news—so until the tribute album officially releases, there won’t be much ruckus at the gates.
Although the flowers and cards and little teddy bears still look fresh enough to have been delivered today.
Ty snakes a hand into his coat and then the gate is opening. We zoom up the road and behind the massive house. Really it’s a McMansion just like all the others in this part of town, but I can’t get past the “mansion” part, because that’s what they all are.
“I always forget how big this place is,” I say when he cuts the engine.
Ty helps me climb off, then he drops the stand and takes off his helmet.
He glances up at the house. “Yeah. I only use part of it.”
He didn’t mean to be funny, but I laugh anyway. That reflexive, trailer park takedown before anyone else can do it for you.
“Well, all right. As long
as you’re only using part,” I say.
Ty laughs and takes my helmet. At the back door he punches in the security code and closes the door behind us.
He puts the helmets on a closet shelf.
“Where’s Livie?” The house is silent, and big as it is, it feels empty.
“Out. Ladies’ night out or a date. I can’t remember which.”
There’s grit in the words.
He turns toward the kitchen. “Let’s get some food.”
He’s not as interested in snacks as he is in plain fuel, so he haphazardly grabs a bag of Doritos, some Oreos, cups with ice, and a two-liter bottle of Coke.
Ty leads the way through an overdecorated sitting room, past a dining room where there are eight sets of china set on the table at the empty seats, gold charger plates, embroidered napkins.
“It must be like living in Barbie’s Dreamhouse,” I say.
“Pretty much.”
We walk into the TV room, and even though it’s on the main floor, it feels like Ty’s the only one who really spends time here. There are game consoles, the pillow from his bed on the massive sofa, cartridges and cases cluttering surfaces.
A torn padded envelope. I recognize Artie’s precise handwriting.
Ty spreads a Mexican blanket on the floor, and we set down the plastic cups, the chips, the cookies, and the Coke bottle.
For some reason we stand there and look at it for a split second.
“All it needs is some beer cans, and it’s a redneck wedding reception,” Ty says.
We laugh stupidly, a release valve more than humor, and then sit down on the blanket, ignoring the sofa like we’re little kids.
Ty sighs and hands me the padded envelope.
I take out the disc, and he puts it in the console. It buzzes up, a professional title card, Orpheus’s Last Lyric: A Tribute to Joshua Blackbird.
And it’s hokey, the background of the menu. Slow-motion sepia-toned footage of Joshua laughing, singing, smiling his heartbreak smile.
Still, it hits me where it hurts.
“Oh.” There is a choke of emotion in my throat. “Maybe this was a bad idea.” I down a slug of my drink, trying to wash the emotion away.
Ty swipes at his eyes with a knuckle but doesn’t say anything. He hits Play.
It starts, performance videos in a studio. You can already imagine the tribute concert.
Angel Rey is first. Her high, clear voice is like a shiver of crystal. Her version of “Orpheus’s Last Lyric” is slow, mournful. A lovesick ballad.
And that makes sense, but it’s not right either. It’s not what he meant.
The first video ends, and next is footage of Joshua performing, one of the first tour dates. He looks so purposeful. So energetic.
I’d forgotten what he could be like.
I don’t even notice when the tears start.
I shove jagged chips into my mouth, just to have something to bite.
Then the next tribute is up, Mendicant’s Son, one of the opening bands, playing a more dissonant cover of Joshua’s “Come Home.”
Ty drains his Coke and shoves Oreos into his mouth without interest.
Two more tributes go by, an up-and-coming band I think we met backstage somewhere.
Then there’s a final version of “Orpheus’s Last Lyric” by Misplaced. I don’t know the band. The production quality is not as high as the others. It seems to be here as an afterthought.
Then I see Speed behind the drum kit. There’s Quinn and Stevie.
Joshua’s band. For some reason, I wasn’t expecting that. It’s another thing that’s wrong in a series of horrible errors.
It’s all surreal, and I’ve pushed through sorrow to numbness. It’s a movie of a tragedy, a history.
Not something recent, not something that happened to me.
I’m not flying . . . I’m falling.
Quinn steps up to the studio mic.
“We just.” Quinn waves a hand. “We just wanted to try this. For Joshua. We miss you, brother.”
They start playing. It’s a lurching calliope rock-sound. It fits better than Angel’s dirgelike attempt, but it’s meandering.
“I need to call Speed,” I say, remembering all the times I dodged his number on the incoming caller ID or returned haphazard, vague texts. Maybe he was trying to tell me about this.
“I need to do lots of things,” Ty says.
Then the disc plays a compilation of Joshua performance clips, over the live version of “Forever or Never.” The one from opening night.
The night he left us.
I can’t look at him, and I can’t look away. The perfection of his face. His half smile. Remembering when we lived in Marchant, how he used to double me on his handlebars to go to the lake.
How I used to let him climb in my bedroom window, him and Ty, when Livie would bring a guy home they didn’t like.
How natural it was. How easy. How easy it was to be with him—before.
His first guitar sits in the corner of this room, on a stand. Ready, like he might walk in and pick it up. The same guitar he used to play when he’d sing to me.
The numbing insulation is stripped off my grief, and the pain wires spark. They spark.
I catch Ty’s eyes. “Yeah,” he says. “I know.” He stares at a Dorito in his fingers, sends it spinning with a flick. There’s something angry about the gesture.
The disc starts playing at the beginning again. Angel Rey’s dirge.
“What a bunch of crap,” Ty says.
“She’s nice.”
“Sure, but her version sucks.”
“It all sucks.”
Ty glances at me, and in his eyes I see a lurking secret.
“What?”
Ty shrugs, like no big deal.
I let my eyes sit on him till he cracks.
“I . . . well . . . I been playing with a version,” he says.
He says it like it’s shameful.
It makes perfect sense. While I’ve been obsessed with figuring out the lyrics and studying the BlueBirdies, he’s been noodling with the guitar, Joshua’s first, and trying to fit his brother’s words to music.
Each of us wrestling with it.
I cross my arms and glare at the guitar on the stand.
Ty’s shoulders bunch as he scrubs his head.
“Why not,” he says.
I push myself off the floor and curl into the couch. Prop against Ty’s pillow.
Ty gets the guitar.
And it’s like déjà vu. That guitar, and how Ty becomes this new person when he slings the strap across his shoulders.
Suddenly his awkward height becomes a presence. The habitual slouch becomes a guitarist’s pose.
Ty fiddles with the knobs, tuning the strings. Getting the sound just right. Then he strums out a series of chords, a heavy rock-blues sound. Ty strikes the strings, slapping and thumping the wood for a percussive kick.
He lifts his jaw and closes his eyes, starts to sing.
His voice is nothing like Joshua’s. No range, no distinct sound. Just a raw voice, his words sung like they’re pressed out from behind clenched teeth.
When he gets to the chorus, his voice breaks.
It’s exactly perfect. The grated sound, the unartfulness of it, the dirty broken-down blues riff that rocks harder and harder at each chorus. Ty’s voice is an instrument of grit.
His rendition packs an emotion more fitting for the Last Lyric. Distortion: sustained, dropped. Each string torqued for the wrung-out note.
He takes a guitar solo bridge, then lets that energy feed into the last lines of the song.
And then silence. The only sound the echo of the notes.
“That was perfect,” I say.
His eyes, downcast, can’t meet mine.
He looks uncomfortable as he lifts the guitar strap from around his head, sets the instrument back on its stand. Like he got caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to. He’s back to being awkward Ty, all loose limbs and jagged movements.
And then, because he sang to me, I tell him about the BlueBirdie blogs. And the Tumblrs. And the real-person fics. And every unhealthy way I’ve tried to bury myself in it.
With Joshua.
Ty gets his tablet, and we’re looking at the poems, and we’re talking about “Orpheus’s Last Lyric,” and what it means. And I see it clearly now.
There’s a brooding undercurrent in Joshua’s words, beneath the apologies. A self-destructive loathing—which is why none of the other versions of “Orpheus’s Last Lyric” on the tribute album work. In fact, it’s why they’re all wrong.
It’s not pop music at all. Only one person understood that.
“Your version is the one,” I say. “That’s the one everyone should hear.”
Ty tries to hide his smile. “Yeah?” he says.
“Yeah. Why not? Ty, it’s good.”
“Thanks. Artie said Angel’s would be the first single.”
“Figures.”
We look on YouTube, because if there’s one thing we know about Artie, it’s that the woman does not let grass grow under her feet, and if Ty got the screener today . . .
And there it is. Angel’s version, already “leaked.” Typical. An early, buzz-build move.
For once I don’t want to read the comments.
“I want to hear your version again,” I say.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously. Humor me.”
“Okay.” Ty picks up the guitar, eases the strap back over his head.
“Can I film it on my phone?”
“Why not?” Ty smiles at me and doesn’t bother hiding this one. It’s that open smile, so much more carefree than his brother’s.
I press Record on my phone.
“This is for my brother,” Ty says into the lens.
I’m propped on the sofa to steady my recording. Ty fingers the strings of his dead brother’s first guitar. He plays “Orpheus’s Last Lyric,” and I film it.
It’s just as good the second time around.