Road Rash

by Mark Huntley Parsons

So I told her pretty much everything from the time she’d left Yellowstone until now. Except for the Neverland gig—that could wait until later. But I didn’t want to get too deep into the internal politics of the band—especially the whole Brad/Jamie/Glenn thing—because Glenn was right there, and even with the music playing, I was pretty sure he could hear. Heck, it was weird enough just talking about the stuff we did discuss. So when she asked, I told her I’d give her more on that later.

  She seemed okay with letting it go, but when I mentioned about Nate being my replacement, she wasn’t about to let that go. “So Brad’s been planning this for a while …”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Hell, I don’t know when he first started talking to Nate. Looking back on it, there were several places where he might have been motivated to replace me, all the way back to that first week in Bozeman. Man, I can read a crowd of five hundred from behind a drumset, but I can’t seem to see what’s going on right in front of me. “I guess I just didn’t pick up on it at the time. Hindsight’s twenty-twenty, right?”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t know he was like that.” I could hear the anger coming out in her voice. “Either way, he knew about this way in advance. That’s so wrong.”

  “No argument here.”

  “What about the other guys … did they know what was coming?”

  “Naw, they were pretty surprised, too. And not exactly happy about it, either. That’s another long story that we can go into later if you want. But at least this time I have some backup.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Glenn left with me.”

  “Wow! He did? What happened?”

  So I told her all about that, too. When I was done, she asked me to hand the phone to Glenn. Weird, but I passed it over. “Hey, man, Kimber wants to talk to you.”

  He took it. “Hello?”

  She talked to him for a few minutes. He didn’t say much, just the occasional yeah or thanks, or maybe, we’ll see. Then he handed the phone back.

  “Hey,” she said softly.

  “Hey.”

  “How’re you doing?”

  “Better now.”

  “Good. I just want to tell you one thing before I go. I know you feel really bad over this, but it doesn’t have anything to do with you or your playing.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’ll land on your feet—you’re smart and you’re talented and you know how to make things happen. It’s their loss—they’ve lost a great drummer and a great guy, just because their leader has an ego problem. So the hell with him.” She paused. “I love you, and I can’t wait to see you. Keep your chin up, okay?”

  “Okay. I love you, too. Bye …”

  I put my phone away and Glenn said, “She seems real nice. You’re lucky.”

  “Yeah, I think so, too.”

  “She wanted to thank me for sticking with you. She told me a little about how bummed you were when you got fired from your old band, so she was glad you had someone with you on the way home.” He looked over at me and raised an eyebrow. “She also joked about setting me up with her older sister.”

  I laughed. “Cool. You could be like my brother-in-law-in-law. Or something.”

  “I don’t think I’m really going there anytime soon.”

  Hmm … “Remember that stuff I said back in West Yellowstone when we played basketball? I still think it’s true—you and Jamie’ll figure it out, sooner or later.”

  “I think she’s already figured it out,” he said casually. “She’s figured out that she likes someone else better, that’s all.”

  I turned to him. “Dude, sometimes you’re too in control for your own good! Plus, I happen to know you’re full of shit on this one.” Oh God, there goes my indie mouth again. “She’s freakin’ crazy about you, but she doesn’t want to be second fiddle to a guitar, excuse the pun. In my dumb-ass, uninformed, unasked-for opinion, I think she’s settling for something that she thinks she might actually be able to have.”

  “She tell you all that?”

  “Hey, I can read between the lines.”

  He snorted and shook his head. Just like you-know-who …

  “But I can tell you this,” I went on. “I’ve seen her in tears over you more than once. And late one night she happened to let slip that she thought you were incredibly sexy—God, I can’t believe I just said that.… But don’t gimme that she-likes-someone-else-better crap. No, she actually likes you better, but she needs to know where she stands. And it better not be before the Marshall but after the Strat.” I caught his look. Uh-oh. “And I’ve said way too much, dude. Signing off now …” And I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes.

  He didn’t say anything. After a long time I heard “Hey …” I looked over, but he wasn’t talking to me. I closed my eyes again.

  “It’s me,” he said. “I’d like to talk to you sometime after you guys get back. Pretty funny, huh? All this time, and now I want to talk? Yeah, I thought so, too. But there are a few things I’d like to clarify. About all the reasons I love you. I’m not always the best at that, but I’d like to try. I know you’ve got your hands full right now, but maybe after you’re in town, we can get together and sort some stuff out. Or maybe you’re happy where you are and … If this all sounds stupid and pointless, then please just delete this message and get on with your life. But I hope … I hope I’ll see ya, JD-girl.…”

  There was silence for a few minutes, then a voice in the dark.

  “Hey, Zach, you awake?”

  “Yeah, what’s up?”

  “You were right. Even if you were wrong, you were right. So thanks for the push.”

  “No problem.”

  “So, what are you thinking about?”

  “Food …”

  39

  “Burning Down the House”

  I spun my computer around so Glenn could see the screen. “Hey, check this out …”

  We were having breakfast at a Bean & Leaf in St. George, Utah, after crashing in the Worm Wagon. I remembered what I’d been thinking yesterday—about the posters—so I went to the Golden State Fair’s website. I was relieved to see that all it said was “And Special Guest” in small print down at the bottom of a full-page blast about Neverland. Whew … I resolved to call Don before we got back to California.

  Anyway, I ended up clicking on Neverland’s tour schedule link, just because. And sure enough, they were all over the United States, mostly working from the East Coast out to the West. The Golden State Fair show was wedged in between multiple-night stands in L.A. and San Francisco as they worked their way up the coast toward Seattle. And in the meantime, they were playing places like Dallas and Albuquerque and Denver and Salt Lake and Phoenix … and Vegas. As in Las Vegas. As in tonight.

  Glenn looked at it. “Mandalay Bay, huh? That should be a great show.”

  “I guess. Somehow I can’t see them playing a casino.”

  He laughed. “I can’t, either. But they’ve got a couple of cool venues there. A House of Blues and a really nice arena. They’ll be in the arena for sure—it holds, like, ten thousand people. I saw a big festival show there last summer.”

  “That makes more sense.”

  “Yeah.” He looked up from the monitor. “So, you want to go?”

  “Huh?” That took me by surprise. “Uh, it’s sold out.”

  “We could probably get tickets. If you want to spend the money.”

  I thought about it. We were low on bucks. And we needed gas and food to get home. And I hated to come home stone-broke—that would be extra fun when it came to talking to my parents, and … The hell with it. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

  Q: HOW DO YOU GET A DRUMMER OFF YOUR FRONT PORCH?

  A: PAY HIM FOR THE PIZZA.

  It had been warm enough coming down through Utah, but that was nothing compared to Vegas in the middle of the day in the middle of summer. Holy freakin’ smoke—it was like a hundred and twelve degrees or something. We hopped off I-15 a little farther north so we could cr
uise through town on the Strip, but that might have been a mistake. I mean, the Worm Wagon didn’t exactly have functioning AC. The best option was to roll the windows down and try to keep moving—when it got hot, the past life of the vehicle began to seep out of the floorboards, if you know what I mean. Plus, whenever we had to idle too long, the temp gauge started to head for the hills, threatening to turn this thing into the flaming bait-bucket from hell.

  So I fired up “Highway to Hell” and cranked it as we slogged down the Strip toward our destination. Glenn looked over at me with a wild look in his eye and did this demonic wicked-ol’-witch thing.

  “I’ll get you now, my pretty! Ahh-haa-haa-haa …”

  I leaned back in my seat so I could get my feet up in the air, then closed my eyes and banged my Converse together. “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like freakin’ home!” I opened my eyes and looked around. “Damn …”

  Finally, we pulled into this massive parking structure next to Mandalay Bay, which had to be ten times larger than the one at the mall back home.

  “So, what now?” I asked.

  “Now we go inside and cool off. Maybe see about those tickets.”

  When we got out of the van I was struck by how darn hot it was, even though we were in the middle of a structure where the sun never shines. But when we walked inside, all was forgiven. It was like sixty-eight degrees in there. And huge. And nice. And smelled like food. And coffee. I was just about to nudge Glenn and point him toward where the good smells were coming from when he turned right and headed through the enormous building like he knew what he was doing. As we walked along, I started seeing posters for the show and I could feel myself getting excited. We ended up at the entrance to the arena and Glenn walked up to an open window.

  “Hi,” he said to the bored-looking guy inside. “Do you happen to have anything for tonight’s show?”

  The guy shook his head. “You kidding?”

  “How about all the will-call tickets? What if no one picks them up—do you sell them after the show starts?”

  “They’re paid for, so they stay here until someone comes to get them, or until the show’s over. Sometimes people’ll be having a winning streak at the tables and they’ll finally show up fifteen minutes before it’s over.” He shrugged. “Hey, it’s their money, right?”

  “Thanks …” Glenn turned away and I followed him, totally bummed.

  “So that’s it—we’re not going?”

  “No, we still have a shot. We just need to be back here by eight, cash in hand.”

  We spent the afternoon cruising around. We probably walked ten miles and never went outside once. Mandalay Bay was like this long mall-ish thing and it connected to the Luxor—which was another casino, shaped like this huge black pyramid. Man, you could literally shop until you dropped.

  At first I thought it was cool. But after several hours of it I was craving something more … organic, I guess. Anyway, after we got a bite in a place called the Burger Bar, I was overloading on the plasticity of the whole scene. Luckily it was after seven by then, so we headed back toward the arena.

  There was a crowd already forming, mostly standing around waiting for the doors to open, but there were merch stalls set up and they were already doing great business. We found a space off to the side of the lines. “This is good,” Glenn said. “Let’s wait here.”

  Sure enough, after a while this guy shows up and starts waving something over his head, calling, “Tickets! I got tickets to Neverland.…”

  Glenn waved at him. “How much?”

  The guy walks over. “Great seats. Only four hundred each. You’ll catch the sweat off the stage. That’s a deal, man …”

  Glenn held up his hand like, You can stop now. “Thanks.”

  The guy just shrugged and turned away. You could tell he did this all the time. Another guy arrived, pretty much spouting the same story and the same price. I was getting nervous, but just a few minutes before eight a man in a suit came walking fast up the ramp to where we were, looking pretty stressed. Instead of broadcasting, he was going around asking individual people if they needed tickets.

  “There’s our dude.” Glenn started toward him, and I followed. “Where are the seats?” he asked the guy.

  The guy took out the tickets and looked at them. “Section one-thirteen,” he said, looking at his watch. There was a seating chart on the wall—Glenn and I went and looked at it. They were maybe halfway back.

  “They’re behind the mix position—they’ll sound great,” Glenn said to me. “Plus, the room isn’t that huge … those aren’t bad seats.”

  “Okay.”

  “Give me eighty bucks.”

  “Huh?”

  “The price printed on those tickets was seventy-nine bucks each—I saw when he took them out.”

  I gave him the money and we went back to the guy. “Looks good,” Glenn said, holding out my money and four twenties of his own.

  The man looked at us for a minute, like maybe he wanted more for them. Just then the doors opened across the lobby and people started pouring into the arena. He finally nodded. “Okay. My girlfriend overdid it, and she’s in no shape to party anymore tonight. So what the hell—at least I’m not out of pocket.” He handed them over.

  “Thanks a lot, man,” Glenn said. “They won’t go to waste, believe me.”

  Now that was an understatement.…

  “We’re from New England,” Jeremy, the lead singer, was saying to the cheering crowd near the end of the show. “That’s a long way from Nevada. I love being here, but I love my home, too. And that’s what this next song is all about.”

  I turned to Glenn with a big-ass grin on my mug and yelled over the noise, “ ‘Long Walk Home,’ man!”

  He just grinned back and nodded.

  It was a killer show. In fact, I’d say it was the best concert I’d ever seen, period. We weren’t front row or anything, but there was a big screen above the stage if you were interested in seeing close-ups. Which I wasn’t all that worried about. I was more into watching the whole band thing, how they filled the stage and interacted with each other and the crowd. They were really good at what they did, no doubt about it, but it wasn’t like they were putting on an act. I think your eyes and ears have like this built-in lie detector, and mine was telling me that these guys were telling the truth.

  Plus, the sound was freakin’ awesome. The room was full and the seating went up at the back, so that helped absorb the big echo you sometimes get in large venues. The mix had that thump-you-in-the-chest-with-a-hammer effect, but you could still hear every word. God, what I’d give …

  Anyway, we’d been guessing songs all night. And getting a fair amount of them right. Including this one.

  “Long Walk Home” was an early hit of theirs, and everyone sang along. Including me. Everybody in the room was on their feet, fists in the air, bellowing out the words. And please don’t tell anyone, but when they finally broke it wide open during the chorus, I actually took out my cell phone and waved it.

  I looked over at Glenn and he was doing the same thing, waving his phone and singing away at the top of his voice. At first I was surprised, but it actually made sense. He liked music more than just about anyone I knew, and how can you really love something if you’re too cool to publicly enjoy it?

  They got two solid encores after that, and the crowd would’ve definitely brought them back a third time if the lights hadn’t come up.

  As we were walking out, Glenn asked me, “So, what do you think?”

  “I was blown away, man. That was absolutely awesome.”

  “Yeah, me too. Everything. The band, the mix, the lights … amazing.” Then he looked at me kinda funny. “So, what do you think?”

  Same words, different question. Hmm …

  As luck would have it, when we entered the immense restaurant-shop-casino area, there was a Starbucks to our left, just inside the entrance. He tilted his head toward it.
“We need to talk.”

  “Okaaaaay …,” I said. “So, what are you thinking about?”

  “Not food …”

  PART IV

  HOME

  40

  “Rock ’N Roll Fantasy”

  Our preflight was pretty damn brief—three words. “Let’s do it!” I yelled as we ran onstage.

  I picked up my sticks from my floor tom, clicked them in time, and counted. “One … two … One, two, three …” On the and of three I hit my kick, and then rimshot my snare with both hands right on the backbeat of four. Not too shy about it, either. Like, ka-slam.

  And it wasn’t just any old ka-slam, either. The kick drum sounded like the freakin’ cannon of doom, just about collapsing my lungs as it pounded back at me from the huge drum-fill monitors on either side of my kit.

  So away we went, pounding out “End of the Day” as our opener, which we’d put together over the last few weeks. Okay, full disclosure. The first tune was actually a little … well, I won’t call it rough, because that’s not really fair, but I could tell he was nervous. Not that I could blame him. I mean … the venue, the crowd, the sound, the lights … let alone the freakin’ headliner. Major whoa-age.

  And it wasn’t that he was making mistakes or anything, but he was kind of tentative. I’m sure it sounded fine to anyone else, but I could tell he wasn’t having much fun. And fun is the key to an outstanding groove.

  I waved him over with the old low-profile head tilt. “How we doing?” I yelled when he’d gotten closer.

  He shrugged, and nodded.

  He stood there, playing his bass until the song ended, then I spoke quickly during the applause.

  “We good? You sound fine.”

  “Thanks. I’m a little nervous.”

  “God, are you kidding? I’m ready to puke on my snare drum.” That got a laugh out of him. “Hey!” I said. “Let’s just play like we’re back in the garage.”

  “Back in the garage?”

  “Yeah. Screw the crowd, forget who we’re playing with, just lay it down like when we used to jam in the garage.”