Which is what the place was; the sounds of Motley Crue were blaring forth from speakers left over from when this joint was a disco, and down at the far end of the smoky barely converted warehouse, a band, five skinny males in heavy-metal war paint and sparkly skimpy clothes, was preparing to play a set. They were called Hellfyre and Jon had heard of them; second-raters all the way.
He had paid at a caged window, coming in, and had been carded, which now that he was getting into his mid-twenties actually sort of pleased him. Drinking age in Iowa was nineteen, so the possible Comfort daughter was either of age or had a fake ID.
Getting a close look at her, as she sat at the bar, a beer and a smoke before her, he figured it was a fake ID. This was a kid. She had the denim jacket off, slung over the back of her high-backed bar-stool, and she wore a yellow RATT T-shirt under which nice high handfuls poked, and her hair was a long and teased and heavily sprayed mane, and she was smoking a cigarette, apparently from the pack of Camels before her; but this was, nonetheless, a kid. With her cute features, big blue eyes, pug nose dusted with freckles, Kewpie-doll lips: a kid. She didn’t yet have the hard look the nineteen-year-old girls in this place did. The crowd was blue-collar all the way, guys in Skoal painter caps and scuzzy work clothes (the latter signifying unemployment) and girls in tight slacks and revealing tops and lots and lots of eye makeup.
The bar was a squared-off area at the back, and beyond it were tables and dance floor and stage; at the left and back a balcony surveyed the smoke and darkness. The place was about half full. Okay Wednesday night business, bar-band veteran Jon thought; typical.
He sat next to her.
She looked at him, noncommittally, looked away, sipped her beer, smoked her cigarette.
There had been no recognition in the look at all; Jon was quite relieved.
He said: “You ever hear these guys before?”
“Hellfyre?” she said. She had the faintest southern accent. She’d be from Missouri, if she was Comfort’s daughter; and sometimes you ran into a bit of a southern accent down there.
“Yeah,” he said. “Have you heard ’em before?”
She was a very cute kid; she was the kind of cute kid you think you’ve met before, Jon thought, even though you haven’t.
“Yeah, I heard ’em.” It was a nice voice, sultry and childlike at once. “They play down where I come from, sometimes.”
“You’re not from here?”
She shook her head. “I come from Missouri.”
He risked a grin. “Does that mean you’re going to show me something?”
She smiled back, warming to him; she had small, childlike teeth, very white. And her pink tongue licked out as she said, “Time will tell.” The slight southern lilt made the words sound great.
Fuck, could this little vision be a Comfort?
“I just love heavy metal,” she said.
“Yeah, uh, me too.”
“What’s your favorite heavy-metal band?”
“Hard to choose. What’s yours?”
“I like that band Spinal Tap. They had a special on HBO. But I can only find one of their records.”
“Uh, that’s a satire, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Nothing. Good band.”
“I like all kinds of music, though. Except country and western. My daddy listens to that all the time and I could just barf sometimes.”
“It’s not my favorite, either. I’d like to buy you a beer, when you’re through with that one.”
“Why not? Say. Don’t I know you?”
He slipped his hand into the deep pocket of the navy coat; the handle of the .38 felt rough and cold.
“I do know you.” She was pointing her finger at him, waggling it at him, and pointing her nipples at him, too; he was pointing the .38 at her from within his coat, though she didn’t know it.
“Isn’t your name Jon?”
“Why don’t we just leave here quietly,” he said, his gun poking at the pocket; but she didn’t seem to see that.
“You played with the Nodes!” Her face lit up like Christmas. She squealed like he was the Beatles. “You’re the organ player!”
His gun hand went limp in his pocket; something like relief coursed through him.
She leaned over and looped her arm in his.
“Don’t you remember me? I’m Cindy Lou.”
“Cindy Lou . . .”
“Cindy Lou Comfort. But maybe you didn’t catch my name. Year or so ago, in Jefferson City? It was at that place out on the highway.”
Shit. It was coming back to him.
She touched her hair. “I had my hair all cut off, then. During a break, you and me sat in this little dressing room under the stage and kissed and stuff.”
He’d felt her up. He’d felt up Cole Comfort’s daughter. Cole Comfort’s underage daughter.
“I remember you, Cindy Lou,” he said, his mouth dry, his dick erect.
“Is that a pistol in your pocket,” she grinned nastily, “or are you just glad to see me?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“I think that was a good idea you had,” she said.
Hellfyre began playing “We Ain’t Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister.
“What was that?”
“Leaving here quietly.”
And they did; her arm around his waist and his around her shoulder.
13
CINDY LOU just couldn’t believe her luck. Running into the keyboard player from the Nodes! She loved that band; when she heard they broke up it made her sad. They’d always played a lot of oldies and some new wave and even a little heavy metal. And they jumped around on stage, and the guys were really cute. Especially that keyboard player. He reminded her of Duane, from the seventh grade, who popped her cherry. He was a little blond hunk, too.
They stepped outside into the chilly air, walking side by side, arms around each other. You could smell the river. You could see it too, moon dancing on the little waves. Real romantic, Cindy Lou thought, surprised at herself, surprised she could get it up after last night. But she put that out of her mind.
“Where do you want to go?” Cindy Lou asked.
“Where are you staying?”
“At the Holiday Inn.” She paused, then added, “With my daddy. He’s here on business.”
“I see.”
“We better not go back there. He doesn’t even know I’m out.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. He’s been keeping me cooped up at that motel, and finally when he wasn’t looking I just took the pickup keys and went.”
He led her to a sky-blue van.
“We could just climb in back of there,” she said.
“We could. It’s not fancy, but I got some blankets back there.”
She smiled, hugged his waist. “This used to be your band’s van, didn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
She pulled away from him, traced her finger on the side of the van. “You can almost see where your name used to be. The Nodes. You guys were real good. What happened to that girl that sang with you?”
“Toni? We were still in a band together till recently. She’s up in Minneapolis playing in one of Prince’s groups.”
“Really? That’s cool! That Prince guy is so sexy.”
He opened the rider’s side of the van and she climbed in and crawled between the seats in front into the back of the van, where the cold metal floor was warmed by several quilts and blankets. Some corduroy pillows were piled up against one side. Jon got in on the driver’s side, turned on the engine, started the heater going, locked the doors, and joined her.
“It’s going to take a while for that heater to get going,” he said, sitting on his knees, watching her as she arranged a little makeshift bed out of the quilts and blankets. At the head of the “bed” she placed two of the cord pillows and invited him to lie next to her, which, after removing his big navy coat, he did. She slipped out of her denim jacket and kicked off her heels, but o
therwise left her clothes on as they got under a quilt and lay facing each other, smiling in the near dark, leaning on an elbow, some moonlight and streetlights filtering in through the back van windows.
“You don’t know how glad I am to see a friendly young face,” she said.
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “I been having some family trouble. Nothing serious.”
“Oh?”
“I’m getting too old to live at home, anyway.”
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
He smiled, a cute little smile on half his face making a dimple. “I didn’t think you were of drinking age.”
“Seventeen’s old enough.”
“For what?”
“Anything I want.”
“What are you, a senior, Cindy Lou?”
“Naw. I stopped going to high school.”
“Why?”
“Daddy didn’t want me to go.”
“Why?”
“Needed some help in the family business. Needs me to run the house. My mom’s dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I never knew her.” She sighed. “I sorta killed her.”
“You . . . what do you mean?”
“She died having me.”
That seemed to bum Jon out; she touched his face.
“Don’t be blue,” she said. “You got any drugs?”
“No. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. That gets old after while, anyway. Boy, I sure do miss your band. Why’d you break up?”
“We weren’t getting anywhere, I guess.”
“What are you doing now? You playing with a new band?”
“I was. Mostly I’m working as an artist. Cartoonist.”
“You draw cartoons?”
“Yes.” He smiled; seemed a little proud of himself.
“Like on TV, you mean. G.I. Joe, He-Man, those things? They’re awful violent. You think little kids should watch those things?”
“I don’t work on animated cartoons, Cindy Lou. I draw a comic book.”
“Oh, like Archie or Batman.”
“Something like that.”
“Are you good?”
“Yeah. I’ll draw your picture sometime.”
“In the nude?”
“If you like.”
“It’s getting warmer in here.” She pulled off her T-shirt; it was still cold enough to make her nips stand out. She looked at his face; looked at his eyes on her boobs. She knew she didn’t have the biggest boobs around, but they were real firm and had a nice shape and pretty pink nips. She liked the expression they put on his face—like he was struck dumb by her beauty. She’d seen that expression many times, and relished it.
Then she leaned back on her elbow and started making small talk again, pretending to be matter of fact about her nudity but knowing she was making him crazy. It was a sort of teasing, although she was no tease: Cindy Lou liked sex. She had put out since she was twelve. Screwing was fun, and besides, it put a guy in your back pocket, for as long as you wanted him there. And she’d had “encounters,” as she liked to think of them, with a lot of guys who played in bands.
“Your band played a lot of your own songs, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “About a third of what we carried was original material.”
“Who wrote it?”
“Mostly Toni. I did some of it. We made a record, you know.”
“No! Really? Can you get me one?”
“Sure. How long are you going to be in town?”
“Just till Friday. We’re leaving real early Friday morning.”
“You and your dad.”
“Well, and Lyle. He’s my brother.”
“He’s staying at the motel with you?”
“No, he’s over on the Illinois side somewhere, looking after business for Daddy.”
“I could drop an album off at your motel tomorrow.”
“You best not stop by the room. Daddy’s funny about boys. He doesn’t know, uh . . .”
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said.
Cindy Lou’s daddy didn’t know she put out. He thought she was pure as the driven snow; he had no idea she’d drifted, in the seventh grade. And he sure as hell didn’t know she and her brother Lyle used to do it together, either. She was thirteen and he was eighteen. Not often. Just now and then, when Daddy was out of the house, till she missed her period once and got scared about having a Mongoloid. It was a false alarm, but she and Lyle got the fear of God put into them, or as near to it as possible for two kids raised to believe in nothing.
Lyle was a great lover; he made her come like a four-alarm fire. One time they made love in a rainstorm, with the water running down the window next to them all streaky, throwing spooky shadows on their naked bodies, with thunder cracking out there. Daddy was home, that time. It made it real dangerous and real exciting. But eventually the fear was stronger than the love of danger and excitement and even of her brother Lyle’s long lovely pecker, and now she and Lyle didn’t even mention it. Didn’t even talk about it. It was like it never happened, except for an occasional glance between them that said it did.
She never thought of it as incest, exactly, at least not till that month her period was late, and she didn’t believe in sin, but she did believe, vaguely, in right and wrong. That much had crept in through her schooling. She sometimes lay awake at night thinking about the stealing her daddy and Lyle did, which she sometimes helped them with, like the food stamp deal she quit school to pitch in on. She wondered if that was any kind of way to make a living.
Her daddy had always treated her like a princess, and had never been mean, except to spank her bare butt when she was bad. Daddy defined “bad” as disobeying, and she’d learned not to do that early on. She hadn’t had her bare butt spanked (by Daddy) since the seventh grade—coincidentally, it stopped about the time she started putting out.
Once, about three years ago, she had sat in Daddy’s lap and, reverting to the manner of a child, which always charmed him, asked: “Is stealing wrong, Daddy?”
“You shouldn’t steal from your kin, darlin’.”
“People go to jail for stealing.”
“People go to jail for getting caught. Everybody steals, darlin’. The government steals from the public, and the public steals from the government. What goes around comes around.”
“Do you hurt people when you steal from them?”
“Your daddy has to make a living in a cruel, cold, hard world. And sometimes that takes being cruel, cold and hard.”
“Does that mean you hurt people?”
“If I have to. Only if I have to. I could lie to you, darlin’, but it wouldn’t be right of me to. You got to be true to your family. That’s all there is in this old world that can be trusted; that’s all there is that’s worth holding on to. Family.”
“I love you, Daddy.”
“I love you, darlin’,” he’d said, and gave her a big old sloppy kiss.
She thought her daddy was handsome; she’d seen the pictures of him and her mom, before his hair turned white, and he and her mom—who looked a lot like Cindy Lou, so much so it was spooky—looked so happy together. Such a handsome, happy couple. Sometimes she felt guilty for coming between them. Sometimes she cried herself to sleep over it, holding her mother’s picture in her hands. Usually during her period, this was.
But sometimes Daddy scared her. When he drank, he got “handsy.” He would put his hands on her and want a kiss. It didn’t go any further than that, but she sometimes went to bed early and slid the dresser across the door. He’d never tried to come in the room, but she’d grown afraid, lately, that he would someday. Some night.
Ever since she quit school and was around the house more, she noticed Daddy looking at her. Looking at her in that way she knew so well. She figured the only thing keeping him off of her was his foolish mistaken notion she was still a virgin. She was afraid of what he’d d
o if he found out she wasn’t.
He had his foolish old head in the sand, Daddy did. What did he think she did, when she went out on the weekends and didn’t get home till three in the morning? He bawled her out about it sometimes, and threatened (just threatened) to “whack” her if she didn’t mind. She could always sweet-talk him out of his mood, though.
“Daddy,” she’d say, archly, “I’m just a poor country girl all cooped up on the farm all week, doin’ chores. You gotta let me raise a little hell weekends!”
He’d laugh at that, and let her get away with it. But that was because she’d never had a regular guy, that he knew of—she’d never (except once) had a guy call for her at the house, she always met him (and there was quite a succession of hims) at a movie or a dance hall or bar or maybe motel. She had followed this route because the one time she did have a guy pick her up, back when she was in the ninth grade, Daddy had given the guy such a hard time, it spoiled the whole night. And the next day her daddy had been in a foul mood and snapped her head off at every turn.
So she’d decided to keep her private life her own. And she’d continue to sit in her daddy’s lap and baby-talk him when she wanted something, and that would be that.
And it was—until last night.
She was staying in this motel room with him, a nice room at a Holiday Inn, just her and Daddy, with two double beds, one for each of them. He’d had some business meeting real late, way after midnight, and didn’t get back till after four in the morning. He stripped to his longjohns and climbed in bed—with her. He started cuddling up to her. She could smell liquor on him, but she didn’t think he was drunk. She turned her back to him and he started bumping up against her. And he started saying things.
Things like how she was going to be a woman soon. Something about educating her to the ways of the world, about ushering her into the glory of womanhood.
And she knew what he meant: fucking.
“I gotta pee, Daddy,” she’d said, and got up and scurried into the bathroom and sat on the toilet, seat down, feet up on the cold seat and hugging her legs to her, shaking like to have the palsy, staring at the locked door, afraid of her own father. Her own daddy.
She’d sat there like that a long time. He never knocked on the door or tried to open it or anything. She just knew he was in bed on the other side of that door, thinking about her, in that way. But finally she heard him snoring out there, and peeked out, and he was dead asleep, mouth open, sawing away at those logs.
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