FAREWELL GHOST

by Larry Caldwell

  Onstage, his band was finishing “Voices” among a storm of feedback and crashing cymbals, in command up there, and Clay felt a strange disconnect, having gone from performer to audience member in seconds. He reached behind him to bring his guitar around, hoping to fight his way back to wrap things up. You’re fuckheads, but we love you. Gooooodnight! But the Rick wasn’t there anymore. The strap had snapped when he’d fallen.

  Clay spun this way and that. “Anyone see a guitar? Hey, who the hell has my axe?”

  The feedback abruptly cut out, and their set concluded, while the crowd screamed and pumped its fists, and a high-school kid with a faint mustache and a Flogging Molly shirt stepped from the crowd. “Wasn’t me, man,” he told Clay, and when he lifted the Rickenbacker’s neck, there was no body attached.

  12

  MY EYES HAVE SEEN YOU

  Karney and the Demons knew how to work a crowd, no one could argue that. With a practiced hand, they aroused maximum energy from their fans while pacing themselves through a full-length set. Their songs were tight and, to a note, sounded like they did on the album. Davis Karney said all the right things between songs, asked all the right questions, feigned disappointment in the response: “I said, “‘Are we having fun yet?!’” So that the crowd fell all over itself to please him.

  Yet, even as the Demons launched into “Sex Doll,” their current hit, even as the crowd hopped up and down en masse, you couldn’t help feeling like there was something missing in the professional men onstage. It wasn’t just that Karney acted like he was the only one up there (Roethke and the others seemed to prefer being in his shadow); it was as if, despite all their radio hits and flawless playing, you could tell this was just another gig for a band that stood onstage two hundred times a year. After all, if Clay had just popped his cherry as a live musician, these guys were veritable porn stars—good at what they did, but having lost the original lusty thrill.

  Of course, it might have only been the mood Clay was in. Breaking a guitar that had been given to you by your idol had a way of pissing on your parade. The fact that someone had made off with the Rickenbacker’s body didn’t help either. “I’ll talk to Dooley at the shop,” Fiasco assured him. “We’ll root and plunder, find another Rick just as good.”

  Somehow Clay doubted that. His Rick, if not literally possessed with Boyle’s talent, was certainly one of a kind, easier to play than any guitar Clay had ever laid hands on. It had carried him through a rooftop audition and a crazy first gig—to say nothing of several spectral encounters and a kind of back-yard exorcism.

  On the ride home, BadVan was full of laughter and post-gig euphoria. The booking manager for The Echo had been at the party and had invited them to play her club the following night. And not the tiny hundred-occupant Echo either, but the Echoplex downstairs, which held four times as many people and hosted national acts. The Physical Jerks were headlining tomorrow and a stomach flu had run its way through their tour opener—so Farewell Ghost would get thirty minutes right before the Jerks went on. They had a right to celebrate. They’d worked damn hard. But Clay could share in none of the rolling revelry. He sat slouched in back with the drum cases, mute, while Fiasco Joe got the game going again: “Bon Scott. Death by misadventure.”

  “Dimebag Darrell,” Spider countered. “Gunned down on stage.”

  “Chris Cornell,” Mo said. “Detroit.”

  “Jimi Hendrix,” Spider answered. “Choked on his vomit.”

  Fiasco snapped his fingers. “Eric ‘Stumpy Joe’ Childs—”

  “—choked on someone else’s vomit!” everyone shouted.

  To top off the evening’s anticlimax, Savy had disappeared after their set. Clay interrogated Mo about where she’d gone, but her brother knew nothing. “I’ve been looking for her too. There’s at least three people dealing Oxy here, and she promised to keep them away from me.” In her absence, Clay had run interference for Mo, keeping him focused on the music rather than the transactions going on in the factory shadows.

  At Clay’s front gates, there were bro-hugs all around. “It’s only the beginning,” Fiasco told Clay, handing the Rickenbacker’s severed neck through the driver’s window.

  “You want your amp?” Spider called from the side door.

  “Keep it,” Clay said, carrying his guitar case like an empty body bag into the night. “I don’t have much use for it right now.”

  Sudden, crushing loneliness made a lousy counterpoint to the sense of oneness he’d felt with the crowd two hours before. Clay wondered if this was why so many musicians put themselves through endless tours while their marriages fell apart and their mansions stood empty. When the music was over, what was left but all-consuming silence?

  Making his way up the driveway, Clay skirted his father’s Mercedes and Estelle’s lemon-colored Bug. These days, the two of them were home before midnight every night, the master suite doors shut up and ’80s hair ballads masking whatever gross debauchery was underway inside. So Clay skipped the house entirely, unlocking the Generator and stepping inside to find the lights already on. The room was empty. But someone had been here. Clay noticed a subtle shift in the furniture, a displacement of the jumbled, but organized chaos on the coffee table, a reshuffling of the sheet music on the music stand. Not Boyle’s doing—the resident apparition had an uncanny talent for leaving things just as they were. No. Someone’s been spooning my porridge. Someone in the flesh. But who would bother? Essie, out of curiosity? His father, on a meddlesome search for drugs? “Rocco?” Clay called. “Who was in here?”

  A minute passed. He felt nothing of the spatial-presence that coincided with Boyle entering the room. He drew an At the Drive-In record from the leaning Pisa tower in the corner and dropped it onto the player. Just as he lowered the needle, something TICK-Tick-ticked outside.

  Clay waited for the sound to repeat.

  It did—a pebble, or something of equal size, skittered across the stone walk and plinked off the Generator’s open door. Clay poked his head out and witnessed a third pebble clearing the perimeter wall, flying in a wide arch to land in the moonlit grass. “Who goes?” he bellowed.

  “Come on, dude, your voice isn’t that deep.”

  “Savy?”

  “Let me in. There’s a cantankerous bat flapping around out here.”

  Clay hurried to the front gate, unlocking it manually. Savy scampered out of the scrub, in the exact place as the first time he’d laid eyes on her, carrying her case in one hand and—and the Rickenbacker’s missing body in the other. The visual, of Savy suddenly appearing in the streetlight with the guitar he never thought he’d see again, left Clay dumbfounded. Where had she disappeared to? How had she found it? How had she gotten to his gates? There was no car in the cul-de-sac.

  “I couldn’t let those savages keep such a beautiful instrument,” Savy told him. “A little detective work, and I tracked it to some skater twerps taking it as a souvenir. Then I ran into a friend—the keyboardist from Robo-Baby? She gave me a lift here in her Barracuda.”

  “Wow,” Clay told her. “Damn. Thanks.”

  “Mo said you looked out for him when I was gone. Call it even.”

  In the Generator, they pieced the Rick together and studied the jagged fracture in the fretboard, the broken strings frayed out like bolts of lightning. “Even if Fiasco finds a specialist, it could be months before she’s working again,” Clay said. “And this guitar… it’s not a guitar that looks like the one Boyle played. It is one that Boyle played. I found her buried under the floor right over there.”

  Savy’s jaw dropped, but only a little.

  “This is going to sound stupid, but sometimes it felt like a little of Rocco Boyle was still on the strings.”

  “Now you’re worried the magic’s going to wear off.” Savy nodded, understanding. “Musicians are a superstitious lot. I used to carry a blue scarf my mother gave me, tied it over my jeans like this…” She propped a boot on the coffee table and pantomimed a knot-tie around her thigh
. Her jeans had several slits in the denim and Clay fought the urge to peak at the exposed flesh. Good thing, because Savy looked Clay square in the eye then, her own eyes narrowing. “But it’s bullshit, man. There are no magic feathers. Good music comes from passion and skill and hours of practice. That’s how we won the crowd tonight. We did that. You did that.”

  Also, it didn’t hurt to have a dead rock star helping to write your songs. Clay shrugged, but Savy was determined to prove her point. She popped her case open and lifted out her double-horned Gibson. “Play something.”

  “Sav, my energy is through the floor—”

  “Shut up and play. I mean it.”

  Clay could see that she did, and he dropped into the nearest chair, as she rooted through her backpack, tossing out her phone, eyeliner, guitar strings, the latest Karney and the Demons CD—which some of the Demons (though not Karney himself) had signed after the show—before locating a pick among the loose change. “Vocals too,” she warned.

  Clay’s throat was cheese-grater raw from the show, but he managed a decent rendition of “Skeletons at the Feast,” the second song he and Boyle had collaborated on, even doing Savy’s own solo, just to be a wiseass. “See that, Dumbo?” she told him. “The magic feather can suck it.”

  Clay smiled. He didn’t know how many of Crissy’s partygoers would remember his performance tonight, but he could see that Savy would; he’d proven something, answered the question she’d been asking about him. And thankfully, it was the answer he’d wanted her to have. “I’m glad you showed up. Otherwise, I’d have spent the night feeling sorry for myself.”

  “Talk to Mo,” she warned. “He’ll tell you what a night of me in your ear’s like.”

  “Well, I’d take a night of you any day of the week.”

  The words were out, cheesy, unfiltered, before Clay could help himself.

  “Quarantined” whispered from the record player. Had one of them stepped forward? They were standing close all of a sudden. Not enough air between them to even breathe, really.

  At least until Savy turned and sat on the back of the couch. “I didn’t mean to give you the wrong impression, showing up here.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Because it can’t be that way.”

  “I know.” Clay’s voice quivered only a little.

  She wasn’t looking at him anymore—given the angle of her gaze, she was probably counting the yellow stitches in his boots. He told her, “I’m just, you know, a little disturbed you think you’re in my league.”

  Savy laughed and squeezed his bicep. But as she put her guitar away, Clay was troubled to feel his loneliness returning, worse than before. And he asked her, with even less filter, not to go.

  They talked, and talked—about bands, books, films, the state of the world, where they would travel on tour in the next year—and when Savy expelled her fifteenth yawn, Ubering home no longer seemed like an option.

  They lay flat on the shag carpet in the loft, staring at the stars through the skylight. With this perspective, Clay could confess how terrified he’d been to play tonight. Savy claimed she felt the same, had always felt terrified stepping on stage. And it was a gracious thing to admit, even if Clay didn’t buy it.

  The moon wandered across the night and was gone by the time they nodded off. Clay woke an hour before dawn to find Savy curled up beside him. Feeling the steady warmth of her—the slow labor of her lungs, the dream-twitch of her thighs—was intimate, almost as intimate as if they’d screwed each other’s brains out. Well. No. But it was nice. Even if Savy wouldn’t open her heart to a bandmate, who knew what the future might hold? Two lost souls, on a winter tour in Maine or Minnesota, cuddling for warmth in BadVan. Practically essential.

  A creak interrupted his thoughts.

  Clay lifted his head. Someone was climbing the stairs. “Dad?” Clay whispered, more for Savy’s benefit than his own. Savy was fast asleep, though, and so was his father, curled up with Essie in the main house. And when the creaks arrived in the loft, they brought no body with them. “Hey, man. Kind of a private moment.”

  Boyle ignored him. When he spoke, there was an edge to his voice that hadn’t been there since the night they’d used Farewell Ghost on Deidre. What’s this?

  At first, Clay assumed he’d meant Savy and opened his mouth to explain that there had been no nookie between guitar players, it was purely a friend-thing under the stars.

  Then Boyle lifted Savy’s Karney and the Demons album into the moonlight and, from that moment, everything changed.

  “We opened for them tonight,” Clay whispered. “It turned out to be a lot more than a birthday party. I’ll tell you the whole massive story when—”

  All the new bands we spoke about. You never told me about this one.

  Clay hesitated. His whispers might as well have been a bullhorn in the quiet of the loft. “You never asked what your old bandmates were up to. I didn’t think you wanted to know.” In truth, Clay hadn’t wanted to tell Boyle about it either, since Hank Ooljee was three years dead and Barrett Roethke had gone on to fortune and fame with another act.

  The record cover, hovering on the air, turned as Boyle reexamined the band picture on the back. I didn’t even recognize my old drummer way in the back. That’s an additional kick in the groin. I was referring to the ass-fuck taking up ninety-percent of the photo.

  “That’s Davis Karney. He holds himself in… pretty high regard.”

  He wasn’t Davis Karney when I knew him.

  “Wait.” Clay’s pulse took a running leap. He wriggled loose of Savy and started to sit up. “You knew him?”

  Small world.

  “No. Tell me it isn’t what I’m thinking.”

  Back then he called himself—

  “Him? Rooster?”

  I shouldn’t be surprised. I just assumed The Hailmaker discarded him after he discarded me.

  “Jesus, Roc, you’re telling me… Davis Karney was the one who broke in here—”

  Clay, stop talking.

  “—and forced you to—”

  Stop. Talking.

  The record fell to the carpet. Boyle drew back.

  Clay turned to find Savy’s eyes open. Her head had lifted and she was staring in the direction of Boyle’s voice. “Holy shit,” she moaned, wide-awake in a hurry.

  She sees me, Clay. She’s lookin’ right at me.

  “Holy shit!” Savy’s fingers raked Clay’s forearm. “Are you seeing this? It’s him! He’s standing right over us!”

  There’s nothing to be afraid of, Boyle assured her. Clay and I are friends. He’ll explain—

  “He’s trying to say something, but no sound’s coming out.”

  “He’s telling you there’s nothing to be afraid of,” Clay told her.

  Savy begged him with her eyes. “You see him too then?”

  “I don’t see anything. But I can hear him. Crystal clear.”

  “Fuck, I can’t hear him, but I can see him.”

  Well, fuck me, Boyle said. Between the two of you—

  “—you’re a fully formed spirit,” Clay marveled.

  “He’s backing toward the stairs.” Savy sat up, jumping to her knees. “He looks upset.”

  “Roc, you told me ghosts like to confess things. So—what did Karney do to you?”

  “You know him, Clay,” Savy realized. “You’ve known him all along.”

  At this point, Boyle abandoned pretense and lifted the record again. I’m angry. And a little freaked out your bedtime buddy can see me. I shouldn’t have said anything. I just can’t believe… he, of all the pricks with small dicks in the world, he’s a rock star now?

  There was a moment’s pause, in which Savy told Clay, “He’s walking backward down the stairs. Or—maybe he’s floating down them.”

  “Please, tell me,” Clay called.

  You want to help? Keep writin’ music. Put everything into your band. Do things right. And steer clear. You hear me? Steer clear of Rooster Rock Star.
The Hailmaker isn’t far behind.

  “The Hailmaker?” Clay shouted into the dark.

  Several moments passed, enough for him to realize that Savy was gripping him to the bone. “He’s gone,” she said at last.

  Playing his first gig, opening for one of the world’s biggest rock bands, sleeping with Savy Marquez (in the purest sense of the phrase), then discovering the identity of someone complicit in Boyle’s murder—who happened to front the band he’d just opened for—was enough to keep Clay’s eyes open the rest of the night. He imagined people fell into comatose states of shock from less.

  After Boyle’s appearance, Clay and Savy had relocated themselves to the main house, taking refuge in Clay’s bedroom which, since Deidre’s posthumous removal, had been as safe and unhaunted a place as any. “How long have you been able to hear him?” Savy asked.

  “Since a few days after moving in,” Clay admitted. “Someone was playing guitar in the Generator. I went to investigate, found the Rickenbacker, then found—or heard—Rocco too.”

  “That’s a hell of a secret.” In the blue-gray of predawn, Savy looked younger, a kid again, as vulnerable as her little brother had waking in front of the TV. “Does he follow you around? Or stay on the property?”

  “I’ve only known him to appear in the Generator. Where he died. That’s his anchor to this world. He says he can’t go anywhere else.”

  “Why was he so interested in my Demons album?”

  Clay let his breath out and thought, Here it is, boy-o—the truth or bust. “I guess there’s not much point in us keeping secrets anymore.”

  “No,” Savy replied, “we should be very candid with each other.”

  “Rocco knows Davis Karney. I think Karney was his old dealer. In those days, he went by ‘Rooster’—that ring a bell?”

  “Never heard him called Rooster. I did read an interview he did in Rolling Stone early in his career, where he gushed over Rocket Throne—how Rocco Boyle was the whole reason he wanted to play. Of course these days Karney seems to think he invented music.”