by Doug Lawson
“You know, I’d love to meet him.” She smiled and the tiny ruby in the side of her nose caught the light and made me blink. “Seriously—after my brother died, his songs saved my life in high school.”
“Everybody says that.”
“Everybody?”
“Everyone your age.” Though they hadn’t toured in decades, inclusion of a song in a sleeper-hit indie film had pushed Old Dog Dreaming from ancient to trendy again about ten years ago. Kids remixed and lip-synced the songs on YouTube. Original vinyl records went for almost four figures on eBay.
She gave me the finger. “And, well.”
“And?”
A pack of noisy jays flew by, squawking loudly. “We could, you know . . .”
“Can you hike a trail?” I said. “Haul a moose? Are you good with acetylene?”
“I’m trainable.” Then she blinked. “Really? Moose?”
“You know he’s not himself anymore. It’s worse than you’ve read.”
“If it’s a big deal? This isn’t, you know, like a boss thing.”
“No, no,” I said. “Actually, he’ll probably really like you.”
“I’m sorry, by the way,” she said. “That I’m so hard on you.”
“I know you’re just trying to maximize all possible returns on shareholder investments,” I said.
“You read that from a book, didn’t you.” She gave me the finger again, grinned and then took a shining green lollipop from her glove compartment, unwrapped it, and stuck it in her mouth. She must be all of twenty-three, I thought. Soon she would rule the world.
I went to the other side of the Jeep to change. A helicopter passed over, a shiny black one with an open door on the side. Someone leaned out and studied the ground with binoculars. Probably spotting for marijuana operations—those were all over the hills. We’d even had trouble out near my father’s ranch.
I waved. He didn’t. I changed in the barn instead.
The paramedics were at my father’s house when we drove up. I had an immediate sinking feeling. Encarnita sat out on the steps holding a bottle of mezcal in one hand and an icepack to the side of her face with the other.
Encarnita read my expression as I climbed out of the Jeep. “It wasn’t his fault, exactly,” she said.
“Are you all right?” I said.
She looked up at me, and I could see the bruise spreading underneath the ice. “This,” she said, holding up the bottle. “This is for you. At least it will be in a minute.” She twisted the top off, took a long pull, and made a face. She put the top back on. “Now. This is for you.”
“Jesus, I’m sorry. Whatever he did,” I said. “What did he do?”
She shook her head. “I just got in between a book and a wall.”
“Please, please, please don’t quit,” I said, but she looked away.
I looked at the paramedic. He was an older guy with a nose like a beak, and he looked exhausted. He was startlingly tall and sweating profusely, and he carried a small, empty animal crate. He gestured inside. We went in. The large bookcase of songbooks and sheet music had fallen across the couch, and papers were scattered on the floor. A lamp had been knocked over, and an acoustic guitar—the one the whole band had signed for him—looked like it had been thrown against a wall. It lay shattered there beneath a large dent in the Sheetrock. We went through to the study, where the other paramedic was sitting with my father, cross-legged on the floor in a disaster of books and spilled houseplants.
“Wow,” Nikki said. I sighed. There was a big black rabbit in my father’s lap, and he was petting it slowly.
“Dad,” I said. “What the fuck.” He looked haggard there in his gaping bathrobe, with his oily hair plastered up one side of his head and wild canyons of anxiety carved into his face and neck.
“It’s her rabbit,” my father said, pointing to the sitting paramedic.
“It’s a new program,” the paramedic said. She’d been to the house so much in the last few months that I knew her name was Isabella, that she had three children, a useless husband, and that she loved hip-hop and appletinis. “It helps calm them down.”
Them, I thought. He’s a category now. “It’s not exactly about the goddamn rabbit, now, is it?” I said to my father.
“You had a rough day, didn’t you, Mr. Hogart?”
My father looked down at the rabbit. “You can call me Cris,” he said to Isabella, almost shyly. “If you want to.”
Nikki said, “Maybe I should come back?”
I sighed. “I did warn you.” But I held out my hand to ask her to stay.
Some days were good—I’d get back to the house to find him sitting in front of his keyboard, drinking tea and composing. He hadn’t actually played an instrument for a decade—he said the meds messed him up too much, and I suspected it ran deeper than that. But he still wrote some. Other days, he’d be moaning and spinning in his bed, spilling an unending stream of nonsense out of his mouth. And then there were days like today.
“I didn’t know you had a daughter,” Isabella said, holding her hand out to Nikki.
“OMG!” Nikki said, frowning. “He doesn’t.”
“She’s my boss. A start-up.”
Isabella frowned, and took her hand back. “Hey,” she said. “Sorry. The, uh, nose thing threw me off there.”
My father looked up. “Helena?” he said.
“Dad, Isabella—this is Nikki.”
“Mierda! Gordie, she’s the spitting image.”
“Mr. Hogart,” Nikki said. “It’s great to meet you. I was telling Gordon earlier how much your music meant to me.”
“I was rather transformational, wasn’t I? Some say I still am in certain ways.” He waggled his bushy eyebrows and patted the floor next to him.
“Are they both OK?” I asked Isabella, meaning my father and Encarnita.
She nodded. “He will be. Just keep him calm, and don’t let him throw things. I gave him some Ativan and made him take his meds. Gordon, it really is time, you know.” Isabella had perfected that tone of condescending sternness used by nurses, dental hygienists, and kindergarten teachers. “You really need to get him into an environment that can give him more care and supervision.”
“Dad, are you listening? Isabella said it’s time for you to go into a home.”
“I have a home,” my father said, glaring at me. “This one has just one fucked-up person in it.”
“She says you need more attending.”
“I’ve certainly got something that needs attending to. You know how long it’s been, Gordie?”
“I’m not sure you’re helping, Gordon,” Isabella said. “In fact, I’m kinda sure you’re not.”
Encarnita came in, holding the icepack. The pale, sweating paramedic drifted in behind her like a tall shadow with a clipboard in his hands. “Gordon, I got to go,” she said.
“You’re OK?”
“The ice will keep that swelling down,” Isabella said. She took the clipboard from the older paramedic and looked at it.
“Which,” Encarnita said, “is why I’m still holding it to the side of my face, OK? I’ll need my keys,” she said, looking at my father.
“What?” he said.
“Those tiny magic metal things I use to start up my car, compadre.”
“Dad,” I said.
My father reached into the pocket of his dirty robe and pulled them out. “Well, since you asked so fucking nicely.”
Isabella sighed and flipped some papers on the clipboard. I grabbed the keys from my father and handed them to Encarnita. I held out the bottle of mezcal to her, too, but she shook her head. “Got to go, Gordon. You know that’s hipster stuff, right? It’s distilled with a raw chicken?”
“Sounds just perfect,” I said.
“I’d have some of that,” Nikki said. She pushed some books out of the way and sat on the floor next to my father. I took a drink first myself and then handed her the bottle.
“Can I change your mind?” I said to Encarnita. �
�He’s about to say that he’s very sorry, and that nothing like this will ever happen again.”
My father looked at Encarnita. “Fuck you,” he said, enunciating carefully. “Fuckety fuckety fuck.”
“Mr. Hogart!” Isabella said sternly.
“Well, Gordon, it’s been fun and all,” Encarnita said. She reached out, took my hand from where it hung at my side, and shook it. “See you.”
“Excuse me?” said the sweaty paramedic.
We all turned to look at him where he loomed there in the doorway. He seemed to sway there, in the middle of all of us, a haggard ghost from our past. “I think . . .” he said. His voice was child-like, as though he’d been breathing helium. “I think I—”
Then he deflated forward onto the floor.
“Holy crap,” said Nikki. “Is he OK?”
Encarnita and I turned him over. Isabella grabbed her kit and shone a light into his eyes.
“Come on, buddy,” I said. “Stay with us.” I imagined it was the kind of thing you were supposed to say. His face was ashy gray, but it looked like he was still breathing. He moaned and his eyes rolled around in their sockets, unseeing. His beak waved east to west. I thought I should smack his cheek a few times, but held off. “What’s his name?”
“Part-timer,” said Isabella. “Floater? I never name the older ones the first few days, until I know they’re going to tough it out.”
“That’s harsh,” said Nikki. “Maybe I should try that.” She looked at me. I rolled my eyes.
“Barry? Billy?” Isabella looked a little sheepish.
“His pulse is weak,” said Encarnita.
“Amigo,” my father said. “I know just how you feel.”
“Probably just dehydrated,” Isabella said. “Come on, Brad. Snap out of it.” She went ahead and smacked him, and he started to come around.
My father looked at us. “Does he need his little fuzzy bunny back?” He held the rabbit up by the scruff of the neck.
Encarnita sighed, got up, went to the sink, and came back with a glass of water. She drank some of it. Then she poured the rest over my father’s head. “Happy fucking birthday amigo,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to do that for weeks.”
“Honestly?” my father blinked. “I found that quite refreshing.” He brushed some of the splattered droplets off the rabbit and placed it on the paramedic’s chest. It tucked its ears back and settled down there, chewing on something. The man reached up and slowly wrapped his arms around it.
“My name is Kevin,” he groaned. “Kevin!”
“Of course it is, sweetie,” said Isabella, patting his cheek absently. She made a note on her clipboard. “Of course it is.”
Later, when everyone had cleared out, I got my father dressed and into the Jeep, and I loaded up everything else: his walker, the acetylene and helium tanks, the fuses and the rifle. I brought his fiddle, which had escaped his storm. Encarnita had packed some birthday tamales. Nikki made room for herself in the back seat somehow, and talked with my dad the whole way up. He preened and boasted, cursed in Spanish, thumped his fist on the dash, and told raunchy old stories about other famous musicians and that story about seeing Bigfoot I was sure he’d made up.
I loved the ranch as a kid, as much as my mother had hated it. I loved the smell of the old Quonset hangar, the way the old cabin creaked with the wind. Once I’d slept out in the old orchard, down past the airstrip, and I woke up surrounded by a herd of boar, rooting and grunting. The Spanish called this area the Sierra Azul—the Blue Mountains—and when the sun goes down and the coastal fog rolls up and over the spiny scrub and scotch broom, the poison oak and blackberry and the live oak, you can see where that name comes from.
We unloaded the food at the cabin, then took the Jeep up the old logging road. It led out to a path, and the path led up to a high, thin ridge. I parked, helped my dad out, and handed him his walker. “You want help getting up there?”
He looked up the steep slope and sighed. “Fuck you,” he said, his chin quivering, though I wasn’t sure whether he was cursing at me or the hill. He tied the bag of tamales to the metal frame of his walker and proceeded to mutter his slow way up to the top.
“What happened to her? To Helena?” Nikki asked, as we watched him. “Maybe that’s something else I shouldn’t ask about.”
I unloaded the tanks from the back of the Jeep and dug out the bag of balloons. “She’s up in the city now, I think,” I said. “Runs her own bar near the Tenderloin, plays sax for an old punk band.” I dragged one of the tanks up the hill to where my dad sat and came back for the other.
“Do I—” she said, and paused. She looked out over the scrub. She tucked her hair behind her ears and pulled the jacket a little tighter. I imagined I could read something there in the patterns of the freckles on her face. “Do I really look like her?”
“Nothing like her,” I lied. I handed her the tank nozzles and the roll of fuses.
“Because that would be, I don’t know. A little weird.”
“She was much older,” I said. “Almost fifteen. She had liver spots and wrinkles.”
“Fucker.” She grinned and hit me on the shoulder, and then followed me up the path to where the view caught her. She gasped and said “Oh!” and then sat down next to my father and stared. On one side, the ridge looked out over the ocean and you could see from Monterey all the way north up the curve of Route 1 to Santa Cruz. The sun glittered out there over the swirling layers of fog like some fiery prelude to an apocalypse. On the other side, hills ran down to wooded canyons of open space out to Morgan Hill, and then the valley stretched to Mount Hamilton and the Diablo Range. Standing up here was like standing on the edge of a knife.
I hooked the nozzles up to the tanks and checked the pressure gauges.
“You going to let me shoot this time, Gordie?” my father said, around a mouthful of greasy tamale. “’Cause you know that I want to.”
“You’re asking me to put a gun in your hands after what you pulled today,” I said.
He scowled and looked away from me. His chin quivered fiercely. “My ranch, my gun, my stump, my view, my fucking birthday.”
“You will follow the rules,” I said. “You will give it back when I ask for it, without any shit this time.”
He squinted at me and slowly nodded. I undid the trigger lock and handed him the rifle. I put the key and the lock in my pocket. “Wait until I tell you.”
“Where’s the moose?” Nikki asked.
I filled a small orange balloon with helium and tied it off. Then I held it up over my head. “Moose,” I said, and let it go. The wind grabbed it, and the balloon whipped away from us, staying pretty much at our level but moving out fast and getting smaller as we watched.
“All right,” I said to my father. “Go ahead.”
My father stood, cocked the rifle, and brought it up to his shoulder. He took a long minute to aim, letting out his breath and letting the shaking in his arms subside, and then pulled the trigger. The crack echoed around the canyons. Off in the distance, the balloon exploded soundlessly.
My father lowered the rifle and grinned. I filled up three more small balloons and let them fly. He sighted carefully, and popped each in turn.
“A la chingada, I still got it,” he said. “You want to give it a try?” he said, looking at Nikki.
She looked at me. I nodded. “Why not?” Nikki said. She brushed her hands on the front of her pants. “What do I do?”
He handed her the gun. She tucked the stock under her armpit and bent down over the barrel to look through the sight. “Like this?”
My father leaned over. “You hold it under here, see? Up here.” He moved her arms around. “And then the stock goes against your shoulder, against, not tucked in it. There you go,” he said. He patted her on the ass and stepped back. “Let her rip, missy-missy.”
She rolled her eyes, and then nodded. I filled some balloons and let them go. Nikki pulled the trigger, and the gun kicked and went high. The r
ecoil was so strong it knocked her backward and onto the ground.
“It’s got a kick to it,” I said.
“You think you might have mentioned that?” She sat up and set the rifle aside and rubbed her shoulder. “OMG.”
“Just ‘fuck’ would be quicker, wouldn’t it?” my father said, looking at me.
“Kids these days,” I said.
“You two are clearly related,” said Nikki. She looked pretty pissed.
“Ell-oh-ell,” I said. “No, seriously.”
I offered her a hand up, but she shook me off. She got up on her own, pulled the jacket tighter around her and walked over to the far edge where the ridge ended abruptly and dropped off into a deep canyon. The wind gusted. I could hear a helicopter in the distance. Her phone must have buzzed because she took it out of her pocket, looked at it, typed something into it with her thumbs, and then put it back. I was surprised she still got a signal out this far. She spit over the edge and watched it fall. Then she shook her head and came back. “What’s the fuse for, then?”
“You kinda have to see it,” I said. I took out five large blue balloons, filled them from the helium tank and tied them together. Then I took out four massive black ones and filled them from the acetylene tank and tied them together and to the helium balloons. I had to keep them all low to the ground because of the wind—I didn’t want static electricity setting them off.
I unspooled the fuse, tied one end to the neck of one of the black balloons, and cut it pretty long. “Still got that lighter?”
She patted her pockets. “Um . . .”
“Dad,” I said. “Jesus Christ.”
My father reached into his vest. “Well, look at what I found.” He handed it over.
Nikki said, “Should I, like, take cover?”
“Probably,” I said. “Darwin and all.”
I lit the fuse and let the balloons go. The wind caught them and whipped them around and carried them out over the drop, but then seemed to lose interest. They hung there, spinning, about fifteen feet out.
“That could be a problem?” Nikki said.