by Doug Lawson
We watched them spin. The smoke spiraled languidly up off the slow fuse.
“Give it a sec,” I said. “Then, maybe hit the deck?”
“Don’t worry,” my father said. “I got it.”
Before I could stop him, he stood and brought up the rifle. He aimed and pulled the trigger and I leapt for a clump of rocks. It was back and off to the right, and I pulled Nikki down with me, knowing I was going to be too slow. Those huge balloons full of acetylene were way too close. I hit pretty hard and she came down on top of me and all the air huffed out of her tiny lipsticked mouth and then I heard the shot from the rifle echoing back. Nikki’s mascaraed eyes were wide.
We waited. “It’s awfully quiet?” she said.
I sat up and looked out from behind the rocks.
My father lowered the gun. “Made you jump,” he said. His chin quivered aggressively at me.
I wanted to hit him. I got up and opened my mouth, but then the balloons actually did erupt, with a blast of heat and light and a sound that I felt deep in my gut. It pushed me back onto my ass, and as I fell I saw my father going over, too, only he was much closer to the steep edge. His arms went up and wide, like someone trying to catch a football thrown too high, and he stumbled back from the walker and went backwards over the edge.
I ran over to where he’d been and looked down. His feet were sticking out of the scrub about ten feet down. I jumped and slid down to him.
“Dad?”
I heard a moan. I helped him sit up. He was covered in dirt, a pretty deep scratch across his scalp was starting to bleed, and there were cuts and scratches all up his arms. His hair and beard had gone all wild. I brushed some of the dirt away.
“Well, fuck,” he said.
“Come on,” I said, studying the hill. “Let’s try and get you back up there.”
“Gordon,” he said. “Gordie.” I turned back. The dirt had filled in the twisted worry lines. Blood dripped down his furrowed forehead. He coughed, and his bloodshot eyes looked back at me. Up under his thin hair I could see the curve of his skull. “You could just leave me out here, you know,” he said quietly.
“For the mountain lions?” I tried to joke. “You’re too full of gristle.”
He shook his head. “Later. Think it through,” he said. “Encarnita’s gone. You tell the girl I’m just spending some time alone up here. Do you want another twenty years of this? Hell, Gordie. Man the fuck up.”
“You guys OK down there?” Nikki called. I turned and gave her a thumbs-up.
“Let’s get you back to the Jeep,” I said. I avoided eye contact. “You’ll feel better when you’re cleaned up.”
He sighed and said nothing. Then he mumbled words he didn’t think I could hear. After a minute I got his arm around my shoulder, he put his around my waist, and we limped back up the path together.
Nikki came down part way and met us with the walker and the rifle. “I couldn’t get the tanks,” she said. “And did you see them?” She pointed, and three large helicopters swung up and over the ridge in a blast of sound. They were black and shiny. Under each of them hung a cable, and as they passed over us we saw that at the end of each was a young guy dressed in camo with a clean crew cut and a glittering new rifle strapped across his chest. They swung low. The downdraft from the blades kicked up dust into our eyes. But it wasn’t so much dust that I couldn’t see how those young men all stared at Nikki as they passed over, and how she watched them back. One of them waved, and after a second she tucked her hair back over her ear and raised a tentative hand in return.
When we got my father cleaned up and back to the cabin, everyone else was there, all of the living members of Old Dog Dreaming. Old Thom had brought his gigantic acoustic bass and Marlena her mandolin. Rory had the silver banjo and Kobi his drums, which took up most of the cabin.
My father cursed us all out for the surprise—it had been, what, fifteen years since they’d all been in the same place?—and they all just smiled back at him and lied and said that he looked great, and I could see that he liked it. We ate tamales and grilled steaks and drank beer and the mezcal. When Marlena started picking out the opening of “Long Road Home,” everyone put down the drinks and picked up instruments, made eye contact and came in on the chorus. I sat in on guitar in my mother’s place.
As the blue fog wended its way up through the trees and as the cold moon rose up full and bright above it in all of its heartless rectitude, and as the owls called out across the canyons and found each other again for another night, we lit candles. Then we filled that old cabin with a swell of sound.
The deep rumbling of Thom’s strings drove us forward. His hands jumped up and down the frets of that huge bass like leaping spiders and the cords in his neck rippled. Marlena strummed and picked across those silver strings, her fingers moving like a breeze across a field of grass.
We slid into “Uncertain Smile” and “Kilimanjaro,” and Marlena sang my mother’s parts, her voice rounding out the low notes in a way my mother never could. She nodded Rory into his solo and he ran with it. He leaned back, shut his eyes, and he belted out the words while the banjo jumped and knocked there against his stomach like a starving calf rooting around there for milk. Kobi beat on. Up under that pork pie hat he had a distant look, like he could see through the walls and all the way to the ocean. Something beautiful was coming, his face seemed to say. Soon the rest of us would see it.
My father sat with his eyes closed and a frown on his face, the fiddle and bow untouched in his lap. But I could see his left hand twitching, as though the fingers set themselves down on invisible strings.
Nikki watched us all, eyes wide, swaying and tapping her foot.
We broke and laughed and nodded around at each other. I looked at Marlena and then at Rory, who nodded his chin in my father’s direction. His eyes were still closed, but he sat up straight and alert, and his bow was in his hand. Rory shrugged and nodded, and Marlena mouthed the words try it and so I opened up “Lay Me Down,” one of Dad’s best songs. Kobi came in at my back.
My father didn’t open his eyes, but he tucked the fiddle under his chin and poised the bow. Then when we hit the rise of that second verse, where Marlena brings in the sad harmony, he was there. Quietly at first. He eased the notes out slow, but the song built that way, as though at first the fiddle is a summer memory that’s just out of reach.
We came to the chorus and my dad built right along with us and then there was his solo and he had it. The bow flashed him down the runway and he ducked his head and lifted up, up, and then he threw out that fire that caught the air and it stretched up high above us and shined there like a flight plan to a better place. He nodded to himself and his hands jumped and he darted and weaved with the bow and built that wild bridge up to the solo my mother would always do, note by note. I looked at Marlena, who shook her head. She nodded over at Nikki, who blinked and sat up and shook her head, looking at me. I shrugged ok by me and Marlena nodded again and then Nikki swallowed yes. My father hit that high note, and with her eyes wide she came in on the solo in perfect pitch. Her voice was pure and clear, like ice water, and the members of Old Dog Dreaming all looked at her, so shining and young there in the middle of all of them. She laid down that haunting heartbreak melody of loving and dying with the rosy light of those candles shining on her face.
My father’s eyes were open. He stared at Nikki. His cheeks were wet. I wondered if he saw my mother, the way she was before everything went so wrong. His lips moved to the words, too, along with Nikki, and when her solo ended he ducked his head again, his gray hair falling across his face, and he threw out that desperate fiery riff that embraced and echoed the solo, that drove it all home.
But then I felt it before I heard it. Nikki and Rory sang on, but when I looked up I saw Marlena and Thom did too. My father’s timing had gotten a half-beat off. He frowned and pushed harder, but then he went sharp and I could see that confused him. He sawed harder, and started stomping one foot to the beat unt
il I could feel the old floor shake, and flung his head back and forth, but it did not help.
I could not catch my breath. It was like watching a tightrope walker fall.
And then the high E string snapped. My father made a sound somewhere between a moan and a shout and before we could stop him he turned and smashed that old fiddle against the wall.
Nikki trailed off, staring, her hand over her mouth. Then all of us came to a cacophonous end.
It was my fault, Nikki said later, after I calmed him down and got him more Seroquel and Ativan. Everyone said it didn’t matter, that he had done just great, and patted him on the back. But the sad sufferance in their voices only made his chin quiver and the dark lines on his face grow deeper in the light of the candles. We had awkward cake. Rory took me aside, put his hand on my shoulder and said something meant to be encouraging. Everyone but Nikki left early. I got my father into bed and gave him another sedative and then walked out into the orchard.
It was my fault, she said, quietly, as she came up behind me there and took my hand. She led me to some old horse blankets spread beneath the sprouting trees. My fault, she said, taking off first her clothes and then my own. Mine, she said, shivering, and then I shook my head and she whispered shhh, don’t be a pussy into my ear and I sighed and touched her hip. Like a terrible wind she drew me down into the blankets and closed her eyes. I was an old brown bird, gasping for breath, and somewhere an owl called out and said oohh, ohhh.
She drifted off, but I stayed awake. I watched the way the night wind shifted her hair. I watched the sky spin and the high satellites cut faint trails through it. I heard the coyotes yowl from the next canyon, a skunk digging in the trash, a jet from LA dropping flaps and decelerating like some awful flashing angel, and then I heard the shot.
I grabbed my pants and ran to the hangar. I threw open the door. My father sat in the rear cockpit of the dilapidated Travel Air. The moon shone down on him through a cracked air vent. He had the old leather cap on, the headset, and he was pale and drenched in sweat.
I climbed up. In one hand he held the barrel of the rifle. The trigger lock and key—the key I’d had in my pocket—was in his lap. He’d pulled the trigger with his toe, but had flung the barrel away at the last instant. I could see dust raining down from where he’d put a hole in the roof.
Also in his lap was my old spice jar, the one with the cloud in it that I thought I’d lost years ago. It was open. I could smell the cumin.
“Gordie,” he whispered. “Gordie, is that you?”
His eyes were wide. He stared up at the air vent, up at that moon. He reached out a hand toward it.
“I’m here,” I said. “I’m here.”
“Gordie, I can’t see you. I can’t see anything!” he whispered.
“I’m right here,” I said. I climbed into the cockpit with him and took away the gun. I took off his headset and the sounds of Miles Davis spilled over us. I slid him over and then lifted him trembling and shaking into my lap like a child, and I tucked his clammy head back against my chest. Some birds don’t, I thought. I looked up into that terrible moon with him. It seemed so close. The music came to an end. The air shimmered; the craters up there seemed to rearrange themselves, like those floaters that drift on those ocular winds across the surface of our eyes, and I thought: what more are we than those?
Blink once and we all scatter.
Blink twice and we’re all gone.
MY YEAR UNDER THE DOG STAR
SEVERAL WEEKS BEFORE he died, my father showed up for my wedding on time, riding a meticulously restored World War II army motorcycle with Jessica, his nurse, in the sidecar. I was surprised to see him so early—Ted is late for everything, and we hadn’t expected him until the reception was well underway. His trademark red and gray beard trailed back over his shoulders like a flag, and he wore a brown leather jacket, a leather flying cap fastened tight under his chins, and a pair of goggles like an old barnstormer. He crouched low over the handlebars, folded over his strangely protruding stomach. For a quick minute I thought he was the one who was pregnant, except Jessica was even larger. She was wrapped in a blue-green Irish shawl that had belonged to my grandmother, and she wore a heavy yellow plastic helmet that Ted had probably borrowed from a construction site. She waved to me. I waved back.
Kelly hadn’t arrived yet. Guests had been queuing up to find their seats under the large canopy, but they froze in their tracks like gazelles confronted by the first sight of a lion. With waves and smiles all around, my father pulled the old bike right up onto the lawn instead of parking in the dirt lot, and he started into a noisy, spluttering loop around the white tents and the carefully groomed landscaping. He weaved in and out of the redwoods, through the gardens, around the koi pond, past the musicians.
The Indian caterers were horrified. My dogs all started barking, from over beyond the gazebo where I’d penned them up. Kelly’s parents looked startled in the way only the British can, as if they’d swallowed a piece of bad fish, bones and all. The guests didn’t know what to think. Was this part of the event? Even the DJ, a well-preserved surfer from Boulder Creek, had a blank look on his tanned, bearded face.
The music ground to a halt, and we all stood and watched him. What else could we do? Technically it was his land. The smoke from the bike’s exhaust was thick and blue-gray, and in the quiet mid-morning it entangled itself in the lower branches of the redwoods and hung there like a garland. Sod churned up by the bike tires rained down across the white canopy, the chairs, and even some of the guests’ subtly-hip-yet-casually-expensive clothes.
I raised my hand to flag him down as he passed me, without much hope. He gave me a solid high-five as he passed. Then he kicked the bike into a lower gear for more traction and spun off toward the bandstand.
I sighed. Even if you’re not in business, you’ve read about Ted Belvedere, the cutthroat venture capitalist. Ted is all energy. He likes to be at the center of things, and is always on a stage of one kind or another. He’d been the one to move from Long Island to California in the ’70s, surfing and living in the back of a VW van. He’d hung out for a time with Ken Kesey over in La Honda and gotten himself written into a novel. He’d married and tragically lost the movie starlet Gia Paverson, my long-lost mother. He had money in Google and Netflix, ate breakfast now with famous CEOs. Valley hopefuls flocked to him like moths, and he ate them one by one like a lizard would, relishing how they fluttered desperately on the end of his long tongue.
At least he’d picked a time before Kelly had arrived. Her father Leonard leaned over and whispered something to her mother. Leonard’s face, I thought, wore that deeply etched frown easily, like it was slipping on an old shoe. Margaret nodded, whispered something back. She hiked up a shoulder strap of her bra and darted a quick scowl in my direction.
I shrugged. I know my father. It could have been much, much worse.
Finally, Ted slowed down and made as if to stop by one of the food tables: samosas, chapatis, pakoras, bowls of namkeen and chutney. He waved again to the starting bartender and the waiters, to assembled guests, and gave a falsely-dignified, seated bow to the mother of the bride.
It was only then that he, and the rest of us, noticed the Balrog.
The Balrog was a sweet and well-meaning dog, with issues. He was a rescued mutt from Sacramento. He was our first dog, and I had made so little progress with training that I’d long ago given up hope, which made him my favorite of all the dogs we’d gotten this past year. He was a mix of Doberman and Great Dane and greyhound, tall and thick and awkward, with a long and deep chest, spindly yet powerful brown legs, and unclipped elephant ears that wrapped around his head like sheets when he shook them. At his shoulder, he stood as high as the wedding cake’s third tier. He was wild and excitable, and he was very, very fast.
The Balrog was so worked up by the noise and smoke of the old bike that he had scaled the temporary fencing I’d put up, sprinted across the bridge over the koi pond, and gathered speed across t
he open field we’d cleared for dancing. He was a tongue-flailing, ear-flapping, brindled missile who had locked on to my father, and he was coming in at about thirty-five miles an hour.
I watched it all in slow motion. Ted’s thick eyebrows exploded into action behind the goggles, and he throttled up the old engine. The bike backfired, spouting fumes and black smoke, and lurched forward. Jessica, who was about my age, looked startled. She glanced behind her, noticed the Balrog, and flapped her hands, her long, white fingers waving like loose pieces of yarn.
Ted pointed the bike back at the road, where an old, eggshell-blue wedding truck was just pulling up, and he raised a hand in my direction. Whether it was to wish me good luck, to flip me off, or just to make his exit was hard to tell, although I had my suspicions.
But the Balrog was just too fast. As the dog closed the last yard, he stumbled on all of the torn-up sod and went into an uncontrolled roll that ended as he hit the side of the bike’s front tire hard. Ted promptly lost control and pitched himself and Jessica headlong into one of the canopy poles. The canopy came down on top of all the chairs, two of the waiters, and many of the guests, including a screeching Margaret.
There was smoke and the smell of gasoline, and shouts from underneath the tent. Leonard and I ran over and tried to help. The bike was on its side with the motor still running, and fuel was squirting out of the broken line. I found the switch and shut that off, as two of my cousins, dressed in bright matching rugby shirts from some British pub in Shanghai, climbed out from under the canopy and tried to set it all straight.
My father lay on his side not too far away from the bike, and Jessica was over near part of the landscaping, construction helmet askew and her arms around her burgeoning stomach. I went to Jessica first, and helped her sit up. There was a streak of dirt on her forehead, and she was working to catch her breath. She held my arm for a minute, then looked me in the eye and nodded that she was OK.