Dexter glanced up, eyes deep and filled with pain that struck Shaver physically, quick withdrawal and reaching with throbbing fingers for the coffee, drinking in a failed attempt to hide the intrusion into his friend’s mind. His own gaze dropped as he lifted the cup, locked to the swirling liquid and soft steam-stream that shifted over his cheeks. Hot burn of the cup through his gauze-bandaged fingers throbbing in time with the beat of his heart, winding down into other beats, soft and shivering quickly through his mind. He tasted the rich black coffee and quickly lowered the cup to the table.
The music Shaver had heard earlier shivered through him, deep burn searing through his soul but he ignored it, refused to grip the edges of the pattern. Madness. That was what insanity felt like. He knew it, sudden and sure, like the pain when he’d pressed that chord out of his guitar. Like falling and the hot scrape of palms on concrete, skin eaten and nerves exposed. Like staring into Dexter’s eyes and knowing the pattern was not controlled, but controlling, eating Dex from the inside out.
“How can I help, Dex?” Shaver asked. “What the fuck can I do? I can’t hum a tune to save the universe, and my fingers are so much chopped meat. Without my guitar, I can’t even come close to that song.”
“I know,” Dex answered slowly, “but somehow it matters that you are here. I told you, bro, it isn’t my song I hear. It isn’t Brandt’s or Syn’s echoing in my head, much as I’d like to think it is. It’s yours. I could tell you all the pain those other songs dragged out of me. I could tell you it was about us, but it isn’t. This time it’s you, Shaver. All you.”
Liz grabbed Shaver suddenly. “Don’t you freak out on me. Don’t you dare fucking play some weird-assed song and head off into the sunset.” She hit him then, a hard, pounding shot to the shoulder that shifted him in his seat, sloshing hot coffee over his bandaged hand and only a soft “O” of his lips to mark the passage of pain.
“Don’t worry Liz,” Dexter’s voice, haunted, half-empty, half sharp-edged determination, “not going to let that happen. Not going to be left here either, not again. I don’t have any reason to believe it, but I’m going on the possibility that I hear the music because I’m meant to. That it will mean something to me. That I’ll understand why one night I’m laying down rhythm for a half-assed band with a drunken singer and the next I’m caboose on the blues train, headed out of town and into some fucked-up, magic place I can’t even see.”
“What do you want from me?” Shaver said, voice whisper-thin and riding the edge of breakdown. His hands shook, throbbing pain of the torn skin joined with the steady burn from the hot coffee soaking the bandages.
“You tell me,” Dexter replied, “what the song is about. Tell me what Brandt dragged out of you that night, what Syn chased through your memory and back again. Tell me what made you want to press your fingers through those strings so tightly that it robbed you of the one thing that gives you release.”
Shaver pressed back into the seat of the booth, head shaking and eyes widening, then closing, hooded by lids striving suddenly and desperately to shut out the world. He shook his head, lips parting to speak and falling short of sound. He could feel those moments, those notes that had rippled through him: more than notes, images and dreams, memories and themes of pain and a childhood he had been running from full-tilt since his mother died. Since he was ten. Since the patterns had shifted, deep inside, and he’d begun a frantic quest to rearrange them into something sane.
“I can’t,” Shaver said at last.
“You can’t not, bro,” Dexter said sharply. “Hell, you think all this has grabbed us by the privates by accident? Time to move on, or go mad. I heard a whisper of a voice when Brandt was playing. Old voice, old and harsh and . . . deep. Wasn’t talking to me, but just that one moment, I heard it. No way I was tellin’ anyone about that, not as weird as things were, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what was said.”
Shaver whispered, “There were a lot of people there. You could have heard any one of them . . . could have been fucking Brandt, for all you know.”
Dex shook his head, but before he could speak, Liz leaned forward, eyes too bright and hands clasped around her coffee. “What did you hear, Dex? What did they say?”
“Crossroads, or crosshairs, all the same. No way outta the pain ‘cept t’rough da music, boy.”
Dexter’s voice had deepened as he spoke, and the intonation, the inflection, and Deep-South drawl sent a shiver racing so quickly up Shaver’s spine he nearly spilled his coffee again. He didn’t. He grabbed it, fingers pain-tight, wrapped as if they might press through the porcelain of the mug, and he drew the cup to his lips, drained it, warm-bitter liquid washing down his throat and failing to drown the memories. The table, Dexter, even Liz, who had gripped his arm again as he leaned back, all fast-fading as he fought to bury the should-be-dead images.
“No.” A single word to draw him back and his mind gripping it tightly, desperate claw-sharp concentration clutching tightly to sanity. Eyes closing trapdoor tight on the visions and his palms flat on the table . . . muscles taut in his arms and throat constricted. Then it receded. Not gone. Not less intense, but the pattern solidified, long soft breath returning his mind to him and with it his voice. “More coffee.”
Dex or Liz must have signaled the waitress, because the coffee appeared, clean mug and fresh wash of hot steam over his cheeks. Shaver never looked up. His thoughts whirled with the dark liquid. Walls were crumbling inside, memories shifting from archived never-open-even-on-Christmas nightmares to vivid present tense.
“Mom died when I was ten,” Shaver said at last. “Dad died, at least the part of him that mattered, about the same time. I wanted him to live.”
The room shifted. Shaver lifted and tilted the mug once more, but he barely tasted the coffee. His gaze was fastened on Dexter’s face, or a point far, far beyond it and out of sight. He felt Liz’s hand lying gently on his shoulder, but the warmth and closeness brought no comfort. It was a disassociated, random connection, lost in the moment, a moment puzzle-pieced together from memories and dreams.
The funeral parlor surfaced in his mind, a dark, surreal chamber filled with endless elongated shadows that were softened only by the eerie light of scattered candles. Men and women, some known, some dark phantom-masks as disconnected as the knowledge that his mother would not be coming home to cook supper, or breakfast, or anything—ever—roamed aimlessly about, their voices a low hum of white noise. Shaver had bounced from room to room, avoiding one set of eyes after another, searching, always, for his father’s dark-gray suit and ruffled hair. Watching for the light at the end of a darkness that crept deeper and deeper into his heart with each passing “I’m so sorry” from uncaring lips.
There had been nothing of his mother in that place. No light. No laughter or soft, floral smells. There had been grim music and the cloying sweetness of lilies. The over-perfumed wakes of black-clad women who wept for their own pain. And in the corner, like a silent sentinel, the guitar case, leaning almost casually against an empty casket. He tried not to look in that direction, tried to move away and into another room, but the moment sucked him in like a vacuum.
Fingers gripped his shoulder and too-strong perfume washed over him in a nauseating wave. Hen-like voices clucked encouragement in his ear as others droned on about what a wonderful boy he was and how his mother would be proud and would see/hear him from a better place and his muscles straining to push him back, failing, as he was seated center-stage at the death-masque Ritz. They didn’t want to hear him play. They didn’t think his mother was listening, either. Most of them had barely known her. They wanted him to draw them back to life. They thought the cute little boy with the shiny guitar could revitalize their depressed lives, death staring them too close in the face for comfort, and his life stronger, just beginning.
Shaver searched the dark wash of faces for his father. He found only strangers, glittering eyes, and grim-tight half-smiles devoid of emotion. Frantically, driven, Shaver slipp
ed his gaze from one to the next, back and on again. Someone had pressed the guitar into his hands, the sunburst finish catching the flickering light and licking at the periphery of his sight. His fingers gripped the neck of the instrument grimly. No comfort there, but the patterns coalesced, the candlelight and eye-flicker dance of life, and something inside shifted.
Shaver felt the strings beneath his fingers. He closed his eyes and smelled the lilies, the sickening backdrop of formaldehyde and salt-scented tears. The macabre strains of the organ had faded. Even the omnipresent backdrop of whispered comments had quieted. The world was silent, and only the squeal of Shaver’s nails over the strings of the old Epiphone acoustic broke the silence, sliding up and down, up and down, trying to decide what to play.
He didn’t want to play for them. He didn’t want to do anything for/with/around them. He wanted his mother. He wanted his father to come to him and tell him it was okay, but it was not his father who moved closer. The crowd moved in, gathering close as if it would help . . . as if it would not be the most claustrophobic, breath-stealing thing they could do, and Shaver gripped the strings more tightly still, eyes closing.
He let his fingers form the first chord, knowing halfway through that A Minor was what he would play, why, and to whom. He didn’t know the name of the song. He didn’t know where it had come from, when, or why, but it blossomed in his mind and blotted out the room and the stiff, white-faced mannequin that could not be his mother, laying ten yards away in a wooden box, and the image of his father’s dead, uncaring face. It blocked out whispered regrets hung in the heavy air by voices trying desperately to prove they cared about someone they barely knew. It erased the memory of the priest’s words, spoken in memory of someone Shaver had never known. Salvation was assured for that someone, but Shaver had known his mother, and it wasn’t so cut and dried.
He slid from the A Minor into C and onward, each note flowing from his memory and blending with its predecessors, mimicking the strains of long-memorized melody. Late nights and his room, dark and empty except his toys, macabre half-shadows dangling over the edges of his toy box and slipping stuffed limbs from under his bed. Nights where amber bottles and wine goblets had stolen both father and mother, and the ominous squeaking of the springs in their bed had kept Shaver rooted in place, unable to go to them for protection, or comfort. The music was always the same on those nights: too loud, walls and floor and bed vibrating in shimmering counterpoint.
There was a shuffle of feet as the tune manifested itself. As the blues-based country twang shivered off his strings and into the dead-formaldehyde-soaked air. Appropriate? That was the question they wouldn’t ask, but stared into one another’s eyes. Now? Here? Why? No answer from Shaver but the notes, pure and clean, cleaner than he’d ever played them.
His eyes rose slowly from the floor and he searched. He shifted from face to face, figure to figure, and found the doorway and his father’s eyes, windows within that doorway, open wide and staring. In that second, they linked. In that moment and that song, they understood one another as human beings and men and not mythical super-hero father to son. Shaver drank in the pain and his father shared the music. For that instant. Then, with a snap that nearly tore out Shaver’s heart, his father turned away, slipping from the room, and he was alone. Alone with the strangers, and the music, and he ran.
He didn’t run away from the room, he ran to the music. He ran through the music. He dove through the notes, driving them before him like a frightened herd of cattle. The tempo raced with his thoughts, and the thoughts fueled his heartbeat. He wanted his fingers to fail. Wanted it to end in a tangle of bone and flesh so he could smash the guitar on the floor and run from the room, but it wouldn’t happen. Faster, and faster still, chasing his mother’s memory through the room, searching and seeking with flying fingers caressing and milking the strings in ways he couldn’t even begin to understand.
His eyes were locked to the doorway. The empty doorway. He played, and he played harder, faster, and again, doubling and redoubling in his effort to bring his father back . . . to elongate that moment into a lifetime together. The white-noise rumble of the rest of the world intruded slowly, and he knew they would stop him, would take the guitar and the song and the moment, and none of the bastards even knew why he was playing. Hank Williams Senior two speeds above 45 and at least an eight on the Richter scale of his heart. Why wouldn’t he come BACK?
Then hands gripped his arms, the guitar, drawing him off the stool and away toward the back rooms, toward the food and the restrooms and the exit, mother left behind to be forgotten and twisted by the words of uncaring strangers, and his father fading into his own gray cloud.
Shaver looked up suddenly. His hands were pressed too tightly to the cup and the hot coffee had burned him. He did not release it. He gathered his thoughts, closed his eyes, then opened them again to find Dexter staring at him strangely. He felt a sharp pain, twisted quickly, sloshing coffee over his fingers again, and realized with a start it was Liz. Her nails bit deep into the flesh of his shoulder, and he felt her shaking. Even his twist failed to fully dislodge her.
“Liz,” he said softly, then again, more loudly, “Liz, let go for fuck’s sake. Are you trying to put my whole arm out of commission?”
Liz drew back suddenly, as if she’d been struck, or stuck her finger into a light socket. Shaking her head from side to side, eyes wide, she pulled back across the booth. “How . . . how did you do that?” she asked, trembling so violently that the coffee shook and spilled gently over the rims of their cups, pooling on the table top and shivering in endless ripples.
“What?” Shaver’s mind was slowly clearing, but he had no clear recollection of anything past the delivery of the coffee he still held painfully tight.
“Where was that place?” Dex asked. “Shaver, where the fuck was that place?”
Comprehension dawned. They had seen. Shaver would have bet his life that he hadn’t spoken, but somehow his thoughts had taken up the slack where his voice left off. Or had they? Maybe he’d told them the story after all . . . who the fuck knew?
“He never came back,” Shaver said, rather than answering directly. He lifted the coffee to his lips, tipped the cup, and grimaced as the still-hot liquid slid in and down. “Not really. He was there, bought me clothes, and paid for the food. Had a lady come in three times a week and clean up the mess. I saw him exactly one hour each day and sometimes on the weekends. He never talked much, never about Mom at all.”
Dexter’s eyes danced oddly, and his lip trembled. Softly, shaking from within, as if fighting against impossible pressure—failing—leaning back and chuckling.
Shaver watched him in shock, unable to react as the drummer rolled slowly into a ball, laughing, then harder, tears rolling down his cheeks. He felt his cheeks redden. “What? What the fuck is so funny?”
Dexter didn’t answer, couldn’t answer or speak, could only roll tighter on the seat, chin tucked to his chest and doing all he could to silence the maniacal laughter washing through him. Liz, mesmerized, somehow regained control of herself and slid back across the seat, pressing up against Shaver’s side and leaning her head on his shoulder, gaze locked on Dexter’s quivering form.
They watched. Silence on one side of the booth, assaulted by steady, helpless laughter from the other. The coffee cooled, forgotten, the mugs standing silent watch between. The moment diffused slowly. Liz’s tension melted and she slumped against Shaver, who slid his arm carefully around her back, avoiding all contact between his fingers and anything, gripping her with his wrist and pulling her closer.
What seemed hours later, the waitress appeared, standing very still at the edge of the table. She was trying hard not to stare at Dexter, who was slowly uncurling, eyes red and wet with the effort of regained control. He rubbed his swollen eyes with his knuckles, grinding the salty tears in deeper.
“More coffee?” Her voice grated on their senses, dragging them through a vertigo-loop time warp to the present.
“What?” Shaver spoke softly. “What is so fucking funny?”
Dex glanced up, nearly lost it again, straightened. “Hank Williams,” he said at last. “It was fucking Hank Williams. The song. Your song.”
Shaver stared. His brain lagged, caught up, shifted. He tried to growl and failed. “You got a problem with that?” he said at last. “Fuck Dex, I pour my heart out to you and you make fun of my father’s music?”
“Hey.”
They turned. Three sets of eyes rising up the black-clad body of the waitress to her frustrated frown.
“You want coffee, or what?”
Shaver shook his head. He did not laugh, but it was not easy, and he felt Liz tense against him again, a pleasant tension, pressing to, not away from, his body.
“Not me,” he said. Staring pointedly across the booth, he added, “And I doubt he needs much to stimulate his dumb ass either.”
Liz giggled, and even the waitress lightened up a bit.
“I’ll bring your check.”
She didn’t wait for acknowledgment, spinning quickly on too-high heels, skirt whirling quickly in the air, holding Shaver’s gaze for just a second, and then releasing him to the moment. He glanced down at the table. Liz’s free hand had been busy. The napkin that had lain before her had become her canvas. Shaver her subject. The hair was too long, the eyes so deep, so soulful and pain-wracked they snagged on Shaver’s nerves and nearly dragged him back again. There was a thorn-crown circling his brow in the drawing: dark droplets, pencil-rendition-blood dripping over his cheeks.
Shaver reached out and touched the drawing, fingers sliding under and lifting the edge, tilting it so he could view it more fully. Liz’s gaze dropped to his fingers, and her hand covered his . . . covered the image, stroking gently. Cutting off his line of sight did nothing to diminish the impact of that image. The eyes—his eyes—stared back at him from beneath his fingers, from beyond Liz’s palm. Eyes that he had not seen in years. They were the eyes of a boy, the eyes of a motherless child. The eyes of a son watching his father fade into the shadows.
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