by Nadia Bozak
That metal of Dave’s was all right and OK, but I said to him how I liked punk because even then, as late as 1989, you knew that when those guys sang about getting beat up by the police or jocks and going to jail and being on welfare and trying suicide and being scared and being called a fag—well, you knew that it was for real. That was the really scary shit, not goddamn Satan.
“There’s no real audience. No idols either. Not like metal where it’s all about being some big fucking light show. In punk, like the Goddamns, there are no fans. That’s the shit to me. That nothing is fucking sacred. Nothing. Kill your idols, Dave. That’s what it’s all about.”
“Kill Your Idols. That’s a great name for a metal band,” Dave said. Was really the name of a song Slava had on one of his mixed tapes, but I didn’t say that. Was harder and harder to think that name or say that name out loud, especially to Dave.
The music stopped and I guess I fell asleep. When I woke up, we had pulled over the side of some back road, and Dave was laid out sleeping in the back seat. His compass, along with the boots, was hung from the rearview mirror. A car had driven past. Heard its spray of gravel. Was full-on afternoon now, maybe even late afternoon. Couldn’t say for certain, it being overcast and grey. All silence. The Hidatsa, it was cold in there. The old nose was running and in the snot that I wiped from mitted fingers onto my jeans there was plenty of blood, leftovers from the night before.
Got out of the car and saw crops growing all around us. Backward and forward and side to side, saw only farmland, and that new geography said to me we were getting south and getting east, for the north as I knew it had no room for that kind of farming, what with the rock and trees and the short summers. Walked down into the ditch and then from there into a cornfield. Pulled down my filthy jeans and pissed onto the cold earth, and a steam rose up and with it the smell of my own insides. Saw my legs were bruised pretty bad, but I didn’t want to hang around to look. It was too cold, and being beaten was just part of the game now, part of getting away.
When I got back to the Hidatsa, I took the driver’s seat. Found a half pack of cigarettes on the floor beneath my boots. Took one and lit it from the lighter on the dashboard, then smoked and drank whisky. Now and then I saw my eyes in the rearview mirror—the whites a sickening red, the rest just swollen, blue on blue on black. Pulled my bangs down over those eyes and hid them pretty well. My teeth were all there, but my lips were real fat, the corners stained like I’d eaten raw meat. Bloodstained neck and hands, fingernails, shirt, jeans. So much blood comes out of a nose or an eye, a mouth. More than people who don’t fight or who’ve never been beaten can really imagine. It scared me, that fuck-up in the mirror. And it scared me to look back at Dave. A big black eye and a wad of bloodied Kleenex duct-taped to his cheek. Knew we’d have to go public and get gas, and the way we looked was worse than a couple of drunken brawlers.
Was a stranger now. Not a girl anymore, not a kid, but a drifting, driving, dead-faced stranger. Choking down Bellyache’s goddamn whisper, I got in my mind a picture of Slava O’Right and I remembered how all this, all this shit and pain and the rest, was his fault. He’d fucked me up and then left me to go it alone. Orphaned me that way. Sensed him now. Smelled him getting near me, how mouth-watering it was going to be when I got him down on the knees and made him say he was so sorry. Imagined that his spilled blood was all I had to wash away the cringing sickness that came when my uncle’s rasp slid that goddamn family secret deep inside the hole of my ear. Rolled down the window and tossed away the cigarette. Started the car then, checking Dave’s compass for southeast. Drove on in the direction of Slava O’Right.
We decided we were better off on the main highway where there was a lot of traffic and travellers rather than taking back roads where small-time opp were more likely to pull us over and ask to see the driver’s licences neither of us had. The canoe strapped to the roof made it look like maybe we were just a couple of hardcore campers come out of the bush. Said if we got gas at a big old Shell station instead of some butt-fuck ma and pa place, no one would give a fuck about us or at least would have some manners and not stare at our beaten faces.
It was getting to be supper when we pulled over at a Husky. Dave had some money and I had some too. Also there was the twenty from Wank’s wallet, and in the glove compartment I found a dish full of quarters. Had enough for gas and a meal someplace, maybe a few supplies, but that would be all.
Pulled in and thought Dave ought to pump the gas and I should pay for it, and also I’d get the key for the bathroom. Avoided all eyes and tried to laugh and smile a bit, even if just to ourselves, and also we took off our leather jackets and put on shirts that didn’t have blood on them. Kept eyes behind my bangs when I paid for the gas. Bought a jug of water and a loaf of bread. Got the key for the toilet. Dave pulled the car around, and we each took turns washing up with Dave’s soap, pissing in a real toilet, though it was dirty and it stank.
Dave drove and then me. Agreed to share mostly on account of how much we both liked driving, but also because my eyes were sore and after some bit of time I found I had to shut them against the light. We listened to almost all of Dave’s tapes, me fast-forwarding through the guitar solos, something that pissed Dave off more than I’d ever seen him.
Said to Dave something Slava O’Right had said to me once. Out in his truck, listening to some kind of thrash or whatever, how if there was no more Cold War, like if all that shit were to end, then all these metalheads would have jack shit to rock about.
Dave said, “There’s always something.”
“And that’s usually chicks and dicks.”
“And cars,” Dave said. “Don’t forget cars.” He said how he aimed to have a car some day and to just drive around in it and listen to music all the time. He said how cars and heavy metal go together, how records are like wheels: they look the same, they go the same too, around and around, always forward, always fast. Also, Dave said, cars go on tracks just like songs are called tracks.
“Ever think of that, kid?”
No, I told him, but it sounded pretty goddamn smart. Dave said that without cars and driving there would be no rock and roll and so no metal, and without metal, well, there would just be no point in driving or living too. Told too how he knew cars pretty well. The old man, he had been teaching him how to fix them, even how to rebuild an engine.
“Yeah, Slava showed me the workings of a car.”
Dave asked me if that’s how I learned to drive, through Slava O’Right, and I said it was.
“Whenever you say Slava, I think Saliva.”
That made me laugh a bit.
Drove on. At a McDonald’s restaurant on our side of the highway we pulled in and parked, and inside Dave looked down at me and he said he could just cry being in there. Me, I sat down to wait for Dave to order the food and bring it over. Was too hungry to notice everyone in McDonald’s eyeing us, staring at us, but most of all, avoiding us. We had the whole one side of the place to ourselves. Dave got us a Big Mac, large fries, and large Coke each, saying it was some sort of deal because it was Wednesday.
“Wednesday? What’s that?” I said to Dave.
Then just devoured that food. Dave took the empty Coke cups up and got them refilled, something that really impressed me, having never before eaten at McDonald’s. Had the mitts off and was dipping my scabby fingers in the ketchup cups and licking them like the shit was goddamn honey. They were horrible, those fingers, in that shock-lit McDonald’s restaurant with the ketchup mixed in with red and black scabs and orange nic stains and all that sunk-in dirt.
“Fuck,” said Dave, when I said this was the first time I’d eaten that McDonald’s food. He said, “You went and you ruined it. I mean we could have, like, sold your blood to the scientific community as the pure stuff, totally rare. They pay big for that shit, unsullied blood like that, and you went and poisoned it. Probably you would have lived a long and
healthy life up until ten minutes ago.”
“Except for all the smokes and the booze that says I likely won’t get to be too goddamn old.”
“My dad never knew I went to McDonald’s. He would have killed me for that, contaminating all his fine work, raising me on wild meat and brown goddamn rice.”
“People shouldn’t get old anyway,” I said to Dave.
“Not our kind, you mean.”
Lit smokes, finished our Cokes, and then we left, pockets stuffed with napkins, salt and pepper packets, fists full of sugars.
Out in the parking lot this family was there by the Hidatsa, taking a close look at old 37. A dad and a mom, and they were holding the kids’ hands, mom smoking and the dad sucking back a carton of orange drink. When they saw us coming out from the restaurant, the parents were quick to yank the kids away. We strode through the lot right toward them and passed them by close enough we heard the mom hissing not to stare. The kids did it anyway, Dave and I meeting their little round eyes full on. Were not scared of us, but scared for us. Saw that right away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Went on in pure silence, cutting through the black night with our yellow headlights. For an hour, then two, I saw on the clock beside the radio. Started relaxing again, giving in to the unknown of the road, feeling good just to be there with Dave.
Had the heater on full blast, so we took off coats and sweaters. Dave took off his shirt and drove with his chest all naked. Then I did it too, even the bra I wore, not that I needed to wear one now, my tits having shrunk up so much since hitting the road. So I took it off without caring if Dave saw them, for he’d seen me before, back when I’d gone in for a bath. He took a look, though, when he thought I wouldn’t see it. Dave was the only boy in the world who I’d want to sit beside without having a shirt on. Sure, he knew I wasn’t a real girl, or the kind of girl you flirt with, but I thought how I’d still like to feel his hands smoothing down the place where my breasts might be. And where I might have had a mouth instead of my chapped-up hole, my brain could taste there that Dave’s lips, though real dry, would still be soothing. Hot and not real, like getting licked by a star, fucked from afar. Nothing better than that to help a girl like me forget all about Slava O’Right.
We got sucking on our bottle of Wild Turkey. Rain came hard, and though Dave had the wipers going full, we could not see the road, just a white sweep of rainwater and the spray off tires, ours and those of rigs flying by. Threatened to dissolve us, it was such a rain. The Hidatsa, it pounded and quaked, and sometimes Dave almost lost control of the wheel and the car went sliding into the oncoming lane. Said how lucky we were to be in that car and not out there on the Ottawa River, shitting our pants someplace, trying to start a fire, cursing out to God to make the rain just stop. Made me think about Pickles, his boots hanging from the mirror during all of that crazy drive, and it made me all nervous about hitting someone out there, but then I thought that shit like that won’t happen to me twice.
Stared out at the rain, the wipers keeping time for us, ticking away like a clock, and I started talking to Dave. Said out loud what rose up from gut to chest to swimming head. “Before Slava and me killed Pickles, we were having sex in a parking lot, and some boys with bats and sticks came and the headlights got smashed in. Some bad O’Right business.”
“Sure, kid. That’s what those guys go looking for, those O’Right types.”
“But this night got Slava so mad and so drunk. We went driving. Took back roads. And there came this big old smash and we hit something, hard and fast. Struck it head on.”
Dave passed over the smoke he’d lit.
“‘Just a deer,’ Slava said.”
“You drag him along you think?” Dave asked. “His body I mean?”
“Christ, no. He went flying off. And, besides, I heard a sound that I guess was him, but when I went to find it, Slava, he held me back.”
Dave looked over, surprised. “So you could have saved him?”
“If I’d had balls, yeah, and listened to my gut and not shithead Slava.” Feet up on the dash, I raised my left toe and gave Pickles’s boots a soft nudge. They swung a bit and then spun right, left, back again, slowly, going with the Hidatsa’s flow.
“If I’d had the balls,” I said again. “And wasn’t such a girl and a pussy.”
“Christ, that asshole killed Pickles. Not you.”
“We both killed him. I know that now. Doesn’t mean I’m guilty, but it is the only truth.” Too bad Dave didn’t have any Black Flag in his tape case. No Messy Divorce either.
Drove on, Dave Bashed-up-Boat practically getting a hard-on telling me all about metal and me creaming my jeans telling him about punk and hardcore. Even said how scared I was that I was going to miss the whole thing if I didn’t get south soon. Then when the hail came on with the rain, attacking us and abusing us and blinding Dave to the road, we pulled the Hidatsa over and switched off the lights.
Sat there awhile and then I said, “Pickles, he tried to tell me about the O’Rights, see. He knew why Bellyache swore to keep me away from them.”
“And, why?”
“Well,” I said, “those bastard half-brothers, seven of them, a different mom for each, their dad Vlad, being this real ladies’ man who plowed any girl who wasn’t too fat or too Indian.”
“I heard about that too,” said Dave. “And what happened to that dad? Heard it said someone killed him off nice and quiet.”
“Yeah, Vlad O’Right went missing some years ago. Many or most in Black Dew Seat saying it had been the oldest, Van, who’d done it. Killed his dad and then taken over the racket and opened up their trade to guns and medicines and not just cigarettes and booze.”
“Bad bunch. Pickles was right to keep you away from them.”
“Yes,” I said. “Only me, I didn’t listen, so he ratted me out to Bellyache.”
“And I would have too, kid.”
“But that’s how we hit him, see. He was going down the road away from Bellyache’s. Had not been there in years, but he went back because he thought it would help me. And then we killed him for it.”
“But it was the busted lights that made it different,” said Dave. “Else you wouldn’t have hit him. It’s O’Right’s fault for driving so dumb. Not yours.”
“Doesn’t feel that way.”
“So why did you go back out there? To where Pickles was on the road?”
Heard Bellyache in my ear, that raunchy secret he’d told me as I’d chewed blood and shit and grit and then had to swallow it. So sad and sick, and, really, I was going to say to Dave how Bellyache was out there too, and about the dirty red snow he made me eat and the words he made me listen to, but Dave leaned over and he kissed me. All or nothing, and I liked him doing it. My mouth full of star, the rest of me was warm and weak. And he put his hands on my chest too because my shirt was already off and so we were already halfway there. Had arms all around each other and Dave’s body was warm, especially his neck where the heat got trapped under all his long hair. Thought I had never felt better than being there in the Hidatsa with Dave, and so I was able to wring Slava from my brain, burn him out and tamp him down, live a moment for me and Dave alone.
Music was off, had for company only the pounding of the rain. We crawled into the back seat, stray traffic and lights going past but rarely, and I was glad it was mostly dark and that we had our smoky old sleeping bags to wrap around us.
Dave was slow in trying to take my pants down. So I got his open and then my own. He touched me there, soft, between my dirty legs, but wouldn’t do more than that. Tried to shove him inside me, but he pulled away, zipping up his pants.
“Let’s just kiss for now,” he said, reaching out for me again.
Pushed Dave away from me and I sat up. Crossed my arms over my chest.
“Because you just got laid,” I said. “Because of that girl back
there, Al’s goddamn girlfriend.”
“Sure it’s ok to fuck strangers. Dumb girls like her. You shouldn’t want that. There’s more to it than what you know, than whatever you learned from O’Right.”
He ran his fingers down the soft inside of my arm. And when he got to my yucky hand, he held it. Then he leaned closer and pushed back my hair and he traced my lips, nose, the lids of my shut eyes, painting a picture of me with nothing but dark and touch, and under his fingertip I was calm and passive. He drew circles around my bellybutton and the tough brown bumps I had for nipples, and I slid my hands around his waist, pulling myself into his arms again, finding safety in the dry copper heat that came from his skinny boy body. Hugging a radiator, it was like.
Kissed for a long time after that. Our bodies curled close. Minds less hectic, hearts not scared.
After a while the rain stopped falling so hard. Dave said we better press on down the road. Got ourselves together, but didn’t put our shirts on, just jackets, and I took the wheel and drove until it was maybe 2 a.m., and then when Dave was asleep beside me, I pulled over onto the shoulder.
Woke up and Dave was driving. Lay there and watched the grey sky through the windows above me and then I called up to him that soon I’d have to stop and piss. Few kilometres down the highway, he pulled over and I got out and ran down into the ditch and off into the bushes, McDonald’s napkins stuffed in the pockets of my jacket, under which my chest was still naked, and I let go a torrent of thick piss and thicker shit and I knew from the smell it was that entire McDonald’s meal. Was gone for a while and when I got back the Hidatsa was empty. The old boat on top was strapped down like a carcass. Waited outside, shivering, running up and down and around the shoulder just to keep warm a bit and also to stretch my crickety back and shoulders. Dave came up out of the bushes, the ones on the other side of the highway, and he was still naked under his jacket too, and I saw that he was a bit pale and so it was likely he had also just shat out Big Mac, large fries, Cokes, and ketchup. He unlocked the car and we got back in, me saying I’d drive if he wanted and Dave saying no, he’d like to drive for a while, at least until Ottawa. Well, we passed a road sign not far on that said Ottawa was only 136 kilometres, Quebec not much more than that, and Dave and me were quiet. We didn’t want to give up the stolen Hidatsa, though we knew we really, really should.