by Otto Penzler
Dook—who knew all the same people I did, or didn't—walked into the room. I told him the score.
Dude, Dook whispered. What are we going to do?
Fuck if I know, I said. Play cards?
This was what Dook and Paulie and I usually did, when practice was over, or when we'd roused a couple of other guys from their lairs: We sat up late and played poker, usually for the same twenty bucks that changed hands week after week after week.
Dook leaned in. If you suggest cards to the Baron, he'll kill you. If I don't first.
Let's stall, I said. Say people are on the way. I'll keep trying.
Dook said, We can talk music.
That might work.
Dook glanced at the door to the kitchen and tittered. Then we joined the others.
One party coming up, I said.
The Baron was rooting through the kitchen cabinets. He pulled out a box of saltines and opened it up and then threw a stack of them into his maw. He washed them down with a swig from the whiskey bottle he held in his hand.
Paulie was chattering, still, about how awesome it was to have everyone around. I could have smacked him.
Bethany, who had been trying hard not to meet anyone's eyes, said to the Baron, You fucking pig. Are you gonna share the booze?
He grinned at her and spat a showerful of cracker crumbs at her. She and Toni both dodged the spray.
No, the Baron said, and cackled. He looked up at me. You. Monkey boy. He tossed me a bundle of keys, which I bobbled for a second but just managed to catch. He said, Go to the trunk and bring in the other bottles. And don't touch anything else.
Dook went with me. Once we were outside, we were both struck by the silence in the air. It was us and the crickets and not much else. My house, as I've said, was a long way from anything—it got quiet out there, quiet and dark.
Shh, I said. Dook knew why. We turned to Old Billy's woods and listened. I scanned the trees for signs of his house lights—if they were off, sometimes that meant he was in his woods. I saw nothing. I looked across the yard at the dark wall of trees. For all I knew, Billy was watching us through his rifle scope. I shivered, as I always did.
Dude, Dook said, reading my thoughts. Do you think Billy'd ever tell on you? Like if we do have a party? Would he tell your mother?
I don't know, I said. I'm not even sure what he sees.
That Toni's hot as fuck, Dook said. But Bethany—
He looked confused, like he hadn't meant to say this out loud.
She looks kind of used, I said.
Yeah, Dook said. That's it. You'd think the Baron—
I don't know, I said. I'd asked myself the same question. But then again, I said, what's he doing out here? With us?
Dook nodded and scratched his scalp.
We opened the Baron's trunk. There were no fewer than three bottles of Hardscrabble whiskey in the back, in a mostly empty box marked with the same name. A stolen case, I bet. We took the bottles out. That's when I noticed: Behind the box was a guitar case, and next to it a beat-up amp. Dude, I said.
Dook looked up at the kitchen windows, where we saw the Baron gesturing with his open bottle. The open trunk hid us from sight.
Open it, Dook whispered.
I slid the case forward and flipped the latches. The inside of the case smelled awful, like cigarettes and booze, but also like vomit, or garbage. And pot. In fact, it smelled a lot like what I imagined Hell would. Dark stains covered the felt.
Dude's so evil, Dook said.
So was the Baron's guitar. That Flying V looked like a weapon. A used spear, blood-red and nicked. He'd carved things in it. "The Red Baron." "FUCK" "666."
Dook closed his eyes and reached down and touched the strings. He whispered, You too, dude. Get some of this mojo.
I closed my eyes and touched the guitar. I almost expected it to burn me. But it was cold and silent. I twanged the high E, and then, sadly, we closed the case, and the trunk, and walked up to the house bearing the Baron's whiskey.
We all stood drinking in the kitchen for maybe forty minutes. The Baron took the bottles from us and said, One for me, one for Bethy, one for the little kiddies. He and Bethany cackled. I poured shots for the rest of us into green plastic cups. I watched Toni drink hers, hoping she'd show the distress I was trying to hide. She drank like a pro. But she was from Alaska, where shit, I guessed, must be pretty hardcore.
We'd have been lost without Paulie. For once his motor was useful. He knew people the Baron and Bethany knew. He kept asking the Baron about bands he liked, or didn't. About guys he used to play football with. The Baron kept pounding back shots and grunting answers. Every now and again he'd ask, Where is the fucking party?
Soon, I kept saying. And he kept drinking, straight from the bottle. His second. It was amazing. And terrifying. My grandfather could drink that much, but he'd had a whole lifetime to practice.
Dook and I talked to Toni. I asked her what Alaska was like.
She sat at the kitchen table, legs crossed, her tights stretched just enough to show a ghost of white skin at her knees. Different, she said. I'm from a little town. It's called Unalakleet.
She made us say it. We did. We were both buzzed, and this took us several tries.
In Unalakleet, she told us, it was dark half the year. There were no roads in or out—to go anywhere you had to fly out, by seaplane. She slept, she said, between two Samoyed dogs, which had been bred to keep arctic people warm. The man who owned the video store was the richest person in the town. The Iditarod stopped there. The pizza-delivery place brought pizzas uncooked, via snowmobile; it was too cold to bring them from the oven. She kept smiling as she told us all of this.
We're all pretty bored with each other, she said. It's always nice to come to Indiana.
First time anyone's ever said that, I said.
No! It's true. It's so warm here. Indianapolis is the biggest city I've ever seen.
What kind of music do you like? Dook asked her.
Lots of kinds. Classical, mostly. I play the harp.
Dook and I looked at each other.
Bethy sent me some of Lars's tapes, Toni said. It's sure something.
It's very pure genius, the Baron said, overhearing. Little Toni, you should learn that. We are metal gods!
We've got a band, Paulie said. Hell yeah.
Dook and I tensed. We'd of course kept taking the temperature of the conversation the whole time, waiting for the right moment to bring it up.
The Baron didn't laugh. No shit, he said. That's very fucking fascinating.
What kind of band? Toni asked.
Metal, I said.
Oh. Cool. She smiled at me. I pledged in my mind to write a ballad for her, call it "Warm at Night."
Metal, said the Baron, flat as concrete. You three. He stared at us each in turn. So what's your very evil name? he asked.
Pitch Black, Paulie said.
It was, I realized, hearing it on Paulie's lips, the worst possible name a band could ever have.
We chose it, Paulie said, because—
We're still deciding, I said.
Good thing, the Baron said. He looked at me. You must be the brains of this operation.
Guitarist, I said. Tried to laugh off the insult.
Paulie said, Lord Foul here just got a new axe. It's awesome.
For the first time the Baron showed a glimmer of interest in something beside the whiskey and Bethany's asscheeks. He leaned at me a little. What kind?
Ibanez, I said. Not as good as—as yours, but it's nice.
It's here?
Upstairs, I said.
He drank again. Show me.
So the six of us filed up the creaky narrow stairwell. Even counting what happened later on, I don't think I've ever seen anything in my life as strange as the Red Baron thudding his way up the stairs of my house, all that creaking black leather moving past the wallpaper, which had little windmills and cows printed on it. The same stairs where I used to stage cra
shes with my Matchbox cars. The stairs I'd fallen down once and broken a wrist. Under the Red Baron's boots! Paulie kept nudging me in the ribs, muttering, Awesome, awesome!
We all walked into the empty upstairs den. The Baron looked at Mephisto on its stand, and the amp, and the chair. Then—I'd forgotten—he turned and saw the full-length mirror I'd neglected to return to my mother's room. He stared, and smiled, and I could see the insults lining up at the base of his tongue. I flushed red. But he said nothing.
He peeked past the drawn shades, into the dark. This the woodshed? he asked.
Such as it is.
It's a cool axe. Fire it up.
I wasn't bad. I really wasn't. We could make some noise, the three of us in the band, and when I was alone I could make even more. But in that moment, with the Red Baron staring me down, with beautiful Toni from cold Unalakleet standing next to Paulie and ignoring him to look me over—smiling, like I could give her something to remember—I found I could barely curl my fingers, let alone walk over to my beloved axe and pick it up and play.
But I did. I made myself.
I turned on the power. The amp hummed. I tuned for a second, my cheeks burning. I tried to remember something decent. Metallica was too obvious. Slayer too hard. Sabbath too easy. Van Halen too gay. I knew a Whorefrost riff, but if I tried that I might as well fall down on my knees and get to dick-sucking. Megadeth, maybe. "Peace Sells." I took a deep breath and tore into it, looked at the fretboard and not everyone else. I fumbled a couple of times but did all right, even got my hair flying a bit by the end. Then I played a bluesy solo.
I looked up. Toni smiled, Bethany smirked, Dook was opening his eyes—looking like we'd all just avoided being in a horrible car accident—and Paulie was so gleeful I wanted to hit him.
The Baron smiled. A little. Give me that thing, he said. You're hurting my poor widdle ears.
There was nothing to do but hand it over.
He slung the strap over his shoulder. The guitar perched high up on his chest, like he was some wispy English bass player. No one laughed. I thought of the back of the axe rubbing against the zipper of the Baron's leather jacket. I should have said something, but I didn't.
The Baron turned to the amp and fiddled with the knobs, dialing himself in with long practice. Struck a couple of chords that right away made me wince. No fumbling, no hesitation. His pick hand steady and fierce. He fiddled some more. Hit a monster power chord, nodded, turned the fucking thing all the way up.
Then he played. Went right for the kill—Slayer, "Raining Blood." Suddenly my Ibanez became a fucking chainsaw. A machine gun spitting out red death. Bethany began to do a stuttering kind of dance. Toni clapped her hands over her ears. Paul began, spastically, to air-drum in the corner. Dook and I looked at each other. We looked at the Baron. His thick fingers pattered up and down the fretboard, and he never glanced at them once. His face serene, almost. No stage snarl here. Just a guy playing, and playing well.
He left Slayer and went into one of his own compositions. Bending, soaring notes. Tapping and harmonics. Riffs like lava. I glanced at Toni and she smiled, sheepishly, hands still over her ears.
I should tell you now. Nothing happened with Toni. Like a lot of things that night, any plans I had for her fell apart at the end. But she smiled, right at the moment of my humiliation, and I will never forget that smile. It was the smile I needed, kind and understanding and embarrassed, with me but not for me. We both knew I wasn't the Baron, but we both knew, too, that a girl like Toni didn't need the Baron, didn't want to be around the Baron. She went back to Alaska when it was all over and is probably up there now, in her little Unalakleet, or maybe she got out, to Anchorage or even Seattle. I hope she's married and happy. I know she remembers us. I do wonder what she thinks of me.
The Baron wrapped it up. He grabbed for a high note and shook the fucking hell out of it, as fast as if he'd had the whammy bar in his hands. Then he stopped and closed his eyes and we all listened to the note hold and die.
What could we do? We clapped. The Baron didn't acknowledge us, but you could tell he felt the applause was his due.
Fucking awesome! Paulie shouted.
The Baron looked at me. This guitar has promise, he said. It's a very good axe. Nice sustain and the pickups are hot. You keep practicing. If you suck, it won't be the machine's fault.
He meant it as a joke. Even cracked a little smile.
Then he said: More whiskey! Paul, where's my fucking bottle?
We stood and watched the Baron drink. Except for the glugging from the bottle, there was no sound.
It was then we heard the gunshots outside. One, two, three. And following them, a shrill cry. So Old Billy was still up, riled, hunting the spirits. That was twice, now, that loud metal had aroused him. What did we sound like, to him? Hell's music? I remembered his glasses, his inscrutable, squashed face.
I reached behind me and turned out the light. Maybe it was a little theatrical of me, but all the same I felt safer that way.
What the fuck? the Baron said.
I explained, quickly: My neighbor, shell shock, the ghosts of the war.
Dude's a fucking nutcase, Paulie said.
That poor guy, Toni said.
Open the window, said the Baron, eyes wide.
I should have refused, but I didn't. I opened the blind and slid open the rickety window, all the way. A half-moon shone down just enough to differentiate the darkness of Old Billy's woods from the shadowed expanse of our lawn. The crickets were shrilling, everywhere, almost sounding like overdriven high notes. Then we heard another shot, and another, and after it Old Billy yelling: Run! Run, you murdering sons of bitches!
The war, eh? said the Baron. Which war?
World War II, I whispered. I think he fought in Europe.
So did my grandfather, said the Baron. He was half-German. Fucking killed in battle, protecting the Aryan race.
The Baron said this with dignity and some pride. We stared at him, all of us. I remember being shocked. But what had I thought? That a guy with a Nazi tattoo—the Red fucking Baron—was just kidding?
Fuck him, the Baron said. And that was when I realized how drunk he'd been getting. Deeply and sickly drunk. His eyes narrowed to piggy slits. He snarled: Fuck him and fuck this terrible boring stupid fucking country! He drank from the bottle again and wiped his lips. Then he leaned close to the window screen. He took a deep breath and stage-roared into the night: Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Stupid Yank motherfucker! The thousand-year Reich will never fall! Sieg Heil!
We were shocked, all of us, crouched and numb and shocked. Toni held a hand to her mouth. Bethany closed her eyes, pretending, maybe, she hadn't heard. What went on in her head I never knew, not even when things were over.
There was a long silence. Then the gunshots came again, one after another. And between them Old Billy's piercing shriek.
The Baron stood. His eyes gleamed in the darkness, and he chuckled.
Slowly, without anyone suggesting it, we filed out of the den, back downstairs, into the lighted living room. The Baron was already leaving his stench behind him—the room smelled of smoke and booze.
So, he said in the kitchen. Now what? Aren't some more people supposed to come? Mr. Virtuoso, where is this very excellent party?
All heads swiveled to look at me.
I made the calls, I said.
Fucking A, said the Baron. He belched. No one's coming, are they? There's no fucking party here. I'm bored. Beth, Toni, come on—fuck this place.
The Baron, swaying a bit, began to feel in his jacket pockets for his keys.
Paulie and Dook and I exchanged glances, and then all of us turned to Toni, who stared at the Baron in horror. It was ten miles to Westover, either down windy roads or along I-65, which on a weekend night was going to be packed full of cars. We—I, at least—thought of the girls' bodies, pulled bloody from the wreckage of the Baron's Firebird.
And, because I am who I am, I still imagined us onstage, sti
ll saw us on tour with Whorefrost if only we could show the Baron, asshole that he was, a good time. Sometimes, I thought, sacrifices needed to be made. So the Baron was a fucking racist loon, and a drunk driver to boot. He could still get us where we needed to go, couldn't he?
I looked at Paulie, waited for him to say something good, but either the incident upstairs or the booze had done him in; his mouth opened and shut, but nothing came out. Dook was glowering, looking at me.
Toni took the lead. Maybe we'd better stay, she said to the Baron. You—none of us—should be driving.
Fuck that, the Baron said. I'm fine. He belched again, deliberately, waited for us to laugh, and then leered at Toni. You could see the ideas working on the surface of his mind.
Wait, he said. You like these little monkey boys? Eh?
I waited for Toni to throw us under the bus.
They're nice, Lars. Come on, it's late. Let's just crash till morning.
Fuck them! We're very gone.
Seriously, Bethany said, giving her cousin a stare that could slice rope.
I thought as fast as I could. Dook's got some weed, I said. And there's—I hesitated, thinking of my mother's private stash of vodka—there's a lot more booze here.
Dook slumped.
Yeah, he said, I got a dimebag out in my car.
Well now, said the Baron, suddenly expansive. This is a very different situation. So we smoke some weed, mellow out. Then what? Watch monkey boy play his guitar some more? Do each other's nails?
Paulie found himself again. Dude! he said. We could play cards.
3. What Was at Stake
This was how, some twenty minutes later, we sat around the coffee table in the living room, watching the Baron roll himself an entirely-too-large joint from Dook's meager weed. We watched the joint lit, and then passed back and forth between the Baron and Bethany. While this happened, I shuffled and reshuffled a tattered old deck.