by Stephen King
We undressed each other--all the way, at last--while the clouds unraveled overhead and the sun shone through and the whisper of running water began to die away. Her arms and legs were already tanned. The rest of her was as white as snow. Her pubic hair was fine gold, accentuating her sex rather than obscuring it. There was an old mattress in the corner, where the roof was still whole--we weren't the first to use that cabin for what it was used for that day.
She guided me in, then made me stop. I asked her if it was all right. She said it was, but that she wanted to do it herself. "Hold still, honey. Just hold still."
I held still. It was agony to hold still, but it was also wonderful to hold still. She raised her hips. I slid in a little deeper. She did it again and I slipped in a little more. I remember looking at the mattress and seeing its old faded pattern, and smudges of dirt, and a single trundling ant. That she raised her hips again. I slid in all the way and she gasped.
"Oh my God!"
"Does it hurt? Astrid, does it--"
"No, it's wonderful. I think . . . you can do it now."
I did. We did.
*
That was our summer of love. We made it in several places--once in Norm's bedroom in Cicero Irving's trailer, where we broke his bed and had to put it back together--but mostly we used the cabin at Skytop. It was our place, and we wrote our names on one of the walls, among half a hundred others. There was never another storm, though. Not that summer.
In the fall, I went to the University of Maine and Astrid went to Suffolk University in Boston. I assumed this would be a temporary separation--we'd see each other on vacations, and at some hazy point in the future, when we both had our degrees, we'd marry. One of the few things I've learned since then about the fundamental differences between the sexes is this: men make assumptions, but women rarely do.
On the day of the thunderstorm, as we were driving home, Astrid said, "I'm glad you were my first." I told her I was glad, too, not even thinking about what that implied.
There was no big breakup scene. We just drifted apart, and if there was an architect for that gradual withering, it was Delia Soderberg, Astrid's pretty, quiet mother, who was unfailingly pleasant but always looked at me the way a storekeeper studies a suspicious twenty-dollar bill. Maybe it's all right, the storekeeper thinks, but there's just a little something . . . off about it. If Astrid had gotten pregnant, my assumptions about our future might have proved correct. And hey, we might have been very happy: three kids, two-car garage, backyard swimming pool, all the rest. But I don't think so. I think the constant gigging--and the girls who always hang around rock bands--would have broken us up. Looking back, I have to think that Delia Soderberg's suspicions were justified. I was a counterfeit twenty. Good enough to pass in most places, maybe, but not in her store.
There was no big breakup scene with Chrome Roses, either. On my first weekend home from school in Orono, I played with the band at the Amvets on Friday night and at Scooter's Pub in North Conway on Saturday. We sounded as good as ever, and we were now hauling down a hundred and fifty a gig. I remember I sang lead on "Shake Your Moneymaker" and played a pretty good harp solo.
But when I came home for Thanksgiving, I discovered that Norm had hired a new rhythm guitarist and changed the name of the band to Norman's Knights. "Sorry, man," he said, shrugging. "The offers were piling up, and I can't work in a trio. Drums, bass, two guitars--that's rock and roll."
"It's okay," I said. "I get it." And I did, because he was right. Or almost. Drums, bass, two guitars, and everything starts in the key of E.
"We're playing the Ragged Pony in Winthrop tomorrow night, if you want to sit in. Guest artist kind of thing?"
"I'll pass," I said. I'd heard the new rhythm guitarist. He was a year younger than me, and already better; he could chickenscratch like a mad bastard. Besides, that meant I could spend Saturday night with Astrid. Which I did. I suspect she was already dating other guys by then--she was too pretty to stay home--but she was discreet. And loving. It was a good Thanksgiving. I didn't miss Chrome Roses (or Norman's Knights, a name I would never have to get used to, which suited me fine) at all.
Well. You know.
Hardly at all.
*
One day not long before Christmas break, I dropped by the Bear's Den in the University of Maine Memorial Union for a burger and a Coke. On the way out, I stopped to look at the bulletin board. Among the litter of file cards advertising textbooks for sale, cars for sale, and rides wanted to various destinations, I found this:
GOOD NEWS! The Cumberlands are reuniting! BAD NEWS! We're short a rhythm guitarist! We are a LOUD AND PROUD COVER BAND! If you can play Beatles, Stones, Badfinger, McCoys, Barbarians, Standells, Byrds, etc., come to Room 421, Cumberland Hall, and bring your ax. If you like Emerson, Lake, & Palmer, or Blood, Sweat, & Tears, stay the f**k away.
By then I had a bright red Gibson SG, and that afternoon, after class, I toted it over to Cumberland Hall, where I met Jay Pederson. Because of noise restrictions during study hours, we played tennis-racket style in his room. Later that night we plugged in down in the dorm's rec area. We rocked the place for half an hour, and I got the gig. He was a lot better than me, but I was used to that; I had, after all, started my rock-and-roll career with Norm Irving.
"I'm thinking of changing the name of the band to the Heaters," Jay said. "What do you think?"
"As long as I get time to study during the week and you split fair, I don't care if you call it Assholes from Hell."
"Good name, right up there with Doug and the Hot Nuts, but I don't think we'd get many high school dances." He offered me his hand, I clasped it, and we gave each other that dead-fish shake. "Welcome aboard, Jamie. Rehearsal Wednesday night. Be there or be square."
I was many things, but square wasn't one of them. I was there. For almost two decades, in a dozen bands and a hundred cities, I was there. A rhythm guitarist can always find work, even if he's so stoned he can barely stand. Basically, it all comes down to two things: you have to show up, and you have to be able to play a bar E.
My problems started when I stopped showing up.
V
The Fluid Passage of Time. Portraits in Lightning. My Drug Problem.
When I graduated from the University of Maine (2.9 cume, missed the Dean's List by a coat of paint), I was twenty-two. When I met Charles Jacobs for the second time, I was thirty-six. He looked younger than his age, perhaps because when I saw him last he had been thinned and made haggard by grief. By 1992, I looked much older than mine.
I've always been a movie fan. During the 1980s I saw a lot of them, mostly on my own. I dozed off on occasion (Heathers, for instance--that one was a nodder for sure), but mostly I'd make it through no matter how stoned I was, surfing on noise and color and impossibly beautiful women in scanty clothing. Books are good, and I read my share, and TV's okay if you're stuck in a motel room during a rainstorm, but for Jamie Morton, there was nothing like a movie up there on the big screen. Just me, my popcorn, and my super-sized Coke. Plus my heroin, of course. I'd take an extra straw from the concession stand, bite it in half, and use it to snort the powder off the back of my hand. I didn't get to the needle until 1990 or '91, but I got there eventually. Most of us do. Trust me on this.
The thing I find most charming about the movies is the fluid way time passes. You might start off with this nerdy teenager--no friends, no money, lousy parents--and all at once he turns into Brad Pitt in his prime. The only thing separating the nerd from the god is a title card that says 14 YEARS LATER.
"It's wicked to wish time away," my mother used to lecture us kids--usually when we were pining for summer vacation in the depths of February, or waiting for Halloween to hurry up and come--and probably she was right, but I can't help thinking that such temporal jumps might be a good thing for people living bad lives, and between the advent of the Reagan administration in 1980 and the Tulsa State Fair in 1992, I was living a very bad life. There were blackouts, but no title car
ds. I had to live every day of those years, and when I couldn't get high, some of the days were a hundred hours long.
The fade-in goes like this: The Cumberlands became the Heaters, and the Heaters became the J-Tones. Our last gig as a college band was the huge and hilarious Graduation Dance '78 in Memorial Gym. We played from eight until two in the morning. Shortly thereafter, Jay Pederson hired a locally popular chick vocalist who could also play both tenor and alto sax like nobody's business. Her name was Robin Storrs. She turned out to be a perfect fit for us, and by August the J-Tones had become Robin and the Jays. We turned into one of Maine's premier party bands. We had all the gigs we could play, and life was good.
Now here comes the dissolve.
*
Fourteen years later, Jamie Morton woke up in Tulsa. Not in a good hotel, not even in a so-so chain motel; this was a roachpit called the Fairgrounds Inn. Such places were Kelly Van Dorn's idea of economy. It was eleven in the morning, and the bed was wet. I wasn't surprised. When you crash for nineteen hours, assisted by Madame H., wetting your bed is almost inevitable. I suppose you'd even do it if you died in that drug-assisted slumber, although look at the bright side: in that case you'd never wake up in pee-soaked Jockeys again.
I did the zombie walk to the bathroom, sniffling and watering at the eyes, shucking my skivvies on the way. I made my shaving kit the first stop . . . but not to clear the stubble. My works were still there, along with a taped-down sandwich bag containing a couple of grams. No reason to think anyone would break in to steal such a paltry stash, but checking is second nature to a junkie.
With that taken care of, I addressed the bowl and rid myself of the urine that had accumulated since my nighttime accident. As I was standing there, I realized that something of importance had slipped my mind. I was currently playing with a country crossover band, and we had been scheduled to open for Sawyer Brown the night before, on the big Oklahoma Stage at the Tulsa State Fair. A primo gig, especially for a not-ready-for Nashville band like White Lightning.
"Sound check at five o'clock," Kelly Van Dorn had told me. "You'll be there, right?"
"Sure," I'd said. "Don't worry about me."
Oops.
Coming out of the bathroom, I saw a folded note poking under the door. I had a pretty good idea what it said, but I picked it up and read it, just to be sure. It was short and not sweet.
I called the Union High Music Department and lucked into a kid who could play just enough rhythm and slide guitar to get us through. He was happy to pocket your $600. By the time you get this, we'll be on the way to Wildwood Green. Don't even think about following us. You're fired. Sorry as hell to do it, but enough is enough.
Kelly
PS: I guess you probably won't pay attention to this, Jamie, but if you don't clean up your act, you'll be in prison a year from now. That's if you're lucky. Dead if you're not.
I tried to stick the note in my back pocket and it fell on the balding green carpet instead--I'd forgotten that I wasn't wearing anything. I picked it up, tossed it in the wastebasket, and peeked out the window. The courtyard parking lot was totally empty except for an old Ford and some farmer's broke-ass pickup. Both the Explorer the band rode in and the equipment van that our sound guy drove were gone. Kelly hadn't been kidding. The out-of-tune nutbags had left me. Which was probably all for the best. I sometimes thought if I had to play one more drinkin-n-cheatin song, I'd lose what little mind I had left.
I decided to make re-upping the room my first priority. I had no desire to spend another night in Tulsa, especially with the State Fair going full blast down the street, but I'd need some time to think about my next career move. I needed to score, too, and if you can't find someone to sell you dope at a state fair, you're not trying.
I kicked the damp skivvies into the corner--a tip for the chambermaid, I thought snidely--and unzipped my duffel. Nothing in there but dirty clothes (I had meant to find a Laundromat yesterday, another thing that had slipped my mind), but at least they were dry dirty clothes. I dressed and trekked across the cracked asphalt of the courtyard to the motel office, my zombie walk slowly perking up to the zombie shuffle. My throat hurt every time I swallowed. Just a little extra something to add to the fun.
The lady on the desk was a hard-faced country girl of about fifty, currently living her life under a volcano of teased red hair. A talk show host was on her little television, chatting up a storm with Nicole Kidman. Above the TV was a framed picture of Jesus bringing a boy and girl a puppy. I was in no way surprised. In flyover country, they have a way of getting Christ and Santa all mixed up.
"Your group has already checked out," she said, after finding my name in her register book. She had the local accent, which sounds like a badly tuned banjo. "Left a couple of hours ago. Said they were driving all the way to North Cah'lina."
"I'm aware," I said. "I'm no longer with the band."
She raised an eyebrow.
"Creative differences," I said.
The eyebrow climbed higher.
"I'll be staying another night."
"Uh-huh, okay. Cash or credit card?"
I had two hundred or so in cash, but most of that liquidity was earmarked for the dope purchase I hoped to make at the fair, so I gave her my BankAmericard. She called it in and waited, phone cocked between her ear and one meaty shoulder, now watching an ad for paper towels that could apparently drink up spills the size of Lake Michigan. I watched with her. When the talk show returned, Nicole Kidman was joined by Tom Selleck, and the country girl was still on hold. She didn't seem to mind, but I did. The itches had started, and my bad leg was starting to throb. Just as another ad came on, the country girl perked up. She swiveled around in her chair, looked out her window at a blazing blue Oklahoma sky, and chatted briefly. Then she hung up and handed back my credit card.
"Declined. Which makes me dubious about taking cash. Supposing you have it."
That was mean, but I gave her my best smile, just the same. "The card's good. They made a mistake. It happens all the time."
"Then you'll be able to rectify it at some other motel," she said. (Rectify! Such a big word for a country girl!) "There's four more down the block, but they ain't much."
Unlike this roadside Ritz-Carlton, I thought, but what I said was, "Try the card again."
"Honey," she said, "I look at you and I don't have to."
I sneezed, turning my head to catch it on the short sleeve of my Charlie Daniels Band tee. Which was okay since it hadn't been washed lately. Or even not so lately. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means I left my first husband when him and both his brothers took to smokin the rock. No offense, but I know what I'm lookin at. Last night's paid for--on the band's credit card--but now that you're what they call a solo artist, checkout time's one o'clock."
"On the door it says three."
She leveled a chipped nail at a sign to the left of the calendar featuring Puppy-Giving Jesus: DURING STATE FAIR, SEPTEMBER 25 TO OCTOBER 4, CHECOUT TIME WILL BE 1 PM.
"Checkout is spelled wrong," I said. "You should rectify that."
She glanced at the sign, then turned back to me. "So 'tis, but the one PM part needs no rectifyin." She glanced at her watch. "That gives you an hour and a half. Don't make me call the police, hon. At state fair time, they're thicker'n flies on a fresh dog turd, and they'd be here in a jiff."
"This is such bullshit," I said.
That was a blurry time for me, but I remember her reply as clearly as if she had spoken it in my ear two minutes ago: "Uh-uh, honey, this is reality."
Then she turned back to the television, where some fool was tapdancing.
*
I wasn't going to try scoring dope in the daytime, not even at the state fair, so I stayed at the Fairgrounds Inn until one thirty (just to spite the country girl). Then I grabbed my duffel in one hand and my guitar case in the other, and set out walking. I made a stop at a Texaco station around where North Detroit Avenue becomes South Detroit. By th
en my walk had become a portside limp and my hip was throbbing with my heartbeat. In the men's room I cooked up and delivered half my goods into the hollow of my left shoulder. Mellowness ensued. Both my sore throat and the ache in my leg began to recede.
My good left leg became my bad left leg on a sunny summer day in 1984. I was on a Kawasaki; the elderly asshole coming the other way was piloting a Chevrolet the size of a cabin cruiser. He wandered into my lane, leaving me a choice: either the soft shoulder or a head-on collision. I picked the obvious choice and made it past the asshole okay. The mistake was trying to swerve back onto the road at forty. Advice to all you novice riders out there: swerving on gravel at forty is a terrible idea. I dumped the bike and broke the leg in five places. I also shattered my hip. Shortly thereafter, I discovered the Joy of Morphine.
*
With my leg feeling better and the itches and twitches at bay, I was able to move on from the gas station with a bit more vigor, and by the time I got to the Greyhound terminal, I was asking myself why I'd stuck with Kelly Van Dorn and his screwed-up country band as long as I had. Playing weepy ballads (in the key of C, for God's sake) was not what I was cut out for. I was a rocker, not a shitkicker.
I purchased a ticket on the following day's noon bus to Chicago, which also bought me the right to stash my duffel and my Gibson SG--the only valuable possession I had left--in the baggage room. The ticket cost me twenty-nine dollars. I counted the rest sitting in a bathroom stall. It came to a hundred and fifty-nine bucks, about what I had expected. The future was looking brighter. I would score at the fair, find a place to crash--maybe at a local homeless shelter, maybe outside--and tomorrow I'd ride the big gray dog to Shytown. There was a musicians' exchange there, as there is in most big cities, with players sitting around, telling jokes, swapping gossip, and looking for gigs. For some this wasn't easy (accordion players, for instance), but bands were always looking for competent rhythm guitar players, and I was a smidge more than that. By 1992 I could even play a little lead, if called upon to do so. And if I wasn't too wrecked. The important thing was to get to Chicago and get a gig before Kelly Van Dorn put out the word that I was unreliable, and the pisshead just might.