Drums: a Novel
While many of my fellow dormies had problems adjusting to their roommates, I never had a problem with John. He was predictable, getting up each morning precisely at 6:45, and leaving for campus after breakfast at 8:00, where he spent all day at class and the library. He returned for dinner at 5:00, whereafter he would occupy his small desk in our room and do more homework or read his latest issue of Sportsman magazine. I, unlike John, exhibited freshman behavior that was closer to the norm, and my life followed no set pattern, but those evenings when I remained in my dorm room, John and I often had nice talks. He would tell me about his courses or sometimes about his life back home in Utah. I would sometimes tell him about problems I had with my dad, and he would listen empathetically and say nothing. Each night John was in bed by 10:00, and he slept like a rock and didn’t snore.
Monday through Friday John treated his school work just as thoroughly it were a job and kept right on top of his studies. On Saturdays and Sundays he also rose at 6:45 a.m., although there was a variation in his routine. On Saturdays he went on outings with the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Sportsman’s Club to hunt, rock climb, canoe, or do whatever rustic activity was planned. On Saturday nights he had a steady date with his girlfriend, Jill, who was nice and unassuming, like John. Jill always wore loud, bright colors, and had a hefty rump and a thin upper lip which never seemed to cover her gumline. Jill didn’t know how to handle a smart remark and clammed up if you kidded around with her; when she dropped by our room to visit John, she and I didn’t talk much. On Saturday nights John and Jill went western dancing; on Sundays they went to Church.
I sometimes remarked to fellow dormies that John and I were about as similar as oil and water, and whomever I was talking with would always say something to the effect of: “Yeah, John gets all his oil from his hair. Hah. Hah.” Though everybody liked John—especially me.
One weeknight I was procrastinating in my dorm room. I had an awful calculus test the next day and didn’t understand the last three homework assignments one iota. John was cleaning his hunting rifle, a lever action 30.30, and I found this activity exceedingly more interesting than calculus.
“Going shooting around here?” I asked.
“Club’s sponsoring a hunt this Saturday. We’re going to see if we can get a boar.”
“No shit?” I exclaimed. He looked at me mindfully; profanity was offensive to John. “I mean, no kidding? Get a boar?”
“There’s a bunch of them in the coastal hills—domestics that have gotten loose and gone back to the wild.” John checked the lever action on his rifle. “Give pigs a free rein and in a couple generations they’ll grow back their bristles, and the boars will take on tusks.”
Talking with John about his club’s pig hunting expedition and watching him work on his gun made it easy for me to continue to neglect studying for my calculus test.
After a while he said, “Come along if you like, as my guest. I can get you a gun.” That was the first time he asked me to go on one of his club outings, and I felt bad turning him down. But pigs? The thought of being confronted by a pack of them in the wild was too scary. I told John no thanks and said I would be eager to hear all about the hunt when he got back.
But that was the last time I saw John McDonald. His funeral was closed casket because there wasn’t much left of his head after he was shot accidentally by one of his fellow sportsmen. Evidently, John’s group hiked several hours in the hills before spotting a herd of wild pigs. John and a few of the more ambitious sportsmen charged the game. One of John’s buddies who remained in the flank sighted in a pig on the scope of his deer rifle, and just as he pulled the trigger, John’s head popped up and centered itself in the middle of the scope’s crosshatches. Bang. John McDonald was dead.
It was a week or two before John’s parents came around to pick up his stuff. One of the hardest parts of dealing with the experience of losing my roommate was coming to grips with the things he left behind. His personal items stirred me most. His toothbrush lay neatly on top of his dresser, in the same place he always kept it, on the right alongside of a three-quarters-empty bottle of Vitalis hair tonic. When I looked at these things—the toothbrush with John’s dried saliva on the bristles, the bottle of hair tonic with its label sopping with shiny oil like John’s hair—I felt the presence of death more vividly than I had ever felt it before. I wanted to clear his dresser and desk, to take down his calendar with his important dates off the wall. I wanted to de-humanize his half of the room, so that I didn’t have to think about him anymore. But I couldn’t bring myself to touch anything of John’s; his belongings remained poised in place defiantly, frozen animals waiting for their master to come home.
Until John’s folks came and boxed up all of his things, I avoided my room, and when I had to go in there, John’s toothbrush, hair tonic, books, and clothes stared at me. I would sit on my bed, with my back against the wall and stare back, thinking about John and what his voice used to sound like.
* * *
Just as I had to deal with John McDonald’s personal effects, Abbey had to deal with Isabella’s and this plight, I realized, was tenfold more traumatic, since Izy had been Abbey’s mother – her only living family besides her son.
“What do you think I ought to do with this place?” she asked Zoe. “Izy’s rented this apartment for years. It’s where she raised me.” I witnessed much strength in her as she sorted through her mother’s affairs, yet her whitewashed, zestless tone of voice was a constant reminder that her composure was painfully forced.
The two girls finished dispensing with Isabella’s personal things in the master bedroom. The last of Izy’s hair combs, cosmetics, and dresser-top knickknacks went into a cardboard box with “Sun-ripened California Oranges” printed in black and orange letters on the outside. Zoe held the flaps while Abbey sealed the top with a wide strip of tape.
“There,” Abbey said, “I just couldn’t stand looking at that stuff another minute.” She lit a cigarette, took a puff, and sighed. “Zoe, dear, you didn’t answer. What on earth am I going to do with this place?”
“Carmen said he’d look after the shop until you’ve made a decision about that. That's one problem solved,” Zoe replied. “If you plan to stay in Santa Barbara, I think you should keep it. Your mother was very proud of this place. Personally, I love the view.”
“It would feel very strange to live here without her.”
“Well, of course, we’d love to have you come back with us.”
“Don’t rush me,” Abbey said. “Please, Zoe.” She shut her eyes and took deep breaths. “I know you guys want me back,” she said. “This is sssooo hard.”
“I didn’t mean to needle,” Zoe said.
“I know,” Abbey said.
Zoe went to her spiritual sister and gave her a big hug. “Oh my, I wish this whole thing never happened. It’s terrible. If only we could go back in time.”
Emotion overcame Abbey, and her eyes blistered with tears. “I miss her so much. God, Zoe, I miss her.” Abbey managed to stop crying for a minute, and, seeming embarrassed, she glanced at me. Her cheeks were stained with streaks of mascara. She began to sob again.
Little Hector, who was sitting on my knee, had no idea what was going on. Kids with Minkinson’s disease, Abbey explained, weren’t able to comprehend sadness. He was fascinated with the big cardboard cube that his mother and her friend had been playing with. “Gop? Gop? Gop?” he said for about the hundredth time.
“Come to Ab-gy,” his mother called. “Come on, honey. We’re done here.”
I felt Hector squirm; so I plunked him down on the floor and he crawled to his mom.
Abbey grabbed him like a sack of rice, and she and Zoe strolled out of the room. I trailed behind, stopping at the doorway. Izy’s bedroom was now faceless like accommodations in a motel. Yet there was something invisible, ominous, and haunting that lingered in the air of the room. Poisonous, yet scentless, fo
rmaldehyde.
Abbey put Hector down for his nap in the other bedroom, the room which the girls had kept secret when I visited here before.
Large fixtures of Izy’s life remained in the living room. Abbey and Zoe sat together on the bench seat of the baby grand; beside them, Izy’s old violin and guitar slept in their wicker basket. Zoe folded her hands in her lap; Abby’s fingers caressed the ebony and ivory keys, transmitting a coded melody to felt hammers inside the baby grand; when the felt hammers hit the strings, a passage of notes stopped time.
An Oriental blue, vase-like vessel rested on top of the piano, and Abbey’s eyes regarded it fondly. She talked in a low voice as she played; she wasn’t singing; her words followed the notes like a dreamy lover follows a butterfly:
“Ashes, Mother, all that’s left of your body are ashes. You and I, we talked about dying. You said if anything ever happened—and I never thought anything would happen—to please not put you underground, where it’s dark, where it’s cold, all wrapped up in awful silk ruffles. You believed in the spirit, Mother, not the body. Throw me into the wind, off the Golden Gate, you said. That would be nice. Powder the wind with me, you said and laughed, away with my ashes and then, daughter, away with yourself. Abbey, you said, I’d do the same for you.”
* * *
Abbey Butler decided to return with us to Lake Tahoe; for how long she didn’t know. It was cramped in my truck, and little Hector had to sit on Abbey’s lap. He chortled and drooled and messed his diapers, and Abbey hugged him and nuzzled his curly brown hair. We journeyed first to San Francisco and walked to the middle of the iron-orange bridge spanning the entrance of the bay. Solemnly, Abbey dumped the contents of the blue urn over the edge of the bridge—into a gusty breeze, which would carry the ashes toward the gray Pacific; some of the ashes floating further, perhaps, on the wings of salt air, till they reached the shore—to rest under a green shrub, to meld with shells on the dirt and sand. When the urn was empty, Abbey threw it off the Golden Gate as well.
Chapter 12
Playing Solidly
The heavy snows still hadn’t come, but the shorter days and weak yellow sun told us fall had bid farewell and winter had arrived. There was a lull in the tourist trade, and the clubs weren’t as crowded. Soon white flakes would coat the mountains for winter sport, and snow skiers would converge upon the Sierra. It was a crazy time of year for us to be at Sand Cove.
Our beach party consisted of Bandit, little Hector, Sly, Eddy, Tish, and one of Tishy’s friends. The Cove’s gently sloping, granite-sand beach was otherwise vacant. Much to everyone else’s dismay, that idiot, Eddy, had taken the liberty of inviting Bandit’s ex-keyboardist to the party; Uwe was supposed to arrive later when he got off work. Eddy had somehow gotten chummy with Uwe, or vice versa, after the two of them met when the P.D.s played the Lake Club. Jay and I hardly ever got to go boating anymore, because Eddy was busy with Uwe. I guess it didn’t matter too much; water ski season was over.
* * *
The late afternoon sky was a pretty azure blue and perfectly cloudless; yet the flawless atmospheric ceiling didn’t match the brisk wind whistling past our frozen ears; the wind was a bully, and greedily consumed what little heat the thin, glass pipes of crystalline winter sunlight carried down to the earth. Jay was the only person who was shirtless; he insisted that the sun, although heatless, still had enough ultraviolet power to tan, but even Jay stuck close to our raging bonfire.
“Whiskey,” Jay said. “Pass me the bottle, dude.” I handed him the quart bottle of cheap liquor that tasted like rotten wood. The clear, medium-brown liquid was almost gone; what remained sloshed in the bottle. No one seemed to give a damn about starting the barbecue.
“You know what?” I said. “You look like a friggin’ Indian with your shirt off and all. Aren’t you freezing your ass off?” The whiskey made me feel weird and edgy. I felt an urge to scream at the top of my lungs—to run like a mad dog into the big, blue lake. But it was way too friggin’ cold.
“Fuck you, Vikker,” Jay replied.
“Fuck you, Wong-dong,” I said.
“Well fuck, fuck, fuck,” Jay yelled like a maniac. We laughed until our eyes watered, bobbing and swaying on our whiskey legs, as though we were a couple of marker buoys floating on the choppy lake.
Abbey, Zoe, and little Hector sat on a smooth, gray driftwood log a cozy distance from the bonfire. Even though the wind was shifty, it always seemed to blow the smoke away from them and in the direction of somebody else. The girls were not so inebriated as some of us and didn’t mix in with our rude conversation; instead, they held a private, sisterly pow-wow. Abbey had bundled Hector up so completely that he looked like a puffy, quilted ball; the hood of his jacket was drawn tightly around his head, and his face was chopped off around the edges, as though it were mounted in a picture frame that was too small. Occasionally, one of the loud, sloppy young adults would try to get his attention: “Hey, Hector. Hey, hey, hey! What’s ya doin’ down there?” But the strange, unfamiliar people amped-out his mind; he issued no reaction. He remained quietly in a daze, with his mouth drooping open and his hand clamped tightly onto his mother’s. The little guy’s lips looked like grape Popsicles.
There was no sunset at dusk; it just got dark, and colder.
Seth went to fetch his guitar. Abbey followed him carrying little Hector. I heard Seth stumble in the darkness and yell, “Shit.” When he returned to the bonfire, he was alone.
I hiked to Jay’s van and heard the engine idling. I shuddered with pleasure when I sliped inside; the heater was on full blast.
“Hi,” I said. “Maybe we should move the party in here? Good God, this feels nice.”
Sitting with her back against the carpeted van compartment, Abbey stroked the fine curly brown hair on top of her son’s now unbundled head; her caresses hypnotized the tiny boy. “Actually,” she said, “I was enjoying the solitude.”
“Don’t worry about us. Hector and I will be fine,” she replied. “I thought we should get warm for a while. I don’t want him catching a cold. It could cause complications – with his condition, I mean.”
“Want some company?”
“No, that’s okay. When dinner is ready, come get us, will you? Bye, Danny.”
I returned to the party solo and suggested that we break out another bottle of rotgut. I was thirsty for another friggin’ drink.
Looking like a bawdy minstrel, Seth stood in the bonfire’s orange floodlight and played his guitar. When he finished the song, he thumped the body of his acoustic and said, “Make a request, somebody. Shit.”
“Play a fuckin’ protest song, donkey. Something rowdy,” Jay suggested. He hung on to Sly as though she were a lamp post. Sly was more sober than her boyfriend, yet full of spirit herself. “Play another bloody song whatever it is, gent. Doesn’t matter, does it now? Play, Seth. Bloody play!” Becoming more engrossed in listening than balancing, Eddy tripped on the sand and fell face-first into it.
“Man, did you guys see that?” Jay bellowed. “Eddy, dude, Eddy, that’s the funniest thing I ever seen in the whole wide world!” Jay stumbled, too, and fell down next to Eddy. Laughing and laughing, the rest of us who were standing let our knees buckle, and we collapsed on the beach. We wallowed in the cold, gritty sand and made pockets to lounge in.
Seth let out a polka-dotted party horn laugh. He rose, and shook the sand out of his guitar, and began to strum and sing a favorite tune by the Stones:
If I could stick a hand in my heart,
Spill it all over the stage,
Would it satisfy you?
Would it slide on by you?
Would you think the boy is strange?
Ain’t it a stray-yey-yange?
If I could win,
If I could sing,
A love song so divine
Would it be enough for your cheatin’ heart
If I broke down and cried?
r /> If I cry-yi-yi’d?
I know
It’s only Rock ‘n’ Roll
But I like it.
I know,
It’s only Rock ‘n’ Roll
But I like it, like it,
Yes I do—
The crackle of the bonfire replaced the sound of Seth’s scratchy voice and melodic guitar. A broken guitar string curled off the guitar’s neck. Seth hadn’t brought any spares.
Eddy decided that a spin in the Blue Max might clear his groggy head. Most everyone wanted to go with him, even though it was dark outside. I stayed behind to cook the hamburgers and hotdogs. We needed to get some food in us. I searched for the utensils, grill, and cooler in the sand.
Down at the water’s edge, Eddy powered up his boat and switched in red, blue, and white lights. The Blue Max looked like a carnival ride. The boat cut a neon wake as it rocketed into the darkness; I listened to the wake backlash against the shore. The rowdy cheering onboard faded. Last of all, I heard Jay yelling “Fuckin’ bon voyage….”
A girl appeared at the fire.
“Boo,” Tishy said, wrinkling her nose. “Need any help?”
“Sure, maybe,” I said. “Good God, you scared me.”
“Brrr, it’s cold. Ooooh. Ooooh. It feels so good to snuggle.” She pressed against me and latched onto my arm. Sluggishly, I bent over the coals and formed the corners of a square with four hefty rocks. I put on the grill, but one of the rocks wasn’t big enough; so I used a flat stone as a shim. I asked Tish where her friend was.
“She’s barfing,” Tish replied matter-of-factly.
“Is she going to be okay?”
“She’ll be okay,” Tish said. “It’s no big ‘D.’ Let her barf. She’ll be ready for more later. She’s hardcore.”
That night Tish was wearing a rather exciting outfit underneath her nylon ski parka – a skin-tight jumpsuit with a chrome zipper from neck to crotch. She didn’t appear to have on any underwear. One part of me said: pounce. Another part of me said: dodge and parry. This time, I listened to the voice of my good fairy. The hamburgers and hotdogs sizzled on the grill.