For a moment I was transported back to that performance, to a time when Brooklyn was still a possibility and what could have been wasn’t as concrete as the cinderblock walls of the room we were in.
“Wonderwall,” I mumbled.
“Right! That was the night we played ‘Wonderwall’!”
“Bonnie Raitt was there. Remember?”
Cal nodded, smiling. “She told you that you played guitar like a boss, and your face was red for an hour.”
I felt like I was blushing again just thinking about it. “She was hot. I couldn’t even say thank you to her.”
“Yo, I saw her at the Whole Foods on Miller last year. She’s almost seventy, and she’s still hot.”
I sat on the couch and stared at the photo. “Jesus. We look like babies.”
“We were babies.” Cal grabbed a bottle of unopened whiskey from the minibar and sat down beside me. “I don’t normally imbibe before shows, but this is a special occasion.” He took a drink right from the bottle, handed it to me, and we passed it back and forth a few times.
“Harp,” he said, once we were both on the verge of being buzzed. “I need to say something to you.” He turned slightly toward me, and I dreaded whatever he was about to reveal. “I want you to know that I know I wouldn’t be playing here tonight if it wasn’t for you.”
“What?” I shook my head. “That’s ridiculous.”
“No, it’s not.” His eyes were trained on my face, full of sincere effulgence. “You were the only person besides my mom who believed in me. From day one.” He rubbed the stubble on his chin, bit the inside of his cheek. “I was a stupid kid with no father, no friends, and a bad haircut, but for some reason you thought I was cool, and that made all the difference.”
“You were cool. You didn’t need me for that.”
“Actually, I did.” Cal’s brow rose and I noticed three sharp wrinkles in his forehead, saw the small scar under his eye from where I’d caught him with the fishing hook. “I don’t think you ever realized how alone I was back then. You came along and made me part of your family, dysfunctional as it was. And after that I didn’t have to give a fuck about anyone else, because I knew you had my back. That was a fucking gift.” He leaned forward and set his elbows on his knees. “Harp, I wouldn’t be playing here tonight if I hadn’t run into you on the trail that day. I know that for a fact. And I guess I just want to say thank you. I’ve missed having you in my life. And I’m really glad you’re here.”
Cal stood up quickly, grabbed his wallet from his duffle bag. “One more thing and then I’ll shut up.” He slipped a piece of paper out from the billfold and handed it to me. “It’s obviously not the original. I made a copy for you.”
The paper had been folded in half twice, but as soon as I had it partway opened I knew what it was. I recognized Cal’s handwriting and could see my fourteen-year-old-kid signature alongside his at the bottom.
I felt myself getting choked up. “I can’t believe you still have this.”
It was the contract he’d written up the day we met.
To who it may concern. This agreement herebye states that Cal Callahan and Joseph Harper are band mates and best friends for life. Our band will be called ________ (to be determine). We will be the bosses of it and no body will ever tell us what to do or what kind of music to make. We promise to practice every day. We promise the band will always come first. Girls second. We promise never to do anything to screw up the band or our friendship. As soon as we sign this nothing will break this bond NOTHING. Forever in truth and music.
x Joseph Robert Harper x Christopher A Callahan
I sat on that couch in the Greek Theater, holding the contract, looking up at Cal and thinking, I can’t do it. I can’t.
TWENTY-TWO.
When I think about the Whitefish Community Library, the first thing that comes to mind is the color green. The tables are green, the chairs are green, the air ducts in the ceiling are green. And more often than not, Patty the librarian’s pants were green too.
I often spent Monday afternoons at the library, not only to check my e-mail but also to work on weekly writing assignments. Sid offers a free writing workshop for veterans at the community center in town—he believes in using creative writing to help men and women heal from PTSD—and even though I wasn’t a vet, or much of a writer, he’d insisted I sign up for the workshop. To process my shit.
“Do it as a favor to me,” he’d suggested, once it was clear I wasn’t leaving Montana anytime soon. “And if that doesn’t work, we’ll call it your rent.”
Sid said everyone is fighting his or her own personal war, and he thought that if I put my thoughts to paper I might learn something crucial about myself and find the courage I needed to go back to California.
Every week we were given a theme and encouraged to explore that theme any way we saw fit—essays, poems, stories, you name it. There was a woman in the class who could draw cartoons really well, and she turned the themes into comic strips. Another guy was obsessed with cartography, and all of his assignments looked like treasure maps.
During REGRET week, I decided to write about the night of Cal’s show at the Greek Theater.
It was early summer in Whitefish, late in the day, but the sun was still saturating my little corner of the library, casting a bright yellow light over all the green in the room, the colors echoing the canola fields that pop up all over the Flathead Valley in June.
I’d been sitting in my
