poured from the ruined set. John’s irises danced with the image of a small flame forming in the electronic components. The smell of burning plastic made his eyes water, made the snot loosen and drip from his nose. He clenched and unclenched his right hand, trying to hold onto that feeling, that momentary feeling of the guitar exploding into the screen.
There was a knock on his door.
He forgot for a moment that he still held the broken
neck of the guitar in his left hand. He looked at it as if he wasn’t quite sure how it had gotten there. He dropped it onto the floor. Knew who would be there even before opening the door. A tremor ran through his body. A tremor that wouldn’t stop.
“I’m sorry,” Chryse said as she stood on the front step. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“What did you do to me?”
She looked down at her feet. Her face was so pale, so white it almost glowed within the frame of her stark black hair. Her eyes glistened, two bits of shiny hard coal pressed into her face. John reached out and tilted back her head. Looked deep in those glittering eyes. The blood from his fingers smeared across her chin.
“I want you to finish it,” he said.
He stepped aside as she entered his trailer.Followed her into his bedroom.
The room smelled of sweat and mouthwash and cigarettes. John quit smoking over a year ago, but some things never seemed to go away. They undressed in silence.
“Close your eyes,” Chryse whispered. John lay on his back on the bed, his one pillow thin and hard beneath his head. He sensed her standing over him, could smell her skin, the dim light beyond his eyelids blocked by her form. He felt her squatting over his face, could feel the short soft wisps of her tiny black hairs on his forehead. He opened his eyes as she spread herself for him.
And he saw it. It shined inside of her. A swirling bright red river full of clots and pieces of bone. Her ribs glowed through it all like the framework of a cathedral. She squatted closer, squatted onto his eyes. Forms floated inside of her. Forms of men. So many of them.
He understood.
“We all pay a price,” she said. “Just for being who we are.”
She began to bounce.
So many of them. All the old blues men, the rock ’n’ rollers, the jazz musicians, all of them dead and gone to the world, all of them overcome by the pain of their world.
And she bounced faster. Harder. The bucking movements, the weight crushed John Baxter’s skull, broke his windpipes, snapped his neck. Yet he was still aware.
He understood.
John Baxter knew where he was going and where all the others had gone before him.
Chryse groaned.
John Baxter, his music, his soul, his pain, was sucked inside.
Scorched Earth
The forest looked surreal. Ann Leroux lit a cigarette and inhaled. “Guess it doesn’t matter too much if I toss my butts wherever I feel like it.” She blew a wavery ring of smoke that dissipated over the slow moving vinyl of the Wakkamungus River.
Patchouli rolled his eyes.
“Just kidding. Geez,” Ann said.
Charred skeletons of pine trees stood black and velvety against the early morning sun. Jagged stumps protruded from a thick layer of ash like rotted teeth. Renegade clusters of cinders floated on the river’s surface. It was only a week ago that the inferno had swept through the area. Small patches on either side of the river continued to smolder on the forest floor. The smell of burnt wood was thick.
Jay set down a cooler full of beer and soda on the river’s edge. “Will you look at that. It’s like we’re on another planet. Are you sure we’re allowed to be here?”
Patchouli shrugged. “I don’t see any signs that say we can’t.”
Kelly Lambert pulled back her auburn hair into a pony tail and secured it with a purple binder. She handed a bottle of sunscreen to Jay. “Rub this on my back?”
He shook the bottle and squirted it directly onto her skin. Kelly flinched.
He wanted to tell Kelly over a month ago that it was over between them, but he couldn’t do it. Whenever he tried, he imagined her breaking down, crying, yelling at him, throwing a fit. Hell, he didn’t know. He just couldn’t bring himself to find out. So instead of saying the things he wanted to say, he swallowed the words and let inane things bubble up from his mouth instead.
But not today. Today he was going to tell her. He couldn’t keep leading her on like this. Especially when she was already talking about things like engagement rings and bridesmaid dresses. He didn’t want to waste his last year of college on a dead-end relationship.
He smeared the lotion on her back and rubbed it half-heartedly into her skin.
“Come on, put a little muscle in it,” Patchouli said. He pushed up his sunglasses and grabbed a beer from one of the coolers. His skin was tan and smooth under a tie-dyed tank top. He helped Ann tether the inner tubes together between gulps of beer.
Damn. It was hard not to look at Ann bent over the tubes in her bright orange bikini. Jay felt his heart pump an extra liter of blood each time he glanced her way.
Kelly jabbed him in the ribs. “Stop drooling.”
Patchouli, you lucky bastard, he thought. Kelly was good looking, too, but it wasn’t all about the looks.
Patchouli held up an inflated pink flamingo about the size of a terrier. “What’s with the kid’s toy?”
“That’s Ju-Ju,” Kelly said. “My good luck charm.”
“What’s it do? Ward off the spirits of good taste?” Patchouli looped the remaining rope around the flamingo’s leg and dropped it in the water where it floated on its side behind the make-shift raft.
They loaded the two extra tubes with the cooler, towels, sunscreen, and Patchouli’s boombox.
“Make sure the box doesn’t get wet,” Patchouli said.
Ann blew him a kiss. “You can get my box wet anytime.”
Patchouli bowed to the others. “You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen. I’ve got dibs on Ann’s wet box.”
Jay barely heard them. Why did I agree to this? Why is it so hard to tell her no?
“Hey. Earth to Jay.” Patchouli cracked open a beer and handed it to him. “What’s up, bud?”
Jay took the beer. “I don’t know. This place gives me the creeps.”
“I think it’s the coolest,” Ann said. “Now how about we get our asses in the water?”
They drifted with the current, the water murky with sand and grit. But it felt cool and good on their butts and on their dangling feet and hands, while the rest of their bodies soaked up the sun.
They had followed the progress of the fire on the news for weeks as it cut a huge swath through the Calistoga forest. Bright orange flames consumed hundred year old trees in a matter of seconds, jumping from canopy to canopy spurred on by hot winds. Smoke jumpers were called in, the National Guard flew helicopters over the inferno, dumping loads of fire retardant. Fire ditches were dug.
At least a dozen vacation homes were destroyed and one small town had to be evacuated when the flames got too close. But before the fire reached the town, the winds changed direction, there were a few much needed rain showers, and eventually the fire wore itself out. What remained was one hell of a lot of ash, large splotches of it still seething.
Patchouli clapped Jay on the shoulder. “Nature’s way of cleaning up the forest. All that deadfall was like kindling.”
