Return to Oakpin(16)

            “Mrs. Brand said New York. Marci has some letters years old that were from New York. I think he’s been out there all this time.”

            “Why the garage?” Ted asked. “What’s the deal on that?”

            Frank interrupted: “Jesus, we spent a lot of time over there, remember, Craig? We had a band, Ted, in high school and used to tear up the garage pretty good. Rock ‘n’ roll. Christ, talk about ancient history.” Frank slid out of the booth. “Wait a minute.”

            He went behind the bar and returned with an aluminum step stool and set it up beside the jukebox and stepped up and reached the yellow bass guitar that was hanging there just below two mounted antelope heads. Wiping it with a bar towel, he brought the instrument over, grinning and plucking the strings. “Hell, maybe it will all come back to me.” He handed it to Craig, who held it in his lap. The name RANGEMEN was written along the shoulder in a loopy cursive in red enamel. “That name may have been premature,” Frank said. “I’ll have to take this over and show Jimmy. You still got your drums?”

            “I think one survives,” Craig said.

            “Well, dig it out.” Frank went on, “When we were little kids, Old Man Brand would stand on his front porch in those overalls and bellow for Matt and Jimmy. You could hear it downtown. Everybody knew it was six o’clock—you could set your damn watch by it. I think they ran the trains by it. Jesus, Jimmy Brand. He could play the guitar.”

            The beer had a heavy pleasant pull, and Craig sipped from his again. He’d last had this guitar in his hands thirty years ago as they unloaded somewhere, setting up for one of their few gigs. It had been fun. His old drum kit was in storage, a hole through one of the snares. Why had he kept it?

            Frank saw Craig’s face. “What? Is there trouble?”

            “Mr. Brand won’t let Jimmy back in the house, doesn’t want to see him at all. This garage deal is her idea. I’ve been over there six weeks, haven’t seen the old man except the day we pulled the boat out.” Craig was thinking about the garage, what a good job it had been, how he was going to miss it. The store was wearing him out, all that smiling and the chatter. Any satisfaction he’d gotten out of finding someone the right hex nut was ghosted, gone. It was a good living, but it was eating his days.

            “Jesus, that’s right. I heard that boat was out of the garage,” Frank said. “That’s the boat that killed Matt, cut him up like a sausage. Our first real tragedy, I’d say. Holy shit, what a deal. So Jimmy Brand is coming back to old Oakpine. How sick is he? We’ll have to get together. Somebody should call Mason, and we’ll get the band back together.”

            “Mason’s coming. He is selling his folks’ place. Fix it and sell it.”

            Sonny appeared. “Another beer?”

            “I got to get,” Craig said. “Thanks.”

            Frank waved off, and she went back to the front. He raised the last of his beer. “This lager is pretty good, but it will be nice to have some of our own beer at last.” He drank. They all drank.

            “Is this good lager?” Craig asked Ted. “I mean, it seems real good to me.”

            “American lager is always a little green,” Ted said. “They hurry it, age it with chemicals, and then drive it around in trucks.”

            “You can’t truck good beer,” Frank said. “Shipping kills it. It comes off like bus passengers, road shot and ready for nothing.” The three drank up.

            “I’ll grab Mason and bring him down for some of this nectar. I’m giving it an A right now. You guys are perfectionists.” Craig said. He set his glass on the wooden table.