Larry turned to Wendy: “I might as well tell you: my father was in a band.”
“So cool,” Wendy said. “What did he play?”
“Craig Ralston was the best drummer in Wyoming,” Jimmy said. The ache in his legs had simply taken all his strength, and he sat very still.
“No way,” Larry said. “This is science fiction.” He opened the door for Wendy.
“Hey,” Jimmy said, “thanks for all the gear.” He was empty now. His leg was afire; the ache along his backbone was warm, and he could feel a pressure in his head. They all said goodbye, and then he added, “Wendy, there’s a book of mine out back by the garden in the grass. You can take it if you’d like.”
She disappeared for a moment and then came back with the book, looking surprised. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll read it.” And then she asked, “What was the name of your band?”
Jimmy felt pinned in the chair by the guitar, so heavy was it now. “Life on Earth,” he said. “That was our final name.” When they left, he couldn’t get up. The guitar was like a bar holding him, and the pain beat in his legs and then crescendoed as he went into the kind of delirium he hated. His mind slipped and slipped again, the sensation was of sliding down a dark vortex, trying to stop, but unable to form a sentence or an image, grab hold, he just descended. There was no rest in it, a thousand spinning defeats, a terror.
Sometime later in the early dark, his mother came out and lifted the guitar from him, and he felt it in his tattered dreaming as a blow. He was then sick, and she helped him into the bathroom and then to bed. He couldn’t eat the meatloaf, but even later, at nine or ten, she came back, and he had a bowl of applesauce while they watched a situation comedy on the television with the sound turned off.
• • •
The next morning, Sunday, Mason Kirby stood in front of his house again and shook hands with his old friend Craig Ralston. The Ralston Hardware van had been parked in front when Mason pulled up. He’d left Denver just before five and had felt charged and alive in the dawning day as he drove. He still had the backseat full of clothes and a ragtag box of whatever tools he could gather in the trunk of the Mercedes; some were his father’s and he hadn’t had them in his hands for twenty years. What he felt was young and old at the same time. Being up before dawn in the fall of the year like this meant he was going hunting with his father, coffee from a thermos, apples. But leaving Denver meant shifting clients, nothing life or death, but this was different. He remembered his father, who worked tech maintenance for Chevron in the fields, saying, as he’d arrive home at night, “The way the workday ends is that you leave. If you don’t leave and go home, one thing will lead to another all night.” Driving through the beautiful mesas in the strange first light as he crossed into Wyoming, Mason knew that was what he was after: a change, an end, some new chapter in this old life. He’d start with a month of work on an old house. He wasn’t lost now. This was not an inquiry; this was a serious trip.
“The attorney comes to Oakpine,” Craig said smiling. “Good to see you.”
Mason took the other man’s shoulder. “I need a little help here.” They walked around the place and pulled open the garage. They forced the back door open and found the house full of bad news. The basement was dank with garbage. The old floors on the main floor were ruined, as was the ceiling, which was boiled up and peeling. The tub was cracked, and one toilet was shattered. There were two motorcycle wheels on the window seat of the bay window, and the rest of the motorcycle was in the kitchen. The fridge was gone, and a layer of gray furze covered everything. While Craig climbed his ladder to look into the attic space, Mason wandered the rooms. He could still see, of course, where the piano had been and his mother’s plants and his father’s chair. He went out on the front porch and sat on the ledge. It was a good house. The door sills were solid, and the wood trim inside, the mantel and ornate ceiling moldings, were restorable walnut.