THE PIGS WERE LINED UP on the platform of a little wood-framed stage, each one inside their own tiny pen made of clapboard and metal, some pressing snouts between the short, thin bars that were soon to be raised, jerking necks and stretching wide eyes colored jet black in the fluorescent-lit night, while others raced in compact circles in vain pursuit of who knows what. All of them, in cruel yet comic flair, were wearing a pair of children’s Underoos with large pieces of white tape above their cages displaying in red Sharpie the name of the superhero adorning their butt. My pick is Green Lantern, a chubby yet undersized little guy who, instead of pressing against the gate or spinning in mad circles, sits back on his haunches while staring out at the late-night, overzealous, intoxicated county fair mob. Many of the raging denizens coughed up cash for the privilege of picking the one pig out of eight that can leap into and swim across a twenty yard above-ground pool of water, thus garnering the winning tickets a five dollar coupon for concessions, which is enough for a small bag of popcorn with 500% of one’s daily sodium content. The truth of the whole bizarre and slightly depressing spectacle is that most folks who stop at the event area, pressing themselves in a wide circle shoulder to shoulder five or six rows deep, don't care which one of the porcine contestants wins, they just like to see pigs swim. Still, after the last animal has gasped, clawed and splashed its way through the big tub and the crowd has screamed and laughed itself hoarse, the traces of blood and hair floating in the water are a reminder that the small display of bizarre entertainment has a good deal of vicious survival to it, at times leaving a lucky winning ticket-holder staring down into his big bag of slow-heart attack popped corn while considering the peculiarness of life. That is until the bell rings at the top of the hour announcing the chicken-catching contest, for any true fair-junkie will not miss the rare spectacle of men and women reduced to clowning like apes as they scramble in wild pursuit of a scared, elusive bird.
Sadly, I will miss the chicken-grabbing experience as we’ll be hitting the main stage to give everyone, people and poultry alike, a charge of voltage when we open with ‘Licks & Kicks’ and streamroll straight into ‘Vodka Talking Woman’. My band, Total Annihilation, or as diehard fans refer to us, T&A, has always been one of the loudest and craziest of the many hard rock outfits but also true survivors, altering the sound slightly as the decades passed and still churning out hits as leather outfits got replaced with oddly colored spandex which evolved into some pleathery offspring of the two. The few good memories from my life growing up in a house of booze and violence were following the release of a new T&A album, when I’d stay up until dawn learning the lines laid down by Rudy Starkill, their ultra-quiet yet smoldering bass player.
A strange, as in weird, series of events brought me from my isolated bedroom performances to hitting the stage as a member of my favorite band. To close out the humid, rainy summer of my eighteenth year, my mother drove her car off a cliff while my dad was out tomcatting around town. Although she was likely loaded it was ruled an accident and the insurance company paid us big on a policy secured in better days. In his customary cold and hateful yet minimally responsible way, my father sat me down and said he’d pay for two years of college which upon completion he never wanted to see me again. So off I went to the state university, taking all sorts of classes like psychology, literature, history and philosophy, never attending but for exams, preferring instead to smoke cigarettes and pour over the books in my dorm room before heading out to jam most every night with a cover band laying down Van Halen and Zeppelin in dive bars on the wrong side of town.
Two years can fly by quickly on a college campus and, although I held out fragile hope that he’d reconsider, my dad yanked away the finances as promised and I had no school, no job and a barely road-worthy Chevy Impala slowly turning into a one-star motel room on wheels. I began spending most waking hours at internet cafes, scouring employment pages for a heaven-sent miracle but what I found was an invitation sent straight up from hell. On a site called RockGigs, a posting appeared for an upcoming tryout in the city entitled Bass Player/Serious Shredder Only with the coded message which only a die-hard T&A fan could decipher, Be able to play ‘Eaten Alive’ and ‘Banging Rock Bottom’, which were the big albums from the band’s heyday. Immediately, I cleared out the back seat of my car, parked it in an abandoned lot and practiced the songs for twenty hours straight, breaking only for slices of pizza and a crude wash up in a gas station men’s room.
On tryout day, I drove to the city and found the old building in a crappy neighborhood where the auditions were being held and took my place in a line that was snaking up an airless set of winding stairs and out the door onto the sidewalk. Over three hours later, I stepped into a large, dimly-lit basement, empty except for the long-legged stool and amplifier in one corner and a folding table against the opposite wall where three men were seated. I sort of froze for a second as two of them were music gods in the flesh, Roddy Hemlock, the keyboard wizard, and Kit Mazer, the crazy rhythm guitarist, both founding members of T&A. Neither paid any attention to my dumbfounded stare while their manager, Benjamin Collins, a pushy, foul-breathed, cigarette-sucking blob of bad cologne and cheap-suit, ordered me to hurry up.
I plugged in my bass and tore through the albums song by song for over thirty minutes until they stopped me and sent everybody else waiting on the stairs into a profanity-laced exodus. While my two idols sat back and smoked some really stinky weed, Benjamin explained that Rudy Starkill was ordered by doctors to dry out completely or else die an imminent, painful death and in order to navigate the first clean and sober days in over forty years, he quit the band. And just like that, after expecting to pick up a few bucks playing tribute gigs in bars, I signed a contract on the spot to cut an album and tour with Total Annihilation, making me think for the first time in my life with stupified wonder that dreams really do come true.
My euphoria lasted for a glorious thirteen hours in which I got wildly drunk with Roddy and Kit at a biker bar, ate and threw up a colossal amount of chinese food, and awoke the next morning at Benjamin’s cramped, messy apartment where over a hair-of-the-dog coffee with schnapps, he gave me the straight story. Due to all kinds of differences and hostilities, the main songwriter and guitar virtuoso, Cha Dibo, who is a rock genius, fell off the face of the earth months ago except for some legal mumbo-jumbo that forbade the guys from playing his songs which is basically their entire catalogue. This was followed in succession by Starkill fleeing for sobriety, the drummer turning a trip to South America into permanent exile, and the third lead singer in ten years jumping ship to another band. Despondent and desperate, Roddy and Kit decided to re-form as (Near) Total Annihilation and play gigs to keep the money coming in. They picked up a great guitarist that plays like Dibo, added a drummer recently busted out of rehab, and found a guy who can belt it just like the original singer, Barry Torch, so along with my spot-on playing we at least sound like old-school T&A. Going on more than a year now, I’ve been living the tedious days and crazy nights of a rock and roller in not exactly a cover band but certainly a close cousin to one.
“What the hell you doin’ watching the pigs! We gotta find Kooky!”
Hands grabbed from behind me and I was spun around to confront Benjamin’s sputtering, slightly demonic face, just as the bell for the pig race jangled and the sound of the first splashes were buried by the crowd’s tumult.
“He’s gotta be somewhere,” I ducked as close to him as I could stand so that he could hear me. “Last I saw he was in the beer tent.”
“He ain’t there!” Benjamin growled and yanked at my already amply torn t-shirt. “Kook don’t show, nobody gets paid!”
Benjamin’s job is to find us OK but more often lousy gigs and meet us there to collect the fee and doll out our paltry cuts, sort of like a rock and roll bookie or worse. The present obstacle to collecting our peanut-sized salaries is Cody Anderson, the drummer, nicknamed Kooky as he has proven solid and dependable behind his kit and an all out master of mayhem everywhere else.
“What the hell, Benjamin,” I took some steps away from the roadies who all had their heads poked through the backstage curtain, whooping it up like the nearby crowd as the pigs churned in the water. “Go check the trailer.”
“He ain’t there. Just the friggin’ old men patchin’ themselves up!”
The trailer was a vintage Airstream currently hitched to the back of my car and parked in the big pasture next to the fairgrounds. The two veterans of the band prefer to hole up in there before shows to split a bottle of inexpensive whiskey and complain how much they miss drugs.
“I gotta roll those two onstage,” Benjamin poked a long, filthy fingernail into my chest. “You go find that piece of crap and get him behind the drums! Hey you guys! Stop standin’ around! Music in fifteen!”
He turned heel and stormed after the roadies who suddenly got busy with the jobs they had abandoned to watch the race.
“Who won?” I asked a skinny, older guy who was lugging a load of amp wire across his shoulder.
“Ah dunno,” he croaked with a dangerously short cigarette burning on his lower lip. “The green one, I think.”
Shine on, Green Lantern. With that one reassurance that not all my luck is destructively bad today, I hopped down and headed across the sprawling field in front of the stage, which was already starting to fill up with fair-goers hanging in bunches or reclining across blankets on the packed down grass. It was a dark and humid evening with a thick cloud cover above so that the only light reaching across the concert area was from temporary towers mounted in the middle and at both ends of the fairgrounds, each of them topped with floodlights, presently hosting swarms of moths fluttering around their big shining bulbs. As I cut in between a long line of food tents, the thick aroma of funnel cakes and corn dogs filled the air and I smiled at the simple pleasures of this great big country. That is until I stepped out into the fairway and met up with a sea of people of all shapes and sizes who seemed to have no discernable means of navigation. They bumped, jostled, and plowed their way through each other in aggressive pursuit of entertainment in the land of the free and the home of the deep fried Oreo.
After a cursory scan of the concession area, knowing full well that Kooky was hours drunk by now and food would only get in the way of more liquor, I made a bee-line through the kiddie rides toward the beer garden, a stretch of grounds gated off with haphazardly placed orange safety fence that was barely containing its raucous crowd of drinkers. As I moved by the long line of kids waiting for the mini-coaster, a small voice spoke up.
“Are you a clown?”
He was just a little guy, probably no more than five or six, barely able to make the height minimum on the midget-coaster, obviously struck by the appearance of a man taking a stroll through the packed crowds of the county fair dressed in red leather pants, biker boots, and a neon purple tee-shirt boasting more holes than shirt. I had forgotten that I was in my stage outfit until the youngster asked his innocent question.
“Not exactly,” I smiled and continued on my way.
“Then why’s your hair all puffed up?” he hollered after me, setting off a peel of childish laughter that spread to some adults nearby.
Damning Benjamin’s insistence on glam metal costumes and abundant hair spray, I stepped up to the two burly guys that were admitting thirsty folks into the beer garden through a small opening in the fence, suddenly thankful that I routinely refuse the eye-liner that the other guys in the band apply with a heavy hand.
“Hey,” I said warmly as they looked me up and down. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Nice hair,” remarked the slightly smaller of the two gargantuan gatekeepers.
“Thanks, yeah. It’s like an occupational hazard,” I looked away. “There was a guy here earlier, no shirt, jeans, real drunk.”
“Yeh, we kicked him out…” the other one replied and pushed me aside to allow two thirsty couples to move their way in before adding, “...trouble maker, that dude.”
“About four or five fellahs went after him,” his partner chuckled. “I’m bettin’ that goose is cooked by now.”
“Oh, no,” I spoke quickly. “We need that goose. Which way?”
“Games,” the big one didn’t look at me but pointed a crooked finger toward the bustling midway full of booths and trailers set up for contests of chance and folly.
The uncanny brightness of the midway was more intense than the rest of the grounds as each stall boasts their own jury-rigged spotlights shining into the faces of contestants to further skew the odds in the house’s favor. It was highly doubtful that Kooky would spend much time tossing rings around bottle tops as he hates empty bottles. I quickly moved along the wide alley of fair-goers, ignoring some wide-eyed stares from strangers and as I began to turn after the last stalls ran straight into some woods, it was clear that the show wasn’t going to happen tonight. My mind began furiously calculating the best way to beg Benjamin for a small advance to keep gas in the tank and food in my belly.
“I’ll take all you on! All a you! Let’s go!!”
The throaty, rageful cries came from somewhere behind the midway and by the stream of profane slurs that were added as punctuation, I knew in an instant it was Kooky. The lighting fell off drastically only steps away from the games and I tripped over a rope tied taut to a stake before fumbling the rest of the way between two tents into a small clearing where a loose circle of young men were closing in on our nitwit drummer. Another guy was sitting on the ground a little ways away and holding his bleeding face which signified that Kooky had won a battle but was about to lose the war and probably a number of teeth.
“Stop!” I shouted with enough authority that the group collectively turned my way.
The young bunch boasted a variety of crew cuts and mullets over mean faces and each body was more ripped with a weight room physique than the next. Their startled attention instantly seeped away as the nearest of them set after me.
“Get outta here, freak!”
It wasn’t clear if this bubbling cauldron of anabolic substances was intent on tearing my head off but it startled my instincts enough to recall some abandoned training in martial arts. For most of one teen-aged summer, I worked out at a Jiu Jitsu dojo, regularly getting my ass kicked but also bringing away some lessons in physics. As the guy got ready to launch a haymaker with my name on it, I grabbed hard to his tee shirt and fell backwards with my feet plunging into his midsection, then rolling all the way over to send the big boy flying backwards. I scrambled to my feet as he hit the ground hard behind me and turned fast to see the rest of them, including Kooky, staring in disbelief, so I figured it was my move.
“Run while you can, villains!" I bellowed deeply and crouched in a fighting position with a fist forward. “I am the Green Lantern!”
The goons all exploded in laughter which was encouraging for all of three seconds until one of them hauled back and landed a big, meaty fist to the side of Kooky’s head, sending him sprawling into a motionless heap. As soon as I turned to beat it, the hulking dude that I had tossed in the air hit me like a linebacker. From what I remember, I got a few good punches in at first until my sudden transformation into a human kickball as a barrage of sneakers, and one jerk who chose to wear workboots in the summer, landed all over me. A shot to my temple made the inside of my head explode like the grand finale of a fireworks show before bringing my night out at the fair to a pitch-black end.
***
Other than very brief flash-memories of some kind of cop talking all mumbly to me and a pretty bumpy ride somewhere, my first real thought as I opened my eyes to the white blinding light was that I’d dozed off on the floor somewhere backstage before a show and the PAR cans all just kicked on so it was time to get up and rock. With eyes still blurry, I sat up quickly and let out a long wheeze as a searing pain gripped my midsection culminating in a slow, hard descent back down onto what I now realized was somebody’s bed. A pounding headache increased in strength as bit by bit my eyes got used to the light and efforts to breathe in slow sips of air broke into a gasp as my focus came together on the far corner of the room. There was another bed with the mattress slightly elevated like my own and upon it under a thin green blanket was a very old man, whose withered body had skin so pale that the veins were clearly visible in the scrawny arm protruding from the bedding. Various tubes connected him to bags of red and pale yellow liquids and if it weren’t for the steady, intermittent beep from the machine to his side, I would have figured he was dead.
While I was staring at his drawn, wasted face, the events of the evening came back to me in the hypnotic cadence of the old dude’s life monitor. Beep. We had a show at a backwoods fair. Beep. You got sent to find Kooky. Beep. Kooky was getting his ass kicked. Beep. I was engulfed in a flurry of shod feet. Upon the last memory of getting drubbed in the dirt, I dismissed the urge to painfully search for my phone to call Benjamin and instead shut my eyes and followed the beeps into a sort of meditation, letting out a slight grunt with each breath and eventually finding a floating pause amidst anxious thoughts.
“Hey there.”
The flash of pain through my midsection kept me from leaping from the bed as I was certain that the old man had zombie-shuffled his way over and was about to take a bite out of my skull. But rather than the gruesome visage of the elderly undead, what welcomed me was one of the prettiest young faces that I had ever seen in my life.
“Oh!” the startled, heavily-mascaraed eyes, which were a deep shade of either blue or gray, got even wider. “Sorry! You were makin’ noises and I…it’s OK. You’re OK.”
A nurse was standing at the foot of the bed and the first thing that struck me was how young she looked, in a wholesome way, like a breath-of-fresh air candy-striper from an old TV show. Loads of brown-blonde hair tucked back into a ponytail, a pudgy but really cute face, which upon closer inspection showed rough edges, circles under the eyes and other tell-tale signs of exhaustion or stress or both. Still, in a rural hospital one would expect a cranky older lady in a white dress rather than a maiden of medicine in baggy, faded-teal hospital scrubs. She stepped up and pressed a cool, damp cloth on my cheeks and laid her soft fingers to my wrist for a pulse check which I found comforting in a way that I’d long forgotten, easily forgiving that her hand was sort of sweaty.
“I must…” my voice was a raspy croak so I tried to clear it to no avail, trying again, “...look a wreck.”
“Oh, now,” she gently scolded before raising the straw protruding from a styrofoam cup to my lips. “Here. Little sips.”
She left the cup there until I had drained it of the cool, metallic tasting water.
“Everybody’s so worried about looks.. You just got roughed up some. From what I heard the sheriff got there before they could…”
A flash of impatience stole across her face as if she had used up all her time but in a second those great big eyes fluttered again.
“I’m sorry,” she slowly sing-songed. “I always say stupid stuff when I’m tired.”
“I’m pretty beat myself,” I let the joke linger but she didn’t get it. “I remember some jerks were beating up my–”
“Your friend?”
“Not really, no,” I took a couple of bigger breaths to test myself and failed with a deep wince. “The guys in the band aren’t my friends.”
“You all were supposed to be playin’ the fair, right? That’s pretty cool.”
“Yeh,” the nagging pinch of imposter syndrome bore down on my ego. “We were going to rock the rednecks but they rocked me instead.”
“We aren’t all rednecks round here…just mostly,” she went to refill my water cup from a plastic pitcher on the table. “But then you got your good rednecks and your bad rednecks which…”
“What’s his story?” I gestured with my chin toward my roommate.
“Oh, it’s so sad,” she pinched her eyes and glanced over. “He was all by himself. If a neighbor didn’t check on him, he’d prolly be…anyway he’s in a coma and what’s worse is we got problems with charges.”
“What charges?”
“His,” she spoke in a whisper and jerked a thumb to the corner. “It’s gettin’ where the state can’t even pay to keep folks alive. Poor old guy. No family. I’m sick about it. I can pull the curtain if it bothers you.”
I didn’t answer and we fell into a shared silence until she gently clapped her
hands together.
“Anyway, you know my uncle went to see you last night. I think you’re his favorite band. My dad says he’s a metal head.”
“Oh, yeh?” my grin was forced but the connection was welcome. “How old’s your uncle?”
“I don’t know, like…60?”
“Geez,” I rolled my eyes, “Please tell me he’s cool.”
“Oh, he’s good,” she began tucking in my blanket around the edges of the bed. “Works full time mostly. Drinks a lot, though. But like I said, he’s been a fan of yours for…”
She halted her words and took me in with a long glance.
“How old are you, anyway?” she scrunched her face. “Cause he’s got albums. I mean real albums from like ages ago and you don’t–”
“I’m a replacement,” I cut her off to dive straight into the awkwardness. “The original bass player had to quit before his liver did. And I took his place.”
“Oh. So, you’re like…him now?”
“He was…is Rudy Starkill. They call me Tony Rocket but my real name’s Patrick,” I cocked my head to the side and put on my best pleading eyes. “Hey, I’m having a really hard time breathing…can I get some pain-killers?”
“Oh, gosh, no. I’m so sorry, Patrick,” she looked both hurt and bothered. “I’m just a…well, they say I’m a junior nurse but I can’t give out meds which basically makes me a housekeeper. Heather'll be back pretty soon, though. But she can only give you regular aspirin ‘til the doc sees you later on. Then you get the good stuff. She’s just downstairs so–”
“I can’t wait.”
“I know. It’s stupid,” she shook her head. “Patients ask for help all the time and all I can do is tuck in their sheets. It’s annoying as…I hate it.”
“You don’t like your job.”
“Don’t get me started!” her suppressed exclamation was followed with a big yawn that she tucked into an arm.
“Believe me, I can relate. Go ahead.”
“What the hell, it’ll keep me awake.”
Over the next few minutes, she caught me up on various major points of her young life, continuing in a loud whisper while she went over and made sure the old man was safe and secure. She was born and raised in a smaller hamlet near this town, parents divorced and a mom who got addicted to pills but kicked it. Bad stuff went on in the public school system. With bleak prospects after high school, an aunt who works in hospital administration got her the probationary position pulling graveyard shift. Reluctantly, she took the job and has since regretted every single second of it.
“I swear, my auntie got me in here cause she hates me. They pay more at the Quickie-Mart,” her tone was more than flustered but she kept that friendly, thick-cheeked grin while leaning on the rail at the foot of my bed. “S’pose I coulda worked at the dairy but it’s only part time right now and I heard it’s nasty. So here I am. After a year, you get health insurance but I really don’t see me hangin’ on for…oh my gosh. I forgot!”
She reached down and unhooked a clipboard from the front of my bed, pulling a
piece of paper off and waving it in the air.
“Somebody left you a note. Here, I’ll just…”
She leaned over the bed and held the paper in front of my face as a strong waft of perfume, probably inexpensive but as fragrant as a field of flowers, was so overwhelming that I coughed twice which dug invisible knives into my sides. Her hand was shaking a bit and Benjamin’s scratch wasn’t easy to decipher but by holding the eye shut that had the worst of the headache behind it, I finally got the message.
Hey kid, tough luck. We had to cancel the show so no pay till next gig. And we had to take your car. Sorry. Good news! Bastards that run the fair will pay your hospital bill. But they’re packing shit up and screwing town tomorrow so better check out quick! See you soon.
Benjamin
“There’s a bus ticket, too,” she gestured to the laminated pass clipped on top of the chart. “But hold on…it’s no good after noon today.”
“Yeh,” I struggled to sit up all the way. “Benjamin’s the king of the 12 hour ticket. What time is it? I gotta go.”
“You can’t,” she objected with a true look of concern while attaching the note to my clipboard and hanging it up. “Those boys hurt you real bad. You need to rest, bus ticket or not. Now to answer your question, it’s gettin’ near 6 AM, which means I go home so this is my last round, lucky you.”
“What’s your name?”
She nudged up her ID tage and grinned with such teasing that I imagined pressing my lips to her flushed cheek.
“Maxine,” I read aloud. “Now that’s a great name. I’m gonna write a song about you.”
“Stop it!” she snorted.
“Maxine,” I croaked, which is not far from my usual singing voice, and slowly lifted my arms into a few licks of air guitar. “You're a bad boy’s dream. You got me hooked like nicotine.”
She shook her head and waved a dismissive hand but she was listening all right.
“Maxine. My beauty queen. I wanna kiss you ‘til it gets obscene.”
Her smile fell away and the twinkle in her eyes went dark as she took a few steps back.
“Sorry, ‘scuse me,” she barely glanced my way now. “I gotta finish work. Good luck.”
Maxine moved with surprising quickness to the door before I could speak.
“Wait! I’m sorry,” my voice cracked badly. “I didn’t…it wasn’t. I was just trying to get you to like me.”
She stopped and looked out into the hallway before she turned back.
“I got a husband,” she seemed to be explaining a hidden illness. “And he don’t want nobody likin’ me but him.”
It could be the exhaustion or maybe my groggy mental state but her words hit harder than any of the kicks to my torso that the hooligans had landed at the fair. My small-town teen angel, this striking portrait of innocence, is a married woman, making me wonder which came first, the high school diploma or the wedding certificate.
“I thought it was gonna be romantic,” she explained for no reason at all. “You know, bein’ somebody's wife. But….”
“I didn’t mean to–”
“He’s like a little boy,” she continued with a bit more warmth but still holding her place near the door, her head leaning on the sill. “I mean…you and me have done more talkin’ than he, his name’s Stan, he and me don’t talk all that much.”
“I’m sorry. But so many people…I mean, assuming you don’t have kids then there’s a way out, right? You don’t have to be–” I was going to say ‘unhappy’ but she cut me off and took a couple of steps inside of the room.
“I don’t wanna sound mean or nothin’...” she was not smiling now, “...but please don’t tell me how I gotta be. Cause I gotta do everythin’ that I’m doin’. I got married with nothin’. And now I got less of nothin’. So…”
Maxine’s voice got shaky and she stopped talking, putting a hand to her mouth.
“No, no,” a sudden sick feeling of despair gripped me hard. “I didn’t mean to…it’s just when I woke up and saw you. I thought you were the most beautiful thing ever. And what you have, you might not like it right now but it’s a life. I…I wish I could say that I have one but I can’t. All I have is…listen I like you Maxine, you’re really nice so I’m gonna just say it. I need some drugs so I can get outta this bed and onto that bus.”
“I told you. I can’t…”
“Look at me! This is what it looks like to have nothing!” they weren’t the words that I wanted to say but they came out with a sob. “I have absolutely nobody. No friends, no family, no money. I swear if I don’t get outta here right now I’m going to end up like him.”
We both looked over to the corner and the scariest thing was that the old man didn’t seem to be in such a bad place as sleeping forever is one way to avoid brutally wretched days.
“I don’t want to. I still think I can do better and…become something but I gotta keep moving. I got to, Maxine. Just like you got to. Only you don’t realize it yet.”
“That’s enough,” her voice was stern, making me wish I hadn’t talked so much. “Understand? Just shut up.”
She was gone. Probably off to get some restraints or a heavy sedative or a big orderly to come in and kick whatever’s left of my ass. I looked over to the old man in the corner and was surprised that his wasted appearance no longer disturbed me. I could almost make out the young person that he was a long time ago, buried beneath the lines and sags of age. The poor guy will never set foot outside again but way back there in the dustbin of history he must have spent days in the sun, sailing a boat or having a picnic or reading a book. Better yet maybe out dancing somewhere with a pretty girl in the moonlight next to his hot-rod car as the radio blasts out a tune from the long lost days of…
A loud crash started me awake from a weird dream where Maxine and I were dancing in this big, beautiful open field at dusk but there was no music, just the beep of the old man’s machine. With perfectly bad luck, I had dozed off right when I needed to hustle my ass out of here. As I grit my teeth and moved through the hurt to swing my legs to the side of the bed, Maxine rushed in.
“Hurry,” she moved quickly and helped to ease me up into a truly uncomfortable sitting position with the hospital johnny revealing way too much. “Here. Med tray got knocked over by accident.”
She placed three small card-board cups holding a half-dozen oversized pills into my hands.
“You take two every four hours. No more! And no alcohol. Promise me.”
"I promise,” I suspected it was a lie but a big part of me wanted to keep it.
“You gotta get more wherever you’re goin’,” she gave me one last big, sweet smile as she moved for the door. “Good luck.”
“Wait!” I pleaded, not at all minding the desperation in my voice, “I…”
“I gotta start pickin’ up before Heather gets back,” she was glancing into the hall nervously before squaring a look right at me. “I know you don’t got nobody special right now. But you will. I can tell. You’re real sweet, Patrick. You just keep lookin’. There ain’t no rush.”
She didn’t wait around for a reply and I didn’t try to call her back. My clothes were on a hook in the corner and after slugging down two of the pills, I got dressed with great difficulty and stuffed the bus ticket into my pocket. Even though my torso was on fire and there was a long half-hour to go until the meds kicked in, right now was without a doubt time to boogie. I stopped in the doorway and turned back to wave good-bye to the old man and instead moved over to his bed and laid a hand on his cheek which was cold and strange as if there was nothing left under the skin. His mouth hung open and the face was a mix of pain and utter exhaustion.
“Rock on, old fellah,” I whispered.
I had to sneak past another nurse, presumably Heather, at the floor-desk to get to the stairs and I saw Maxine at the other end of the hall, on her hands and knees cleaning up the pills strewn across the blue and white checkered linoleum. I blew a kiss that I hoped would find her and slipped out the door to execute a long, tedious climb down the stairwell before pushing outside and embarking on an even slower trudge toward the station. There was no reason to hurry, the gig wasn’t until tonight and the bus trip should take less than four hours. I’ll make it for sure. It’ll be a long, long while before the music stops. I’m good. I got all the time in the world.
— TERENCE PATRICK HUGHES
Terence Patrick Hughes writes fiction and drama. His crime novel, “A Sin to Know”, which reviewers are calling “brutally tense and wickedly funny” and “a gripping edge of your seat read,” is available now. Hughes’s stage plays have been produced around the world. The New York Times noted that his work “… explores heavy subject matter with humorous dialogue and strong characters.” Born in Lawrence, Mass., Hughes lives with his wife and two children in Woodstock, New York.