32. The Chickens Come Home to Roost
32
THE CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST
ARCHER
“I dunno,” Mal said. “I think you’ve got two different styles butting up against each other here. Your lyrics are funny, and your meaning is serious. What do you think, Ian?”
I looked from Mal to Ian. Mal had actual musical training, but Ian was the voice of authority.
“It’s a mess,” he said.
“Shit.”
All three of us looked down at the sheet of notebook paper on the picnic table. November in Ohio wasn’t the warmest place and we all had gloves on, but the sun was shining and Charlotte had made herself another nest in the mulch. The campground was pretty much our own, and it had seemed like such a good time to ask them about the song I was working on.
“Sing it again,” Ian said.
“The tune is shit. I need you guys to help me with it.”
“Sing it again,” he repeated .
I took a breath of crisp air scented with pine and decaying leaves. Got a good column of air going.
I can signal “touchdown!” and show you “most muscular,”
I can play a bass guitar and walk a dog
But what these arms want most of all
Is to form a circle
A circle around you
And when you’re not there, the circle is . . . useless
It’s the empty part of the donut
The place on the bagel where the hot cream cheese escapes
The puncture in my tire that deflates the good part
I reached the inconclusive end of all I’d written so far. “What’s ‘most muscular’?” Mal asked.
I pushed away from the bench. I’d been stepping on Charlotte’s leash to keep her from wandering, but she was settled like a boulder and not going anywhere. I moved back a pace to show them the body-builder pose: lats flared, traps powerful, fists nearly touching across all the flexed ab muscles in the “I must crush you” stance.
“That’s called ‘most muscular’?” Mal asked.
“Well, yeah. You think people won’t know what that is?”
Mal looked at Ian, who shook his head. “Thunderstorm,” Ian said.
I frowned, annoyed. It was hard enough to share what I already knew was a crappy song without Ian being cryptic all over it.
Mal banged on my arm and gestured back to the bench so I’d sit. “It’s like I said. You’re mixing up your styles here. You’ve got a ‘Full Moon and Empty Arms’ vibe going with wanting to have your arms around someone, but then you’re comparing her absence to hot cream cheese running through the center of the donut.”
“Bagel,” I said. “No one puts cream cheese on a donut.”
“I don’t know how you know that since you won’t eat either of them, but my point is, you’re all hot and cold here. Hot air and cold air come together, and what do you get?” He illustrated his words by slamming his two drummer’s palms together, sending a crisp clap of sound rolling across the empty campground.
“Thunder.” Ian nodded. “Like I said.”
“Crap.” I sagged on the bench. “So . . . what do I do? How do I fix it?”
Mal looked at Ian and did an “after you” with his eyebrows. Ian replied with an, “if I must” with his eyebrows.
“You have to decide what you want,” he said.
I waited, hoping he’d go on. When he didn’t, I turned to Mal for interpretation.
“What we’re saying is, do you want another one of your excellent witty songs? Like ‘The Salesman’? We’re down for that if you do. That was our first song on the radio, so go ahead with you.”
“Do it,” Ian agreed.
“Or,” Mal said dramatically. I was swiveling between the two of them, and he’d regained my attention with one word. “Or you could write the love song that’s trying to get out of you.”
“Obviously,” Ian said.
I sat back, curling away from the words. “A love song? Me? Come on.”
Ian tapped on the page with one callused finger. “ ‘I want to form a circle around you’?”
I got up to pace again, nearly tripping over the dog, who didn’t even raise her head in response to the quick dance I did to recapture my balance. “I don’t write love songs. I write about annoying customers, and—and about my truck.” I gestured to the BFT gleaming in the afternoon light. Mal and Ian were watching me, and I detected an annoying level of smugness in their observation. “Love songs are Ian’s thing, not mine.”
“Well, that’s true.” Mal turned to Ian, awaiting his judgment from on high.
“Because you’ve never been in love before,” Ian said like an Easter Island head suddenly deciding to speak after centuries of stony silence.
“I’m not in love now,” I shot back.
Damn it, they were both openly grinning now. So insulting.
“Sure you’re not,” Ian said.
“Let me ask you,” Mal said. “When you envision those very manly empty arms circling around someone—when you look down with your mind’s eye—what color is the head you see in your vision? It wouldn’t be red, would it?”
I scowled at him. “I do not love O’Connor. Far from it. You saw her at the pre-Thanksgiving. She couldn’t wait to get every single relative to tell her stories about my misspent youth. She Googled Maggie Danforth, can you imagine?”
“The girl you tried to videotape. She asked us about her too,” Mal said, and Ian nodded too.
“She got my dad going on you,” Ian said.
“Yeah,” Mal added. “And my mom. ‘What was Archer like as a boy?’ ‘Was he always the favorite child?’ ‘Did anyone ever say no to him?’ ”
“As if no one ever said no to me! I mean, come on!” I threw my hands into the air, ignoring the continued smugness of my friends.
“He’s got it bad,” Ian said to Mal.
Mal nodded. “Hard for him,” he said as if I wasn’t standing ten feet from them. “He’s late to fall in love for the first time. Probably go really hard for him. ”
“Delayed development,” Ian agreed.
“Shut the fuck up! I’ve been in love before,” I protested.
“Nah.” Ian stood and slapped my shoulder as he passed on his way to the truck. “You’ve been in lust. Permanently in lust. Unlock this, will you?”
Of course he wanted his guitar. Ian played scales obsessively, but even he couldn’t do it with gloves on. He took his guitar into the red tent, where the heater from the BFT would create an acceptable environment for Ian to worship at the shrine of his only god—a six-stringed god that sang under his fingers.
I was left with Charlotte, sound asleep in the sun, and Mal, whose grin had softened to a smile. Somehow, the smile felt more dangerous to my peace of mind.
“You’ve got some good stuff here,” he said, flicking the page. “Some great imagery. I think you should sit down and stare into the woods. Percolate a little. Seems to me you could probably tease this into two different songs.”
I sat again, deflating. “One full of hot air and one full of cold air.” He raised an eyebrow. “Which one,” I asked, “is the love song? The hot air or the cold air?”
“They’re both hot,” he said as he stood. “I’m going to go warm up in the tent. But let me ask you”—his hand fell on my shoulder, and I looked up—“seriously, how many groupies have you had since Chicago?”
I sputtered, and he waved me off.
“Arch, I know about the woman who got you to kiss her ass with her lipstick. Did you fuck her?”
It took me a moment to shake my head. Why was it so shameful to admit that I hadn’t fucked some willing woman? “My life has gotten so screwed up somehow,” I finally said.
“I know.” He patted my shoulder and moved away. “Stare into the woods. Let your mind go blank. Let the song come to you. You want me to take Charlotte? ”
I glanced at the soot-gray boulder behind me. Like he could make her move. “I’ve got her.”
“Happy meditating.”
I could hear Ian and Mal in the tent. They were reviewing the chord progression to Ian’s song “Street Dancing.” As background noise, it was probably even better than silence because it was so familiar.
So, I did as I’d been instructed. I sat.
I stared into the woods.
I was aware that my torso felt good in the down coat, and my legs felt good in the chill of jeans.
I pleated the hem of my left glove with the restless fingers of my right hand.
I used my teeth to worry the appealing bumps-under-wet-silk of my inner lip.
And I cleared my mind.
I didn’t want to love you
That’s not who I am
How you crept in, I can’t say
But now my arms are empty when they don’t hold you
Now my smile has lost its full force
Now when I think of something I want your opinion on,
You’re not here to ask
And I’m not used to this
What the hell have you done to me?
Becoming a new person at my age,
Well, that’s terrifying
I think I was happier before I knew
How good it felt to hold you
Because now you’re not her e
And I want you here
Have you doomed me to living my life
With these perpetually empty arms?
Christ. It’s just not fair.
Mal was right. The song flowed into me once I was silent enough to hear it. It captured the confusion, the anger, the fear of falling into—into?—
And was there a third verse waiting? One about determination? About rejecting the emptiness and going after the goal? The unspecified, confusing, redheaded goal? I thought that verse was out there waiting for me too.
“Arch, man.” Mal startled me when he emerged again. “Brother, it’s getting dark out here, and fuck, it’s cold. Let’s go get some dinner, okay? Where’s Charlotte?”