Born to Rock (4 page)

[7]

MAY. THE HOMESTRETCH. HIGH SCHOOL,
for all intents and purposes, was over. The big exams had all been taken. Grades—at least the ones that would be reported to colleges and universities—were already set. Class attendance was sparse, and even the teachers didn't seem to mind.

The buzz was about next year—who would be going where. Melinda had final acceptance from U. Conn., and four schools were actually competing for Owen. Despite average SATs and lukewarm grades, Connecticut's diamond in the rough would be cruising to a full ride somewhere. At least it meant Borman wouldn't get his way.

Gates was (where else?) Stanford-bound, and Fleming and Shelby both got the nod from Yale. Somebody had to be the sickening lovebirds of the incoming freshman class, I guess. I was just happy they'd be sickening somebody else for a change.

At our next Young Republicans meeting, good old Flem brought in stacks of newspaper clippings claiming that his Yale had surpassed my Harvard in the college rankings. What was the point in arguing? High school arguments seemed lighter than air, and getting lighter.

Harvard was stamped all over my incoming mail—dorm assignments, preregistration. Some fraternity even sent out a flyer advertising their first party of the fall. The tuition bill was there too, along with a letter from the McAllister Foundation. They were the sponsors of my scholarship, the only way I was able to pay said tuition bill. So it was fitting that the two should arrive together.

I tore open the McAllister envelope. The letter was short and to the point:

Dear Mr. Caraway,

We are sorry to inform you that we are canceling your scholarship funding due to a recent ethics violation we note in your student record. In addition to academic and extracurricular achievement, the foundation requires the utmost in integrity from our candidates. In this light, we cannot overlook what your school describes as “cheating on an examination.”

With regret,

Rosalie McAllister Black

C
HAIRPERSON

It was like being hit by a train when you didn't even know you were standing on railroad tracks. Total devastation, but total shock as well. I had checked with Harvard after my meeting with Borman. In a million years it had never occurred to me that the math test thing would cost me my scholarship. If it wasn't a deal-breaker for Harvard, why should the McAllister people care?

A feeling of cold panic descended on me as I realized that a no on the scholarship was a no on Harvard, too. Sure, I had college savings, but that would never cover more than a state school. Dad owned a small-town hardware store; Mom picked up a few extra bucks as the dispatcher for substitute teachers in our area. My first year's tab for tuition and housing was more than
forty thousand dollars
! For me to come up with that kind of money now would take a much larger ethics violation than the one I'd allegedly committed with Owen Stevenson. I would have to hold up an armored car on its way to Fort Knox!

I was screwed.

My parents took it worse than I did.

“If only we'd
known
, Leo!” Dad lamented. “We could have found that money somewhere!”

“Come on, Dad. Forty grand? That was always the deal—no scholarship, no Harvard. That's why I applied to state schools—in case the McAllister didn't pan out.”

“But we told the state schools to forget it!” Mom interjected desperately. “It's too late for that now!”

Dad cut right to the heart of the matter. “But how can they accuse you of cheating?
Did
you cheat?”

“Of course not!” I exploded. “I was tutoring a guy in algebra, and I said one word to him in the exam. One word! It wasn't a question or an answer.”

“But why did you say
any
word?” my mother persisted.

“Mr. Borman was gunning for Owen Stevenson,” I explained. “If I'd served the kid up on a silver platter, nothing would have happened to me.”

“Owen Stevenson?” my mother repeated shrilly. “You can't stand Owen Stevenson!”

“Borman's worse. He was looking for an excuse to kick Owen out of school, and I sure wasn't going to do his dirty work for him.”

They supported me. Mom got on the phone to Mr. Borman, and Dad took on the McAllister Foundation. Then they switched. They fought hard for me, their strident, outraged voices ringing through the house.

In the end, it was all settled. The powers that be were going to take away my scholarship, and I was going to let them. There's no mercy in academia.

Screwed.

Thinking back on it, I probably should have gone to the newspapers to expose Borman for the tin-plated dictator that he was. But that wouldn't have gotten me my scholarship back. Technically, I was in the wrong here. Talking during an exam counts as cheating. It's like speeding—everybody does it, but if you're the guy they catch, you're done.

Dad was practically suicidal. “This is my fault. If I had stayed on Wall Street that tuition bill would be a drop in the bucket right now.”

“Erik, that's crazy talk,” my mother soothed. “Who could blame you after what happened to Dan Rapaport?”

“There were a lot of other guys on that commuter platform, and none of them quit their jobs. None of them put themselves ahead of their families.”

“You did that
for
your family, remember?” she argued. “So you'd always be there for us.”

It tore me up to see him blaming himself for this. I also saw a connection with that day on the railway platform, but my take was different. Ever since then, I'd been unable to say no to Melinda. If I'd had the spleen to tell her to stuff it when she'd asked me to tutor Owen, none of this would be happening right now.

If only life came with a rewind/erase button.

“Oh, Leo!” Mom was distraught. “I know defending Owen was the right thing to do. But, oh honey, how
could
you?”

It came back to me as clear as Caribbean water—the feeling that had swelled inside me as I'd sat opposite Mr. Borman, stiffening my jaw as well as my resolve. Only this time, McMurphy had a face—ferocious eyes blazing beneath a punk haircut.

I bit my lip. This was probably not a good time to bring up King Maggot again.

I moved through the halls of that school like I'd never seen the place before. I could barely walk in a straight line. I wasn't drunk. It was just that my life had suddenly become entirely devoid of direction. I felt like a guy who had just been released from prison after serving a fifty-year term. This was not my planet.

The planet may have been different, but the local aliens were still the usual suspects.

“Leo!
Leo!
” Melinda came pounding down the hall, her layers of black on black flowing behind her like the cape of the vampire Lestat. “You're never going to believe this! It's the greatest thing that ever could have happened!”

I made a split-second decision then and there: I would tell no one that I wasn't going to Harvard. I couldn't face the questions and I couldn't face the sympathy. People might get suspicious in September when they saw me still working my summer gig at Dad's hardware store, but they weren't going to hear the news from me.

“What's up?”

“Guess who's headlining the Concussed World Tour this summer?”

“The
what
?”

She was disgusted. “Concussed, Leo. They have it every year. It's a traveling all-day festival of punk, hardcore, ska, and heavy metal. You're going to die when you hear the news: Purge is getting back together to do the tour—all the original band members!”

It should have made a big impression on me—the fact that my biological father was about to slither out from whatever rock he'd been hiding under since 1990. I'd never really thought of him as a today person. He was just a guy who, eighteen years ago, made some terrible music and got my mother pregnant. The fact that all his fame was from the '80s only seemed to reinforce the idea that he existed in the
past.

Now he was going to resurface.

Before yesterday, that would have been front-page news. But now, with my life in shards around my feet, I had no interest whatsoever in seeing the mysterious King Maggot in action. If Purge had been staging their reunion in our backyard, I wouldn't have lifted the blind to check it out. Losing Harvard had done that much for me. McMurphy couldn't hold me for ransom anymore. There was nothing left for me to lose.

Anyway, your real father wasn't the one who provided the genetic material. He was the one who was willing to get on the phone and call Rosalie McAllister Black an “unreasonable, heartless old bag.” Dad was a real pit bull; Mom too. And even though it hadn't changed anything, it was some consolation to have two people so ardently on my side.

I felt a surge of resentment toward Melinda for interrupting the end of the world to supply me with this useless information. That might have explained why I snapped at her the way I did.

“What makes you think I care?”

She looked at me as if I'd slapped her.

“I've got news for you, Melinda. Purge sucks! All punk sucks! It's stupid, pointless noise!” It was the first time I'd raised my voice since opening the McAllister letter. It felt good to let the anger out, even if it was being directed at the wrong person. “Look at you—you've based your whole life on it! What does that say about
you
?”

I'd seen her deck goth-hating jocks in a single blow, with the silver studs of her dog-collar bracelet pulled up onto her knuckles. But when she punched me, it was barely a tap on the shoulder with the soft leather part. It hurt far worse than a home run swing, because I knew how much my words must have upset her. She expected to take grief from the usual gang of loudmouths at our school. But not from me.

On the other hand, if I'd had the guts to offend her a couple of months ago, I might still be going to Harvard.

So why did I feel even worse than before?

That Saturday, Owen Stevenson dropped by to see me just before seven
A.M
. His 180 IQ may have been a thing of the past, but he was still gifted in the field of bothering people.

I blinked bleary eyes at him, struggling to find focus. “Don't you sleep?”

“I just got off the train from New York,” he replied. “Mel and I stayed up all night waiting in line for passes to the Concussed kickoff press conference.”

“Congratulations,” I mumbled. “That's the dumbest thing I've heard all day. Of course, it's early yet. Plenty of time for you to say something even dumber.”

In spite of the fact that I was blocking the doorway, he pushed past me and established himself in a living room chair. “Mel was going to get a ticket for you too, as a surprise. You know—
before.
”

“I'm glad she didn't bother. I wouldn't be caught dead in that place.”

Another funny thing about Owen. If you don't tell him what he expects to hear, he continues as if you hadn't spoken. “You were really nasty to her. What did she do to deserve that?”

“For starters, she saddled me with you.” I gave him my most inhospitable glare. “Now, are you here just to bug me, or do you have something to say?”

“You don't know how good a friend Mel is to you,” Owen informed me. “When people make fun of you and your Young Republicans, she doesn't let them get away with it. When people are sick of hearing about your Harvard scholarship, she sticks up for you. When people call you a snob—”

“What people?” I growled. “It's you, isn't it?”

“It's lots of people,” he insisted. “And you should hear Mel—‘Leo's a good guy; I've known him my whole life; he's just a little misguided.' What do you say to that?”

“Since when is ‘misguided' a compliment?”

“You owe her an apology.”

Here's the thing: I'd been mentally formulating an apology to Melinda for the past two days. But I wasn't going to admit it to Owen.

I said, “Go home.”

He stood up. “I told her not to get you a ticket, but she got you one anyway. You're going to see Purge.”

“I've got better things to do with my time than to waste it on a bunch of middle-aged punks who were
nobody
in their prime, and are even less now.”

He faced me with haughty dignity. “Twenty-five million CDs—what do you say to that?”

“I don't know,” I told him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Twenty-five million CDs and vinyl records—that's what those
nobodies
sold in their prime.”

“Really?” I stared at him, stunned. A lapsed Einstein, sure. But he had just pointed out something I'd never thought of before.

Rock stars weren't just notorious bad boys and gossip column fodder. The music business
paid
! Twenty-five million CDs—that was a lot of money. And that didn't even include concerts, T-shirts, posters, and radio and TV royalties!

Here I was, completely undone by losing a forty-thousand-dollar scholarship, when…

I had a rich father!

[8]

I SAT ON THE PACKED TRAIN, WEDGED
in between Melinda and Owen, on my way to the press conference and an uncertain future.

Good old Melinda had forgiven me readily. God only knew why. Just like I couldn't stay mad at her, she apparently couldn't stay mad at me. Maybe it was our shared history, which stretched clear back to toddlerhood. Maybe she wasn't as punk as she liked everybody to believe. Or maybe she was just so psyched about the prospect of a Purge reunion that everything was sunshine and roses. On her usual online soapbox, KafkaDreams posted this message:

Nobody bug me today. This is the greatest moment in the history of recorded time! Tell you all about it tomorrow, but right now I'M GOING TO SEE PURGE!!!!

Her enthusiasm hadn't dampened on the train. “I can't believe,” she was raving, “that when we get there, the four guys sitting behind the microphones are going to be Purge. I mean, what do they look like now? Has anybody seen them in all these years? King used to be so sexy!”

Owen nodded thoughtfully. “But you know who's smokin'? That guy who calls himself Ylang Ylang—the drummer for the Ball Peens.”

Melinda shook her head. “The real hottie is Pete Vukovich from the Stem Cells. P.S.—he has the best butt in punk.”

While they giggled like sixth-graders, I sat there, working up a migraine, scared witless. I felt a lot like those Olympic athletes who train for decades, and then it all comes down to a ten-second race. How was I going to get close enough to King Maggot to give him the letter I'd written, explaining who I was, and how I desperately needed to talk to him? Would he read it? And even if he did, how seriously would he take it? Rock stars collected paternity claims like baseball cards. I could be one of a royal court of thirty Prince Maggots.

I had thought that getting into Harvard and competing for a McAllister scholarship was pressure. I didn't know the meaning of the word.

On the subway ride down to the SoHo Grand Hotel, those two got talkier, and I sank even deeper into my personal sensory deprivation tank, until I felt like a disembodied brain, floating in formaldehyde.

Melinda noticed my anxiety. “Leo, are you okay? There's no color in your lips.” Her voice seemed to be coming from a long distance away.

Owen beamed triumphantly. “I knew you were going to have a great time!” Like being pale and ill was a barrel of laughs.

When I saw the hotel ballroom, my heart sank through the soles of my shoes. There must have been eight hundred people in that room, packed bumper-to-bumper. The close-in section was roped off for the press. We squeezed into the back of the peanut gallery with a bizarre mix of neo-punks and middle-aged housewives—black leather and body piercings pressed up against L.L.Bean and minivan keys.

I was a light-year from the dais. To get King Maggot's attention from this distance, I'd have to spontaneously combust. How was I going to get closer?

I shouldn't have worried. Melinda had no intention of being this far from the bands. As the interviews started, she took our hands and began to ooze us forward through the crush of people until we were right up to the velvet rope that separated the spectators from the press.

There were nine bands signed on for the Concussed tour—the Stem Cells, Dick Nixon, the Ball Peens, Mark Hatch and the Hatchlings, Skatology, Chemical Ali, Lethal Injection, Citizen Rot, and the immortal Purge.

Since they were the headliner, Purge was scheduled to go on last. That meant we had to endure three hours of the other groups, a collection of unkempt, nose-picking thugs who didn't have a word to say that was more than four letters in length. Each was determined to shock by being more rude/outrageous/nasty/obscene/stoned than the others, the net effect being that they all sort of blended together into a mass of generic cave dwellers.

The crowd had their favorites here and there. Melinda snapped dozens of pictures of the Stem Cells, and Owen went pretty wild when the Ball Peens took their place on the dais. Dick Nixon's drummer had just gotten out of jail, so he was the object of a lot of media interest. But it was pretty obvious that everybody was waiting for the main event. Like me, they wanted to see the return of the legend.

We all had to sit tight. After three interminable hours, they declared an intermission, and everyone was served a free eight-ounce bottle of water, and presented with a plastic bag full of premium giveaways—a T-shirt, baseball cap, bumper sticker, pencil, and refrigerator magnet, all embossed with the Concussed logo, in which the O had been turned into a round head that was being bashed in by a sledgehammer. The tongue was hanging out, and the eyes were X's. A spray of blood splattered the other letters.

By the time the MC returned to his microphone, we'd all been there for close to four hours. At that point, people would have gone crazy if they'd introduced the four Teletubbies. So when Purge took the stage, there was bedlam.

The biggest noise came from the forty-somethings we'd left in the back of the room. They were shrieking, howling, and even spitting, which Melinda explained was a sign of deep respect in the '80s punk scene. Now I understood why they'd given out baseball caps. I put mine on, and so did everybody else.

After the parade of strutting freaks we had just witnessed in the form of the other eight bands, the sight of Purge—the freakiest of the freaky—was a little surprising. They could have been the freaks' fathers, or at least their cool uncles. They were a generation older, and not quite so willing to do absolutely anything just to get attention. They were still punks—at least they were trying to be for the tour. But it was obvious they were coming off a long stretch as civilians.

Max Plank, the drummer, sported a Mohawk that faded into his receding hairline. Zach Ratzenburger, bass, now hid a big paunch beneath his bullet-perforated leather jacket. Neb Nezzer, the guitarist, incorporated a strange limp into his macho strut, and was obviously favoring a bad back.

And then my eyes fell on the fourth member of the group—the lead singer and front man; the father of modern punk, not to mention me. I had sweated out the last four hours, and a ninety-minute train ride before that, my head lost in a whirlwind of figuring the angles of a desperate scheme to salvage the future. Yet the moment I laid eyes on King Maggot, a strange calm came over me.

This was McMurphy. The McMurphy on my birth certificate, the McMurphy in my veins. Somehow, the fact that I was standing there, looking at the missing piece in the puzzle of who I was, eclipsed Harvard, tuition money, and all my machinations. This was my father, my blood. Although, family resemblancewise, I could see zilch.

Melinda was in ecstasy. “Look at them! They haven't changed a bit!”

Obviously, the eyes of love were blind, and fame was a glow that smoothed over wrinkles and colored gray hairs.

Of the four, King Maggot was the best preserved, mostly because he was slim and still had a full head of dark hair. But something was missing in his case as well. I startled myself by actually knowing enough about Purge to realize what it was. The white-hot rage wasn't there. The leader of the angriest band in America looked like, he only wanted to kill two or three people instead of the usual five hundred.

The ovation lasted ten long minutes. And it wasn't just us. The press people applauded. The other bands came back out to cheer. You'd think Purge had cured cancer, and not recorded “The Supreme Court Makes Me Barf.”

When order was finally restored, Max Plank stepped forward to speak for the band. “Nobody panic. We're not taking hostages this time.”

It got screams of appreciation, and the questions began.

“King, what have you been doing for the past sixteen years?”

His reply was the first words I ever heard from the mouth of my biological sire: “Ask your mother.”

I felt like he'd just spit in my face. If it had been
eighteen
years, they could have asked
my
mother.

“Zach, what's the best part of being back together again?”

“Stupid questions from people like you.”

“Neb, how did you keep your guitar skills up during the years off?”

“Picking zits.”

All the answers were like that, and nobody seemed to mind or think it was unusual. This interview had nothing to do with information. It was to give the band members a chance to be obnoxious in public, almost as if the fact that they could fire off a nasty comeback proved that they really were Purge.

“King, have you still got your motorcycle and your samurai sword?”

“Give me your address and I'll get back to you.”

In fact, in the entire press conference, there was only one question that got a halfway straight answer. It was this: “Hey, King, the other guys all have families. What's your story?”

King Maggot raised his mirrored sunglasses, revealing dark piercing eyes that were, for the moment, devoid of anger, genuine or manufactured. “Nothing to tell,” he replied. “I just never had any kids.”

And that statement jolted me out of my stupor and galvanized me into action.

“No!” I said aloud. “That's not right!”

Melinda looked at me warningly. “Leo—”

I ducked under the rope and pushed my way into the crowd of media.

“Beat it, kid!” a newsman told me. “This is press only.”

But I was not going to be stopped. This event was already running an hour late. Someone was going to shut it down any minute, and then my chance to reach King Maggot would disappear forever.

I reached back and yanked the camera out of Melinda's hand. I put the viewer to my eye and bulled forward, snapping pictures of the back of a lot of reporters' heads.

“Hey, quit pushing!”

When at last the sea of obstructions opened up, and the viewfinder showed a clear path to the band, I hurdled the front barrier and ran for the dais, shouting,
“King! That's not true! You do have a kid! I'm your son!”

I got within ten feet of Purge before two large roadies sandwiched me, effectively stopping my progress. I bounced off, reeling, and pulled the letter from my back pocket. I held it out toward King, but he made no move to take it.

A very large hand closed on my shoulder and spun me around. Frantically, I yanked myself free and Frisbee-ed the envelope in the direction of the band. I saw it bounce off the chest of a startled Max Plank before the roadies—four of them now—each grabbed a limb and carried me to the exit.

“Read the letter!”
I howled.
“There's proof!”

They toted me down a fluorescent-lit corridor in the guts of the hotel. I became aware of a sudden cool breeze, and then I was airborne, still hugging Melinda's camera. A moment later, I found myself in a place most Young Republicans don't frequent—lying across a pile of green garbage bags in a deserted alley. As indignities go, it didn't measure up to the cavity search that lay in my future, but it was a respectable, if distant, second.

I leaped up and started banging on the metal door. But it was locked from the inside. No one answered.

I prowled the alley, looking for another way in. The doors were all bolted shut. Most of them didn't even have outside handles. I took stock. Garbage in the alley meant that sanitation people could get in. So I could get out.

It wasn't a short trip. The outlet was on the other side of the block. I had to race around two corners before I could even see the marquee of the SoHo Grand. Then I couldn't get near the front door because of a huge milling crowd.

“Hey!” A kid about my age was pointing at me. “There's the guy who tried to attack King!”

It hit me—these were the people from the ballroom. The press conference was over!

I looked around. The nucleus of this seething mass was a silver stretch limo parked at the curb. All I saw of the band was a phalanx of roadies and the receding Mohawk of Max Plank as he ducked his head getting into the car.

I knew this would be my last chance.
“King! It's true! Read the letter!”

The car door slammed shut, and the limo began to inch away.

A man twenty years older than me sneered in my face. “Hey, King—I'm the kid's brother! You're
my
father too!”

“You're my mother!” piped up another comedian. “You're my step-cousin twice removed!”

The smoked glass receded, and I caught a glimpse into the limo. King sat surrounded by his bandmates, looking in my direction. But behind those mirrored glasses, it was impossible to tell what his eyes were fixed on. If anything.

I took one more stab at it.
“Mr. McMurphy—”

But at that moment, the stretch broke out of the crowd and disappeared down the SoHo street.

I hope I never again experience the despair I felt standing there, watching it go.

I hung around the dispersing throng, looking for Melinda and Owen, but they were nowhere to be found. After half an hour, I gave up and hopped on the subway to Grand Central.

Maybe it was for the best. I wasn't in the mood to have to talk to Melinda about what I said to King Maggot, and mostly, why I said it.

I made the train by the skin of my teeth, and passed between cars, looking for an empty seat. Sure enough, there were my travel companions. I took the bench across from them, and handed over Melinda's camera.

She snatched it from me. “Go away.”

“Let me explain—”

“I don't want to hear your explanation,” she snarled. “If you hate my music, you could have just said so. You didn't have to bust up Purge's first press conference in sixteen years.”

I stared at her. “Is that what you think happened today?”

“Music is important to me, Leo! Every bit as important as being an Ivy Leaguer is to you!”

“Didn't you hear what I said in there?” I cried angrily.

“The whole world heard what you said,” she snapped back. “Really smart. Stuff like that may be a big hoot with you Republicans, but in the rock and roll business, paternity is not something you joke about.”