Drive (10 page)

“Well, here we are,” I said. “Hope we're not late.”

“No,” Rutley said. He was staring at the two-foot amplifier I was struggling to balance. Daniel promptly set down his guitars at the table closest to the wall, shrugged off his jacket and began setting up.

“Could I get you to move?” he said to a nearby table of three men. “I need some room here.”

I heard the grumble, and the discontented scraping of chairs. Rutley glanced back at them.

“You…you did a great job with the decorations,” I said quickly as I set down the amp. “Jake is going to be thrilled.”

“Look,” Rutley said, stepping closer. “How loud is he going —”

“Do you have a microphone?” Daniel cut in.

The man looked at him as if he were a bug. “No. Why would we?”

Daniel snorted, soft but unmistakable. “Right. Why would you.” He turned away, too fast. Rutley raised an eyebrow at me. I could feel the sweat gathering under my arms and around my collar.

“Allan,” I said, easing him away, “let me buy you a beer.”

I left some of my gas money on the bar, then swept in beside Daniel, as if I was helping him.

“Get a personality,” I hissed, “or I'll drive your ass back home tonight, I swear to God.”

I couldn't see his face but he hesitated; the brim of the fedora quivered.

I built a pyramid of cassettes for display on the table, and took some in my hand. As Daniel slung the strap of the electric guitar over his shoulder and began to tune up, I looked at the crowd.

Cold calls, any salesman will tell you, are the hardest. It takes guts to start at zero, come face to face with someone who didn't ask for what you have to sell. There weren't a hundred people in the Legion, not even fifty yet, but I could tell by the backs and shoulders turned against us, these were all cold calls. I took a deep breath and waded in.

“Hi, how are you tonight?” I began over and over as I moved through the room. I tried to work in the important things quickly: the Friesen name, the fact that we were from Ile-des-Sapins, and that we were doing this for Jake.

“Would you know him if you saw him?” one woman asked point-blank. The truth paralyzed me for a few seconds before I managed to laugh
nervously and tell her it was the thought that counted. I tried not to slink away.

Every table I stopped at, I showed Daniel's tape. Some people glanced at it in curiosity but most had only one question: Was he old enough to be in here? I had to keep explaining that as long as he didn't drink and as long as I was with him as a guardian, it was legal. But that wasn't the same as welcome. The magic twenty tapes seemed as impossible as seven hundred.

One man in a crisp white shirt and a heavy gold watch leaned over the snooker table and sank the pink with a decisive crack. “Does your brother play that thing or does he just tune it?” he said.

At that instant the room burst into sound, electric vibration, notes running wild, not up and down the scale but around it and through it. I looked. Everyone did. I'd never heard this song before, not on one of Daniel's CDs, not floating up through my bedroom vent. It was pure instrumental – I couldn't imagine words keeping up with it. If this was R & B, it was that music on drugs, blues at 150 kilometers an hour.

Daniel wasn't looking at us. Head down, brim hiding his face, he was watching the fingers of his left hand fly over the frets. My mind leapt back to Mickey's pawn shop. One shit-hot guitar man. He deserved that Fender.

Climbing the scale, dropping, then climbing again, dancing on it, until suddenly it was over. There was a moment of stunned silence, then the feeling came up through my chest, a rush of awe. I started to clap. The room abruptly joined in, and Daniel looked up shyly. His bare sixteen-year-old face was a shock to me. I'd forgotten this was my brother. But he was surprised, too, as if he couldn't believe it was me out there, clapping so hard.

The whole night wasn't like that, but it set the tone. It was a good thing. Daniel was a brilliant guitarist, but he had utterly no talent with an audience. He was playing only instrumentals and he hid behind his hat. People asked
me
for requests. One man, drinking fast, desperately wanted to hear the Animals' classic, House of the Rising Sun. When I passed it on, Daniel rolled his eyes as if I'd just asked him to spend the morning in kindergarten. I had to go back later and lay it out plainly for him.

“This guy has three nephews and he'll buy a tape for each of them if you just play the damn song. But if you don't do it soon, he's going to be too pissed to get his wallet out.”

That did it. Daniel started off snarky, too fast, but he got lost in the beauty of that old song, the haunting melody of a ruined life. For a second time the room seemed to stop,
transfixed. Daniel wasn't singing but it didn't matter. The fast drinker knew the words and he was mouthing them or singing softly, the rims of his eyes suddenly bright. Everyone from Starling seemed to understand whose song this was and why.

On the very last quavering note, Uncle Jake the birthday man walked in, and the room leapt to its feet in a standing ovation – for him, for the fast drinker, for Daniel. My brother rolled into Happy Birthday, full of electric riffs, and the applause went on and on. The old man had to sit down; he kept touching his hand to his temple. He might have been expecting something but not quite this: music and streamers and a roomful of people drunk with gratitude and love.

“Jens, buy me a beer.”

Daniel was taking a break, resting up for the second set. I was touching base, hovering like a coach. I wanted him to loosen up and talk to the audience.

“I'll get you a pop,” I said.

“No, I want to sing. I need a beer.”

“We'll get kicked out…” I argued.

“By who? They love me here.”

I saw my mother's worried face, but it seemed long ago and far away. And Daniel was right. They did love him, and they loved me,
too. I was rushing on a salesman's high, the thrill of people glad to see me, wanting what I had to offer. The money was growing thicker in my wallet and nudging me from behind. I knew I was nearing my magic number, and I didn't want it to stop.

“Just one,” I told him. I bought a beer and got a glass, and shielded behind him I filled it slowly and at an angle, so it wouldn't foam. “If anybody asks, you say it's ginger ale,” I said.

He took down a third of it in a single swallow, and I felt a dim pulse of concern. “I mean it, I'm not buying another,” I said.

“Don't worry.” He opened the case to the acoustic. I waded out into what was now a packed, smoky hothouse, determined to pick up the trail of money again.

There is magic in an acoustic guitar. Maybe it's the campfire memories or maybe it's just friendlier than an electric. Whatever the reason, once Daniel started singing, the room seemed to draw closer to him, wrap around him. People stopped asking me for songs, and started asking him.

I wasn't really listening. The music seemed to take place at the edge of my hearing. One song caught me, though, maybe because it was softer and slower, as pretty as a ballad. I was certain it was a request – my brother didn't write
love songs. I think it was called Chantel.

I was too busy to listen long. Occasionally I'd look over and I was mystified. Daniel kept drinking but his glass never seemed to empty. Then I saw the snooker player in the white shirt sidle up to him, making a request. My brother smiled and touched his glass. The man smiled back and left his own full one on the table.

The little sneak! I felt an angry flare before reason took over. Give him hell tomorrow, I told myself. Tonight he's what they want.

Not since my days of chocolate almonds had I been on such a roll. I couldn't fold up the bills fast enough. But it wasn't just about money. I was hungry to talk to people, glad to listen to any life that wasn't my own. The stories and hushed secrets wrapped around me like an arm: the wife who gambled away the house; the daughter who ran off with her teacher. The memory of yesterday morning was easing away, and I needed it to. I needed somebody to trust me.

“This song is from my debut. I only sing it when I'm pissed.”

Daniel's slurred voice leapt out at me across the smoky buzz. At the back of the room I stood up, straining to see him. He was sitting now, vest gone, sweat staining dark circles on the denim shirt. He was hugging the guitar, hat pushed
back, his bleary face naked to the audience.

He wasn't just high, he was smashed.

Alarm shot through my body. Pack it up, get him out now.

“It's about the worst night of life,” Daniel continued, and he grinned stupidly, bravely. “It's for my brother.”

I was rooted to the floor. He struck the first chords and dimly I realized this was a ballad, too, but it was no love song.

All I ever did was walk behind you

Try to learn how to be

I guess you never asked for

A shadow who looked like me

You were there first

So I guess its your right

To throw me out

Chew me up

Cut me down

But did you ever think… that was my room too?

You had lots of friends, I had only you

You had the whole world, I had that room

But, hey, it's your right

There was a sketching of applause. Some people glanced at me but it was late and many were too drunk to care.

I was sober. I sat down heavily, the room spinning, my guts churning.

It happened at the end of April in my grade nine year. I'd been fifteen for a week and I liked it. I was five-feet-eleven – not the tallest guy in my year, but the only one who could take down our gym teacher Mr. Flett in wrestling, take him down and keep him there, make him grunt and struggle, then finally laugh. He said he was glad I'd be going to Rosetown Senior High the next year.

“Yeah, Jens, that's how I keep my job,” Mr. Flett teased. “Keep the boys home and send the men on to Rosetown.”

I was feeling so close. I'd had my learner's permit for three months and I was doing really well – terrific, Mom said. That day in April she'd promised I could drive us to Winnipeg for dinner out; Dad was working late. Daniel could
ride up front with me, and she'd sit in the back.

“I'll read a book,” she said. “I won't say a word.”

Daniel and I were revved about it. It was almost like being out on our own.

“Let's go to Gooey's for pizza subs,” he said cheerfully. “She hates that place!”

“When I've got my license, you and me will go there all the time,” I promised.

I had lots of plans for when I got my license.

In a small town, everybody dates everybody else eventually, although “date” is probably too complicated a word. The people I knew just hung around together. There were some basement parties, some school dances, some moments along the dark north wall of the rec center. But until you could drive there was hardly any way to be alone with someone you liked.

I liked Mona Perenthaler and I was pretty sure she liked me. In a group, we always wound up standing next to each other. Maybe I was kind of goofy and loud sometimes, but she laughed at my jokes. And when she talked, I shut up. I had experience with shy people; I knew you had to listen.

Part of me seemed to be listening to her all the time. I could lose my train of thought standing next to her, swept up by the nearness of her
high, heavy breasts and long back, her curving buttocks that strained against the pockets of her jeans, exactly the same height as where my hands would be, if she was against me.

Mona was taller than many of the other girls but still she managed to look up at me, cheeks flushing pink, biting her lip in a way that made me want to bite it, too. Even in a crowd, I could almost hear her heart beat.

That afternoon in April I was excited by my life, barely able to squeeze my shoulders down the aisle of the bus that was taking us out for the Rosetown Introductory Field Trip.

R.I.F.T. was a tradition, and a joke. Because all the kids from the smaller towns went to Rosetown Senior, one day each spring they'd bring in the new groups for a tour – as if our families didn't shop in that town every week. But the real joke was the acronym. The open house probably did more to stir up rivalries than anything else they could have done. A small place like Floret might only have two or three students starting at a time. That year from Ile-des-Sapins we had twenty-two.

On the bus we seemed like more.

“For Pete's sake, tone it down!” Mr. Wiebe called back at us, time after time. But we were on our way into new territory. We needed to be bigger than we were; we needed to be more.
And Mona Perenthaler was on that bus. I couldn't tone it down.

If Rosetown had any sense, they would have given their own school the day off for this, but they didn't. And so as we were led around – the gym, the labs, the classrooms – there were moments when every high-school kid in the province seemed wedged into the same hallway.

By three o'clock we'd been in our coats too long. I was overheated and bored, the skin under my shirt itchy with sweat. Just as Mr. Wiebe was trying to lead our group out, the final bell rang. Doors burst open and the hallway flooded. “Stay together, people. Stay together!” Mr. Wiebe shouted, but I was shuffled back by the surge from all directions. All I wanted was to get out into the cold air, but I was trapped, waiting for an opening.

“Another Ile-des-Sapins bastard.”

I turned to see Chris Butler. Big, brooding, pig-eyed, he was six feet tall in grade nine, the cousin of a friend of a friend, and he was from Floret. We'd played a pick-up game of football together last fall, on the same team. He couldn't run worth a damn, wouldn't even try, and I'd told him so.