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SINISTER

21.

I had a bad dream, Garren at the center of it.

We were still kids, goofing around on the street in front of my house. He had sticks in his hair, like he’d just come from one of his father’s job sites. His eyes were childishly wide and both of us were laughing. It was a hard and breathless raucous, joyous for no apparent reason. Night fell upon us all at once and, in that nonsensical way dreams have, Garren stood before me on the street as he was now, a skinny, seventeen year old. He held a tiny fire. I saw it clearly in the darkness, delicate red and yellow flames held cupped in his hands. I told him, sharp,“Put it down.” He didn’t. The fire got bigger. “Come on, man, put it down!” He opened his mouth wide and crammed the fire down his throat.

I woke up with a start. Weird dream, I thought. I heard my Dad and Stacy in the kitchen and when I joined them neither one of them looked at me.

“You mom called,” Stacy said.

“What’s up?”

She didn’t answer, so I looked to my father. I was scared then because the dream was still fresh and the one thought that came to mind, strong as a gunshot, was that Garren had killed himself.

“Dad, what’d she say?”

It happened all the time, didn’t it? The loser kid got pushed over the edge, one final insult broke him and he killed himself. Maybe he’d thought of me in his last second of life, before all his blood gushed into the sink or before he’d jumped off a chair, a rope cinched around his neck. I’d heard him, of course, in my sleeping state and had a nightmare.

“What happened?” I asked.

My dad picked up the phone. “One of your teachers passed away,” he said, offering me the phone. “You should call her back.”

So I dialed my house, relieved that my friend was still alive, and vowing that I would tell him so when I got home.

“Oh, Anthony,” my mom said when she picked up.

Then she gave me the news and I agreed to come home early so that I could pay my respects and say goodbye to my English teacher. I hung up and my stomach seemed full of slick grease that wanted to come back up.

“Sorry for your loss,” my dad said.

“Yeah,” Stacy added and gave me an awkward pat on my shoulder.

“He lived a long time,” I said and felt awful about saying it.

“Did your mom say what happened?”

“His nurse found him on the floor,” I said.

She bit at her lip. My dad sighed. Outside, the girls were playing and their shrill voices came together in a giggle. I thought of me and Garren when we were kids and laughter came that easily. For some reason, I was shaking.

* * *

I drove to Taco Grande to see if Garren was working. I wanted to check out the keyboards at Rock Garage and thought Garren might come with me. I knew he would, actually. He never had his own stuff going on. I needed to see him, too, because the dream had stayed with me. I’d thought about him all the way home from Kansas.

The girl at the counter was new and said she didn’t know who Garren was, so I drove toward his house. It was a cool day, overcast and cloudy; fitting for the funeral I’d attended. Mr. Creedy’s service had been held in the SMCA chapel. The graduating class of 1985 sat together in one section, all in uniform, the school faculty and staff in another. Mr. Creedy’s coffin was on display in the center of the alter. It was the same dull silver color as gun metal, stark and cold compared to the vibrant flowers that surrounded it. Someone had suggested that the students share a favorite story about Mr. Creedy; and few had stood up, gone to the pulpit and done so. All I could think to say was, “Mr. Creedy was a real perfectionist when it came to tenses.” So I’d stayed in my seat.

The police had escorted the hearse and funeral process to the cemetery. The preacher had performed another ritual and said more words. Then we’d abandoned him, leaving him to be lowered into the grave and covered with dirt alone and headed to our cars in clusters.

I didn’t see Garren on the drive, so I cruised slowly past his house, then drove around the block and parked where I could keep an eye on his front door. The whole time we’d been friends, I’d spent only one afternoon at Garren’s house. We’d played Warfare, which was a game he’d made up based on some books he’d read at school. I don’t remember which books, but his game had an intricate plot in which I played some kind of medieval hero and battled an evil horned monster alongside Garren. “We have to train,” Garren had said, “because the fate of the world hangs in the balance.” So we’d practiced fighting by bashing one another with swords made out of sticks. It’d had been fun, even though I knew I was too old to spend my summer vacation in his imaginary world. Then I’d wacked him harder than I meant to and made him curse and cry. His arm had bled where my stick-sword had slashed him. “Sorry,” I’d said. He inhaled through his teeth, wiping the blood off with one hand and his tears with the other. “It’s okay.” We’d gone inside so he could wash the cut.

His house fascinated me. It was like a Salvation Army store. The kitchen chairs were cracked, white vinyl and didn’t match the wooden table at all. Everything, I saw, was second-hand and mismatched. His room was a barren square with nothing on the walls and his blankets gave off a sour, wet odor. His existence knew nothing of clean sheets every week. I remembered standing in his room, perplexed, and thinking how much I liked going to bed with the smell of clean bedding rising off the blankets at my neck. We’d been in his room when his Dad had come home.

“He’s early,” Garren had said, his eyes wider than usual and watery, like he was going to cry again. “You gotta go, Anthony.”

I’d looked at him, questioning. Why would I leave just because his father had come home from work? Then the man had blocked the doorway. My father, the teachers at school, all of them were always clean shaven. Garren’s father had whiskers, grey and black specks on his sun beaten face. His clothes were covered in grime. His appearance made his glare all the more hateful when he stared at me. He gave Garren a hard look, too, then walked away.

“Go,” Garren had repeated. I’d left in a hurry. The back door closed behind me and as it bounced in its frame his father began shouting.

“What was that Mexican doing in the house?”

I didn’t know if Garren had answered. Maybe he’d tried to explain and I couldn’t hear him. Maybe he’d just accepted his fate. I heard the sound of a leather belt whipping him a moment later, and my friend’s sharp cries. I listened to the beating for several strokes, then I’d fled. We’d never talked about it, but all the rest of our friend-time had been spent at my house.

Now, I saw Garren’s mom coming down the street. She had a paper bag in both arms, holding it close to her chest. I slouched down in my seat, just in case she looked my way. She kept her head down and walked fast, cutting across their dirt yard to the side of the house and disappearing from sight. I waited another minute. If Garren was home, he’d leave now. He hated his mom just as much as he hated his father, I knew. When he didn’t come out I gave up and started my car. I had the rest of the afternoon to kill and I decided to check out Rock Garage by myself.

* * *

I heard the guitar player as I approached the door, a loud wail of notes being pushed through an amplifier. It made me really wish Garren was beside me because he’d get a kick out it. Then I entered. I saw the guitar first. I recognized the chipped body and dark wooden neck. Then I saw the guitar player and for a moment I didn’t recognize him. It was more than the new jeans and black boots throwing me off. It was the bruises around both of his eyes. He’d been beaten and the assailant had gone for his eyes.

His posture was the same, a gangly slouch, and his hair hung over his foreheads, limp and unwashed. It was Garren. He looked up. The bruises covered both eye sockets, above and below, so in the moment he made eye contact with me it was like looking into an empty skull.

“Hey, buddy,” he said.

I was aware that my mouth had dropped open.

“When did you get back from Kansas?”

All I thought to say was, “Holy shit.”

“Yeah, I’ve been practicing,” he said. “I’ve been practicing a hell of a lot.”

He looked back to his guitar’s neck. His fingers did a spider-like crawl over the strings as he unleashed another lick. Then he looked back to me, his gas-flame eyes glowing in the center of those horrible bruises.

“How do you like this little girl now, huh?”

He ran a finger over the cracks in her body, a slow, affectionate touch.

“Ain’t she killer?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said with the image of swallowing a mouthful of fire in my mind. “Who punched you in the face?”

“Long story,” he said, still looking down at the guitar. “I named her Zoie, just so you know.”

Zoie – my best friend’s first love, somehow it fit her.

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