Shotgun Lovesongs: A Novel (35 page)

Her hand fit so perfectly in mine and I allowed myself the briefest reverie: lying together in a white bed, our limbs entangled, her chestnut hair, morning sunlight and the joy of making a baby together. I saw her hair growing white in intervals: first a few fibers, then waves, and finally her whole head of hair, until finally it became fragile, brittle, flyaway. I saw her face now, and then imagined it far off, inscribed by the sun, the cold, the prairie winds, her squinting and laughter. God it made me sad, to pull away from that reverie only to see my own future as it lay ahead, decades without this woman, decades watching her with my best friend. But there it was.

“Maybe what I should say is, ‘I’m sorry.’”

She looked at me. “Sorry about what, Lee?” We had stopped.

“No,” I said, “please, don’t stop dancing with me. I just mean, look. I don’t even know how to say it. I just … I’m sorry about that night. I’m sorry about what happened.”

She had returned her head to my shoulder and I could no longer see her eyes. “Lee, I don’t know what to say,” she said. “I haven’t even thought about that night in months now. We’ve been so happy. Everybody’s been, you know, just so happy.”

“I haven’t been happy.”

“Well I don’t ever want to talk about it again, okay? I don’t even want to think about it.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t want
you
to ever think about it again. Okay? Lee? It’s done,” she said, “and now here we are.”

“Beth?”

She looked up at me.

I wanted to say,
I love you
. “Nothing,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

And then we were quiet, just the steady shifting of our weight, foot to foot, our tiniest movements: the traffic of blood in our veins circulating, pumping, our lungs at work and the lightning of our brains, the smallest currents of air and breath pushing strands of our hair and our sad eyes blinking, taking in light, taking in darkness. The parquet flooring of the rundown Palladium Ballroom below us sinking and rebounding ever so slightly. I thought of a night, many, many years ago, when Henry, Beth, and I were just kids, and we’d erected a canvas pup tent beside Lake Wing. I thought of that night now, the dance of our flashlights and the sound of midnight laughter.

The song ended, and an elderly man much wrinkled and leaning on a cane was suddenly beside me, tapping a finger against my shoulder and smiling broadly. “I apologize,” the old man said, “but you’ll forgive me for cutting in. I don’t get too many chances to dance with young women these days.” And then he handed me his cane, as if I were a coatrack, a hat tree. Beth kissed me fleetingly on the cheek before curtsying politely at the old man. They began to dance, and I returned to the bar, where I ordered a beer and stood beside Ronny and Eddy.

“Got to watch those geezers,” said Eddy. “They’re cold-blooded.”

I stayed until the end, until the lights came on and everyone groaned for more: more music, more beer, more dancing and fun. Beth and Henry waved at us as they left the building and climbed back into their limousine, bound for a hotel in Eau Claire. I waved good-bye along with everyone else, waved at them until I could no longer see the red of their taillights.

And then I went home with Ronny and his parents and lay on their couch, gazing at the ceiling fan as it turned, not even the slightest bit sleepy.

*   *   *

Four o’clock in the morning, and my right hand was in the air, my knuckles poised millimeters away from the door of the hotel room where Beth and Henry slept, newly wedded and without a care in the world. The hallways of the hotel were abandoned, the night auditor watching a little six-inch television screen behind the front desk. The only sound was the ice machine.

But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t knock. Because time had passed, because we were all adults, and there are boundaries that adults don’t cross, and this was one—two people fairly married, and what reason, what possible reason did I have now to ruin it? And why? Why at that moment? Why not a year ago? Or two? Or five? Cecil was right: she had lived within five miles of me my whole life, and now, here I stood, in a stale hallway, a peephole staring blankly back at my sorry face, my fist raised in announcement of what? Of love? Of friendship?

I thought about the future,
my
future, my life, and I could see it now spreading out before me as surely as I knew every line of topography around Little Wing, the hills, valleys, sloughs, coulees, ridges, country roads and cornfields, railroad tracks and game trails. I could see it all: that I would keep writing and playing music and touring and soon, things would take off. The magazines would begin to print reviews, and then stories. I’d be commissioned to write songs for television shows and movie soundtracks, until one day, I’d be standing up on a stage, holding a little golden gramophone and talking to an auditorium of my heroes. I could see it, because I believed in the music, believed in my own voice, in what music I heard the world make. I could see that Henry and I would slowly grow apart, at first by increments of weeks and months, and then by years, until when I called him, he would no longer even recognize my voice. My friends would have families, children, and comfortable homes—homes with tired, comfortable furniture. While I would date and marry women who loved and then loathed me, who didn’t understand the first thing about me, who were bored by me, who detested my hometown and no more than tolerated my friends. And then, one day, there would be nothing to come home to. No more friends, no family, no smiling faces and no hellos or good nights. I saw myself buying a big penthouse, maybe a beach house, a place along a coast, a place with a massive selfish view, and I saw myself roaming that floor plan, restless as an old dog.

I lowered my fist to my hip and exhaled years of love. I walked down the hallway, out into the early morning, and climbed in Ronny’s parents’ car, and drove all the way back to Little Wing.

H

W
E THREW NO DUST
as we rocketed toward Lee’s schoolhouse over those dewy midnight gravel roads. Fireflies rose up in the ditches and fields like tiny lanterns. Moths to dust the windshield.

“Hope you’re not bleeding too much on that bench seat,” I said.

“Just on your damn garbage bag.
For shit’s sake,
Jesus, it hurts.”

“We’re close now,” I said. And we were, Lee’s mailbox coming into the cones of the truck’s headlights, and beside it, the taxidermied bull, its red glass eyes reflecting our arrival, and now the bumpy driveway, the potholes with their miniature ponds of water and the night frogs leaping for safety, Lee hanging on for all he was worth, hanging on to that seat belt, grimacing, muttering something about a new asphalt driveway and then there—his pasture, a dozen deer or more turning their doleful muzzles to stare at our approach and the lights of his house and garage and outbuildings. I drove us as close to Lee’s front door as we could get, shut off the engine, and came around the truck. Already he was stepping down gingerly, draped an arm around my shoulder, and together we stumbled inside.

“Just get me to the bathroom, okay?” he said. “Put me in the shower. Less mess to clean up.”

“Good thinking,” I said, though I couldn’t have cared less about any blood trail. This mess was Lee’s, all Lee’s.

We peeled his pants off, then his underwear, and socks. Untied the shirts that were acting as a tourniquet.

“Christ you’re pale.”

“I’m throwing it all away,” he said, “burning it. Worst night of my life.” He lowered himself into the bathtub, and I began to draw him a bath, testing the water with my hand until my fingers went pink, then red.

“You want it hot?”

“Sure, burn me all to hell. Stupid fuckin’ pickled eggs.”

Soon the bathroom was filled with steam. I sat on the toilet and listened as the water filled the tub, holding my head in my hands, Lee making small childish noises with every little readjustment of his body.

“Henry?” he asked.

My drunkenness was receding, even the pounding within my head was beginning to diminish. But I was tired, God was I tired. Ready to fall into my own bed. Ready to cuddle Beth. Ready to push Leland’s boat clear away from my shore, ready to push him far out into the foggy surf. “Yes,” I said.

“Mind checkin’ my medicine cabinet? See if I got any of those Vicodins left? Or codeine? I need something.”

“Sure,” I said, “hold on for a sec.”

I went through his medicine cabinet, rattling empty orange pill canisters, spinning them around to read the prescription notes. And there it was—Vicodin, recently expired, twelve pills left. I handed two to Lee, then turned on the bathroom sink and filled a palm with cold water, swallowed two myself for good measure.

“Think that’ll do you?” I asked.

“Maybe some whiskey too,” he said. “Something hard and quick. Something to help me swallow. I feel all dried out.”

In the bathtub, the water was turning pink now, and I stared at the wound in Lee’s thigh, the hole there wisping out a feathery stream of blood, the slug of a bullet still somewhere inside him. I went into the kitchen, found the whiskey, took a sip from the bottle, and then poured out a shot for him. Walking back toward the bathroom, I passed through Lee’s dining room, and nearly ignored the new painting hanging above his sideboard. It was mine—the missing St. Vincent’s painting. I just stood there.

“Henry!” he called out in irritation, desperation really.

“Yeah!”

“I’m dying here!”

“Shut up. I’m comin’, I’m comin’.”

He was writhing in the tub when I walked back into the bathroom, eyes pinched shut with pain. He pounded at the wall with his fists.

“Here you go,” I said, holding out his shot.

“Thanks,” he said, and tossed it back in a gulp. Closed his eyes and clenched his fists.

*   *   *

We sat together a long time, lulling off into intermittent sleep, Lee in the bathtub bleeding, and me on the toilet. I stood to shut the tap off at some point and looked down upon my friend, stretched out as best he could, bleeding, in the bathtub, his arms and neck tanned a deep brown and the rest of him white as the porcelain that held him. I saw Lee’s thousands and thousands of hairs blowing gently in the tub, as if seaweed.

“You got a new painting,” I said casually.

“Yeah. Got it at the St. Vinnie’s of all places.” He opened one eye and peered at me. “Why?”

“It’s ugly as sin.”

“I like it.”

“Why?”

He shrugged, closed his eyes again. Then we were quiet again for a while.

“Henry, I have to tell you something about me and Beth.”

I shut my eyes, wincing against whatever he might say.

“It wasn’t like you think it was, Hank. Or, hell, I don’t even know what you think it was like. But it wasn’t like that. And what I have to tell you, it’s not an easy thing, but it’s the
truth,
okay? And so I’m going to tell you, and then you’ll know and we can be done if you want to.” He was clearly in great pain, his teeth bared as he looked up at me sitting on the toilet, the shower curtain pulled far off to one side, the air between us gauzy with a condensing steam that must have held molecules of his blood.

“Look, we’re well past wherever we used to be, buddy. I don’t know as anything you could say now’s going to make it better or worse. So I’m going to just close my eyes again, but I’m listening.”

“I’m sorry, man,” he said. “I’m so sorry. You’re like my brother. You’re
better
than any goddamned brother, and I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“I have to tell you.”

“I told you I don’t need to know any more,” I said, squinting at him, my eyes tired and probably bloodshot, my body so weary.

“I’ve always been jealous of what you have. But I only
used
to love her. But I don’t feel that way anymore. And look, I’m sorry for what I’ve done to you. But I did what I did and said what I said only really because I’ve always basically wanted what
you
had. She’s the best. You know? Beth is the best.”

He took a deep breath now, and allowed his body to sink beneath the water, little bubbles rising from his nostrils.

I counted the seconds he was submerged until I lost track and then replaced my head in my hands,
so exhausted,
and said, “I forgive you,” though I’m sure he could not hear me. But maybe that didn’t even matter. With Lee, the important thing was always that he heard himself.

*   *   *

I stood, went into the kitchen, and called Beth from Lee’s landline, having left my cell at home. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning, and now I rubbed my face, yawned, and waited for her to pick up. I’d probably scared her to death—I’d told her I would be home before midnight. She answered after the second ring, I could hear her fumbling with the receiver beside our bed.

“Lee?” she said—the caller ID.

“It’s me, baby. Henry. Sorry I didn’t call earlier. I’m over at Lee’s.”

“Why? Where were you? You left your phone here, I tried calling, I don’t know, a dozen times before I found your phone in Alex’s room. Are you okay? What happened?”

“No, I’m fine. We’re both fine. Look, I’m going to spend the night here, okay? For one thing, I’m too drunk to make it home.” I decided to leave out Lee’s bullet wound.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, Beth, we’re fine, both of us. Really, I’m fine.”

“You’re fine?”

“Hey. I love you.”

“Okay, but just—can you call me tomorrow morning?”

“Will do. I love you.”

I hung up and walked back into the bathroom to make sure Lee hadn’t drowned. He was standing, a trickle of blood emanating from his thigh where he seemed to be poking at the wound with his index finger.

“Maybe we should have gone to the hospital,” he said weakly.

“I told you so.”

“I think I might pass out.”

“Sit down, okay? Let’s get you bandaged up. I’ll get you some orange juice. You’ll make it.”

“Fucker shot me.”

“Yeah, you threw an egg at his car.”

“And then he fucking shot me.”

*   *   *