When Corey spoke, his voice was high and clear. He wasn’t going to cry but he also wasn’t himself.
COREY: well. i think it’s time to go
WES: mm m
COREY: yeah
WES: back to cooki e’s dad’s h ouse?
COREY: well, no
WES: oh
COREY: i think i wanna call my parents, and drive home
WES: yeah
COREY: you can call yours and we’ll figure it out
WES: yeah
COREY: they’ll pick us up somewhere or wire us some money for gas and we’ll just drive back
WES: mm
COREY: you wanna get your bass case and patch cable and stuff?
I don’t know what to tell you. I didn’t. I guess I didn’t think Corey would actually leave without me.
And I wasn’t ready to go back to my parents. There was no reason. They weren’t even mad at me.
WES: you know, i don’t
COREY: oh
WES: i want to stick it o ut
COREY: you sure?
WES: y eah
And I was mad at Ash. I was sort of furious at her. But I just didn’t want to leave her yet. It just wasn’t time. And again, I was thinking, if I leave Ash alone with Cookie, there’s a chance something horrible could happen. It was the pickup on the highway all over again.
COREY: well, good luck, man
WES: yeah
COREY: i understand. i hope it works out
WES: be s afe, okay?
COREY: yeah you too
We both stood there for a little while longer.
COREY: well, see you in pittsburgh, and, uh, don’t let em cut off your dick.
And he turned and walked down the access road until he got to our Honda Accord with his drums in the back, and I watched him get in and kind of slam the door after himself, and the brake lights turned on, and the headlights, too, and the car lurched back into the road and pulled out to the end and waited for a few cars to pass and then eased onto the highway and out of sight around the time I heard clapping from inside the Crossroad, and Cookie kind of muffledly saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, Ash Ramos.” I heard her start with a simple little blues tag, and Cookie joined her at the turnaround, and she started singing about how it was early in the morning and she heard the rooster crow for day.
They sounded good together. I had to admit it to myself. I wanted them to sound bad, and I knew that was petty and stupid. But anyway, they didn’t. They sounded good and legit and I knew that it wasn’t the pickup truck all over again after all. Ash had found the right band for her, and it was a duo. It was her and Cookie. And Corey knew that it was time for us to leave and I should have known it, too.
And probably I was just staying because I was in love with someone who didn’t love me back. And because I thought I belonged in a good band that could go on tour and play great shows, even though I didn’t.
So I was standing around thinking, Ash doesn’t love you, and music isn’t right for you, and you just let your best friend drive away, and your parents might try to pretend otherwise but they don’t need you back anytime soon. I was thinking, Wes, all you really have is yourself.
I guess that probably sounds super lonely and terrible. But actually I wasn’t sad about it. As soon as I saw Corey drive away, I stopped being sad, or angry at Ash, or anything. I stopped feeling feelings at all.
Because it was just me at that point. I was all that I had to worry about. So I wasn’t worried. I just didn’t really have feelings anymore. I wasn’t anxious or hopeful about what would happen next. What I would do or what would happen to me. I wasn’t even that curious about it.
I just stood there thinking, At some point, something else is going to happen, and then I’ll know what it is, but until then, I don’t mind not knowing, and maybe even more than that, I just don’t care.
I don’t know how long I stood there. It felt like a really long time.
Eventually, a car pulled onto the access road and took the Accord’s old spot, and a man and a woman got out. Each was tall. The woman had the same kind of wrung-out trampled-by-life look of Cookie’s girlfriend back in Furio. The man had sleepy eyes and tattoo sleeves and a long stemmy neck. He wasn’t fat but his belly was all settled downward like a sock half-full of something.
I watched them come down the access road. They were taking long slow steps. Her shoulders were hunched, and she looked like she was trying not to look furious. He looked kind of calm and almost bored, but maybe that was just his sleepy eyes.
When they were close the man asked me, “That’s Cookie Pritchard up on stage right now?”
It was clear that he already knew. But I nodded anyway.
As they passed me, I saw a gun tucked into the man’s belt, and in my new feelings-less state, I just stared at it and didn’t really feel anything.
They went in and the door closed after them and nothing seemed to happen. Cookie and Ash continued playing the song they were playing. It was just me alone outside again. I still had that feeling of something is going to happen, except it had sort of evolved into something is waiting for you to do it.
For some reason I found myself walking around the outside of the Crossroad. I walked around the side past the kitchen entrance and the exhaust vents and out back where the dumpsters were and around the other side where the power and telephone lines were attached to the building. I got to the side door that led directly to the stage and watched Cookie and Ash through the smudgy little window. They were all I could really see. Ash was deep into the music. But Cookie was gazing out into the audience with this weird intense pout that looked ridiculous on his face.
They finished, and there was some applause, and Cookie got up kind of quickly and muttered, “Well, that’s all for Ash and me, let’s bring Deebo up here,” and there was more applause, and then I could hear the other guy in the crowd yell something, but I couldn’t quite hear what it was over the noise.
Then everyone got quiet and I could hear him a little better.
“Haven’t seen you round here in a while,” I could hear the man say, or something like that.
Cookie just stared out at what was probably the man, blinking and swallowing.
“Hey,” I heard the man say. “What are you getting for this gig? You two gonna split it fifty-fifty or what?”
Ash’s eyes were huge and round and darting back and forth between Cookie and whatever was out in the audience.
“You know my little sister’s working double shifts,” I heard the man say. “Six, seven nights a week. Because if she doesn’t, your daughter doesn’t eat.”
“My daughter isn’t really any of your business, O,” said Cookie finally, and that immediately set off a bunch of noise, with the man named O and the woman who I guess was O’s sister both yelling, and the audience getting loud again, and I stood there not making out what anyone was saying. And then a few people grunted or shrieked and around the corner of the building I could hear the front doors of the Crossroad fly open and people running outside to their cars and starting them up, and I didn’t know for certain but I was pretty sure O had pulled out his gun, and I could kind of hear him yell about this deadbeat son of a bitch bringing his new skank around here and how O wasn’t sitting around on his dick any longer waiting for a family fucking court judge to get his shit together, and I knew I needed to think of a plan but the plan-making part of my brain wasn’t really responding and so just to do something I deployed my patented Wes Doolittle Go-To Panic Move and went over to the circuit breaker on the side of the house and flipped the Main switch, and all the lights went out, not just inside but out where I was, too. All of a sudden I was in the darkness. Inside I could hear a huge amount of shrieking and shouting and some stuff crashing to the floor but no gunshots as far as I could tell, and I opened the stage door and yelled, ASH, into the darkness, and then WHAM something smashed into my chest and face and knocked me to the ground.
It was Cookie. He kept runn
ing. The door slammed shut. I lay there on the ground trying to get my breath. The door opened again and this time it was two people. It was Ash and the guy named O.
I could hear Ash breathing kind of raggedly. It looked like O was holding her arm. “Cookie,” yelled O a few times. “Cookie, be a man for once in your damn life.” There was no response from Cookie, wherever he was. “You call him,” O told Ash. “Cookie,” she tried to yell. Cookie was gone. “Louder,” he said. “Cookie,” she tried again. I kept lying there. “You even know he had a kid,” he asked her. “Yeah,” she said. “But all we do is play music together.” I got my feet under me, and no one seemed to hear it. “I don’t care what you do together,” O told her, and I knew it was the wrong choice but I very quietly crept close to him and he was peering past me into the woods and his head was about a foot and a half above mine but I could see it pretty well in the moonlight and I could see his big nose and before I could talk myself out of it I gathered myself and right as I heard him whisper “shit” I jumped up and dolphin-bounced my forehead right into his nose, hard, I jumped and I nodded the place above my eyes right into his nose as hard as I could, and a huge burst of light went off in my head,
32.
AND I HEARD HIM MAKE A NOISE LIKE HAAARRRM,
and he fell to one knee and I heard no gunshots and felt nothing and then Ash had me by the hand and we were running into the woods and we were pretty deep in there before we stopped and looked back through the trees at the police lights flashing.
33.
DEER IN THE HEADLIGHTS
We sat there under a bush and watched the police talk to O and take him into custody and help him with his bloody or broken nose. We couldn’t really hear what they were saying. A few times they sent flashlight beams flickering into the woods, and we crouched down to duck them but they wouldn’t have reached us anyway.
Ash still kind of had that high nervous tween voice when she spoke.
ASH: are you okay?
WES: yeah
ASH: you’re sure?
WES: pretty sure
ASH: ohhhhhhhh god
I had a feeling she was going to tell me how stupid I was, and I was right.
ASH: ohhhhhhh my god that was fucking dumb, wes
WES: i know
ASH: no, you don’t know. that guy had a gun. that was so fucking dumb
WES: no, i know he had a gun
ASH: then why the fuck did you do that?
WES: yeah, it was probably a mistake
ASH, starting to freak out: how are you so calm?
WES: i don’t know
I really didn’t know. But I was pretty calm. My head was starting to pound, but that was it.
ASH: where’s corey? is he okay?
WES: he left a while ago, so i think he’s fine
[ash nods. her chin is trembling]
WES: he’s driving back to pittsburgh right now
I was calm because it was still just me. All I had was me and it was still just me trying to be ready for the next thing.
But then the next thing that happened was that Ash pushed her face into my chest and cried, shaking and sniffling, and I put my arm around her and hugged her closer, and she burrowed in there sort of mouth and nose first like a dog, and at that point it was kind of impossible to still have no feelings.
She didn’t cry for very long. Afterward she mostly had her voice back.
ASH: wes i’m sorry
WES: no it’s okay
ASH: no. i made a huge fucking mistake
WES: i mean
ASH: it should have been you and corey up there with me
WES: well, but i get it
ASH: no. please don’t say that. it should have been you fucking guys and i knew that and cookie fucking knew it too
WES: it’s fine, though
ASH: it’s not fine. it’s not fucking fine, because he’s a shitty person
WES: cookie?
ASH: yeah. he’s a shitty dad
WES:
ASH: he told me about his daughter, and he was like, i never see her, because i hate her mom, but it’s okay, because her mom’s family is taking care of her, and if i wasn’t free to do what i want i wouldn’t be happy, and then i wouldn’t be a good dad to her, so it’s for the best for both of us
ASH: he said all that shit to me on the drive yesterday and i didn’t say anything because i was stoned but i was also too chickenshit
ASH: and then later i was practicing guitar alone and he sat next to me and put his gross hand on my leg and tried to make a move and all i said was, i’m not into men, and what i should have said was, do you know how bad you’re fucking up your daughter’s life? do you have even a little idea of how shitty and selfish you are?
ASH: i let him break up our band and he’s a shithole and i hope that other dude finds him and beats the shit out of him
WES: maybe we can find him and i can headbutt his face
ASH: no. i don’t want to see his face. i just don’t want him to exist in my life for another fucking second
We sat there in the damp forest and kept watching the police. I could hear O’s sister’s voice angrily trying to tell them something about the big picture. Cookie was nowhere to be found.
Ash and I were leaning against each other and her arm was around my waist and her hair was tickling my neck and I didn’t need it to be anything more than that.
ASH, eventually: so. you want to get back on the road
I didn’t know what that meant. Like if it meant, let’s keep being on tour, or just, let’s get out of this forest where there’s deer and Lyme disease and stuff.
WES: what about our guitars
ASH: we’ll figure it out tomorrow
WES: okay
ASH: we’ll find somewhere to stay tonight, and come back tomorrow for our stuff, and then we’ll figure it out
WES: okay
ASH: i emailed onnie today. he’s expecting us. so maybe we can just go straight to new orleans tomorrow. we’ll figure out how
WES: okay yeah
So we made our way out of the forest and to the two-lane highway, and started walking in the direction that Corey had gone.
We walked single-file at the extreme edge of the shoulder, which was pretty narrow, and cars passed us and some of them slowed down, but we didn’t want a ride with any of them. We just walked and talked and Ash told me more about what it was like to have a dad who didn’t really care about you, or care about anyone, and I’d tell you about it but you don’t need to know it and I don’t want you to.
And she told me if it turned out that I got that girl pregnant, then I better be ready to move down to Mississippi and become a full-time dad. And there was undoubtedly a non-zero chance I did get that girl pregnant, because we had definitely botched our whole condom procedure.
WES: shit
ASH: you’d be a good dad though
WES: i don’t want to think about it
ASH: you’d be a great dad because all you do is sacrifice yourself for other people and for some reason it doesn’t make you miserable
WES: that’s not all i do
ASH: well most guys don’t ever want to do it, so you’re a great guy
WES: i dunno. i was shitty to shaeanne today
ASH: she committed many sex crimes against you last night, so it’s fine
WES: i guess, yeah
My head was throbbing kind of violently and I was pretty sure my hand was bleeding again under the wrapping. But for some reason I was amped about it.
ASH: hey
WES: what
ASH: i never ever ever want to have a kid, i mean never, but if i ever changed my mind, i would want you to be its dad
WES:
ASH: i don’t ever want to get married. that’s never gonna change. but if my hormones get all fucked up and i decide i need to have a kid, you’re the only guy i know who would make an even half-decent dad, so i’d probably ask you to be the dad of that kid
WES: wel
l
ASH:
WES:
[ash reaches out and takes wes’s hand]
ASH: hey. i’m not fucking with you here
WES: no. i know
ASH: no but i’ve been thinking about how it probably seems to you and it probably seems like i’ve been fucking with you, but wes, i know you like me
WES:
ASH: i mean i know you want us to have a thing and i’ve kind of wanted that too
WES:
ASH: i mean i was mad when you were hooking up with shaeanne, and then afterward, the next morning when i was giving you shit, i mean i was jealous
[ash squeezes wes’s hand and then lets go]
ASH: but we’re not gonna have a thing. not now. it’s not the right time. what it’s time for is, it’s time for us to have a band together. that’s what i need and that’s what we need. but i just want you to know, i know you like me. and i like you too. i like you in all kinds of ways.
WES:
ASH, a little huskily: i just don’t want you to think i’ve been fucking with you.
WES: i’ll be your kid’s dad
ASH: you will?
WES: i will. i’m in
ASH: you have to do all of its diapers though
WES: eighty percent
ASH: one hundred percent because it’s still a way better deal than being pregnant
A car flashed its beams at us. We ignored it. It veered onto the shoulder. We yelled and jumped out of the way. It groaned to a stop.
Then we recognized it.
COREY: GET IN GET IN
WES: OH HELL YES
ASH: FUCK YEAH
COREY: SHUT UP AND GET IN THE CAR
We got in the car and hugged the shit out of him like he was our long-lost brother presumed dead in the war or something.
Corey had gotten about fifteen minutes away from the Crossroad before turning back. The reason he turned back was me.
He just figured I couldn’t really have wanted to stay behind. I was just being an idiot in the moment. Also, he knew his parents were probably going to end his life when they finally got him back. But they were definitely going to end his life if they found out that he had abandoned me with insane people in the middle of Mississippi.