Burn Down The Night (19 page)

Spence leads us up
to the back of the truck, swings open the back door and then motions me up. "Get up and get in
there. I got something to show you."

I do as he
says.

It's dark as
anything inside, can't see a frigging thing. I stumble against something lying on the floor.
Whatever it is, it groans.

The truck shakes
as Spence jumps up in back. I hear him fumbling around in the dark and then a little light
flashes on. It's one of those small battery-operated jobs and it's hooked to the wall of the
truck.

There's a couple
of cases of beer at Spence's feet. He reaches down and grabs a couple of bottles. "Here, man,
have a beer. We just nicked them. The club ain't gonna miss a few."

The beer streaks
toward me and I drop it. My cut-up hand is still wrapped with a cloth, making me a little
awkward. But the pain is gone, the bleeding stopped. Almost forget I hurt it. The bottle lands on
the floor next to the body's head. I bend over, pick it up. Lucky it didn't break. I don't say
anything about the body, don't even look at it too close. I figure that's why I'm here but
Spence'll tell me about it when he's ready.

Spence opens his
beer and then hands me the church key. I open my bottle with it and toss it back. The wall light
makes strange shadows on the sides of the truck. The inside of the truck is like a badly lit
sound stage in a B movie.

Spence adjusts the
light, moving it so the beam points down at the body at our feet. He takes a long swig at his
beer. "Ya see this joker on the floor?"

"Hard to miss him.
Is he dead?"

"So close to it,
it doesn't matter," says Spence, and he drinks some more beer. "That fuckup on the floor is
what's left of our driver."

I take a careful
look at the body. I don't know who this guy was but there isn't much left of him now. Hair
falling out, skin peeling; open sores on his face and neck. Yellow skin and glazed eyes. Saliva
dribbles out of his mouth, rotted teeth show through a split lip. There's blood around his teeth
and snot and blood crusting the right side of his face. Jesus!

The smell hits me
then, excrement, sweat and stale urine, like no smell anyone wants to meet this side of hell.
This guy is a self-inflicted concentration camp.

"The maggots would
die on a body like that," says Spence, taking another slug of beer. He peels the label off the
beer bottle with one finger, taking his time, thinking about it. He has his head turned away,
keeping his nose away from the smell. "So we need a driver and that's you, okay?"

"I appreciate it
that—"

"Stuff it up your
giggy sideways!" says Spence. "Get it in your head we ain't doing you a favor. We don't do
anybody favors. You're gonna drive for us, score dope for us, do a lot of donkey work for us."
His voice is hard, exacting, edged in flint. "Do I lay it out clear?"

I nod. I
understand. A trade for a trade. This is a transaction, nothing personal. "Real clear. I'm in." I
drink some of my beer. Then did the next question I knew we had to do. "What do we do with
him?"

Spence let the
tiny bits of torn-up beer bottle label fall down on the body like snow. "Dump him in the alley
before we load the truck. To the cops when they find him, he'll be just another junkie and they
won't come looking for us."

"I understand. I'm
still grateful. You guys saved my ass."

"Up to now. Me, I
don't give a shit. Just get us to the gigs in one piece and don't fuck us up and you're cov­ered.
We'll get along real good."

"I'll help you
drag his body out." I can feel my flesh crawl just thinking about touching that body.

"Yeah, I know you
will," says Spence. "I'll get his feet and you get his arms. I hope we can get him out of here
without puking ourselves to death."

We get hold of
this stinking mess that used to be a human being and drag it to the back of the truck. We lower
it as low to the ground as our arms will go, then drop it. The body flops on the pavement like a
bag of dead fish.

I start to climb
out of the truck but Spence grabs my arm and drags me back inside. He puts another beer in my
hand and gets another for himself. We do the bottle-opening routine and we sit there in silence
on the tailgate of the truck, him not saying anything and me waiting for him to.

"Tell me about the
woman you wasted?" His interest sounds superficial, as if he is only making small
talk.

I tell him how it
happened. Spence cuts me off before. I get too deep into it. "Far out! That's not murder. That's
self-defense. Not that I give a shit one way or the other. Anyway, it's not important. Forget
it!"

Not important!
What is?

"It don't bother
you?" Hard to believe anybody can be this uninvolved.

"Why should it?
Man, you got a lot to learn. This is rock and roll, man! No rules! This is a world for dan­gerous
dudes and hateful cats. Hard riders! Nobody bothers anybody else, because what goes around, comes
around. You can do anything you can get away with! The harder you are, the more you get away
with."

Now I understand.
"Okay. You got a driver and I'm good at it."

"Underage?"

"Yeah, but Russ
said—"

Spence waves it
away. "No problem. I got maybe ten driver's licenses and we'll pick one that fits you. New name,
new clothes, part your hair in the middle instead of the. side, they'll never catch you." Spence
tilts back his beer bottle and empties half of it down his throat. He wipes his mouth with the
back of his hand, gives me a hard stare. "But we don't look out for you. You take care of
yourself, understand?"

The guy has laid
it all out cold. "Yeah. I read it loud and clear."

Spence tilts his
beer bottle and dumps the rest of it on the body below us. "Here's to you, Jack! You stupid
junkie bastard!"

Despite ten miles
of tough, there's some sadness in Spence, buried miles deep. It's in his voice. "You know, Jack
was my best friend, the dumb fucker! Well, I hope you hang in there better than that shit head
did!" He throws the bottle angrily and it smashes against the back of the building.

The lesson is
clear. In the rock and roll world, you also got the right to kill yourself and nobody has to
care. Nobody is indispensable. If you get knocked out of the ring, there's any number of faces
that can take your place, and nobody will mourn you.

Spence jumps off
the truck. "Let's drag him over against the building and then you hustle in and help get this
frigging truck loaded."

We lay the body
against the building, next to the place where they haul out the trash. Spence and I put him there
and don't say another word. It's all been said. Spence goes out and crawls into the back of the
truck to begin working on a big drunk.

I go back inside,
uncomfortable in the borrowed clothes that don't fit me but at least are the right sex. Inside
it's a sexual circus without a proper place to happen. Nobody says anything about the guy I am
replacing. It is a secret everybody knows. If there is any pain, they hide it by a frantic
scrabble for drugs and little ladies. They are all dancing desperately and nobody looks in
anybody else's eyes.

We load the
equipment, Russ and I, getting it all stowed away in the truck. Nobody else is in any shape to
help.

The truck fills up
quick. We are ready for the road.

Randall, the bass
player, a straight cat who seems to belong to some other band and maybe some other plan­et, split
hours ago, driving his own car to the next gig. Mick, too drunk to move, lies among the guitar
cases in the back of the truck: Chris, so stoned he could exhale on someone and get them stoned,
is crashing out in the back of the truck. Spence sits next to me in the cab of the truck, half
drunk and completely wrecked on electrics, fruitcake-eyed. Russ is in the back with two groupies
who promise him a trip through their own version of the funhouse.

I'm feeling pretty
good, all things considered. Hand bandaged and a Benzedrine to keep me awake for the flight. The
Benzedrine keeps me from thinking about thinking.

The truck's full
of dope, all and every kind. There isn't a sane person in the bunch. I've got a fake I.D. in my
pocket and a new name from people who haven't even bothered to learn my real one. Or maybe it's
like I never had a real name and my new name is as real as any I'll ever have or get.

The engine turns
over and I pull out, leaving the cops behind, leaving behind the world that hadn't ever been
mine. I aim the truck down the dark streets, entering a new American night.

"Speed up!" says
Spence, banging the dashboard in time to the music only he hears. "Man, you ain't even up to
illegal yet!"

My foot finds the
accelerator and I bang it to the floor, exhilarated by the speed in me and by my escape into the
night. The truck surges ahead, roaring through the nightland.

I see my face in
the rearview mirror. It hasn't changed. I am the same dark-eyed stranger I have al­ways been. The
only difference is inside. I'm thinking maybe this is the place where I belong. I don't have to
be a human being. People are going to let me alone. This is rock and roll. This is where all the
people go who can't make it in the outside world, all the desperate ones. People like me. The
hungry, hurting ones who swallow people with their eyes and leave, still hungry.

The truck thunders
down the freeway, rain glistening like diamonds on the windshield.

"Do you know what
this is?" cries Spence, cradling an invisible guitar in his arms, tearing off a mad solo to throw
at the dark. "Do you know what this is?"

My eyes are on the
road ahead. I never look back.

I don't have to
ask him what it is, 'cause I already know.

"This is a
freak show on the endless Highway of Night!"
shouts Spence and he thrusts his imaginary guitar toward the windshield as if
impaling a dream.

And that was what
I already knew.

I'd lay back down
under the bush and go right back to sleep but I don t know if I can trust that poodle. I suspect
the little bugger is lurking out there waiting for me somewhere.

Man, I am tired. I am partied out. I
been out on the street too long. I'm hurt and bruised and generally mangled.

So maybe it's time
to go back to Tamara, the girl who lets me hide in her world for a while, to Tamara the fair and
beautiful one who's made the mistake of falling in love with me.

Tamara.

Walking down some
street, trying to get oriented. Don't even know where I am. But then, when do I ever?

Get out to a major
street, I know I can put my thumb out and hitchhike back to her.

I guess maybe it's
time to check back in, to go back to Tamara and the secret, almost human self I sometimes am and
try not to be. My clothes reek of strange girls. I feel like I've traveled a faithless million
miles across the cold asphalt heart of L.A.

The cars go
whizzing by like angry soldiers. I got the taste of cop cars and all-night bars in my
mouth.

She'll be waiting
for me.

Tamara.

"I love you,"
she'll say, not having seen me in who knows how long. "I missed you." And I'll look at her,
amazed every time, wanting to think she's so stupid I should laugh at her, but there's something
fragile and unlaughable about perfect trust.

You feel like
screaming at her, "Can't you see me for what I am!" because she gets to you somehow, and you can
almost feel the heart you don't have breaking.

Tamara.

If I had someplace
else to go, I'd go there instead.

But I
don't.

Finally I get a
ride that takes me to her.

Looking in the
refrigerator I can see that I've been gone so long everything's turned into a science fair
project. Even the mold is growing mold. It's time to get on her case.

"Hey, what have
you been eating? Don't you ever eat anything out of here? You got to stop eating in restaurants!
Have you seen this refrigerator?"

Her voice comes
from the bedroom. It's a voice easy to listen to, as if it had a smile in it
somewhere.

"Forget it. I'll
go to the store later. Come back to bed. I miss you and I'm glad you're back." If she had her
way, she'd spend her days just holding me, just touching me.

"I'm hungry!" My
ribs are shaking hands with each other it's been so long since I ate anything that even looks
like food.

She comes out of
the bedroom, wearing a white sheet and nothing else. Some of the good parts of her are sticking
out. She's got lots of good parts. Some-times I forget how good-looking she is. Makes me wonder
sometimes why I've sold myself on the idea I like waking up with strangers, not knowing where I
am. That I like not knowing the names of those blond, blue-eyed girls who all begin to blur
together after a while. That I like just touching skin and going no deep­er.

She's even
good-looking all rumpled from sleep and lovemaking. Tamara rubs her eyes sleepily.