The Devil's Metal (12 page)

I didn’t wake up when the rest of the band
got in. I didn’t wake up when the bus roared to life and we started
our nighttime journey across America.

I only woke up once, at four in the morning,
when my wrist and shoulder started to sting and burn, like they had
been licked by fire.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I was dreaming about my mother just before I
woke up. I was sixteen again and wandering the fields behind my
house. There were holes in the ground that moles had created, only
these ones seemed fathomless and got bigger the more I walked
toward the distant hills. I kept walking though, until my mother’s
sing-songy voice soared out above the waving grass. I turned to see
her. The farmhouse was gone, as was the barn, and it was only her.
She was as pretty as always, with long red hair that gave off an
angelic glow as the sun hit it, like a rusty aura.

“Dawn, I must leave you,” she said.

“Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right back,” I
told her. I turned around and kept walking, my feet struggling to
find footing in the grass. I tried my hardest not to look at the
holes for I felt I would fall into them if I did.

“It’s all over. There’s nothing left for
me,” her voice teased at my back.

I kept going, tossing over my shoulder,
“I’ll be right back. Don’t worry, Mom.”

My mother was the queen of crying wolf.
She’d been threatening us with this and that since the day I was
born.

Then she said “I’m sorry” in a tone of
sincerity I never heard from her. It made me stop and look
back.

The farmhouse had returned and it was in
flames behind her. She was standing there with my father’s razor
blade in one of her hands, covered in blood from the sticky, deep
cuts she made in both wrists.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, heartfelt and
anguished.

I could scarcely move in my horror. Then I
found my legs and began running toward her, jumping over the holes
and side-stepping them.

I was so close to reaching her, my arms
outstretched to grab her wrists and soak them with my shirt, when
the ground opened up. A hole became larger at the last second and I
was airborne, falling down into a darkness that was lit from the
bottom by a fire’s angry light. As I fell, I looked up. My mother
was standing over the side, her blood dripping onto my face.

“I hope you don’t see me again,” she said,
before the fire swallowed me whole.

***

I woke up in a cold sweat, my heart beating
rapidly as the remnants of the dream lifted out of my head, and
with the uncanny feeling of someone breathing on my face. It
smelled rank, like menthol cigarettes, coffee and mothballs.

I held my breath and managed to pop an eye
open. Staring back at me were the citron-tinted eyes of Jacob. His
pupils resembled a reptile’s for a split second but as my eyes
adjusted from their sleepy fuzz, they went back to round
pinpricks.

“You’re alive,” he said dryly, and another
burst of odor wafted my way. I was lying on my side in the top bunk
and he was just tall enough to have his head at my level.

I scrunched up my nose and moved my head
back. “What time is it?”

He pulled out a pocket watch from his ugly
jacket and gave it a quick glance. “Ten in the morning, Rusty. I
thought you might want to join us for breakfast.”

Ten already? I leaned over and poked my head
out of the bunk. The bus was deserted and the early sun was
streaming in through the dusty windows.

“Where are we?”

“Just east of Lawrence, Kansas, if that
means anything to you. It means nothing to me.”

Kansas. It sounded so far away and oddly
exotic to my sheltered ears. The bus really had been going all
night long.

He patted the edge of the bunk. “Well, hurry
your lazy arse up then and get in while the getting’s good.” He
pointed out the window. “We’ll be just in there. Want me to order
you anything? Orange juice? A wholesome glass of milk?”

I gave him a tepid look. “Coffee, please,
and lots of it.”

“That a girl,” he said with a grin. I always
expected Jacob to have gold teeth glinting in his mouth. He turned
and started moving down the aisle. I began to get off the bunk,
hanging my body rather ungracefully until my feet found the bunk
below.

He had stopped at the doors, watching me
with amusement. “You know, I hope you don’t take last night the
wrong way.”

Right. Last night. I wiped away the lewd
images before I had a chance to dwell on them. I pulled down at my
Sabbath shirt and stared at the leftover messy bed on the couch,
avoiding his eyes.

“They’re a metal band,” he continued, his
voice more grave. “They like to have a good time. It’s normal,
Rusty. You’ll get used to it, eventually, and if you don’t,
well…try loosening up a bit.”

I snapped my head up to give him a dirty
look but he was already out of the bus. Right, like I was the one
that needed loosening. I was just fine, thank you. It was the band
and their careless manager that needed some tightening.

I got dressed quickly, not wanting to keep
the band waiting, and put on a pair of white hot pants and a simple
red and white striped tank and denim vest. The shorts were the most
scandalous thing I owned, and I felt like showing them that I
wasn’t as uptight and prudish as they seemed to think.

The moment I stepped off the bus and into
the hazy sunshine, I immediately felt better. The weird interaction
with Sage’s stalker and my disturbing dream were swept away as I
looked around at the surrounding flat fields of golden soybean
punctuated by aging grain silos. It was hot already, the oppressive
heat of the Midwest giving central Washington a run for its
money.

The diner itself was one of those popular
truck stop joints, quietly charming in its simplicity and spinning
neon sign, with semis and camping trailers lining the outer edges
of the half-empty parking lot. I stepped inside and immediately
spotted the band. With their long hair and young bravado, they
stood out like…well, like a bunch of rock stars. The patrons, worn
out truckers and passive middle-aged couples, were on the edges of
their padded vinyl seats, watching them like one watches snakes at
the zoo.

They had taken up two booths, with Noelle,
Mickey, Graham, and Sage at one and Robbie, Jacob, and a small,
hawk-faced man I presumed was the bus driver at the other. Jacob
saw me and motioned at me to come over and take a seat beside
Robbie.

Just great. I felt like I could never look
Robbie in the face again.

I sighed and sucked it up and made my way
over. I stopped at the end of the booth and smiled at the bus
driver. He was an older man, maybe late sixties, with a shock of
white hair and a bad comb over. He wasn’t, however, frail in the
slightest. He had a scarred cheek and twinkly blue eyes that
promised a load of scandals and stories.

“This is Rusty,” Jacob said, as if he were
some proud father—who’d forgotten my actual name. “Rusty, this is
Bob, our driver and the driver of all drivers.”

“Nice to meet you, Bob,” I told him, totally
conscious of Robbie’s eyes at my back, not wanting for the
attention to be taken off the driver. “I hear you used to drive The
King around.”

He chuckled and slurped back some coffee
before saying, “If you think you can get secrets out of me, you’re
dead wrong.”

“Bob will take those to the grave,” Robbie
piped up. “I’ve tried.”

I flashed Robbie a vague smile without
looking at him fully and sat down next to him.

“You’re not as charming as you think.” Bob
pointed at him. “Noelle, however...”

Noelle craned her head around from the booth
behind us. “What’s this about what?”

Jacob pushed an empty cup toward me and
filled it with coffee from a steaming pot. “Nothing you need to
hear, Noe. Your ego is already too big for your britches.”

She breathed out through her nose in
annoyance and turned back around in her seat. Across from her, Sage
looked up from his coffee and our eyes met. He looked tired but
strangely vibrant, like he only needed passion and nerves to coast
through life. I didn’t want to look away, so I held his eyes until
he was the one who gave up and fixed them on his coffee cup, as if
he could find all of life’s answers there.

“Did you have fun last night?” I felt Robbie
whispering into my neck. I looked over at Jacob who was watching me
as he always did, a wry smile dancing on his cracked lips.

“Not as much fun as you had,” I said
spitefully. I couldn’t help it. It was inevitable.

I finally looked over at him, his cornflower
blue eyes just inches away from mine. How could someone so
fresh-faced and California-kissed be as depraved as he was? Right
now, with his white teeth, dimpled chin, and wavy chestnut hair,
with no signs of drug use or lack of sleep in his eyes, he looked
like the poster boy for posterity. In other words, not at all like
a fucked-up sicko who liked to fondle breasts and get his dick
sucked for the enjoyment of his bandmates. I had a hard time
believing it even happened at all.

He smiled and I caught a wave of remorse or
embarrassment in the way his head ducked briefly. “Sorry about
that. I forgot you were in the dressing room. We’re not used to
having girls there. Normal girls. Professionals.”

I heard Noelle clear her throat loudly from
the other booth. He ignored her. “You know how it is though. You
just gotta go with the flow.”

Sage snorted. I looked at him sharply,
unused to the sound of amusement from him.

“What?” Robbie challenged him.

Sage stroked his chin and looked out the
dirty window toward the resting tour bus, her green paint looking
extra faded in the sun.

“What, nothing,” he said. “If anyone’s going
to go with the flow, it’s you.”

“Well, if you stop the flow, you’ll be
called a cock-blocker,” Robbie shot back.

“That’s a new one,” Sage mused. He slowly
took his eyes off the window and looked right at Robbie,
straight-faced and unflinching. “God knows what would happen if
you’d put your cock away for two seconds. Maybe you’d get some real
work done.”

I sipped my coffee and watched the two leads
as they traded barbs across the tables. It was enthralling and I
wished I had brought my tape recorder with me.

Robbie laughed but it was mean and forced.
“Oh, I see. I see. Sage, the one whose name means wise, thinks he’s
the sage one. As always. Can do no wrong unlike the rest of his
band, I mean his
minions
.”

“Boys,” Jacob barked, his eyes hardening.
“Can you try keeping your issues in your pants where they belong?
It’s morning. I have a headache the size of the USSR, we have a
journalist sitting at our table, and there’s another show tonight.
A real one, none of this pussy-footed acoustic shite. Let’s please
talk about something else. Bob, you pick the topic.”

Bob looked unconcerned, I guess as every
rock and roll bus driver should.

“So do you think Nixon’s going to get
impeached?” was Bob’s contribution.

“Fuck Nixon,” Robbie said. That sunny look
of his had disappeared.

“Many want to,” Bob noted.

I could tell Robbie wanted to keep fighting
with Sage but the guitarist wasn’t having any of it. The diner
waitress had stopped at their table and she was busy taking his
order, her eyes darting at the band with apprehension as she jotted
it down.

Bob and Jacob got into a light discussion
over whether the full Watergate tapes were going to be released,
with Mickey jumping into the conversation every few minutes with
his pro-Republican stance. When the waitress made her way to us, I
ordered toast and two poached eggs, while Robbie refused to eat
anything.

“I’m not hungry,” he said through grinding
teeth. I could feel the energy oozing out from his pores, and I
knew why he was such a manic mess on stage—it was the only place
his frustrations could come out.

When the waitress finally left and the
political conversation was getting more heated than I would have
liked, Robbie decided he had enough stewing and excused himself. He
bolted out of the diner, his hair flowing behind him, and
disappeared around the corner. No one took any notice except for
Jacob, who watched him out of one eye with a calculating gleam to
it. Then he continued berating Mickey for his backward
thinking.

I munched on my toast, and after eating an
egg, I had enough too. It felt awkward and stifling in the diner
and too many customers were watching our strange company.

I excused myself from the table and went out
the doors after Robbie. I didn’t know why really, part of me was
still put off from his behavior last night, but I was curious as a
cat to see one of the best singers in the world down on his luck.
Call it morbid curiosity.

I found him smoking and leaning against the
stucco walls, just out of the intense sunlight that was steadily
building up power by the second.

“Robbie?” I asked timidly.

He managed a smile when he saw me.
“Hey.”

I walked over to him, glad I was wearing
Keds and not my platform heels—I was just his height. He seemed to
notice and straightened up a little more.

“Are you okay?”

He shrugged and gave me a sheepish smile.
“Oh, fine. This is normal, just breakfast with the family, and you
know how it is on family trips.”

I leaned against the crackled wall too,
enjoying the coolness at my back. “The trip just started.”

He puffed on the cigarette then offered it
to me. I didn’t smoke, usually, but I thought I’d be polite and
have an excuse to stay in case he remembered I was a
journalist.

“Yeah. It’s like this when it starts. All of
us getting used to each other again.”

I put the smoke to my lips and barely
inhaled. “I thought you all lived in the same town. Redding,
right?”