The Haters (29 page)

Corey and I were both quiet.

It was like Corey and I were each waiting for the other to blow up. But neither of us did.

That probably made it harder for her and that was probably why we were doing it.

Finally, I just said, “Well, have a good show.”

“Yup,” said Corey.

She nodded. She looked like she wanted to say something else. But she didn't.

Instead, she just walked back into the Crossroad, and we were left alone outside.

Neither of us said anything or looked at each other. I mostly just stared into the woods and tried to wait out the need to cry. My eyes were burning again and my throat was hard and I knew it was the dumbest shit ever.

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 running. 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.