Seven Nation Army

IT STARTED pretty much the minute he walked into the father's house. They hadn't even gotten inside before a fortyish, exhausted blond woman ran out, wiping her face with the back of her hand. She waved at Jock to stay away and didn't give Guthrie a second look, just jumped into the red Toyota under the trees and roared away, leaving Jock swearing and Guthrie unhopeful about the state of Jock's love life.

Before the car was even off the property, Guthrie could hear his father. For a man dying of lung cancer, among other things, his voice still carried.

"Goddammit, Jock, I told you I don't want that little faggot in my house!"

Guthrie paused on the cracked walkway and gave his uncle a flat-eyed scowl. "Really?" he said.

Jock swallowed hard. "Let me talk to him," he said. "I told him I couldn't do this by myself. He's just making noise."

"I'll be here," Guthrie told him, standing on the stoop with his arms crossed. Jock opened the screen door, outlined in peeling white paint, and the miasma from inside rolled into the decayed yard.

Cigarette smoke—a lot of it still fresh—ammonia, and, oh God, shit and piss blew out in a choking cloud, mixed with a sort of rotting overtone, a death smell that Guthrie had only caught in whiffs and clouds in the depths of hospitals when someone wasn't going to make it.

He'd never thought of himself as particularly weak-stomached, but he had to fight against nausea as he stood there and listened to his uncle beg and plead for Butch to let his son in the door to help him die.

Finally, Jock surprised Guthrie by shouting, "Look, you old fucker, me and the kid are gonna work in the yard while you sit in here and stew in your own shit. Yeah, I can smell it. How long's it been since you crapped yourself? An hour? Well Jolene's gotta go to work, and I'm not going to change it without his help, so you either learn how to be a human fucking being or this is how you're gonna fuckin' die."

And with that Jock stomped out, slammed the door behind him, and took a deep breath of free air when he'd cleared the threshold.

"So," Guthrie said, not sure how to feel about this. "It's gonna be a short trip."

"Looks like," Jock said grimly. "But I sure would appreciate the help around the house while he rots in his own filth and dies."

Guthrie raised his eyebrows. "You think that's gonna happen?"

Jock shook his head, gesturing for Guthrie to follow him to the carport, which was one of the most modernized things on the three-acre lot. Jock was a decent handyman—the thing appeared sturdy, although the wood was still raw and needed staining and painting, and there were obviously parts that Jock intended to add on to.

"I'm working on the plumbing," Jock said frankly, indicating a couple of shovels and a pile of pipes in the corner. "I need to get that done in the next two hours or he really will die in his own filth. I don't need no help with it, but God, Guthrie, anything else you see that you want to do. I've got supplies for about everything—painting the carport, painting the house, painting the gutters. I've got trash pickup scheduled in two weeks, and I'd love some help hauling shit to that one spot in the front of the house. It's gonna cost me a couple of hundred dollars, and I want everything out there. I've got hip waders and long gloves for that, so maybe we could do that work in the morning. I figure…." He swallowed and looked sheepish. "I'm sorry. I asked you out here, and now I'm ordering you about like I'm no better than your daddy—"

Guthrie shook his head. "There's a difference between outlining a job, Jock, and ordering someone around. Tell me what you figured."

Jock gave him a brief, sad smile. "God, I missed you, kid." He swallowed again, like he didn't want to have that discussion now, and said, "See, what I thought was that we'd get up in the morning, I'd come out and work, you'd take care of your daddy's needs for an hour or so, and then you could come join me. We'd put a baby monitor in there and carry it around—I already bought one cheap—so if he needs anything he can call out. We work till noon or so, you go make lunch and help him, and then maybe spend a couple hours with me out here. Then nights, I got him, and you get some time off."

Guthrie thought that through. "But when's your time off?"

Jock snorted. "When I'm out here fixing the place up!" He shook his head. "God, it's all I wanted to do those years. We were touring California, getting gigs, and all I could think of was, ‘Maybe we'll make enough money to fix up the house. Make it a home.' But no. Butch just wanted more money so we could follow more gigs. But now I got some money saved from the album we cut—Butch didn't know about it and now he can't spend it—and I want…." He glanced around the neglected property and the dilapidated house. "I want it to be a home," he said, his eyes sad. "I don't got music like you and your daddy. I got a girl I like and a job waiting for me, and I want to be able to have her come over and not be embarrassed." He gave a weak smile. "I'll miss your daddy, Guthrie, but sort of like you, I guess, I'm ready to set all his meanness free from my heart, you know?"

Guthrie nodded. "Amen to that," he said. "I'll start with sandblasting the old paint off the house before I paint it and the carport. How's that? Do we have an air compressor?"

Jock's lower lip wobbled a little as he nodded and pointed to the equipment in the corner of the carport. "Thank you," he whispered. "God, Guthrie. Thank you."

Guthrie let out a sigh—and let out some of the anger he'd harbored toward Jock. "I missed you too."

The hopeful smile on Jock's face was both pitiful and beautiful, and Guthrie returned it. Together they started for the carport, ignoring Butch's vitriol as he shouted for Jock's attention from inside the house.

Jock pulled out his phone and set it for an hour. "I'll go back in and see if he's changed his tune," he said. "Jolene texted and said he hasn't been stewing that long. He may be sick, but your daddy's got his pride like any man."

"I wouldn't know anything about pride," Guthrie lied, and apparently Jock knew it too, because he rolled his eyes and together they went to work.

That first day it took Butch two hours to agree to let Guthrie tend to him, with Jock's help.

"You like looking at that?" Butch taunted as Guthrie wiped him down and rubbed ointment on his reddened skin. "Bet you love looking at your daddy's ass, you worthless fucking faggot."

Guthrie snorted. "Nobody loves looking at your ass, old man. Except the women you had to pay who were thrilled to see the back of you."

There was a shocked gasp. "Now that was just mean !" Butch said in surprise. "When'd you get so mean?"

"You kicked me out, fucknugget." Ooh, this was fun. "You got no pull on whether I'm mean or whether I'm nice or whether I think you're a father or a saggy pile of shit. I'm just here to help Jock." Guthrie talked a good game, and it was awesome being able to tell the old man exactly what he thought of him without fear of a crack across the face. But inside he was heartsick. His father's body—once a barrel-chested example of a middle-aged man who existed on beer and red meat—had wasted to baggy yellow skin on brittle bones. His stubbled face was so lined and loose that Guthrie figured a good shave would rip it off. And the whiskey voice he'd once used to belt across honky-tonks and charm women who were way too good for him was now a sour cigarette rasp.

It was one thing to hate your father, but it was another thing entirely to see him dying. To hear him curse you with almost his last breath? Well, that hurt.

Guthrie would fight back as best he could, but as he set about changing his first adult diaper, he had to wonder how much of his soul would be left when he got back to Tad.

THAT FIRST day set the tone. Jock may have been a half-assed bass player, but he actually had a good head on his shoulders when Butch wasn't ripping it off. His original schedule, with Guthrie supervising Butch's care between bouts of escaping into helping Jock with the house, gave Guthrie an outlet to release some of his frustration over dealing with his father.

And there was a great deal of that.

Guthrie hadn't realized his father kept a scorecard of grievances from Guthrie's childhood, but boy did he pull that out when so inclined.

For instance: "Remember that Christmas you threw a tantrum about being at a bar on Christmas Eve? The owner got so pissed he didn't pay us for the gig. No presents for you, you little shit, and you bitched about that too."

"No, old man, I don't remember it. Jock told me about it, though. I was four. Merry Christmas, you drunken bastard."

That one was fun. And Guthrie finally figured out where he got his cavalier regard for Christmas. Suddenly, achingly , he wondered if Tad did the holiday up right, with a tree and tinsel and Christmas songs and everything. He resolved to ask him… in person. Not on text, though, because dammit, that little stretch of property was like the goddamned nineteenth century.

But then there was: "Yeah, it's not like you didn't need some fucking medical care. You broke your arm when you were twelve, you fucking faggot. Remember that? Jock and I didn't have beer money for months ."

"That's a lie, and we all know it," Guthrie told him. "You never paid that hospital bill, and Jock cut the cast off with a fucking Sawzall. I'm lucky to still be alive." He was also lucky the broken arm was all he'd gotten; what Butch hadn't mentioned was that he'd broken his arm running away from Butch and getting hit by a car. If the accident hadn't happened out of town, with an out-of-town hospital and law enforcement, Guthrie probably would have died because he'd had a concussion then, too, and he'd gotten to spend a week in the hospital recovering. Of course Butch had lucked out because Guthrie's bruises had been blamed on the car. The reason Jock had cut the cast off was that that'd been the first time Guthrie had fought back. Butch had cracked him across the face, and Guthrie had given him a black eye with the cast. Butch had been angry enough to kill him, and Jock had gotten Guthrie out of his sights. The good news was, after that, Guthrie had stopped taking the physical abuse. The rest of that shit was just par for the course.

Or maybe not.

"I can't fucking believe you let Fiddler go. If you were going to be a cocksucker, the least you could have done was sucked his cock and made him stay! That kid was our ticket to something good , and you let him walk off the stage and out of our lives!"

And that was enough. Absolutely enough.

"Seth Arnold was better than any of us deserved. None of us—not me, not Jock, not you— none of us deserved to have that boy in our lives. And he was in love with someone else. They're married now, Dad, and they're parents. Good parents, who are kind and gentle. Hell, they even feed their kids, and they're men enough to keep them clothed and to provide for them. And they don't hit, and they don't abuse, and they don't yell. So fucking live with that , motherfucker. Those people you hate so much, they're better than you , and they always will be."

Butch sucked in a breath at that—Guthrie was giving him a shower, forcing the old man to wash his own privates, shampooing his hair, the whole nine yards. For the most part, Butch huddled on the shower chair and spewed invective, but at Guthrie's words he sat up straight and spat, right in Guthrie's face.

Guthrie was wet from the waist up anyway—and wearing an old pair of Jock's gym shorts and flip-flips because he'd done this before and he knew the job could be messy. He turned the spray on himself, on his face, spitting and rinsing several times before wiping the water out of his eyes. Then he turned to glare at his father, who was cackling like a demented witch. Deliberately, making sure Butch could see him, he turned the hot water off, leaving what was coming out of the showerhead ice-fucking-cold.

Then he turned it on his father and, ignoring his shouts, bathed the old man's pits and privates, ignoring the discomfort of the cold water, ignoring his father's screams and curses. When he was sure the job was done, he stood and sprayed Butch in the face, turning the shower sideways for a moment to say, "You gonna behave, asshole?"

He had to repeat the action three times before Butch nodded his head, his furious expression made less threatening by his shivers. Guthrie turned the water off and gathered the towels, helped the old man dry off in icy silence. Guthrie got him back to bed, worn out, and set him up with the television while Guthrie made lunch. He brought back a warm mug of soup so Butch could maybe heat up his core temp a little, but before he handed it over, he turned off the television, making sure he had the old bastard's attention.

"Butch, I got you? You hearing me?"

His father nodded, scowling.

"Good. That's great. Now look. Jock asked me to come help him out, because frankly, you were killing him. I agreed, 'cause Jock was a bright spot in my life when I was a kid and I felt like he deserved that much. But frankly? You don't. You deserve to die in a ditch, far away from civilization, mewling like an animal where no man can hear you to help."

Butch stared at him, shocked. "You don't got no killer in you, boy."

Guthrie shrugged. He wouldn't lie—not to this man. "Nope. No, I don't. But you know what I do have? I have access to the medical system. You put Jock in this position. You told him you wanted to die at home. You've been such a pain in the ass we can't get a nurse to stay longer than a week. Jock hasn't had a chance to live alone, but I have. I moved out when I was eighteen, remember? Stayed with the band until Fiddler left, but I know what it's like to live in my own goddamned place, even if my own goddamned place is my own goddamned truck." When he'd turned eighteen, he'd started to talk privately to the bar owners, making sure he got his fair share. Turned out if he wasn't drinking his fair share away, it was enough to get him a used truck and an apartment.

"So? You gonna brag about living in your truck now?" Butch groused, but it was clear he knew where this was going.

"I'm living with a family now," Guthrie told him. "One you can't fucking touch, not with your meanness, not with your vitriol. I can get away. But I'm not leaving Jock with you here alone. Before I go, I will take you to the hospital and sign all the fucking papers, and I will surrender your care to the state, old man. I'll do it freely and gladly, and Jock won't have to feel one drop of guilt. You wanted to die here—I guess so you could feel the wind on your face from the window, see the sky, smell something besides your own piss. I get that. That's great. You want that to happen? You will be a goddamned human fucking being to me and to Jock, or the last thing you will see will be white walls, and the last thing you will hear is the beep beep beep of your heart failing, and you will never see sky again, and you damned sure won't hear any music. I'll make a point of it. You know how Jock plays the radio for you at night on that country western station? I'll tell them it makes you crazy. No music for you in your last days. No television. No remote control. Not another human who cares whether you live or die, just some underpaid orderlies hoping you won't clock out on their shift. This is it, Butch. This is your last stand. You've got the power to make your last days decent or a sterile hell, and it all comes down to this: Can you or can you not be a human fucking being?"

Butch glared at him, absolute hatred burning from his eyes. "I shoulda given you to the state," he said after deep consideration.

But coming from Butch, that was mild.

"Too late now. What's it gonna be? And you might want to make up your mind 'cause your broth is getting cold."

Butch shivered, and Guthrie noted that his lips were still a little blue. "Fine. We don't need to say too much to each other. Too late now to wish your mama woulda flushed you."

Guthrie had heard that before. "Same could be said of you. Here's your soup. I'm going outside to do anything but this. You need something, holler." And with that, he gave Butch the remote control on the television and set up the baby monitor and strode out.

When he got to the front yard—mown now, thanks to Jock's tireless efforts, and covered with a fine layer of paint dust, thanks to his own—he leaned forward and rested his hands on his thighs and breathed. Just breathed. In and out, shuddering the last of the rage and the hurt and the violence into the quiet around him.

Jock rounded the corner, hauling half a stove on a wheelbarrow, and stopped, seeing him there.

The panic on Jock's face was enough to tell Guthrie Jock's worst fear.

"You're not leaving me here, are you?" he asked, voice shaking with tears.

"No," Guthrie said. "But Jock, you gotta hear me out."

With that he stood and outlined the things he'd threatened Butch with, and while his big fear had been that Jock wouldn't back him up, he'd been gratified to see Jock's posture straighten, a little at a time.

"So we can do that?" Jock asked. "We can give him to the hospital?"

"Jock, we are barely legal with his care regimen as it is. If he fights us like a toddler every day, we can't meet it. If he wants to die on his own terms, he's going to have to stop being a fucker, and that's all there is to it."

Jock nodded, and to Guthrie's absolute shock, turned his head and wiped his cheek on his shoulder. "I-I didn't think I could do anything," he confessed brokenly. "I felt so trapped …." And his voice broke. He shook his head and held out his hands when Guthrie would have said something. "Hey," he said after a minute. "Could you… could you maybe come sit with me on the porch after he goes down to sleep? I know you been sitting in your truck, using the good internet, but… but I don't got no one to email. Could you, you know, like when you was a kid. Could you—for a little while—pretend to be my friend?"

Guthrie's eyes burned. "I wouldn't be pretending," he said heavily. "Sure. You come get me after he's asleep. We'll sit on the porch and talk as the sun goes down, how's that?"

"Thanks," Jock said, and Guthrie knew he was crying, but he kept hauling that damned stove to the trash pickup spot like nothing was happening.

Guthrie let him. He was about done with feelings for the moment. With a sigh and a conscious straightening of his back, he went to the carport for some paint. He'd finished prepping the outside of the house the day before. It was time to swap out the attachments on the air compressor and put some lipstick on this tiny two-bedroom, one-bathroom pig.

NONE OF this went into his email or text to Tad that night. April didn't hear a word of it. Olivia only got plans for her father's wedding and internet jokes. Kelly's sisters got kitten videos. Martin, from the auto dealership, shared a YouTube video of Eddie Vedder in concert that made Guthrie super happy, and he shared his favorite of Eminem.

And then he picked up his guitar and tooled around, fixing the last song he'd written, setting it in music notation on the laptop he kept charged in the kitchen, along with his phone.

At around eight o'clock, just as the last light of the sun was fading from the sky, he heard Jock's quiet "Guthrie? You want to come sit? I got us some cookies from the store when I went for groceries. That okay?"

Guthrie swallowed, throat thick. "Yeah, Jock. That's real good. I appreciate it. I'll be right there." He tucked his laptop away but grabbed his phone, in case Tad texted him back like he tended to do.

That night, he and Jock sat and talked. Jock caught him up on the gigs he and Butch had been playing before Butch got sick, and Jolene, the woman Jock dated on and off but whom he'd like to see more. And Jock listened, heard about Seth and Kelly's wedding, and while his language might have been pretty much the worst, Guthrie heard honest joy for Seth, their "Fiddler," and that put paid to a lot of resentment Guthrie had felt toward him about how shit had fallen out after Seth had left their band.

After a little bit of low-key begging, Jock promised to work on cleaning up his language, as long as Guthrie promised to come out and sit with him again the next night.

Guthrie could promise that.

His loneliness for Tad and April and their little home with their cats was like a black hole opening up under his sternum. It was starting to suck the color out of the sky and the scent of the ocean out of the wind and the sweetness out of the flowers and the sawtoothed grasses in a giant cosmic whooshing storm.

Jock's human companionship didn't fill it, but it did dull the roaring of its wind in his ears.

SO JOCK was a bright spot in an otherwise dismal time. The lack of cell coverage was no joke. Guthrie retreated to his truck every evening for an hour or two to use the internet—because he got signal there—contact his people, and decompress. After Jock finished with Butch at night, they'd retire to the porch to talk, to play; Jock still loved to play, even though he'd never be beyond a garage guitarist, and since those classically trained musicians like Roberta and Neal and Owen and Seth had taken pity on Guthrie's own flaws and foibles, Guthrie paid that forward by giving Jock some time to fill his soul.

At night, after Jock took his one last beer to bed, Guthrie returned to his truck. He kept the guitar locked in the moisture-proof case and the computer behind the seat in the cab. His phone was fully charged after some time in the kitchen, and it was Guthrie under the stars, tucked in his sleeping bag with the blankets April had sent.

One of the blankets was fleece, and very much appreciated in the damp, foggy nights so close to the ocean. The other blanket was crocheted, and that one Guthrie tucked into the sleeping bag as more of a talisman than anything else. It was warm—more as a couch throw than as defense against the fog—and pretty, but mostly it was home. It was Tad's sister, who loved him, and Tad himself, who also, it seemed, loved him. Guthrie read books on his phone sometimes, or texted Tad if he was awake.

Once Tad started working, Guthrie could sense him falling asleep earlier, and the thought made him smile. His boy was healing, getting stronger and more active, and Guthrie tried to imagine a life with the two of them. Yeah, there'd be some gigs, some local stuff, but this album with Seth had taken on a life of its own. Guthrie had sent Seth some of his songs, and Seth had demanded more. In return, Seth had sent back instrumentation that he and Amara and Vince had come up with to make the songs richer and more complete.

Except for the one about the ribbon of road.

What do you want to do with that one ? Guthrie asked. Even he had to admit it was the best song of the bunch.

I want you to play the guitar and sing it , Seth sent back. We may hire someone to do some quiet percussion. Vince has a lonely trumpet riff. The rest is you.

Guthrie laughed a little. No, seriously . One of the hallmarks of this album had been Seth's deft hand at instrumentation, at making the classical instruments and the modern music blend into something amazing.

It's the best track on the album, Guthrie. None of us want to ruin it with too much. Trust me on this, okay?

Guthrie had stared at the text, shocked.

Guthrie?

I'm not sure what to say.

Say you'll be there the last week of August. You said you were taking care of your father, but your internet is shitty. Here's the address. Commit it to memory. The production company is fronting our hotel and food expenses. Make it if you have to crawl. It's going to be everybody's time to shine.

Guthrie had to smile at that. That was Seth. Loving music. Loving to make it with the people who loved it like he did.

Looking forward to seeing you all , he texted.

Maybe we can meet your policeman friend.

That was Seth too—not subtle. He's moving to the mountains with his sister.

Then Christmas. We're renting places in Monterey again. This time your plus one can be him.

And his sister?

Course. You know us. Sisters welcome.

Guthrie laughed softly to himself, and then Seth signed off and he was left alone, his only companions the indifferent stars seen through the drifting tulle of fog.

He'd gotten used to putting words and music down in the last month. Something about his time with Tad had made him more confident, broken the ice of the things he kept in his head but didn't say. The song flowed out of him like a river.

Two-dozen crappy memories of Christmas

No toys, no food, no lights

I want to see you at Christmas

But it's too far away tonight

Way off I might see happiness

Chocolate sugar mint high

Far away like the stars on a foggy night

I'll reach for you to make you mine

Last night I dreamed I saw heaven

In a cabin across a lake

All I had to do was swim the distance

To reach out my hand and take it

But I couldn't find the wind to keep going

The water was dragging me down

And my breath was getting shorter

I was going to drown

And when my head went under

When my eyes closed in despair

Your hand closed over mine

You pulled me into the air

We'll cling to each other on a lifeboat

With the cabin right there in our sights

We'll make it, I swear we will make it

If I just get to hold you tonight

Guthrie stared at the lyrics on his phone, his eyes burning, sobs trapped in his chest. This was dumb, he thought. So dumb. He was going to see Tad in a week. He'd taken his stand against his father, refused to take abuse, made his peace with Jock. He could last a week, right? And after that, there were only a few more hurdles between him and a whole new life, with everything he'd ever wanted in the package.

A whole new life. A little cabin of heaven. Tad.

He buried his face against his arm and cried.

BUT TAKING a stand against abuse wasn't the end of things. It never was.

Butch didn't spit anymore, and he didn't throw stuff or drop his cups on purpose or dump his plates, but how much of that was respect or fear, and how much of it was simply dwindling strength, Guthrie would never know.

But that didn't mean he didn't have some barbs left.

"Lookit you," Butch muttered one day as Guthrie bustled around the house, cleaning up. "You can't wait for me to die."

Guthrie took the earbud out, surprised. Butch was in his afternoon mode—he usually just stared at the television until he slept. Guthrie had seen the newish carpets that Jock had bought, waiting for the right time to install them. In fact from what Guthrie could see, Jock had been quietly hoarding all sorts of things—indoor paint, discount tile, used appliances he'd gotten that still had some life in them. Guthrie suspected that the moment Butch passed on, Jock would move in and fix the house into a decent home, the one Jock had always wanted but Butch had never been willing to settle down in.

It made Guthrie proud in a way. No, Jock had never lived out from under Butch's thumb, but he wasn't planning to get drunk and wallow or wander lost. Jock had apparently been imagining how to be his own man for quite some time and using the few life skills he had to make that happen.

But Guthrie had assumed Butch had missed all that.

"Well," he said now, to Butch's rude—if accurate—comment, "if you'd wanted us to be excited about your life, you shouldn't have been such a bastard."

Butch rolled his eyes. "You and Jock—always fucking whining about something. I was trying to keep us in gigs!"

"For what?" Guthrie asked. "To make music? 'Cause I assure you, Butch, you make better music when you're not falling asleep in your own puke and running away from creditors and the cops."

Butch grunted and then coughed, a deep wet one that spewed blood into the dingy handkerchief in his hand. "You act like you didn't love every fuckin' minute of it," he gloated.

Guthrie sighed, some of the fight draining out of him. "You got me there," he admitted. "When I was a kid, I thought that was livin'. Then I grew the fuck up and realized how much more there was to life than faking music."

"You mean making music!" Butch crowed. "Me and Jocko taught you and that faggoty fiddler a thing or two, didn't we!" Seth wouldn't have cared about the slur, and Guthrie had been protecting his sore spots, his hot and bare nerves, from Butch since he'd walked in the house. At this point, the only way to explain to the dying old pusbag how wrong he was would be to rip away the only self-delusions the old fucker used to keep breathing. Guthrie had needed to balance honor and compassion against cruelty and vengeance on the blade of a knife for the last two or three weeks, and when he'd been with Tad, he would have said he could fall on the side of icing, white feathers, and marshmallow fluff. But something had slipped in Guthrie these past weeks, the whispering conscience that would have kept him from saying the ultimate cruelty to a dying man.

"Oh get off it, old man," he snapped. "All you ever knew was a garage band's chord progression!"

"I was a music man!" Butch whined, and that meanness Guthrie had warned Tad about was suddenly the nine-hundred-pound gorilla of his nightmares.

"You were a drunk ! And a shitty father and a liar and a thief—"

"We never got a break," Butch told him, and it sounded like a plea for Guthrie to understand, but Guthrie was beyond that. "One good break we had, you let him slip away. Couldn't even suck the right dick."

Roar! "Oh bullshit . You make a big deal out of Fiddler deserting us after we gave him his break. Dad, Fiddler was our break. We lucked into that kid wandering into the bar and trying out for us. He's not just good—he's a prodigy . Everything he touches turns to gold, and for a bare, precious moment, he gave us some of that shine. You drank yours away. Jock saved it so he could fix your shitty house when he got a chance. I put mine into my education because I knew I wasn't ever going to be no Fiddler." Guthrie's eyes burned, because Seth was still trying to give him a break, and he refused to tell his father about it. It was obscene enough that the old man tried to use his friend like a sledgehammer to take Guthrie out at the knees. "But before Fiddler came around," Guthrie continued, "you were no better than a teenager playing ‘Smoke on the Water' on a shitty guitar. You couldn't hold a tune in a fucking bucket. You'd pawned your axe so often you forgot what it looked like and you were playing on a Walmart kid's special and it showed. The only reason bars were hiring you at the end was because you drank enough liquor to make up for the customers you drove off, and I know this because I played at some of those places after you'd left, and it was hard to get those people to trust me once they heard the name Woodson. Do you get me? Fiddler was always the sunshine, and you and me were always here, scrabbling in the dirt, but I ain't played in your shadow since I was seventeen, old man. You been playing in mine."

Oh, it poured out of him, and he knew it was pure meanness. He wanted to rail at things like living in the front of a truck when he was eight years old, or going without meals, or going without a bath for two weeks, until he showed up for a rare stint at school and had to put up with the kids making fun of his smell. He wanted to ask Butch why he couldn't have been a fucking parent, or why he had to be an asshole, or why he had to get pulled out of his own puddle of puke every night before they could go up on stage and earn at least a meal. But none of that would hurt his father—Guthrie knew that. So he went for the jugular, the truths that would really hurt, and he knew he'd won this round when a mewl like a rat getting its balls crushed issued from the old man's throat.

"You ungrateful little bastard!" Butch screamed, and that was the last coherent thing Guthrie could hear from him because he'd grabbed his keys and his phone and stalked out.

Jock was waiting for him by his truck with a fistful of twenties.

"The Alley Kat's still open," he said shortly. "This'll get you enough beers to cool off."

He had the baby monitor on his belt, and Guthrie could hear Butch sputtering, his voice weaker and weaker.

"I'm sorry, Jock," Guthrie mumbled, feeling a powerful need for a beer and a fuck or a fight or a chance to take a sledgehammer to a wall or something. He wasn't sure what he'd hoped for when he'd come down here—he'd told himself it was nothing. Told himself he was down here for Jock and no other reason, but God that was a lie, wasn't it? A moment—just a moment—of humanity from the man who'd raised him—it shouldn't have been a goddamned dream, should it? But Butch wasn't going to change. Was going to go to his grave without remorse for the shit he'd done to Guthrie. Hell, the shit he'd done to Jock. For all Guthrie knew, the shit he'd done to Guthrie's mother, who had taken off and left Guthrie in his care. Expecting a change of heart from Butch Woodson was like expecting to wake up one morning to be the next Elton John. It wasn't going to happen, and the only thing—the only thing—Guthrie could do was to wake up every morning and try to be the best Guthrie he could be.

He just needed a minute before he tried.

It was unfortunate that there were only two places in town to get a drink. One of them was the Cut, where the construction workers who maintained the tunnel hung out, and the other was the Alley Kat.

As Guthrie pulled his truck up to the Alley Kat—his bedding, computer, and guitar all hidden behind the seat or locked in the lockbox because he wasn't a fool—he scanned the parking lot and almost turned around to go back.

It was damned near full, and while there was no live music playing tonight, as there sometimes was, the juke box was loud, and the rednecks were hollering, and Guthrie was forced to wonder how many of the kids he'd sort of gone to school with had stayed here in Sand Cut, where there was no future and no forgiveness and no hope.

God. All he wanted was a fucking beer some place besides Butch's house. Was that really too much to ask?

The place hadn't changed that much from when Guthrie, Butch, and Jock had played it when he'd been a kid. Ralph Simpson at the bar looked the same—just skinnier, more grizzled, and yellower from nicotine. He wasn't allowed to smoke in the place, but he disappeared every half hour like clockwork to get his fix out back. The wood was still weathered and smoky, the smells coming from the kitchen were still full of grease that hadn't been changed in far too long, and the brass was still buried under a week's worth of fingerprints.

And Bud Light was still on tap.

Guthrie found himself the quietest corner he could, and without acknowledging Ralph's startled spark of recognition, pointed to the tap and held up a finger.

One to start.

He didn't want to talk.

He leaned his head against the wall for a moment and peered around the room more closely. It was almost the exact same crowd, he thought with a touch of sorrow, except the old drunks of his childhood had been replaced with the adults he'd known as children.

The head cheerleader had put on weight, had a couple of kids, and now dyed her hair all the way blond. The football quarterback had done the same, but he didn't have enough hair to dye. Guthrie accepted his beer from Ralph and took them in, noting that her mouth was turning down at the corners, and her husband, the football player, had lips that were flat and thin and grim.

He'd say trouble in paradise, but they'd both been cruel and shallow in high school and had probably made each other's lives cruel and shallow too. As he watched, a waitress—probably barely twenty-one herself—sashayed by the football player, and he patted her behind when his wife wasn't looking.

Classy.

Guthrie sighed and went back to his beer, trying to let the taste of something fresh from the tap wash out the words he'd hurled at Butch.

Nope. He was going to need another swallow.

He was on his second beer and starting to relax when it happened, which was a shame because he would have liked the excuse for being on his sixth beer and a little incapacitated. But no, it had to happen when he was on his second beer and still spoiling for a fight.

Dwight Climp strolled in, and with the sort of gaydar that could be found in a lot of repressed rednecks, his vision went straight to Guthrie, nursing his brew in the shadows and trying hard not to interact with a soul.

"Guthrie? Guthrie fucking Woodson?" Dwight called across the bar. "I thought we kicked your faggoty ass out of this town years ago!"

Maybe because it was Butch's favorite slur too, but Guthrie was reluctant to smile and sidle out. "No, sir, I left this flea-shit town all by myself."

"That didn't last long," Dwight scoffed, and Guthrie rolled his eyes.

"You're assuming I got nowhere to go when my business is through. Buddy, I am spoiled for choices. I got so many places I can live when I leave this shithole, I got people begging me to come drink their beer. Who wants you besides San Quentin?" Yeah, he'd heard that Dwight had done two years—not in the big house but in a local minimum security. It didn't matter, though. He'd scored a direct hit.

Dwight hissed and moved in closer, his eyes narrowed and rattlesnake mean. "You want to know the best thing about prison, you fucking fag?"

"The cuisine?" Guthrie asked, chuckling to himself. Yeah, he knew what was coming. God, you blew one football player in high school and the whole world knew your business. He hadn't even known Dwight's name. His attendance had been so spotty at the time, the guy hadn't even known Guthrie went to Sand Cut High.

"Those boys know how to take it without bawling like a baby," Dwight laughed. "I mean, I hear you whine like a little piss-boy, is that true?"

Guthrie smiled at him and finished off his beer, feeling the inevitable settling down on his shoulders. He'd wanted to drink, but a fight had just walked in, and who was he to look some gift therapy in the meth-rotted teeth?

"Well, I don't know," Guthrie drawled. "But only someone who liked my lips on his dick would know for sure. Is that you , Dwight? Did you like my lips on your dick? Because if you did , that would make you…." He glanced around the bar like he was telling a secret. "You know," he said, leaning his head in conspiratorially. " Gay ."

Dwight let out a howl of rage and charged Guthrie like a bull.

Guthrie took a step to his left and threw Dwight into the wall headfirst. Dwight fell on his ass, but he'd brought in three buddies who didn't like that at all , and as Guthrie spun lightly on his heel, he caught a blow to the jaw and the fight was on.

GUTHRIE'S HEAD ached and his arm ached and somebody was bothering him with something cold on the… ouch , was that a cut? On the meat of his bicep.

"I don't know you well enough to let you do that," he mumbled, but the chuckle from the man next to him sounded familiar.

"I am disappointed to hear that, Guthrie. I thought we were friends."

Guthrie squinted past the pain in his head, his body trying to process his surroundings while his brain processed that voice.

"Kenny Wilson?" he muttered. "I thought you got out?"

Kenny Wilson had been his one friend in high school. Sweet, scrawny, and bookish, Kenny had been a year below Guthrie in school. Guthrie remembered a couple of fights keeping the older kids away from Kenny as a kid, and when he had been in town, Kenny had been something of a shadow.

Guthrie hadn't minded. Thinking on it, Kenny reminded him a lot of April—quiet, sarcastic, kind. He'd been one of the reasons Guthrie hadn't grown up in Butch's shitkickers. When someone gazed at you like you were something, you tried not to disappoint them.

Guthrie squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, taking in his surroundings. Tan painted bars, tan painted cement floor, hard cot with a clean, sanitized plastic cushion on it underneath him, and a surprisingly warm and cozy wool blanket surrounding him as though he'd been asked to sit up and the blanket had pooled around his hips.

He squinted at Kenny, who was sitting next to him, doctoring his arm, wearing a set of pressed khakis and a baseball hat that proclaimed him a Monterey County Deputy. Kenny had grown up handsome, Guthrie thought muzzily, with a square jaw, a long face, and thick brown hair that had once been stringy. No acne now, and no uncertainty in his plain brown eyes as he stitched up Guthrie's arm.

"I did get out," Kenny said, sounding like he was concentrating. "I got my EMT's license, and then the Monterey County Sheriff's department wanted me to come work for them, and then they found out I was a Sand Cut native and thought I should run the branch. So I'm back, but, you know. Got a badge. Got my certificate. I'm all-purpose law enforcement, and you got me for the day."

Guthrie grunted and shifted on the cot, wincing when everything hurt . "It's nice to see you, boy, but I really wish I wasn't in jail."

"Well, even the witnesses who hate you say Dwight picked the fight and his buddies dogpiled on."

"Why aren't they in jail?" Guthrie asked grumpily.

"Because they heard the siren and ran, sir," Kenny said, sounding almost cheerful. "You, on the other hand, were about to be used as a rag mop, so you had no such option. Here, take these."

"So I get jail?" Guthrie asked. He didn't even question the painkillers and probably antibiotics Kenny thrust into his hand with a cup of water. Jesus, was his head aching.

"Only because the hospital's a ways out," Kenny told him. "But don't worry—I got the names and locations of your assailants. They'll be arrested and taken to Salinas for actual jail, and you get to sit in here for your own protection. Good enough for you?"

Guthrie groaned. "Can't I just go back home?" There was only one image behind his eyes when he said that, and it wasn't Sand Cut or San Rafael or even Sacramento.

"Nope," Kenny murmured, finishing with his patch job and soaking Guthrie's arm with antibiotics. "For one thing, you've probably got a concussion, so I want to keep an eye on you until someone I trust can take care of you, and for another, your boyfriend's on his way here to get you."

Guthrie's head gave a giant throb, and he had to struggle to think. "I'm sorry, what was that last part?" he asked.

"That last part," Kenny said, taking his time to tape a gauze pad to the wound, "is that I unlocked your phone with your face while you were out in my jail, and I called one Detective Tad Hawkins of SAC PD. He said he and his work wife will be here around noon."

"Oh God," Guthrie mumbled. "How long have I been here?"

"Well, we broke up the fight around nine last night, and I had the doc come check you out and irrigate your wound—he left the stitching station here so I could stitch it if it didn't stop bleeding, and it hasn't. You may not remember him checking you out, but I was here. You were KO'd somewhere in there, it's true, but he said you were mostly sleeping." Kenny's voice dropped, and he shucked off his gloves and started cleaning up the stainless steel "stitching station" he'd been using to clean Guthrie up. "Apparently, Dwight picked on a tired guy who—according to your uncle Jock—had just had a shitty fight with his shitty father and had tried to get the hell out of Dodge so he could have a drink and cool off." Kenny's gave him a gentle, rueful pat on the thigh, like friends. "So we agreed to let you sleep it off here. Nobody to beat you up, and you got a bed and some shuteye under a roof. How's that?"

Guthrie closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the cinder block wall some more. Oh, cinder block wall, you and me are friends . "You called my boyfriend?" he complained.

Kenny's eyes went soft. "Yeah, Guthrie. My friend was hurt and needed backup, so I called his boyfriend. You gonna fight me now?"

"No," Guthrie moaned, feeling plaintive. "Nice to see you, boy," he said belatedly, but he meant it. "You, uh, gonna bring me some coffee?"

"Nope," Kenny said cheerfully. "I'm going to have you sleep for another two hours. Then I'm going to bring you some coffee and let you get cleaned up. Jock came by to get your truck moved in front of the station so it wouldn't get ripped off. He brought in your shaving kit and your knapsack. I guess he did some laundry 'cause all your clothes are clean. Told me to give you a day or two off, and yes, he knows you're leaving on the fifth to do a gig at a wedding, but he says you need the break. So here we are. Your pit crew. Making sure you don't drive yourself too hard. Now go to sleep, Guthrie. I'll tell you all about the wife and the new baby when you wake up."

Guthrie settled his head down and smiled a little. "New baby," he murmured. "That's good news. Proud to see you again, Kenny."

"Same here," Kenny said, and in spite of the fact that Guthrie was in jail , he got the feeling Kenny meant that. That was nice. Guthrie's eyelids fluttered shut, and he dreamed of Tad.