Red Hot Blues (16 page)

Tonight I won’t sleep either. Because I
choose not to. I won’t sleep because I don’t want to miss a second
with Gin. Not a second.

Maybe I’ll stay another day. Maybe.

I get the rubbers and realize she has no
dress because I tore it apart. She didn’t realize it either.

I pull out my phone and search for the
nearest clothing store. Walmart. I drive there. It’s not too far, a
few miles. I pick up some sundresses she might like. I don’t know
her size and don’t want to seem like an asshole for getting
something too big so I pick up everything from the smallest to the
largest.
No, that’s too large.
I pick the second largest.
No, also too big.
But what if it’s not? OK, fine, I take it.
But the smallest is too small. She’d know I was bullshitting if I
brought that!
OK, leave that.

Christ. Girls are so complicated.

OK, I take everything from the
almost-smallest to the not-almost-largest-but-pretty-large dress.
Fine. I hope she doesn’t take my head off.

Is she hungry? Thirsty? Damn it!

I pick up some water, a few Yazoo Pale Ales,
some potato chips. Some dips. Junk food—the Good Ole American
staple. She’d probably want to eat a salad. Screw that. I’ll be
damned if she thinks she needs to eat a damn salad around me! I saw
how she dimmed the lights, thinking I wasn’t completely turned on
by her figure.

But I didn’t say anything. I can
feel
the terror in her eyes about the way she looks. She doesn’t need to
mention it. And I know me mentioning it, telling her she looks fine
as she is, would make her uncomfortable. So instead of mentioning
it, I’ll drop a hint—in the form of Lays potato chips and beer.

When I get back to the suite, she’s sleeping.
Still naked. I remember my need to have her, my urge to burst out
the door and pick up some condoms because all I could think about
was being inside her again.

I can’t fight the urge back.

I wake her up with a kiss, on her breasts,
her beautiful pink discs, then lower, lower,
lower
.

Until I’m there, kissing her, loving her.
Tasting her.

I kiss her until she’s fully awake, and
screaming over the edge.

And then I take my fill of her.

We’re sitting on the carpet, legs crossed, no
clothes on. Perfection. Potato chips and beer and dips in the
middle.

She hesitates on the potato chips. “Carbs,”
she says.

“Fuck that shit!” I grab a chip, dip it in
the carb-filled dip, feed it to her. Some lands on her chin. She
laughs.

I do it again. And again.

“OK! OK! I can feed myself!”

She does, but she can’t do it for long,
because not long afterwards I have her on the carpet, and I’ve got
her legs open, and I’m inside her again.

And it’s heaven. Being wrapped in her is my
heaven, my bliss. I need a little bit of heaven in my life.

I need Ginger in my life.

But she doesn’t need me.

In the morning, I call my mom. She tells me
my dad’s not gonna make it. She tells me I should visit him and say
my goodbyes “because it’s the right thing to do.” I tell her I
don’t want to. She begs me. “He’s your father, Ace. Come and see
him.”

“How’s Aaron?” I change the subject.

She hesitates. “B—better.”

Silence.

“Please, Ace. Do it for me. I beg you.”

“I can’t, momma. I can’t.”

She says nothing.

I dredge up the courage to say what I want to
say, what I believe: “Maybe it’s for the best, mom.”

Silence.

“Mom?”

“We’re broke, Ace.”

Silence.

“Huh?”

“We’re broke. Broke. If there’s one thing
your father knew how to do it’s how to keep the debt collector
away. We’re up to our ears in debt. We have nothing. I can’t deal
with it. I can’t...run the farm like he did. I can’t keep it alive
if he goes. It’ll all crash. It might have crashed later even if he
lives, but he would have kept it going long enough to get Janice
through school. He would have kept it going long enough for that,
I’m sure.”

I feel sick to my stomach.

I think of Aaron, all those nights he taught
me how to play. I think of his daughters. I think of momma, nowhere
left to go. I think of Janice, that night Logan Travers, her own
father, had his dirty hand on her innocent leg.

Pig.

And now this. The ultimate betrayal. Forced
to depend on him when he’s alive. Dropped like a sack of
worm-infested potatoes when he’s dead.

I decide I will go and see him.

And if he’s not dead yet, I’m gonna kill him
myself.

“I need you to come to Virginia with me.”

Gin’s shocked at my request. She’s sitting on
the bed, holding her knees, looking adorable.

“OK.”

“OK?”

“Yeah. OK.”

“Just like that? No questions?”

“No questions.”

I’m stunned. Moved. “OK.”

“OK.”

“You ever ridden on a motorbike?”

“Nope.”

“You’ll need a helmet.”

We get her a cool pink helmet with flames on
the side and a Mohawk on the top.

She wraps her legs around my waist and
already I’m feeling that wave of peace. I need that, or else I’ll
do something stupid. I’ll do something really stupid.

I tell her she can hold on to me or hold on
to the bar behind her. She holds on to me.

I roar the Harley awake.

And we ride.

It’s open road. Me and my Harley and my girl.
I could get used to this. I could really get to like this.

I could even get
to...
love?
...this.

We ride slower than my usual pace, not
because I’m scared of an accident. I’m not. I’ve driven for years.
I’ve got a sixth sense about it. We drive slow because I get the
feeling that life can’t get better than this, cruising up the I-81,
the wind in our hair, the squeal of the hog under our butts. And
its American purr—that pure rock n roll purr.

What would normally be an eight hour drive,
becomes a slow, kissing, hugging, enjoying-the-sites-and-the-heat
road trip of two days. Two
full
days.

We make a detour and check out Rock Island,
feel the spray of falling water on our cheeks as we stop to listen
to the rumble of the Twin Falls. We traverse the rocks and she
almost falls over one. I hold her, kiss her, imagine what it would
be like to take her, right here, under this falling water. Or
inside it.

She picks up on my thoughts and gets on her
tip-toes to kiss me, buries her tongue in my mouth. Makes me so
horny for her.
So
horny.

We spend the night in Knoxville, downtown, go
for dinner, make love like sick lovebirds in a hotel until we can’t
keep our eyes open anymore. We don’t talk about the future, just
think about the moment.

We wake up early, order room service, fall
into each other again.

I catch the flash of fear in her eyes. She’s
falling for me as well. I know it. And I’ve fallen for her already.
I know that, too.

We ride all of the next day, make more
detours, see more mountains, more parks, more falls. The road to
Virginia is so beautiful, one of the best in America.

Near the end of our trip, we’re singing rock
n roll and blues at the top of our lungs, drowned out by the roar
of the Harley, but we don’t care.

And then we finally arrive. Nighttime. St
Mary’s Hospital. And it’s cold. There’s a wind that cuts through my
jacket. I turn the bike off. Get off it. Extend my hand to
Gin’s.

She’s so beautiful. And I’m so glad she’s
here.

We walk in. Hand in hand.

Layna called a few times, told me I was mad
to go out on the road with some guy I don’t know.

But I do know him. I know everything about
him. I know everything that’s important to know about him.

And I love him. Completely. True love. Real
love. The stuff they write about in movies and plays and books—all
those books I’ve read on that brown leather couch in the Nashville
library—this is it.

It’s gonna burn. It’s gonna sting. It’s gonna
knock me out the ball bark and I’m gonna fall, tumbling,
crashing.

He is who he is.

I know why he runs. He runs because he’s
afraid.

He told me, sitting under that rushing water
at one of the parks we stopped at, chewing on carb-loaded chips,
about his fighting days.

He keeps his fear at bay with his fists, his
music, and his motorbike.

I can’t change him.

Does he love me in return? If he doesn’t, he
sure as heck likes me a
whole
lot!

But I believe he does love me. Love is
different for guys, I think. And I think it takes them longer to
figure out they’re in love. But I believe he does love me.

I know him. And I won’t hold him back when he
needs to go. When he needs to hit the road again to alleviate his
fears. When he needs to run and get some air and stop his mind from
imploding on him.

I know the feeling.

That had been our deal. I broke my personal
rule. He broke his own rules.

But that had been the agreement: Some fun.
And then stay friends.

Oh, boy, he’s gonna be one
hell
of a
friend.

But I’ll be here for him. I’ll hold his hand.
I only want that he respects me when he does leave.

The hospital reeks of disinfectant. I hate
hospital smells. They remind me of my own dad, of those last days.
They remind me of when I was five. They remind me of my mother
screaming at the top of her lungs. That smell. That disinfectant
smell.

It’s the smell of Cancer to me.

And it’s the smell of End of Days.

It’s the smell of loneliness. Of pain.

I hate this smell.

I don’t remember him much. But I know that my
life would have been different, much different, if he’d been
around. Even if only to have been held by him, held by a
man
—the first man that ever holds a girl like he loves
her.

I never had that. And if I did, I don’t
remember it.

He left us nothing, because he had nothing.
And what little money we did have went to paying his medical
bills.

In the waiting area, a lady who I assume is
Ace’s mother, gets up and hugs him. She’s a frail woman, tiny bone
structure. She’s sporting a blue eye. Yeah, must be from Mr. Logan
Travers. She’s taller than me, because everyone’s taller than me.
But she’s shorter than Ace.

He introduces us. Her accent’s deeply
southern.
Deeply
southern. She has frizzy red hair and thin
cheeks, thin everything. More like gaunt, I realize. She’s not led
a happy life. And whatever this...
man
...(if you can call him
that) has done to her, she’s at her wit’s end at the fear of losing
him anyway.

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Ginger,”
she says, and extends her hand to mine.

She and Ace have a slightly heated (albeit,
Southernly polite) discussion about who he’s gonna see first. Ace
wants to see Aaron. His mom says his father might go any minute
now.

Ace doesn’t budge.

He visits Aaron.

And while he’s in there—his father dies.

I’m back in the moment, five years old,
hearing the screams, hearing that shrill cry of a wrenched heart, a
torn-apart soul. I’m in that hospital, smelling that disinfectant,
listening to my own mom rip her lungs out with wringing calls to
the underworld, begging to sell her soul in exchange for one more
minute, hour, day, with the man she loved.

My daddy.

My poppa.

Now, pummeled by memories, I fall onto a blue
seat, bury my face in my hands.

And I weep.

Mrs. Travers goes ballistic, screaming like
my mom did, falling onto her knees. I get up, go to her, try and
console her but she’s inconsolable. She doesn’t want to be touched.
She flicks away at my hands and falls on the ground, her back to a
wall, and she weeps viciously.

Ace comes running out, only too aware of
what’s happened.

She points an accusatory finger at him,
shaking, like a person on the verge of death herself: “You! You
didn’t see him! You didn’t see your own father!”

Ace stands, takes her accusations.

“He loved you! Oh, Logan, Logan!”

She lies on the ground, right here in the
hallway. A nurse appears, tries to take Christa Travers away, but
Ace gets in the way, grabs his mother. Heaves her up. She starts
slapping his chest, complaining, and he just holds her.

I see him crying, just one tear.

Is he crying because he’s sad? Or is he
crying because it’s over? Maybe he’s crying because he knows his
mother and his family have nowhere to go. Nowhere to turn.

His mom keeps slapping him, punching him,
hitting him, but eventually she just cries into his chest, her
shoulders shuddering up and down while he just continues to hold
her tightly, comforting her, taking on the role which is his now by
default—the man of the family.

And I’m feeling sick. Remembering that I
don’t
remember. Remembering only those faint, ripping
screams. And being confused, at five. But I don’t remember his
face. I don’t remember him holding me. I don’t remember anything
about him at all.

Only that disinfectant smell.

That smell makes me sick.

And I eventually go into the restroom and
hurl.

I call Layna and tell her what’s happening.
She offers to come by but I tell her there’s no reason to. She asks
me what I’m gonna do: Am I gonna stay in Virginia? Take over a
tobacco farm? Drop all the website work?

I tell her I’m coming back to Nashville,
soon. “It’s just all over the place now,” I say to her.

“I’m here for you,” she says.

“I know you are.”

Then she tells me something vitally needed in
this moment, a glimmer of light in the lonely darkness: