Vernon and Jay got together on most Sunday afternoons to practice guitar. They sat in Vernon’s garage. The door was open and wouldn’t close. A lawn mower balanced off kilter in the corner like a drunken guest.
Vernon sat in a folding chair; Jay next to him on a wooden stool. Jay took off his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves unveiling the tattoos he’d gotten the same evening he’d returned from Vietnam: a guitar and an image of Bootsie, a gnome with bushy hair that Jay had worn around his neck throughout the war and considered his good luck charm.
Jay took reached for his lighter. Vernon balked. “Doctor says I have to quit. If you want to smoke, go outside.”
“We are outside. Anyway, it’s not a cigarette. It’s pot.” He waved a fat joint under Vernon’s nose. Pot was illegal and hard to come by.
Vernon was having a hard time quitting. Nothing killed his cravings for a smoke, not patches or nicotine gum. Not even the sunflower seeds he kept chewing and spitting into an ashtray. “Where’d you get it?”
“Where d’you think I got it? One of my bandmembers.”
They spent the next few hours trading songs and laughing their heads off. Smoke filled Vernon’s lungs with memories of a careless youth, traveling on a bus from one dive bar to the next, and being booed from behind a screen of chicken wire where drunk patrons launched bombs of empty beer bottles, but more pleasant times also, venues filled with patrons clapping and two-stepping, holding on to each other like it was their last breath, a vibration exalting them to a place where nothing else mattered. The highs and the lows, always wanting to keep the highs even after the audience had disappeared. “Listen to this and tell me what you think. It’s a tune that keeps rolling around in my head.”
“Nice,” said Jay. “But I think you could use a slide to hold the notes longer. Give it a softer feeling. Who you writing that love song for anyway?” Vernon didn’t answer, but kept playing. “Look, man. I know you’re dating Rae-Ann. Lila has been giving me an earful.”
Vernon blew out two columns of smoke. He already knew about Jay and Lila. “Don’t tell me you’re already on her shit list?”
“Not me…The stink behind her portable. Site number four where we’ve been dumping.” Jay didn’t get a response. He rested the joint in the ash tray. “Did you know the site was close to the school?”
“You only care is because you’re dating Lila.”
“Not true.”
“You were sitting right next to me. Perlson wanted me to get rid of those dead fish. Now you’re crying about it.”
“If I’d known it was behind the school…”
“Bullshit…you’d have done the same thing.”
“Is that right? What makes you so sure?”
“Because playing guitar on Saturdays in that ratty bar don’t pay the bills.”
Jay flung the ashtray of sunflowers on the garage floor, grabbed his guitar and stormed away.
Vernon watched him go. After a while, he got up and spotted an egret behind his house prowling for fish. “Scat! Get out of here,” he said for no particular reason, reminding himself that he had to call an electrician to fix the garage door. He walked to the porch where he heard Jay picking his guitar. He hadn’t left.
“I’m too fucked up,” Jay said and continued playing. “Leaving soon.”
“Where did you want me to put them?” Vernon said. “Reclamation ponds where that boy died? Where the crew was getting sick? School will be out. It was the best choice I had.”
“Doesn’t matter. Either way, we’re fucked,” Jay said. “Always have, always will be.”
“Stay as long as you want to.” Vernon picked up his guitar, his back to Jay, until their notes reached out to each other, one chord answered another, one riff led in a new direction; they discovered what they always knew–music was the only thing that mattered. Jay began to sing. Vernon accompanied him. “You sound like George Strait,” Vernon said. “Got that same tremor.”
“Thanks, man. That’s a high compliment.”
Once it got dark, they turned on the television to watch Sunday night football. The Saints were on.