Nine Volt Heart (12 page)

JASON

I
STOOD WATCHING THIS lanky, long-haired
kid in the doorway for ten minutes before he ever looked up to notice anything
around him. He worked with his eyes closed, listening with his whole body. I
like watching drummers who make it look like their loosely knit bones are part
of the overall instrumentation. What I like even more is the amazing moment
with kids where you can see the future. You see the man that is about to emerge
from the funky shell of a boy. You see a future of hopes and failures,
adventures and love affairs, and in some kids, you see a dynamic life about to
unfold. This particular kid, doing what he was born for, was so energized and
heated that I swear he glowed, the primordial percussionist.

When he saw me, he sat back, folding his arms, drumsticks
clenched in his fists.

He recognized me.

“So you’re who she’s having for lunch? Are you spending the
night?”

Brutal.

I shook my head. “I’m vegetarian. And under age.”

He laughed, rueful still. “I wanted to break up the party. I
need a ride to the show we’re doing this afternoon.”

“Why not come up and ask?”

“I can’t get her attention unless I drive the annoyance
level up to a certain point. I was supposed to ride over with our rhythm
guitarist, but his grandmother is dying, so he has to hang around the hospital
where everyone is crying.”

“You don’t drive?”

“I was at the wheel one night when the cops stopped us. One
of the guys was holding, and my parents’ lawyer worked a plea bargain. For
doing nothing, I lost my driver’s license.”

“I can identify with the random karma of being in the wrong
place at the wrong time.”

He laughed again, ready now to look me in the eye. “I guess
so. What do you do about it?”

“Swallow it. Learn not to care about what people think.” As
he nodded, I said, “Actually, I’m lying. I don’t have a clue how to deal with
it. What if we give you a ride? I could sit in on rhythm if there’s an
instrument for me.”

“The other guys will shit themselves.”

“You’re OK with it? It’s your show. I don’t want to
distract.”

“As a fellow innocent, falsely accused, I could go with it.”

I think for Zak that passed as unbounded enthusiasm.

“What do you play?”

“Lame folk songs we learned in class. Here’s the set list.”

“Tame.” I studied it.

“We, uh, changed up the rhythms. We do ‘Tom Dooley’ as punk
rage and ‘Barbara Allen’ as reggae.”

“So we play like we’re Sly and Robbie on a British folk
song?”

“We had to do something. It’s such a girl’s song. I mean,
dying for love? Come on.”

“What do you do to ‘Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies’?”

“We skipped the autoharp and treat it sort of like ‘Gloria.’”

“It’s all acoustic?”

“We’ll be miked. You’ll have steel strings. What else do you
need?”

SUSI

W
HEN WE PREPARED TO leave
Gwyneth’s house, she didn’t have an opportunity to put her hands on Jason, or
down his pants, since he made himself busy helping Zak load his drum kit into
my much-too-small car. I said goodbye to Freeman, whom I believe cares for my
well-being. He promised that he’d appear at the benefit later if his driver
returned on time. Gwyneth didn’t even offer an excuse for not coming to the
benefit.

I fumed in silence all the way to Town Hall, where everyone
was preparing for the afternoon performance. Jason lingered behind when Zak
hauled in the first load of his drum kit. I peeled off that prima-donna jacket
and put on a sweater, still so furious that I buttoned it up wrong.

“Here, let me fix it.” Jason put his hands on me again.
Actually, on my sweater buttons. “Are you mad at me, Susi?”

“I’m furious with Gwyneth. You see these kids trying to grow
up, and the adults who are supposed to help don’t do what they should.”

“Zak seems fine to me. You’re sure this isn’t about Gwyneth
rubbing her leg on mine all afternoon?”

I ignored the comment. “Zak wants to drop out of school. His
mother can’t be bothered to come hear him do what he loves most in the world.”

“Susi, the rhythm guitarist isn’t here. I’m going to sit in
with them. You don’t mind?”

“Not if Zak doesn’t. Do you know how good they are?”

“Didn’t you hear him in the basement?”

Then Jason disappeared.

After I had greeted parents and siblings, I sat in the back
to write notes about what each of the kids did best in their performance. After
the first few acts, I was dragged to the parking lot by one of my student’s
parents, who wanted a serious discussion about whether their little girl should
accept an offer to a school like Julliard. The question befuddled me, but I
applied my most zealous efforts to convince them, with the result that we were
still talking and the parents were still shaking their heads when the program
ended. As I came back, just in time to hear the chords of a last unidentifiable
song, the kids in the audience all yelled and whistled and clapped, which
wasn’t how I thought audiences received folk music.

“Let’s get out of this noise,” Randolph said, grabbing my
hand and tugging me up the aisle and back outside.

The sound system buzzed and shrieked, and the young people
in the audience shrieked back.

“You seem to allow your guest every privilege,” Randolph said.

“Not particularly. Zak needed a stand-in. How is your
grandfather? I regret missing dinner with you last night.”

“Really?” Randolph said, like a drowning man grabbing thin
straws.

No, but it’s the sort of thing that one is supposed to say.
“I enjoy his company a great deal.”

“Come out to dinner with us tomorrow night. As a rain
check.”

“All right. But please don’t make dinner mean more than it
should, Randolph.”

“Is that what you tell your houseguest?”

“Don’t be petty. It’s unbecoming to you.”

“Susi, what would it take? Other women find me attractive.
I’m educated. We enjoy the same music, books, and films. It’s just going to
take more time, isn’t it, Susi? I have to be patient.”

“No, I think the time already passed. I don’t want the
intimacy and demands of marriage.”

Parents and children streamed out of Town Hall, everyone
animated from the performance. So I fetched my car and brought it to the
loading dock, then waited quite a while before Zak and Jason appeared to once
again fit the disassembled drum kit into my little car, with Zak cramming gear
in the trunk and Jason fitting the tom-tom to ride in the back seat.

~

Back at Zak’s, the house was deserted and dark. He and Jason
talked about music, none of which I recognized, each speaking as fast as the
other, while Zak made peanut butter sandwiches and poured milk. It was a more
enjoyable supper than the luncheon we had suffered through.

While they chewed their sandwiches, Zak and Jason started a
series of one-word exchanges with each other. Most of the words seemed to be in
English or were people’s names. I kept looking at the clock, trying to judge
the time and whether I should leave Jason here. However, then I would be
leaving him at Gwyneth’s house, which didn’t seem acceptable.

“Too derivative,” Zak said, licking peanut butter off his
fingers.

“I don’t know how you can say that,” Jason said.

“Watch my lips. Too. De-ri-va-tive.”

“Yikes, I would hate to find out what you think of
Stoneway.”

Zak didn’t say anything for a moment.

“Shoot, man. That bad.” Jason laughed.

“What period? Before the Yoko Ono effect or after? Though I
have to say, I dig on what the real Yoko is doing these days.”

Jason said, “It’s the same thing she was doing in earlier
days, if you had a memory that went back that far.”

“Don’t pull the shit on me, man. Like, ‘you will understand
when you get older.’ I can listen to any MP3 on the Internet, and the music is
happening right this moment. It doesn’t matter when it was first made.”

“Zak, music happens on a space-time continuum, in a social
context.” Jason caught a drop of jam as it fell from his sandwich and paused to
lick it from his finger. “So what if you discover Shostakovich’s Fifth this
year, and it affects your thinking? It’s the song that plays everywhere when
you fall in love that anchors you in a special emotional world, the same way
certain smells always make you think about Christmas. It creates a shared
meaning of that time in history. You and I can understand musically what Lennon
and McCartney were doing by playing a CD alone in your room. But we can’t
understand what it meant for kids suffering through high school who heard that
music for the first time.”

“I don’t think music has meaning,” Zak said. “It’s just
feeling.”

“Lord, that is the saddest thing I ever heard. You are
saying that just to jerk me around.”

“So what does ‘White City Blues’ mean from your work last
year?”

“I can’t explain it without a guitar, pedal steel, and penny
whistle.”

“Then tell me what the rules are, if you don’t do secret
meanings.”

“Stoneway has always had the same rules: no samples, no house
music. Know your instrument. Get tight and stay there.”

“I can’t deny you the goodness of that. It’s similar to my
personal taste.”

“Gee, Zak. Thanks for condescending so far.”

He shoved Zak’s shoulder with his open hand, and Zak
responded by bumping back with his shoulder, causing Jason to spill milk on
both their shoes. They laughed and kept shoving each other.

Then Jason caught my eye, like he just woke up.

“Susi, I’m sorry. We’re ignoring you.”

They mopped up the kitchen and whisked away the remains of
our sandwich frenzy. While they were horsing around, experimenting with the
acoustics of kitchen implements on granite versus butcher block, I took a deep
breath and decided that I would bring Jason with me. It felt like I could trust
him to keep personal secrets.

JASON

W
HERE SHE TOOK ME next was to
church. I am not joking.

We walked up a street on Capitol Hill and into a
Presbyterian church. The narthex rang with a bluegrass twang the moment she
opened the door. The sanctuary was deserted except for six musicians standing
or seated in a circle below the altar, instruments and cases scattered around
them. The tallest of them saw us come in and hailed Susi.

“Baby, you always show up after the whole congregation has
left and the preacher has taken off his collar.”

“I just don’t get organized in time, Dan. I apologize. You
aren’t headed home already, are you?”

“We’re still playing a little longer, baby. Hope you came to
join us and not just to break our hearts.”

“I brought a friend. Jason, this is Dan, Roy, Pete, Aaron,
Bobby, Gene.” She ticked off their names around the circle. “It’s Pete’s
congregation that lets these boys play here.”

“Gentlemen.” I nodded to all. Pete made a point of shaking
my hand. My fingers itched to join in, but I managed to mind my company manners
and only sang along on the first song they played.

Most of them were hippies who never gave it up—grey beards,
hair tied in a ponytail, comfortable belly above low-slung jeans, silver and
turquoise on their wrists. A couple of the guys looked straight from Sunday
school, matching the surroundings where they played. What they all shared was
excellence: precise, well-practiced, and personal guitar and mandolin licks;
voices cracked from experience and controlled with practice.

Bluegrass is difficult. The musicians are technically
precise; singing close harmony is extremely demanding. It’s where certain kinds
of elite musicians like Toby go for the satisfaction of hard, precise work. I don’t
mean “elite” as a pejorative. Good bluegrass musicians deserve great respect,
and there were six truly good men in that sanctuary.

However humbled I felt in this roomful of virtuosos, I
begged for an instrument after one song. It didn’t feel right to sing with
empty hands.

Susi hadn’t joined in the singing, but Dan urged her. “Come
on, baby. ‘I’ll Fly Away.’ I know your daddy taught it to you.”

“All right,” she said. “In G?”

Then I heard what I had longed for.

She had a voice that pierces the veil, so we can see God
face to face.

This wasn’t my personal prejudice, because I was already in
love with her. You could see it on the face of every man in the room. That
little swimmer’s body produced huge sounds, but the emotion she projected into
the music made you want to stop breathing and just pray that she’d go on. She
had perfect pitch, which made playing difficult music nearly impossible, for it
was tempting to just stop in awe. After Dan had coaxed a second song from her,
she balked at a third.

“It’s me standing here singing by myself,” she said. “I can
do that in the shower. What are the rest of you doing? Dan? Jason?”

Dammit, if that wasn’t the bravest thing I’ve done in years,
though I'd never been afraid to sing before in my life.

Dan said, “What do you know, Jason? What shall we play?”

“‘Shake My Mother’s Hand’?”

They nodded. I started the lead, and it went fine, though
pin-pricks of adrenalin shot through my fingers when she came in on the high
harmony counter-point in the chorus.

We were singing together.

Lord, I still don’t know how we made it through such an
emotional song while learning to work together, in front of all those
strangers, to find the right pitch and rhythm. Yet as in the sweetest of dreams,
we matched. We fit together like when you listen to those old family bands,
when they have sung together around the dinner table for so many years that
they knew each other’s voices and choices as well as their own.

Dan and Pete coaxed more from her—“Life’s Railway to Heaven,”
“Take Me in Your Lifeboat,” “Farther Along,” “Angel Band.”

“Give her a rest, boys,” Jimmy the banjo player said.
“Jason, seems like you’re holding back. Did God give you any special talent you
can share while Susi gets her breath?”

“I can yodel,” I said. “Though I don’t know any yodeling
hymns.” And I never do it in public. The two times I have, someone came up
after to tell me how much I sound like Jesse Rufus, and both times occurred
before Dominique let the world know all about my parentage.

Pete suggested a Hank Williams or a Lost Sons song. I chose
Hank, and the guys kindly helped me through “Long Gone Lonesome Blues.”

Then Susi begged to sing again, and Pete said only one more,
because his wife was waiting at home, so we did “I Am a Pilgrim,” with Susi
asking for a key so that she could sing a tone lower, getting that same warm
sunshine into her voice as Maybelle Carter.

In the end, they sang “Goodnight, Irene,” with their arms
around each other’s shoulders. The guys who angled themselves into position
with their arms around Susi’s waist made her laugh and made love to her with
each chorus. After, Dan was talking to Susi about her father’s health and maybe
getting together with him. I returned the borrowed guitar to Pete.

“I hope you won’t mind,” Pete said, offering me a sheet of
music ledger paper and a pen. “My son isn’t going to believe I was playing with
you if I don’t bring home proof. Would you be so kind as to sign this?”

I scratched notation for the first line of the Lost Sons
song Pete had suggested earlier that I sing.

“Will you be back to play again?” he said.

“I’d be honored if you’d have me.”

“It’ll be fun, Jason. You are almost a match for Susi. Few
of us dare try.”

“Scared the heck out of me. I hadn’t heard her sing before
tonight.”

“You don’t need to be modest. You sound just like your
father on the high notes. Takes me back thirty years, when listening to the
Lost Sons got me started playing roots music.”

We shook hands again, and I went to join Susi. I almost
slipped my arm around her waist, a possessive gesture I have never made toward
a woman in my life. I clasped my hands behind my own back, nervous again.

Dan said, “We are going up to the Hopvine for a beer, those
of us who can stay out late. You coming, Susi? Jason?”

She looked to me for an answer, but then spoke before I
could.

“Not this time,” she said. “I have to be at work in the
morning.”

I tried not to gloat about getting her to myself again as we
got into the car. She stopped before turning on the engine and turned to me.

“Don’t tell anyone about this, Jason. I don’t want others to
know.”

“You don’t want your friends to know that you got hillbilly
religion?”

“It’s not the religion. It’s the singing. I want this to be
a private experience, outside the rest of my life. You must appreciate what I
feel.”

“It will be all over the Internet before tomorrow,” I said.
“Bootleg tapes of Susi in concert. They will trade them on eBay. Someone will
open a whole new forum to trade Susi’s collected works.”

“What do you mean?” She sounded terrified.

“It was a joke, Susi. Do you know about bootleg concert
recordings?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And you know people trade them on the Internet?”

“I suppose. Yes, I do. But what did you mean?”

“I didn’t mean anything. Do I have to explain the entire
twenty-first century for time travelers, so you can understand my jokes? Or am
I simply not funny?”

From the look on her face, the answer was clear: I’m not
funny.

“Susi, the world should hear you. You are—”

She wasn’t listening to me.