Casey and I raced through town while Pat Benatar’s
“Shadows of the Night” played in my mind. I couldn’t believe how
cool it was to be riding around with Casey Winslow on his motorcycle.
We pulled off the road about a mile from town at a
house with a small barn for a garage. Casey looked back at
me. “Can you get off and open that door? It looks like
rain.”
I did as he asked me. He rode the bike inside
and shut off the engine. I followed him inside. “What’s upstairs?”
“My loft. We’ll check it out later. I
think the jacket is in the house. Come on.”
I followed him to the house and went inside.
His mother was there. She had long, curly, blonde hair and a
weariness in her eyes. She was reading a tabloid newspaper and
smoking a cigarette at the kitchen table.
“You got mail today. Army junk.”
“Did you toss it?”
“No.”
“Why not? You know I ain’t dumb enough to join
up.”
“Sylvia’s been calling all day.”
“Did you see my old leather jacket anywhere?
The little black one that doesn’t fit me anymore?”
“Check your bedroom closet. If it’s not there,
it’s in the loft. Who’s your little friend?”
“This is Crystal. Crystal, this is Ma.”
“Hi,” I said.
“You look familiar. Who are your parents?”
“Cal and Connie Larson.”
Mrs. Winslow gave me a strange look when I told her
their names. I got the feeling she knew them, but all she said
was, “Nice to meet you.”
Casey disappeared up the stairs and came back down a
while later empty-handed. “It must be in the loft,” he said.
“Are you going back out on the bike tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s supposed to be a big storm tonight. I
don’t want you on that motorcycle if it starts to rain. Do you
hear me?”
“Yeah, I hear you. Come on, Crystal.”
I followed him back to the garage and up the stairs
to the loft. He turned on a light and waved his arm around.
“Welcome to my nightmare…I think you’re going to like it.”
“Wow!” Two neon Budweiser lights blinked on a
few seconds later. Casey’s loft had a stereo, records, tapes, two
couches, a big wooden table with a map of the world burned into the
surface, a few Penthouse
magazines laying around, and posters of all of Casey’s dead heroes on
the walls. He even had one of John F. Kennedy. “You’re a
real deadhead, aren’t you?” I asked him, but he just laughed.
In one corner was a bed with an acoustic guitar
laying on it. An easel stood in another corner with a green cloth
covering the canvas. “You paint?”
“Yeah. Want to see it?”
He walked over and lifted the cloth to reveal an oil
painting of Sylvia. I was surprised to see how much it looked
like her. “That’s really good!”
“I wanted to paint her in the nude, but she wouldn’t
go for it,” he said. “Too bad, I could’ve put it up at school to
get back at her.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“I should just burn it.” He tossed the cloth
back on top of it, then walked over to the far side of the
loft. “I’ll find that jacket. Have a seat.”
I sat down on the mattress while he began digging
through an old chest. I took off his jacket and laid it down next
to me.
“My old man used to hang out up here when he was
growing up. Some of these old albums were his. He was a
real hippie back then.”
“Back in the Sixties?”
“Yeah. He was a big stoner back then.
Then he joined the freakin’ army.”
“He was listed as Missing In Action in Vietnam,
wasn’t he?”
“How did you know?”
“Jeremy told me. He said he was a chopper
pilot.”
“That’s right,” Casey said. “He crashed his
helicopter and they never found his body. They gave him all kinds
of medals afterward. Lot of good they did him.”
“Do you think he might still be alive?”
“I don’t know. I don’t like to think about
it. My mom still gets weird over it.”
He pulled an old black and white photograph out of
the trunk and tossed it to me. “He’s in this picture…the guy with
the curly hair.”
I looked at closely, and spotted him right away. He
looked a lot like Casey. There were three other people in it
beside his father. One was his mother, who was easy to
recognize. The two of them were standing next to another couple
who looked a lot like my own parents!
“Hey, that’s weird. These other two people
kind of look like my mother and father. I didn’t know they knew
each other.”
Casey walked over with his old leather motorcycle
jacket and looked at the picture. “Are you sure it’s them?
Everybody looked alike back in the Sixties.”
“It sure looks like them, but I’m not sure.”
He handed me the jacket, and I stood up to put it
on. He watched me turn around and nodded. “It fits.
It’s yours.”
“Really? You’re going to let me keep it?”
“Sure. It’s way too small for me. ”
“Thanks! It’s really nice. It looks
pretty tough.”
Just then we heard the heavy rumbling of thunder in
the distance. Casey looked at me. “Hear that?”
“Yeah.”
He began to grin. “Let’s get high. I
love being stoned during a thunderstorm.”
“Okay.”
He took a trange looking contraption made of blue
acrylic tubes and rubber hoses from a shelf and filled part of it with
water. Then he took out a bag of weed and began to stuff some of
it into the small metal bowl on one end. When he was finished
doing that, he took out a lighter and lit it up. “Watch how I do
this.”
He covered a hole on one one of the cylinders and
began to suck on one end while he lit the weed. The cylinder
filled up with thick, white smoke that immediately shut up into his
mouth when he took his finger off the hole. He took a massive hit
and handed the smoldering contraption to me.
“Plug that little hole in the back of the bong and
take a deep hit. When I tell you, let go of the little hole and
suck in the smoke. It’ll build up inside that tube and knock you
off your ass. Be careful.”
I did as he said and nearly killed myself coughing
my lungs out. My eyes were brimming with tears as I handed it to
him. He laughed at me.
“Ah, you’ll get used to it.”
I watched him take another hit and hold the smoke in
his lungs effortlessly. Then he handed it back to me and I tried
it again. This time I only coughed about half as much.
“That’s more like it.” He walked over to the
stereo and turned it on. He put a cassette in the player and
began to nod his head to the music that came on.
“What is this song?”
“It’s by Led Zeppelin. ‘Kashmir.’ Really fits
the mood, doesn’t it?” He took the bong and inhaled another
massive hit. Rain began to hit the roof above us. The storm
was getting closer.
“We’re going to get stuck in here,” I said.
“Not that I have anywhere else I want to go.”
“Good,” he said. He popped the pipe off to
dump out the ashes, then packed it full again and lit it back up.
“We’re going to be tripping in a minute.”
“I didn’t really want to go to that dance anyway,” I
said. Casey handed me the bong. I sat back down on his bed.
“You can’t do this at the dance.”
I took another hit, held it in, and exhaled.
“Wow…that was easier than the first one.”
“Catching a buzz yet?”
I nodded my head and grinned. “Yeah…”
“Me too. I’m so high my brain’s going to burn
up on reentry.”
We both started laughing. Casey walked over to
another shelf and grabbed a rectangular bottle with a black label.
“Jack Daniels. Keith Richards swears by it.”
He twisted off the cap and took a swig, then handed
it to me. I took a sip and felt it burned as it went down.
“Jesus!”
“No, Keith Richards.”
“This stuff is…dangerous…”
“Maybe you shouldn’t drink it. This is the
hard stuff.”
“I’m not afraid of the hard stuff.”
“I can see that.”
“This is good,” I managed to say. “I don’t
know what it is that Curt drinks, but I’m sure it’s not this stuff.”
“He drinks peach brandy, the friggin’ pussy.”
He sat down on the bed next to me, picking up his guitar as he
did. “You’re in luck. It’s blues night at the Lonesome Dude
Café.”
He began to play a song for me.
“Have you ever wanted to kill someone
Just to prove how much you care?
I been down that street so many times
I could build me a house down there.”
Casey had every right to sing the blues. When
he was done, he looked right at me.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“How long has this thing between Sylvia and Curt
been going on?”
“I don’t know. Not very long.”
“Are they doing it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“You can tell me.”
“I really don’t know. I’m pretty sure they
didn’t.”
“I can’t believe she’s doing this to me. What
a slut. I thought I knew her.”
“I don’t think she meant to hurt your
feelings. She told me she loves you.”
“She’s got a funny way of showing it. She
betrayed me in the worst possible way, going out with my worst
enemy. I feel like getting rip-roarin’ drunk and killing the
whole damned town! Present company excluded, of course.”
Instead of bursting into a murderous rampage, he
merely slumped backward on the bed with his guitar across his
chest. A few seconds later, I felt his finger on my back, tracing
my spine. The sudden sensation sent a shiver through me. I
glanced back at him.
“Why are you doing that?”
“Because you want me to.”
“Not because you want to get back at Curt?”
“Gee. I never thought of that. That’s a
good question.”
“Is it true?”
“What do you think?”
“It would make sense.”
“Maybe. Do you care?”
“If it was true, maybe I would.”
“What if I told you I had a Jones for you and this
had nothing to do with Curt and Sylvia?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t you think it’s possible?”
“What’s with all the questions all of a
sudden? I thought we were here to party and forget about
everything.”
“Everything is a lot of stuff to forget.”
I was starting to get nervous. “Sylvia’s my
friend, that’s all. It would seem like I was trying to get back
at her somehow.”
“Get back at her for what?”
“I don’t know. That’s just how it would seem.”
“To whom?”
“I don’t know! To anybody.”
“Am I making you uncomfortable?”
“No…well…yes. A little, I guess.”
At that moment a bolt of lightning struck nearby and
the whole loft shook. The power went out. The rain started
coming down even harder. Casey didn’t say a word.
“Do you have any candles? I can’t see a thing.”
Silence.
“Casey? Come on, this isn’t funny.”
Casey lit up his cigarette lighter. “You’re
not afraid of the dark, are you?”
“No.”
“Afraid of lightning?”
“No. I’m afraid of you.”
Casey shut his lighter off. “You should be.”
“I think I should go home pretty soon.”
“Do what you want. I’m not riding in this
weather.”
“Would your mother let me use her phone?”
“Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters?”
“You’re right. There’s nobody at my house with
a car.”
“I think you should just spend the night right here.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I won’t try anything. Trust me.”
“Where am I going to sleep? There’s only one
mattress.”
Casey sat up and leaned close. “You can sleep
right here with me. We don’t have to do anything.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“Maybe you don’t trust yourself.”
“I’m not going to sleep with you!”
“Stay up all night, then. See if I care.”
Casey leaned back on the bed, then repositioned
himself the long way. He put his guitar on the floor next to him
and didn’t say another word. I just sat on the edge of the
mattress and and watched the storm through the nearest
window. If it weren’t for the lightning, the room would have been
completely dark. I picked up the bottle of Jack Daniels and took
another swig before finally laying down next to Casey. He was
already drifting off to sleep.
“I guess I stay.”
