Hitchers

CHAPTER 15

The pitching machine rattled, spit a grey, rubber-coated baseball. I fouled it off. The impact of ball on metal bat stung my hands, despite the thick gloves I was wearing.

“Shouldn’t you be lights out at this, seeing as you’ve got a batting cage in your back yard?” Mick called from the other side of the chain-link fence. “You’ve got to listen to The Sonics in the original vinyl,” he added.

“I don’t use it much,” I said. Mick’s outbursts were still going strong, but it had been almost twenty-four hours since my last. We were waiting, hoping Grandpa wouldn’t return, hoping Mick would have a spell like mine and that would be the end of it.

I hit a bouncer to the left side. “That would’ve skipped just under the third baseman’s outstretched glove for a clean single.”

Mick tossed a cigarette butt on the concrete. “Is the third baseman a double-amputee? That’s the only way I can picture that.”

I laughed just as the next pitch came, causing me to swing and miss badly. The ball hit the padding behind me with a heavy whump.

Mick rolled his eyes toward the sky, grinning at my incompetence. I leaned the bat against the chain-link fence, let the final pitch go by. “You know, I haven’t had a chance to tell you how much I love your music.”

“Yeah? Cheers, mate.”

I’d been meaning to tell him that, now that it wouldn’t sound like insincere flattery, but hadn’t had the opportunity, because we had more important things to discuss. By silent assent we were taking a break from talking about our problem, if not thinking about it.

I hadn’t slept at all the night before. The thought that Grandpa might be lurking right behind my eyes, watching everything I did, judging me, was intolerable. I hoped Mick was right that he was gone, but what if he wasn’t?

“What’s your favorite, eh?” Mick asked, interrupting my reverie.

I liked all of his big hits, but didn’t want to name one of the obvious songs. “I always loved ‘Mystic Messenger.’”

Mick looked pleased. “You’ve got good taste. That’s one of my favorites. Hang on a minute.” He jogged off toward his car—a vintage Jensen—popped the trunk, and pulled out a guitar.

“Oh, man!” I shouted, raising my arms in the air. “Are you serious?”

Mick propped a leg on the steel bench outside the batting cage and strummed the opening cords to “Mystic Messenger.” Grinning like an idiot, I reveled.

He was still good—his voice had the same power, the same slightly scratchy quality that I remembered. The song was interrupted by the voice three times, but it was pure magic nonetheless. I gave him a standing O.

“I still love the music,” he said as he set his guitar against the bench and pulled out a cigarette.

“I wish my wife could’ve seen this. She loved your music, too.” I hadn’t thought of Lorena in days, I realized. Too much else occupying my mind.

“How’d you meet her?” Mick asked through the side of his mouth as he lit his cigarette.

“In high school. I had a secret crush on her. Totally debilitating. When I passed her in the hall my heart would hammer. I used to secretly take photos of her with my phone when we passed in the hall.” I smiled wistfully, remembering my awkward teenage self. “I thought I had no chance with her. I was a boy, and she was a woman. I sat in the back of the class and only talked to my friends, making boy jokes and talking about The Fantastic Four. Lorena had conversations with our teachers after class about Dostoevsky.” I shut my mouth, suddenly realizing I was babbling. Mick hadn’t asked for a history of my adolescence.

“How did she die, if you don’t mind me asking?” Mick said.

“Lightning,” I said, feeling no desire to elaborate.

His eyes got big. “She was struck?”

I nodded, though Lorena hadn’t been “struck.” Few people are truly struck. Reluctantly I told him about the canoe trip; Mick listened attentively until I got to the point where Lorena screamed that there could be snakes in the tall grass.

“Snakes?”

I nodded. “She had a terrible fear of snakes. I jumped into the water and pulled the canoe to the bank, but she wouldn’t get out. I made a show of looking all around to show her there were no snakes. I told her I’d carry her up the bank.” I blinked away tears. “I think she was about to let me carry her when lightning hit the far bank.” I could hear the rain pelting down, feel my soaked shirt pasted to my skin.

Mick nodded understanding. I couldn’t describe the moment Lorena died. I’d never described it to anyone.

“Were you hurt?”

“I was ten feet up the bank.” Up the bank, where it was safe. I didn’t remember taking those steps; somehow it was the only aspect of the event that wasn’t emblazoned in my memory.

“It’s hard to believe she was thinking about snakes in the middle of all that lightning.”

I thought of my car skidding off the road and sinking in the icy lake in the midst of an anthrax epidemic. “I think sometimes what we’re afraid of and what can actually kill us are very different things.”

“That’s nice,” Mick said. “If I still wrote, I’d use that.”

“So you don’t have a secret cache of songs you’ve been working on? I thought all musicians did,” I said.

Mick scratched his temple at the hairline. “Most of them don’t, actually. It’s a lucky few who can keep writing good songs.” He retrieved his guitar, plucked a single string, watched it vibrate. “For most of us it goes, and it doesn’t come back. Maybe it’s the drugs and booze, I don’t know.”

He set the guitar back down. I wasn’t sure what to say; I couldn’t imagine what I would feel if my ability to draw abandoned me.

Mick glanced at his watch, signaled it was time to go. He had an appointment with Dr. Purvis, and I had one with Corinne, so we were driving downtown together.

“Truth be told, I wrote very little of my last successful album, Little Tripe,” Mick said as we climbed into his car. “It had all dried up by then.”

“Who wrote it, then?”

“My lyricist. Bloke named Gilly Hansen. I never wrote the words, was never very good with words. I was a music fellow. Gilly always did the words, then slowly took over doing the music.”

I’d heard of Gilly Hansen. He’d had a nervous breakdown or something, became a recluse and never wrote again.

“What’s it been, a day and a half since your last ghoulie voice?” Mick held up crossed fingers.