Torn

3

Hours later, Devin McCloud lay in his comfortable bedroom, waiting for sunrise. The house was quiet, his parents fast asleep. He was exhausted. By rights he should have been unconscious, but his brain was locked—and not on Cody and the Slits. Though the nervous energy that propelled his thoughts was probably a leftover from that encounter, his focus was on the fact that Torn was getting together in less than twelve hours to record “Face” in Devin’s garage, and sometime before then, he would have to fire Karston.

Grateful though Cody had seemed because Devin had fought by his side, he had not given up on that point. Karston’s bass was supposed to be there; Karston was not.

When the Slits had fled, Devin had felt exhilarated. Now he just felt tired and kind of sick. Shifting up onto his elbow on the soft mattress, he stared out his large round window at the manicured lawns and squared hedges of the gated Meadowcrest Farms housing development. As far as he could tell, the development had nothing to do with a meadow, a crest, or a farm. It had more to do with tiny, well-tended yards, and neighbors who seemed to pose as they stopped and smiled and waved. The squares, rectangles, and circles that made up the houses were tight and perfect. Everything seemed held together by money.

But even in the dim light of early morning, Devin could see exactly where the lawn mowers and hedge clippers stopped and something else began, something jagged and unkempt: a dark forest that went on for miles. As a child he hadn’t been allowed to go in there; now he just didn’t want to, as if all the years of comfort and security had left him too comfortable and secure.

He wasn’t like Cody. He wasn’t a natural. He wasn’t driven. He wasn’t sure. He didn’t even know if he could write any decent songs. What was “Face,” anyway? What did it mean?

As his eyes half closed, a line from the lullaby drifted back to him. It was his grandma’s song; Namana, he used to call her.

Your heart beats slowly, drowsy eyes…

It was a pretty thing, the tune. Even the small bit playing in his mind relaxed him. The rest of the words and the melody licked at the edge of memory, teasing, just out of reach, like the woods. As he reached for more words with his mind, they dissipated, like ghosts.

Half awake, he found that strong images came to him more easily. He remembered being curled up deliciously cozy in Namana’s lap when she babysat. There was a stuffed toy in his hand. When she started singing, he’d bury his head in the toy, hide in its darkness until he felt drowsy. He could feel the rough fur against his cheek, hear her old voice as she croaked more than sang.

Or else the wild will come for you.

And snatch bad children away? A tingling along his spine told him he was on the right track.

Be good or else.

By the time he was six, his mother said, he had demanded Namana never sing it again. It was too horrible—he thought it might be real, that something might really come and kill him. Stupid. But at six, you think everything might be real, everything except real-life horrors like the Slits.

Be good or else.

Funny, but weren’t all the lullabies and nursery rhymes like that? Lost children, cannibalistic witches? Didn’t the famous ones talk about dying before you wake, or a baby falling screaming out of a treetop? Wasn’t ring-around-the-rosy about the black plague? The symptoms and the fatal sneezing fit were wrapped into the cute lyrics:

Achoo! Achoo! We all fall down!

As if they were waiting for just the right moment, a few more strands of the lullaby came back. They gave him a rush more familiar than the adrenaline frenzy of his fight. This was the kind of rush that came when something inside of him filled him up to bursting, the kind he got whenever he was trying to write a song and he was on to something. This was something.

Your heart beats slowly, drowsy eyes…

Devin thought maybe he could call Namana, visit her, ask her how it really went. The senior care facility was just an hour away. She’d love it. No one ever visited. But no. He didn’t want to deal with that place, or with her being old and feeble. The last time she hugged him (two years ago at Christmas?) her hands and arms felt so thin against his neck, it was like being grabbed by a skeleton.

Besides, it would ruin it if he knew the real song. This was better. The less perfectly Devin remembered it, the more he was free to make it his own.

He snapped on the light by his bed, plugged in his amp, slipped on his headphones, and played, fumbling around for the right notes, finding them more and more often. He paused occasionally, scratched down some chord progressions with the nub of a pencil, crossed others out, and filled in the missing parts with his own inventions.

As he worked, it came to him faster, as if he were in a welcome trance. Sitting there, sleepless, working on a dream, reminded him why he’d helped Cody form Torn in the first place, why he was so worried about not being worthy. Because sometimes, like right now, working on the music made him forget all the hesitancy, all the guilt, all the fence-straddling.

In an hour, he was finished, and he liked it. It wasn’t like “Face” or any of his other songs. This was soft, but it had something edgy to it, too. Cody’s voice alone could make it ache. And when he imagined Cody singing, Cheryl on drums, him on rhythm, and Ben on bass, it made Devin feel more than real; it made him feel like he was on fire.

A little giddy, he sang it to himself, in his head so as not to wake his parents, to make sure it all worked. As he sang, a chill went up his spine and settled heavily on his shoulders—as if there were suddenly something right behind him, something thick and dangerous. The feeling was so strong, so pointed, he even stood up and stared out his window.

As he scanned the line where the woods began, he thought he saw something move, but it was only shadow bumping into shadow as the wind twisted the branches of the trees.

He laughed as he realized he’d spooked himself. He’d written a song that actually spooked him!

Was that cool, or what?

Now all he had to do was fire Karston.

Saturday had arrived in earnest. With only a few hours’ sleep behind him, a resolute Devin drove the good-old monster SUV across the abandoned tracks into Karston’s lower-class neighborhood. As he did, he was struck by how everything here seemed held together by wood—old rotting wood that was frayed at the edges, badly painted, and ready to give. Things were shaped like houses and stores, but really they looked like they were ready to call it quits and go back to being forest.

Despite his resolve, driving slowly in the huge car Devin again felt undeserving, conspicuous, and after the Slit attack, unsafe. He also felt annoyed with himself for feeling all of the above. He’d driven here before without any problems, but today everything seemed sharp and pointy, like it was ready to cut him.

It was probably just the lack of sleep.

The block that held the shotgun shack the bassist occupied with his single mom was easy to find; there was an old refrigerator on the corner that no one ever bothered to clear away. It just sat there as if waiting for the bus. The door was missing, so there was a clear view of the brownish stains inside that may once have been some sort of food.

After making the turn, Devin parked in front of a garbage-strewn lot across the street. Before popping open the door and getting out, he gave himself a moment to chill. He looked at his oblong face in the rearview mirror, examining the bump in the center of his nose that his mother suggested he have removed when he was older. His light brown hair looked stiff and stringy. Pleased by how much stubble he had on his face, he rubbed it thought-fully. The little garnet earring in his upper right ear always looked weird to him, but it, and the piercing, were a gift from Cheryl.

He realized he looked like he felt: terrible. But what did that matter? It was time to do the deed.

Cody could be a crazy son of a bitch, but he was right. Devin really did need to do this. Karston, in the end, would be better off finding out sooner rather than later that he didn’t have what it takes…right?

Still looking at himself, he remembered something Samurai warriors did before going off into battle. They would look at themselves, then make some sort of ridiculous face to distract their minds. Following suit, Devin stuck his tongue out at himself, then hopped from the driver’s seat and punched the Lock button on the keys.

The avenue was quiet, since most folks were sleeping off Friday night, so the chirp of the locking car seemed horribly loud. He winced at the sound, but no one else seemed to have heard.

His sneakers crunched along the decaying asphalt as he approached the chain-link fence. Its silver paint bubbled in spots and the poles were marred by reddish rust. Stalky dead plant-things stuck out along the bottom of the fence, threatening to claim the sidewalk. On the other side, a gray walk led to wooden stairs and a porch littered with beer bottles, most empty, some stuffed with cigarette butts.

He would do it, Devin thought; he would get it over with now. He thought about buying himself a new DVD as a reward, but just before his foot hit the first step, he heard shouting.

“I just can’t believe what an idiot you are! How old are you? When are you going to grow up? You’re wasting your life hanging out with crooks and sluts!”

Devin knew the voice. It came from Karston’s mother, a short, pit bull of a woman. She had a kind of back-of-the-throat dying-animal screech that brought up phlegm at the end of every sentence. Even when she was saying something nice, like asking Devin if he wanted some water, you could hear the hate.

“I keep telling you I was with the band! We played at a club! We were really good!” This was Karston. His voice had volume, too, but there was no anger, only a wimpy, surrendering tone.

“Did they pay you?”

“A little.”

Even though he was outside, with the walls of a house between them and no windows open, Devin could hear her disapproving “Tch.”

More whining from Karston: “They invited us back next week to play a full set. I’m recording with the group this afternoon!”

“Recording, right. Makes me sick, all that money you wasted and you can’t even keep that thing in tune. Watch. The two crooks and the slut will dump you first chance they get, just as soon as they can get that bass away from you. That’s all they want.”

Devin felt something in his gut tighten. It was true. Except the slut part.

A long pause followed, as if Karston were considering. Finally, he said, “No. Devin would never do that.”

Great. Devin would never do that. Cody would. Cody would do anything. But not Devin. He was the nice guy. The good kid. The knot in Devin’s gut twisted.

“Oh, Devin! Devin, Devin, Devin. You trust that spoiled brat?” the shrill voice shouted. “You’re going to wind up just like your father!”

For the first time, anger appeared in Karston’s voice. “Keep my father out of this!”

Frozen at the rusted gate, Devin heard footsteps moving on a wooden floor. The next sound was a hard slap of skin against skin, followed by Karston’s whiny, “Ahh! Don’t hit me!”

That was it. Devin turned around, got back in his father’s car, drove home, and spent the rest of the afternoon fiddling with the melody to his new song, trying to get it just right, wondering if it would ever be bright and shiny enough to distract the adamant Cody, if only for a little while.