Bud Smith: F 250

“Brain damage paid for this place? I gotta get me some.”

The stereo fired up. It sounded like the Huey Lewis and the News were set up on his back patio.

“He’s got some great brain damage-funded stuff.”

Ron walked back over and said to the girls, “Come on over here, to the other side, I want to show you girls my deck. Don’t you want to see my deck? It’s big and beautiful.”

I encouraged them to ignore this.

The hot tub was good. In quick order, the girls were all dunking in, while we were all drinking and drinking and drinking — like our throats were full of sand. Then I went in, sunk to the bottom, held my breath, and passed like a turtle under all the beautiful feet of these summertime girls.

When I came to the surface, Ron and Terry were off somewhere smoking. I was fucking around with the stereo, singing along — all the wrong words to the wrong song.

“You wanna see my deck?” I said to the girls mockingly.

“Man, he’s a creep,” June said.

“He is,” K said. “You see the way he’s looking at me? Pennsyltucky trash.”

“We’re in New York,” I say.

“Same difference.”

When Ron came back, he was practically carrying Terry. Ron’s brain damage-strength weed was no match for Terry’s normal brain weakness. Before too long, Terry was off in the stones vomiting up hamburgers and hot dogs.

Terry opted to walk himself through the woods to his house.

I had no idea where Feral and Trish were.

Then it was just myself, June, K Neon, and Speedboat, who was all cross-eyed and insistent that the girls make room for him in the bubbling water. This was cause enough for them to flee the tub. They’d had enough. They toweled off and walked, bare feet in the green grass, to the F-250.

I tossed June Doom the keys and said, “Don’t crash.”

As I stood there with Ron, I wasn’t sure what to say. Jesus Christ, it was some house. Where was I gonna live? I had nowhere to go. I was out on my ass.

Ron said desperately, “Let’s do a shot. You like tequila?”

“Sure.”

“Come inside my house, dude, I got the best tequila you’ve ever had.”

We went in the house. The lights were all out. He stumbled around in the darkness, crashing into things like a two hundred and seventy five pound pinball. I went in the kitchen and leaned against the counter. He was screwing around with the stereo again in the living room.

A song I didn’t know was on.

Then he came into the kitchen with a bottle and poured us both a really big slug. We knocked them back. It was really nasty shit. I know good tequila. This wasn’t it.

“What the hell was that?”

He held up the bottle.

It wasn’t even tequila. It was a plastic jug of mescal. Whatever. I thanked him anyway.

Then something really strange happened. Over the stereo came the opening strains of “Thunder Road” by Bruce Springsteen.

“THIS IS MY FAVORITE SONG.” Speedboat said as he stomped around the kitchen.

“Mine too,” I said honestly. And then it was official: I was sentimental drunk.

“Screen door slammed. Mary’s dress waved. Like a vision she danced across the porch while the radio played…”

Here I was, in a big empty house funded with brain damage money in the heart of Mount Mercy. I was so far away from where I should have been.

Not here. Not at this house or any other on the lake. I should have been East — the ocean and the boardwalk all lit in a wild dream while fireworks popped above them like flowers on fire burning themselves apart while the Ferris wheel rolled forever end over end over end…

Speedboat sang out of key and in another world, but he knew all the words. He swayed back and forth, looking at me with pained, heavy eyes that said, “Do you really have to leave?”

So I said to him, “Hey, you got any more of that good tequila?”

“YEAH,” he shouted, happy as they come.

“Alright, let’s have another,” I said.

We knew all the words. We sang them all. Then we put the song on again, just as it should be done.

Then the door opened, and three small children ran into the house. Ron’s kids. The lights switched on. A woman in an emerald green dress stood there holding a silver harp.

“Hey babe,” Ron said.

“Hey…” she said like an angry prison guard.

“You’re back early.”

“Nice to see you too,” she said.

“Harpie, this is my friend…”

“Hi, Harpie,” I said. She drew her fingers across the silver harp, making an angelic string of notes.

I slept in June doom’s room—held on tight to her while I listened to the darkness outside fall onto the mountain. As I held June, her breath sounded like a song that I was familiar with but couldn’t explain the meaning to.

I couldn’t help but think about Seth, how he said he’d spent so many nights lying next to Shannon, pretending to be asleep, while wired on coke.

With the gray daybreak, I came out in my boxer shorts. Feral was in the living room, as if he was just another piece of the furniture that needed to be dusted. He was gazing out the back deck’s bay window, scratching his face. “This is amazing,” he whispered. “Come over here.”

“What?”

“Don’t ask ‘what’ like a schmuck. Just fucking look.”

Across the lake, Harpie was sitting on the dock in a large, white, wicker chair. She was in another emerald green dress, and her wild and curly red hair was blowing around in the breeze. Mist was coming off of the lake as she played her large silver harp. We could see her fingers moving but couldn’t hear the music.

The wind was blowing away the music and the mist off the cool lake as if it was all the same.

“Who’s that?” Feral asked with wonder in his voice. “I keep thinking there’ll be a ripple in the middle of the lake. I keep expecting a hand to come up with a sword.”

“Excalibur.”

“Excalibur, right on. That’s what I need.”

I thought about the hundreds of thousands of lottery tickets crumpled up on the floor of his van.

“Who is that enchantress?”

“I think it’s Speedboat’s wife.”

“Ssssh,” he said. “Let me just have this moment, where I just pretend she’s some mythological creature that’s slipped out of some weird dimension and come here to change my entire life.”

I looked at Feral. Felt bad for him in a way. He was always fucking up. The things he touched fell apart.

He’d burnt down our town’s only video store. He was always getting shit on by seagulls. I’ve never seen a person get crapped on by so many birds. One time, we had a big party and these jugs of crappy vodka. We dumped an entire jug into this watermelon, and it sat in the fridge. Nobody ate the watermelon. It just sat in there and rotted for three weeks. One night, there was nothing else to drink, and the liquor store was closed. I watched in disgust as Feral ate the rotten watermelon just to get drunk.

He opened the window very slowly as not to disturb her, as if she was a bird that would just fly away.

“I wish she would sing,” he said, spellbound.

“What song you wanna hear, man?”

“Anything but KISS,” Feral said.

He looked at me so heartbroken. He killed Seth. He knew it. I knew it. It was inescapable; he was the most responsible. It was his coke. It was always his. He was the vein of that kind of thing with the group. I had to get away from him.

“We won the Kentucky Derby,” I said.

“What does that mean?”

“Well, he won the fucking Kentucky Derby. That’s where all that money came from.”

“Oh.”

“Good luck killed Seth.”

“You should break my teeth out, man,” he said. “That’s what I deserve.”