Black Sheep Magazine

Chapter 3-1

––––––––

Luke Campbell went out to the parking lot for a smoke and when he saw the guitar leaning against the dumpster he veered toward it unthinkingly. He stuck the cigarette between his lips, got it going as he walked. It was nine o’clock at night, but summer dusks in Oregon take their time in fading; in the town of Kacey the sky was still just bright enough to read by, and the paved bed of the carpark yet exuded the heat of the sun—gone now beyond the horizon—that had baked the Willamette Valley all that day. Luke achieved the dumpster and stood regarding the guitar with a quizzical grin. The brace of floodlights mounted in the wall of his apartment building snapped on and began to hum.

There came the rip of a bad muffler approaching in the road behind him. Luke recognized at once what it was and tensed, dizzying moths of hot dread flapping suddenly in his stomach. He held himself still, the cough and snort of the truck’s engine gaining, feeling his skin crawl. Now he could hear music—Def Leppard, god—and he pictured the driver, with his inset piggish eyes, the huge wart squatting at the edge of his right nostril like a bloated tick, a thin-haired and pink-skinned troll of a man puffing a Marlboro Red, his stubby left arm hanging in a crooked L-shape out the rolled-down window—and then it was there, the ridiculous truck, seemingly right on top of him, roaring on its massive tires as it barrelled west along Twenty-Third Avenue. Luke hoped desperately the driver—whose name was Ron—hadn’t seen him. He waited, motionless, anticipating at any moment to hear that word—Fag!—lash over him with all the hateful acerbity of a wet locker-room towel; or perhaps it would be a piece of fruit this time, bursting between his shoulders; or a takeout cup of chipped ice and sticky, half-drunk soda. Or maybe this would be the day (you never knew) that Ron decided he’d finally seen enough of the skinny queer boy from Twenty-Third—that he ran Luke down in his obscene truck, got out and bludgeoned him incontinent, leaving Luke broken there beside the dumpster, surrounded by litter and rats.

The roar of the truck at his back felt interminable. Only after he’d seen from the periphery of his vision the truck’s brake lights pass and vanish up the road did Luke allow himself to breathe. When he could no longer hear the engine he took a long drag of his cigarette. He exhaled shudderingly, eyes closed, relishing in the soothing hand of nicotine as it caressed his crackling nerves. Heart still pounding, he opened his eyes again, shook his head and looked once more at the dumpster and the strange instrument propped against its side.

The guitar was an electric six-string. Its neck had twenty-two frets (unmarked except for the thirteenth, in the fingerboard of which was inlaid in mother-of-pearl the roman numeral XIII), its curving body like the blade of a halberd. It had been painted crudely by whoever had owned it previously, banded black and silver and tagged with a craze of scribbles and ideograms in what Luke assumed was nail polish. He squatted on his heels, tilted his chin, and read along the instrument’s left edge the somehow ominous isosceles of words: You can’t take it back!

Cupped in the bow of this—declaration? warning?—was a pentagram. There were blue arrows pointing to red cartoon hearts left and right of the pickup selector switch and running round its base were seven scarlet stars. Trailing between the volume and tone control knobs was another slogan—Reverse Momentum of the Great DIVORCE—and on the cutaway horn was an image of a cracked human skull. There were a number of other strange cabalistic symbols Luke couldn’t identify and it was an altogether ugly machine, but it was Luke’s kind of ugly: it practically emanated with the quirks and drives of the hand that had decorated it. This was no pristine showpiece or untouched parlor ornament: the guitar had character; it had the ineffable punk-rock varnish of a battle-scarred and inked-up thing that had survived many a long night in many a raucous milieu. A kind of animistic life radiated from it, and when he finished his smoke Luke dropped the butt to the pavement, ground it out beneath the toe of his shoe, reached and picked up the guitar by its neck.

He cradled the instrument against his hip, almost but not quite resting it on the wing of his pelvis. Luke was thirty-six years old, hadn’t played guitar since high school, but it seemed his fingers still remembered how—for they found the correct spots all on their own, depressing the steel strings against the dusty fingerboard and smarting with that familiar sting as the filaments bit into his flesh.

He struck a G chord and winced—the old axe was badly out of tune. Gripping the guitar by the neck, Luke faced about and crossed the parking lot. He went up the stairwell leading to his apartment and disappeared from sight.

The throb of insects singing nearby the dumpster abruptly ceased behind him. A bat hunting low in the darkening air plunged from the sky and smacked into the pavement. In the dumpster a rat nosing its way through the amassed heaps of waste shivered once, flopped to its side and was still.

––––––––

Matty was at the kitchen counter mixing a drink when Luke came back in.

He turned, bottle of vodka in hand. He was smiling, his tilted hazel eyes aglint in the kitchen lights. Luke’s heart gave a giddy lurch (as it did every time Mateo smiled at him). It was as if he still couldn’t believe the reality of this beautiful man standing in his apartment, gazing back at him like he was someone special, even though they’d been living together now for two years. Luke came into the living room, shucked his shoes and held up the guitar. “Look what I found,” he said.

Matty’s eyes widened. “Oh? Where?”

“Out by the trash. Look at this thing.”

“It’s hideous.”

“Right?” Luke rounded the cabinet dividing living room from kitchen, carrying the guitar in front of him. “I can’t believe a person would just throw this away.”

“Does it work?”

“No idea. Here, check it out.”

He passed it into Matty’s hands. Matty looked at it, eyes ticking.

“Cute,” he said. “It’s perfect for you.”

He stood it in the floor, leaned its head against the wall. They would both reflect later on their great luck that this was as far as Mateo’s interest in the guitar went that night.

“Drink?” He gestured with the bottle.

“Just one more,” Luke said. “I open tomorrow.”

“Fine,” Matty said, turning back to the counter. Luke heard the cheerful, crystalline babble of vodka splashing into his glass.

They went into the living room with their drinks and sat across from each other in the loveseat. Two round marble-topped tables Luke had got at a steal from the depot he managed bookended the pleated couch and on the one nearest him was a stack of poetry and a glowing ceramic lamp. On the other was a record player, on which was revolving a vinyl edition of Prince’s Greatest Hits. They had no television. Matty wouldn’t allow it.

Luke took a sip of his drink. “Ron drove by just now. When I was outside.”

“Asshole,” Matty spat the word. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. He didn’t notice me.”

“Asshole.” Matty wagged his head, the curls of his sable hair shaking. “Straight up, I can’t understand how people like him still exist. It’s 2017.”

“This is the country we live in,” Luke said.

“I wish he’d go away. Just take that stupid truck of his and drive it right off a cliff.”

“Straight up,” Luke said. He drank.

The stunted malignity that was Ron Hazen had intersected Luke’s life several months before, in the winter of that year, when Luke and Matty first moved into this apartment (Matty, who’d grown up in Kacey, had known Ron much longer). It had been a clear brisk night and they were walking home up Twenty-Third from Sandy’s Bar and Grill, holding hands, when they heard the throaty vroom of a truck coming towards them in the road. It slowed almost to a stop as it drove by, and Luke looked over curiously to see a broad torso in silhouette facing them from the driver’s seat. He had a fleeting foresight of what was about to happen, and then it did, the figure in the truck leaning and shouting “Faggots!” before speeding off, leaving Luke dazed and Matty’s eyes sparkling with tears.

That was how it started. Eventually Luke had to call the police. The harassment abated promptly, but neither he nor Matty harbored any real hope it was truly over. There were days it seemed they would be made to endure the Ron Hazens of the world forever.

“It’s that pompous racist in the White House,” Matty said. “He’s empowered these people.”

“They were always there,” Luke said.

“Maybe. But that smarmy orange-headed f**k certainly hasn’t helped.”

“No,” Luke agreed. “Not my president.”

“Hell no.”

They clipped glasses. They drank, listened to music. Soon they were laughing. After a time they went to bed. They laid down together in the cool spread of sheets facing each other in the dark and Luke ran his hands through the ringlets of Mateo’s hair and pulled him close and after a time they slept.

––––––––

Luke worked as one of three leads at a furniture boutique downtown, trading in new and high-end imports. He transferred there from a sister store in Hollywood, spurred by a breakup and a mounting intolerance for life in the city, and he was content with his work, though it hadn’t always been his dream to become a salesman of handmade credenzas and luxury leather chaises. In the past he wanted to be an artist. A famous artist, a painter, with galleries in New York (where he’d gone to school) and Los Angeles (where he moved after dropping out), an Andy-Warhol-esque pop-cultural icon renowned in Paris and Milan, his unique and fervid visions giving shape and color to the aesthetic of a generation. But that was all behind him now. While the appeal of notoriety still shimmered undeniably in the depths of his being, his pursuits had brought him nothing but heartache, and his ambition had long since waned. He was good at his job; he was shrewd, with a keen eye for quality; and he was happier with Mateo than he had ever been before. Now all he wanted was to maintain his life in peace. He clocked out from his shift just after seven the following night. When he came in through the door he found Matty sitting in the couch, hugging his knees. Gawping up at him with haunted eyes.

“Oh thank god,” Matty said.

“Hey babe, sorry. We got a little rush there at the end.” Luke saw the guitar leaning against the armrest and nodded. “Were you able to get it in tune?”

“I didn’t want to text you.” Matty stood, went to Luke and gripped both his hands.