Beneath the Stain - Part 7 (10 page)

He didn’t care.

Three days later, it was Trav and Mackey’s turn to play with Katy on the little porch. She knew their names by now—all of them. She knew “Tav” from Mackey from Kell from “Bake” from “Tevie” from “Chef,” and got excited when they came.

That morning she’d almost fallen out of her mother’s arms in her attempt to get to Mackey, and Mackey actually caught her. Trav thought that maybe those few weekends a year, that one month they could leverage for, was going to count for this child. For the rest of the world, Outbreak Monkey was a band, a god, a source of music Trav didn’t think would ever dry up.

For Grant Adams’s daughter, they were going to be salvation and refuge—real men who would do their human best to share her father with her.

Trav could live with that. Letting her run from him to Mackey and back again was an easy way to spend a half an hour, and he was almost sad when Kell came out, looking strained.

“He’s not going to be awake much longer, Mackey. He’s asking for his song.”

Grant had wandered in and out of consciousness since he’d given them the file with the funeral directions. Nobody said the words “He doesn’t have long,” but everybody knew.

“Yeah, coming.” Mackey scooped up the little girl and started inside. Uncharacteristically he grabbed Trav’s hand, pulling him into the room behind him.

Grant’s chest hardly rose and fell, and the hush in the room was almost painful. Katy was ready for her snuggle time with Daddy, so Jefferson lifted the rail and settled her at his shoulder, on top of his wasted chest.

Trav had seen pictures of Grant since he’d come to Tyson. The Sanders kids didn’t have a lot of them, but every picture they had featured Grant. Their mother had kept a scrapbook, and he’d seen the full lips, the odd nose with almost no bridge, the golden eyes, as luminous in their way as Mackey’s gray ones. That beautiful boy bore no resemblance to the wasted frame Trav had seen for the past two weeks. He wondered—did his boys look at Grant and see him? Or did they see what Blake and Trav saw? Did it make it easier to see the illusion of youth and joy impressed on the frame of death, or harder, when the illusion slipped?

He didn’t have words for that question.

All he really had was the leather bag and the amp he’d bought from Mackey’s old music store. The night before, he’d held the bag and dodged as Stevie and Jefferson had, in an oddly synchronous dance, pummeled it, first one, then the other, their harsh grunts echoing in the garage like song. The night before that, Mackey gave the neighbors a solo performance, all guitar, no words, using the amp. The boys had the tools, but no words.

But Mackey’s hands maintained that ever-present smudge that showed he was writing. And the song about cleansing sins was on the top of the practice roster.

Trav found himself praying for Grant to let them go, to
let
go, and do it soon, so his boys had enough of themselves to drag back home and grieve.

Today it looked like God might have visited that little room after all, and Trav might get his prayer.

“Mackey, you singing my song today?” Grant asked.

Mackey grunted. “Yeah. You got anything you want us to sing after? You can fall asleep to it.”

“Surprise me,” Grant murmured. His eyes were half-closed, and Mackey stroked his hand one more time before picking up the guitar.

Mackey’s song about making love in the river shadows rang through the room. The boys hummed the backup harmonies, and Stevie tapped out a sedate rhythm on the side of the gurney. The little room was peaceful, and the window in the vaulted ceiling let in a stream of thin autumn sunshine so pure the dust-motes looked like stars. Grant started out humming the song with the boys, but by the time Mackey was done, he was asleep.

For a moment, Trav thought that was it and the boys would pack up, kiss his cheek, and go.

But there was a weighted pause, and Mackey and Kell met eyes.

Kell opened his mouth this time, and although he didn’t have Mackey’s tone or his passion, he had a passable voice.

So. So you think you can tell,

Heaven from hell….

Trav knew the words to this one too. Mackey picked up the guitar, and the clean chords surged in melancholy waves under their quiet voices.

When they got to the part about the two lost souls, Mackey’s voice cracked, but his brothers kept up the melody, and Mackey did what he’d done the first time Grant left. He just kept playing, because it was all he had.

Kell was the one who broke the tableau of the dying song. He bent and kissed Grant on the forehead. “Bye, brother. Sing in heaven for us, okay?”

Jefferson and Stevie followed suit, and Blake held that wasted, ink-smudged hand for a moment before kissing him on the forehead too.

Mackey paused at his bedside and bent down, whispering in his ear. Trav heard him, though, because his voice was broken, and whispers didn’t come easy.

“Let it go, Grant. Fly. We’ll wish you were here.”

Trav touched foreheads with the boy he’d hated since he first heard Mackey say his name. “I’ve got him, Grant. I’ll take good care of him. You’re leaving him in good hands. You can go now. It’s okay.”

Silently they filed out.

The next morning Grant’s father called and Mackey’s mother answered the phone. She came by their room, but she didn’t have to. Mackey had heard the truth in the silence, and she and Trav met eyes as he wept silently on Trav’s chest.

She told Trav later that it had been the same with the other boys. Kell had known. Blake had known. Briony ran into Kell’s room while Mackey’s mom tried to get the words out, and Kell fell into her arms and cried like a baby while Blake hugged him from behind. Shelia was sitting up in bed while Stevie and Jefferson wept on her lap.

Cheever had come home the night before, and he stood in the hallway, baffled, while his mother cried. Trav saw him looking into every doorway in wonder, but Trav didn’t have words.

He only had Mackey, and the hope that they would get over the crying and start to live.

A
WEEK
later they stood at a grave and buried an empty coffin while the ashes sat beside Kell and Mackey in a big black urn.

Mackey was supposed to speak, and he glared at everyone from behind his sunglasses as they got out of the car.

“I’ll bet he thinks this is real fuckin’ funny,” he snapped. “Man, he’s laughing his ass off in heaven, you know that?”

“I hope so,” Trav muttered.

A week—it had taken a week to rush the funeral through, and the boys were strangling and their mother was ready to have them out of the fucking house. Mackey kept talking about home, and Trav did the math. They had two weeks before Thanksgiving and less than a month before they got on the plane to his parents’ house—and besides a stop in San Francisco, which he was actually looking forward to, this was the last thing they had to do.

It gave him heart that the guys had bitched about the funeral during the planning.

“Flowers? Roses? Did he really ask for that?” Kell demanded.

Trav shrugged. “It just says flowers.”

“Chrysanthemums,” Mackey said promptly. “For his eyes.”

“Gross, Mackey,” Kell muttered, but it was for form. “Daisies, for his sunny personality.”

“He will come back and haunt you!” Trav snapped, out of patience.

Kell flashed him a grin just like Mackey’s. “I fucking dare him.”

“Roses, daisies, and chrysanthemums, because I fucking say so,” Trav snarled, putting his foot down.

“And irises,” Shelia said, from nowhere.

The boys all looked at her.

“They’re pretty!” she defended.

“And those big calla lily things,” Briony said thoughtfully.

“Yeah,” Cheever agreed, obviously trying to help. “Those are nice. Can we get some of those?”

It was a damned weird-looking arrangement, and it took up the entire empty coffin.

And it made Trav smile. God, it wasn’t perfect or ordinary, but it was definitely his people. And it was showy, and that was important, because this wasn’t the real funeral—not for Trav’s guys. This was a performance piece, a play, and they’d even practiced a little, taking turns saying the shit they most wanted off their chest about Grant Adams and, by association, the town that had twisted them all.

Mackey brought his guitar, and grinned at Grant’s parents and Samantha, who glared back. The baby was there, struggling to crawl out of Samantha’s arms, and Ms. Sanders was on that like white on rice.

“Can I take her?” she said, smiling into Samantha’s eyes. “I’ll just let her wander over here while Mackey talks. It’s not fun for a baby.”

Samantha simply gave her over, and Mackey’s mom smiled her son’s smile, but untainted by bitterness or guile. “Thank you! It’s lovely to hold a baby. It’s been so long.”

Trav watched the way Samantha looked after the two of them, and then looked over at her parents. He thought that maybe there would be more healing to happen—but that, please God, he and Mackey wouldn’t have to be there for any of it.

Mackey looked around at the crowd—the guys from Grant’s dad’s dealership, what looked to be Grant’s relatives including his mostly absent sister, all sitting down in the ordered chairs and looking solemn, and Samantha and her mother and father—and then looked at his phone for the time.

“We about ready?” he asked, tuning idly, and Kell, Jefferson, and Stevie shook their heads.

“You’re doing all the hard shit, Mackey,” Kell answered, getting his own guitar out of the case. “Are
you
ready?”

“If you drop the fucking song, Kell, I will throw you into the big hole.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it. Grant didn’t make this easy on you.”

Mackey rolled his eyes. “God, ain’t that the truth. Didn’t make it easy on any of us. Okay, everyone. Whether you’re ready for this or not, here goes.” He swung to the assembly without ceremony or reverence, and Trav wondered if everyone was as surprised by Grant’s edict as he was.
Tell the truth. Tell it unvarnished. Be pissed off if you want. And sing something angry. This isn’t the real ceremony. That’s private. This is the rock star show. It’s all the public needs to know.

“Grant Adams,” Mackey said, and then paused like he was choosing his words. He said Grant’s name again, licked his lips, and then, like a cannonball, he was off.

“Grant Adams asked me and my brothers to talk at his funeral. You may notice we’re burying an empty casket, which I think is weird and Kell thinks is fucking hilarious, and you’re welcome to think what you like, but it’s what we’re doing. See, Grant Adams and I….” He took a deep breath and met Trav’s eyes. Whatever he saw in Trav’s eyes must have given him strength, because he kept going.

“Grant Adams and I were in love for five years. We were
lovers
for five years. And we kept that from everybody—from his parents, from his girlfriend, from my brothers. And he let me go, at first because he was afraid of what would happen if he came out and told the world about us, and then because his girlfriend lied and said she was knocked up, because she knew it would keep him here.”

Samantha gasped and Mackey rolled his eyes. “Yeah, don’t nobody think I can do math or anything. Grant neither. We knew. We figured it out. It was a shitty thing to do, but Grant loved that baby, so he forgave you for it. Don’t worry. Anyway, my boyfriend and my brother’s best friend felt like none of you knew him. You knew what you
thought
was him. The good boy who stayed home when he wanted to fly, the nice husband, the good father, and maybe he was partly those things—but that was just the outside. That’s what you get to bury. Kell?”

Mackey’s delivery had been sarcastic and aggressive, and Kell’s was not much better.

“We’re going to take his ashes to the San Francisco Bay and we’re going to throw them in. He’s got a boat, and a trust, and a whole thing worked out. Me and my brothers are going to see it, and we’re going to ride on the ferry, which he told us was hella fun, and we’re going to eat fried donuts at the pier and buy all sorts of shit we don’t need and ship it up here to his daughter. He told me once that some of his happiest moments had been in San Francisco. I didn’t know then that those were when he was sneaking away to bang my brother silly, but now that I know, I figured you all have to live with that information too. It
should
make you happy that he got some happy, and if it does, then you can count yourself as someone my best friend—my brother—really loved. If it doesn’t, I’m going to let you live with that, because it should, and yes, I think it makes you a bad person if you think worse of the dead because he stole him some happy.”

“Grant wanted us to sing a nice song and all,” Jefferson said, picking up the thread. Even in rehearsals they’d gotten good at picking up the thread when the last person dropped it. Which might come in handy, especially if the crowd turned ugly. “But not here. He wants my brother to play their love song, which I don’t know if Mackey will ever be able to sing again after he does that, so it’s a big deal—but Grant doesn’t want that here. He wants that on the ferry, and I’m sort of looking forward to that. What he wants here is an old Eric Burdon song that I think every garage band in the history of ever has played. Which is awesome. I wish Grant had played this when we were in high school. This would have been a very different thing.”

“And by the way,” Stevie said, taking his part. That small, subversive smile that he got when he was about to do something evil had crept up. “I know a lot of you are out there judging us, judging this dog and pony show, judging how pissed off we sound and how we’re saving the sweetness for ourselves and not sharing. You all ask yourself this. Can I get a show of hands for how many people knew my father was a douche bag who liked to watch little boys undress and touch their asses and beat off while they watched?”

Trav opened his eyes really wide and looked out at the crowd in disbelief.
This
had not been in rehearsal.

To his horror, about half the crowd looked shocked. And the other half looked uncomfortable and guilty. Fucking Jesus, was he ready to get out of this town.