The Less-Dead (2 page)

“But we’re only sixteen,” I say. “And we don’t have any experience.”

“It doesn’t matter! Here, look at this.” Carson grabs the entertainment section of the newspaper and points to a photo of a guy playing guitar. He has a mop of curly hair. “That’s Sean Espinoza. He’s
fifteen
. He plays Tuesdays at the Saxon Pub.”

“Really?” I peer more closely. This guy Sean’s got a real baby face. Pimples, too. I scan the article. It says that besides talent, Sean’s got a solid work ethic, and if he keeps playing, he might be Austin’s next Stevie Ray. “But I don’t get it,” I say. “I thought you had to be twenty-one to get into the Saxon Pub.”

Carson groans like I’m the most naive guy on the planet, which I sort of am after having spent half my life in church. “Dude, not if you’re the
performing artist
. Look, right here it says that Sean began as a street performer on the Drag. People liked his music, word got around, and next thing you know, he’s a star! Come on, what do you say we go down there tomorrow?”

“Hmmm …” I don’t have the heart to tell Carson that tomorrow, Saturday, to atone for my many sins, I’m supposed to cut the grass, weed-whack, and paint the back fence. But suddenly an idea pops into my head. The Drag, aka Guadalupe Street, is where the zealots from my youth group go every Saturday to witness to the lost. They claim Satan has a stronghold on the Drag because of its new age shops, tattoo parlors, dive bars, and drug dealers, and they have to win it back for the Lord. Anyway, my parents would never refuse if I told them I wanted to hang with the youth group on Saturday. And if I was bringing Carson along, well, maybe he’d listen to the gospel and get saved. Of course,
little would they know, Carson and I would be spreading our own gospel: rock and roll.

“What do you say, Noah? Are you with me or not?”

“Yeah, man. I’m with you. Totally.”

“All right, then.” Carson holds out his fist. I bump it. “Tomorrow, we take our guitars to the Drag. Show Austin what we’ve got.”

We finish off the pints of Ben & Jerry’s, and Carson heads back to bed. I’m not tired yet, so I spread out the newspaper on the kitchen table. I’m about to reread the Sean Espinoza story, but something else catches my eye. A blurb on the front page of the Metro section.

I can hardly breathe. About a month ago, right before I got kicked out of school and things were getting pretty hairy between me and my parents, there was this psycho who kept calling in to my dad’s radio show. The guy seemed intelligent and knowledgeable about the Bible, but after a while it was clear that he was completely warped. He’d call in with a question but would soon begin to rant about Austin’s gay community and how God was going to bring judgment upon them.

My dad always gave the guy his lame, standard answer concerning homosexuality—hate the sin but love the sinner—but soon the guy became so angry and belligerent that my father stopped taking his calls. One week later, a gay eighteen-year-old boy, Kyle Lester, was strangled to death outside Urban Legend. A cross had been carved into his chest. The killer left behind a rope, the murder weapon. Along with it, a note—letters cut from newspaper.

SATURDAY MORNING
, I jog home from Carson’s, sneak past my parents, who are drinking coffee on the back patio, and tiptoe into Melanie’s room. I swear, the kid is such a sack rat. It’s eleven o’clock and she’s still sound asleep. I take a seat on her bed, pleased to see the collection of poetry I gave her for her ninth birthday this year sitting on the night table. Since the only books in our family’s library are Bibles, Bible commentaries, and inspirational junk about how to live an exciting Christian life (oxymoron, if you ask me), I figure someone has to enlighten her.

I open to the page she’s dog-eared—“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” by Robert Frost—and run my finger across the first three lines she’s underlined all wiggly in pencil.

“Noah?” She smiles dreamily and is about to reach out and give me hug, but then she sticks out her tongue and rolls over. “You’re a big fat liar! Go away!”

“Hey, come on, Mel. All right, so I didn’t come home last night. So I’m not perfect. But, listen, there’s a reason.”

She throws a stuffed lizard at me; its beady eye scrapes my cheek. “Yeah, like
what
?”

“Ouch! Jeez, Mel! I stopped by Aubrey’s after our gig, all right?”

Melanie’s quiet now and I can tell she’s thinking things over. She misses Aubrey almost as much as I do. Before the whole mess happened, Aubrey used to hang out at our house all the time. She’d braid Melanie’s hair, paint her toenails, give her advice about boys. Slowly, Melanie turns around. Her eyes are puffy, like she went to bed crying. I hope it wasn’t because of me. “So … what did Aubrey say? Does she want to be friends again?”

“Well, it was late and she couldn’t really talk, but I’m working on it, okay?”

Melanie sighs. Then she looks at me all serious and her chin begins to quiver. “Noah, I’m scared. I heard Mom and Dad talking last night. They said if you keep getting into trouble, they’re going to send you away. To a farm or something, where they keep horses and pigs and chickens. I don’t want you to go!”

“Oh, come on, Mel. No one’s sending me anywhere. Besides, I’d never leave you.” I make a goofy face and tickle her; she starts to laugh. My parents think they’re hiding something, but I’ve seen the stuff that’s been coming in the mail lately—pamphlets about Christian farms for troubled
youths. The idea is that if you pay a butt-load of money, your delinquent kid gets his very own horse to care for. Which sounds pretty cool, right? But here’s the catch. The farms are like fascist right-wing military schools. No phones, no radio, no secular music, no coed mingling, and the only book you can read is the Bible. Screw that.

I hear footsteps in the hallway. I can tell it’s my dad, because he’s got these brand-new tennis shoes that squeak. Melanie’s door is slightly ajar and he raps it a few times. “Noah, is that you?”

“Oh, come in, Daddy,” Melanie says. “Noah’s here and he’s
absolutely
fine. The reason he was late last night is because he went to visit Aubrey. So, he’s not in trouble, right?”

When my dad enters, I study his face, wondering if he’s seen the article in the paper about the murder suspect. It’s hard to tell. I brace myself for a proverb like
As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly
, but instead, he just sighs and pats Melanie on the head. He looks worn out, which may not be a bad thing for me. “Well, sweetie, I’m glad Noah’s home, and I’m glad he’s fine, but—”

Before he can go any further, I say, “Dad, I’m
really
sorry about last night. What happened was, I stopped by Aubrey’s after our gig and I didn’t realize how late it got.” I take a deep breath and try to look as sincere as possible. “I know I have a lot of work to do around the house, but, well, I was wondering if I could go to the Drag today. You know, with the youth group? Carson wants to go too. I’ll cut the grass and weed-whack and paint the fence and do whatever else you want tomorrow, okay? After church.”

The “after church” insert was brilliant, if I do say so
myself. Also, notice I didn’t lie. I never said Carson and I would be
witnessing
on the Drag. It’s one of those sins of omission, which, in my opinion, is about on the same level as coveting your neighbor’s ox or donkey.

My plan seems to be working. I’ve definitely thrown my father off guard (his jaw is hanging open) and Melanie’s helping me out by making these big, sad pleading eyes. “Well, I suppose you could do your chores tomorrow,” he says. “But I’m a little confused, Noah. Why the sudden change of heart? And now
Carson
wants to join you? It’s all very odd, to say the least.”

This is true. My father might be a sucker when it comes to wanting to save my soul, but he’s no dope. He graduated with honors from UT Law School and went on to Dallas Theological Seminary, where he became an expert on eschatology or whatever you call that end-time crap. As he stands there tapping his foot and waiting for my explanation, my mom walks in. Perfect timing. “Noah! Oh, thank goodness you’re home.” She breathes a sigh of relief and gives my father a scolding look. “John, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Oh, sorry, hon, I was about to, I just …” FYI: my mother is the only person who can render the Bible Answer Guy speechless.

She walks over and gives me a hug, then pulls away all hurt and disappointed, which kind of kills me. “We were
very
worried about you, Noah.” I can tell she’s about to ask where I stayed last night but stops herself. It’s all part of the tough love thing. Pretty ridiculous, if you ask me.

“I know. I’m sorry, Mom. I won’t let it happen again. I promise.”

My dad clears his throat. “Laura, Noah’s asking to go to the Drag today with the youth group. What do you think? Can he do his chores tomorrow?”

Her eyes widen. “The youth group? Why … sure. Of course. Um, that’s wonderful.” I haven’t shown interest in attending youth group meetings since eighth grade, so this is probably quite a shock to her. Fortunately my mom doesn’t question my motives. Now I need to get out of the house as quickly as possible.

“Okay, well, great,” I say. “I better hit the shower and get a move on.” I tickle Melanie in the ribs one last time. “See you later, kid.”

I shower, get dressed, and grab my guitar and harmonicas, and just as I’m about to walk out the door, I see my dad sitting in his study, staring at the wall. It’s risky to go in there now—he may have caught on to my devious scheme—but I do anyway. “Dad?” He turns to me. His eyes are a little glassy. “Um, did you see the article in the paper yesterday? You know, about the murder?”

He nods. “Yes, I did.”

“Looks like they caught the guy, huh?”

He sighs deeply. “I hope so, Noah. I really do.” Right after we heard the news that Kyle Lester had been killed, my father contacted the police. The murder was a pretty high-profile case in Austin, probably because the city, smack in the middle of the Bible Belt, is an oasis for gays and lesbians. It was a long shot that the psycho calling in to my dad’s radio show was the killer, but still, the cops followed up on every possible lead. The investigation went nowhere. The guy was like a ghost.

“Yeah, me too,” I say. “So have the police called you? Do you know who they arrested? It didn’t say much in the paper.”

“No. I don’t know anything. I’m not sure I want to either.” There’s a moment of awkward silence, and then my dad says, “Well, have a good time today. I’ll put some gas in the Weedwacker so you’ll be all set for tomorrow.”

“Oh, okay, thanks, Dad.” What I really want to do is tell my father I’m sorry for what I said that night, one week after Kyle’s murder, when I came home drunk from Ben Huber’s party. When my father saw that I’d been drinking, he started going off on me about how I’d turned my back on my family, on my church, and, worst of all, on God.

I couldn’t take it anymore. “Turned my back on
God
?” I screamed. “You’re
such
a hypocrite! Just like all the other phonies at church. You think you’re better than everyone else because you’re a Christian? All you do is spread
hate
on your stupid radio show. You say, ‘Hate the sin, but love the sinner’? Well, let me ask you something, Dad. How are you supposed to love a gay person when you’ve never even
known
one? You pass judgment on people, condemn them for who they are. You could have done the right thing, stood up to that caller, but you didn’t. The truth is,
you’re
the one responsible for Kyle Lester’s murder. That’s right,
you!
The Bible Answer Guy.”

He raised a hand like he was going to hit me, and honestly, I wouldn’t have blamed him if he had. It was a rotten thing to say. Besides, who was I to talk? Sure, I knew some gay kids at school, but it wasn’t like I was friends with any of them. Did I even want to be?

My father’s hand fell to his side. He started to cry. I stood there, stunned. My father’s not an emotional person, and I’d never seen him cry before. But there was no way to make this right, so I walked away, slammed my bedroom door behind me. For once, he was the person being judged.

To my surprise, in the morning, my father skipped the lecture, reached out, and gave me a hug. I had a wicked hangover—my head was splitting, and my stomach churning—but I managed to hug him back. “What’s past is past,” he said. “Let’s move on.”

But I don’t know. Words like mine are not easily forgiven.

Or forgotten.

CARSON AND
I set up on the corner of Twenty-third and Guadalupe and begin our Austin debut with a little Pearl Jam. After that, it’s Smashing Pumpkins, and soon we’re rocking out on Jet’s “Are You Gonna Be My Girl.” Our plan was to start out with a few cover songs to draw people in, and it’s working. A small crowd of UT students is gathered around, seriously digging our music, and dollar bills are piling up in our guitar cases. One guy throws in a five. I’m beginning to wonder if Carson and I can make a living doing this.