Leaving Amarillo(3)
He’s different. More . . . vibrant. And his hygiene has certainly improved since he was a ten-year-old kid pretty much fending for himself. But there is still hunger in him. Still a deep, dark need that consumes me body and soul when I look into his fiery eyes.
“Let’s take five,” Dallas announces when the song ends, throwing me a pointed get-your-crap-together look. “I’ve got a few phone calls to make.”
I don’t say a word to either of them as I leave the room. Grabbing a bottle of water, I make my way to the stairwell that leads to the roof. I try not to get lost in memories, but that day is looming over me like a persistent storm cloud.
On that day, ten years ago, I ran into the house and grabbed as many finger sandwiches and brownies and cookies as I could carry. I nearly tripped over my own two feet in my rush to get back outside before the boys left me.
I handed them both the goods and stuffed a brownie in my own mouth so Gavin wouldn’t feel like a charity case. In the brief time since my parents had died, I’d already had my fill of sympathy and I didn’t like the bitter taste of it. At all. He and I were the same in that way, I could feel it. So I didn’t ask, didn’t say a word about why his clothes and hair were filthy, or why he was roaming around town alone in search of food.
We ate on the short walk to an abandoned lot where we proceeded to throw discarded beer bottles against a brick building until I couldn’t lift my arm.
Each beautiful shattering explosion of glass brought me back to life, bringing to light the emotions I’d covered with a heavy black blanket. The world had turned gray the day our parents died, literally. It’d been rainy and gloomy in Texas every day since. But that release, “breaking shit,” as Gavin put it, brought color back to my world like sun peeking through the clouds. It felt so good. Too good. Guilt for enjoying myself weighed on my nine-year-old brain.
“Fuuuckkk,” I screamed out, just to release some of the pain and confusion.
Gavin stopped and stared at me. Dallas kept throwing bottles while I crumpled to the ground. Letting my long, tangled mess of curly hair provide a dark curtain between myself and the boys, I cried—really cried—for the first time since we’d gotten the news. At some point the sound of glass breaking ceased.
“Don’t touch her.” My brother’s voice was frighteningly calm, but heavy with the threat of violence. “She’s fine. You want to be friends? You don’t ever touch her.”
Lifting my head I saw Gavin approaching me. He’d been coming to comfort me, from the looks of it, but Dallas’s warning had stopped him in his tracks. Gravel dug into my knees and the palms of my hands while I watched conflicting urges battle for control in the depths of the boy’s mysterious eyes.
“Get up, Dixie Leigh,” Dallas said, his voice softer than before. “It’s time to go home.”
Home. That was a joke. Home was a brick house in a suburb half an hour outside of Austin where we rode bikes and played with our friends. Home included our mom and dad, pancakes for breakfast, and Saturday morning cartoons. We were going to a rickety old shack with no TV and a dilapidated front porch on a dirt road in Amarillo to live with people we usually only saw on holidays.
Home had died with our parents. We weren’t ever going home again.
As I burst out of the stairwell, metal door clanging behind me, I take in a deep lungful of damp air. It’s cloudy in Texas today, just as it was on that day ten years ago.
Dallas and Gavin and I don’t roam the back roads of Amarillo like a pack of strays anymore, but in a lot of ways, our lives are still the same. Except now we make our way across Texas in Emmylou, the used Chevy Express that hauls us and our equipment from gig to gig, playing music for anyone who will pay us to. Even though sometimes they just pay us in food and tips from a jar.
We started playing in our grandparents’ shed when I was fifteen, but we didn’t really decide to make it official until we placed third in a competition at the state fair when I was a senior and the boys had both graduated.
I play the fiddle in Leaving Amarillo and I’m good at it. Our opening act usually consists of me playing “Devil Went Down to Georgia” all by my lonesome to get the crowd’s attention. Most of the time it works. Unfortunately, by the time we realized Leaving Amarillo might be more than just a hobby, I’d already accepted a scholarship to the most prestigious music school in Texas.
Last year I spent a semester and a half at Shepherd School of Music in Houston becoming a classically trained violinist headed straight for an orchestra pit. When our grandfather had a mild heart attack just before spring break, I was able to put my scholarship on hold and came home to help with his care. Once he’d made a close to full recovery, Dallas and Gavin let me join back up with Leaving Amarillo for a few shows. And then a few more. Now that we’ve gained some momentum, I’m hoping I’ll never have to go back to wearing all black and being herded in and out of an orchestra pit again. But if a manager with legitimate connections doesn’t sign us by the end of the summer, it’s back to college for me in the fall.
Despite the many times I’ve told my brother that being in an orchestra pit makes it impossible for me to breathe, Dallas has made it clear that he won’t allow me to throw away my scholarship in order to live cooped up in a van with him and Gavin while working for scraps. Other than music, a girl like me doesn’t have too many more attractive career options. If I drop out of school and the band doesn’t make it, I’ll likely end up spending my days asking folks if they want pie with their coffee.