What Have We Done (51)

Maybe seeing the old haunts will jog it loose. He’s not keen on traveling down memory lane, but this is for Ben. And to get the money for the book he agreed to spend one full week with Reeves. The literary agent wants a draft by month’s end, no doubt concerned that the clock is ticking on Donnie’s fifteen minutes of fame.

A white work van speeds past.

Donnie points at it. “When we first started touring, there’d be eight of us living in a van like that, playing dive bars across the country. We’d each get seven dollars a day for food. By the end, Tom had his own tour bus, there were two for the crew, and one for the rest of the band.”

Reeves looks ahead at the road. “How was that, living on the road?”

“Nothing else like it, Hemingway. I loved it.”

“Did you all have, like, homes, or…?”

“Yeah, after we went platinum the first time everybody had a home base. I had a crib in LA, the rest were spread out.” Donnie doesn’t mention that he had to sell the LA property and currently rents a studio apartment in North Hollywood. “Three of the guys were married, had kids. But we were on the road about two hundred days a year.”

“What’s it like, living on a bus most of the year?”

“It’s kinda like you never grow up. Other than getting from one show to the next we didn’t have any real responsibilities. Our manager would take care of paying the bills for everybody’s home base.

We had only three rules.”

Reeves turns his head, like this might be something he can use for the book.

Donnie ticks them off. “One, if you bring a girl on the bus there’s an ID check and an NDA gets signed. That was the result of an unfortunate incident when our bass player met a seventeen-year-old who lied about her age after a show in Phoenix. That was a mess.”

Reeves’s eyes widen.

“Maybe don’t put that part in the book.” Donnie smiles. “Rule Two: no number twos on the bus.

The smell gets in the vents and it’s a big hassle to clean out the septic tanks.”

Reeves scrunches his face. “I think I’ll leave that out too.”

“Understandable. And Rule Three: no drugs on the bus.” Donnie doesn’t mention that he was the genesis of that rule, but he probably doesn’t need to. “Other than all that, you live for the show, then the afterparty, then you’re on to the next town. You watch a crapload of movies.”

Reeves follows the GPS’s voice and veers off the exit for Chestertown.

Donnie feels acid crawl up his throat. It’s been twenty-five years.

“Where to?” Reeves asks.

“I suppose to where it started.”

Fifteen minutes later, the rental car pulls to the curb on the south side of Chestertown. Reeves seems to be in awe at the urban decay. A neighborhood of boarded-up homes. Unbelievably, things have gotten worse. Twenty-five years ago, the neighborhood was on the decline, but there were still people left from before the steel, automotive, and paper factories closed. Old couples who mowed their lawns, planted flowers, maintained the exterior of their homes—fought the losing battle of their neighborhood being taken over by drugs and crime.

They get out of the rental car and Donnie gestures to a boarded-up mansion that has a lopsided porch. Once upon a time—long before the town used it for a group home—it had been a grand manor.

But once the factories all closed, the place, like the town, went to shit. For some reason, a memory from the tour bus comes to mind. Watching the movie Forrest Gump, the scene where Jenny throws stones at the home where she’d been abused as a kid. No rock is big enough for this place.

“So, this is it, where you grew up?” Reeves asks.

“Only from when I was twelve to fourteen. Before that I was with the Jensons, and before then we were in Alabama in a trailer park that made this place look like a palace.”

Reeves has a pad and pen and takes notes as they walk. He spins around, taking it all in.

“It’s amazing you made it out.”

Donnie examines the house. Next to the front door there’s a rectangle where the paint is a different color. A plaque that read: SAVIOR HOUSE used to hang there.

“Benny said we owed it to each other to make it out.”

Reeves nods, scribbles something.

“About Ben,” Donnie says, “his law clerk told me something that I can’t figure out.” He clues Reeves in on the cryptic message she relayed to him. Nothing’s coming to Donnie. Maybe the writer will have some ideas. He leaves out the part about Ben being blackmailed. That could lead Reeves down a path Donnie doesn’t want him to venture.

Reeves thinks on it. “Did Ben think he was in danger, is that why he asked her to give you a message?”

“No idea. The law clerk said she told the FBI what he said, so I’m sure they’re on it.”

“He said to tell you that you all had it wrong, what could you have gotten wrong?”

Donnie isn’t sure about this either.

“And Boo Radley?” Reeves says. “Did you all read To Kill a Mockingbird or something?”

Donnie shakes his head. “Benny loved to read, but I’ve never read it. Why?”

“Boo Radley’s a character from the book. He was a mysterious neighbor of the kids in the story.