Purple Hearts(36)

“Which were?”

“Creed.”

I almost spit out the bite I had just taken. Creed’s success was baffling to anyone in music, probably even Creed. Their sound was basically constipated-Kurt-Cobain-meets-youth-pastor-trying-to-be-cool.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said, trying to keep it together. “I’m laughing with you.”

“No one wants to admit they know all the words to ‘Arms Wide Open.’?”

I imitated Scott Stapp, the lead singer, and it was his turn to spit out sandwich.

I took him in, trying to match the drummer with benefits I knew against the guy I had yet to know, the guy who was taking me on a surprisingly good date. Toby had grown up in a country song in Arkansas. His dad was a trucker, his mother a waitress, and he had basically raised himself. He never went to college, opting to take an apprenticeship with a well-known sculptor instead. He became a drummer when one of his fellow line cooks at Denny’s wanted to form a band. His car’s name was Sergio, which Toby pronounced “Surge-ya.”

Things going for him:

He didn’t ask me if it was all right if we sat on the curb, he just went ahead and sat, a paper-wrapped, greasy sandwich in each hand.

He could wear the shit out of some boot-cut jeans.

The boy could talk music. Because we were always practicing or otherwise-ing, I’d never known how much.

“. . . well, it’s not that I’m opposed to Jeff Tweedy’s sobriety, it’s just that I don’t know how you could ever make another masterpiece like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot without being completely messed up. I mean, think about it, even the songs themselves were drunk. Drony and rambly and full of this electricity that you don’t get with the measured, composed country ditties in Sky Blue Sky . . .”

“Mm-hmm,” I said into my sandwich. The thing was: He was right. Or rather, I agreed with him. We’re never going to get another Yankee Hotel Foxtrot out of Jeff Tweedy. The world was different then. Alternative rock had been clamoring for anything with substance post-Nirvana.

And he could discuss, at length, Portishead’s Roseland NYC Live, one of the greatest fifty-seven minutes of music that has ever taken place.

“. . . it was the orchestra that did it, though. I mean, it would have been great with just the band, but, oh man, when it tunes up at the beginning.”

“I get chills.”

“Me, too.”

I motioned for him to go on. I would wait to throw in my two cents once we circled back to Portishead. Or Bj?rk.

I wasn’t obsessing over aligning my opinions with his. I wasn’t trying to prove myself, because he knew me. I wasn’t performing. The only thing I had to prove to anyone would come in the form of the songs we were writing. The Loyal had played every night for the past two weeks and we’d started to record rough versions of our songs on GarageBand.

“Ready to see this?” Toby asked, crumpling up his sandwich wrapper. “It’s going to be wild.”

“Can’t wait,” I replied.

When we stood, he took my arm like we were British gentry, and we laughed.

As we parked on Red River Street, we could already hear the show beating through the entrance.

The duo was called Hella, and was more noise rock than anything I liked, but had the dynamic sound of a band of six. I closed my eyes, rocking back and forth with the dips and switches of the drumming. This drummer took me to the forest, but instead of foraging for notes, new plant life was sprouting in front of me, leaves and petals on fire with color: 9s, 7s, 5s, all over the place.

I opened my eyes to look over at Toby, whose eyes were closed, too, long brown hair behind his ears, unaware of anything but the music. For a second I thought of Luke, and the way he looked off into the distance somewhere, his thoughts in a faraway place. I wondered what he thought about.

“This is fun,” I said into Toby’s ear, calling above the noise. “Why didn’t we do this sooner?”

He looked amused at the prospect, and brought my hand to his mouth, kissing it. Then he leaned close to my neck, his warm breath sending shivers down my back. “You tell me.”





Luke


Sometimes, when we were high into the hills where the roads stopped, I’d jog ahead, my feet digging into the ground because of the fifty extra pounds of ammo on my back. It was mostly scrub and rocks, but when you’re rolling through the landscape long enough, you start to notice the difference between light brown and dark brown and red brown, between opium and cotton, the difference between 100 and 105 degrees. Out of the city we’d hit tobacco or sugar beet or poppy fields. We’d pass donkeys or camels on the road, or other vehicles whose horns played a little song each time they sounded. Depending on who was driving or who was riding, we’d pause at prayer time. Our interpreter Malik would get out and face east as he bowed his head on the road.

It’s hard to run when you’ve got to gear up practically everywhere you go, but I found ways. I started to get up before the heat hit to run around the makeshift track at the FOB that some hardcore marathoners had worn into the earth. A few of them did something called shadow runs, where they timed themselves running the same number of miles as a race back in the States. They got T-shirts and water stations and everything.

I preferred to run alone. Most of our days were hard and long, too hot or too cold, hours and hours waiting on the decisions of our superiors. Alone, running, was the only time when I had control. I could run for as long as I wanted. I could escape into my running dreams.