Here So Far Away(14)

I peered down the bar.

Oh.

No.

The “gentleman” had to be fifty. He did not have all his teeth.

“What’s the matter?” asked the guy on the stool beside mine. He looked like he belonged to a biker gang: long, curly black hair, shiny and crisp; bushy beard; leather jacket that was too tight around his gut.

“Am I supposed to go over and talk to him now? The guy who bought me the drink.”

He leaned over and checked him out. “No.”

The biker guy gave the gentleman a salute that seemed to mean both thank you and piss off. “Come on, Half-Pint. Band’s about to start.”

I was uneasy as I followed him to a table. Did sitting with the biker guy mean I was now with him? He was slightly terrifying, with his furrowed expression and a large circular burn scar on his temple that suggested something deliberately pressed against it. One hand was wrapped in a thick, dirty bandage. “Barbed wire,” he said. “Maybe I was somewhere I shouldn’t have been.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Let’s see.” He slammed it against the table, making me jump. “Yep.”

The biker guy’s name was Bobby, and he’d founded the band when he was sixteen. They were based in the city but played bars and campuses all over. “Mick there on the left is filling in for me tonight,” he said. “Hope he’s good. He’s a friend of a friend who happened to be around.”

Among the long-haired and long-bearded dudes onstage was the Come From Away, tuning an acoustic guitar. His eyes were even brighter under the stage lights, his hair mussed and shirt rumpled like he’d traveled all night to get to the gig. Now I knew his name: Mick.

Bobby was leaning back on his chair legs, missing nothing. “I think I’ve seen him around,” I said.

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Half-Pint.”

Thankfully, the band started to play. It wasn’t metal, wasn’t country, wasn’t exactly rock or blues. It was a twang and a rumble and a steady, easy beat, and as they hit the bridge of the song, unexpectedly, between the second verse and the chorus, Mick looked up from his guitar, directly at me, and it was like a door opened, blowing winter air over my skin.

At the end of the set, Mick stepped up to the center microphone. “Thanks for letting me join you tonight, all you long fellows,” he said. “Before we go, another for the drunks at the back. But we need Bobby since this one is still new to me.”

Bobby pushed back his chair.

“And bring your friend,” Mick added, turning to tune his guitar.

“Let’s go, Half-Pint. You’ll know the words.”

Of course I knew the words, like everyone else in this corner of the world. As soon as the first chord rang out on Mick’s guitar, they flooded my head. But that didn’t mean I was prepared to sing to a packed bar. I’d never sung in front of an audience, other than carols in the elementary school Christmas pageants, and yet somehow there I was, onstage next to Bobby, still clutching one of my two pints, blinded by the stage lights and vibrating with panic.

Bobby’s voice was incredible. He may have looked like a biker but he sang like an Irish rover. He gave me a gentle push toward another mic as he rounded the first chorus.

For when I am far away

On your briny ocean tossed

Will you ever heave a sigh

Or a wish for me?

Beyond the lights, people were nodding and hooting and whistling. I whistled back. I whistled the entire next verse, the room growing still as I trilled the familiar melody. Oh, sure, Bobby could sing like an Irish rover—but I could whistle like a goddamn nightingale. It was the only real talent I had, and until then, it had been hard to imagine a more useless one.

Bobby joined me for the chorus and we did the rest of the song together, my whistling rising above his baritone. I couldn’t see Mick, but I could feel the thump of his foot on the floor behind me.

In the movie version of my life, I will raise my pint triumphantly as the music ends, setting off a roar from the crowd. They will demand an encore, something from Motown, naturally, and the entire bar will sing along. In reality, I was having a hard time shaking off the panic, despite the sloppy but enthusiastic applause.

I felt a hand on my arm. “That was amazing,” Mick said. His smile faded with the stage lights. “Or a really shitty thing to do to you.”

It all suddenly felt very precarious, the revelation that I was underage imminent. If there was any movie moment in the making, it would be someone who knew my parents parting the throng with shouts of “J’accuse!”

“No, it’s cool,” I said unconvincingly.

“I’m sorry. You struck me as fearless.” Reading the question on my face, he added, “You made a strong first impression.”

He placed his guitar on its stand. “Let’s get a drink. That beer looks like it’s warm.”

“I should probably go. I have to be up early tomorrow.”

This was not remotely true. They were touching up the paint at the lighthouse, so I didn’t have to go in at all.

“So do I.”

He took the glass from my hand, set it on a speaker. Waited.

“Okay,” I said. “But you’ll have to buy.”





Seven


He sat in the chair cornered to mine and slid a beer across the table toward me. “Were you the guy who said that a full pint only counted for one?” I asked.