CHAPTER 14: PADRINO

“Put on that Nirvana, Colter. Let’s listen to Kurt.” About a Girl is the first record on the album, and Tom immediately fell into a slow, meandering grunge trance as soon as he heard the first chord strumming off of that sad guitar of Kurt’s. The following song is, Come As You Are. Tom started bouncing his hands up in down drumming along with Dave Grohl. “I gotta memorize this, Colter. Start it over. Okay, okay, you hear that? That’s the first cord. Oh, Kurt is so good. Okay there we go, the second cord. Motherfucker, what’s that lyric? Start it over again.”

“What are you doing?”

“Colter, I’m trying to memorize it, right? I’ve always loved this song, but now I gotta memorize it. Dontcha want to make music? Do music? Oh, that reminds me, we should memorize Man Of The World, too! Peter Green, right? I need to take guitar lessons.”

“Are you okay?” Tom gave me his usual mouth slightly open wide-eyed look, and he crossed his arms. “Well, yeah, Colter. This is about accomplishing something real, something great. No bullshit.” He held out his left hand and pinched his fingers together, and gently shook them near my face. “Life, Colter. This is life.”

“Memorizing Nirvana, and Peter Green?”

“Who else?” Tom said. I shrugged. His wheels were turning, I could see actual capacity showing itself, it was encouraging. It’s generally a good thing when a drunk strives for more than a gleaming new bottle filled with their inherent vice. “As a friend, as a friend, as an old enemy, take your time, hurry up, the choice is yours, don’t be late.” Tom held his head low and slowly moved back and forth whispering the words to himself, and then springing up randomly and yelling a lyric. “It’s all contradictions, Colter. He wants them to come as they are, but not really.” Tom yelled over Kurt’s lyrics.

We pulled into the driveway, and Tom hopped out to get the gate. He sprang up in the air, and ran into the tall grass, and held up the bottle of Pendleton. I pulled in the orange brute to the carport, and Tom ran up to the driver side. “You threw it?”

“You pissed me off.”

“Well, I guess I must have. Where’d you throw that from?” I nodded towards the porch. “Jesus, I know you played football, but that’s quite the fuckin throw!” We sat on the swinging bench on the front porch, and passed the bottle back and forth. Tom shook his head, and rubbed his face. “I gotta tell you something. It’s about the music, and I guess my behavior.”

“What?”

“I got cancer, Colter.”

“What?”

“I got skin cancer, Colter. Alopecia. It’s in my skin. Fuck, at this point it’s everywhere.”

“Tom, stop.” Tom held out his hand, and showed me a rough patch of skin right above his right thumb. He shoved his quivering hand near my face. I didn’t, or couldn’t say a word. He took my left hand and pressed it on his forehead right where his hairline used to be. “Feel that? You see it in the light?”

“I saw that the other day, but I thought you had hit your head when you were drunk.”

“I don’t do that.” I slowly took my hand away. “It’s not contagious or nothin, right?” Tom said.

“Yeah, yeah. Sorry.”

“Oh it’s okay. I know.” Tom’s eyes started watering, and so did mine.

“What are you doing about it?”

“Nothin. I can’t do all that shit, Colter. Where’s the quality of life in that bullshit? I don’t got it in me.”

“You gotta fight! That’s what people do! You’re meaning to tell me you aren’t going to fight?”

“For what? A couple more years after putting myself through hell? Fuck that.”

“What about your family? Or me? Or anyone?”

“It’s my life, Colter. Don’t worry; you’ll get that big orange thing. The brute, right? And the house. Maybe some dough too if there’s anything left.”

“I don’t give a fuck about all that shit! What about your grandchildren? Have you told you daughters?”

“You have to swear to me you won’t say a fucking word. Not a fucking word!” I stood up and lit a cigarette. I couldn’t handle this sort of information sitting down. I grabbed the bottle from his grasp, and took a deep swig. I pinched my eyes closed, and shook my head. “What? Tom. You want me to shoulder all this?”

“You have to, Colter. It’s my life, and I trust you. You can’t tell your father especially. You can’t tell your damn father. You can’t.” The light outside was grey in the adolescent morning and the sun started peeking through the rich oak trees bringing about weird prisms of light. I swayed there on the front porch, and walked out into the gravel driveway kicking the occasional pebble. I turned my head to the sky and it was cloudless and the last stars were slipping away out of view. The cicadas started purring their perverse insect discourse, drifting in and out in distant ripples, proclaiming sex and at the time I assumed nothing else. Apparently they ascend out of the salt of the earth every seventeen years to mate and feed a new generation of birds, and squirrels, and raccoons, and whatever can live off of the pointless bug. What I heard from them that morning was their attempt to emulate a rising, receding, and crashing of waves, reaching to connect to the osculating and revolving world they inhibit. When people argue the notion of a world built off of design I think of the stupid insect and marvel over the idea of a white bearded man twenty stories tall shooting the breeze and fucking with us until the day we figured out his grand joke of our world. 

“You hear those little fuckers?” Tom yelled from the porch. I grounded out my smoke and walked back to the porch and sat back down again. Tom put a hand on my neck and messed up my hair. “I know you can handle it. I only got a few more years. I found out about it two years ago. That’s when all this shit really started rolling. You know, the drinking. I’m just doing what I feel like doing. I’m moving to Texas, I’m living out here. I just want to be normal, Colter. I want to be a normal guy.” I started to tear up again, and I put my face in my hands. “What the fuck, Tom? This is bullshit.” We sat in silence for what felt like a long time, but I had no idea if it was. Tom stomped a foot, and light out a long exhale. “You know, I am scared though. I really am. Can I have a smoke?” Tom started to fully cry now, and I stood up with my back turned to him. I couldn’t look at him, because I started to cry too. “I really am scared, Colter.”

What do you tell a supposed dying man when he tells you he’s afraid to die? What do you do when a dying man just wants to drink and drink away till he’s nothing but the sickness that is consuming him? Is it courageous not to fight? To let it take you, and live as much as possible before it does? These are the questions I mulled over then and still am now. These are the questions that will poison my brain when I can see whatever is going to eventually come for me.

Tom started quietly singing Man of The World. “And I need a good woman, to make me feel like a good man should, I don’t say I’m a good man, oh, but I would be if I could.”

“That’s Peter Green, Colter. That’s Fleetwood Mac, Colter.”

“I know.” I said.