In Harmony

When Mom was alive, I loved Harmony. Its soundtrack was her sweet voice playing in the background of life. But she’d been silenced forever, and when she died, some part of me went dead silent too.

I rolled over, putting my back to bullshit fantasies and burrowing deeper into my blankets. Done was done. She was dead, Harmony was Hell, and the only sure way to escape the misery and find my voice again was to get the fuck out.

Martin invited talent agents to see me.

My acting could

take me somewhere else. I didn’t perform for accolades. Compliments nauseated me. But now I recalled tonight’s applause, the standing ovation that went on and on and on. The repetitive clapping reverberated in my head, blocking out the cold wind whistling under the trailer.

And just before sleep took me, I remembered the gold of Willow Holloway’s hair as she stood under the theater marquee, staring up at it as if it held the secrets to the universe.

Pops was out of the trailer early the next morning. I watched him through the kitchen window, walking the far rows of junked cars in the yard. He was hardly more than a bulky blob of army green jacket and red hunter’s cap. Smoky breath pluming from his mouth.

He often walked the graveyard of his business, like a mourner walking among the headstones of a cemetery. Grieving his hopes and dreams. Grieving my mother. I could almost sympathize, if I didn’t know damn well he’d come back inside, pissed off at the failure of his business and the shitty hand the world dealt him, and he’d take it out on me.

My fingers touched a scar on my chin, mostly concealed by my light beard, where Pops had hurled a lamp at me. Another time he’d brought in an iron bar from the yard, demanding I find more and get to the recycling. When I didn’t hustle fast enough, he broke my arm. I’d done Death of a Salesman in a cast.

The last time he took a swing at me, I hit back and left him with a black eye that he showed off at Nick’s Tavern. Then the rumors at school started. I was violent, high-tempered and heavy-fisted, just like my old man. But no one fucked with me, which was exactly how I liked it.

I turned away from the window and took a shower in the trailer’s one tiny bathroom, freezing my nuts off as the cool air slithered in through the cracks in the windowsill. I dried and dressed quickly, putting on the same jeans as last night. I pulled on a clean T-shirt, layered a sweatshirt over that, then shrugged into my jacket.

Pops was coming in just as I was going out.

“Where are you going?” he said, blocking the doorway.

“Out,” I said. “Then to work at the theater. Then the show.”

“Out.” A smoke-lined exhale snorted out his nose as he backed me inside the trailer. “Does out include spending one damn minute at the gas station?” He flipped a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the yard. “Or checking the answering machine for part requests? Good product is rusting away out there while you prance around a stage.”

I gritted my teeth. We hadn’t had a call to the yard for parts in six months. Our only business was Pops sitting in the Wexx gas station every Sunday, and me stripping useable parts out of the rusting junk in our yard. No one came for gas, and I’d already been through what we had a hundred times.

“I can’t strip ‘em when they’re iced over,” I said.

“Bullshit. We got acres of potential profit going to waste because of your lazy ass.”

My jaw ticked. One load of scrap in my flatbed wasn’t going to buy a pack of smokes. With the shitty rates, it would take me weeks to load and haul enough down to the metal recycler to make anything decent.

“I make more money at the theater,” I said. “When the snow melts, we can start up the recycling again.”

And maybe you could run the station like your franchise contract says to.

Pops’ face turned ruddy, and I wondered if he was going to try something. I drew myself up to my full height and tilted my chin. At six-two, I towered over him. Since the broken arm three years ago, I’d been lifting weights to ensure he’d think twice before fucking with me.

But he was sober. Whatever scrap of decency he had in him—and it wasn’t much—wasn’t drowning in booze this morning. Yet. He pushed past me, whiskey fumes and stale cigarette smoke filling my nose.

“Get the fuck out then. Useless. I don’t want to look at you.”

Feeling’s mutual, I told myself, and slammed the door behind me as I left. Unscathed, but feeling like he’d hit me anyway, right in the goddamn chest.

I drove up to Braxton. At The Outpost clothing store, I bought two new pairs of jeans, socks and underwear. The lady at the register said I still had fifty dollars left on the gift card.

Jesus, Marty.

I left my purchases with her and went to the kids’ section. I found a weather-proof winter jacket—a good one, not some cheap crap—in bright blue, and on sale for $45.99. I held it up to judge the size, then took it to the register.

“For your little brother?” she asked as she brought the card balance to zero.

“Yeah,” I said.