I
TROUBADOURS
THE GHOSTWRITER
Two Days Before the Contamination
I’m chasing a song down the neck of my guitar when the pain in my back breaks the spell. The fighting cocks across the creek crow in added interruption, and I know it’s pointless to continue. I can work past the pain, but never the racket of the chickens. Just one rooster singing is enough to make the others convene an ill choir, all their voices rising in shrill music that spills through my walls. Sometimes the distraction tempts me to go free the flock from their coops, only I’d never get past Mr. Fredrick. Generations of his birds have fought in the local pits, their spurs adorned with razor blades that gouged through opponents’ feathers. In Coopersville County, anything accustomed to that much violence is worth protecting.
My lost melody had repeated in a loop all morning. I thought I’d play until I found a bridge, but songs are fickle. They rarely appear fully formed. Most must be mined slow from the subconscious in fragments. The tune won’t drift back, so I light a cigarette and remind myself not to worry. It’s just another love song I owe Angela.
Caroline is playing in the other room. I grab my cane and shuffle across the floor littered with dirty clothes. The place smells like an animal den. Beer bottles rest on the bedside table and the ashtray overflows with crushed butts. A few of the filters are marked by Caroline’s lipstick. I try to recall last night, but my back protests with each step until I can’t remember our evening. Everything will remain foggy until I swallow a few pills.
In the living room, Caroline strums my unplugged hollow body. She still can’t quite create proper barre chords. Each note is full of static, but her rhythm is coming along. The guitar presses into the white of her bare thigh as she leans over the instrument. Blond hair dangles against the strings and her lips purse in concentration. Lacquered nails rub the fret board as she shifts to a C chord to play one of the many cowboy tunes I’ve taught her.
“Sounds like cats fucking,” I say.
There is no discernible pattern to Caroline’s visits. She comes and goes like a stray, often showing up in the middle of the night. Usually, I can sense her before she arrives. I’m not superstitious, but winter nights feel hotter as if warmed by her approach. The air carries a slight electric charge in her vicinity. These sensations should only be brought on by a lover, but I’m uncertain how to define my relationship with Caroline. I’m something between teacher and curiosity. She came to me a year ago, traveling across the creek no one dares to cross, saying she wanted guitar lessons. I should have sent her away, but something inside me was too lonesome for company. There’s a classic archetype in our dynamic. The withered expert and the brash student. In the old parables, the reclusive master doesn’t get to turn the cocky apprentice away. I guess I felt teaching her was owed, no matter how much I knew it was a mistake.
“I can’t get these chords,” she says and demonstrates by forming another poor F. “How long before I can just pick it up and play whatever?”
“Depends,” I say. My back hurts too much for conversation. I move around the couch to the end table, where my pills lie spilled from the bottle. Lately, I need more to numb the pain and these larger doses transform me into something formless. A euphoric ghost drifting about the confines of the house, content just to listen to records. This new dependency is half the reason I’m behind schedule on The Troubadours’ album. Just a few more songs for Angela, then I’m calling it quits.
“What were you playing in there?” she asks.
“It’s a secret.” I bite one of the pills. I’ve taken to chewing them just enough to get the chalk taste in my mouth. There’s no reason it should, but the medicinal tang makes me numb quicker.
“It’s all muscle memory,” I say, pointing to the guitar. “You just gotta keep at it. All day, every day.”
“How long if I practice for an hour each day?”
“Years.”
I sink into the couch above Caroline and hang down the cigarette to let her steal a puff.
“Piss on that,” she says, neck still craned back from the toke. Her wild hair brushes against my knee. “Got one of those pills for me?”
“I thought you were quitting.”
She’s probably taken a few already. I never keep an exact count, but the bottle rattles half empty and Caroline’s eyes carry a wet shine. It isn’t anything personal. She enjoys my company and is an adamant student, but some things are about need. If I refused her, she’d just sneak and steal them. We both know that truth. There’s no reason to debase ourselves by making it a reality.
“I’m trying,” she says.
When I don’t hand over a pill, Caroline tosses me the guitar and rises to get a drink of water. I watch as she goes, the backs of her thighs red from sitting on the carpet. She leans under the faucet and slurps up a drink while I tune the guitar.
“Remind me what time you got in last night?” I say.
“Pretty late. I borrowed Jeremy’s truck.”
Caroline doesn’t belong to anyone and she makes it a point to remind men. Some of her lovers must feed off the evolutionary principle that they’re in competition for mates and that a woman who makes them compete so fiercely is a sort of thrill. I hate knowing but feel so fortunate to have been occasionally included in her rotation, I don’t question motives. I believe it’s probably the novelty of my body that’s responsible for our few nights together. Each time, she ran hands over the great curve of my back that bends me low like a snow-heavy tree. Her fingertips never examined in that clinical way I’ve often endured. I read somewhere that certain ancient cultures used to look at the misshapen as touched by the Gods. Once, we revered deformity rather than isolated it. When Caroline touched me on those nights, she seemed to be paying respect to whatever force could twist me so severely.
“I’m going to need a ride into town.”
“What for?”
“I need a guitar fixed.” I wish she’d just offer the favor without questions. I already feel impotent relying on favors. Delivery boys bringing groceries and medicine, Caroline providing rides on the few occasions I slink into town. Sometimes I want to pretend there’s no burden in my requests, to focus less on the blatant charity.
“Can’t we just stay here and relax awhile?”
Nothing would make me happier, but I promised myself I’d finish the song today. I’ve been ghostwriting for Angela over eleven years. In all that time, I’d never felt the desire to compose my own work. I thought it would always be that way, but recently I’ve been inundated with snippets of tunes. Tones invading any silence until I’m compelled to transcribe the strange songs. I’ve even heard lyrics. Their singing interrupts my thoughts like some schizophrenic episode. Now Angela’s tracks are a hindrance keeping me from this new material. Things were simpler without ambition.