The Lamb

The night was still young but was aging fast, and the band hadn't eaten, and the very long road ahead of them spilled out wet and dark and growing wetter and darker every minute they waited for Sloop.

They had been waiting for almost four hours, to be exact: three-quarters of The Deader Thans impatiently staked out in a Red Roof Inn, the breadth of the Rockies and over eight hundred miles of America's vast gut between that particular Red Roof and Salt Lake City—all of which needed to be crossed in just under thirty-six hours to make it in time for their first show under labelship (Skin Sleeve Records, Phoenix, AZ)—and, in this eleventh hour, their quote-unquote transinstrumentalist (“differentiation,” in Skin Sleeve language) and fourth member, John “Sloop” Buchanan (motherboard snares, piggy bank maraca, etc.), missing in action, not heard from since the signing in fact, much to the anxious, pacing consternation of frontman Don Donner. . . .

All the muscles of whose neck visibly tightened when his cell phone finally rang. He took the call outside. Ten minutes passed before he returned, snapping closed his phone and tossing it on the bed. The other two Deader Thans immediately stopped what they were doing and turned to fix on Don: bassist Quinn shooting a ripe and lacy chica (“XXXtreme Latinas Get Tough Love”) square in the breasts with the remote, muting her loud moans and sending them to closed captioning; sweaty Chego (retro Prophet-5 synth [“differentiation”], piano) looking up from manically editing and illustrating a Gideon's with a tube of black eyeliner—both of them halted and all ears, waiting for the make or break word.

“Sloop's in,” said Don, biting his lip in triumph. “He's in for the long haul.”

Chego war-whooped and began jumping on the bed. “Sloopiedoopiedoo! Sloopy! Sloopdog! Sloopy!”

Quinn, who on any other occasion would have cherished this opportunity to punch Chego flat, just sat there trying to read Don, who was beaming like a proud father.

“He did it?” asked Quinn. “I mean, I guess I didn't think he'd work up the nerve.”

“Sloop! In the group! In the loop!”

“Did he do it?” asked Don in mock exasperation. “Did he do it? God, it was a thing of beauty. Fuck, just wait until he gets here. He'll tell you. Fuck.”

“Sloopy! Droopy! Troopy! Groopy!”

“Well,” said Quinn. “Shit. I mean, awesome, right?”

“Awesome's right—God, fucking animal.” Don threw a pair of drumsticks at Chego, who yowled and jumped off the bed and tried to crawl underneath it. “Jesus Christ. Remind me again why I bring him places? Chego, you're a lunatic.” He laughed and shook his head, as if at the dumb antics of a dog. “God, beautiful.”

Twenty minutes later there was knocking at the door and Sloop stumbled in from the rain, his black rubber trench coat shiny like wet tarmac and his long hair flat against his face and caught up in his
chin and neck hair.

“Well,” he said, sounding as sodden as he looked, “that's that.”

Don strode over and grabbed his hand and pulled him into a hug. Chego, who had been trying for some weeks to build up his rather tenderfoot narcotics resume to a respectable level, and was really gone on E at the moment, tried to press into Sloop's free hand a small pink tablet branded with a pair of kissy lips and the word “LOVE,” but Don chopped his wrist away.

“Tell 'em what happened,” Don said.

They all huddled together as Sloop recounted; all the while, Don would periodically clasp both his and Chego's scrawny shoulders like an evangelical and shake his head like he couldn't believe what he was hearing and mutter things: “You little beautiful liar,” “You fucking snake, you,” and “Thing of beauty.”

“Tell that part again,” when Sloop had finished and was eying Chego's pink pill on the carpet. “The part after you split with her and get on the bus. What the old man says. That, that is a singular moment.”

“Who the fuck cares, Don? Let's go, I'm hungry.”

“Shut up, Quinn. Just that one part, Sloop. That's what I'm talking about.”

Sloop swallowed. “Well, uh, yeah. He was just sitting there in the bus. Old man—and oh yeah: he had all these buttons on his shirt. Like medals, you know?”

“Ha ha! A fucking old-timer! A fucking vet! Watch guys, just wait for it.”

“Yeah, and he just looks at me looking at, you know, at Sam, and he says, 'She's your sweetie, huh?'—”

“Too perfect,” said Don.

“—and I didn't say anything back because I was like what, and then he says: 'Son,' he's like, 'I know how hard that is, telling them goodbye. You just write to her. Tell her you'll see her again, you hear?'”

“And you told him . . .?”

“Well, I couldn't think of anything to say to that, you know. Dude's lost it. Kinda sad, I mean, but what do you say?”

“Make it count,” said Don.

“So I say sure she's my girlfriend. I promised him I'll write her letters, told him I didn't know how I was gonna deal with being away from her, told him I loved her, just playing along, you know. It was weird, man, I felt weird. It would have been so much easier, the whole thing, if it wasn't for him. But it's like you said on the phone, right? Makes the gesture count more.”

Don fell back on the bed laughing. “Sloop,” he said sniffling, “Sloop. We've got our Sloop.” And, lunging back onto his feet: “Occasion, occasion. . . .” He opened the nightstand drawer and drew out a bottle of Jameson. “To Sloop, the prodigal son!” he toasted, “—and let's not forget Sam, the sacrificial lamb! Dear Sam: may your ricocheting love find its own high score in pinball America. Pachinko America, man—you know that's what she is, huh?”

“Uh. Sam, you mean?” asked Sloop.

“She's the smoking hot Goddess of the Arcade, that's what she is,” said Don. “She devours all the young guys and their gold tokens.”

“Wait, Sam does?”

“Awww, Sloop,” Don said, pinching Sloop's chin. “We've got our Sloop.” He swigged, and then turned the bottle and spilled a dash of whiskey on the carpet. “To Sam!” He passed the bottle on to Sloop, who took a mighty and grateful pull.

Don fell back on the bed. “Okay, so, what did Sam look like, buddy?” he asked, wiping his mouth.

“What?”

“I mean, did she cry at all when you told her?”

“Well,” said Sloop, “I was trying not to look at her so much. You know?”

“So you don't know if she was upset?”

“What the fuck does it matter, Don?” asked Quinn mutinously.

“I don't know, Quinn. What the fuck does it matter?”

Chego clapped his hands vigorously. “Stop stop stop stop stop! This is a place of no fighting!”

“No,” said Quinn. “No. What does it matter to you if Sloop's fiancé of two fucking years felt like shit when he was leaving her? Did your mother cry when you lied about Salt Lake and the contract and told her you were going off to—what was it now?—seminary? Oh no, that's right. She started screening your calls. You're so fucking funny, Don, you know that?”

The room instantly became quiet, all but for Chego's heavy breathing. Something seemed to stir behind Don's eyes. He grimaced and shut his eyes and pulled at his cult-black hair like he was in pain. “I know it, Quinn. I see your point. Man, I know it. I just get all caught up in these little gestures, you know?”

“I mean, whatever, okay?” said Quinn. “Listen, whatever, I don't care. Let's just get on the road and not talk about any of this anymore. Let's just get the fuck to Salt Lake, get to the Kilometer, the Kilwilkie, the Kilimanjaro, whatever the fuck toilet of a place it is we're playing. Sláinte, everyone. Sláinte, Skin Sleeve Records, Inc.”

Quinn then turned and unmuted the television and sat there, starchily and resolutely staring straight ahead into the screen. For a minute, all there was to be heard were the mammal sounds of porn. Then Don sprang off the bed and tackled Quinn to the floor. Sloop and Chego stood watching as a mad drama of limbs unfolded on the carpet: Quinn kicking at Don's flanks and clawing like a girl at Don's face; Don's face contorted and terrifyingly far removed from the human register as he punched Quinn repeatedly in the throat and the chest and ears until Quinn was left wheezing and rattling for air. Don straddled him and pinned his wild arms down with his knees.

“Don,” Quinn rasped, “Don.”

“Hush. Hush. Be still. I've had enough of this. Let me ask you something.”

“Don. . . .”

“I said hush! Now: what have you done? What? What have you given up? Look, see: Chego, give me your wrist. CHEGO, GIVE ME YOUR WRIST—here, see that Quinn? See that? Stupid, isn't it, a little melodramatic? Yeah, but never in your life could you do that.”

“You—” gasped Quinn.

“Me?” asked Don. “That's exactly it, it's not about me. That's what you,” he enunciated every syllable, “—just—don't—get. It's not about any of us.”

“Get—the fuck—off me!”

“I will when you begin to show some small fetus of a conscience, you immoral, selfish sack of shit. This is a crossroads, Quinn. I love you, but really, this is your last chance with us.”

“Conscience? You—you fucking sold your own mother for that label deal! Sorry, I guess that's all right though, you just got all caught up in a little fucking gesture!”

“Oh, oh, back to that word, selling. Sloop, Chego, let's have a show of hands from everyone who's heard that word way too much these days. Selling my soul, selling my mother, selling out—that's your little buzzword hipster hang-up. I couldn't care less about Skin Sleeve. I'll call them right now, tell them I'm renaming us 'Don and the Donner Party,' that we're only going to cover Mayhem songs, and that we're going to, I don't know, dress up in gimp suits and sacrifice Chego on an altar every show. Who cares? I don't care one bit, 'cause I'm not hanging on to anything, and that feels pretty great. It's not about me. It's about what I love.”

“God, get him off! Chego, what did you give him?”

“Uh, Chego,” said Sloop, nervously miming a cigarette. “Chego, man, smoke. Let's, uh. . . .” Chego, watching everything through a crack in his fingers, made a timid little hoot.

Don jerked Quinn by the hair as if he were about to scalp him. Quinn inhaled in pain. “Nuh-uh, you're looking at the soberest guy in the room, Quinn. No, this is good, Quinn, we're talking things out, okay? So let's talk about that word, love, before you get hung up on that too. What I'm about to say, it's going to sound a little crazy to you, but that's just because you're an immoral sack of shit. Love is patient, Quinn. Love is kind. Sometimes it's both. But most of all, all the time, love is sacrifice. So how on earth can you pretend to sympathize with poor, poor little Sam? It's like you're broken or something. You can't even love.”

Quinn bellowed like a bull and tried to pull his hair free from Don's hold.

“But when you can,” said Don, sweeping the room together with a flourish of his hand, “well, it's like you've pulled the world from its socket and let it spin free. That Madonna, you see, she was right: it does makes the world go round. She knew.”

Quinn thrashed wildly underneath Don, trying to buck him.

“Nothing doing, huh?” asked Don, scanning the floor. He picked the pink pill off the carpet. “Here. Here. First Communion, Quinn—here comes the airplane! Open. . . .” Quinn wouldn't, so Don pinched his nose until he did, forcing him to swallow the tablet like making a dog take its medicine. He grabbed hold of Quinn's wrists and kept him firmly to the floor.

Chego, sucking on a drumstick, ran whimpering like a monkey to the corner of the room, where he tried to make himself as small as possible.

“Hey, Chego,” consoled Don soberly, gently. “Chego. Everything's going to be alright, buddy. Shhh. It's going to be okay. He's going to be okay. I love Quinn. I love you, Quinn. Quinn's just had this night coming for a while.”

Don patted Quinn once on the cheek and pointed at him sternly. Quinn's wet red eyes crossed as he looked down the barrel of Don's finger. “Gotta cough 'em up, Quinn, gotta show her your tokens at some point. She doesn't trust someone who hasn't sacrificed anything, Quinn. Look at you, even you don't, you don't trust yourself one bit. I'm just giving you some time to meditate on all this, before you do something really and truly hateful. Just buying you time. That's all I'm doing.”

Don sat there straddling Quinn until he stopped kicking and thrashing. Then he stood up, wiped his bright brow and pulled his hair behind his ears, watching with a strange distant look, something like sadness, as Quinn stumbled off to the bathroom.

Bowed over clutching the banks of the toilet, outraged to the point of shaking, Quinn pushed fingers down his throat over and over, trying to make himself throw up, but only gagging—sounding, he couldn't help but think, like one of the girls on TV getting her Tough Love. He stopped, took a couple of deep breaths, tried to calm down. Then he attempted to throw up again, but all that came up was a small dangle of blood that unfolded into, wow, a red clover in the toilet water, and tiny merry ripples that were startlingly and suspiciously keen and articulated, and was that just adrenaline, or did the tablet really work that fast? He had never known it to work that fast. There was Listerine by the sink, so as a last-ditch effort he drank as much of it as he could, and then fell slumped against the bathroom door, biting his tongue to keep from gnashing his teeth. He could feel it; could he feel it? There was no way he could go out there like that, sky-high and just like dumb, Don-loving Chego, so he locked the door and waited for it to hit, waited for Don's chemical, tyrannical love to well up in him, swaddle his heart and open his eyes and shoot out like tender, nerve-ended light through his fingertips, which would lead him to unlock the door, go to Don, and learn to give up all things and follow Don, and love like Don, and. . . .

And why not? After all, Chego loved Don, Sloop loved Don, Don's mother loved Don, Jesus loved Don, Skin Sleeve loved Don, and wouldn't America love Don too? But stop stop stop—there was poise left to be salvaged, he just had to wait this out. And so he rallied his entire being into a fierce loathing of Don, furiously willing every cell of his body to buzz with hate; then he did it again; and again; each time he drew himself together, he panicked a little and worried that less and less of him was committed to the task, or that the hating itself was growing duller, or worse, that it was slowly being replaced by something else.