Beneath the Stain - Part 3 (13 page)

He closed his eyes tight, because it didn’t matter. “That’s my song?” he asked, voice shaking.

“Yeah,” Mackey said. “Is it okay that I wrote that?”

“It’s in your heart, Mackey. I’m not going to say it’s wrong.”

“But what do you think about it?”

Trav reached out and touched the letters again. His finger was shaking.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, his voice thick. God. This kid. This man. Trav could hardly speak. “The things in your heart, Mackey. They’re beautiful.” He was undone. All Mackey’s words about being friends, and this was about the most poetic thing Trav had ever seen. It wasn’t platonic. It was the song of lovers who hadn’t touched.

“Thanks, Trav,” Mackey whispered. Trav realized Mackey was crying, soundlessly, helplessly, and that this day with the chocolate cake and the catalogs and the family was probably a titanic undertaking for him.

“Are you going to send those to your family?” Trav asked, his chest suddenly aching.
Oh please, Mackey. Please come out to your family so this part of who you are can stop causing you so much pain.

“Yeah,” Mackey said. “Next week. Will you….” Trav heard him swallow. “Will you be there for my brothers when they get them?”

“I’ll be there for you too,” Trav promised.

Blake brought everybody back right then, and Mackey couldn’t seem to stop crying. He hugged everyone distractedly, not saying a lot, barely able to wipe his face on his shoulder. Trav walked him back to Dr. Cambridge, worried, sad, and hopeful all at once.

“It’s okay,” Cambridge reassured them, looking at Mackey with that exasperated combination of pride and sadness and pain that Trav knew from his own heart. “If you’re doing this right, it’s going to be like an open wound for a while. Don’t worry, Mackey. Let’s go back to your room and lie down for a while, and we’ll have a talk.”

“Bye, Trav,” Mackey said, and Trav folded him up, held him so damned tight he wasn’t sure if Mackey could breathe. But Mackey hugged him back, his arms wiry, strong, and reassuring.

“You’ll get better,” Trav whispered. “You’ll have to. I need to hear you sing that song.”

Mackey popped back from his hug and grinned. “That’s right!” he said, seeming to snap out of the tears for a minute. “You don’t have the music in your head like I do. That’s a deal!”

Cambridge led Mackey away, the battered spiral notebook still clutched in his hand. Trav walked back to the group thoughtfully.

Next week, he thought, was going to be
very
interesting.

O
N
THE
way home, the brothers were… well, thoughtful as well.

“What’re we doin’ next?” Kell asked, like he always did.

Trav grimaced. He couldn’t imagine Gerry had given this group that much guidance—he was pretty sure that had been Mackey. It was one of the reasons he’d started their running regimen. In a way he’d made the house into a rehab facility—they were all rehabilitating from being on the road and having nothing to do but hang out in hotel rooms and get high.

“How about you guys pick out some bunk beds and bedding for Mackey? We never did get to that, and we need to order it before next week if it’s going to get here on time.”

“Can we order some for Blake too?”

Trav sighed. Hell—that was his
own
prejudice against Blake, who’d been Mackey’s self-professed dealer. “Yes, of course. If you guys text, you can ask him what he wants.”

Kell smiled, and Trav thought that he really wasn’t a bad young man once you got past the redneck. And the urge to protect Mackey, which had gone so horribly awry.

And like he was justifying Trav’s faith, he suddenly asked a really perceptive question. “Blake said they’re getting along okay now—do you think that will last outside of rehab?”

Trav picked absently at his cast. The guys had all signed it—which was actually sort of cool—but mostly it felt like a fiberglass brick on his arm. It would be off a little after Mackey got back—he could only be grateful. “I think it will have to,” he said carefully. “I think your brother didn’t take losing your old guitarist well at all. Learning how to deal with change is something he’s got to do if he doesn’t want to start using again.”

Kell hmmed. “It’s just….” He sighed. “You gotta see. There wasn’t any grown-ups. Mom was working and it was just… us. All of us. Wasn’t much, but it was comfort. Grant left and….”

“No comfort,” Trav said bleakly. “Yeah, I figured that out, you know?”

Kell reached forward and smacked him on the thigh. “Well, good thing we’ve got you—you’re like the dad he never had.”

He was, by chance, sitting between Stevie and Jefferson in the back of the limo. He actually
saw
them exchange glances before they fell apart, laughing silently, one on each shoulder.

“I can’t
believe
this,” he muttered while Kell said, “What? What? Guys, what’d I say that was so goddamned funny?”

As one, the twins recovered themselves, but it was Shelia who spoke.

“You’re not very bright,” she said, wrinkling her little freckled nose. “I mean, you’ve always been real nice to me, and it’s great you haven’t given me shit for being with the guys, but seriously, Kell. Read a book.”

Kell scowled and glared at them all—and then lowered his sunglasses over his eyes and leaned back. Even Trav could see the disguised hurt.

He turned and looked at Jefferson and said just loud enough for Jefferson to hear, “Give it a rest. Mackey will tell him when he’s ready.”

Jefferson straightened and rolled his eyes. “God. Finally. If that’s what’s eating him alive—”

Trav thought of the song—
his
song—and the cry from the invisible boy who slept in forgotten corners and lived to make people love him or hate him or anything so long as they didn’t forget his name.

“It’s not,” he said, knowing it was true. “It takes more than one break and a bad tube of glue to make your brother.”

Jefferson started to crack up again. “Damn, that was almost poetry. You and Mackey—”

Trav shook his head, just that much, and Jefferson stopped talking, which was a good thing.

Trav didn’t even want to hear it spoken aloud.

T
WO
DAYS
later they got back from their run and scattered for their showers. They had a public appearance scheduled later that afternoon, a benefit they wouldn’t be playing at, but they would be signing autographs, and Trav’s entire day was focused on not pissing off Kell enough that he would actually
say
where the two missing members of his band were. Trav’s phone buzzed in the charger as he came out of his bathroom (a luxury, that, a bathroom all to himself) and was drying his hair.

Terry’s name flashed across the caller ID, and for a moment he was tempted not to answer.

“Terry?” God, he wished he was the type to hang up.

“You got
hurt
?” Terry’s voice pitched shrilly, and Trav grimaced.

“I’m sorry, they were supposed to send my bills and stuff here. I guess that hasn’t gone through yet.”

“What did you do?”

Trav half laughed. “I hit a wall.”

“
In a car?
” To his credit, Terry sounded worried for him, but Trav was too embarrassed to summon much sympathy.

“No, not in a car. With my fist. It was stupid, and childish, and I regretted it before I did it.”

Terry’s laugh was mostly disbelief. “Jesus, Trav—next time just hit the person!”

“I did,” Trav snapped. “And that didn’t make me feel any better.”

Terry’s low whistle seemed to stop time. “You
hit
someone?”

“I pulled the punch,” Trav argued weakly. “I mean, he said I pulled the punch.”

“You walk in with me with another man in the shower and I don’t even get a raised voice!” The hurt was unmistakable. “What did this guy do to make you hit him?”

“Took Kurt Cobain’s name in vain?” Trav hedged, and in the puzzlement that followed, he heard the boys, excited, downstairs.

“Hey, Trav—Mackey sent us letters! Did you know about this?” That was Stevie, calling up the stairs, and just the fact that he was calling for Trav’s opinion on something was reason for Trav to go down.

“I’ve got to go,” he said apologetically. “I’m sorry to worry you. B—”

“Trav?”

“Yeah?”

“I hope it works out.”

The guys were getting
really
excited, and Trav didn’t have time for this. “What works out?”

“This guy you love enough to get pissed over.”

Oh hell. “I gotta go
now
,” he snapped, and hung up the phone. In record time he’d barreled down the stairs in slacks and a polo shirt and loafers—no socks—half-afraid of what he’d find when he got there.

Kell sat on the cold tile floor of the kitchen with his arms around his knees, a lot like Mackey had sat next to Trav on the hospital bed, except Kell had a crumpled piece of paper in his hand.

Jefferson and Stevie were right next to each other, Stevie resting his chin on Jefferson’s shoulder as he read their letter, both of them smiling a little while Shelia rested her chin on Jefferson’s knee.

And Trav’s letter was sitting clear as day on the counter that separated the kitchen from the entryway.

“The letters came,” Trav said, wondering when they were going to get a call from Mrs. Sanders. “Good. It’s about time.”

Kell looked up through red-rimmed eyes. “You knew? You knew what this said?”

Trav sighed and hauled his creaky old man’s body to the kitchen, where he sagged against the island and slid down to join Kell on the floor. “Yeah,” he said, when they were eye level. “I proofread them—he didn’t want to piss anybody off.”

Kell swallowed and leaned his cheek against his knees. “I was supposed to keep him safe,” he said, looking lost. “I was supposed to—that was my job. Enos Cheever about ended him—he was just a little kid and his face was all bloody, and I hammered that fucker. Made him back off. And I thought, ‘This is what I am. I’m supposed to keep ’em safe.’ Kept Jefferson and Stevie out of Stevie’s house, ’cause—” He looked up to where the twins sat on the couch, and Stevie shrugged, like whatever Kell was saying, it wasn’t going to bother him. “Because,” he finished with dignity. “But… but that whole time I was killing him inside, and now I’ve got… I’ve got nothing. Who am I supposed to be for him?”

Trav sighed. For the umpteenth time since he’d walked into that crappy hotel room in Burbank, he wished he was a hugger.
My mother should have gotten this job.
Wasn’t the first time he’d had that thought either. “I don’t know, Kell. Who are you supposed to be for
you
?”

Kell looked at him like he’d started barking and scratching behind his ear with his back foot. “I’m me,” he muttered. “What am I supposed to be? We all know without Mackey I’d still be in Tyson, married to the first girl I knocked up and running cars for Grant’s old man.” He gave an irritated shrug. “Fact is, Mackey could have ditched us at any time. We’re just lucky we ride his fucking coattails.”

Man. He’d wanted so badly to hate Kell, but that just wasn’t going to stand up, was it? “So you kept your brother alive and he gave you an opportunity. What are you going to do with it?”

Kell glared at him. “I just told you—I’m not the kind of guy who gets opportunities. I got no fucking idea.”

Trav glared back. “Kell, this floor is making my ass hurt and you’re pissing me off. I get it. You’re more a doer than a thinker. There’s all sorts of shit you can
do
when you’re not playing for Mackey. You work out three hours a day. Great. Do you want to take some personal training courses, some nutrition classes, make that happen? You like cars—fucking awesome. Buy a car and restore it. It’s called a hobby, dumbshit. Fucking get one. Your brother still looks up to you. Did you not notice that he was afraid of losing you? Well, be a better person and you won’t feel like such an asshole!”

Kell curled his upper lip and sucked air through his teeth. “You know, you sound a lot like Mackey when you’re riled. You’re gay. Maybe you two should hook up.”

Trav pretended not to hear the riot that exploded from Stevie and Jefferson’s corner of the living room. He pushed himself up off the ground and extended his good hand to Kell. “Glad to have your blessing,” he muttered, but when Kell turned his attention to Jefferson and Stevie, he was relieved.

“Hey, guys—what’d Mackey say to
you
?”

Stevie looked over his shoulder and grinned, and for just a minute, he looked like any other young man in love. “He said congratulations,” Stevie said, shining with absolute joy. “He said he was happy that we were happy. He said we were all okay.”

Kell squinted at them. “And this was important to you?” he asked, not like he was being shitty but like he was trying to understand.

“Sure it is,” Trav said, realizing it as he said it. “It’s why there’s all the fuss about legalizing gay marriage. When you’re happy, you want the world to acknowledge that your happiness is valid.”

“That’s a lot of big words,” Kell said, looking at him levelly. A month ago Trav might have missed the faint quirk to his lip.

“Don’t be a fucker,” Trav said amicably, and Kell burst out
laughing.

“Yeah, yeah—Mackey’s right. Congratulations, the three of you, on whatever the hell you are. Man, you’re better adjusted than the rest of us fucktards, that’s for sure.”

There was general laughter, and Trav’s pocket buzzed insistently. He knew who it was.

They get them?
Mackey asked, and Trav could imagine him lying on his back and texting, hands shaking, that fuck-off-and-love-me expression on his face because he didn’t want anyone to know this was important.

They’re fine. They still love you. Kell’s going to get a hobby, and I just saw Stevie’s teeth.

He has teeth?

See—it’s going to be okay.

There was a pause, and even Trav’s hands started sweating.

Anything from my mom?