Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [100]
“The waitin’ is the worst. Once you get the results, at least you know one way or the other.” Of course, if the test was negative, Johnny would have to be retested in six months. He wouldn’t be out of the woods. “We were careful,” Rooster reminded him, and the past tense rang through the room.
The kids kept coming.
Jude smelled cigarettes on one guy’s breath and sent him home; another guy went with him, saying “Fuck this shit” and walking fast. But the next afternoon, two more came to take their places, skinny, zitted-up kids with Bert and Ernie eyebrows who’d heard from someone who’d heard from someone else that they played killer music here; could they sit in? With Johnny gone, Delph and Kram were instantly the elders; no one knew that they were new recruits, too, that they were still imploring their mothers to leave the carne out of the chili. To show up the other kids, they gave up dairy and eggs, too, scowling at boxes of cookies and crackers that contained sodium caseinate, dry milk powder, whey. “Don’t you know this shit shrinks your balls?” One by one, kids would sidle in and say, “Eaten nothing but plants for three days, man!” And they’d get noogies and ass-slaps from Jude and Delph and Kram, more approval than they’d gotten all year for their mediocre performances as students and athletes and sons, and they’d come in the next day as though they had no other place to be.
And Jude’s contest of self-restraint went on. He gave up honey. He gave up Coke. Mouthwash. Processed sugar. His multivitamin, encased in gelatin. He went so many days without jerking off that he lost count. He worried that he might forget how to do it, as he might forget where Mario’s secret coins were hidden in the Mushroom Kingdom, but he was committed, those were the breaks. Sometimes, when he thought about the genius ridiculous fun he used to have with Teddy, or when he’d accidentally listen to a really good Black Flag song about getting fucked up, or when he’d come across one of his old hiding places (he actually found a little shwag in the toe of a pair of leather sneakers he was throwing out—what he would have done for that a few months ago!), he’d get a whiff of the old Jude, who’d say, What’s next, man? A Megalife T-shirt? But it didn’t take long to shake him off. “By the restraint of his senses,” said Johnny’s Laws of Manu, “he becomes fit for immortality.” He’d be lying if he said the Krishna stuff didn’t weird him out a little, but he did feel immortal, he felt fabulous, indestructible, he was a straight edge god. Flushing the shwag, he felt a rush of righteous adrenaline in his veins. So maybe he was addicted to the game itself. What was wrong with that? It was like being addicted to wheatgrass, or jogging.
And he could read. He read antivivisection newsletters and liner notes and even a few pages of Johnny’s Bhagavad Gita. On the back of the toilet was a stack of dog-eared, water-ruined zines, all of which Jude had read more than once. “Are you hooked on phonics, Judy?” asked Delph. It was still hard; he still struggled to align his letters; he still had to rest his eyes. But maybe he didn’t have dyslexia; maybe he didn’t even have FAS. Maybe he’d just been a burnout, and now his synapses were awakening after a long hibernation.
Meanwhile, the band practiced. Matthew filled in for Johnny on second guitar. On afternoons when Delph had to work, one of the twins played bass. By the middle of June, they had enough tracks for a seven-inch. They had at least twenty guys with their fists full of dollars, ready to buy it. Army of Four, they’d call it. An homage to Gang of Four and a nod to Army of One, but irresistible, said Jude, for a band named after one of the greatest military companies in history.
But they were broke.
“What are we waiting around for?” Kram said, working the bass pedal restlessly. Delph, too, wanted to get on the road, wanted to quit his job at the Record Room and haul ass out of Vermont. He was days away from graduation.
“We got to record the album before we can do a tour,” Jude said. He wanted to do it