Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [91]
Anyone in the audience that night would have seen the fortieth president of the United States, in camo pants and T-shirt, doing beautiful injury to his Les Paul. Who the fuck are these guys? shouted the kids in the crowd into their friends’ ears, not just because the singer’s face was concealed from view but because their sound wasn’t bad, it was hard, it was wicked. What the fuck is this? they asked in the beat between songs, before the next one started up.
The fact was, even before the Green Mountain Boys’ debut was over, Jude had forgotten it. The stage was a ship he was riding. His voice was a transmission from another planet. He was not on shrooms—Get that shit, he sang, away from me!—but he remembered the one time he’d been on this stage before, for a class play about the Green Mountain Boys in which he wore a tricornered hat Harriet had fashioned out of black felt. He and Teddy had sneaked a few shrooms before the call, and carousel horses had flitted in the aisles of the audience. He remembered only a single line from the play, spoken in a lisp by the kid who played Ethan Allen: “We will use violence and coercion, but we will take no lives!”
That was how the militia gave its name to the band. “They were vigilantes,” Jude had recalled one afternoon in the basement. “Guerrilla citizens.”
“Like Gorilla Biscuits?” said Kram, who was pawing through a pile of Harriet’s nude drawings.
“Outlaws,” Johnny clarified.
“It sounds like a bluegrass band,” Delph worried.
Kram said, “My mom has a dinette set from Ethan Allen.”
“It’s not bad,” said Johnny.
Jude had expected Johnny to head the band’s lineup; it was the natural order of things. Johnny had led Army of One, and he sang, and he was the superior guitarist, and he was the oldest, and the straightest; he was Johnny. So Jude had been unprepared for Johnny to hand the mike over to him one afternoon while they practiced in the basement. “You try this one.” It was as though Johnny were testing him, seeing what he could do. And before long it seemed right, Jude’s voice the band’s voice, Jude’s basement, Jude’s equipment, let’s ask Jude. And even though Johnny was the band’s spiritual taskmaster, the straight edge grandfather, he seemed to prefer the anonymity of second string. Teddy had been the same way, Jude thought. He was always willing to go along for the ride.
Teddy was not here tonight; he missed the rapturous woof of the crowd; the plea for an encore; the drunk, breathless step down from the stage. But here was his brother, finding Jude again in the humid press of the crowd, holding a plastic cup of water up to the lip of Jude’s mask, easing his head back and helping him drink.
Toward the end of Phrog’s set, Jude spotted Hippie. He was standing at the back of the gymnasium, performing a slow, swimmy dance that required closing the eyes. Jude felt his heartbeat slowly accelerate. He put a hand to his face to make sure the mask was still there, though he could smell its oily film, see the blurry flesh-colored sockets around his eyes. When Hippie headed for the door, Jude followed him outside and watched him cross the street, safely out of range of city property, to the chain-link fence in front of the high school. Hippie’s bike was not in sight, but he was wearing his fag bag, as well as a suede jacket with tassels down the arms. Jude didn’t want to get too close yet. He stood up against the building, watching the cluster of smokers gathered out front.
“Nice set, Mr. President,” one of them called.
“Thanks,” Jude called back. His voice sounded rubbery inside his mask.
“You guys going to have more shows here?”
“I don’t know,” Jude said. “I hope so.”
Someone else joined him from the shadows, leaning an elbow on the wall. “Hey, man, can I get an autograph?”
Jude flinched.
“Fuck off, Rooster.”
Rooster nodded toward the smokers. “What do you think those posers thought of your song ‘Blowing Smoke’?”
“They’re probably going to buy the seven-inch.”
“Oh, yeah? When’s it comin’ out?”
“Soon as we record