Never Mind the Pollacks Page 21

  “Holy shit!” I say. “R. L. Burnside! What are you doing here?”

  The playing stops.

  “Son, I ain’t R. L. Burnside,” says the man. “I wouldn’t record no album with no Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.”

  He starts playing again.

  Then I recognize him for the second time.

  “Clambone,” I whisper. “Clambone.”

  Again, he stops.

  “Now that’s right, Paul St. Pierre,” he says. “I’ve come for you.”

  “You know me?” I said.

  “Oh, I know you,” he says. “I know you. You’re trying to tell the story of rock ’n’ roll. The Neal Pollack story.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Your tale is not complete,” he says.

  “I know.”

  “That’s because you’ve been untrue. You’ve been untrue to the truth.”

  “My research skills are impeccable,” I say.

  “No doubt,” he says. “But your story has no ending. I’m here to tell you that it must end. The truth is not true if it’s incomplete.”

  “What ending?” I say.

  “You know,” he says.

  I clutch my head in my hands. I begin to weep.

  “NO!” I say. “I DON’T KNOW THE ENDING! I CAN’T FINISH MY BOOK!”

  “Yes, you do, Paul,” says Clambone. “And yes, you can.”

  “Ruth,” I moan. “I did it for you, Ruth.”

  “You owe it to Pollack,” Clambone says. “You owe it to memory. The world needs to know. Tell the folks the truth.”

  Clambone is right, of course, because Clambone is always right.

  And so the ending shall be told.

  I went to the address in Brooklyn I’d written down. Williamsburg? What the hell? I’d never heard of this neighborhood, though I’d been to Brooklyn a few times before. Some friends lived in Park Slope, where we met monthly to discuss the future of book reviewing, and I had a cousin in Brooklyn Heights. But no. There was no way Pollack could be living here, in the basement of a poultry-processing plant on a dead-end street with a view of the East River and the BQE.

  The air was dense with shit and feathers. I peered into a thin grease-stained window with bars. An enormous cat peered out back at me and hissed mightily. That was one of Pollack’s bitches, all right. The door was open. I went inside.

  “MRRROWWWWWW!”

  The cat was on my head, clawing, within a second. Another one was crawling up my leg, dug in for the duration, ripping flesh, seeking bone. God, it hurt. But I was used to dealing with these creatures. I shook a little conical container.

  “Kitties,” I said. “I have treats!”

  The cats released immediately.

  It was dusk outside and the room was lit like a tomb. But I’d come prepared for that as well. There were matches in my pockets, and three candles. I lit one and saw a cheap wood veneer kitchen table covered with crumpled sheets from a yellow pad, and album covers, and discarded nitrous-oxide canisters. My research sense was tingling. I uncrumpled one of the papers. It read, “When is the new My Bloody Valentine album coming out? Must get free copy to review.”

  Pathetic.

  I chose another one. Pollack had written:

  “My favorite bands right now, in no particular order, are, Swervedriver, Jawbreaker, Seam, the Breeders, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Royal Trux, Sonic Youth, Verve, Beat Happening, Sebadoh, Superchunk, Tsunami, Unrest, Belly, Pavement, and Beck, whose Mellow Gold is the best record I’ve heard in many a day. Thank god I’m alive. I really think this is the year my writing is gonna break out.”

  I realized that there was music playing in the room. Some kind of hip-hop, but not the slick stuff you heard on the radio now. It was old-school music, with meaning. Between the candlelight and the music, the room seemed to pulsate slightly. It stank in there, of chickens from the factory, and of cats, but also the faint whiff of unwashed human flesh. I gagged into my sleeve, lit another candle, and moved forward.

  Neal Pollack was naked on the filthiest futon that I’d ever seen. His legs crossed at the ankles, and his arms formed the upper half of a T. He lay among a mess of needles and plastic bags, discarded cough-syrup containers and rubber tubing, pills of diverse color and shape, a half-drunk bottle of isopropyl alcohol, pipes of partially smoked weed. I moved the candle closer. Pollack looked pale and gaunt. Dried streams of drool caked on either side of his mouth. I felt Pollack’s arm, and recoiled immediately with a preternatural shiver. Pollack was freezing to the touch.

  “So much senseless death in the world,” I said.

  I picked up a pipe and sparked. Pollack usually had good stuff. I sucked a sweet inhalation of narcotic earth, held it for about ten seconds, and then exhaled. The air instantly smelled better.

  Pollack shot up like a bolt from hell.

  “DON’T DO IT, KURT!” he screamed. “YOU’RE TOO YOUNG!”

  I dropped the pipe, which clanged on the concrete floor. The force of Pollack’s reanimation had been enough to blow out the candle. I scrambled in his pockets for the other one. Pollack was sniffing the air.

  “What is this?” Pollack said. “Does my nose deceive me?”

  A moan rose out of Pollack, low at first, but then it became almost a bray.

  “WHO THE FUCK IS SMOKING MY WEED?”

  I lit the third candle. Pollack was patting around the mattress for something. He found a pill and popped it in his mouth.

  “Oh,” Pollack said. “Hey, Paul. What’re you doing here?”

  “You called me,” I said. “From a pay phone. And begged me to come over.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “You said you were going to kill yourself.”

  “Naw,” said Pollack. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Well, you seemed dead when I came in.”

  “I was just tired,” said Pollack. “I’ve been remembering.”

  “Remembering what?”

  “My whole life. It’s been pretty interesting.”

  Without being asked, Pollack began to tell me everything. For the first minute, which was basically the unhappy boyhood with immigrant parents section, my eyes glazed. But then Sam Phillips entered the narrative. No, I thought. Pollack didn’t know Sam Phillips. It wasn’t possible. But by the time Pollack got to the point where Elvis was playing his Bar Mitzvah, I was taking notes on whatever he could find, detailed notes, with underlining and asides to myself to make follow-up calls. This was a rock ’n’ roll story unlike any I’d ever heard.

  Pollack talked and talked, seemingly in a trance, about the mysterious bluesman who’d haunted his dreams since he was a boy. He told me about his mother’s disastrous marriage to Jerry Lee Lewis, about his unverifiable folksinger wanderings across the earth, his symbiotic friendship with the young Bob Dylan, his crush on Brian Jones, his brief stint as head songwriter at Pickwick Records, his days as a hairless androgyne, meeting Iggy before he became Iggy, and about the story he’d heard about the spaceship in Detroit during the race riots. Forward the narrative moved, forward into the fog, toward Asbury Park and amnesia and then the stuff I knew about, the Patti Smith stuff and the Ramones stuff and the glam period, and then veered away from my knowledge, to the secret indie days in L.A. and Athens and Olympia. Pollack talked for hours that seemed like days that seemed like seconds.

  It was nearly dawn. I needed to get home. The family had a plane to Mexico that afternoon. It was time for my annual sabbatical, which I’d dearly earned. I looked at his notes. More than a hundred pages. I’d have to do some digging, look at the newspaper clippings, and conduct hundreds of interviews, naturally. But the outline was all there. I had his book, perhaps my masterpiece, there in front of me, scribbled on yellow pads, prescription slips, and the backs of cereal boxes. I would make Pollack’s life’s work my own, get a huge book contract, making sure that Pollack got between five and ten percent of the advance. It was the least I could do.

  “So then I woke up
here, and you were in this room, smoking my weed,” Pollack said. “That’s the last thing I remember.”

  “This is great, Neal,” I said. “A really great story.”

  “Yeah,” said Pollack. “Well, you didn’t have to live through it. Next life, I’m going to dental school.”

  I got up to leave.

  “Wait,” Pollack said. “I left out one detail.”

  “What?”

  “I fucked your wife.”

  I sighed.

  “I know,” I said. “I forgave you for Barbara long ago.”

  “No,” said Pollack. “Not Barbara. The other one.”

  “You fucked Commie Girl?”

  “Oh yeah, her too. I forgot about her.”

  That left only one wife, my beloved Ruth. No. She was my dearest possession. She belonged to me. There’s no way she’d ever have sex with Neal Pollack.

  “You…” I said. “With Ruth?”

  Pollack took a long toke from his favorite pipe.

  “Shit,” he said. “I’ve been banging her for years. She once said something to me like, ‘Paul is my husband. But you’re my man.’"

  I dropped my notes, shaking.

  Pollack laid his head down. He blew out a puff. He turned and looked at me.

  “Hey, Paul,” he said. “Guess what? I fucked all your wives.”

  Without a thought, without a pause, I ripped the pillow from underneath Pollack’s head.

  “You…” I said. “You…”

  “You married well,” Pollack said. “Ruth’s a hot lay.”

  I shoved the pillow in Pollack’s face.

  “Mmmph!” Pollack said. “Cut it out!”

  I flipped the pillow vertically, and pressed down, hard. Where had I read about asphyxiation? Probably in some heavy-metal liner notes somewhere, and now I was going to try it myself. My left thumb pressed into Pollack’s larynx. I could feel it vibrate; Pollack was trying to scream. Pollack jerked and twitched, but the drugs had slowed his reflexes. It only took ten, maybe fifteen seconds, before he relented. His body went slack, twitched, and went slack again. His chest was heaving, but irregularly. I pressed harder. I’d never felt so much strength and power, so much anger. It was like a wicked guitar solo, only murder. A throat ligament snapped beneath the pressure. There was no more sound, not a ripple of movement.

  Pollack was done.

  I removed the pillow. Pollack’s eyes had rolled up into his head. There was a thick blue bruise near his Adam’s apple. I had to cover that, so I took some rubber tubing and tied it around Pollack’s neck. Then I jabbed a used needle into the bruised area. There. Now it looked like an overdose. Everyone had expected Pollack to OD anyway. I was just fulfilling a prophecy.

  Pollack’s eyes opened. Then his mouth. I gasped.

  “Take…care…of…my…kitties,” he said.

  And then he died.

  Max jumped on my back. Kansas City attached to my side. They clawed and they started to bite.

  “OK,” I said. “I’ll take care of your kitties, Pollack.”

  I staggered toward the futon, removed the case from Pollack’s pillow, put it on the floor, opened my kitty treat container, and tossed it in the case. The cats detached themselves from me and burrowed. Quickly, I tied the case shut. I ran outside, taking care not to slam the door. The cats screamed. I dashed half a block, scrambled up on some concrete. With a desperate heave, I threw the cat-filled pillowcase into the river. It splashed and sank.

  “Fucking cats,” I said. “You deserved it.”

  I had to wash off the blood and grime. Maybe I’d stop at the Y on the way home. Then I had to call my agent. I would still do the book, but I was going to tell the truth about what an asshole Pollack was. Now I knew what questions to ask. Oh, it would be so juicy! I thought of the title. American Rock Monster: The Lies and Betrayals of Neal Pollack.

  But first, home to my wife, who belonged to me and only me. Screw Pollack, I thought. And now, vacation.

  I stood in the middle of a parking lot next to what had once been Maxwell Street, sobbing. Clambone looked at me without emotion. He strummed absently on his guitar.

  “I’m a murderer,” I said.

  “Yes, son, you are,” said the Clam. “But so am I. We’ve all murdered at one time or another.”

  “I’d blocked it all out,” I said. “It was the only way.”

  “But you can be whole now,” he said. “Because now you’ve told the true tale. Your story is accurate. But more important, you’ve learned the Message.”

  “What Message?” I said.

  “The Message that has been embedded in American soil since the beginning of America.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Would you like to know the Message?” he said. “After all, you’ve learned it.”

  “Sure.”

  Clambone opened his arms wide to the sky. He closed his eyes, tilted his head upward, and said, “Blind, unfocused rage is the emotional core of all great art. And once you’ve experienced it, you can make rock ’n’ roll.”

  He began to fade.

  “Wait!” I said. “Don’t go! What am I supposed to do now?”

  “Make rock ’n’ roll…” he said.

  He kept fading. Even though he wasn’t singing, I could hear his voice anyway. The sky was growing cloudy, the wind whipping and bitter.

  “Please!” I shouted. “Don’t tell anyone I murdered Pollack.”

  Clambone laughed, a cackle twinged with kindness. He’d broken down into a spectral outline, and was receding backward across the parking lot.

  “Shit,” he said. “I’ve got better things to do. Like my three P.M. date with Josephine Baker in heaven…”

  With that, Clambone vanished, and I was alone.

  Thunder clapped. Seven bolts of lightning struck around me like an electric cage. A chill rain pelted from the unforgiving heavens, and I found myself seized by a wave of blind, unfocused rage, just as Clambone had predicted. My wife had left me. I had an alcohol problem. I was a murdering bastard, a biographical leech. I was broke and I smelled like shit. Without knowing, I knew where I needed to go. I said:

  “ARRRRRRRRGH!”

  I tore down Halsted to Roosevelt, and then down Roosevelt to Michigan. I ran in the wind and the rain, down the Magnificent Mile, past the popcorn shops and the boutiques and the malls that bore the façades of other malls, and the Hancock Building and the Water Tower. I ran all the way to Oak Street, where I encountered a police barricade, so I turned left and ran to Clark. I ran eight more blocks and then I stopped, stunned. I looked to my left and saw a playground, a shopping center, and a new branch library.

  “Holy shit,” I said. “They tore down Cabrini Green.”

  Something said to me, run, Paul, run, and so I did. Past Planet Thai, My Thai, and Thai One On, six neighborhood bars that used to be theaters, and six theaters that used to be neighborhood bars, on into the district that sold incense, ironic lunchboxes, and spiky dog collars. I’d never run forty-five blocks in my life, but I still had all my breath. My eyes burned with bloody anger. Then I saw it. The Guitar Center. In the window was propped a 1956 Les Paul Fender Stratocaster.

  I threw myself into the window. It shattered. The guitar was mine. I ripped it from its perch and launched myself down the street, an unstoppable force of one. The sky had darkened with rain mixed with sleet. The wind was unbearable and the air felt like it was full of knives. I held the guitar over my head and shouted,

  “ROCK ’N’ ROLL! ROCK ’N’ ROLL! MOTHERFUCKING ROCK ’N’ ROLL!”

  Everyone got out of my way.

  I stopped to take a piss on the Harry Caray statue, and I just kept running. This neighborhood had so many restaurants. Past the cemetery and the International Leather Museum, I ran and ran. At the door to a bar in a yellow-brick building, I stopped. Inside, I heard the distinct beginning guitar notes of “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”

  I needed whiskey, now.

  The bartender was a squat middle
-aged blond woman who looked just off the truck from Appalachia. She wore a T-shirt bearing the image of a beautiful young thing playing honky-tonk music. The text read, “Wanda Jackson: The First Lady of Rockabilly.”

  “Whaddya have, darlin’?” she said.

  “Whiskey,” I said. “Make it a triple.”

  She noticed my guitar.

  “Nice Les Paul Fender Stratocaster. Is that a 1958?”

  “1956,” I said.

  “Ah,” she said. “You should play. It’s open-mike night.”

  I looked around. In a room next to the bar was a stage. Between both rooms, there were about twenty people in the place. Half of them were old men asleep, heads on the bar. There was a middle-aged Chinese woman, face heavily made up, glancing around nervously over a glass of white wine. The rest were bikers or shit-kickers of some sort. They watched the house band wrestle with Hank Williams cover after Hank Williams cover.

  Blind, unfocused rage, I thought. OK. I can do this.

  The song ended, and the bandleader said: “Our sign-up sheet is empty. Doesn’t matter if the mike is open if there’s no one behind it.”

  I approached the stage with my guitar.

  “I’ll play,” I said.

  “Well, all right,” said the bandleader.

  I got onstage. Took off my shirt. Plugged in the guitar.

  “What’s your name?” he said.

  I held my guitar above my head and said: “MY NAME IS PAUL ST. PIERRE! AND I AM ROCK ’N’ ROLL! STAND BACK!”

  A chord progression flashed through my mind. Even though I’d never played an instrument before, somehow I was ready. I hit the first note.

  A sound louder and more dissonant than anything ever heard before on earth came out of that guitar. Someone in the room shrieked. I hit the second note. It was even louder, and more dissonant. Holy shit. My heart was full of fire. I was a goddamn punk rocker, at last.

  “Fuck you!” I heard from the audience.

  I stopped.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “You suck!”

  My music had clearly agitated the crowd. Two of the old men lay dead on the floor. The Chinese woman was sobbing. The bikers and shit-kickers moved toward me, grinding their hands. I couldn’t tell which one of them had called me out.