Read Online Hothouse by Chris Lynch - Free Book Online Page B

were as talented as anyone in the industry … Russell on the banjo and Dave on mean fiddle....”
    There. There is where it can’t go. As I said, I can listen to a lot of uncomfortably wonderful things being said about my father, can even listen to a superhuman barrage of them to make a guy’s knees go weak like today. But the rule’s the rule—it’s got to be true.
    I turn right around to catch Jim Clerk’s eye. He looks down at me.
    â€œWhat?” he asks, bagged.
    â€œCome on,” I say.
    He’s stifling a laugh now. “He was a great fiddler.”
    There are a fair few murmurs, in the band and out beyond, but nobody’s going to step into this one but me.
    â€œHe was awful,” I say.
    My mother gives me a playful shake of the shoulders, and parts of the crowd boo me in defense of my old man. And I get a shiver like I haven’t had since. Since, the night I shivered myself to sleep.
    It is the best Dad moment I have had, since I haven’t had the dad.
    It’s got it all. It’s real, and it’s fun. It’s got loyal and it’s got great and it’s got true.
    Just like the man.
    This is so hard. Beautiful, but so mind-splitting hard.
    â€œHe was not awful,” Jim plays along.
    I nod defiantly, because words aren’t coming now. He had only played the thing for a year and a half; he was self-taught. He had no musical anything in him but he learned just so he could be in this band right here, because he wanted to belong to everything, anything that was happening here, with these guys.
    But really, when he practiced, cats came to the house in gangs to free their tortured comrade.
    â€œHe did not stink,” Jim finally says. “Dave was … earnest, on the fiddle.”
    The crowd roars approval, and finally, DJ jumps in. “But my dad was a great banjo player !” And this statement seems to please him more than anything else so far.
    He was great, too. Russell was great at whatever he did. Russell was a star.
    The band starts a slow, gentle plucked rhythm, swampy, pale-blue bluegrass and Jim shouts out, “Friends, the Hothouse Heroes!” and backs away, pulling back a curtain at the rear of the stage.
    Sitting together on adjacent chairs, necks crossed like old friends, my dad’s fiddle and Russ’s banjo.
    Hanging up on the wall behind them, is the memorial.
    It is big, five feet by five feet, mixed-media. There are two oversized brass replicas of the city FD badges, but with the names Russ and Dave engraved. The badges lean on each other at an angle, like the comedy/drama faces at a playhouse. An eagle spreads its wings behind the badges, and in front of him a ribbonlike banner flutters above and below carrying the words OUTRAGEOUS and COURAGEOUS .
    Hundreds of people gasp at once, but they all sound like my mother to me. I turn back and look at her. She has her hand covering her mouth, and her eyes are blinking three times the speed of the three-beat pattern as the band plays “Waltzing Matilda” right at us.
    â€œYou all right?” I ask her as she squeezes my shoulder hard enough to get juice out of it.
    â€œIt’s all right to cry,” is what she says.
    â€œGo ahead,” I say, being, you know, the man round here now.
    â€œI meant you,” she says.
    â€œMe? I’m not crying.”
    â€œIf you say so,” she says with a smile and another mighty squeeze. There’s the juice again. “If you’re not, you’re the only one.”
    I turn back to the stage and watch the goings-on from head-bow angle now. See, don’t be seen.
    Beside me, DJ’s got the same idea, different approach. He has plunked right down to the ground, sitting cross-legged, staring up, and out, at nothing in particular. He is moving just slightly with the music, though, so something okay is going on, too. I give him a little wave, like we are in sight but far apart. He gives me a small