“My nephew Googled you.”
“Why didn’t he just ask you what he wanted to know?”
“He just wanted to make sure you were a good guy and he knew I would say that you were.”
“So, did he find anything he didn’t like?”
Tia slipped off her shoes and got back in bed next to Dwight.
“Don’t be mad.”
Dwight chuckled, reached for a half-full can of Vernors from the night before.
“Let me guess. When I spit on that kid in Rhode Island, the DUI on New Year’s Eve 2009, or Night Cry off the second record?”
Tia rubbed Dwight’s chest, idly tracing a few of the dragon tattoos.
“He wants to know about Tate.”
Dwight exhaled. “Well, if he knows that Tate exists...existed... why didn’t he read the damn articles?”
“He read the articles. He’s 14. Just like you were when… He wants to know if you’ll talk to him about it.”
“What does he wanna know?”
Tia sat back.
“I’m not really sure. I think it’s that he’s the same age and he can’t imagine losing a friend...like...that.”
“I’ve told that story in five billion interviews, it’s not like--”
“Honestly, my love, truthfully, I think a lot of it is that he’s thrilled his aunt is dating a rock star and wants an excuse to talk to you. And he didn’t want to ask something boring. He wanted to ask you something that meant something. He’s a smart kid...shit, he’s my sister’s whole life...”
“Of course I’ll talk to the kid. I’m not some ogre. That...incident...has just been on my mind again ever since my mom died.”
It wasn’t something Tia expected to hear. They had started dating after Dwight’s mom had passed and he had never seemed very emotional about it.
“You don’t have to talk to him about it now, or even soon. I’ll promise him we’ll come visit one of these days and he can ask you then. Maybe by then he’ll have something different he wants to ask you.”
She nestled up against him; the tattoos, the scars from lit cigarettes and errant pyrotechnics, incongruous with the imported sheets and view of the private lake.
Dwight slipped his right hand behind Tia’s neck, played with her earlobe.
“Know what I never told anyone?”
“It’s hard to believe that there’s something you’ve never told anyone, but if you wanna share something for the first time, I’d be honored to hear it.”
“You’ve seen that crime scene picture, right? Everyone’s seen it. Seems like, anyway.”
Tia nodded quietly. She had seen it, before she ever saw the band, ever knew she would meet Dwight, much less wind up in his bed. She hadn’t committed the photo to memory, but this seemed like a horrible time to admit that.
“You know how you can only see lower legs and feet?”
Tia nodded again. What must that be like? Your best friend gets killed, and there is part of him on the front page of the paper. Then in magazine articles. Then you’re accused of being an accomplice in the crime. Even after he was exonerated...Tia couldn’t imagine. The worst thing in her childhood was the death of her pet rabbit and their pontoon boat catching fire.
“Tate’s wearing Pumas.”
Tia didn’t remember the brand of shoe but nodded slightly.
“There was the Slayer poster, of course, because the bible thumpin’ Grant Creek newspaper had to include that, fuckin’ small town asswipe rag that it was.”
Tia nodded again. She felt like her head was on a tiny spring and was furious with herself for destroying what could have been a serene morning.
“And of course the Dungeons and Dragons figures and the unsharpened knock-off medieval sword Tate got at the flea market…”
Dwight stood, looked out the window, turned back to Tia.
He chuckled, not a laugh, that little sorrowful spasm when something doesn’t make sense to you.
“When the papers said we were all into Satan--and we fucking were, the same way the kids down the block were into Iron Man. It was just..you know, it wasn’t religion…”
Tia, despite her affection for the man standing in front of her, was starting to get annoyed. Dwight had said these things to other people. She had read the Iron Man sentence online, verbatim.
“My mom…”
He laughed, and this time tears started to form at the corners of his eyes.
“My mom was so confused, she thought Pumas were Satanist. Devil shoes.”
Dwight ran his hands through his naturally jet black hair, hair like he came out of the womb to be a rockstar.
“I saved all my paper route money... the Courier, the big city paper, big to us anyway...to buy my Pumas. I think Tate’s mom got him his for his birthday, The one coming up, the one he never…”
Dwight shook his head like he was trying to flick the memory off him.
“So my mom took my shoes. Satanist shoes. Pumas.Fuck. “
“My friend was dead, I didn’t know why, or how, and all I wanted was some normalcy, to put on my shoes and go ask somebody, anybody, what the fuck happened to Tate.”
Tia’s lip quivered. She was no historian of Dwight Cochran, but she had never heard nor read the shoe story.
“But my mom, my idiot mom had taken my shoes. So when the sheriff showed up, and I don’t have my shoes, my mom tells the sheriff she took ‘em.”
Dwight sucked little breaths through his teeth. Tia didn’t really need to hear the rest of the story. She wanted to stand and hug him but she was frozen.
“So the Sheriff, he doesn’t get it, that she took the shoes for the shoes. Because that doesn’t make sense, right? Who takes their kid’s shoes, for any reason, right? The sheriff, he thinks my mom took my shoes because of the laces, because she thought I was gonna hang myself, and why would I hang myself, I have no reason to hang myself unless I killed my fucking best friend, right?”
Tia launched herself from the bed and threw her arms around Dwight. He embraced her and kept talking.
“So now, my best friend is dead and I’m in a jail cell under suicide watch, and there’s nothing I can do about it, but these cops are convinced I must have killed Tate because my mom took the shoes.”
Dwight pushed Tia back so he could look her in the eye.
“It took me years to forgive her about the shoes. I never told anyone while she was alive because it’s so fucking dumb to think shoes are Satanist. I was never gonna tell anyone.
I grew up, moved on, forgave her for the shoe thing.
Then she died, and they gave me all her stuff. There were some old VHS tapes. I knew there were some old talent shows and garage band stuff, and maybe some of me and Tate playing soccer, so I played ‘em.
“On one of the tapes…”
Dwight pulled Tia closer to him again.
“On one of the tapes was a documentary I never watched. I guess my management refused all the interviews...I dunno..you might have seen it, but I never did.”
Tia shook her head no against Dwight’s chest. She hadn’t watched any documentaries about him.
“All our DNA was in Tate’s bedroom. Of course it was. We were always there, listening to CDs and playing D&D and goofing around. So we were all suspects.
Herds of reporters went around town to all our houses. They went to Ray’s house. His dad said “ no comment” and slammed the door. Justin’s aunt was a lawyer and she greeted the reporters on the front porch to deny his involvement.
No one was home at Billy’s house, of course, because Billy’s mom was driving his ass, still high on meth, to the goddamn Tennessee border with his bloody clothes in the trunk.
And they knock on our door. My mom opens it…”
Dwight’s chest heaved.
“She opens it. And one of the reporters asks her for a comment, and she looks at ‘em like she’s the fucking publicist for the sewage department during a water main break and says “none of this would have happened if these boys hadn’t gotten involved with Satan.”
Dwight kissed Tia on the top of the head.
“She discarded my shoes. First thing I ever bought with my own money. But she hung onto that tape of her professing my guilt on TV like it was some fucking priceless souvenir.”
***
Photo by JC Gellidon on Unsplash
Wow
Jimmy, Bravo. Great read. Even like the story more than my vintage Pumas. And I love my Pumas.