Page 9 of Born Into Trouble (Occupy Yourself)
Five
19 years old
Ben sighed and rolled his neck, pushing up on one elbow on the bed. Glancing around the room, there were the usual tangles of tossed clothing on the floor, an overflowing suitcase on the built-in dresser, and—thank fuck—his acoustic guitar case in the corner. Every day when he woke up, it was the first thing he looked for. Sober or drunk, so far, he’d always managed to keep the flattop nearby. Retrieved it from a pawnshop more than once before Danny finally realized it was much more than just an instrument for Benny.
Fabric rustled behind him, pulling his attention away, and he twisted his neck to see Benita stretched out behind him. A snore broke the silence of the room, and he glanced at the other bed, seeing, as expected, Danny sprawled corner to corner.His relationship status should be sleeping in bed diagonally, Ben thought with a grin. The man never seemed to hook up with anyone.
Blake Downey, their drummer, was another story. He had picked up a groupie tonight who had sprung for a separate room so she could screw him, or there’d be a body on the floor between the beds, too.
Ben and Danny started playing music together in high school. Starting out as a not-bad two-piece garage group called the Enoch Eunuchs, they’d imagined themselves masters of rock and roll. The summer of their junior year, they took their act on the road in Danny’s hand-me-down truck, working to get themselves booked into wherever they could. Before they graduated high school, they’d upgraded to a van Benita had scrounged from one of her dad’s dealerships in Cheyenne, which meant they were able to travel to more distant cities and play.
After graduation, they’d added Blake, and renamed the band, becoming Occupy Yourself. With four mouths to feed, and one van to keep in gas, Benny and Danny focused on the music, bringing Blake into the fold as needed, while Benita worked at developing a network of venues they could depend on for a good payday. So far, it was working, and Benny felt like things were finally starting to fall into place.
The previous night they’d played a decent bar in Idaho Falls. A medium sized room, but with a rowdy crowd that didn’t mind tipping. So in addition to their share of the door, the bills dropped in the tip jar meant they had enough cash to get a motel room for a change. Real rest, a hot shower, and a soft mattress on which to stretch out.
Easing out of bed, Ben pulled on shorts and a tee, then laced up his running shoes before snagging one of the room keys and heading out. Pounding the streets was something he found enjoyable, something he'd picked up while still in high school. It was a way to cope with how everything had fallen apart. There had been no promise of a football scholarship to take him away from Enoch; all through his junior and senior years, he’d been too busy partying with Benita to play with any focus.
The scourge of high school was behind him now, but like Andy had discovered, Benny realized there weren’t any jobs in Enoch. While Owens owned half of town, he refused to hire Benny for anything. This meant Harddrive and the music were the only two good constants in his life. He kept trying to hold those together, though some days it felt like a losing battle. The feeling of euphoria at the end of a run was exactly what was needed to help him push past everything else. For hours, the energy and endorphins would feed him in a good way, letting him ride high, like the wave of adrenaline from playing an exceptionally good set at a gig.
This was the third time he’d tried to dry out and stop drinking. Nineteen years old, and he knew he was a full-blown alcoholic. In the past five years, he had burned through relationships with family and friends, much like his mother had. Backing himself into a corner, again and again, always coming out on the losing end, watching as friend after friend fell away. Benita and Danny had stuck with him, at least.
The first blackout he'd had was at fourteen, the night of Benita’s senior prom. That first episode of not remembering anything, just vague flashes of faces leaving him feeling so out of control it was like skating on the river before the frigid weather set in. The edges might be stable enough underneath your blades, but if you strayed an inch beyond that surface, the results could be devastating. That blackout was like the first ringing crack of the ice, lapsing into silence, the threat going unrecognized at the time.
He'd woke the next morning, tangled in a jumble of bodies. Sticky limbs draped over him and one girl’s hand still wrapped around his flaccid penis. Looking around in disbelief, he'd tried to track which body parts belonged to who, giving up after a few seconds as impossible. Carefully untangling himself from the pile of people, Ben had made his way to the bathroom. Looking down to see something crusted on his belly, he'd hesitated only a moment before crawling into the bathtub.Gross.
The chilly porcelain had felt good against his head. So good, that slowly taking the thought to its next logical conclusion, he'd eventually reached and turned on the shower, setting the water as cold as it would go and sat there with it streaming around him. Shivering violently, he'd tried to reconstruct the evening even as he'd retched and spat, seeing a thin drool of yellow bile hit the bathtub between his feet. Diluted by the running water, he'd watched it circle the drain, eventually passing down and out of sight. Ben stayed in that position, hunched over his legs, the cold seeping into his bones, so lost in trying to figure out what had happened that he'd shouted in surprise when someone had pounded on the door.
“Gotta pee.”
“Gimme a minute.” Water off, he'd grabbed a towel from the closet and wrapped it around his waist. Unlocking the door, one of the senior guys leaned against the wall, looking about as sick as Ben felt.
“Good party.” Naked, the guy pushed past him, and Ben had turned to watch him weave towards the toilet.Jesus.
He'd left the wrinkled and ripped tux on the floor of Benita’s bedroom, finding one of his T-shirts she’d confiscated weeks earlier. Looking around, he'd rifled through various after-prom bags to find a pair of jeans which had fit well enough to wear.
All he'd been able to think about was getting away. Away from the press of bodies. Away from the stench of his vomit in the shower. Stuck with the feel of day-old booze in his belly, he'd left the house, picked a random direction and took off, walking. After making it about ten miles, he'd stuck his thumb out once more and finally got a ride. Ben had swung over the tailgate of the pickup and settled in the back. Caring less about their destination than escaping, he'd shrugged his agreement when the driver leaned out the window to tell him they were headed down to the stockyards in Cheyenne.
Ben had leaned against the cab, crossed his ankles and closed his eyes, wanting…trying desperately to turn off his mind. Unable to control his thoughts, they compulsively circled back around the edges of the places he couldn’t remember. Blurred images in his head, each of them a taunting fragment of what might be a memory cycling past in rapid succession, overwhelming him. Faces, so many faces, with mouths open in a shout or a groan. Anonymous hands on his chest, fondling his dick, intimate moments shared with nameless strangers.
Gravel pinged off the wheel wells as the truck pulled off the shoulder and back onto the road. The vehicle had then gained speed, and only then had Ben slowly relaxed, spending the next hour zoning out to the mindless droning sound of the tires on the road.
Traffic noise on the outskirts of Cheyenne recaptured his attention, and he'd lifted his head in time to see a motorcycle dealership flash past. Impulsively, he'd pounded on the glass behind the driver’s head, frantically signaling to the shoulder. Five minutes later, Ben had stood in the dealership’s front lot, looking through the window at the motorcycles. Andy had taught him how to ride a dirt bike years ago, and he'd dazedly wondered if it would be the same feeling of freedom to ride a real motorcycle.
A form moved through the store, a young woman. She'd paused and stared out the window at him curiously. Making her way to the door, she’d pushed it open a few inches and tipping her head to one side, looked him up and down. He knew she was taking in his bare feet, too-big jeans, and worn-thin shirt. “Need a hot meal, honey?” Holding the door open, she'd gestured with one hand. “Come on inside, let’s get you fed and warmed up.”
She had apparently taken him for a homeless person, and Ben didn’t bother to correct her mistake because the honest to God truth was he had needed a meal. Anything he might have ingested yesterday had already come up, and hardly any of that had been solid. Anxious about Andy leaving, he’d been unable to eat the goodbye breakfast GeeMa had fixed that morning. Then the punch at the prom had been so spiked, after a single cup, he’d been far more interested in wrangling more of the drink than hitting the sandwich table. Later, after the dance was over, and after pouring himself into Benita’s car in the parking lot, her hand on his dick, there hadn’t been any thought of food at all.
The woman, Lauren, led the way up a single flight of stairs to an office area over the showroom floor, seating him at a table while she busied herself in the kitchen. Sitting quietly, he'd listened to her talk about her husband and father-in-law, partners in a multi-location motorcycle sales and service business. She'd had so much pride in the people she loved, and it shone through her every word.I’d give a lot to hear someone talk about me like that.He shook his head.Yeah, like that’ll happen. Such a loser.
Lauren had kept up the conversation singlehandedly, requiring only minimal input from him to keep things flowing. She'd taken a moment to serve him tomato juice with a splash of hot sauce while she cooked, making him wince at the memories invoked.
Seated across from him, a small grin on her face, she'd watched as he took a first, tentative bite of the sandwich set in front of him. That grin grew to a broad smile when he'd given her a thumbs-up, enthusiastically eating every crumb of what may have been the best fried egg sandwich he’d ever had. His sole contribution to the talk had lit up her face, too, when he'd offered her a quiet, heartfelt, “Thank you.” The simple words all he could think of in response to her kindness and generosity.
Once certain the sandwich was going to cooperate with his stomach, Ben had followed her out to the back of the building where she'd introduced him to her husband, Barry, and his dad, an older man weirdly named Harddrive. Effortlessly, the group made room for him in their day as if he were a fixture in their lives all the time. To him, it was a continuation of the entire day feeling surreal, like there was a haze over everything, making the impossible possible.
As if he belonged there, Ben had sat on top of a workbench, dipping a rag into a bucket of solvent and acting as if he'd known how to clean the parts Harddrive brought him. Lunch had come and gone, Ben again seated at the table upstairs, this time listening with a grin as Lauren and Barry good-naturedly argued about the best way to boil eggs, of all things. Surreal.
Six o’clock saw the doors locked and Ben’s ass in the front seat of Harddrive’s truck, the old man smiling as he'd asked, “Where to, son?” When Ben had recited GeeMa’s address, the man had looked at him strangely. His voice gentle when he'd asked, “Enoch, huh? You know Andy? Andy Jones?”
