Revenge of the Rocket Gang

As Told By Hess, The Big Human · part five

The Dancer had come, and she was a hydrogen bomb—me, just a shadow on the wall. I described her, and he whistled. Once the smoke cleared, I realized Merida was perfect for us. It was like a medieval marriage between the Cracker House and the Hollis.

one two three four

five

Jilly Maddox was a strong strong woman. She come into the yard one morning, and I could see that she was going to be something real special. She wasn’t young, and she didn’t do anything to hide that. Her silvery hair was cut short, and she was round all over. I liked her right away. Her brown eyes guided you towards her in a gentle way. Drew you in. She smiled and quipped easily, smart, spicy even, but underneath you felt her kindness. Like she had this glow that come from inside. She’d driven the same highway that brought Golly here. They knew each other a long time, apparently.

Merida took the fifth floor, where George had the wooden floors sanded down and varnished, and the walls wrapped in mirrors, except for under the windows, where the bar was installed. There was a desk and a low wooden shelf module for the sound system. A piano, which George got at an estate sale—good one they said—sat in the corner. Fifth floor spruced up nice.

She was working on a long solo piece that was to premiere San Francisco and then travel on to Chicago and New York. The studio was like a dream to her, like a blessing she had never counted on, with space enough for her rehearsals and teaching, but most importantly, a place where she could put together a troupe of her own. She told us all that when Golly interviewed her. I got to watch that since I had turned into the Carmens’ ambassador, Merida being another of their relatives. I’d heard of her before but Carmen M. told me Merida’s family grew up on the east coast. They only saw each other a few times during childhood.

Me, like some others, I watched her dance sometimes from the hallway. If she realized, she didn’t seem to mind. The doors to the fifth floor were always open. Man, that woman bust her ass. She would repeat and repeat the same sections over and over again. Get frustrated and collapse on the floor, panting. I felt like a stalker, but I couldn’t tear myself away, even when I had things to do for George. I started to recognize her moods. Once, when she was having a hard time, I waited for her to stop shouting, “No, Fuck! NO!” and brought her juice from downstairs.

Standing at the open double doors, I knocked, and held the bottle up for her to see. Merida was startled at first, then switched to the look of cold distance I’d grown used to, then softened, which I did not expect. She got up off the floor and walked towards me.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hey. I was going up to Knox’s, saw you there. You look like you could use some sweet hydration.”

Merida laughed.

“I’m not kidding—this has enough sugar in it to count as candy.”

“I need some sweet hydration, but I could also use some sweet inspiration.”

I smiled at her. She was almost the same height as me. Rare for a dude my size. Okay, I thought, here goes.

“Would you mind if I watch you? I don’t know much about dance but of the little I just saw, you are blowing my mind.”

She laughed again and gestured for me to follow her in. She took a fast swig of juice and handed me the bottle.

“Finish it,” she said. “Maybe that’s what’s wrong today. I need feedback. You just watch and give me your honest impressions. Like what does this remind you of, what comes into your mind, what do you feel, that sort of thing.” She queued the music and stood in the middle of the floor, poised to begin.

Her bare foot traced a semicircle while her arms rose, and then without warning, she took off across the floor in a series of steps that followed one after another and seemed like a kind of short-hand, like code for some idea. Like letters of an alphabet spelling out a message, which got insistent in some places, where the music rose in pitch especially. The movements  and music seemed to understand each other. She explained later that her artistic partner, Betthany, who was still in New York, had composed it for her specially. I thought that was fine. I wondered if Knox would someday collaborate with them. This was what I was seeing. They were all crossing and feeding off each other’s creativity. I had never been around creative folk before. Whole new world to me.

Jilly was given the sixth floor, under Knox, who she’d never heard of, probably because he refused to tour red states. It hadn’t always been a rule of his, but politics aside,  on the first nationwide tour, he’d had run-ins with magas that damaged his equipment and left him pretty traumatized. I read about it on the internet. Too woke for them, I suppose.

Transferring Jilly’s studio from Tennessee was a big deal. For the first few days, there was a series of delivery trucks. I helped Monty and her carry stuff in. Some of it was pretty strange, like the bent tuba. I asked her what had happened to it and she told me that she had played tuba in a traveling circus with an elephant named Bertie, which she rode when the circus paraded into a new town. They would arrive to the main street dressed in full regalia, playing band music, blowing kisses and handing out flyers. She said the elephant was smarter than some of the roadie guys. One day they got her pissed off and she threw the tuba at them. Traveling circus, can you imagine that? I told her I didn’t know there were any left. Seemed like something out of an old movie. Jilly told me that as their circus traveled year after year, but the older people retired, and they couldn’t find acrobats or jugglers. Young people didn’t know how to do these things and weren’t interested in learning, so the circus died. I thought that was sad.

Golly asked what she’d need for the studio, and she told him—aside from the art supplies—sheet rock and studs, white house paint etc. She showed him the plan and he asked if she wanted him to hire a construction company, but she insisted on doing it all herself. I loved her tic-tack-toe design. Anyway, that’s what I called it. We helped her knock it together in a couple of days. There was enough floor space for two of these suckers. Later on, all the eight resident painters voted to close the fourth wall giving them each one more gallery and studio wall. And when there were no shows up, a lot of them hung unfinished pieces on the gallery space walls so they could look at them from farther away.

Jilly’s design for the work spaces

Jilly listens to jazz or experimental contemporary music in the studio, which she said makes her see things in her mind, like, what to paint. She played us Ornette Coleman, took out some charcoal and tacked a big piece of paper to the wall to illustrate what she meant. We watched as she made strokes and shapes, not exactly in time to the music, but coming out of it in some elemental way. It wasn’t what we was used to hearing. It sounded like animals screeching out the shapes she was making. I was with Monty the day she explained all this to us. I swear, that fool didn’t know what hit him. He said it was like tagging trains, but way better. He asked her to teach him everything she knew, and just like that, Jilly had not just her first student, but first studio assistant. He spent all his time up there. Few weeks in, I think he was even sleeping with her. I asked him indirectly, although I knew he wasn’t going to say anything about that, but I outed him anyway by saying she was old enough to be his mother.

“So what?” he snapped like an angry lobster. “She has love and intensity, man.”

Now we had two female powerhouses on the premises. 

Robert Merran showed up with his crew a little after Aaron Pierson, the architect. His floor and Aaron’s floor, three and four, we called “the clean floors”, not that Tom on the first didn’t know how to work a vacuum cleaner, but compared to the noise and chaos of floors five to seven, they were like hospital-clean and quiet. Golly said he’d dock anyone’s pay if they didn’t stay that way. 

When the freight elevator doors opened, You were standing in a vestibule in front of a glass wall with a mechanical sliding door you needed a code to open. The glass was frosted in fat bands and had his name written in fancy serif. Slick as fuck. Aaron had designed his floor before he got there, George being Aaron’s first client at the Hollis. It was combination studio/gallery space. Merran was a no-nonsense type, fifty-ish. Polite in a kind of airy way, some type of GOAT for sure. Including heavies like him was how Golly got the drone raids to stop. Robert and Aaron weren’t being paid like we were, but they started earning right away.  Merida, Jilly and Knox all needed a photographer. 

The last person to join was Sebastian Brenner, a twenty-eight year old NYU Film School graduate with a few small awards under his belt. He was in Berlin when he saw a YouTube video interview George and Aaron had done together to promote the Hollis. It only got a thousand views at the time, but we only needed one film guy. 

I have to admit, it took me a while to like him. Initially, he was a bit too unfriendly for my taste. Then I reminded myself that Merida had been a bitch the first few weeks too. They both came in with this “Who the fuck are you?” vibe. Somedays, it was even “Who the fuck are you to talk to me?” Or at least that’s what it felt like. I checked around, and it was the consensus.

Nothing like when Knox and Jilly first met. They were together at least an hour, and Knox, gracious as ever, accompanied her down to her studio to look at her work at her invitation. They swapped stuff. She gave him a square painting he couldn’t take his eyes off of, and he gave her promo copies of both the EP and album. On the way down, the elevator stopped at five, and Merida strode in and hit G for ground floor. She eyed Jilly without saying anything, and Jilly, still glowing from connecting with Knox, said hello and introduced herself. Merida’s reciprocation was startlingly curt. That experience would repeat with Sebastian. It took individual moments of vulnerability to break down their natural indifference to other people, but I saw it happen, like the day of the juice. That seemed to be the Hollis's superpower. Maybe mine too.

The truth is, Merida connected best with Merran the photographer, and he with her. A photoshoot got scheduled in their very first conversation, and I loved those pictures. Black and white, Merida leaping, and posing, some of them with her wearing nothing but patchouli or whatever. Those I snapped phone pics of.


George was all over the place around then. I don’t think he even went home to change sometimes. I was turning into his VP man, between the concerts and plans for exhibitions, screenings and Maisie's farmers' market. Everything she planted back in March was coming up. There was a lot more than the restaurant needed, so that was the first successful, collective event between the Hollis and the town of Scottsville. The next would be Knox's outdoor concert.

All great, but no one saw what I was seeing about George. The man wasn't well. When he said he'd be back in a few days, I knew he wasn't going on business. He was checking into the hospital for tests and shit. I took over for him while he was away, and that's when I got my first plateful of admin, when I saw how smart George really was. In little time, he gauged what he had to work with, and pushed everything in the direction it had to go. Putting Joe the sculptor in the Cracker House, for example. Real smart. It not only created peace between them and the Rocket gang, but it employed about forty people, the restaurant another fifteen. That's not a lot, but it's like the town woke up. Now there were two new cafeterias, another restaurant, an Italian one with a pizza oven, a hardware store, lumberyard, and a plant nursery. The latest was a 3D printing shop with printers to rent or buy, a MickeyD's that came and went; nobody was eating there. A tattoo parlor. George made all this happen. 

When he got back, I asked him how he was feeling, and he said good days and bad. I asked him to train me because it was becoming obvious to both of us that this was going to be my role.


❈

part six