Revenge of the Rocket Gang

As Told by Hess, The Big Human

one

We just stood there, waiting for ‘April Fools’ or some other punchline. He stood there waiting for any reaction at all. It was like being asked if we would like to go dance with penguins in Antarctica.

two

Golly said he had to go, and the group dispersed. I grabbed Tom, who looked like he’d fallen into a puddle daydreaming.

So, what do you think of all this?”

Tom smiled and shrugged. “Dunno. There’s a lot of this no one’s gonna care about. Look how we live, like we got born and never even bothered to snap off the price tag. Just going through the motions, man.”

“And he thinks this could work? He doesn’t know us, bruh. He’s sinking money into a town he doesn’t know either. It’s really like… big yikes.”

“Could be the best thing that’s ever happened around here,” said Tom.

“What do you think we should do?”

“Meet the people he was talking about. Go look at the building.”

“So you’re into it?” I knew that but wanted to hear it out of his own mouth.

“Hell yeah, sure I am.”

“CEO of his deal or not, he’s already splitting up the group.”

“Yup, and I don’t see this as a lazy man’s project. Guys like Jaime, well… how do you convince people to change enough to—”

“Yeah, Jaime was always going to go off in a different direction, though. Maybe even Monty. But Kevin, Harley, Joe, Steve, Gunner, Robbie, and few others I can think of—these guys’ll be into it.”

“It’s Golly’s brainchild. That makes him the evangelist. ”

“If it works, it’s because everyone finds their own reason why they want it.”

“Yeah… Could slay, too. Hey, what about that guy who lives out beyond Cost Co, the one who writes songs. You know him, right?”

“You mean Knox from The Maelstrom? What about him?”

“He’s our local celebrity. Let’s go talk to him.”

“Hum, I don’t know. He’s a recluse since they split up—shame they only did an EP and one album. I heard there were problems, and he got really sick after that. Almost died, or so it says online. I haven’t talked to him in a year and a half.”

“Still. Let’s go talk to him.”

“What, now?”

“Yeah, let’s go. Call him.”

An hour later, we were on the interstate, heading out of town. Knox lived in the middle of nowhere in a trailer set up on cinderblocks inside a small pine forest. It was a Saturday afternoon, and we found him sitting in his front yard, on a rain and snowed-on imitation leather sofa. As we got out of the car, he stood up, and we saw how his clothes hung on him. He was as thin as a coat hanger. He didn’t smile, but held out a hand to his old comic book dealer. They shook, and he brought it to his chest. Tom, who had come with a stack of the newest anime under his arm, introduced us.

Knox brought out some beers, and we sat with him. He told us about the sour record deal, his fallout with bandmates, and the stint in the hospital. He said his recovery was painful, but I had already seen it written on his face. Pain. We told him about G. Golly. Tom described the various floors of the Hollis, and that same faraway look came into his eyes as he listened. He jumped on the idea faster than a boa grabbing its next meal. We went home with a new project member in the back seat.

A lot of black sand had fallen through the sieve, but I saw gold in that pan. George was true to his word. Two weeks later, the top floor and the ground floor were ready to be occupied. Knox turned the top floor into a studio with lots of equipment, some from home, some Golly had bought him. He set up small practice cubicles and studios for classes, plus a few cabinets full of instruments. Things he’d bought himself when the first album went platinum. He had his studio musicians to help him. Thanks to the duplicitousness of their contract, The Maelstrom continued on without him and they were the bitterest enemies.

Guitar and keyboard classes started. There was something about Knox, his personal style, his fame maybe. It wasn’t hard to convinced people to take an interest in what obviously made him tick. A bunch of starstruck teens and a lot of the town’s children signed up for some instrument or other. The adults started showing up too, but that was later, when the school started getting famous. I’m getting ahead of myself. All of this was happening because Golly was paying everyone a salary, so the free music school jammed night and day.

Food and music. George was smart to start with the basic things.

The restaurant opened. Chef and sous chef clashed on what to offer. As Mamadou put it, ‘You can’t expect people raised on Slim Jims and cottage cheese with Welch’s to want Blinis with Trout Roe and Crème Fraîche. Maisie said the tastes would defend themselves, but he was doubtful. They compromised. The corn dogs would be made with homemade andouille, an authentic French-creole recipe from 1823, and the elaborate dipping sauce would have ingredients no one had ever heard of, but no problem if it was great-tasting. Secret sauce was secret sauce.

George agreed with Mamadou, and Maisie was forced to channel her ideas into the kind of menu items that were recognizable. As Golly said: just make real food. Once she understood how context-dependent their success would be, Maisie threw herself into that. George threw himself full force into getting the word got out, and the rabbits he pulled out of his hat were all hungry and all left happy, so they were both right.

The Carmens monitored all of this with considerable interest. One day, Maisie called Golly to say that they’d made a reservation for ten. It was exactly what he’d hoped would happen since the day he went over to have a little “chat”. He found out that they were Puerto Rican.

“Our first real challenge, Maiz, you understand, right? They don’t like what they find here, it’ll be our funeral.”

Maisie answered him by whipping up Arroz con Gandules, Lechón and Tostones to feed a hundred and called it Boricua Day. Everyone came. After all, who doesn’t like spit-roasted pork? The atmosphere that afternoon was more wedding than a funeral. Now there was a place to hang out, complete with a cafe, baristas, and one of those corny little chalkboard stands.

Maisie’s most long-lived partner was Mamadou, who had followed her across the country from one gig to another for nine years. Turns out, apart from being a hell of a cook—George was right— he was a smokin’ hot drummer, so he fit right in with the project and wasted no time going up to the top floor where Knox drafted him to teach. His class was drawing people from all the surrounding states.

Next, there was Tom, who couldn’t draw worth a damn, but loved stories. He had an encyclopedic, idiot-savant level memory for the ones he’d read. George gave him literature to run, just like that, and Tom protested at the next meeting.

“I don’t know anything about this!”

“The hell you don’t,” said Golly.

Tom talked and talked in a flustered and unsettled tone. George told him it didn’t have to be Harvard by next Tuesday. Golly had already ordered shelving units, and boxes of comics and novels to set up a library. That could be a way to start. Dix the poet would be joining him the following month. Tom was to preside over everything as he saw fit.

“George, I still can’t believe you’re spending so much time and money on this shit town. I also can’t believe that the Carmens haven’t been over here yet to give us grief.”

He ignored Tom’s remark.

“Now, I’m putting you on the second floor, Tom. Over the cafeteria and well away from Knox and his noise.”

What none of the gang knew was that George and me had paid a call on the Carmens the week before, right after the restaurant and music school opened. The more he heard about them, the more he thought it necessary to establish some kind of relationship. 

Carmen Maldonado decided to hear Golly out the day he marched up to the gate of the Collins Cracker factory. I came along, since he asked me to. The roller shutter docking bay door was open, and a soldier ushered us onto the half empty factory floor where an old Cherokee sat parked. We went into the office and saw Carmen behind a desk on the phone. We had to wait for her to finish the rapid-fire patter in Spanish. I knew she was giving orders because she was using imperative verbs, not that I understood everything. She sounded ticked off. After introducing himself, Golly and I sat, and he started in with his questions.

“This town is turning into the talk of the county,” he grinned, taking a seat. “What is it you do in here?”

His eyes went up to the joists that spanned the ceiling, and then across to the old paned windows as if calculating the space. I think it was around ten thousand square feet, similar to the Hollis but with slightly lower ceilings. This was the ground floor; he had asked me if I knew what was going on upstairs. I had to tell him, no.

“We live here,” said Carmen.

“That it?”

“We take in abused kids and women, but yeah, that’s it.”

“Interesting…I heard a different story.”

George looked Carmen in the eye—same way he’d done with us, the stark once-over, though the tone of his voice was gentle. She matched his gaze and threw up a wall as thick as my leg. I’d seen her do this a thousand times, get cagey while feigning a relaxed indifference. I knew Carmen M. better than most. We were ten when I gave her my favorite Spiderman action figure, and fifteen when she let me—well, whatever; I was the only one who had permission to come inside the Carmens’ domain. I also knew that Golly was testing her because of the love not lost between them and us.

“I heard the police tried to shut this place down, and you cut yourselves a deal. You’re a smart lady. In one fell swoop, you solved your personnel problem, got the police off your back and cleaned up the streets. You might just get elected mayor.” Golly’s eyes crinkled and Carmen shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

“My turn,” she said. “What are you doing here—in this town?” She nodded to the other Carmen, who had just entered the office.

Carmen Pérez scratched under her eye and readjusted the elastic pirate patch. George was going to introduce himself again, but she cut him off.

“I know who you are.”

Why she was being so salty I could guess at, but it might also have been for some reason I couldn’t, so I just watched them go at it, to be processed later.

“I’m a businessman, Carmen. I have a thriving concern in Memphis. I make enough to plow capital back into it, and more than I can spend personally. Upwards of that, I could just go the charity donation route, but I had a different idea. Whereas I know guys who buy failing businesses and revitalise them just to add to their empires, I want to resurrect dying towns.”

“Pretty ambitious,” said Carmen M.

Golly explained how the Hollis was like a novel, with the beginning and ending already in place, but the middle still needing to be plotted out. He had three of the floors fully functional, with Knox, Tom and Maisie working full-time. The other four were just ideas.

“We’re neighbors, so I came to get to know you.”

“Pay your respects, you mean,” said Carmen P.

“Actually, to ask a favor. I need someone to head up Dance and Sculpture. You know any sculptors or got any dancers wanna get paid to teach?”

Those floors had been cleaned out and had a good part of the neighborhood squatting in them. George didn’t want to kick them out, but the longer they stayed, the harder it would be. The plan B, if our town turned out to be a wash he said, was to put in a dojo and a game space. He would stick with his idea of getting an out-of-state architectural firm willing to relocate for free space, and he was looking for a film guy, but this was going to be challenging. How do you get people who only know the movie MCU to sit through the film Rashomon?

He explained the seven arts thing to them and his grand project. They looked at each other and burst out laughing. Under her breath, Carmen P. leaned over to Carmen M. and said, “Pero será pendejo.”¹ G. Golly couldn’t hear her, but even if he had, he wouldn’t have understood. I knew exactly what those words meant on account of Carmen M’s father.

“You come next week. We want you to sample the restaurant. Hell, we’ll cook something special for you.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat and stood up to stretch.

That’s when I saw Jaime Sánchez on the other side of the floor. We made eye contact and froze. Bed-haired and in his drawers, he had just come out of the crumbling men’s room in a pair of blue plastic chanclas. I couldn’t say anything while the reality of his betrayal washed over me, and it smarted. Jaime was only mildly surprised. I think he knew it was only a matter of time, and couldn’t care less, now that he was shacked up in what amounted to a military bunker. He’d gone over to the Carmens.

I wondered where that left Monty, specifically, if they’d had a fight or something. I was betting that’s what pushed him over. The whole thing eclipsed my interest in whatever else Golly had come to the Cracker House to talk about. I asked him to excuse my leave-taking, and he said yeah, whatever. I could see he had hit some extreme level of word craft. His eyes were glowing with the force of his obsession, and the Carmens had subtly shifted from listening with casual disdain to eye-narrowed concentration. I had to Paul Revere the Jaime situation back to Wilt and Tom, and for sure, I wanted to find Monty. I would shake him up and make him spill.

Jaime was carrying a carafe half full of water. He looked at me, bleary from the night before most likely. If my words had filtered through, they didn’t mean much to him. Still, acting like everything was normal would be like major gaslighting.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I know what it looks like.”

“Oh yeah? What does it look like?”

“Like I’m...”

“Benedict Arnold?”

“Who?”

“Nevermind. I guess you know what you’re doing, huh?”

Jaime gave me his meanest smile.

“Fuckin’ A.” He turned and shuffled off to the coffeemaker, and I saw no reason to stay another minute in that place.

❈  

Part three drops Wednesday, June 25

1. He must be an asshole.