Chapter Six

I should probably give you a sense of the house where we live so you can picture Bobby in there with us. We're about a mile from the store, easy walking distance, in a pretty small cottage you'd probably call it, right up against the waterfront, just a little bit down the road from the main harbor where the fishing and pleasure boats park. Our backyard goes right up to the water's edge and if you're not careful you could just fall right over and topple in, because we never put a fence or a wall back there, just a row of stones to give the idea. We didn't want to block the view because it's beautiful, looking over the river to the grassy hills on the other side. At night you can hear the cows mooing around over there if the wind is right.

There's about ten houses exactly like ours on the street. We're the last one on he left at the end of the dead end block. Across from us is a dusty little park that no kids ever play in. The swings and stuff are all rusty and old, and the sandbox is basically a dirt box. It's kind of a deserted street, even though people live here. Most of them are like us, old timers who've been here forever. My best friend Clayton Thomas was two doors down before he moved away. His mom and dad still live there though, and the Redburns next to them. Victoria Redburn was in my school as well, a few years older than me. Now she's on the city council and lives downtown somewhere. It's just to say there used to be kids around here but then we all grew up and no new families ever moved in to start up a new generation.

The house has got two floors, sort of. The first floor is basically the garage which is now my room. It's halfway underground. The driveway is steep and unpaved. We park out on the street. From the walkway you go up a half a dozen red brick steps to get to the landing where the front door is. There's an old wicker chair on the landing like we're pretending it's a porch, but nobody ever sits out there. Who wants a view of the abandoned park and the scrubby vacant lot that's next to that? We sit out back in the yard where we can look out over the river.

Anyway, you go inside and on the right is the master bedroom where my mom and dad are, right above my room. On the left is the living room and behind that is the kitchen. Those rooms display the history of domestic struggles between my mom and my dad. He's got his things and she's got her things and it's more or less been divied up by compass. He has the north and east. She gets the south and west walls. Her stuff is a lot like her; warm and lively, colorful, active, lots of reds and yellows and things on fire. His stuff is more mellow and cool. He likes his candles and his "vintage" rock posters. Neither of them ever cared very much about furniture so it's all pretty old and shabby, leather mostly, and glass for the tables.

Behind the kitchen is a sort of pantry or what used to be a pantry that they got fixed up a long long time ago so it could be a bedroom. It juts out into the back yard a bit and doesn't contain much beyond a bed on a box spring, a brightly painted blue dresser with yellow parakeet knobs, a Stevie Ray poster and a folding card table and chairs. There used to be more stuff in there but bit by bit it all vanished along with the strays. It didn't matter what it was, the took it, whether it was my collection of toy soldiers, an old electric race track, a cut glass chess set, books about electrical wiring, all of it gone, gone, gone. It's a good thing I never get attached to my stuff because it sure doesn't stay attached to me very long.

Across from the kitchen is the bathroom (behind the master bedroom), and between those is the back steps going down into the yard. So you can see there's not a lot of room. That pantry bedroom used to be my room. That's before my mom began collecting strays. That's when they fixed up the garage and stuck me down in there. I was about five or six at the time. At first I didn't like it, because it's a steep and narrow stairway up from there to the kitchen, plus like I said it's halfway underground and kind of cold and dark and damp, but I got used to it, and most of the time I'm glad I'm there and not up where the strays are. I can get away, which is something I often need to do.

Most of the time the strays respect my boundaries. A few of them would come down there and hassle me for money for drugs or booze, or just to waste my time by hanging out. Some of them like I mentioned tried to steal my equipment. There were some who wanted to use my stuff and I let them if they asked politely and didn't make a mess. I try to keep things neat and clean. I really don't like chaos. I'm pretty easy to take advantage of. Girls especially figured out if they were nice and smiled I'd pretty much give them anything. I used to beg my mom to not bring any more girl strays home. I told her I couldn't afford it and she laughed, but I meant it literally!

Bobby O'Bannon played that game as well, the old "I want to be your friend" routine. Maybe he really meant it. I never saw him have any other friends that I could tell, and when he told me all about his life (the way that almost every stray would tell me all about their lives, knowing I would be polite and sit there and listen, knowing I would not say anything because as you remember I can't talk, and because they were in my own room in my own house and where was I going to go?) he only mentioned former friends, not current ones. I told you that he talked fast. He also talked a lot. Right from the very first night my mom had brought him home he came down there to my room and offered me a lemonade (I wonder who told him I was a sucker for lemonade) and took my spot on my couch and started in to talking.

I should tell you about the room while I'm at it. My mattress is on the floor, right in front of where the garage door is. You can't get directly into my room from the outside. You have to go upstairs, and through the living room, into the kitchen, and then down the steep and narrow staircase. Outside my door is where the washer and dryer are kept. There's also a few steps up to a door that goes out to the backyard so you could get in from there but I don't usually. Anyway on the left wall facing the mattress there's my favorite red velvet-like couch. On the wall across from that there is a small desk with my computer on it and a pile of pedals and effects boxes and the floor below it. There's a rickety old folding chair I use to sit at the desk. The floor is covered by a pretty worn pale blue carpet that once upon a time had gold stars woven into it but all the stars are gone or faded now. The rest of the room is filled with my music and recording equipment all set up and a trunk where I throw all my clothes in.

There's not much room to move around in and you even have to scoot around the drum kit to get to the couch from the doorway. It's cluttered but it isn't chaos. I know exactly where everything is. There's only one window, and that's a long and narrow one up above the couch that faces out onto the side yard, which isn't really a yard but just a gravelly space where we keep the garbage cans. I don't get a lot of light down there. I also have to stoop a little bit sometimes because the ceiling is only seven feet high and the doorway's only six and like I said I'm six foot four. I want to get the hell out of there someday. That's part of the motivation that's building up inside.

So as I was saying, there was the new stray, coming right in, offering me a lemonade, taking my favorite seat, and right off talking fast and telling me everything I never wanted to know about him and never asked.