“Sabotage” Beastie Boys
Cam Collins has gutted me twice.
I remember all too well how she clams up when she’s really hurt. She hides inside herself, hoping to just disappear. And now she’s retreated so far inside herself that I can’t see the luminescence in her eyes anymore. Which can only mean one thing—she’s telling the truth.
My insides are reacting violently to her admission. I want to console her. I want to continue shouting at her. I want clarity.
But instead, I’m frozen as she silently slinks past me, a terrified, timid creature. I guess she collects her coat and slips on her shoes just a moment before my front door slams. Hard. The sound reverberates through me and jolts me back to life. I bolt toward the door, determined to get her back inside, get an explanation.
My hand is resting on the doorknob when she slides on my icy sidewalk. She reaches up for a branch to catch herself, losing its pile of snow on top of her head. Fluffy powder slides down from the crown of her head and disappears beneath the green wool neck of her coat. She still can’t find her balance and her legs wheel for a moment before she crashes to the pavement. Her ass hits so hard, it jostles my bones.
I know Cam is crying long before she sags her head into her hands and her shoulders start shaking. Wounded pride was the quickest way to cut Cam deep and judging by the heap she is on my front walk, it still is.
I want to go to her. I’m compelled to console her, but I stop, my hand still frozen on the door. Knowing that I saw the whole mess will only hurt her more. I can’t kiss it and make it better like I used to. I won’t. And judging by what she just said to me, she doesn’t want me to.
How dare she say that anyway?
I broke her heart? I hurt her?
I’ve been replaying her words for years like a bitter talisman to ward off other heartbreak. I can’t stay here Jay. I won’t. She’d paused like her words were the continuation of some conversation we’d already had. Like I knew what was coming, what she was going to say. And Edinburgh to Willow Creek… It took her forever to continue but in that moment, I felt the axe swinging over my head. It’s a gap we can’t close. Even then I didn’t think she was referring to an ocean. A minute later it had been made crystal fucking clear.
But she was still the one that had wrecked me. Worse than breaking up, breaking my heart, she’d never come right out and said what the real issue was. There was always something unspoken behind our splintering break up.
Never in a million years did I expect it to be that I’d broken her.
It’s ludicrous.
And bubbles the fury of hellfire inside me.
My hand falls from the doorknob and I storm back to my bedroom. I need to run or burn off steam somehow. Her insolence…
I shove my legs through Carharts, yank on a thermal, and jam my feet into boots. I’m tromping around my house, laces untied, looking for my iPod. It’s going to take more than physical exertion to burn this…this…whatever out of me.
When I burst out my front door, sweater in hand, iPod in mouth, Cam has vanished. Only the tiny circles left by stilettos cut down my path. I can’t help but compare them to the matching gunshots she riddled through my heart this morning. I kick at them with my boots then realize I never stopped to tie them. I crouch down and my earbuds hit my knee, drawing my attention to the snow.
There’s the tiniest bit of blood on the snow beneath my boot. Looking up, I’m directly under the tree branch Cam grabbed.
Shit.
I’m even more upset at the sight that I didn’t go to her, that she was even here, and rage propels me up and toward my truck. As soon as I yank open the door, I chuck my crap into the passenger seat, ignoring how the door bounces on its hinges and how my iPod clatters around. I rev my engine and slide the slightest bit as I gun my truck out of my driveway.
When Tony Pritchers—Or rather, Officer Pritchers—waves his arm wildly out of his patrol car, I realize I’m speeding and slam on the brakes as I gesture an I’m sorry. He shakes his finger but smiles underneath his sunglasses.
Soon town turns into outlying buildings, then into the cemetery, before breaking open into the rolling sage and snow-covered hills. I’m winding along the river road I know all too well relishing the crisp whiteness of the valley, the way green pokes out here or there, and how glassy rushing water attracts snow speckled livestock. When I turn off the highway, I really gun it and my new Nissan fishtails again, the small bit of recklessness does nothing to quench what’s churning through me.
My parents’ log cabin comes into view. Usually it’s reassuring but not today. Today, I can picture Cam sitting on the steps like she used to when I had ranch chores or she beat me home. She always looked smaller the way she balled up on herself. Every fiber of my being wanted to protect that fragile little being. And when the breeze would dance in her chocolatey waves of hair, she seemed like an angel, and I knew she’d been sent to look out for me.
But now she has a straight-out-of-a-magazine raven black haircut that hangs fashionably straight and unruffled. The severe cut makes her eyes seem hauntingly green rather than gold and her lips a bloody, bloody red. And it is her lips, not her lipstick, I noticed when I watched her sleep last night.
Fuckfuckfuck.
Mom’s not here so I slam the car into park near the woodpile and sync my iPod to the stereo. The Beastie Boys come blaring through the speakers and I throw open the doors so the sounds can fill the small valley around me. There’s the faintest echo off the hills.
I roll my shoulders and crack my neck side to side before grabbing the axe from its home beside the pile. It swings idly by my side as the music picks up pace. My eyes pinch and my face crinkles as I start bobbing my head in time with the beats. After only a breath, I swing the axe. It splits the wood easily. So easily in fact, the halves fly apart.
Automatically, I grab another piece and split it. Before long I’ve found a rhythm that has my heart pounding and my shirt sweaty. Mom’s going to have two full cords of wood cut before New Years. Relief is pumping in time with my blood as I bend and flex and work myself into a lather.
When Sabotage comes on, I automatically scream along with the opening line, going King Kong on the wood in front of me. I’m going to split Cam Collins out of my soul if it kills me. And when The Beastie Boys scream again, me in perfect unison, I believe I’ll succeed.
But then the music cuts off, leaving me hanging. My axe comes down halfheartedly on the piece of wood in front of me and gets lodged in the log.
“Hey honey, whatcha doing?”
I turn to find my mom leisurely leaning against the hood of my truck, twirling my keys on her fingers.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” I try to keep the edge out of my voice.
“Looks like you’re trying to shake the ghost of Cam Collins.” She purses her lips in the way only moms can. I sigh. She knows me so well. “Sherry Lucas told me she’s here.”
Damn Sherry Lucas and her goddamn big mouth.
“Yeah, she’s here.” I can’t bear to look her in the eye so I twist back to the log and work the axe out. Wordlessly, I swing and split the piece of in front of me.
“I would’ve known even if Sherry didn’t say anything. No one gets under your collar like her.”
I go back to splitting wood, trying to find the rhythm I had before.
“AJ, stop,” she calls after me. “You’re going to kill yourself. And over some girl that’ll blow out as quickly as she blew in.”
My instinct is to yell at her, to defend Cam. She isn’t just some girl. Besides, I’m mad at myself every bit as much as I’m mad at her. And I’m confused. Really fucking confused. Even hurt splits through my chest.
She’s leaving. Again.
There’s no way to summarize everything I’m feeling. There’s not even a real way to explain it.
“Mom,” I say in an exasperated voice, hoping she’ll leave me alone. On this anyway.
“No, don’t you mom me. Look I love Cam, I always have, but Cam is the kind of girl that’s never satisfied. She’s gotta barrel through life one thing to the next, never appreciating what she has in front of her. She’d take you down her path kicking and screaming, unconcerned with what your dreams are. Cam needs to be single and Cam needs to leave town.” She shoves her hands on her hips and narrows her gaze as if she’s the end all, be all, on Cam Collins.
Yesterday I would have agreed. Hell, twelve hours ago I would have agreed, but this morning…
I can’t think about that. I can’t think about Cam’s words or Mom’s words or my feelings. But I can walk over, grab my keys, turn on my car and move from Sabotage to the aptly named Get It Together.