Going out of business, Closing SALE, Everything MUST Go! Discounts, Discounts, Discounts!

Youve got to be fucking kidding me, Indy says, flicking out the window ash from a herbal cigarette which she liberated from the prop room. Sams Records, the one tiny shrine to the counter culture in this one gas station, two bars, podunk town, has a bunch of neon colored fliers advertising its demise plastered on the shop front. Indy slams the dashboard of her pickup added to the innumerable scuffmarks, and park right up by the curve. !he level of grime and distress on the truck about matches that of the shop" when her mother drove it, the car was white, and her second day driving it she dented it on one of #ortunas authentic hitching poles. $er father kept it bottled up" Sam, however, has not stopped ribbing her. She parks shittily and tromps in. Sam $ekell, the slightly pudgy, balding wannabe rocker who owns the place, spies her distorted reflection through the glass door, despite the dust. Seeing the look on her face, he dives into the stores back room. %ithout him the place is deserted, like the town in the off season. Indy was, as usual, the only one in here. !he stores other clientele consisted e&clusively of the lone drunk wandering in after the bars closed, looking to buy a pack of smokes or the occasional trucker stopping buy for one of the lad mags that Sam kept behind the counter and thought Indy didnt know about. So, Sam and Indy had spent months worth of contented afternoons playing music cranked way up. 's for the merchandise, Sam never even ordered anything new, unless Indy asked for it. It was mostly old hair band albums, their covers slathered with a coat of dust. I bang on the door. Sam( !he crinkle of a hand in a )oritos bag, but no reply. Sam, Ill throw your fucking guitar through the window. *pen. ' cherry red +ibson ,-. with an airbrushed flame decal and embossed pickups, the only thing in the store that was actually clean, was on a display stand in the storefront. Sam only ever let her touch it on the rare evening when he was feeling kind, generous, and drunk. 's to how he could have ever afforded it, he remains mum. /Indy suspects black market kidney hawking0.

Sam yanks the door open so fast, she can feel the wind rushing past. Sam, only a few inches taller than her /hes short0 takes a swig from his omnipresent 12R. *k, *k( 3alm your tits, Indy. You need to stop listening to 4etallica, Its made you violent. $e winks, bustles past her, and wanders round the back aisle. $es browses through albums stocked at the stores inception, with faded covers and names unrecogni5able and unrecogni5ed, leaving fingerprints that disturb the cast of dust. Indy crosses her arms and watchs. ' beat passes. $e pretends not to notice. She coughs from impatience and the stirred up dust. !hose signs, tell me theyre a 6oke, or a ploy to drum up business or a 7o, theyre real, he says, with an odd note of decisiveness in his voice. 'll the hot air is knocked out of her. 7o, no, she says softly. !he rustle of album covers continues as Sam flicks through them, picking out the few he would save from retail damnation. %hy8 $e looks up, finally, brow taught, face clenched. %hy8( Its 6ust not working( !his, he says, pointing at the sheet of poster paper hung proudly on the wall with its do5ens of band names thought of, thought better of, and scratched out, 9this, is not gonna happen. I can:t do it anymore. $is tone softens. Im selling. !he blanketing warmth of the innumerable summer afternoons Indy had spent and was going to spend here, in this shop, tuning in and 6amming out, slipped off. Sam had been her lifeboat after the departure, and hed gotten her this far through high school. Your dad does pretty well selling his 6unk to tourists, you think $er look of disbelief trips him up. Sam swallows. Im leaving, Indy. 4y brother booked me a gig doing construction up in 1ortland. You should come visit me sometime. 1ortlands a hipster hellhole and you know it, she spits.

$ey, its somewhere, and any somewhere is better than this nowhere. $e gestures e&pansively, collecting this whole useless hamlet in his words, this cultural sinkhole so far backwater that it cant support the one institution in this town that was actually cool. She looks around, already envisioning the walls stripped bare of their striated layers of the band posters, show flyers, and album blowups that Sams tacked up in the decade hes owned this shop. Yeah, it is. !he bell 6ingles as she grips the door. %ait, Indy. Sams tapping out a ;<; beat, nervosissimo, mulling something over. %ith a particularly vigorous downbeat, he makes up his mind and crosses to the shop window. Ive got something for you. $e detaches the +ibson. She produces vague, dry mouthed noises of protest. Sam cradles the guitar and plucks the = string softly, runs his hand along the curves, turns and proffers it gingerly to me. Sam> I want you to have it. 2etter you than a pawn shop. 'n unusual kindness banishes his standard demeanor. Im too old to rock. $e throws the horns weakly. 2ut? I play bass, she says, covering up the hint of tears with a smirk. 7ot anymore. Indy takes the guitar, despite Sams initial reluctance to let his baby go. She hugs him awkwardly, wrapping both arms around his neck and letting the guitar bang into the small of his back. 's the shop bell chimes, marking her departure, she looks back at him. $es watching her go, hands in pockets. 2iting her lip to keep from smiling too much, she flips him the bird and walks out. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ !he newly polished +ibson resting in her lap, Indy dangles her legs off the bed and plucks. Shes been practicing nearly every waking moment for the past week, breaking only for the occasional feeding and even then she scarfed down her food without a word to her father. !oday she made a half hearted attempt to feign illness to get out of school. $er father had pretended to buy it, and so the choppy

moan of chord practice had permeated the house all day. Shed mastered scales and basic harmonies, and has now moved on to power chords. $ugging the guitar close to her chest, she rips into a particularly difficult = 4a6or. !he satisfying wall of sound emanating from her choice amp that she wheedled her father into buying two christmass ago is cut into glass sharp screech as the e string, wound too tight around the tuner, snaps off and whips around, right into her cheek, leaving a hair thin cut. Indy curses. Aoudly. Shed been holding the guitar close, to best perform the more delicate fingerings that a B string guitar demanded, trickier than her bass. $er hand, with its too stiff digits, pats the wound lightly, feeling for blood. Cust a trace. She tosses the guitar on her bed with perhaps a bit more force than should be used for an ob6ect of its heritage. Running her strumming thumb across the cut, she collects a dollop of blood, and stares at it. )amn, she murmurs, rubbing the blood away, absorbed into the ridges of her fingerprint. ' knock on her door. Indy8 =verything all right in there8 $er father, though used to hearing his teenager swear, still has enough parental mo6o to know when somethings wrong. Indy flinches at his voice. She wipes her cheek with the hem of her current dingy band t shirt. She looks back at the guitar. 7o. 7o, everythings fine, )ad. %ell then, soups on( 2e right down, she mutters. 's he tromps off the landing, back down to the kitchen which is covered with yellowing scratch papers filled with hurried diagrams and sketches curled from the splashback of innumerable dinners and washing up afters, Indy reaches out for the framed picture on her nightstand. Its the three of themD $er mother, father, and Indy, with technicolor braces and hair still straw colored like her mothers, lined up along the railing of the +olden +ate bridge. Its one of the last ones.

Indy cracks open the back of the frame, slides out the photo careful not to smudge the gloss, and tucks it in one of the many pockets of her parachute pants. $er father calls up, 9You ready8 'lmost. She slips downstairs. )ad has a bowl of soup waiting for her, 3ampbells !omato with toast, a !uesday classic. $es hard at work already, his soup barely touched, an empty glass milk bottle, a vial of soil, a few seedlings and beetles from the undergrowth outside, a long metal wire with a small hook, and an enormous pair of twee5ers laid out on a mat in front of him. Indy twirls her soup aimlessly, watching her father deftly manipulate with the hook and twee5ers a blade of purple needlegrass, N ssell !uchr , planting it in e&act concordance with the proportions of the container. 4ost nights, Indy and her father eat in a comradely silence while he brings into being tiny terraria and she 6ams out with her earbuds in. !onight, however, Indys not feeling the music. %hats this one supposed to be8 Indy asks, 6abbing with her spoon. $e looks up. She used to be his partner in bottling the world, her tiny hands an invaluable asset, but she hasnt asked about his bottle gardens for years. Its part of a series of the flora and fauna of #ortuna. =verything in this vivarium is indigenous to the region. 're you going to show this one to the park director8 %ell Im not going to hawk it to tourists, he says, his elbow accidentally crushing one of the beetles. !his will be my year, finally, finally. %hat originally drew the family to #ortuna was its pro&imity to the densest part of the Redwood 7ational #orest. Indys father, 'rthur, then a recent art school grad drunk on #elice Earini and 3hristo, managed to convince his eFually artsy fiancee, $elena, to

move across the country, from 7ew York to some unmapped town in 7orthern 3alifornia, so that he, 'rthur 4c4anus, could construct the installation art piece that would draw the worlds eye and launch his career. "gg#r sil it would be called" a vast assembly of terraria, from the tiniest micro biome to an entire globelike aFuarium, would hang suspended from the branches of the worlds tallest redwood tree. "gg#r sil, the %orld !ree. 1ass the salt. 'rthur looked up from his half made worldlette, 6ust another addition to the do5ens that already dotted their two bedroom house. !heyre propping up books and weighing down papers, scattered helter skelter, ranging from $ieces of the Seven Continents /'ntartica took up half the free5er0 to the five foot long replica mini 6ungle Terr ri A% &oni mounted where their television used to be. You can date each piece by the thickness of the dust on the glass. $e made them, but the task of cleaning them belonged to someone else. In the end he couldnt get permission. $e begged and pleaded, but the parks director was too afraid of possible liability and damage to the tree, nor was he convinced that the media attention would be profitable enough to offset costs. $e told 'rthur to apply again the ne&t year. 'nd the ne&t year. 'nd the ne&t year. #lash forward a decade and a half, his then wife, fed up with waiting on a failed artist with a failed vision, bought her ticket on the ne&t +reyhound and was gone before supper. $er father has finished his soup. $ers remains untouched. She grabs the bowls, and dumps out both into the drain of their chronically clogged sink with its moldy splash tiles in their kitchen with the linoleum countertops covered with the uncleaned detritus of all the failed pro6ects of the last four years. !he metallic well water of this town cleans them, until it is like they never held anything at all. I fucking hate this town. It isnt Fuite what I imagined, but? he says, cradling the milk bottle and watching the soil settle. So go, Indy says, rubbing her thumb along the long edge of the picture in her pocket. #or the first time, he takes his eyes of his work and looks at

her. #or a moment. $e turns back to his work. She continues to watch the simple grace of his movements, the smallest gesture magnified by his tools, used to put everything in its precise place. It reFuires great skill" both life and glass are delicate materials. $e fumbles. ' beetle, turned over on its back. $e is trying to right it without crushing its chitinous body. Indy crosses to him, takes the twee5ers from his hand. She sets the beetle right. #ree to move, at least within the confines of this bottle, it crawls away. $er hands might not be perfect for playing the guitar, but they are 6ust right for this. $er father gives a muttered thanks, then takes back his fine instruments. She starts to leave, to ascend back to her fortress of solitude, but she pauses at the foot of the stairs. )id 4om leave a note8 %hen she 'rthur doesnt look up this time, 6ust stares at her image distorted through the milk bottle. 7o, she did not. Indy nods, and runs her fingers through her short hair, black like oil the way she dyed it when her mother left. $e stands. I cant, Indy. !his is what I do, he says, holding up the bottle like a peace offering. She pads over and gives him a hug, longer than compulsory. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 2y the time her father found the note resting on her bed, made for the first time in four years, she was gone. !he note had the sketchings of a melody in notes she could imagine but not yet play and a few sparse lyrics. Indys hands rest lightly on the steering wheel. #or once, she

hasnt put any music in the tape deck. !he +ibson, once Sams and now hers, is riding shotgun, buckled up for safety. Indys bedside picture rests in the glove compartment, bottled and stoppered in an old milk glass. She turns onto the interstate, south, toward San #rancisco. !he moon is not yet out. She cannot see the way.