One Gun by Vinnie Hansen

Author:Vinnie Hansen [Vinnie Hansen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Level Best Books
Published: 2024-09-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Blues

MONDAY - after school

Marshall rested on his twin bed, the blue pack underneath sending radiation up through the mattress. The pack had to go somewhere else before James got too curious. If he found the gun, he might do something stupid, or tell their dad, who would go ballistic. Or worse, sit Marshall down for one of those serious, disappointed conversations. Marshall stared at his Hendrix poster, waiting on inspiration.

He and his brother shared the superstar’s real name—James Marshall, although at birth Hendrix had been called Johnny Allen. The name was changed a few years later, part of Hendrix’s messed-up childhood. But the fact he and James split the legendary musician’s name was cool, even if his brother had the first name.

Marshall’s dad had actually named Marshall after Eminem, thinking what kid wouldn’t love that, but his mom put her foot down on the naming of the next baby. Their dad had been named James after his father, who had died in Vietnam before their dad was even born. Their dad carried the name in their grandpa’s honor, and their mom insisted James carry it forward. It was like a tribute to a ghost, or maybe to their biology.

Lifting his guitar off its stand, Marshall cradled the maple against his body. He strummed a G chord, then a C and a D, then he mixed it up and added a blues riff. How had they decided to make blue the color of sadness? He knew only why blue sang sadness to him.

Playing the easy, opening lick to the Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction, a song he knew by motor memory, left him free to worry about James. Their mother had always taken his little brother’s side. James even had the creamy skin and wide apart, big eyes of their mother. And like their mom, James cried easily, which was a big problem.

Marshall was the spitting image of his dad. They just clicked—maybe it was that first-born son thing. Whatever. Their parents’ preferences had been obvious, but maybe they thought it didn’t matter, that it balanced out. Marshall was his father’s son. James was his mother’s. In photos, his brother snuggled up against their mom while he stood by his dad, his father’s hand on his shoulder. His dad taught him to surf while James built sandcastles near their mom, reading a book in a striped beach chair.

He slammed a power chord, trying to drive away the gathering image of himself, a kid, sprinting over cobalt-blue creatures, each smaller than his palm, littering the sand. He bent down, such a pretty, pretty blue.

“Are these jellyfish, Daddy?” A fin stuck up from each blob of bright blue, his favorite color. The fin looked like the glass of a jelly jar.

“No, son. People think that’s a Portuguese-man-of-war, but that’s a Velella velella.”

Marshall rolled the words around in his head, the la la sounds like something to sing. “Do they sting?”

“Nah.”

His father lifted one by its transparent wing. “Actually, this isn’t one thing at all.

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