Fitz - By Mick Cochrane Page 0,25

over from Minneapolis back into St. Paul. Below, the Mississippi is shimmering in the afternoon sun.

“What was it about, then?” Fitz says. He’s looking out the window, staring down at the river. There’s something almost hypnotic about it, it’s calming him down to watch it. “Tell me that.”

“We were so different,” his father says. “From different worlds, that’s what she used to say.”

That sounds like another soap opera to Fitz, maybe a romance novel. Now Fitz is feeling not so much angry as exhausted. Maybe it’s his belly full of burger and apple pie. Maybe his father’s line of bull is making him sleepy. He feels almost too tired to call him out.

They’re exiting the bridge now, and Fitz turns to get a last look at the river. He remembers seeing the source, on vacation in northern Minnesota with his mom, and there, at the headwaters, in Itasca Park, he and his mom waded across in a few quick steps. It made an impression. Something so modest, a shallow trickle, could become swift and powerful, dangerous even, a force to be reckoned with.

It’s the same river that flows through St. Louis, where Chuck Berry grew up, where his father lived, all the way down to the Delta, home to the bluesmen that Caleb so reveres and refers to sometimes by first name, as if they are still alive, as if he knows them, as if they are kids from school. “This is how Robert would play it,” Caleb might say, and Fitz knows he’s talking about Robert Johnson, who died in something like 1930. On the other end of this same river is New Orleans, Fats Domino, the Ninth Ward, all those people stranded on roofs and stuck in the Superdome. His mom watched them on television, tears streaming down her face. Somehow they are all connected by it, this river, Fitz and his father and his mom and the folks down there. Fitz wishes he could find a way to write a song about that.

22

Fitz flips up the hood of his sweatshirt. It is a kind of private signal with his mom, half joke and half not, his own personal do-not-disturb sign. It’s what he does when he doesn’t feel like talking, when he needs a little Fitz time. It’s how he retracts into his shell when he feels vulnerable. He’s read somewhere that some rock star, Dylan probably, somebody legendary, communicates this way with his people—when the hood is up, it means I don’t wanna talk. It means leave me alone. Fitz loves the wordless efficiency of the gesture—no need to explain, which is exactly the point—and he sometimes likes the sensation of being insulated from the world. It’s a way for him to step back. It’s not as if all his clothing is hooded—though a surprisingly large percentage of his wardrobe does indeed consist of hoodies—and it’s not all that often, really, that he feels the need. But sometimes he does. Especially in the car, he’s glad to have a no-chat option with his mom, who may smile a little when he flips up but always respects his preference. It works for him, with his mom at least.

His father obviously doesn’t know the code, doesn’t speak the language. Right now he seems to be in his own world, too. He might as well be hooded. He’s off in his own place, wherever that it is.

Fitz unzips the front pocket of his backpack and takes out a CD. It’s got a handful of songs they recorded the week before, just Fitz and Caleb and a drum machine, a few covers and one original. It isn’t a demo or anything, just something to show for all their time in Caleb’s basement. Fitz isn’t sure why he packed it this morning. He wasn’t really planning on playing it. But right now it feels like the right thing to do. They’re in the middle of something, going from one thing to the next, scenery whizzing by them—it’s the perfect time for, what do they call it? A musical interlude.

The first song on it is them doing a number by Jimmy Reed, one of Caleb’s heroes. He wasn’t blind, but he did have epilepsy and was an alcoholic, too, of course. A couple of weeks before, Caleb gave Fitz a CD of his songs. Told Fitz he should try to write something like it, but there was no way. If you copied out the lyrics to one of his songs, they didn’t