Noble McCloud - A Novel
Chapter 1

Copyright© 2018 by Harvey Havel

“Hey, are you alright, mister?” said the woman next to him, the infant prodding her lap.

He longed for the darkness of his own internal world, as though he drew pleasure from its tragic consequences. His inebriation hung with him, and he was lucky enough to be released on his own instead of thrown into jail for contempt.

“It’s not that bad,” she said, “and it isn’t the end of the world.”

Noble wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. He rubbed his eyes and acclimated to the crowded antechamber, a loud speaker belching numbers and the climate unbearably muggy. The winter ended abruptly. Even though his disliked the cold, the warmth signaled new lows.

Things couldn’t have been worse. Sweat wandered down his temples, and his irritability erupted into agitation and unease. He had to get out of there, away from the dregs of society and onto the familiar turf of upper-crust Waspachick villagers. The beige linoleum, the mildewy walls, the pea-green disposable chairs, the mother with her child, and the old coughing man were less symbols of his predicament and more examples of an ugliness from which he needed immediate flight.

The unseasonable sunshine followed him the five miles into Waspachick’s center. All about people were celebrating spring’s arrival. Women in spandex and college sweatshirts jogged passed him. Bicycles whizzed with the flow of afternoon traffic. All around him the flush of melting snow, an indoctrination of the new season. The breeze brought relief from the municipal building, and yet his irritability bit like unruly stable flies. What would happen if he just turned around, dropped everything, and made his way Westward? What was so special about Waspachick that he had to remain there like a dog tethered to a parking meter? He could hitchhike down Route 17 and over to 80 West. Once on the interstate he could flag down tired truck drivers and make it to the Coast in time for high tide and those delectable beach-women who would never refuse him. What a risk. From quiet, assiduous guitar player to fugitive-at-large, running from a Mid-Atlantic probation officer to the shrines of the Pacific, meeting others who shared his dreary visions, the world exploding, the only remedy these flirtatious nymphs and the righteous breath of ocean...

He stopped on the sidewalk and looked into a wide road which led to Route 17. He could have dropped everything and followed this road. In his projections, however, he didn’t get far.

He arrived at Shylock’s apartment in the late afternoon. Luckily Shylock was at the coffee house. He searched behind the sofa and found a whiskey bottle. He poured himself a full grass and watered it down with ice cubes. His guitar leaned against the wall. As he drank, a joyous gaiety supplanted his irritability, but he viewed his guitar as menacing. He was afraid it may not yield its previous efficacy. He always encountered this difficulty before playing, a prediction of total failure when trying to recapture that high note. The longer he evaded the task of playing, the harder it became to play. He had been separated from his instrument for only a few hours, but it seemed like days, weeks, years, since he strummed the strings. What was the big deal? he asked. Just pick it up and begin another session. The booze was with him, the apartment empty. What was so difficult? Perhaps it dealt with his notion of achievement, that every practice session needed to approach a level of greatness or perfection.

If the guitar didn’t obey his slightest command, then the session would be useless. The guitar must bend to his will, like dissidents on a dictator’s work camp. His initial gaiety caved in to this unbelievable frustration, the dense wall which separated him from his instrument. He could have smashed it to bits; he could have thrown it off the balcony, or dunked it into a tub of scalding water, anything for it to stop calling his name, needing him to liberate its hidden sound. Maybe he put too much pressure on himself. He was also inhibited by the great many guitarists who came before him, these same idols who pushed the instrument beyond its limitations. He had little idea how to encapsulate his every waking experience through this one shining instrument. And then loomed this idea that the total of his practice sessions were worthless, that he would somehow fail in his glorious attempts, that he would never be great, only a lesser known player who never had the potential of a greater artistry. He felt a deep hollowness at the one particle of an idea that his efforts, his toil and struggle, would never bring him the same satisfaction as living his most precious dreams, that he would be buried as a man unsung, a statistic in a dusty encyclopedia, as though his soul couldn’t thrive without proper recognition from those housewives who scurried by. Perhaps this was the root of the problem: his determination to become a great guitarist without the toil of practice. He could skip the rudimentary phase and latch onto an image of greatness and notoriety, living his dream without having to play. The convenience of image over substance.

He squatted next to the instrument and sipped his whiskey. If only he could practice through proximity. If only his fingers could release a greater magic, or unearth a tune which had never been played before. He clutched the instrument by its neck and jerked it from slumber. He practiced between gulps of whiskey, going over the tabulations, the string exercises, the tremolo deviations, touching every string with deference and caution, as though the session may collapse and fail at any moment, the misguided fear that failure hid behind a flat chord or a severed continuity or a jam which faltered before epiphany.

He pushed hard, the pick grinding every string, his hand inching closer to the high-pitched end of the neck, and suddenly he stopped. The internal critic censored his playing.

If only his play would make sense, follow some established form and structure, never decline into the muck of careless improvisation. Was he mad in thinking a record executive would fall for this? Again the internal critic with its cold rationale and knowledge of market forces and demographics. This stuff will never pass for music, he thought; the second one breaks from logical melody, the moment when a guitarist shows his infinite personality through his playing, the internal critic puts an end to the slightest musings of utopia in favor of a more patient, earthy sound.

He gulped at his whiskey and tried again, a slow strum which hurried into loud, huffing bellows, and then a break into the intricacies of a high E note, sliding from fret to fret, inching his way towards a similar high-pitched wail, and suddenly sliding down towards the nut in keeping with a pattern, no longer the self-indulgent improvisations, and in this manner he appeased the critic by establishing a structure through which he could still maintain his originality, a prison where license plates were manufactured and rocks were chiseled.

He followed the same pattern until he was too drunk to practice. He collapsed on Shylock’s sofa, the warm inebriation humming in his brain. He had played for ten minutes, and already he showed fatigue and discomfort.

He wished he could rush the process of learning, to arrive at a level which flirted with mastery, and then begin from the stance of notoriety and expertise, as though the guitar-playing world would follow him no matter what he played. He dreamt lavishly, with women who wanted him for what he represented. Not a thing had changed since high school; those sun-drenched beaches, the award shows, the clubs. No, this is not the way, he thought, as he accepted an award for best all-time guitarist. And when the image became clear and utterly preposterous, he crawled from the sofa and drowned in more whiskey, squelching these fantasies. There must be an attempt to cure image with substance, and he would be the first artist in a long time to do so. The other great artists of generations passed had sold themselves out, and Noble remained the last pioneer. He would accept no money, no glory from his expertise ... gulp ... and he would donate all of his money to charity ... another gulp ... and the world would be indelibly marked by his style of play which would move mountains ... another gulp ... and cause a joining of hands and minds ... until he finished the bottle. Amazing what Noble endured to be a person other than himself. He too had been captured by what others had- an image. He must now cast aside the image and work from the very bottom, those same creatures at the municipal building who the apparitions insisted were more than insects but living spirits within flesh and blood.

He strummed slowly. He recreated the three of them in the municipal building, their vacuous stares suggesting poverty, sickness, and above all oppression. These people were not insects, they were not numbers on an actuary’s list. They lived and breathed, and for that isolated moment they were connected through their various infractions. And only through a gentle strum can their voices be heard, the voices of those millions calling plaintively for mercy, an alleviation from penalty through an empathic strum getting thicker and more complicated as their stories were. And it is art through which these voices are carried, from one section of the ladder to the next, this thing called art which transformed climbing into a flowering spiritual quest. They were people just like him. He couldn’t comprehend how alike they were.

He searched for more whiskey. He searched the entire apartment. He knew he had stashed several bottles throughout the household. He checked behind the sofa, under the sofa, the cabinet beneath the sink, the closet in Shylock’s bedroom, the guitar box, and the utility closet. Instead he found a ten dollar bill in Shylock’s bedside drawer.

He headed into town and went to a second, more obscure liquor store further south, not the one next to the coffee house, as Shylock could have easily spotted him. He purchased another whiskey bottle and cruised home with his gaiety recharged. He played his guitar with an abandon until Shylock returned.

Noble explained the events of the day and told him about Alcoholics Anonymous.

“It may be good for you,” said Shylock.

“I’m no alcoholic, but if I don’t do it, they’ll put me in jail for sure.”

“It’s getting late. Shouldn’t you be getting to a meeting?”

“I can go tomorrow, and besides, how would I get there?”

Shylock picked up the phone and made a toll-free call despite Noble’s protestations.

It turned out there was a meeting in Waspachick, at a sprawling stone church near the supermarket.

“I don’t want to go. I have a lot to do.”

“Like what? Sit here all day and night drinking and stealing money from me?”

“Shy, I’m not stealing from you.”

“If you don’t go, I want you out, is that clear? No more nice-Shylock. You obviously can’t handle liquor.”

“I’ll go, all right, I’ll go.”

“I’m only telling you, because I’ve seen what’s happened in the last few weeks. Ever since you bought the guitar, it’s gone all down hill. Are you, like, drinking so much because other musicians drink a lot?”

“It has nothing to do with that,” snapped Noble.

“All right. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“This is very hard work,” as he gulped at the bottle. “I guess I’m going out with a bang.”

“I mean it, Noble. No more of this. You’re a guest here, okay? Let’s make that clear. Don’t abuse my friendship further.”

“This is the last whiskey bottle you’ll ever see around me,” as he finished it.

“Prove it then. Prove it by not drinking. Prove me wrong.”

In the evening, Noble was driven to the church which occupied one full block of a lesser-known avenue parallel to the strip. The entrance to this heavy, gothic structure was well-lit, and on the steps gathered people of all sorts smoking cigarettes, some sitting on the long stone slabs which tumbled from the doorway. Some stood and conversed. Noble gawked at them through the car window and shook his head.

“This will never work, Shy.”

“How do you know? Besides, if you don’t go, you’ll be tossed in jail. The probation officer will be after your ass.”

“I’m not an alcoholic.”

“Prove me wrong, then. Give it a try. I’ll meet you home later.”

“Where are you going?” he asked in alarm.

“I have a date at the bar in East Waspachick. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“Hey, here’s a breath mint,” as he dropped one in Noble’s palm, “don’t want you getting into any trouble. You’re pretty drunk in my estimation.”

He crushed the mint between his molars. He hoped it would prevent anyone from suspecting him. He would act totally clean and straight in their company. He was there only for the DWI slip. These slips, with the seal of New Jersey on them, would be given to the probation officer as proof of his attendance. He would not talk to anyone; he would march in, sit for the full hour, grab the slip, leave, and ultimately return to his guitar and the whiskey.

He darted through the pack of smoking alcoholics and entered the church. Its external architecture deceived the lay onlooker. Inside the floors were made of blonde wood, and the walls of white plaster. In the congregation room, the lights were turned low and candles on the tables illumined the expanse. He also detected a stage at the head of the room. Apparently it wasn’t being used. He heard the din of conversation rolling from one end of the hallway to the other. He avoided this area and quickly took a seat.

The darkness soothed his initial anxieties. His shadow loomed sinister on the walls. After reaffirming his intentions not to utter a word, the AA-goers trickled into the room through a side door. The meeting commenced with a vague preamble.

The people sitting next to him smiled. He smiled back. ‘Remember, keep silent, get the slip, and get out of here,’ he thought. He didn’t own a watch, so had little clue when the required hour would end. He sat quietly and hoped the format excluded him. A medium-sized elderly gentleman talked of DWI cards. He wore a blue polyester suit. His speech was hard and methodical. Noble earmarked him for after the meeting.

After a long preamble the leader of the meeting, a tall, heavy-set woman of middle age, a face as demure as a sheet of ice, went around the room starting with the person next to her. She mentioned a topic- ‘powerlessness.’ Noble again paid little attention. He grew nervous, as he sat only two chairs away. He would have to participate.

When his turn came he ‘passed’ without mentioning his name or the ‘I am an alcoholic’ disclaimer. He wanted to participate only in his buzz. He didn’t listen at all to what they said. Their contributions were cryptic and esoteric, as though they belonged to an occult. The Branch Davidians came to mind. He did notice how they looked in the mellow candlelight. Their ages ranged from teeny-bopper to old and toothless. They were unattractive or far below the Waspachick standard. He saw this as a significant drawback, but he sat in a drunken daze, waiting for the coveted DWI slip and boom! Walk out into the clear evening and gulp the whiskey at home.

The bits and pieces of talk only intensified his longing for the drink. The discussions focused on alcohol exclusively, and as each drunk shared, he could taste the bitter elixir running down his gullet. Thank God he wasn’t like these people, he thought. Imagine not drinking for the rest of their lives? What would they do without liquor? There would be little joy, little escape from the rest of the world. It would be so incredibly boring, so tremendously empty and vacuous. There would be little reward for a hard day’s work, little enjoyment, and few women.

The attractive women hung around the bars, especially the one in East Waspachick. There were no beautiful women here, only ugliness; old maids, widows and widowers, corpulent and grotesque, agitated and irate. They would never again experience the beauty of alcohol, its power to relieve the pains of existence if only for a few moments. No great man of any society had ever emerged from these meetings, certainly not a guitarist, and they would go through their lives dismissing the only substance which provided an escape. This was Noble’s reasoning. These alcoholics were ugly, weak whiners who stuck together for an hour or so, living boring and difficult lives. He had no place with them, as they had no place within the calculus of his artistic ambitions. They were losers who admitted they had lost everything through their inability to hold their liquor. Alcoholics were bums on the street without a nickel to their names. They ended up sodomized in prison or in the psychiatric wards walking like robots, or in the gutter. He had little connection with these nuts, these crazies, these outlaws who hid in these churches and complained of their misfortunes. How absurd.

He heard from a stray voice that the only requirement for membership was a desire to stop drinking. Since Noble didn’t fulfill this requirement, he didn’t belong. But he stayed, because he was forced to stay. He had grown anxious and irritable. His thoughts screamed for a drink, anything for the bliss of a drink to drown these miserable misfits, to eradicate them from memory. He heard words like ‘Higher Power,’ ‘God,’ and ‘Spirituality,’ and he instantly rebelled. Overpowering evidence suggested there was no such thing as a God, and if a God existed he had created evil from everything holy and pure. As far as he was concerned, God didn’t exist. The concept remained a psychological opiate for the weak, sick, and hopeless. Only people who had frontal lobe damage prayed. Only the depressed, lascivious, and suicidal prayed for this manna from heaven.

He fought the urge to scream, to shout, to vomit upon these candles and mouths moving at the surge of syncopation towards the tail end of the discussion. He needed a drink immediately. He couldn’t handle it. He wanted to shout, kick, and yell, but as usual with Noble, his composure was dead enough to pass a polygraph. He didn’t move an inch. He didn’t even shift positions in his chair. His buttocks numbed. He sat like a congealed bowl of oatmeal, his brain melting into porridge. A tingle spread from the tips of his fingers into his hands, then his arms. The temperature of the room turned cold while his body grew warm and feverish. A cold sweat, and then the inclination to shit in his pants. Finally, he shivered in his seat. He tried desperately to control it, and when he focused on the task, the shivering stopped. He was relieved at the power of his mind to overcome this embarrassment.

The meeting soon ended with a group prayer. Noble prayed for his guitar, his whiskey bottle, and his instruction book. All he needed were these three objects operating in his life, nothing else, certainly not AA. Alas, he needed a DWI slip from the man in the blue polyester suit. The lights were turned on, and the candles blown. He rushed to the man in blue polyester, his pale eyes reminding him of a retired school teacher, an ex-cop, or a man who hated big government.

“Listen, man, I need a DWI slip,” said Noble quickly. “I heard you’re the man.”

“What’s your name, son?” asked the man.

“Noble. My name is Noble.”

“First time here?” he said with a derisive grin.

“Yes, my first time. Listen, man, I’m really in a big rush. Can you give me the slip or the ticket or whatever?”

“What’s your rush?”

“I’ve got some people to see, business and all.”

“You’re not fooling anybody,” he said solemnly.

“What? What on earth do you mean?”

“You heard what I said.”

“Listen, man, I need that slip or else my probation officer will throw me in jail.”

“It’s called a ‘card,’ a DWI ‘card,’” his articulation slow, precise, and enervating.

“Well, whatever it is, I need the ‘card.’”

“You come to this meeting tomorrow, sober, and I’ll give you the card, okay?”

“Let me make this clear. I don’t know who you are or what power trip your on, but I need that card, and I need it now. This is not the time to fuck around with someone’s life, okay, now give me the card so I don’t have to raise my voice.”

“I said, come here sober tomorrow, and I’ll give you both cards- one for tonight, and one for tomorrow. Satisfied?”

“No, I’m not satisfied,” snapped Noble. “I’ve been here at this meeting for an hour straight listening to this bullshit, and I want the card immediately, now, pronto, in haste, got me?”

“Is this the way you want to live, a young guy like yourself? Sweating and shaking for another snort?”

“Spare me the lecture, man. Give me the card,” he whispered hotly.

“That’s my offer. Come tomorrow sober, and you’ll get your card. Until then, I don’t want to see you.”

Noble flew from the church and rushed for Shylock’s apartment. He could have punched the man in the ear. He could have pulled apart his limbs like the centipede he was. The nerve of such an imbecilic weasel, this decaying K-mart shopper with his shit-brown tie and his slate blue suit which mimicked his eyes, those albinic insect eyes which didn’t move when he spoke. He could have been blind, that worthless two-bit lush, his black zipper boots from some oriental import shop, his mind bought from a gum-ball machine, his body like a warped wooden plank. The nerve of this lonely, dismal man avenging himself for years without the sauce, so vindictive that he took out all of that pent-up frustration on him.

Noble needed a drink before his body went into convulsions, before his brain liquefied into a soupy, drippy ooze. He hated that old windbag, that geriatric, diaper-wearing, cryptofascist failure. They were all as ugly as insects, failures by default, and Noble would drink just to spite them.

He almost ran up the slope to the apartment driveway. He searched frantically for the keys, searched again for his keys, searched a third time. Shit, he forgot his keys. He could have banged the door down, but then a window of calm encouraged him to think.

On the narrow balcony he peered through the window. The apartment was dark, and he couldn’t see a thing but his own harried reflection. He tried the window. His fingernails chewed the crevice where the window frame met the sill. He succeeded in getting it open and crawled through it, banging his knee in the process. He switched on the light and spotted the warm whiskey bottle by the sofa. It was half-full. He chugged it from the bottle, the amber dripping from his chin.

After polishing off the entire bottle, he felt normal again. The shivering stopped. The cold perspiration dried. The anxiety left. His anger towards this one man drained into the sewer of distant, unimportant memories. He was whole and complete again.

He thought things over in a rational manner but discovered that the whiskey bottle was drained and needed replenishment before the practice session. He still had change from the last purchase. He journeyed to the liquor store next to Shylock’s coffee house. A town should always have two liquor stores, thought Noble. That way, the counter people don’t ask questions or get too suspicious.

He walked to the first liquor store, but it was closed. He got nervous again. He couldn’t see the night through without another bottle. He moved further South towards the other liquor store. He walked briskly, the climate getting colder, his temperature steadily rising. Shady characters appeared more frequently. He thought they looked him over without provocation, as though it were odd to see his type on the southern streets at night, a spectacle, a young man out of place. He cruised by them and to his delight found the liquor store open, even empty.

The South side liquor store was unlike the one in the center of town. The counterperson sat behind thick, bullet-proof plexiglass. The whiskey bottles were stacked in a fuzzy blur behind the plastic. He panted within a cramped space, one-on-one with the salesperson and the drawer which he pushed open. Noble dropped every last dollar and dime he had.

“Whiskey,” said Noble, “your cheapest and largest bottle.”

The counter-person flashed a variety of sizes. Naturally, Noble chose the biggest bottle, regardless of the brand. It could have been mouthwash for all he cared. Before leaving, he downed a mouthful, his mood elevating. On his way towards Central Waspachick he was unencumbered by the patrolman on vigilant watch, as the Southern areas were still kept under the town’s jurisdiction like a prodigal son. A short man with a wide-brimmed chapeau offered him “coke, reefer, coke, reefer,” which he would have purchased had he the money. Instead he swigged from the paper bag. By the time he climbed the slope to Shylock’s apartment, the whiskey bottle was half-drained. Nevertheless he was content with his purchase and saved some for the long hours ahead. His guitar waited for him, and the sessions would be easier.

Before picking it up, however, he again encountered this fear. He couldn’t understand this fear before playing, this haunting conniption which rendered him impotent. He looked at the instrument in horror, as though the booze weren’t enough. It went beyond a lack of inspiration. Even the fear of failure wasn’t acceptable anymore. He had to surpass these ghosts, these guitarists who revolutionized the sounds of each steel chord. He put himself under pressure again, but there was more to it- the stubborn problem of the creative process- the movement from amateurish day dreams to realist professionalism, the attempt to create a product for public consumption.

He reasoned that the creative process within his practice sessions concerned the mind and its attempt to inspire itself into a form of work, as though it were a muscle which needed conditioning. The bottom line involved the work. Not inspiration. Noble could have easily been inspired by the mosquito slipping through the window screen, or the noise of the jet airplane. Inspiration, then, was not the problem. It was the idea of work, the suicide sprints after practice, or the long dirt road in front of the out-of-shape jogger. In order for the creative process to ensue, the guitar player must first find a conducive environment.

So he cleaned Shylock’s apartment. He threw away the beer cans, folded the sheet on the sofa, dusted the cobwebs from the corners, arranged the CD’s, even sprayed air freshener which stung his eyes as it misted to earth. Between each of these tasks, he chugged the whiskey and mistakenly drained the entire bottle.

He didn’t get a drunken high from the intoxicant. Again, it brought him to a level of normalcy which avoided the anxiousness, the irritability, and above all else the shaking. He reasoned that if he left for more whiskey and then returned, the new environment would freshen or cleanse his spate for work, like setting fire to a palace.

There was no time to waste. He ran to the South side liquor store, purchased what more he could from the change in his trousers, and returned with a half-pint of whiskey.

The apartment was as clean as could be, a remarkable difference from the combat zone he had traveled through. And once again, the fear- the idea that he must sweat, toil, and bleed with each string, a chore, a bureaucratic entanglement.

He took out the trash and strategically left the bottle next to the guitar. It must be the fear of work, thought Noble.

His mind projected into the session, visualizing the uncomfortability when a riff didn’t sound right or a chord played off tune, or the struggle when the internal music externalized into something pathetic. The guitar was the nucleus around which everything revolved, and he avoided the nucleus, as though the main drama floated around it. Perhaps he was burning out. Maybe he was a terrible player, but the dream, the vision, an inundated arena and himself on the stage, plucking the strings. Somehow the vision seemed unimportant and the goal of working a high priority.

He found it harder to stick within the bar lines. If there were no such impediment he could have explored the complexity of his instrument. Someone had to listen, and if the tune entered the irrational or the nonsensical, if it flew beyond traditional limits, the tune would fail. His audience became the cheers and jeers of his own brain. To please the censor, to shout within a three-minute format, to have that shout make sense, and for the audience to interpret this sound in the correct manner became the equivalent of hearing Noble’s own voice through cluttered technicalities. This leads to the idea that one’s own private play, one’s private world becomes easier to construct than its movement beyond it.

If he were to strum for himself, if he had an internal audience which accepted anything he played, what would he play but music completely irrational and at heart rebellious, a loud distorted thunder, a primordial shout within darkness, a bathtub full of blood? In no way could he be so indulgent, and yet that’s what he wanted, not the rigid framework provided, not the commonsensical definition of what music should be, but what it ought to be.

He tried this new approach, playing recklessly without tablature or notes or bar lines. He didn’t see it as work but something which brought pleasure for the first time since purchasing the instrument. His chords didn’t make sense. They were never meant for public consumption, only fulfilled a private desire to express what he saw, what had happened, what was to become, almost like stuttering, until the internal audience took over and coerced him to make sense and walk the line and articulate positive sounds.

 
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