May 21, 2010
Back then, Bonehead lived to jam. Day and night, he played for whoever would listen: Little Charlie, Okeefenokee, Miss Chivalry, Uncle Lotus, Abner Philistine. They all hated it, that rambling, purposeless noodling on the cigar-box guitar. That jam band stuff just grated on every nerve in Knuckle Junction. Folks there liked meat with their potatoes and structure with their music. Give ’em Nigel Buzzcrack or Lacey Drawers any day of the week.
But Bonehead kept trying. For him, walking into people’s houses or businesses uninvited and striking up an hour-long jam of a so-called song he’d just made up with some nonsense title like “Squirt Gun” or “Pickle Jar” was the equivalent of playing Carnegie Hall. It was the be-all and end-all of his musical ambition. The fainthearted applause of three old guys at Giblet’s Diner trying to get him to go away might as well have been the roaring ovation of three hundred thousand true believers at the New York Philharmonic.
But all things must come to an end, even never-ending tuneless jam sessions. One night, Bonehead went out to a teenage keg party in the woods, thinking those trashed kids would “get” him. And they did, but not the way he’d expected. They started out flicking bottle caps and cigarette butts at him, then moved on to beating him with alternating tire irons and live chickens. They dragged him all the way to Trollop Point and were just about to roll him off the cliff on account of they favored hip hop, not that jazz shit.
Then, something crazy happened. Something they never talk about. Neither does Bonehead. Two of those kids never made it home alive; the rest came back with glazed-over eyes and uncontrollable trembling. One girl, the youngest at the party, said something about the cigar box guitar being the three-dimensional shadow of something much bigger from a higher plane of existence. Something more monstrous than we can ever imagine. She said something about the guitar playing Bonehead, not the other way around…and the jamming that seems like it never ends being some kind of spell that brings down unspeakable horror.
But folks around Shogpatch County don’t much cotton to that sort of gobbledy-goo. We just think Bonehead has always been a crazy bastard, and his homemade kitten accordion and his wet fart trombone sound just about as foot-stompin’ awful as his cigar-box guitar and his bug zapper xylophone used to.
©2010 Robert T. Jeschonek
