And since those two were in, Tim and me had to wade in because, man, these were our brothers. You took their backs.
But then…
[Pause]
We met Tommy.
By this time, we’d been on the road, I don’t know, four, five months.
Summer was over, I know that.
Felt like we’d been on the road four, five years, I know that too.
And we were outside Chicago.
I know that too.
I’d have to look up my notebooks to know exactly when it was, but it doesn’t matter.
I was pissed as shit because we were in that camper where we rode and slept, and they all fucked chicks.
But I wasn’t pissed about that.
It was cold as fuck, and Dave was alternately smoking a bong—and we barely had enough money to eat, and Dave got his hands on weed, probably using our money, which did not make me happy—and holding ice to a fat lip.
And Preacher’s knuckles were all split and he was lying on his back with his long-ass legs up the side of the camper, his head hanging over the bench of the table that turned into a bed ’cause his nose wouldn’t stop bleeding.
Two of my knuckles were split and I had a tooth loose.
And before we even left the joint, Timmy had a shiner.
That was when someone hammered on the door.
Preacher was on his feet in a flash and Dave was mumbling shit like, “Fuck, I can’t fight. I’m high,” and Timmy had his head bowed and was staring at the crappy-ass carpet of that camper, probably hoping what I was hoping. That no one had come to kill us after we got out of that last brawl that included Preacher having to deliver a beatdown to the bar manager who didn’t wanna pay us.
And after that, we had to haul ass.
In a camper.
When that knock came, I was in the middle of delivering a lecture, something I did a lot before Tommy, something that made me feel like I was my mom, which I fuckin’ hated.
I was doing this reminding Preach and Dave we kinda needed all our fingers to work so we could play music.
I’d learn, you know, later, where that shit came from for Preach.
I’d think about it a lot.
Hell, I still think about it a lot.
Wondering…
[Pause]
You know, if I should have let him…
[Trails off]
If he’d been able to get more of it out. If he’d have been able to work it out of his system.
If we hadn’t met Tommy.
Needless to say, Preach shoved me out of the way and opened the door.
Tom was outside.
I think Tommy said something like, “You’ll wanna let me in and listen to me.”
Now, Preach was a brawler and Preach had shit he was dealing with but Preacher was far from dumb.
Tommy Mancosa, as you know, was five foot eleven. Preach had five inches and probably fifty, sixty pounds on the guy.
But Tommy was also a former marine, still had the buzz cut, no neck, and he did not get the nickname “Bulldog” for nothin’.
There never was a Preacher versus Tommy smackdown.
From the beginning, total simpatico with those two.
But if it had happened, I wouldn’t lay money on either of them, ’cause honest to Christ, I’d have no idea who’d come out on top.
So, what I’m sayin’ is, Preach did not get up in his shit.
He just said, “I’m listenin’, but I’m not lettin’ you in.”
Tom said, “Fair enough.” Then he said, “I’m gonna make you guys the biggest rock band there ever was.”
I was standing behind Preach.
At that, Tim and Dave pushed up close and we all stood there, behind Preach, looking down at this five-foot-eleven hunk of muscle with a fighter’s face and mean eyes wearing a beat-up leather jacket who looked maybe five years older than Preach.
“You a scout?” Tim asked.
“Nope,” Tom answered.
“You a manager?” Tim asked.
“Not until now,” Tom answered.
Seriously.
That’s what he said.
Guy had big balls. Huge. Enormous.
Not until now, he said.
[Shakes head while chuckling]
“You sayin’ you wanna be our manager?” Preacher asked.
“Yup,” Tommy says.
Preach shut the door in his face.
He turned to us and said, “Vote.”
Dave was the first to say yes, which came as no surprise.
“He doesn’t know dick,” I pointed out.
“We don’t know dick either,” Dave reminded me.
“We don’t know dick about this guy,” I kept at it.
“We don’t get paid dick by anybody,” Tim reminded everybody.
Preach turned and opened the door and Tommy was still standing out there, in the cold.
“Until we make cake, you don’t get paid,” Preacher told him.
“Deal,” Tommy said.
And that was how we hired Tommy Mancosa.
It wasn’t Tommy but Preach who took me in hand.
Tom had found us some gig in Michigan City and he and the other guys were out with their posters and staple guns, papering the city with band shit, this Tommy’s new thing. We’d never had posters before Tom.
I’d slept in the cab. I was cold, pissed I’d had to sleep in the cab and in no mood to wander around Michigan City, putting up posters.
And Preach was fucking some chick in the bed over the top of the cab.
When I heard he was done and took the time Preach took before he rolled her out—because even if it was a one shot, Preacher was not a slam-bam man—I got out of the cab and went to the camper at the back.
He was standing at the little stove, frying bacon.
I barely climbed in when he asked, eyes on the bacon, “You gay?”
“No, I’m not fuckin’ gay,” I told him, backed to pissed but now pissed because, you know, it was the eighties. You didn’t ask a man shit like that in the eighties and ever get a yes or make the man you asked pissed as shit.
Even so, I’m not gay.
That was when Preach looked at me. “Why don’t you get laid then, brother?”
“Look at me,” I told him.
He was looking at me, so he just repeated his question.
“Pizza face,” I said.
He had a fork in his hand, lifted it my way, and said, “That’s the last time I hear shit like that from you.”
That was it.
He made us bacon and eggs and we ate them at the table where he’d been bleeding a few weeks before.
That was Preacher McCade too.
He knew he was a good-lookin’ guy with a good body. Straight up, he was full of himself. Totally vain.
It was confidence, sure.
But it was also vanity.
[Laughs]
Sayin’ that, he could have been ugly as fuck, and he would have thought he was the shit.
That was just how he was. That was just how he thought everyone should be.
Knowin’ his story, I don’t know how he got there, took himself there, got to that place in his head where he was at one with himself, and I never asked.
I just know he did.
The thing was, it wasn’t something he had that he held over anyone else.
In the way Tim needed it, he did that shit with Timmy too. I didn’t know when or how, I just saw Tim come into himself and how Preach settled into that, so I knew he had a hand in it.