Spiral

join Spiral.”
    A frown as he took a long drag on the cigarette. ”You mean, like, way back?”
    ”Right.”
    A shrug, the smoke coming out his nostrils like a cartoon of a raging bull. ”Might be this’ll turn into a three-butt break.” After tapping some ash into the soda can’s opened top, he looked at the smoldering end of the cigarette. ”Man, but that first puff, it always the best.”
    ”The Helds don’t want you smoking inside the house?” Another shrug. ”Don’t nobody want us coffin-nailers smoking inside anywhere. I hear out in California now, they went and outiawed it every which place—even bars, man. You a nicotine-fiend, how you supposed to enjoy a drink, you can’t smoke, too?”
    ”Don’t know, Mr. Biggs. Never picked up the habit.”
    He eyed me, then a cagey smile. ”Second time you call me that, babe.”
    ”What?”
    ”‘Mr. Biggs,’ like I’m some kind of record-company honcho and you my ass-kisser.”
    ”Just trying to be polite.”
    ”To the house nigger.”
    Biggs sent two more plumes of smoke out his nose.
    I said, ”You weren’t black, and used that word, I’d ask you not to use it again.”
    Head cocked again, but a little differently. ‘You in the war, right?”
    ”Vietnam, anyway.”
    ”What other one there been, babe?”
    ”Persian Gulf.”
    ”No,” said Biggs, shaking his head as he drew another lungful. ”You too old for that one, and besides, you got the look.”
    ”The look.”
    ”Yeah, like what some of my homeboys used to get, they come back from over there and I use ‘honky’ or ‘offay’ in front of them.”
    I heard a sudden, buzzing sound to the right, and turned that way. Someone had suspended a hummingbird feeder on what looked like monofilament fishing line from the outside beam of the alcove. One green hummingbird was hovering over the red cover of the feeder, about to land on the clear plastic rail around the bowl part, when another hummingbird strafed it from an oblique angle, both zooming off in different directions.
    Biggs said, ”Bother you to talk about the war?”
    I turned back to him. ”Bother you to talk about how you came to join Spiral?”
    A raspy laugh, then a cough before another deep drag on the cigarette. ”You got a little of the bulldog in you, babe. But I admire that, so we cool.” More exhaled smoke. ”Okay, here’s how the shit happened. I was doing studio work—you know what I’m saying?”
    ”Teach me.”
    Another raspy laugh. ”Studio musician, he play for a recording session with a singer don’t got their own band. Producer find out you can lay the tracks down fast and clean, he keep hiring you, account of you save him money.”
    ”By shortening the session and the rent on the studio?”
    ”Now you got it.” Biggs dropped the remainder of his cigarette into the can, but didn’t light another right away-”So, like I was telling you, I’m working this studio, and Mitch Eisen—he Spiral’s manager?”
    ”We’ve met.”
    ”Mitch, he say to me, ‘Buford, I got this white kid, wrote a couple songs I think might fly. You want in?’”
    ”Just like that?”
    The frown. ”Just like what?”
    ”Eisen has you match up with another musician you’d never met?”
    ”Oh, babe. You in the war, but not some time capsule, right? Back in the early seventies, everything be real loosey-goosey. Wasn’t no ‘courtship’ kind of thing. Some bands, now, they been messing around since they in junior high, but lots of groups, they got put together by the front office, you dig?”
    ”Go on.”
    Biggs shook another cigarette from his pack. ”Anyway, I go in this session, and Mitch already has Gordo lined up for bass guitar—I tell you what I play?”
    ”Eisen said you were the keyboardist.”
    ”Okay, then. Spi, he was lead guitar and lead singer, and I did backup vocals. This spaceshot name of Tommy O’Dell, he on drums—not to mention more drugs than you could find at twenty Walgreens.”
    ”I know O’Dell died of an overdose.”
    ”Yeah, yeah. But that’s a long time later.” Biggs lit his second cigarette. ”You want the early days, right?”
    ”Right.”
    ”Okay. Mitch gets us four together, and fact is, we don’t sound half bad. Mitch, he has like a talent for that.”
    ”For the right mix of people.”
    ”Yeah, but more than just the music.” Another cocking of the head. ”Name me one brother who play in a rock band, you can.”
    ”Jimi Hendryx.”
    ”The main man. Name me