Poor ghost, p.18
Poor Ghost, page 18
In particular, I’m thinking of that scene in the dressing room before one concert where Stuart and Kerry are trying to harmonize on “Koan Americana,” and they keep getting interrupted by people. First it’s Ed Wingfield, then Shane’s girlfriend at the time—I don’t remember her name—asks for Stuart’s autograph, then the lighting designer wants to talk about a glitch in the console, then Gregg has a question about the order of the set list. It’s chaotic. But instead of getting pissed at everyone, Stuart and Kerry just respond calmly, then go right back to trying to get that harmony right. You felt like they were professionals, and also that they were artists, really devoted to their craft.
SHANE REED: I honestly thought this would be our last number-one album, and we were lucky to have it. Even one week at the top, like we had, is a real sales booster.
STUART FISHER: The album’s title comes from Emerson’s essay “Experience.” The line right before it is “The great gifts are not got by analysis,” and I thought that was an accurate summation of PG’s ethos. We’re a band that has always sort of felt our way forward. Like: “Is this the right thing to do?” And you say: “Well, how does it feel?” Ultimately, that album, that tour, the movie—they felt right.
YOUTUBE
Poor Ghost: Everything Good Is on the Highway
18,979,755 views • Jul 31, 2013
Andrew Kennedy
rewatching the movie for like the hundredth time i keep getting blown away by how good these guys were. every. single. song. rip.
PGRulz
I’ve never had such a strong connection to anything as I’ve had to their music. They saved me many times for sure when I was feeling so, so low.
Edgar Eagle
Check out Gregg’s solo on “The Afterbirth of Tragedy” at 38:17. The Phrygian scale in E has never sounded more alive.
Shred 2 Survive
I still laugh every time that lady takes it off onstage. And Gregg just keeps right on jamming.
Briana Wilson
this is how you connect with an audience—write songs that people want to hear over and over and over again
Owen the God
Look at the audience shots. Those people are in pure bliss!
Samantha Buchanan
Love how Stuart keeps the crowd going at the end of Wax monk in a glass box (around the 52-minute mark). He’s all la la la la la laaaaaaaaaaaa!!!
Brandi the Bulgar Slayer
Never seen so many happy people in one place before or since.
Eric 805
am i the only one who feels like shane is the unacknowledged leader of this band? without the drums, pg is just a really good garage band. but with shane, they are transcendent.
punkwontdie
Legends, pure and simple.
55
You take Kerry Cruz’s card from your wallet and, right there in the backyard, pull your phone from your pocket and give him a call.
He is in New York and has an important meeting that afternoon with Poor Ghost’s lawyers, but he thinks he can be in Santa Barbara before midnight. You tell him the next morning is fine, and he says he’ll text you his arrival information once he has it. There’s something about his voice that, despite yourself, makes you want to trust him.
You feed Jackson a can of dog food, make a cup of tea, sit down with your computer, and pull up some YouTube interviews with the band, just to see how Kerry comes across. The interviewers, naturally, direct most of their questions to Stuart, but Kerry is clearly the next in charge, at least from an intellectual and aesthetic standpoint. He talks intelligently about the composition of a song or an album, and he clearly is not only concerned about the artistic direction of the band, but he has a hand in shaping it. Gregg is funny—the wild lead guitarist—while Shane comes across a bit pinched, more of a bottom-line guy. He only really lights up when the band’s success is mentioned. None of them seem eager to bring on their own deaths.
You make another cup of tea, then call Kelsey Symmons.
“Hi,” she says, apparently surprised to hear from you. “Anything new?”
“Yeah, actually. I think I found the gun that was used to force down Poor Ghost’s plane.”
She’s silent for a moment. “You’re shitting me, right?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Have you called the cops? Or the NTSB?”
“No. Kerry Cruz is coming over tomorrow morning to talk about it. He says it’s not his, but I think it might be. I caught him looking for it in the bushes of my backyard.”
“You what? Whoa. And you didn’t tell anyone?”
“He was poking around in my bushes the day you called me about Elineo killing his daughter. Then my father was in the hospital, and I kind of forgot about it until after he died.”
“Wait, what? When did your dad die?”
“A few days ago.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.”
There’s a longer pause. Finally, she says, “I’m down in San Diego right now, doing a story on military personnel who refuse to get vaccinated, but I could come up there if you want me to. It might take a day or so.”
“No, that’s okay. I just wanted to tell someone. In case something happened to me.”
“You think Kerry Cruz is going to kill you?”
“Not really. Just being cautious. But if it happens, you’ll have quite a scoop.”
“I mean, getting murdered by a rock star? Sounds unlikely. On the other hand, you did have an airplane crash in your backyard.”
“I’m going to hear him out. I’ll let you know what he says.”
“I’d very much appreciate that.” In the background, you hear some men laughing, then the sound of a jet engine coming to life. “Gotta go,” she yells. “Call me after you talk with him.”
“I will,” you say, but she’s already hung up.
56
It is Tuesday, December 21, and you haven’t done a thing for Christmas. Last year was too raw, but this was Connie’s favorite holiday, and the prospect of buying a Christmas tree and spending the day decorating for the holidays makes you suddenly and unaccountably happy.
Jackson, ever alert to your mood, perks up, and you have a hard time keeping him in the house as you head down to the garden center off Patterson where you and Connie would always buy your trees. You choose a seven-foot spruce with thick branches. Two men attach a stand, then tie the tree to the top of your SUV, and on the way home, stopped at a light, a little girl in the back seat of the car in front of you turns, waves, and mouths Merry Christmas.
Back at the house, you cut the twine and drag the tree into its traditional corner. Jackson sniffs at the branches, and you give him a finger wag and keep repeating, “No pee. No pee.” You fill the stand with water, sweep up the trail of pine needles—the tree is much drier than you realized—then fetch the Christmas lights from the garage.
Outside, you use a staple gun to attach a string of white lights to the eaves on the front of your house. Then, for the rest of the morning, you decorate the tree, playing Christmas music on Spotify, which includes Poor Ghost’s guitar-driven version of “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” Jackson sits on the rug, watching as you go back and forth from the boxes to the tree.
At first, it feels as satisfying as you had imagined it would, but then memories of Christmases with Connie and Victoria come flooding back. You remember the morning when Victoria was six and you and Connie came out to find that your daughter had unwrapped not just her own, but every present under the tree. Also, the time you bought Connie a pair of diamond earrings and she lost the right one as she was putting it on. You never found the earring, though you looked for days afterward. And then her last Christmas, months before Connie got sick, when the pandemic was just a thing happening in China. The two of you bought each other Rick Steves’ travel guides: Portugal, Italy, Iceland, Scotland, Ireland, Switzerland—all the places you were going to go, together.
The blackness of loss sweeps through you.
You struggle to find the motivation to hang the last ornaments on the branches, nearly weeping when you reach one Victoria made in preschool. It’s a photograph of her in a Santa hat glued inside a border of popsicle sticks. “Child of God,” it says, in gold marker.
You loop the yarn around a branch, stagger to the bedroom, and collapse on the bed. Jackson curls up next to you, and the two of you sleep until three.
You get up and wander to the kitchen, feeling lonely and adrift from your life. This was supposed to be the year that you and Connie began taking some serious, month-long vacations to the places in the Rick Steves guidebooks. Connie had discovered a house-swapping website, and she’d even made some tentative overtures back in early 2020 with a couple in Dublin. Covid would have nixed those plans, of course, but there would still have been a future together—wide open and possibly wonderful.
Jackson is hungry, shaking his head back and forth until you get the message, and you open a can of food and plop it in his dish. He devours it greedily.
Jackson is another reason you’re feeling blue. Victoria has told you that she’d like to take him back to Thousand Oaks after she visits you for Christmas, and you feel that’s only fair.
As this is your last week together, you get him in the car and drive down to Haskell’s Beach, where you let him off the leash and he runs into the crashing waves. Though it’s late afternoon, the beach is crowded and Jackson makes friends with other dogs, big and small, generally exhibiting an unthinking joy in life that you desperately envy.
You sit down in dry sand and watch him cavort in the surf as the sun drops toward the horizon. There’s a faint stench of drying kelp, and sand fleas hop up and down like kernels of popping corn.
Connie would have relished the scene, but you think instead of your father, and how little he liked the sea, though he lived within five miles of it for most of his life. He was always so dissatisfied, and something about him lingers in you like an unpleasant smell that won’t go away, no matter how wide the windows are open or how hard the wind blows.
Out over the Pacific, a United jet coming down from San Francisco begins its final approach to the airport. You imagine it blowing apart in a ball of flames, wreckage and people scattering into the waves. Why would you think such a thing? you ask yourself. What’s wrong with you?
57
The next morning, you’re awakened by the hum of your phone. It’s Kerry Cruz. He’s just landed at the airport, and is wondering if it’s okay to come straight to your house, ten minutes away. You tell him that’s fine. You’ve just finished dressing and brushing your hair and your teeth, when there’s a knock on the front door.
Although it’s the third time you’ve seen him in person, it’s still something of a shock to encounter a celebrity on your front porch. He’s wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap. Out on the street, a black sedan is idling. You can just see the driver through the tinted windows.
Jackson waits near the doorsill, wagging his tail. He loves company.
“Who’s this big guy?” Kerry Cruz asks.
“Jackson.”
He reaches down and scratches Jackson behind the ears. “Good boy,” he croons.
You invite him in and ask if he’d like a cup of coffee or tea. He says tea and you brew a cup for both of you as he wanders around your living room, looking at the prints of Connie’s cartoons. “You really like her work,” he says.
“I do. She was my wife.”
“‘Was’?”
“She died from Covid in May 2020.”
“Wow. Jesus. Sorry.” He lets out a long breath. “She was good,” he continues, and you nod—of course she was.
You bring him his tea, and he gestures at your tree. “I see you have the Christmas spirit.”
“Trying,” you say. “Why don’t we go outside?”
“Good idea, good idea.” He clears his throat. “One thing, though, if you could leave your phone in here? I’d really appreciate it. I consider the conversation we’re about to have to be a private one.”
“All right.” You put down your tea, take your phone from your pocket, and put it on the kitchen table. “And what about you?” you say. “Same thing?”
Kerry Cruz smiles and reaches for his phone. “Sure.”
Then you and Jackson and the bass player for one of America’s most famous bands go outside.
“What are those flowers?” he asks, pointing at the clusters of torch lilies that line the yard. Their colors are fading a bit in mid-December, but the tips of the stalks are still striking—yellow, orange, and red, pointing at the sky like just-shot flares.
You tell him the name of the plant, and point to two chairs by the firepit. It’s cloudy and chilly, and you light the burner, and the two of you sit there together for a moment, silently. It’s strange to have this man on your patio who, for so many nights, was the topic of so much discussion. Strange to see him at all. Jackson settles himself down at Kerry Cruz’s feet.
“So,” he finally begins, “I’m going to tell you the story of what happened on that plane, at least as far as I know it. Everything I tell you is in confidence, and I will deny it all, but I think you’ll see that none of it was my fault.”
“Okay.”
“First,” he says, “I’d like you to give me that gun.”
“Actually, I’m not really comfortable doing that just yet. Why don’t you tell me your story, and then we’ll see.”
He sighs. “Fair enough.” Then he begins.
According to Kerry Cruz, even after all these years of touring, he’d never felt comfortable flying. Therefore, he swallowed, as was his habit, two one-milligram tablets of Klonopin about an hour before boarding the private plane. He was already sleepy when he buckled into his seat at the rear of the aircraft, which he’d always heard was the safest place to be in a crash. While he did notice Stuart Fisher and Gregg Morgan arguing about something, bickering between the two was nothing out of the ordinary. Shane Reed, who had already boarded, was staring out the window. He grunted a “Hello” but not much else. Kerry assumed Shane was having girlfriend problems, which were endemic for him.
Kerry remembers the pilot being youngish and apparently excited about flying one of his favorite bands on the short trip from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara. Nothing about him indicated that he was going to crash the plane. In fact, nothing at all seemed out of the ordinary, and Kerry fell asleep before the wheels went up.
“The next thing I remember,” he tells you, as the wind increases and the fire flickers, “was this incredibly loud sound, but before I’d even opened my eyes, my head was slamming into the seatback in front of me, and my right arm twisted, and I felt a crack.
“Then my part of the plane stopped moving, but the front of the plane tore off and kept going forward. There was smoke and fire, but it wasn’t thick yet, and I could see the others up front, and they all looked, well, dead.
“I was taking that fact in, when I looked down at my feet and saw a gun. A tiny one, like a toy. My right arm wasn’t working, but I reached down with my left hand and put the gun in my pocket. This was right before you and a young woman showed up. I just had this feeling: they’re going to blame it on me, they’re going to say I was the one with the gun.” He pauses and takes a long sip of his tea.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” you say, “but why would you do that? Why would you assume they were going to blame it on you, if the gun wasn’t yours? And what was it doing at your feet?”
“See,” he says. “Exactly. You’re asking me why I had the gun, just like they would have.”
“So, what do you think happened? Did anyone in the band own a gun?”
He takes another sip of tea and shakes his head. “Not that I know of.”
“Then why don’t we just give it to the police?”
“Because the very fact that I hid the gun will almost certainly lead them to believe it was mine in the first place. But I swear to you on all that’s sacred, it was not mine, and I had nothing to do with the plane crash.”
Jackson gives a whimper and licks Kerry Cruz’s fingers. He’s clearly a believer, but you wonder how far you can trust a dog’s judgment.
“I guess that’s about it,” he says. “What do you think?”
“It’s a plausible story. But I’m not sure about the gun. What if I just call the NTSB and I tell them I have it?”
“You can certainly do that. As I already told you, I will deny the story. All you’ll have is a gun, with no evidentiary connection at all to the crash.”
“It sounds like you’ve been talking to a lawyer.”
“Of course I have.”
“What if the gun can be traced back to you? Presumably it has your fingerprints on it.”
“I’ll say you called me here with some wild story and put the gun in my hand. The phone records will verify that.”
“But I have your business card.”
“I gave that to you just this moment, when you asked for it. And you got my phone number from some lunatic fan. In fact, you’ll be the one with the gun. You’ll have plenty of explaining to do yourself.”
“I have to say that all this pre-strategizing on your part doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence. You sound guilty.”
“Like a lot of people who are wrongfully convicted. Look, Caleb,” your name sounds oddly familiar coming from his mouth, “I understand that Poor Ghost has changed your life, and mostly for the worse. But I feel like everything I’ve worked for since I was a teenager is at stake. I’m already suspicious enough in the minds of most people—the bass player who survived the plane crash. I’ve heard the jokes. I’ve seen the memes. Something like this coming out, even if I were shown to be totally innocent, would be horrible not just for me, but for the very idea of Poor Ghost as a band.”
Out over the canyon, a red-tailed hawk circles in a wide, casual loop.
“Let me think about it.”
Kerry Cruz gives Jackson one final scratch behind the ears, then stands up. “I don’t know what else I can do.” He walks back into the house, and you follow him inside. He places his empty cup on the kitchen table and picks up his phone. “Thanks for the tea,” he says. “Call me when you know what you’re going to do. I’ll be waiting.”
