THE 7-11 THAT ONLY PLAYED MEGADETH

In 1992, when we were in sixth grade, Rick Fitzgerald and I were riding our bikes around town and found a record store that sold Metallica bootlegs. They were in a glass case marked "Imports."

In 1993, we found a place that looked like an abandoned fire station in the old part of town.

Then, in 1994, we found The 7-11 That Only Played Megadeth.

We used to describe Cornersville as "the kind of town where kids get shot at the 7-11. And they don't even have a 7-11!" It wasn't really that kind of town, but we always wanted to make it seem tougher than it was. Nobody wants to admit that they grew up in a wimpy suburb.

On that particular Saturday, the one when we found the 7-11 That Only Played Megadeth, Rick and I were out on our bikes, looking for garage sales. "Saling," we called it. It had been a slow day; the real garage saling season ends as soon as September comes around, and it was already October. Rick had picked up a couple of Led Zeppelin tapes on 82^nd Street, and I'd found a book called America In Prophecy on Hammontree Drive, but that was it, except for a couple of Ghostbuster action figures, which we planned to use in a game of Ghostbuster Baseball later that afternoon.

"You think Metallica is ever gonna put another record out?" I asked, as we rode along down Oak Avenue. Rick and I had been headbangers ever since fifth grade.

"Yeah, they're under contract," said Rick. "I'm pretty sure they have to."

"They don't have to do anything," I said. "They can always break up."

"Nah. From what I heard from Danny Nelson, the next one should be out in a couple of months."

"He's been saying that all year." Danny Nelson thought that he knew everything there was to know about metal. He was full of shit.

"Yeah. Well.I hope he's right. He said he heard it was gonna be called Raging Bull".

"I'll bet that's just a bootleg."

Rick shrugged, and we rode on in silence for a few more minutes, keeping our eye out for signs. We were getting into the old part of town.

The old part of town wasn't really all that old, I think most of it came up in about the '40's. But it was older than all of the other neighborhoods, and half of the houses were supposed to be haunted. In any case, on the gloomy days when the Halloween decorations were up, they certainly looked haunted. We always checked that neighborhood for sales, but when they did have any, it was mostly doilies, ashtrays, and avocado green cookware. We referred to that sort of merchandise as OPS - Old People Stuff.

All of a sudden, Rick cried out "Port bow," which meant that there was a sale coming up on the left.

We pulled our bikes up into the driveway of the old house, stepped off, and walked into the garage sale. It wasn't a very well set-up one, just three card tables full of busted appliances and a small tray of paperback books. But there was a box of records in the corner, and we both went straight for it, even though neither of us had a record player.

"Morning," said the guy sitting at the table in the corner. He was an older guy, maybe in his mid forties. His hair was getting gray, and he had a moustache. He looked like the kind of guy who worked down at the impound lot. "You guys have record players?"

"My grandma does," said Rick. "I can tape records off of it. You have any metal?"

"Just some old stuff. Ever hear of Deep Purple?"

"Sure." Rick found a copy of their Made in Japan album in the box and held it up. "But I already have this one on tape."

"Great record, man."

"Sure is. My dad seems to think that Ritchie Blackmore is God."

The guy laughed. "He might be."

Rick's dad was big into rock, and he'd told me that his grandfather had about the biggest jazz collection in the state. His relatives were way cooler than mine. My parents were into stuff like Barry Manilow, and my grandparents all liked country.

There wasn't much in the box, and most of the stuff wasn't metal, it was just rock, the kind that Rick's dad was into. There were two copies of that damned Boston record that you find at every single garage sale. I looked at a Styx record, but it didn't have "The Renegade Who Had It Made" on it, so I passed.

Just as we were getting up to leave, the guy asked "You guys ever been up to that 7-11 on Beechwood?"

We both turned around to look at the guy. "There isn't one," I said. Neither of us was old enough to drive, but gas stations were still the best place to buy Slim Jims. We knew every gas station in town, and the closest 7-11 was two towns over.

"Yeah there is," the guy said. "And you know how the gas stations always play music over the speakers?" We nodded. "Well, I swear to God, the only thing that place ever plays is metal."

"No way," I said.

"Go up and see for yourself!" he said. "It's right next door to the H&R block."

As we walked out of the garage towards our bikes, I asked Rick if he wanted to head up to Beechwood, and he shrugged and said "sure." I was about ready to grab a bite to eat, and, anyway, it was almost noon, so most of the garage sales that were left would be closing up.

Beechwood wasn't far away; nothing in Cornersville is ever far away, really. You can ride from one end of town to the other in less than half an hour on a good day.

And there it was. A 7-11.

"Holy shit," said Rick. "I thought that guy was just crazy or something."

"I thought this place was a Kwik Shop," I said. "Haven't we been to it before?"

Rick shrugged and we kept riding up to the 7-11. When we pulled in, we could hear the music over the speakers. It was metal all right.

"What is this?" I asked. "It sounds familiar." I recognized the guitar solo going on in the song, but I couldn't quite place it.

"Whoa!" Rick said suddenly. "It's 'Eye of the Tornado.'"

"Holy!"

We just stood there listening for a second. It was Megadeth. The 7-11 was playing Megadeth. This was huge.

You didn't hear Megadeth on the radio. Ever. You only saw them on MTV about once a week, and that's if you were lucky. But Rick and I - and Danny Nelson, and all of the other headbangers in school - had all of their records, and even a few imported singles that had extra tracks. And not only were they playing Megadeth, they were playing a track off the Rust In Peace album, the best album of all. Someone who worked in the store clearly had cool taste.

We waited around outside, listening to the rest of the song. When it ended, they started playing "Holy Wars / The Punishment Due" off the same record.

"Wanna go inside?" I asked. "I've gotta see who's in charge of the music in there."

We walked inside and walked up to the counter. Behind it was an old, curly haired woman who looked as though she wouldn't know Megadeth if they played a show in her living room.

"Who picks out the music here?" I asked.

"What music?" she asked, looking annoyed. "We don't sell no music here."

"I mean the music you play outside, on the speakers," I said. "The Megadeth."

"Mega who?"

"The band. The music. Outside," I said, starting to stammer a bit. She seemed to think I was just trying to bother her.

"It's playing when I get here, it plays when I leave. Now you boys gonna buy anything? I ain't running no information booth."

We each grabbed a SlimJim, paid the dollar, and stepped back outside. They were still playing "Holy Wars." Over by the pumps, a couple of guys who looked like they were about twice our age were sitting on the hood of a powder blue Honda, headbanging along to the music. We both strolled over to them.

"You into Megadeth?" asked Rick.

The nearest us took of his sunglasses. He was in about his thirties, with long, light brown hair that probably hadn't been washed since the eighties. "Hell yeah, man. You gotta go where the music is, right?"

"You spend a lot of time here?" I asked.

"All the fuckin' time, man."

"You don't hear stuff like this on the radio," said the guy next to him. The other guy looked about like Slash from Guns n Roses, with curly black hair that hung down over his eyes.

"Hey now," I said. "They were playing Metallica on KGGO last night."

"That's bedtime music, man," said the Slash lookalike. "They ain't heavy enough."

"I dunno," said Rick. "I hear their next one is going to be pretty heavy."

"Nope," said the lighter-haired guy. "It's gonna suck."

"Have you heard it?" I asked. I suddenly became aware that the fellow had been headbanging along with the music the whole time they'd been talking to us, never missing a beat.

"Don't ask, man. But I know for a fact - an absolute fact - that the new Metallica record is gonna suck. You know Kirk Hammet?" We nodded. Kirk Hammet was the lead guitarist of Metallica. "All he ever listens to now is jazz, and all the drummer listens to is grunge. The next Modifidious record'll be cool, though. All heavy stuff. No ballads."

We just stood there for a second, staring at the guys. They both looked like they'd just gotten off work down at the local garage, but, considering it was barely noon and they were already surrounded by empty beer bottles, I sort of doubted that they worked anywhere. "Holy Wars" had ended and the speakers were blasting out "High Speed Dirt."

"Did this place used to be a Kwik Shop?" asked Rick.

"Seven Eleven, man, seven eleven," said the dark haired guy, still headbanging. He hadn't exactly answered the question.

"All the time, seven eleven," said the light haired guy.

Rick and I stood there, chewing on our Slim Jims for a minute or two.

"Well, man, we have to get going," I said. "What're you guys' names?"

"Stink," replied the light haired guy, holding out a hand. We both nodded, and Rick shook the guys hand, but I held back. There was no telling where his hands might've been.

"They call me Gar," said the other guy. He didn't offer his hand, but sort of tipped the bottle he was holding at us in a sort of salute. Walking away, we got back on our bikes and started to ride back towards my house.

"That was just about the coolest thing ever." I said.

"Yep," said Rick.

"Why do you suppose those guys don't just stay home and listen to records if they wanna hear metal?"

" "They probably live with their parents!" Rick said with a laugh. "In the basement."

Yeah!" I said. "And they spend all night down there, listening to Pantera and eating macaroni and cheese."

"Brand -X macaroni and cheese," Rick clarified. We both had a laugh and kept riding along..

"I could've sworn that place was a Kwik Shop," I said.

"Hey," said Rick. "Strange shit happens."

He had me there.

****

We spent the rest of the afternoon playing baseball using Ghostbuster action figures as balls. You know those ones they made where you could push their arms in and their eyes would bug out? All you have to do is bunt those and they practically explode.

Sunday came and went without incident, as far as I can recall. At lunch on Monday, we told everybody at lunch about the 7-11, but nobody believed us except for Danny Nelson. He said he'd not only been there, but he'd also heard Morbid Angel at the Amoco on Douglas Avenue. Then again, Danny Nelson was full of shit.

"We have to go back there," Rick told me on the way to gym. "You wanna go this afternoon?"

"Sure," I said. I had a bunch of homework to do for science, but I probably wasn't actually going to do it. And, anyway, the America In Prophecy book I'd bought on Hammontree said that the world was going to be toast in July of 1999 anyway, and I would just barely be out of high school by then. Why even bother? For the time being, I just wanted to make sure that that 7-11 was still playing Megadeth

As we rode along after school, I told Rick all about that book. Most of the psychics seemed to be saying that 1999 was going to be the end of the road, though they didn't seem to agree whether the world would end because of war, an earthquake, or a meteor. Personally, I was hoping the earth would just get blown up by some sort of space-fireball. I figured that, if you had to die, you might as well do it by exploding.

"So we only have five years left?" asked Rick.

"Looks like." We claimed that we believed that sort of thing, but I think that if we had really believed it, we would've been more bothered by the idea that we only had about five years left to live.

When we pulled into the 7-11, the powder blue Honda was in the same place it had been the day before, and Stink and Gar sitting up against the wall. Sure enough, the speakers above the pumps were playing "Peace Sells, But Who's Buying?" I sang along a bit as we walked towards Stink and Gar. I noticed that Gar was wearing the same Danzig t-shirt that Rick had.

"Hey," said Stink. We walked over to him, a bit nervously. Normally, I liked any adult who would cuss in front of us, but I was pretty sure the guy was either crazy or on drugs. Probably both.

"You guys spend a lot of time here, don't you?" I asked.

"All the fucking time, man. You have to go where the music is, man," said Gar.

"I mean, you can stay home and listen to records," said Stink, "but only dorks stay home all day. All you need is right here. They have beer, they have cheap sandwiches, and they play Megadeth. What more could you want?"

"Some chicks would be nice," murmured Gar.

"That's true," said Stink. "Some chicks would be very nice. But most chicks want you to be all respectable and cut your hair and shit. You ain't shit if you cut your hair."

"Might as well just go ahead and buy a fuckin' Phil Collins record," said Gar.

"Right, man. Or Michael Bolton. No chick is worth that." Stink took a long swig out of his beer bottle and threw it into the trash can next to him. He pulled another out behind it and opened it right away.

"What we really need," I said, "is a radio station around here that'll play metal."

"Pointless, man," said Gar. "All they'd play is sissy shit like Metallica."

"Metallica rules," said Rick.

"Yeah," said Stink. "If you're a soccer fag. And, anyway, metal is gonna be lousy in a few more years. Pretty soon, you won't even be able to hear good metal at the record store. Just at the 7-11."

"How do you know?" I asked.

Stink got up off the curb and walked to the back of his car. "Come here." He told us. We reluctantly followed. Gar stayed on the curb, somehow managing to take swigs of his beer while keeping a cigarette in his mouth.

As soon as Stink opened his trunk, I got a very good idea of where he had gotten his name. His car smelled like a twelve pack of cheap beer had crawled inside, thrown up a couple of times, and died.

Stink rooted around in the piles of empty cans and pulled out a cassette.

"Check this out," he said. "It's a mix tape of metal songs. From 2004."

"Bullshit." I said.

"I'm dead serious, man. This is what metal is going to sound like in ten years."

"Well," said Rick, humoring him, "I'm glad the world'll still be here. I heard it was ending in '99."

"It might as well," said Stink. "If this is where metal is going."

"Where'd you get that tape?" I asked. "Is it a bootleg or something?"

"Don't ask where I got it, man. Just let me say this: when you hear this record, you'll know why you have to go to the 7-11 to hear good music."

I stared at the tape for a second. It looked just like a regular blank tape, except that someone had written the word "2004" on the cover in crayon. It couldn't be real.

"You guys wanna step into my car and hear it?" asked Stink.

"No thanks," I said. I wasn't about to get into a car with that guy.

"I will," said Rick. I grabbed him by the sleeve and whispered in his ear. "Carefull, man. I think this guy's nuts."

"I have to hear this," Rick whispered back.

Stink opened the front doors of his car, and he and Rick stepped inside. I watched through the window while he put the tape into his car tape deck and turned it on. . I walked slowly away and sat on the corner near Gar.

"Smart man," he said. "I've heard that tape. It's terrible, man. Doesn't sound like metal at all, just a bunch of rap with guitars and shit."

"Rap with guitars?"

"That's where metal's going." He held out his pack of cigarettes to see if I wanted one, but I waved him off. I couldn't hear much of the music that was coming out of the car, but the speakers over the pumps played "Hook in Mouth" and "The Mechanix" while Rick was in Stink's car. Those were both good songs off of the first couple of Megadeth records.

When Rick opened his door and stepped out, he looked kind of pale.

"See man," asked Stink, getting out of his own door. "That's why you have to come here. If you ever wanna hear any good music at all, you have to come to the 7-11."

Rick walked up to me, and muttered "let's get out of here." We got on our bikes and started to ride.

Rick didn't say a word all the way back, and he wasn't in school on Tuesday. I tried to call him on Wednesday when he didn't show up again, and his Mom said he'd gone to Omaha to see his grandparents for a couple of days. The bastard was always getting to do things that got him out of school.

That night, when my parents drove me to a restaurant a few towns over, we drove down Beechwood and the 7-11 wasn't there. There was just a boarded up building next to the H&R Block. The pumps were still there, but there were no signs to tell what kind of gas station it had been.

"Hey," I said. "They closed down that 7-11!"

"I thought that place was a Kwik Shop," said my mother.

So on Thursday, when Rick still wasn't in school, I rode up to the house where the guy had told us about the 7-11 in the first place. I rang the bell and some old lady answered the door. She said that she lived alone and hadn't had a garage sale in years. That kind of freaked me out, but I told myself I just had the wrong house or the wrong street. I don't memorize the address of every garage sale I hit, and a of houses in the old part of town look sort of alike, anyway.

On Friday, when Rick came back to school, his hair was cut a few inches shorter and he was carrying a library book about Thelonius Monk. He'd even made me a couple of tapes labeled "cool jazz," which I promised to listen to. I'd heard some old jazz that sounded cool in movies, but all the jazz you ever actually heard was wimpy stuff like Kenny G. He told me that the tape was full of guys like John Coltrane and Charles Mingus who would beat the shit out of Kenny G.

I told him that the 7-11 was gone, and he wasn't surprised. "Are Stink and Gar gone, too?" he asked.

"I sure didn't see them. Maybe they were holed up inside." I told him what Gar had said about the tape sounding more like rap than metal, and he said that that was just about right, from what he could actually hear through Stink's crappy speakers.

So that, he said, was why he was listening to jazz now. When he was in that powder blue Honda in the parking lot of the vanishing 7-11, he had heard the future of metal.

And it sucked.

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