The Armageddon Rag

  The rain pattered against the windshield as Daydream plunged through the night. It was late now, and most of the other traffic had pulled in somewhere for the night. Black fields rushed by on either side, full of shorn corn and hidden missile silos. The road was slick. Sandy gripped the wheel hard, and there was a dryness at the back of his mouth. He could feel Maggie fading, the last of his fever dreams drifting away from him. “What if it wasn’t?” he said.

  “Huh?” she asked. She seemed just a little more solid when he glanced over at the passenger’s seat.

  “What if it wasn’t all we could do,” Sandy said. “What if there was something else, some way to have a second shot at it, to bring it all back, to do it over. To put Lark in denim again, and give Slum back his sanity, and you your joy.”

  “But there isn’t, love,” Maggie whispered.

  Simon and Garfunkel were singing about a most peculiar man. Sandy punched the eject button. The music stopped suddenly, and the cassette came popping out of the tape deck. “There’s a cassette in the box there. The Nazgûl. Give it to me.”

  “The Nazgûl?” Maggie asked.

  “I’ve driven thousands of miles, listening to my tapes or the radio every foot of the way, and I haven’t played any Nazgûl since the case began. I think I was scared to. Bambi was right. I did understand. I saw the shape of it a long time ago. I’ve just been afraid to admit it. The tape?”

  No answer. The silence was heavy. Rain and road noise. Sandy waited a long minute with his hand out, before he remembered that she wasn’t really there at all. None of them had been there, not really. And yet they were; they would always be with him. He reached into the box, and came up with the right tape on the first try, as if something had put it in his hand.

  The Nazgûl. Music to Wake the Dead.

  He slammed it into the waiting slot and turned up the volume. The music filled the interior of the car, drowning out the rain and the sound of tires against slick wet pavement. The teakettle whine of descending bombs, the hammering of drums, and Hobbins’ voice.

  Baby, you cut my heart out! Baby, you made me bleeeed!

  “Jamie Lynch got his heart cut out on top of a desk, with the West Mesa concert poster underneath him. A poster. A broadsheet. You get it.” Then he was quiet, while Hobbins sang of love, loyalty, and betrayal, and Maggio’s guitar cried anguish.

  See the ash man, gray and shaken, too powdery to cry,

  began the second cut. The background vocals were saying, Ashes, ashes, all fall down, over and over again. Maggio went wild on guitar. The music was a living thing, full of crackle and heat. In the bridge Gopher John did a long drum solo. Sandy dug out the No-Doz, swallowed another handful. No sleep tonight. Just driving. Just music. No sleep and no dreams, he’d had enough of dreaming. Ashes, ashes, all fall down, the lyrics went, the four voices of the Nazgûl blending into one terrible whole, full of hurt and loss and passion gone to cinders.

  “Next up,” Sandy announced as the third song began, “Richard Maggio and his fabulous trained angst.”

  Yes, I’m ragin’!

  RAGIN’!

  The growl of Maggio’s voice, the rumble of Faxon’s base, the drums, the guitar, the rage all melted into the whine of Daydream’s tires, the smooth hum of her rotary engine. This time Sandy didn’t hear out the song. He stabbed the fast forward, held it as the tape spun. Just long enough. Then it was Hobbins singing again, the hard beat behind him.

  The survivor has a different kind of scar.

  YEAH! The survivor has a dif—

  Fast forward again, whirring, spinning. “I think I knew by the time I left Albuquerque,” Sandy said, “but when I saw Morse, talked to him, the outline became really unmistakable. Listen to the music, he said. Two or three times. What the fuck did that mean? And something else. He kept saying that the hour was at hand for his revolution, that the time had come. Only he didn’t say it like that. His phrasing was very precise. The hour has come round at last, he kept saying. A very familiar phrase, that.”

  Was it Maggie’s voice he heard, a whisper above the road noise, above the sound of the tape skittering forward? Or only the caffeine buzzing in his head? “Yeats,” it said.

  “Yes and no,” Sandy said. “Words by William Butler Yeats, music by Peter Faxon. Here.” He released the fast forward in the middle of the song.

  Things fall apart, the Nazgûl promised. The centre cannot hold! Acid frenzy. Discords. Chaos drums. Feedback. Singing like the wailing of the damned. An Irish poet spinning in his grave and sixty thousand kids leaping to their feet, clapping their hands, dancing, shouting. He’s coming! cried the vocals behind the poem. He’s COMING! shouted the crowd. Again and again. Something wild and beautiful and chilling.

  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

  The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and—

  Eject: sudden quiet settling like a veil, a shroud, a grave-cloth. “The best lack all conviction,” Sandy said, “while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” He pulled the cassette loose. “Larry Richmond, the new Hobbins, reborn in surgery and the mind of Edan Morse. But he was born in Bethlehem. A steel town in Pennsylvania. Bethlehem.” He glanced down at the label on the tape.

  SIDE ONE

  1. BLOOD ON THE SHEET

  2:07

  2. ASH MAN (ASHES, ASHES)

  5:09

  3. RAGIN’

  3:01

  4. THE SURVIVOR

  3:15

  5. WHAT ROUGH BEAST

  2:02

  6. PRELUDE TO MADNESS

  5:23

  SIDE TWO

  1. THE ARMAGEDDON/RESURRECTION RAG

  23:14

  “The Rag was the best thing the Nazgûl ever did,” Sandy said. “That was the song they were singing at West Mesa when Hobbins was shot.” He put the tape back in, upside down, pushed the rewind until he hit the leader, and then let it play.

  Later it would pick up speed, Sandy knew. Later it would grow fevered and insistent, the backbeat would crawl under your flesh and become one with your blood, the guitars and the bass would move faster and faster, the drumming would turn satanic, and you would hear chords like Hendrix used to play, impossible licks, sounds that made you wonder just how many instruments they had up there, and lyrics that made you angry, lyrics that made you sad, lyrics that conjured visions from the night. Later. Later. But the beginning of it was slow, slow and mournful and almost quiet, a whisper of guitar strings, a gentle rain upon the drums.

  This is the land all causes lead to,

  This is the land where the mushrooms grow.

  And Sandy hit the eject, stopped it before it had even gotten started, suddenly afraid. Afraid of what? Afraid to put a name to the thing he was afraid of. “Music to wake the dead,” he said to Maggie. But she wasn’t there. He was alone, hurting, tired, amid rain and darkness and the Nebraska winter night.

  SIXTEEN

  Is there anything a man don’t stand to lose?/

  When the devil wants to take it all away?

  New York had tasted its first snow of the season, and the streets of Brooklyn were filthy with wet brown slush. Sandy drove slowly to avoid skids, but Daydream’s wheels still sent up a spray as she wound her way home. The hour was late enough so that few pedestrians were abroad, but one bag lady on Flatbush Avenue, splashed by his passage, hurled curses after him. “Welcome home,” Sandy muttered.

  He parked the Mazda in his rented garage, opened the hatchback to remove his suitcase, and started the two-block trudge toward home. The slush soaked through his boots and left his feet wet and cold, so he hurried. He had been driving all day; exhaustion had set in, and he wanted to be home. It seemed as though he had been away for years.

  The brownstone was dark. Sandy set the suitcase just inside the door and fumbled for the light. The hallway looked strange at first. There was a new rug, he saw dully, and Sharon had moved the tall bookcase that used to stand in the living room, moved it to the hall and filled it with glass figurine
s. He wondered what she’d done with all of his paperbacks. Tossed them in some box, probably. She’d frequently complained that the cheap paperbacks made the living room look tacky.

  “Sharon!” he called. “It’s me.” He started up the stairs. Near the top he took them two at a time, turned to their bedroom, flicked on the lights. She’d heard him call. She was sitting up in bed. So was the man next to her.

  Sandy blinked, sighed, tried to keep his composure. “Hello, Don,” he said.

  The man was thick-bodied, blond, florid. Lots of hair on his chest. A fortyish jock just beginning to go to fat, but a real up-and-comer in the realty business, Sharon said. Sandy was still annoyed. He’d thought she had better taste.

  “Uh,” Don said. He turned a little redder than he was already. “Uh, hello, Sandy. How was your trip?”

  “More fun than fucking a monkey,” Sandy said, a little too sharply.

  Sharon picked up her glasses from the nightstand and put them on. Her hair was rumpled by sleep, and the lace nightgown she was wearing had bunched up on her. She smoothed it out, frowning. “No need to get sarcastic with Don,” she said to Sandy. “We’re not monogamous, you know, and you didn’t even give me a hint as to when you’d be home.”

  “I didn’t know,” Sandy said. “And I’ve been distracted.”

  “I’ll bet,” Sharon said dryly. “You could have called ahead, you know. Say from Jersey. Given me a little warning.”

  “Yeah,” Sandy said. Hey, Penelope, this is your old man Odysseus coming home at last, time to clear out the suitors, he thought. He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Well, what now?” he asked. “Anyone for a game of Monopoly?”

  Sharon turned to Don. “You better go home, honey,” she said. “Sandy and I have a lot of things to settle.”

  “I understand,” Don said. He crinkled up his face with what Sandy thought was excruciating cuteness, kissed Sharon on the tip of her nose, and got up to dress. He wore striped boxer shorts and had flabby thighs, and somehow that made Sandy even angrier. Neither he nor Sharon spoke until they heard the door close downstairs. Then Sandy pulled off his boots and turned to face her, crossing his legs and leaning back against the foot of the bed. The brass bedpost dug into his back.

  “Well?” said Sharon. Her face was very composed. She made no effort to touch him.

  “What can I say?” Sandy said. “I suppose I ought to be grateful that he hasn’t moved in yet. Christ, though. Don! Of all people!”

  “Don’t pass judgments, Sandy. You have no right. He’s an attractive, intelligent man. He’s attentive and responsible and we have a lot in common.”

  “Do you love him?” Sandy asked.

  “Not especially, but I’m comfortable with him, which is more than I can say about you. You’ve been away a long time, Sandy. You didn’t write, you seldom called. I’ve had a lot of time to think about us.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Sandy said. “Please, Sharon. Not right now.”

  “Waiting won’t make it any easier. I want to get this over with. Let’s make it clean and civilized if we can.”

  Sandy suddenly had an awful headache. He rubbed his temple. “Sharon,” he said, “don’t do this to me now. Please. I’m asking as nice as I can. The trip, the story…it’s turning into some kind of fucking nightmare. It’s surreal. I need to talk to you about it. I can’t handle any more grief at the moment, you know? I need you right now. I need somebody who cares.”

  “But I don’t, Sandy,” she said calmly. She didn’t even have the grace to look sad. “You need somebody, but it isn’t me. We have to face the truth. It’s over between us. It’s been going bad for a long time. I think it’s only been inertia keeping us together.”

  “You’re mad at me for taking off like I did—” he started.

  “I was,” she admitted, “but not for long. That was the problem. When you’d been gone a while, I wasn’t angry anymore. I was…I just felt nothing. I didn’t miss you, Sandy. Not at all.”

  “Terrific.”

  “I’m sorry if I’m hurting you, but this has to be said. How many women did you sleep with this trip?”

  “One and a half,” Sandy said. “The half I don’t remember. Seems to defeat the whole point. Why?”

  Sharon shrugged. “I just wanted to know. To see if I’d care. I don’t. When we started with the open relationship, back in the beginning, I always cared. I tried not to be jealous, but I always was, just a little. Nothing I couldn’t control. I think I liked it a little, knowing that you were attractive to other women and still came home to me, but that tiny bit of insecurity was still there. Now it’s gone. You could have said fifty and I wouldn’t have given a damn. I don’t hate you, Sandy. I don’t dislike you, even. There’s not enough feeling left to dislike you. You just don’t matter.”

  Sandy winced. “You have a great touch for this kind of thing, lady. The least you could do is tell me I’ll always be a cherished friend.”

  “But you won’t be, Sandy,” she said. “Lovers get together for the weirdest reasons, like we did, but friends have to have something in common. You and I live in different worlds. We march to different drummers.”

  “Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys,” Sandy said sullenly.

  “What?” Sharon frowned at him, then sighed. “No, Sandy. It was Thoreau or Rousseau or somebody like that. See what I mean? We don’t speak the same language and we don’t sing the same songs. And we won’t, ever. I don’t love Don, but maybe I could, eventually. I want to give the relationship time to grow.”

  “Fuck,” said Sandy. He thought he ought to cry but he had no tears left. Maybe he’d used them up on Slum and Butcher Byrne. More, he knew that Sharon was right. It had been a hard trip, but not because he’d missed her. He’d hardly thought of her. Still, that didn’t prevent him from feeling abandoned. “Do you have to be so damn cold about it?” he said accusingly. “We meant something to each other once. We could at least end it with a little passion.”

  “To what end? I’m trying to keep this civilized. We’re both mature adults who tried something and it didn’t—”

  “Screw maturity,” Sandy said. He stood up and scowled. “I have had it up to here with maturity. Goddamn it, call me a shithead, throw something at me, yell! Cry, damn it! We’ve been together for almost two years. I deserve at least a few fucking tears, don’t I?”

  “I don’t want to cry,” Sharon said briskly. “Let’s take care of the sticky details, shall we? You’re just back from a long trip, so you can stay here tonight. I’ll go over to Don’s. But I’d like to keep this house, if you don’t object. I’ll buy your half. At a fair price. We both know how much the place has appreciated. I can only give you ten thousand dollars right now, but I’ll pay the rest in installments. How does that sound?”

  Sandy wanted to scream. “I don’t care about that stuff,” he said. “We made love half a million times. We shared… laughs, dreams, all that shit. That’s what matters. Cry, dammit!”

  “You don’t care about the money now, but you will,” Sharon said. She got out of bed and crossed the room, began to dress. When she pulled her nightgown over her head, Sandy found himself looking too hard at a body he would never hold again. There was something about the fact that she was lost to him that made her more attractive than ever. As she dressed it was as though she was armoring herself against him, covering her last vulnerabilities. She pulled on a pair of pale blue panties, slipped into a matching bra, fastened it. Then faded jeans and a pristine white tee shirt. Blue and white. Like ice.

  “Sharon,” Sandy said, in a voice faintly edged by desperation, “you’re scaring the hell out of me. I had a dream about this. Your face turned to ice. You’re making it come true. Don’t. Please. Leave me if you want, go to Don, but don’t do it like this. Show some emotion. Please. I’m begging you!”

  She pulled out an overnight bag and began to pack her work clothes. “You’re being juvenile, Sandy,” she said without looking up. “I don??
?t care about your dreams.”

  He had to make her cry, he thought wildly. He had to make her rage. “Remember the time we made love in the bedroom of that boring party on the Upper East Side? And the guy came in to get his coat? Remember?”

  She ignored him and went on packing.

  “Remember the week in Mexico? The party I threw for you when you turned thirty? Remember how we both bawled like kids when E.T. phoned home?”

  Sharon zipped shut her bag, shouldered it, and gave Sandy a brief look, a chilly look with only the faintest hint of emotion in it. And that emotion was pity. She started for the door.

  Sandy followed her downstairs. “Remember the kitten I bought for you? The one that got run over after he got out through the open window? Remember the ERA rallies we went to together?” Sharon took her coat off the hook. “Remember when your father was sick? I stayed with you then. All the funny gifts you used to get me? You have to—”

  But she didn’t have to. She didn’t even care enough to slam the door. It closed with a small, terribly final click, a click like the sound an icicle might make, falling to shatter on the ground.

  Blue-white, and frost on her glasses, Sandy thought.

  He stood on the stairs for a long time, too tired to walk back upstairs, too uncertain to go elsewhere. Finally he wandered into the kitchen. Two six-packs of Schaefer were stacked in the refrigerator. He started to pull loose a can, then thought better of it. Instead he grabbed both six-packs and lugged them into the living room.

  Sharon had been playing the stereo. The dust cover was still up. He had told her a hundred thousand times to keep the dust cover down, but she never listened. Suddenly furious, he took her Donna Summer album off the turntable and flung it across the room. It bounced off the wall hard, leaving a deep gouge in the plaster.