But the music poured from the great amps behind him, a song that was liquid and haunting and made him want to weep and storm and make things better, and Sandy knew that it wasn’t so, had never been so. He took up the binoculars again and looked through them, not at the stage now, but at the crowd. He did not know what he was looking for. He found only faces. A fat man with a stoned smile. A gorgeous young woman riding on the shoulders of her boyfriend, her eyes closed. Another woman, plain and fat, dancing now, dancing all by herself but not alone, because she was part of it all, part of the crowd and part of the music and part of the night. A biker, maybe the same one who had threatened to cut him earlier, bobbing awkwardly to the beat, the tension gone from his face. Good and bad, old and young, male and female, happy and sad. Faces. People.
It was a good concert, he thought numbly as he lowered the glasses. West Mesa had been a terrific concert back in 1971, he recalled; everyone had agreed about that; it had been fantastic until that shot had been fired from the darkness, until Hobbins had died in blood and silence, his song incomplete. And now it had to happen again, and he had to pull the trigger. Didn’t he? Didn’t he?
The thought made him sick.
Out there, below him, they were applauding again, in the hundreds and the thousands, they were gathered round their fires and their towers, they were holding hands and hugging one another and dancing together and singing and whistling and clapping, while he lay up here alone. The song had ended, Sandy realized dimly. And now the music began once more, but the bottom was harder and heavier, and the guitar licks taunting, wicked.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
From a half million throats came a whispered promise that sighed across the darkness.
He’s coming!
Hobbins leaned into the lyrics while the guitars sang.
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
And Sandy studied him through the rifle’s scope. It seemed as though Hobbins was staring straight back at him, as if those dark red eyes looked deep into his own, as if Hobbins sang only for him.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Oh, they’re full of passion, and intensity
Now, Sandy thought, as an ocean of people sang, He’s coming! louder and still louder with each repetition. But he did not pull the trigger. The best lack all conviction. Why did he hesitate? It wouldn’t be murder. Patrick Henry Hobbins had died in 1971, after all. This was only some demonic doppelgänger. That was a dead man singing down there.
Oh, yes, I know, I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rockin’ cradle
Oh, a rocknrollin’ cradle!
But what about Larry Richmond? Maybe that was Hobbins singing, but it was Richmond’s body. Kill Hobbins, and Richmond died, too. And Hobbins… Sandy remembered him from the old days. Arrogant, brash, full of himself and his own success and his talent, maybe a little fucked up on drugs, maybe just starting to crack… but a monster? No. Just a rock singer, a good rock singer, hardly more than a kid. Faxon had known him best of all, and Faxon had loved him.
“HE’S COMING!” they screamed.
“HE’S COMING!!”
“HE’S COMING!!!”
And the lights went down, all but one, and Hobbins stood there, looking out at all of them, out at the stars, and he smiled at them and he said, “I’m here.”
“Yes,” Sandy whispered. And he knew it was true. But who was here, who, who? The Antichrist? The devil? Some monster? Or only the Hobbit?
The Nazgûl went into “Prelude to Madness.” Stretched out on the tower, the cold metal underneath him, the amplifiers pounding at his back, Sandy listened and watched them. One more song, only one more. Then it would be “The Armageddon Rag,” but Edan Morse had said it, the resurrection was a lie, it would be armageddon forever and the blood would never stop flowing. He had to stop it. Didn’t he?
Charlie is the joker in the deck
And he was Charlie. “Sorry, Charlie,” Hobbins said to him at Red Rocks, and Ananda had admitted it later, and that was why she hadn’t killed him. Morse had seen it coming all along, had seen him there at the end, had seen him up here between the earth and stars, with this rifle in his hand. Sandy felt a coldness along his spine. If Morse knew it, Ananda knew it too, didn’t she? Knew where he’d be. Knew why.
The car keys on top of the television.
Unguarded.
Waking at just the right time.
Mirrors smiling, turning his back.
Queens beat aces every time, yeah!
Do queens beat jokers, too? he wondered. He wasn’t sure; he wasn’t sure of anything. The Nazgûl were singing, and half a million people sang along.
Wolfman looked into the mirror
and Lon Chaney looked back out
Sandy stared up at the black, churning, overcast sky. A cold wind shivered through him. The rifle felt heavy and oily in his hand, alien. Wavering discords and strange echoes vibrated through the air around him. He studied the stage again, saw Francie dancing, saw the huge X behind her. Unless he shot, they would nail her up, bleed her, strip her, rip her eyes out while the crowd danced to the Rag, the endless Rag, while the demons gathered outside and no one listened to his warning. Unless he stopped it. Unless he shot.
Or…or maybe… if he shot?
West Mesa, 1971. A bullet from nowhere, Hobbins dead, sixty thousand people in a blind panic. Eight dead, hundreds injured. And now? Another shot, another bloody body, the music shattered for good and all, but the crowd was so much bigger tonight, and they would know the enemy had done it, the enemy who had tried to stop them all along, the enemy out there in their tanks and jeeps and uniforms, the enemy that ringed them, penned them in like animals. For a moment he could see it clearly, as real as the ghosts who had warred in the streets of Chicago that night. They would tear down the towers in their rage and grief, they would pull one another to pieces, and Ananda and her red-armbanded cadres would nail up Francie and make the blood sacrifice and seize control, and Hobbins would rise again from the dead and the band would play on, play on and on forever, play “The Armageddon Rag” to the darkness and the cold while the corpse armies gathered and spread out across the night.
The music had stopped. “Prelude to Madness” had run its course. And now, very slowly, it began.
This is the land all causes lead to,
This is the land where the mushrooms grow.
He could see them on the horizon again, could hear the long gasp from below as the crowd saw them, too; phantom towers of red and purple and burning indigo, crowned with blinding fire, blossoming slowly, engulfing the world with fury and hate.
To the battleground I’m coming,
Oh, don’t you hear the drumming?
They’re playing the armageddon rag, oh!
Playin’ the armageddon rag!
What if he was wrong, though? What if he did nothing and he was wrong? Hobbins danced through the gunsights. Hobbins was moving, strutting, singing with his body as well as his voice. Sandy shifted the rifle and found him, lost him, found him, lost him. Through the scope he glimpsed Faxon, standing behind Hobbins in the line of fire. He drew a bead on the Hobbit again, hesitated, finger on the trigger. He heard Bambi telling him to believe. In what? His instincts? Or his nightmares? “You know what to do,” Maggie whispered. Froggy laughed rudely and made his loud wet noise. “And then you put spaghetti in their hair, you do, you do.”
This is the day we all arrive at,
This is the day we choose.
The world swam dizzily. The night sky was striped, bands of overcast alternating with bands of stars in clear black ink. Below was an endless army. Below was a small and frightened crowd. The sound tower seemed insubstantial. He looked down through solid metal at the ground below. On his wrist, Spiro Agnew had both hands pointed straight up.
Sandy pushed the rifle aside and stood.
He had taken three steps
toward the back of the tower when she stepped out from behind the amps and stared at him, her face baffled and angry. “What are you doing?” she demanded, screaming it at him above the music. “Get back there. Shoot!” Mirrors must have told her, Sandy thought. She was so lithe and quiet, he had never even heard her ascend the tower.
“That’s what you want,” he shouted back at her. “It’s been me all along, right? The joker in the deck. The assassin.”
“Shoot him!” she screamed. She was not beautiful now. Her hair streamed in a black icy wind, and her face was distorted with an almost animal rage.
“Go put the fucking spaghetti in your hair!” Sandy told her.
Well you’re a killer too
All the dead look just like you
When they’re playin’ the armageddon rag!
YEAH! They’re playin’ that armageddon rag!
She lunged for him, caught him. “Do it!” she screamed. “Do it or I’ll break your fucking neck for you, just like I broke Gort’s. Do it. DO IT!”
Sandy relaxed. Somehow he was not afraid. He was not afraid anymore. “It’s armageddon day, baby,” he said to her, “and you and me chose different sides. Shoot him yourself.”
The Nazgûl went sliding off into the bridge, the long instrumental, guitars keening, wailing, drums pounding, the bass thrumming way down deep, while the vast audience below shook and stomped and called its deafening approval. Ananda looked up in panic, and poised with her hand in the air. “It’s too fucking late,” she shrieked. “I’ll do it myself.” She was incredibly fast. In an instant she was off him, and in another she had the rifle.
“It won’t work,” Sandy called out to her.
Hobbins was moving around wildly, dancing to the song, laughing. A half million people laughed and danced with him. “Hold still,” Ananda muttered. “Hold still, fuck it!”
He moved behind her. “It’s not a choice for you. It won’t mean a thing. It had to be me, the joker in the deck, shooting and killing everything I used to believe in. Give it up, ’Nanda. It won’t work.”
She ignored him. The rifle moved in small circles as she tracked Hobbins. “Ahhhh,” she breathed at last. She squeezed the trigger. The whine of the shot was lost in the whine of the electric guitars.
Hobbins staggered back just as Sandy raised his binoculars. A ripple of shock went through the crowd. Faxon broke off playing. Maggio’s guitar screeched with feedback, and died. Gopher John’s drums sounded lonely and lost for a moment, until he too froze.
Silence like an indrawn breath.
Hobbins flipped white hair back from his eyes, and grinned. “Sorry, Charlie,” he said. “Must be the drugs.” They laughed, thousands of them. Hobbins’ face was red, but it was a hot flush, not blood. He looked right at Sandy and Ananda, and drew a short, exuberant sound from his Gibson, a chord that bubbled and soared. Then he led the Nazgûl back into the song, and music filled the darkness.
Overhead the clouds were breaking up. Sandy saw stars twinkling in a clear sky.
“No,” Ananda said, her voice thick with disbelief. She squeezed off another round, and was rewarded with the click of an exhausted magazine. Again and again she fired; the rifle clicked and clicked.
“You only get one shot,” Sandy said. “You missed.”
She discarded the rifle, leaped up, whirled on him. “It was a full magazine! I loaded it myself! And I couldn’t have missed, I had him right in the crosshairs!”
“Then maybe you killed him,” Sandy said sadly.
Ananda didn’t understand; she was wild and confused. Down below, the Nazgûl played “The Resurrection Rag” as it had never been played before, and half a million people clapped along and smiled and swayed to the beat. Sandy felt weak and weary, yet somehow very good. It was as though he’d found something, something precious that he’d lost a long, long time ago.
This is the day we’d dreamed about,
This is the land where the flowers grow.
And all my hopes I’m bringing,
Oh, don’t you hear the singing?
And all my dreams I’m bringing,
Well, can’t you hear the singing?
And all my pain I’m bringing,
and I’m joinin’ in that singing!
They’re playing the resurrection rag, oh!
Playin’ that resurrection rag!
YEAH! That everlovin’ funky goddamned
RESURRECTION RAAAAAAAG!
The four Nazgûl sang the final line together in a single wild, joyous shout. Bass, guitars, and drums melted into one another and delivered a thunderous, tumultuous crescendo, a great throbbing burning sizzling slambang piledriver assgrabber finish that went louder and louder and louder and LOUDER and then cut off sharply. For the merest fraction of a second the silence was absolute. And then the noise began. Applause. Laughter. Whistles. Cheers. Shouts. Pandemonium.
Far away, over the miles, through the darkness, the sound came sweeping and surging and climbing.
The ovation went on for five minutes, ten, fifteen. Twice Faxon tried to lead the Nazgûl into an encore, but the applause did not diminish appreciably even when the music began, and both efforts were stillborn. Finally the Nazgûl just stood and let it overwhelm them.
Sandy clapped with the rest. The cuts on his palms reopened and bled again, but he hardly felt it. He clapped until his hands were sore and swollen. He clapped and clapped and clapped.
Ananda stood beside him, silent and lost.
Finally the tumult began to diminish, dying away little by little, dwindling, softening. And the quiet came again. Patrick Henry Hobbins, his song complete at last, moved to the edge of the stage and opened his arms to all of them. “I love you goddamned assholes,” he said to them. “Are your ears bleeding yet?”
“YES!” they screamed back at him. “YES, YES, YES!”
Hobbins smiled a small, sad, wry smile. Somehow he seemed to glow with an inner light now, and there was something wraithlike about him as he stood there, something translucent and larger than life. For one long moment, it seemed as though he did not stand alone, it seemed as though others were crowding the stage on either side of him. There stood a slender young black in phantom finery, long bright scarves dripping from his neck and waist, an electric guitar slung against his ruffled shirt. There was a pudgy young woman in oversized glasses and a flowered dress, a purple feather boa curled around her neck, smiling a wide, vibrant, crooked smile. There moved a handsome, unsmiling man with a full beard, wearing lizard boots and tight leather clothing. And behind them were others, so many others, dozens of them, hundreds maybe, bright and dim, shades from a restless yesterday only now put to rest, and all of them were dead, and all of them would live forever in the music, in the sounds that would never ever die.
The wind blew gently, and they were gone. The Nazgûl stood alone upon an empty stage. And up in front stood Larry Richmond. He stared down at the vast, awed, silent crowd with a baffled fear on his face, and turned away in panic. By then Peter Faxon had unslung his bass and moved to help. The two men embraced. Through the binoculars, Sandy could see that both of them were crying.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Lately it occurs to me/
What a long, strange trip it’s been
All things considered, it had been a terrific party. Sandy had stocked the hotel suite with nothing but the best, and everyone ate too much and drank too much except for Bambi, who wouldn’t touch anything but tea and kept talking about how inorganic and unhealthy all the rest of it was. Sandy got her good. He slipped the bellman a ten, and fifteen minutes later the man returned, carrying a silver platter. He placed it right in front of Bambi and lifted the lid, and there was a stack of Hostess chocolate creme-filled cupcakes piled a foot high. Bambi stared at them in horror for a moment, then broke down helplessly, and afterward she got up and pushed one into Sandy’s face before sitting down to consume six. “They’d go good with raw milk,” she said.
Sandy was left with chocolate cupc
ake and creme all over his face, but that didn’t matter too much, since Maggie had been drinking a lot of champagne, and champagne always made her sweetly, drunkenly amorous, so she sat on his knee and licked at him until it was all gone. Froggy watched the process and made rude comments. “And then you bite his ear right off, you do, you do,” he suggested in an evil croak, but Maggie giggled and ignored him. Froggy was left to wander off and talk about aura balancing with Fern.
Bambi had brought both Fern and Ray from the commune. Froggy had brought Samantha, a statuesque brunette who proved a disappointment to Sandy, since she looked more like Raquel Welch than Andy Devine. She had a good sense of humor, though, which you needed if you were going to live with Froggy Cohen. “I’ll never forget the first time I let the poor guy get lucky,” she told them all. “There we were on my bed, and he was on top of me with his old magic twanger pumping in and out, and suddenly he leans over, leers, goes into that voice, and says”—her own voice dropped into a commanding, froggish croak—“‘You’re gonna come now, you will, you will.’” Froggy actually blushed. “The hell of it was, I did,” Samantha finished, and they roared with laughter.
In the end, though, neither she nor Bambi’s friends had the requisite stamina, and one by one they drifted off to sleep, until only the four were left. Sandy ordered up some more champagne, and Bambi sat knitting while he and Froggy and Maggie put away bottle after bottle and sang up all the old TV theme songs. Sandy had a nice buzz on, Maggie was nuzzling his neck, and Froggy was singing endless obscene imaginary verses for Have Gun, Will Travel when the knock came on the door. It was almost one at that point. “Probably a noise complaint,” Sandy said, but he went to answer it anyway.
Outside stood a trim, short man with wavy chestnut hair and a pencil-thin brown mustache. He was wearing designer jeans, a vest, an open-collared chambray work shirt, high boots, and carrying a guitar. Sandy stared at him, mouth agape.
“That looks real intelligent, Blair,” Lark said with his old mocking smile. “Close your mouth before a bee flies in.”
“I didn’t think you were coming,” Sandy said.