Jeremy Pett would have to be totally insane to stay in this country with his face and his license number all over TV. That was the theorists talking. He would have to want to be caught. And why in this world should he follow that damned band to California when he could slide right into Mexico from Tucson?
“Truitt,” said the Sunday morning heathen, “we’re pulling the second team.”
Ouch. True had nicked himself under his left nostril.
“There’s no need for you to stay out. Call it off and bring them in.”
“Slow down, take it easy.” He’d realized he was talking to his heart. “The tour ends six days from now, and they’ve only got two more gigs, in Dallas on the 15th and in Austin on the 16th. Then it’s done. We’re checking out this afternoon and driving to see somebody Terry wants to visit. That’s the keyboard player.”
“I saw the story in People. Hell, I know their names.”
“Okay. We’re hitting the road right after that and driving to Amarillo. Then, tomorrow, on to Dallas. I figured they could hang out in Dallas for—”
“Excuse me, did you say ‘hang out’?”
True had heard himself sigh. It was a sound of exasperation; those mundanes—Terry’s word—just don’t get it. “They’re good people,” he’d said. “Hard workers. You wouldn’t believe how hard.”
“I know they’re a big hit now. Selling thousands of CDs, aren’t they?”
“Yeah.” Not only that, but every gig since that night at the Cobra Club had been jammed solid. Which actually put a strain on him, trying to get the security locked down. The news that The Five had aided in the capture of the Duct Tape Rapist had really made the engines rev. Roger Chester was calling him, giddy with glee, saying he had offers from three networks to do a The Five reality series and publishers were calling with quickie book deals and somebody wanted them to be spokespeople for a new energy drink. It was off the hook, as John said. Yet he didn’t say it with a convincing display of joy. So what was up with that?
“Six days, two more gigs,” True had said into his cell, as he’d dabbed the small red dot under his left nostril with a bit of tissue paper. “Can I finish it with them? And can I get some support from the field offices?” Boy, did that sound like begging.
“Truitt,” said the voice attached to the large hand that held the leash. “You do understand you’re not really their manager. Right? You do understand your role, don’t you?”
“I do. But…you know… I told them I’d finish it out.” He’d paused, trying to think of something else to say to pierce the silence on the other side. “They really are good people.”
“I heard that the first time.”
“I can’t leave them,” True had said.
“I hear the word won’t in that, Truitt.”
“Yes, sir,” True had replied. “That’s correct.”
The silence had stretched a little longer this time, and had been a little more solid.
During it, True had wondered if he should tell his old friend and compatriot and superior that Ariel Collier thought the song they were writing was being directed—well, not really directed exactly, but guided in a way, but not exactly that either—by a girl who was not exactly human, but something more than human if you believe in that, and this song they were writing was just a regular song, nobody could see any big thumbprint on it, no hidden meanings or mystical codes as far as they could tell, and if it was supposed to break them through into being a success it was a little late, because the song wasn’t finished yet there was The Five in People magazine and their CD catalog was going back for a hundred thousand more pressings, and they were selling big numbers now all over the world, so they were already a success, and by the way Terry Spitzenham—oh, I forgot you know their names—believes the same thing, that this song has a divine inspiration, and Berke Bonnevey and John Charles don’t quite know what to make of it but they’ve come around to admitting nothing ever shook their foundations but this was putting some cracks in the mortar, and also—a big also—Ariel thinks there’s a link between Jeremy Pett, Connor Addison and our trailer park communications wizard, maybe even the Duct Tape Rapist too, because this thing—this greedy king crow, she calls it, only she says that’s not exactly what she means—wants to stop the song from being finished so it has reached out to human hands to do the dirty work.
And that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
“Truitt?”
“Yes, sir?”
“One of your best qualities is that you’re determined to see a situation through to the end. I appreciate that. I’m going to tell you that you can see this one through, but you’ll have to go it alone.” The voice had paused for True’s reaction. None was forthcoming. “I’ve told the second team to stand down. As of thirty minutes ago, they were relieved of duty and instructed to come home as soon as they can pack up. I imagine Casey’s going to be knocking at your door any minute now. You say you have an errand to run this afternoon?”
“Right.”
“I can’t justify the cost, Truitt. Now, I can work with you on providing security at the venues in Dallas and Austin. But as far as having that caravan burn money and time on the highway… I just don’t see the point.”
True had known there was no use in arguing. When the large hand on the leash didn’t see the point, there was no point. It wasn’t as if he could single out anything that had happened in the past week as a reason to keep one team on the road. Everything had gone like oiled clockwork except for that incident at Magic Monty’s in Anaheim last Tuesday night, where a young man stoned on pot had set off a string of firecrackers in the crowd. The Five had stopped playing just long enough for the cops to haul the kid off to jail, and then they’d picked it right up again.
When Agent Casey had come to the door to announce what he knew True already knew, True had told him he appreciated the good work and attention to detail, and he would make sure everybody involved got gold stars on the reports. True had been so tempted to ask Casey to wait two hours, until the band had roused themselves from their late night gig at the converted church, and follow them out along Route 66 before taking off for Tucson, but he couldn’t do it. The orders had been given. The men were anxious to get home to their families.
So long, guys. We’re going on.
But after Casey had gone, True had had trouble steaming the wrinkles out of the gray slacks he intended to wear, the steam just wouldn’t come out of the nozzles, and suddenly he’d felt a hot surge of anger and when he banged the steamer against the bathroom counter he was holding a piece of broken plastic dripping water all over the floor. He realized he was hanging on the edge, and it was not a good place to be.
That was why he kept watch on the white car back there. That was why he wondered who was driving it, and why it kept such a constant speed. He thought about giving the troopers a call on his cell, identifying himself and asking for a little help in checking out a plate number.
“Who’re you calling?” Terry asked when True took the cell out of his leather bag.
“Hang on a minute.” But in only a few seconds True realized he wasn’t calling anyone. No bars, no service out in this expanse of desert. He said, “Just checking something,” and then he put the cellphone away.
“We ought to be almost there,” Terry told him. “The sign’ll say Blue Chalk.”
“Okay,” True answered, and he tried to concentrate on his driving.
Terry knew very well what he’d heard and kept when he was a child, and knew he had it still, hidden away in a place of safety. It was something from his grandparents’ house. His mother’s parents lived in a brick house a few blocks from his grammar school. They were still there, Granddad Gerald in his mid-seventies and Grandmother Mimi just turned seventy. Some days after school, Terry had gone there to get a cold drink and sit on the screened-in porch as his grandfather listened to the early autumn baseball games on the radio and smoked a pipe with a face carved on the bowl that GeeGee said was a
musketeer. His grandfather played board games with him, too. Any excuse to pull from the closet the old Milton Bradley Dogfight or the Mattel Lie Detector or the really cool Transogram 52-variety game chest with all the different colored boards. And then as the afternoon wore on, and Terry didn’t want to leave because this house was small and warm and not like his own at all, Grandmother Mimi brought from the closet a small plastic keyboard that she plugged in and placed in her lap as she sat in the front room. He would never forget the sound of that keyboard coming to life when she flipped a switch. It was like hearing an orchestra warm up, the violins, the oboes, the flutes and trumpets just softly starting to awaken. An orchestra contained in a small plastic box. And then she played it with her supple fingers, and he was sure that her fingers were supple because she did play it, and maybe it called to her to play it, day after day, because they needed each other to stay young.
What stories that keyboard told! When Terry closed his eyes and listened, he could see the image in his mind of a boy on a raft with a beautiful girl clinging to him, and in the river the rapids ran fast over dangerous rocks and the boy would have to be quick and smart to get them through that treacherous stretch. Or he saw a hundred Cossacks on their horses, driving forward through the snow under a moon as bright as a new quarter. Or he saw himself, older but still young, playing that very same keyboard before a vast audience, in a great concert hall, and then the Cossack chief rode in right down the aisle and awarded him an official sword and the beautiful girl stood up from the front row and said she would be his forever.
And then, of course, GeeGee cleared his throat across the game table, and when Terry opened his eyes GeeGee puffed smoke from the musketeer’s feathered hat and slapped down the dogfight’s ‘5 Bursts’ card, which meant Terry’s Spad was going down in flames.
He began to think they were teaming up on him.
“Terry,” said Grandmother Mimi, “do you want me to show you some chords?”
Chords? You mean…like…ropes?
“Sort of,” she’d answered. “Only these ropes never wear out, and they always keep you connected to something wonderful.”
Years later, the small portable organ just didn’t wake up on one day. It was a Hohner Organetta, not the kind of instrument found in every neighborhood music store. It sat silent in the closet, gathering dust. Was it for that reason Grandmother Mimi’s fingers began to swell and twist with the onset of arthritis?
“Let me try to fix it,” said Terry Spitzenham, the high school freshman.
There was no owner’s manual. No electronics diagram. Maybe somewhere in Germany there lived a Hohner Organetta expert, but he wasn’t in Oklahoma City. Terry opened the keyboard up, and looked at the old wiring and the reeds. He replaced the electric cord, but no go. It had to be a voltage problem, according to his electronics books. Not enough voltage was being generated to produce sound. He tried this and that, and that and this, but the keyboard remained mute. Finally he decided to take it all apart, every last bit of it, and rebuild it.
It regained its voice too late for Grandmother Mimi, whose fingers would no longer let her play. But, she said, she would love to listen, because she said that when she closed her eyes and he was playing—just that small keyboard with its twelve black keys and seventeen white—she felt like she was right there with him.
His first vintage keyboard buy had been a Hohner Symphonic 320, a real nasal-sounding and nasty-ass bastard found in the back of a garage. If those old brutes weren’t the heart and soul of rock, he didn’t know what rock was.
And now, he was minutes away from seeing—touching, playing if he could—the legend of legends, Lady Frankenstein.
“There’s the sign,” he said, and he heard in himself the excited voice of a little boy.
Blue Chalk, it read. True noted that it was defaced by a pair of close-set bullet holes. He took the exit off Route 66 and started north along a cracked and uneven asphalt road. Ahead stood a mesa, purple above the burnt brown of the desert floor. True drove sixty feet and slowed the Scumbucket to a halt. He peered into the sideview mirror.
“What’s the problem?” Nomad asked. True was acting shady this afternoon; something was up, and it wasn’t just because of the second security team leaving, as True had told the band at lunch.
True was holding his breath. In his lap was the leather bag that held his pistol. He watched the exit curve very carefully.
“True, what is it?” Ariel had awakened when the van stopped, and now Berke opened her eyes and removed the earbuds.
“Where are we?” Berke asked.
True could see cars speeding by on the highway. He watched the curve for a white car that might suddenly take the same turn to Blue Chalk.
Nobody said anything else, because they realized True was not only working, he was a two-hundred pound tuning fork that had just been struck into vibration.
He saw the white car pass.
Then he let his breath go.
He gave the Scumbucket some gas and it rumbled onward.
“What was that about?” Nomad looked back, but of course could see nothing beyond the trailer’s bulk.
“I wanted to make sure we weren’t being followed.”
“Why?” Berke’s voice was tight. “Did you see something?”
“We’re good,” he told her, and drove on toward the distant mesa.
The road began to undulate, to rise up on small scrub-covered hillocks and then to fall into rock-walled gullies. Here and there were trailers with external generators because the power poles that marched this way no longer held electrical lines. They passed several houses that had collapsed under the weight of time. Maybe this had been a community when Route 66 was a leisurely scenic road, the theater of Buz and Tod in their red Corvette convertible, but now it was a footnote to progress.
The road curved in and out. If there was any blue chalk in these red walls of rock, it was hiding under camouflage paint. This place was so far off the track it was refreshingly clean, not a beer can or broken bottle or spray of graffiti to be found. An undiscovered country, True thought. Well, it had been discovered once, but in the end nature always won.
They rounded a curve and there stood the brown stone building Eric Gherosimini had told Terry to watch for in his letter. It was a hollow shell, really. An abandoned gas station. Long abandoned, from the looks of the two rusted-out antique pumps in front. A few tires that might have been perfect for a 1959 Ranchero lay in a dust-whitened stack.
“Damn!” Berke said, looking out her window. “Was gas ever twenty-five cents a gallon?”
A barely-legible metal sign leaning against a broken wall said it was.
“And who’s Ethel?” she asked, but True didn’t tell her.
Across the road were a half-dozen remnants of houses, not much left but the roofs and frames, and around them stood the boulders and shale that had over the years—decades?—drifted down from the rugged hill behind. Between two of the ruins was a rusted swingset, a slide and a seesaw. Once upon a time, a children’s playground.
The Scumbucket negotiated another sharp turn, another descent into a washed-out gully, and there the asphalt ended. Ahead the road turned to dirt.
“Your boy wanted to get away from it all, didn’t he?” True asked, easing on the brake. “You sure about this?”
“He said he lives a half-mile past the pumps,” Terry said. “We’re almost there.”
“I think if I’d wanted to be a hermit I would’ve chosen an island in the Caribbean,” True replied, but he pressed the pedal and the wheels of the van went round and round, raising whorls of dust behind them. “Maybe I’m crazy, but that’s just me.”
They continued on. True had been glancing every so often in the sideview mirror. It disturbed him that he couldn’t see anything through the dust. They rounded one more snakespine of a curve and Terry said, “That’s it.”
On the right was a small, regular-looking adobe-style house, nothing special about it at all. It migh
t have been plucked from any Southwestern city suburb, with a minimalist and rock-loving landscaper in charge. But then again, most adobe-style houses in city suburbs were connected to power lines and didn’t have a pair of big metal boxes that could only be heavy-duty generators cabled up alongside. As they got nearer, they could hear a rumble like an old aircraft engine turning its propellor. An honest-to-God outhouse stood out back, along with a raised wooden platform that held a showerhead and some kind of waterbucket device operated by a pullchain. A sagging pickup truck the dun color of mole’s skin was parked on the shale in front of the house. Berke thought that it had probably used its share of twenty-five-cents-a-gallon gas.
True was getting the picture of where they were. He could see two trailers standing maybe a hundred yards further on, where the dirt road ended at a rock wall that angled toward the sky. He figured the Zen masters of hermitry lived in those trailers. Either that, or they were cooking meth and hiding from the IRS.
“You guys ever watch Western movies?” he asked. They gave him blank expressions. “Know what a box canyon is?” When there was no reply, he wondered what young people were learning in schools these days. “Well,” said True, “we’re in one.”
He stopped the Scumbucket in front of the house. A reddish-brown dog came rocketing off the shady porch, planted its paws in the stones and gave them a reception that could be heard even over the rumble of aircraft props.