Ellen slides the record from the sleeve and places it on the Admiral. She sets the needle. Only one song per side, she’s gonna have to flip the disc in a couple minutes, but still she goes to the couch and falls flat on her back, the sleeve between her fingers.
Ah, how Ellen Jones loves an instrumental.
The song begins. Big, rolling drums. A steady bass. Sprinkles of a piano. And that guitar line . . .
Ellen closes her eyes.
There’s no job in this song.
No sadness, either.
No healing or not healing, secrets or mysteries.
Ellen smiles.
Outside her apartment window a tire squeals and she looks up. The guitar is soaring by now, but it’s the piano that’s caught her ear.
What color is it?!
There’s no room in her mind and heart for hospital memories now. She looks to the back sleeve of the 45.
“‘Be Here,’” she reads. “By the Danes.”
Ellen sits up fast. Despite the fact that she doesn’t entirely believe it yet, that she’s still piecing it together while looking at the whole, she feels like a teenager again, back when a photo of a matinee idol was enough to make her scream.
She speed-reads the back of the sleeve. Reads the names of the band members.
Duane Noles—Drums
Larry Walker—Bass
Ross Robinson—Guitar
Philip Tonka—Piano.
“No shit! ” she yells. “Philip!”
She’s up now. She sits again. She can’t believe it. “Be Here” by the Danes.
She’s got the 45.
And it’s well worn.
“Holy shit!”
The song comes to its signature uneven end and Ellen starts it over again.
She feels like she’s gotta call someone, tell someone that this happened.
So, I’ve got a patient who was under for six months, and he comes to, and I’m worried sick about him and I need to calm down and I play a record, a favorite record, and holy shit holy shit—
“Holy shit!”
She laughs because there’s nothing else to do. She laughs and crosses the living room to the kitchen, grabs a second pan from the rack, and puts it on the stove.
She’s gotta keep moving.
She goes back to the couch, sits, watches the record spin, reads the name as it’s spinning.
The Danes, The Danes, The Danes, The Danes . . .
“Philip Tonka,” she says. “Wait until I tell you this.”
As the song comes to its end for the second time, as the apartment goes silent, as even the street outside seems to hold its breath, Ellen realizes that on the other side of the sleeve is a photo. And in that photo are the four men who made the music.
She’s seen it before. She knows it’s there.
Ellen flips it over.
She can’t read the name on the blue and white sign, but behind them, through the open front door, an old man, the proprietor, is looking toward the camera. Of the four band members, the black man is featured most prominently. He stands out against the orange brick. He looks confident, soldier strong, his arms folded across the chest of a powder-blue T-shirt. To his right, a long-haired guy is laughing hard enough that his eyes are closed. To his left is a shorter guy, curly hair, sporting a smirk. And to the left of the guy with curly hair is . . .
“Philip,” Ellen says, bringing a hand to her mouth.
To say he looks different now is to say a white house looks different from the White House.
“Oh my God.”
Dark hair. Dark eyes. A half smile as powerful as the black man’s physique.
“Oh my God.”
Philip is leaning against the orange wall. One shoulder is raised a little, and the wind tousles his hair.
It occurs to Ellen that Philip was as good-looking as any of the matinee idols she loved as a teenager.
Without getting up, without taking her eyes off the photo, Ellen reaches out and starts the song over again.
When the needle connects, she brings the same hand to the album sleeve and touches Philip’s symmetrical, unbruised face with her fingertip.
“Oh my God.”
And by the time the guitar line begins, she feels like she’s there with them (be here), the Danes, the band whose name spins over her shoulder, in rhythm with the song, spinning as if on wheels, rolling from the past to the future or perhaps the other way around.
It’s impossible not to compare what Philip looks like now to what he looked like then. Impossible not to note the carefree swagger in his expression, the almost bullish confidence of all four men.
But their name continues to spin, as if trying to generate enough momentum, enough torque, to bring back this great moment in their past, to resurrect the ghosts the four of them have become.
“Philip,” Ellen says, her elation giving way to tears. “I’m so sorry, Philip . . .”
18
Because Philip isn’t expecting a storm, because he’s expecting only the desert flat, not rising, the columns of sand in the distance at first don’t register.
As he steps from the airplane stairs, as his boot actually touches the sand of the Namib Desert for the first time, he hears Stein calling out, sees Duane hurrying to unload the larger cases.
But despite the chaotic activity and the sense that he should get moving, Philip has to pause, for a single breath, and acknowledge the panoramic beauty of the Namib.
It’s the most gorgeous thing he’s ever seen in person.
A high wind flattens against his body, presses against every bone, it seems, strong enough to push Philip back against Sergeant Lovejoy, still descending the stairs.
The airplane has landed in the fog, where the ocean meets the desert. Belts of mist curl up around Philip’s boots, the green short sleeves of his shirt.
And in the distance, columns of sand.
The pilots are moving quick, moving gear, unloading, hollering about the need to leave, the lack of time.
Before, they say. Before this storm hits.
Philip listens. Despite the beauty, he’s anxious.
It’s as if he wants to locate the sound immediately, before the plane takes off again without them. So that Mull and the pilots have to stay, long enough for them to get it on tape, long enough for Philip or Larry, Duane or Ross to say it must be here, it must be there, we found it, our mission is complete, and we’ll be going home with you after all.
He looks to the active sand in the distance. Has it gotten closer?
“Right here,” Lovejoy says, ten feet to Philip’s left, pointing to the sand at his boots, directing the pilots and soldiers.
It makes music, so they’re sending musicians. Lovejoy had said that.
Think music, Philip tells himself. You’re here because you’re good at what you do. You’re here because your country needs a musician, needs you.
“Private Tonka.”
Philip looks up to see that the photographer, Stein, is handing him a sand mask.
“Do I need this?” It’s so sudden, so present.
The photographer is already wearing his. He lifts the camera from around his neck and turns to take a photo.
The façade of sand is barreling toward them. As if ten thousand Africans are behind it, delivering it, walling the soldiers in, telling them now you stay HERE you don’t leave HERE you stay HERE.
Philip puts on his sand mask.
Stein snaps a photograph.
“Sandstorm,” Stein says. “Fucking huge.”
The pilots are rushing behind them.
The compartment with the gear is closed. The Danes have everything they’ve brought with them, whether they need more or not. Secretary Mull is holding a hand in front of his eyes, blocking the already rising dust, talking to Lovejoy, patting him on the shoulder, then making for the airplane stairs.
Two steps up he turns. Sees Philip. Salutes him.
Philip salutes back.
Stein snaps anothe
r photo. Holds an already grainy thumbs-up to Mull.
The airplane stairs are vanishing into the wall of the plane, a ladder nightmarishly receding from a burning building.
We’ve saved everyone we can. You’re on your own now.
The propellers begin spinning.
The plane is lifting. Rising.
So much sand. The voices of his platoon. The voice of Lovejoy.
And . . .
. . . water.
Philip turns to see he’s less than forty feet from white rolling surf. The ocean exposed by the propellers. Parting curtains of fog.
Secretary Mull’s info packet called it “the Skeleton Coast.”
Philip imagines an audience behind that curtain, his parents at his first piano recital.
“Philip!”
It’s Stein. He’s got one hand on Philip’s right shoulder. The other still holds the camera.
He says something, gestures toward the others. Philip turns to see a bivouac erected.
And the coming bulwark of sand.
The airplane is already out of sight.
With Stein, Philip rushes to the others. He finds them crouched behind the makeshift cover, shoulder to shoulder, masked. He squeezes in beside Larry, his back to the hard plastic.
Already . . . here in the Namib . . . a storm.
Philip braces himself. Duane begins to say something but his words are drowned in the rumble.
Then the sand hits, and the words, whatever they were meant to be, are as unreachable as the airplane in the sky.
19
Ellen knows how to play the piano, too. Well enough. And she’s been thinking about it all day. Since waking on Bettman Street, while getting a coffee and reading the Des Moines Register at Uncle Danny’s Diner, she’s been visualizing herself playing the piano in Unit 1 of Macy Mercy.
As a nurse, she’s always looking for a joke, a story, something she can bring into the hospital, a window of light for an otherwise dark home.
She’s gonna surprise Philip with his own song.
By the time she enters the hospital, hangs her coat in the office, and changes into her uniform, Ellen is nervous. She wants to make sure she gets it right. The E minor intro. The lift to the F sharp minor. Then landing on the E major, where the song really begins.
Philip should recognize it by then.
She takes the hall to Unit 1, practicing the chords at her hips, careful not to whistle the tune like she did for six months as he slept.
She stops.
Is it possible Philip heard his own song during those long six months? Is it possible she was helping him in a bigger way than she could’ve possibly known?
How many times did she play it on the very same piano as he worked his way through a darkness she can’t fathom?
The thought is exciting. And it propels her to the unit door, across the threshold, where she stops again, this time as though in a very bad dream.
“Philip!”
It’s the worst she’s seen him since he woke from his coma. The angles of his face look sharper, the shadows darker, so that the blue bruises look purple, and the purple ones black. Sweat pools on his pillow, his breathing is labored, and there’s an almost audible sound of creaking, as if Philip’s bones are finally declaring their true condition.
“Dr. Szands!” Ellen calls, hoping he’s within earshot.
“Ellen,” Philip manages to say. “It hurts.”
“Okay. Okay. Hang on.”
It strikes her that Philip didn’t turn his head toward her when he spoke. That his fingers look like pieces of petrified driftwood on the bedsheet.
Ellen checks for a fever. It’s scorching.
“Don’t worry,” she says. But she’s very worried herself. “You’re running a little fever. I’ll be right back.”
Philip doesn’t nod, doesn’t say a word. Instead, as Ellen leaves the unit, she hears a slow, guttural hissing. As if whatever pain he’s experiencing has only a small window from which to be expressed.
In the hall, Ellen calls again for the doctor. Instead, Nurse Francine, huge and wrinkled in her white uniform, peers out of the office door.
“What is it?” she says. Her glasses magnify the concern in her eyes.
Ellen points to Unit 1.
“It’s Philip Tonka, he—”
“Oh no,” Francine says. Then she’s out the office door and thumping away from Ellen, toward the hospital’s front doors. She turns left and Ellen knows she’s heading for the Medicine Unit.
There are simple medications in the nurses’ station: aspirin, cough syrup, antihistamines. But in the hall that Francine thunders down is one of the rooms Ellen Jones isn’t allowed to enter.
Ellen can’t think about that right now.
She hurries back into Unit 1. Inside, Philip looks even worse.
His fingers are curved unnaturally, like the arthritic claws of an elderly man. His Adam’s apple is pointed to the ceiling, his back arched.
Ellen goes to him, kneels beside the cot.
“Francine is getting your medicine. Hold on, Philip. It’s going to be okay.”
Francine storms through the unit door.
“Move,” she says.
She’s carrying a tray with two syringes. Ellen has never seen her this way before.
“Do you need help? What can I do?”
It’s hard to look at Philip. The way he’s stuck, frozen, as if every bone inside him has turned to wood.
Francine waves a dismissive hand.
“Nothing,” she says. “Or . . . play for him. Like you used to.”
Like she used to. Yes. During Philip’s six-month sleep, Ellen played for him often.
She crosses the unit quickly, feels helpless, like she’s no use as a nurse if she can’t help Philip, can’t help him right now.
Then, without consciously deciding to, operating with severely frayed nerves, she plays the same song she played for him over those six months.
“Be Here.”
She almost stops when she realizes what she’s doing. Hearing his own song might be too much excitement, too crazy to comprehend. But she’s already begun.
The E minor. The F sharp minor. E.
In the silver metronome, reflected, she sees Francine inject Philip’s shoulder.
By the time she reaches the end of the first round of the song, she’s sweating.
Francine administers the second shot.
Ellen doesn’t watch. She’s gotta watch her fingers. Wants to play this right. Play this man’s song for him here, now, as he experiences a pain she can’t know.
She worries, irrationally, that she’s ruining it, speeding up, playing it without feeling it. This isn’t how she imagined this going. This isn’t how she saw herself, this morning, surprising Philip, lessening the loneliness, the pain, the horror.
When she reaches the end, she lets the notes dissolve, then hangs her head so that her black hair is touching the keys.
Silence. Almost. The far distant cry of those final notes.
Ellen looks up to the metronome. Sees Francine is gone.
Sees Philip’s head is angled toward the back of the unit, watching her.
She spins quickly.
“Jesus Christ,” she says. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“You . . . you played our song . . .”
“Yes,” Ellen nods. But she’s struggling to reconcile the sight of him now with what she saw only a minute ago.
“You played that for me when I was under, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Many times.”
Philip smiles. It’s the first time she’s seen it.
The satisfaction Ellen feels is foreign to her.
“It’s one of my favorite songs.”
“And you knew that I—”
“No!” Ellen says, getting up at last and taking the chair beside his cot. “No. I figured it out last night. I have your record.”
They look into each other’s eyes for a long time.
“Ellen,” Philip says. “Will you draw something for me?”
It’s the last thing she expects him to say. And she can’t help but notice that the angles of his face look rounder again, the shadows shallower.
“Draw?”
“I can’t grip a pencil yet. But I wanna see . . . something. Something I saw in the desert.”
Ellen looks to the bookshelf behind her. To the filing cabinet against the wall by the door.
Are they listening? And, if so, can they hear a drawing?
“Color or pencil?”
“Color.”
Philip raises his arms. He slowly extends his fingers, slowly curls them back into a fist.
Ellen gets up and leaves the unit. When she returns with colored pencils and a paper pad, Philip is relaxed again. His eyes are bright with memory.
“All right,” she says, sitting down. “A drawing.”
Philip doesn’t hesitate.
“A goat.”
“A goat?” Ellen begins to sketch a goat, then pauses. “You saw a goat in the desert?”
Philip nods. He remembers hoofprints.
Arms up, arms down.
“A long-haired white goat,” he says. “Facing right. Side view.”
“And you’re sure you saw this in the desert?”
Philip is looking at her directly. Ellen can’t help but think of the X-rays, the cracks in Philip’s bones, the photo of him on the cover of the 45.
“Large horns,” he says. “And between them, a piece of steel.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure exactly.”
“A piece of steel where the horns meet.”
“Yes. Like . . . like an emblem.”
Ellen is drawing. This is another first for her. First time a patient woke after a six-month coma. First time she feared the hospital was listening in on their conversations. First time she’s drawn for a patient.