Heroes of the Frontier (30 page)

“Yes,” she said, as if it had been the plan all along. Then, realizing that with her hands full of grocery bags she wouldn't be able to hold a candle at all, she delivered the coup de grace. “You two will have to light our path. I can't do it.”

It sounded more dramatic than she'd intended, but they took the bait. They made their way down the road and at the RV park they ducked across the frontage road and into the darkness. The candles gave them a circle of light that allowed them to see one another, their shirts ghostly white. But the short reach of the candlelight meant that all around them was still darker. All along the walk, trees arrived in front of Josie's view with alarming suddenness. She could only keep faith that they were on the right path, that the path did not split or detour, and that because it was inclining slightly all the way, they were making their way up the hillside and over the ridge.

“Smell's getting worse,” Paul said. He was right. The wildfire's acrid air seemed to be stronger, denser.

Tomorrow she would return to work with Cooper. She smiled to herself, disbelieving that she'd made a proposal like that to a stranger. He had agreed, and now her head was full of ideas, elaborations and reversals. The show about
Grenada
? Would that be the first thing to explore? Or
Disappointed: The Musical
? Or something encompassing all of Alaska.
Alaska!
No, without the exclamation point, because this was not a demonstrative place, no, it was a place of tension, of uncertainty, a state on fire. Alaska with a colon.
Alaska:
Yes. The show would start with Stan. Stan and his wife, awash in white carpet, closing the door on Josie and her children, the Chateau in motion. Josie thought briefly of
Starlight Express,
the actors on roller skates—that kind of debacle could be avoided. There would be Norwegians, and naked showering nymphs, magicians from Luxembourg. The zip code guy? He'd tip the show, obliterate all else, as he did on the cruise ship. You could get Jim in there, Grenada. You'd have to have Kyle and Angie. Guns everywhere.

“Mom?” Paul asked. “Has anyone ever done this before?”

Paul asked this question every so often, when they were in new situations, when something seemed wrong. He'd asked it once when he peed in his pants at school. Has anyone ever done that before? he wanted to know. There was comfort in precedent. Happens every day, Josie had said then. Now she said, “Walk in the dark? Every night, Paul, someone is walking in the dark.”

For a moment it seemed Josie's wording had made it worse, conjuring an army of stealthy night strollers, but Paul seemed satisfied, and Josie returned to her show. Could it be that there would be periodic shots in the theater? The actors would sing, the orchestra would play, but every few minutes a rifle shot, the pop of a handgun, would break open the air, and there would be little to no attention paid to it. Who was shot? Was it real? The play would go on. Josie thought she would try that the next day with Cooper's group—some kind of arrhythmic interruption that might mean death but would not stop the music. The crazed music—for it had to sound like organized lunacy—would always go on, loud and ceaseless.

“Champagne on my shoulders!” Ana yelled.

Then: “Stab stab stab!”

And: “PBS kids dot com!”

Josie laughed, and Paul laughed, and they both knew that by her getting a laugh, Ana would not stop until forced to. Encouraged, she sang louder. “Cham
pagne
! On my
shoul
ders!” Where could she have heard these things? But then again, Ana was tuned to a different galactic frequency, and there was no telling what signals she was picking up. Josie had no choice but to allow Ana's babbling nonsense; she needed both kids to be happily distracted from the fact that they were walking without the dog they had in the morning, over a mountain in the dark holding disintegrating candles.

“Mine's almost done,” Paul said, and they stopped so Josie could transfer the flames from the gnarled and spent candles to the pristine new ones, and the kids seemed similarly re-energized with the new candles. Josie chose not to think about the possibility that they would be attacked by bears, wolves or coyotes. She had seen signs warning of the presence of all of these animals nearby, but she guessed, without any evidence to support her thesis, that the candles would ward them off.

So there would be periodic gunshots. Mortar fire. Thunder but no rain. There would be horns, and strings, but the woodwinds would dominate. The clarinets—and flutes! They sound innocent but always signal deviance. They would underline the madness. The air would be full of smoke. At times the audience would barely be able to see the action, and everyone, especially the Alaskans, would wonder why Alaska, the last frontier, pure and undiminished, ragged and filthy, endless, independent but then wholly dependent, which had sent billions of gallons of oil through a pipeline to be burned and sent into the atmosphere, was now on fire. And so there would be tragedy, too.

“There it is!” Paul yelled. On the opposite side of the ridge, the rusted roof of the mine was visible, just a slant of black against the sky, and Josie had the strange sensation of being home. The abandoned mining town was now their home. The path was illuminated by the partial moon and the kids could find their way.

“Wait,” Josie said, and scanned the area for cars. She half-expected a police car to be waiting. But there was no one. They were still alone, and her heart swelled.

“Can we run?” Paul asked.

Ana looked to him, as if unsure if she could support this suggestion. Then she nodded vigorously, kicking herself for doubting any radical act, especially one involving running.

“Just to the cabin,” Josie said, and enjoyed saying that. The kids ran ahead, down a dark path, toward the amber light.

Could you have animals in the show? she wondered. Wolves and bears. A bighorn sheep. An eagle dropping it a thousand feet to a silent death. Cruel logical murder in the wild. More gunshots. Someone would die but no one would care. The fires would burn. That could be part of the soundtrack—the slow hushing crackle of the fires. Sirens. She couldn't help picturing the curtain call: cops, prisoners, firefighters. Evaders and crusaders. The fires, on stage, would rage behind them, pushing them to the edge. Finally the actors would leap into the audience, flee for the doors. More gunshots, real or unreal, no one would know, as everyone left the theater and ran into the night. When they left the theater, they'd forget where they'd come from.

Josie unlocked the front door, let the kids in and turned the light switch on. Nothing happened. She tried again, nothing. They entered the cabin by candlelight, trying anything electric, and found that something had happened: the power was out. She opened the fridge, feeling its fleeting cold, threw their groceries in, and closed it, wondering what among the things they'd just bought would go bad by morning.

“Is this okay?” Ana asked.

Josie turned to find her face, orange in the candlelight, her eyes shining. What Ana meant was: Should the lights really be on? Did someone turn off the lights because we shouldn't be here? Should we be in Alaska, in an abandoned mine, alone, in this home that isn't ours? What does it mean that it's dark here, and we have only candles, and we just crossed a mountain to get here, and were not harmed by beast or man? How is this all allowed?

“It's fine,” Josie said.

They lit more candles and brushed their teeth, and Josie read them C. S. Lewis from a copy they found in a bathroom drawer, and in the flickering candlelight, while reading
Prince Caspian,
Josie felt that they were living a life that had kinship with the heroes of these books. They had only walked two miles through the dark, through a forest and over a ridge to their home in a twice-abandoned mining town, but she felt there was not so great a difference between what she and her children were capable of and what these other protagonists had done. Courage was the beginning, being unafraid, moving ahead, through small hardships, not turning back. Courage was simply a form of moving forward.

COOPER LIVED IN A REAL HOUSE,
a red-brick ranch with a black roof, which was surprising, though Josie didn't know why. He'd told her he lived there in town, and he'd been wearing clean clothes when she'd met him, so did she really think he lived in a tent? Something about the hootenanny had her thinking of hoboes.

Josie and the kids had walked over the mountain trail and into town, and Cooper opened the door before she rang the bell. “Right on time,” he said. He'd told her to come at eleven, with the rest of the players trickling in after noon.

The kids entered the house reluctantly, but then Ana ran to the back porch, where she'd spotted an ancient hobby horse on wheels. Paul walked in slowly, looking around as if this might be his future home.

“I made some lemonade,” Cooper said. “The kids can drink it out there if they want,” he said, indicating the backyard, where Ana was already testing the horse for weak points. There were a handful of other playthings strewn about the porch, all of them weather-worn and missing key parts. “Or they could stay and watch.”

Ana was already outside and couldn't hear him. But Paul stayed by Josie's side as Cooper led them into a wide living room, most of it dark but for a cone of light in the center, coming from a bright round skylight. There were Persian rugs overlapping each other, a pair of drama masks, happy and sad, over the fireplace. Josie complimented the house, which was cave-like and clean. Cooper sat on a leather ottoman and gathered his guitar on his thigh.

“I figured we could start alone,” he said. “Just to get your bearings. Or for me to get mine.”

“And the rest of them? They're all okay with a checkup?” Josie tried to conjure what tools she'd be able to muster and sterilize. She'd have to bend a paperclip. “And these guys are professionals or…?” She wasn't quite sure why she asked. She knew they weren't a band of professional musicians, playing parades and parks in Alaska.

No, no, Cooper said. They all had full-time jobs, or as close to full-time as anyone had in the town. A couple were seasonal oil workers, one was in commercial fishing, another had retired as a lumberjack. “Suki's the drummer. She waits tables at Spinelli's. And Cindy's the new mailperson around here. She's the singer,” Cooper said, and it was clear that there was something about Cindy—was she beautiful? Were she and Cooper involved? “We just found out a few weeks ago she could sing. She wasn't at the parade.”

Josie didn't know what to do with herself. Stand? Sit? She sat on the arm of the couch.

“So guitar?” he asked. “I play piano, trumpet…”

“Guitar is fine,” Josie said.

“You have in mind a song, or—” he asked. “I assume you have lyrics already.”

Josie didn't have any words at all in mind. She had only the thousand notions from the night before.

“Maybe you could start with some lower chords,” Josie said. “It was when you were strumming yesterday, at the end of that last song, that I started thinking about this.”

Cooper tried a few chords, and then strummed one that sounded right.

“What's that?” Josie asked.

“G.”

“Just G? Not flat or sharp or anything?”

“Just G. You want me to keep going?”

“I should be writing this down,” Josie said.

“I'll remember,” Cooper said, then went to the kitchen and came back with a legal pad and a pencil. Paul was sitting close to Josie, silent and seeming to understand what was happening. She knew the important thing, now, was to act normal, in command—to avoid this being some pivotal moment where he realized his mother had left the rational world.

“Can you write for me?” she asked Paul.

He took the pad eagerly.

“Write down G,” she said, but he already had. He underlined it for her, and looked up at her, now involved, no longer concerned.

Josie asked Cooper for other chords that were low like G. He played two more, named them A and C, and Paul wrote them down.

“You have a piano here?” Josie asked.

Cooper smiled, and Paul reached across her lap to point at a small piano in the corner. Josie glanced out the back window, and saw no sign of Ana.

“Can you go check on her?” she asked Paul.

“No,” he said. Josie was stunned into silence. “I want to stay,” he said, his tone softening. “I want to hear.”

Ana reappeared from the side of the house, carrying the disembodied antlers of a deer. She seemed to be speaking to them, or to herself, animated but stern.

“Okay,” Josie said. She turned to Cooper. “While you strum the G, could I play with the piano?”

“Of course,” he said, and Paul wrote, “Mom on piano:”

She hit a key, and it sounded tinny and wrong. She moved twenty keys down, and that was all wrong, too. She found a spot in between and hit a note. It sounded like a bell. It sounded like Sunny. She hit it again.

“That's nice,” Cooper said.

“What was it?” Josie asked.

“B-sharp.”

Paul wrote that down, and Josie had a thought, too soon to articulate. What she couldn't say at that moment was that this sound from the piano was what should be her voice. In her head Josie heard this strumming, his low strumming, then heard a bell-clear voice, high in pitch but strong, lyrical but determined, and this voice was both hers and Sunny's.

“Is that the note you want?” Cooper asked. “Any others?”

She tried some of the keys nearby, but none sounded as certain as that first one.

“Can you strum that G again?” she asked, and he did. “Now can you vary between G and F and D? Make some kind of song out of it?”

Cooper played the chords, and they sounded right for a moment, until he began filling the transitions with some kind of extra flourishes.

“No, no, not those,” Josie said, and mimicked what he'd been doing. He laughed, stopped, and returned to the regular rhythm he'd begun before. Paul was busy writing.

“Good, good,” she said, and returned her attention to the piano. She played her B-sharp, and then leaped a foot over and found another note she liked.

“What's that?” she asked.

“G-flat,” he said.

Now she alternated between the two notes, the sound like a bad man walking up a set of very high steps. Her eyes welled and her breathing grew shallow, but her fingers continued, now with more force. It sounded like it happened that way. That's the way it sounded, she thought, but she didn't know what the music was describing, what exactly it was recounting.

“Should I keep going?” Cooper asked.

“Yes!” she said, not looking up. She saw only the keys in front of her, and she made the footstep sounds louder, then softer, faster and then slower. She paused, continued. It was exactly right, she thought, though she never wanted to hear it again.

“I'm going to check on Ana,” Josie said, and walked outside. She needed a break. It was too much. From the back porch she saw Ana in the shallow woods, holding the antlers on her head.

“You good?” Josie asked.

“I'm looking for a frog friend,” Ana said.

“Makes sense,” Josie said, and returned. Paul was scribbling furiously on his pad, as if to avoid eye contact with the two new women in the room.

“Couple new arrivals,” Cooper said.

One was introduced as Cindy, the singer. She was a blond, cherub-faced woman of about thirty, wearing a tanktop and the grey and blue pants of a mailperson. The other was Suki, Asian, lithe, muscular, in a fleece vest and shorts. The two of them were setting up Suki's drumset.

“So you're a dentist?” Cindy asked. “I haven't had a checkup in a few years. Am I doomed?”

“I think you'll be fine,” Josie said. “We'll make sure afterward.”

“After what, exactly?” Suki asked. “Coop says you're a composer?”

Josie looked over to Cooper, whose face betrayed no strategy. But Josie figured there was no harm in a reach of confidence.

“Amateur,” Josie said.

“We're all amateurs,” Cindy said.

Cooper was looking at his phone. “The rest of the guys are coming in one van. But it'll be a little while. Should we get started?”

Josie sat on the edge of the couch, her back straight, her hands raised a bit, indicating the position of a conductor.

“We're improvising,” Cooper said to Cindy and Suki. “Just stay loose.” He began with G, and instantly Josie felt more sure. This chord seemed right and it gave her strength. It sounded as sturdy as the earth beneath them.

“Just tell Cindy when you want her to sing,” he said.

“Thank you,” Josie said. “Now vary between that and the F. You decide how.”

And so he strummed the F, then the G, and Josie looked over to Cindy, whose face was teetering between enthralled and afraid.

“Ready?” Josie asked.

Cindy nodded.

“Hit the B-sharp,” Josie said.

“Just the note? Any words?”

“Anything. Sounds or words,” Josie said.

Cindy sang a quick succession of notes, something like fa-la-la-la-la, and it was wrong. Josie grimaced, and Cindy saw her grimace, and stopped. “No?”

“Your voice is beautiful,” she said. “Maybe a little lower? And when you sing, it doesn't have to be pretty. It could be Ya! Ya-ya-ya! Yaaaah-ya-ya! Or calling out to someone, someone about to cross the street in traffic.”

Cindy tried it and again it was wrong. She was tentative. She was mimicking Josie and it sounded false.

“Make any words you want,” Josie said. “But urgent.”

All the while, Cooper had been strumming loudly, and with more force. She nodded to him.
Good, good
.

Cindy's eyes showed she was thinking of words to say, words that would fit the urgency, and the syllables, and the staccato pattern Josie gave her. She seemed to settle on something, and closed her eyes, and when Cooper hit a transition, the beginning of something, her eyes opened again, and now she was possessed.

“Now! Now no! No no no! Now now no!”

She was singing these words at a volume just below yelling, and it was wonderful. Josie forgot to breathe. Cindy's eyes were open to the wall, avoiding Josie and Cooper. Cooper was looking at Cindy anew, and was nodding in approval. Finally she looked to Josie, needing to know if she should continue, and Josie nodded vigorously, because she loved Cindy very deeply now, because she was vocalizing the music inside of her. Paul had stopped writing.

“Okay, ready?” Josie said to Suki.

Suki raised her sticks.

“You have a sound in your head, Josie?” Cooper asked.

There was indeed something in her head, Josie told Cooper and Suki, and to describe it Josie made a rolling sound with her lips, a rolling bumping sound like heavy rain on a hollow porch. Suki tried to replicate the sound and succeeded immediately. It sounded very much like, and better than, the sound in her mind, and Josie asked her to continue making that sound, with any of the drums she had before her, as if there were a storm overhead, and the rain and sleet were coming in heavy waves. Suki began again, and now the storm did come in waves, heavier, then lighter, faster then slower, but always it was the same storm, the heavy rain and sleet on the hollow porch. Suki was the storm outside and Cooper was a pair of great wings flapping inside a house pelted by steady rain. Josie didn't know where she'd heard this sound, but it sounded to her like some home she'd once had. Where had she lived with a porch like this? With a roof like this, with the rain and sleet in the darkness?

Josie waved to Cindy that she could join in again.

“Now now no! Now no no no! Now no no no no! Now now no!” Cindy sang, venom at the end of every line. Suki kept the tumbling coming, fast and slow, and Cooper strummed his low chords, the volume filling the dark room. Cindy continued, “Now now no! Now no no no! Now now no no!” adding one long “Nooooooo” that lasted as long as she had breath. It wavered wonderfully at the end, and it sounded so much like Josie's teens, those forgotten years, and her twenties, a whole decade of wretched, regretful self-inflicted pain contained in that long
Nooooo
. Josie threw her head back and stared at the ceiling, spent.

“That was cool,” Cooper said.

Josie nodded seriously, inwardly blooming, so happy about his respect for what they were doing, as if he actually believed that the process had precedent and worth.

The door opened. Josie turned to find a man, tall and familiar. He was one of the musicians from yesterday's circle. He was carrying a cello.

“Frank,” Cooper said, and walked to the cellist. He was wearing a fur-lined corduroy coat, far too warm for the weather, grey flannel pants and rubber boots. He and Cooper exchanged a few private words by the door, and Cooper went quickly to the kitchen to retrieve a pair of chairs, which he placed in the living room.

Frank approached Josie, extending his hand. His face seemed conflicted with itself—his face was long, jowls falling into his collar, but his eyes were small and bright.

There was a knock on the door, and another face appeared, a grey-haired man Josie didn't remember, carrying a guitar, and a half-dozen more people immediately behind him. Two carried guitars, one a trombone, another a trumpet. The last in was an older woman with a violin. “Word got around,” she said, and closed the door.

“Getting weird out there,” Frank the cellist said, indicating the world outside, as he brought a chair from the kitchen and positioned himself near Cooper. “The winds are heading this way,” he said.

Josie wasn't sure what that meant, but assumed this was a kind of shorthand for locals, that this meant something to them.

“So get set up,” Cooper told everyone. “We already got a good start. Everyone know Josie? This is Josie,” he said, and the musicians, crowding together in a two-ring circle, nodded respectfully to her.