Nightzone (23 page)

“I better find my chair,” I said. “Enjoy.” That earned a sober nod. “Come by the house after for a bit.” Another sober nod.

In the distance—roughly a basketball court's worth—that I walked to reach my seat, I greeted dozens of folks, at least half of whose names I remembered. In the reserved section, Dr. Guzman and his wife were standing, talking to half a dozen people. As I slipped into the row, Jerry Reader stretched across a couple of chairs and pumped my hand. The music teacher's eyes were huge behind his thick glasses.

“Isn't this just incredible?” he shouted, and before I had time to agree, the gymnasium lights dimmed, then brightened, then dimmed again, remaining low. Twin spots lanced out and haloed the Steinway. Not a speck of travel dust remained on its polished ebony flanks. A figure appeared to stand in the dark at a lone microphone off to one side, and when most of the audience took their seats, I could see that it was Superintendent Glenn Archer.

I sat immediately beside Carlos, who squirmed down into his seat, both hands clutched under his chin in that characteristic pose of anticipation. I hadn't had time to actually read the program, and I glanced at it now, the light already too dim for me to make out the fine print. Snagging my car keys, I thumbed the tiny pen light on, cupping it to keep the glow focused on the words. The artists would open with the
Winter
movement of Vivaldi's
Four Seasons,
arranged for the flute and piano. Following that, Francisco would play some more square fodder, the kind of music that was going to drive ranchers to turn the radio dial searching for some Reba McIntire or Garth Brooks. In this case, it was Beethoven's
Sonata No. 10 in G Major, Opus 14, number 2.
The program's notes indicated that “Beethoven loved a good laugh, and this piece ends with just that.”

As if stamping their authority with a heavily classical start, the two boys would then venture…who the hell knew where. We would have a short intermission to stew about it.

“See that?” Carlos whispered, and poked my program.

“I see, I see,” I said. He was so excited he couldn't stand it. After scaling Carlos' skyscraper, the concert would return with an interesting potpourri. I didn't see any surprises, but then again, I knew this Guzman kid pretty well.

Estelle sat between Carlos and his grandmother, and the undersheriff clutched Teresa's left hand in both of hers. No nerves there. The lights took us by surprise, switching off with a dull
bang
of heavy circuits, replaced immediately by a single spot illuminating the mike in the corner. Glenn Archer squinted against it.
He
was nervous, his hands shaking a little as he glommed onto the mike and its stand with both hands.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This…” and he paused to look off into the semi-dark gym. “This is quite an experience for us and we're glad you could share in it. It's always a treat when students of Posadas Municipal Schools come home for a visit. Oh, my.” He took a deep breath. “I'd like to extend a warm welcome to our visiting artists and their crew, but first, I need to point out two important things. First of all, those of you with gadgets that make noise—cell phones, I-this or that,
please
turn them off. Let's take ten seconds to do that right now.” He held both hands toward us, and there was a rustling as folks who hadn't been able to figure this out for themselves complied.

“Next, we originally were going to close the bleachers. They are so
noisy,
folks. But as you can see, your wonderful turnout has far, far exceeded our expectations. So, those of you
in
the bleachers, I implore you to make every effort to avoid shifting around or changing seats. And please—corral the children who are too young to understand the need for silence.” He smiled benignly. “I think that concludes all the dire warnings.” Looking out toward the piano, he said, “I would like to extend a heartfelt, an
excited
welcome to Dr. Hal Lott, headmaster of Leister Music Conservatory in Edgarton, Missouri.”

Lott looked smaller out on that stage all by himself, but he pumped Archer's hand and then turned to the audience with a welcoming smile—and no little cheat sheet to remind him of what to say.

“Good evening. Leister Conservatory is proud to present another in our series of hometown concerts featuring the talented students we are proud to serve.” He gazed thoughtfully at the piano for a moment, as if it had something to say. “You know, I had every expectation of having to make some programming changes, but the two artists assure me that what you're holding is accurate. Well…” and he let that thought drift as the audience laughed. “Your children
never
serve up surprises to you, do they.” He grinned and waited for the hall to fall silent.

“From Dos Pasos, Texas, a senior flute major at Leister, let me present Mateo Atencio.” He held up a hand, and when the applause died, and sounding like a boxing match announcer, said, “From Posadas, New Mexico, senior pianist Francisco Guzman.” The roar of applause was enormous, and I leaned forward a bit and looked across at Estelle.

“Senior?” I mouthed. What happened to the thirteen-year-old I knew.

Chapter Twenty-seven

The applause rose as the two youngsters walked onto the stage. Both looked impossibly young, but both moved with the grace that comes with being completely at home. The spots winked off the flute that Mateo carried one-handed as if it were nothing more than a tennis racket. Francisco, nifty in a black tux and shoes so polished that the spots winked off
them,
walked to the Steinway and rested his hand on the corner nearest the lid support. As if wired together, the two kids both bowed with reserve. Francisco smiled at our section, then straightened up and acknowledged the rest of the audience.

He ducked his head again and turned to the piano. It was then that I noticed the lack of music. None on the piano, no music rack for Mateo. No wonder Dr. Lott was worried about the unexpected. I held the program again, trying to catch enough light to read the descriptive notes. Impossible. I took a deep breath and tried to relax.

Mateo had moved to the piano's curved flank and gently placed the flute on the Steinway's right candelabra shelf. Francisco waited with his hands in his lap. Withdrawing a white handkerchief, Mateo touched his nose then dried his upper lip. Just as he was pocketing the handkerchief and reaching for his flute, a cell phone deep in the audience burst into life, a warbling, raucous jangle. Without hesitation, Francisco exactly matched the pitch on the piano and began a rapid trill, at the same time turning toward the audience with his eyebrows furrowed. That prompted a laugh, of course, but the cell phone went away, with its owner no doubt wishing he or she could crawl under the seats.

Mateo nodded, and Vivaldi sprang into life, his tribute to winter. Even I could count the square four/four time, and I sure as hell was no musician. The piano sounded with a cadence that reminded me of troops rapidly double-timing through deep snow until after a few measures the flute sprang into the scene with a series of gentle but insistent little shivers. Now we had a gang of kids playing in the snow, sliding, slipping, ignoring the winter winds. That was followed by a long sequence of teeth-chattering, and regardless of what impossibly high flights the flute took, Francisco never abandoned his relentless four-square accompaniment until the last bit when everything accelerated to a manic pace.

Atencio didn't just stand in one spot and hoot the notes. He engaged both the audience and his accompanist, rocking on his feet, punching notes, sometimes the flute pointing at the floor near his feet, sometimes arching to point to the heavens. The kid was amazing, the audience struck dumb.

Between the first and second movements, we had two breaths to relieve the tension, and a few hands thought about clapping. The second movement was as lyrical and graceful as the first was maniacal, and it was over too soon—but not before the final note stretched for measures while the piano counted down, the flutist astonishing us all with the amount of air he could capture in his lungs.

He needed that air for the third and final movement when winter winds shrieked, the piano danced, and the velocity of everything accelerated to a whirlwind of up and down, the spotlight flashing off the flute, with the two performers colliding in the end with the final “big note.”

The audience didn't know what to say. Mateo had time to lower his flute after the last note died, and glance at Francisco before the audience erupted with applause so powerful that I'm sure I could taste some of the dust filtering down from the gymnasium girders.

I reached across Carlos, found Estelle's forearm and squeezed it. The little boy captured my hand as I drew back, and didn't appear ready to let go.

What next? I remembered that Beethoven's ghost was in the house, and sure enough, after the bows and applause, Mateo left the stage after establishing his bona fides with Vivaldi. Francisco settled at the piano. If I expected to be able to leave the concert hall humming the tune from Beethoven's Sonata no. 10 in G-major, I had another think coming. Beethoven had other plans. I could see why the music appealed to Francisco Guzman, since it was rich with imagery. I could picture a cat chasing butterflies and a host of other cinematic clips, up and down the keyboard, all so precise, sometimes so soft that I could hardly hear it, sometimes loud enough for two gymnasiums.

The second movement, to my mind a march that syncopated the base with the upper notes, suckered me—and lots of others—into an unexpected crash of an ending so loud it shook the stage. The final movement was a delight, bass conversing with treble, triplets fast and perfectly accurate, until a surprise ending with a little trill in the bass that sounded as if the artist had bounced on a whoopie cushion.

Francisco's wide smile greeted the explosion of laughter and applause, and then the stage was empty, almost as if something had been stolen from us. All we could do was turn to each other and marvel. But beyond the artistry of the two boys, there had been no surprises as promised by the artists. That meant that the intermission, even if it was only five minutes long, was going to seem an eternity.

Old prostates can stand only so much fun, and I decided to buck the crush of people, many of whom would have the same problem. I made it as far as the last row of the reserved section before an elderly woman with two walker-canes maneuvered out to the aisle, assisted by her son, I supposed. He nodded in apology as he helped the woman maneuver, and I waited, taking the time to actually scan the crowd. They were all talking, animated and amazed.

Eventually, I was able to step on the gas. Even so, if I had turned every “Hey Bill,” or “Hi Bill,” or “Evenin' Sheriff” into a conversation, the trip to the far end of the gym would have taken a week. By bordering on the brusque if not actually impolite, I reached the large foyer, grateful that a long line didn't block the restroom door.

Even so, by the time I was rewarded with a turn, I was ready to start seeking out a dark corner.

“If I listened to this concert with a blindfold, the last thing I'd imagine would be that I was hearing two kids,” Dr. Arnie Gray said. I turned and found the paper towels. “If I don't see you all, give the whole family my congratulations,” the chairman of the county commission said.

“You bet I will,” I replied. “I'm glad you could make it.”

With a long way to walk, and I hoped not much more intermission to suffer, I made my way back toward my seat. The lady with the canes had reached the foyer, one hand against the door jamb for support. Somewhere along the way she'd lost her escort.

Dr. Guzman was standing by his seat reading the program, and Carlos, still wound tight as a drum, was telling him what it said. Estelle, radiant in her black pants suit and white scarf, rose as I approached. She turned to say something to her mother, and I saw the angular bulge at her belt-line under her tailored jacket—a nasty little reminder that the rest of the world still existed, regardless of how wonderful the music might be.

“This is an ambitious program,” Dr. Francis said, and I pulled my own souvenir from my pocket.

“What's next?” I said.
Border Themes and Variations
opened the second half of the program, with Mateo Atencio at the helm as both composer and soloist.

“How do these guys have the time to both compose and practice as hard as they must have to?” The physician shook his head in wonder. “At their age…”

“You have the inside track on that,” I said. “I guess that's what geniuses do. They work harder than anyone else.” Lynn Browning, CEO of United Security Resources, was working hard too. She had decided to remain in town for the concert, and now had cornered State Police Lieutenant Mark Adams over near the bleachers. The lieutenant was doing all the talking, his pretty wife at his side nodding away, and Mrs. Browning listening attentively.

The lights dimmed then brightened, and then the big sodium lights above the sea of banners switched off with a loud
crack
of their switch.

“So now we find out,” I said, and sat down next to the jittering Carlos. “What do you think?”

He made a grimace of glee.

“Did you get to visit Francisco during intermission?” He nodded eagerly. From where I sat, I could see Francisco standing behind the curtain, coat unbuttoned, hands in his pockets…again listening to Dr. Lott, nodding now and then as he regarded the floor. He looked more like a junior executive than a prodigy.

The main spotlight bloomed to encircle the piano, the remaining house lights settled, and I took a deep breath. After a few seconds, Mateo Atencio appeared by himself, the spot erupting flashes from his silver flute. He favored the curved flank of the piano again, then moved a step closer to the audience, the spot recentering. He nodded at the applause, waited until it started to die, and lifted the instrument.

Over the years, I'd managed to batter and scar my hearing, adding the constant symphony of tinnitus on top of it all, and it didn't sound as if Mateo was playing. But he was, and eventually I became aware of a note so high, so true, just touched with a vibrato, that was held impossibly long.
No one has that much breath,
I thought. But he did. The single note intensified and then did an incredible thing. Just when the kid should have turned purple and fallen on his face, the note climbed first one step, then another, becoming round and rich as if the sun had risen over the border prairie.

I had no trouble following the composer's images as they tumbled one atop the other, and was delighted at one point when the music somehow shifted into the gentle flute music known in the Indian pueblos.

The composition was long and challenging, but when the last complex arpeggio soared, we all knew that we'd heard a master at work. When Mateo finally drew the flute away from his lips, I discovered that I'd gone too long without breathing. He beamed and bowed deeply. I clapped as hard and long as anyone else, but I think little Carlos Guzman's enthusiasm was more because he knew what was coming next. And sure enough, Mateo bowed once more and walked offstage, passing Francisco and Dr. Lott in the wings…at least what passed for wings on this makeshift stage.

Francisco's hands were empty of music, and to someone who can't remember the simplest things in life, that in itself was remarkable. I had no idea how one went about recalling that many notes in some presentable order.

The program notes said that
Upward, Opus 7 in G Major
, dedicated to Carlos Guzman, told the story of the construction of a skyscraper. I had heard Francisco improvise dozens of times, always most impressive. Somehow I found it
more
difficult to picture him methodically locking the music on paper, note by note, tearing his hair now and then, gulping the modern kid's equivalent of Mozart's red wine as he worked. Who knew? Maybe, as a modern composer, he used a goddamn computer.

I was still reading when a distant throbbing interrupted me, along with a little gasp from my twitchy little seat neighbor. I looked up, surprised that someone would start a diesel backhoe right next to the gymnasium while a concert was in progress. At the piano, Francisco Guzman was leaning over the left end of the keyboard, both hands busy on a collection of notes deep in the bass. The engine throbbed and then tore into the ground, the notes racing through the bass, interrupted only by the sharp, staccato treble notes of the backup alert as the earth mover shifted into reverse to reposition itself. It didn't take long to lay the foundations, but the dust from construction hung heavy when the sprayer drove through, its plumes of water cascading down from the treble with Francisco's hands diving one over the other.

And so it went for an uninterrupted ten minutes or so. The construction motives left me behind, but I could imagine the general image of the building towering toward the sky, sun winking off the new windows, cranes hauling their cargo up past the unfinished floors. At one point, it sounded to me as if someone had lost his balance and come perilously close to diving dozens of stories to his death. I made a mental note to ask the composer how the construction worker was saved.

Finally, a light breeze tugged at the flag on the top mast, billowing it out as the building stood for all to see, great crashing chords marching up and down the keyboard. Night fell, lights came on, and the music drifted down to a tranquil closing.

I glanced at Carlos and was surprised to see the tears coursing down the child's face.
He
had certainly understood the whole thing. I held out my hand, and he shook it with a clammy little paw. “Good work, Bud.” He beamed. He might not have written or performed the music, but he
had
built the skyscraper, after all.