The Five (51 page)

Something was all mixed up. The good and the bad and the weak and the strong, all mixed up. It seemed to him that she should be sobbing and begging for her life. He had the rifle. She had nothing. He didn’t understand this; it went against all his training, that a weak unarmed enemy could look at a rifle and see their death in it, and not fall terrified before it. And she
was
weak. She was a weak, dark-spirited…

…
liar
?

He felt like he was about to pass out. It was close on him, this oncoming darkness. He could feel himself not only bleeding, but filling up with blood on the inside. He was a bladder, and something was about to burst.

I did kill a child, he thought. I did. I committed murder. I did.

It had eaten at him for so long. It had chewed and chewed at him, down in the belly of the beast. It had misshapen him, and warped time into a long midnight that never moved. It had driven itself into his bones, and made a nest in his heart.

It was pecking at him, even now. It never stopped.

Peck
.

Peck
.

Peck
.

God had punished him for that murder. He was certain of it. Call it fate, if you wanted to, but it was God who made him pay. But Jeremy thought, as the world began to slowly turn around him and the taste of blood was thick in his mouth, that if only…if only he’d been able to tell
someone
about it. To tell Karen, and ask her to pray for him, but the accident took her away before he could. To tell his father, and get a kind hand on the shoulder, but it would only be another fist. To tell any of the officers, or the men, or any of the doctors at the hospital where he hoped one Wednesday somebody would ask him how he was doing. To have someone…
anyone
…listen, and say what he needed to hear most in this world. But, as the Christian In Action had said,
our meeting never happened
.

And now, in a place where it was the least expected, the person he’d least expected to help him with this burden was listening. Of all people, it was the hippie chick. She was standing before him, unafraid of his rifle, and he could tell she’d made up her mind to die for the others, and what more could you say about a person?

< >

I murdered a child.” Jeremy said to Ariel. “In Iraq.” The words came out with thorns on them. They were tough to dislodge. “I’m not a good guy. But the others…the soldiers…they weren’t all like
me
. You were wrong to say those things. We didn’t go over there to kill children. We went to do our
job
. They weren’t all like me.” His voice shattered, and fresh tears began to course down his face. “Do you hear?”

She felt what he wanted. His eyes were frightened, and he was starting to waver on his feet. She focused on this moment, this moment alone, and with an effort that redefined the limits of her willpower she put aside her grief at the things this man had done.

She knew. And she knew that whatever was with him in this place, whatever had brought him on his long journey, whatever it had promised him, whatever it had proclaimed, it could not give him what she was about to offer. It was so simple, yet so important that the lack of it could crush a soul.

“I
hear you,” she said.

Oh my God, Jeremy thought. Oh Jesus…I have killed innocent people. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

Maybe this band had been harsh in their interview with Felix Gogo. Maybe they’d been wrong in their judgement of his fellow soldiers…but how did the video itself lie? How was it not an accurate depiction of the choices that a soldier had to make, and no matter how tough you were trained you only had seconds to decide matters of life and death? How was it not the truth, showing the darkness that can swirl down in an instant and peck you to pieces?

I am the liar, he thought. Me.

And Gunny.

Gunny’s a liar, too.

There is no need to kill anyone else today, he thought. This battle is over.

< >

Jeremy felt his face begin to come apart. A knot rose, writhing, on his forehead. He reached up and pushed it down. His right eye began to sag from its socket. He took his fingers and put it back in its place. His mouth opened, wider and wider, and his jaw began to unhinge, but he pushed his jaw up with one firm hand and his mouth closed and the little ripplings and tremors that moved across the plains of flesh and bone ceased to be.

< >

He shivered. He lowered his rifle, and when he did a small figure stepped out from behind Ariel Collier, and held onto the edge of her dirty blouse with one hand, and from the shadowed face the voice of a little boy said,
Daddy? You can come home now
.

Gunny screamed in Jeremy’s ear that this thing
lied
.

Screamed that it was not what he thought. Screamed that it was a trick, that he should not—could not—let his eyes fuck up his brain. Screamed
You have a mission, you dumb
fuckstick.

But for a brief moment, as Gunny shrieked and babbled in first one ear and then the other, Jeremy Pett was allowed to see beyond the glass.

They were not alone in this ruined place.

There were other figures, at the edge of sun and shadow. They stood amid the rubble, behind Ariel Collier, John Charles, Berke Bonnevey and Truitt Allen. They stood silently, only watching. But Jeremy heard Gunny give a cry that began with bitterness and ended with ache. Jeremy looked from the hippie chick to the long hair to the drummer girl and then to the man on the ground. He looked at the small figure, whose eyes held centers of light that made Jeremy think of candles.

“Please forgive me,” he said to all of them, to every listening ear. He backed away. He dropped his rifle.

He walked a distance, to get his bearings, and then he began to slowly and painfully climb a small rise of shale and stones that stood behind the building. Halfway up he took the .45 from his jeans and dropped that too, and then at the top of the rise he faced a huge expanse of open desert, brown-dusted and white-streaked under the hot blue sky.

He went on.

He was sure the Elysian Fields lay in the direction he was travelling. He wouldn’t get there today, though. It would be a long, hard journey to—

He fell. He felt no weight on him, but he had the impression of hearing wings and the dry rattle of claws, and the sensation of something gripping his back and chewing at his neck. He tried to get up and could not. Tried again, but failed. He felt scrabblings at his flesh, and the noise of huge wings thrashing the air just behind his head.

Maybe on one side ten thousand times ten thousand screamed and capered, and on the other side ten thousand times ten thousand shouted and cheered for the man in the arena, the bloodied man, the man forsaken and cast aside, betrayed, yet the warrior spirit never broken.

It all came down to sharp edges, the wings of a crow, black origami.

That, against a Marine who was determined to stand.

Jeremy cast it off like an old skin. He walked on, staggering. The horizon was lost in the red descending mist. He knew he wouldn’t get to the Elysian Fields today. He had too much to account for. Too much innocent blood on his hands, to be allowed entrance today to the Elysian Fields. But wherever he was going, it would be a step
toward
the Elysian Fields. He told himself that whatever he had to do to get there, even if it was the impossible, he would find a way. He would never give up the fight to reach his wife and son—whatever they had become—on the other side of this.

The thing descended upon him again, but this time did not drive him down. As he staggered forward it beat at him, and clawed his back, and tore at his head with a beak like a piston.

His back bowed but unbroken, Jeremy remembered something Gunny had said to him, in the truck on the highway outside Sweetwater. That had been a lie, too. Its opposite was the truth.

“Without me,” Jeremy whispered to the enraged air, “
you’re
nothing.”

He shrugged the thing off. It whirled around him in a dark blur.

Gradually, whirl by whirl, the dark blur subsided. It did not vanish so much as it melted, oozing itself away in tendrils and chunks that also melted away into smaller and smaller pieces.

Jeremy fell to his knees.

He drew a breath, and he had a good look at the land that lay before him. Black clouds were rushing toward him, shot through with terrifying pulses of electricity. He smelled the ozone of war, the burnt scent of calamity and chaos. He figured he was in for a long hitch.

And in the last few seconds until his next mission began, he braced himself for the storm.

THIRTY.

 Guys, we want to thank you for being here tonight,” said Nomad into his microphone.

They had come to the end of their show at the Vista Futura, in Austin on Saturday night, the 16th of August. It was a packed house in this club, another black box on the knife and gun circuit. People had been turned away when the doors closed. It had been advertised as a free concert for those who came wearing a The Five T-shirt, which meant they’d been to another of their gigs or had bought the shirt off the website. All ages were welcome. It was approaching midnight, and it was nearly done.

Nomad stood cradling his Strat in a cone of clear white light. At his side, a few feet away, was Ariel with her acoustic Ovation. Behind them was Berke, at the center of her Ludwigs. Amazingly, only her snare and a floor tom had been damaged in the trailer. She was a firm believer now in styrofoam cubes and color-key labels.

Tonight there was no bass player, and there were no keyboards on the stage. It was just the three of them, and they’d had to improvise and fill in and do what they’d needed to do, but they were professionals and the show must go on.

But not, as Nomad had realized, on and on and on.

He looked out at the small lights of cellphone cameras. Some people had brought video rigs and set them up, but the space was tight. It was okay with the band that the whole concert was filmed. Put up on YouTube. Used to show the grandkids what grandmom and granddad did back in that long-ago summer of 2008, before musicians played everything in the air on virtual instruments.

It had been a quiet show. Nomad had done a couple of hot movers but his heart really wasn’t in them, and they didn’t sound so hot without Terry’s keys swirling in and out. Tonight belonged to Ariel’s voice. It belonged to her acoustic guitar, which she played with the precise passion of someone who wants not only to be clearly heard, but to clearly speak.

“I guess everybody knows, this is our last show.” He held up a hand, palm outward, when the predictable moaning and groaning came from the audience, but they knew it already and they were just doing what they thought the band expected. It was like a heart thump that went into a peace sign.

“The Band That Will Not Die!” someone shouted, over on the right.

“Yeah!” another voice hollered, and then the crowd erupted into whoops and whistles and whatever they needed to do to express themselves, and Nomad waited until they were done until he smiled out at all the faces revealed by the reflection of stage lights and said, “Thank you.”

He cleared his throat. “We lost three of our friends last time out,” he said. It was the first he’d spoken of this tonight. There’d been a brief introduction from the MC, and then The Five had started right into ‘When The Storm Breaks’. The songs had gone past with just a brief intro from either Nomad or Ariel between them. He didn’t make any jokes about limping around like an old man, because his sprained right ankle was still bothering him though it was taped up under his jeans. Ariel said nothing about her slightly purpled nose. Neither did Berke offer any explanation about the bass guitar pin she wore on one lapel of her black jacket, and the keyboard pin on the other. The news stories had told everything, to everyone who wanted to know. Nancy Grace had done her interview and so had Greta van Susteren. Berke had done a telephone interview with Rachel Maddow on her radio show and was going to be featured in
The Advocate
next month. She would go again to the obvious tag the press wanted: Deranged Iraq war veteran stalks rock band, is killed in the New Mexico desert, hi ho.

That was the line they had pushed, with True’s help.

The magazines and newspapers and networks and bloggers had emerged by their multiple thousands. Even Wally was a celebrity who found reporters hammering on his trailer door. Wally on his motorcycle, coming upon what appeared to be a wreck in front of the old Pure station that had once served the community of Blue Chalk, and then the people staggering out to the road, and all that blood.

Eric Gherosimini had been discovered by one of those tenacious door-knocking reporters.
Re
discovered. The genius of the 13th Floors, one of the most influential acid-rock bands of the ’60s. Justin Timberlake said he’d been looking for him for years, to get permission to re-do a song in modern style. Lily Allen said she had all his old shit in a box in her closet. Eric Gherosimini announced through a spokesman that he was moving to Jamaica.

But not before he left a boocoodle of money to the University of Oklahoma to offer music scholarships at the American Organ Institute in the name of Terry Spitzenham.

They specialized in maintaining the tradition of the magnificent pipe organs that were played in churches, cathedrals and in the grand movie theaters, the kinds of keyboards most people never knew still existed.

George called them from the hospital when they were being interviewed by remote on MSNBC. He was doing some therapy now, he said. He was out of the woods. He was home free. He sounded strong. Nomad took the opportunity to ask him, on the air, why he wore pennies in his loafers, and George said that was easy to answer: for good luck.

“This is our last show,” Nomad repeated to the audience. “We have one more song to do.” He had to pause for just a few seconds, and Ariel wanted to touch his shoulder but she stayed her hand. He was a big boy now. “This will be the last song,” he said. “We’re not going to do an encore. It’s late, and from the looks of some in this crowd it’s past your bedtime.
Kidding
,” he said to the exaggerated boos, but he really wasn’t. “This song is one we wrote together on the road, all of us adding some lyrics. Ariel’s going to sing it, and it’s called ‘New Old World’. Thanks again, guys.” He stepped back, so Ariel could be front and center, and the audience applauded and waited as Berke started a steady beat, smack on 126 beats per minute, relying on the dark voice of the bass and the bright snap of a hi-hat.

Ariel strummed the intro on her Ovation. She was dressed tonight more funky than lacy, because she wanted to try something different. She had on a pink blouse, black jeans and a sleeveless blue vest with large red and pink polkadots. She wore a blue porkpie hat, tilted jauntily to one side on her strawberry-blonde ringlets. She had made the decision that it was time for her to start having
fun
at this, her calling. She thought there’d been enough pain, and now it was time to let some pleasure in. Starting with her closet full of hippie duds. She would always go vintage, but she needed more and brighter colors. Like the song said, some things do change, and they change with you.

She began on the A chord. The song had a triumphant sound. It suggested just a hint of strut. It bore in its bones the strength of English ballads and smoldered with the earthy heat of Tejano. At its heart there was a touch of Soul, but at its heart of hearts classic rock ’n roll.

She sang in her warm, full voice.

“
Welcome to the world, and everything that’s in it.

Write a song about it, just keep it under four minutes
.

Got to figure what to keep, what to leave behind, and like life it’s never easy.

I wish you safe travel, and courage when you need it,

I wish you safe travel, and courage when you need it.

You’ll need it. Oh, you’ll need it.

Won’t you move my hand, please tell me what to write.

I’m sitting here like a candle on the darkest night.

I’ve got my hot flame, got my flicker on, but where am I when my light is gone?

I wish you safe travel, courage, you’re gonna need it.

I wish you safe travel, courage, you’re gonna need it.

Gonna need it. Oh, gonna need it.
”

There had been a meeting in Roger Chester’s office.

It had been yesterday afternoon, up on the fourth floor in the gray building on Brazos Street. The Five had cancelled their Friday night gig in Dallas. They’d stayed with True in the hospital in Albuquerque until his wife could get there. The Albuquerque FBI had been very helpful. They’d arranged for the contents of the wrecked U-Haul trailer to be truck-shipped to Austin, they’d taken care of Terry’s body and brought Jeremy Pett in from the desert where he’d died, and The Five had flown from Albuquerque to Austin courtesy of Roger Chester’s checkbook.

“I want you to look me in the face,” said Roger Chester, sitting behind his desk in his office with a picture window onto The Live Music Capital Of The World at his back, and Ash sitting elegant, composed and expressionless in a brown leather chair to his left. “I want you to look me right
here,
” he said, pointing with one hand, two fingers, into his own dark brown eyes slightly magnified by the tortoise-shell glasses. “And tell me
why
Ash says you won’t do a reality show.”

Nomad, Berke and Ariel were all sitting together on one brown leather sofa. Before them was a glass-topped coffee table with magazines on it like
Money
,
Texas Monthly
,
Billboard
and of course the
People
with them in a small box at the upper right. Nomad wished Berke would put her black high-heeled boots up on it and sweep the magazines aside, but she didn’t. His gaze kept being drawn to the huge horns on the bighorn sheep head mounted on the panelled wall between the picture window and the ceiling. If something like that fell, it could knock a man’s brains out.

“Don’t everybody talk at once,” Roger Chester said. He glanced at Ash. “How come they’ll spread it out thick to you, but to me it’s as thin as a spick’s wallet?”

Nomad almost said Mr. Chester ought to ask his pal Felix Gogo if his wallet was so thin, but he kept his mouth shut.

“Okay, I know you’ve been through some heavy…” Chester hesitated, seeking the right word for a man of his standing. He settled on, “Shit. Everybody knows it was rough. And I absolutely think you ought to take some time off. I guess you’re shell-shocked. Well, who the hell wouldn’t be? Right?”

“Exactly,” Ash agreed.

“But we have to talk about your
future
. We have to get serious about it. We have to strike while the iron is hot.”

Berke shifted her position. Nomad thought for an instant that she really
was
going to put up her boots and knock the magazines off, but the moment passed. He couldn’t help it. He had to say, “That’s a term used in branding cattle, isn’t it?”

Roger Chester peered at him over the rims of his glasses. “Oh, mercy!” he said. “Mercy me and Johnny Jehosophat! What’s your problem?” His voice not only took over the room, it nearly broke the picture window.

No problem
, Nomad almost answered, but it would be a lie and that phrase could still send him into a rage thinking about a crazed waitress in Tucson. “We’re breaking up,” Nomad said. “Tomorrow night’s the last gig.”

“Yeah, I heard that from Ash.” Roger Chester drank from a coffee mug with a UT logo. “Didn’t listen to it, though. Didn’t listen, because it didn’t make any goddamned
sense
. You’re telling me you’re calling it quits, after all you’ve been through, all the shit, all the work, and now you’ve got network TV people interested in following you around with cameras and broadcasting your
life
to the world, and publishers wanting to do quickie books that ghost writers will write for you, and promoters crying out for you all over this country and in three foreign lands, and record deals hanging from money trees ready to be plucked, and you’re calling it quits.
Quits
,” he said to Ash, as if the suave fellow from New Delhi had forgotten his clipped English.

Ash just shrugged and smiled, showing some front teeth that Nomad thought would look so pretty on the floor.

“We need time,” Ariel spoke up, “to decide what we want to do.” She started to say
Sir
, but her lips would not let it through.

“And we definitely no way want to be in any fucking reality show,” said Berke.

“Oh, is that
beneath
you? That’s what this is about? You think it’s
crass
?”

“I think it’s unnecessary,” Nomad said. “We all do.”

“Do you think making money is unnecessary? Hm? Because that’s what it would be. A whole big truckload of money. Plus super exposure, an opportunity to promote new songs and CDs, maybe a tie-in to a televised concert special, and—” He slapped the edge of his desk. “Jesus Christ, I don’t believe I’m having to spell all this out! Look, you’re on top right now! You’re somebodies, instead of the nobodies you used to be. Your powder’s hot and you’re about to make one hell of a flash.”

“Yeah,” Nomad said. “Flash. That’s kind of what I was thinking, too.”

“Is there some cryptic meaning to that, or will you enlighten me?”

“I’ll ask you a question.” Nomad stared across the desk into the man’s eyes. “Can you name one song we’ve ever done?”

“
‘When The Storm Breaks’
,” said Ash.

“Not you. I’d like Mr. Chester to answer that. Any song titles come to mind?”

Roger Chester stared back. He took a drink from his coffee mug.

“Any lines from any of our songs?” No response. “How about CD titles?” Nomad asked. He raised his eyebrows. “Anything?”

In the Vista Futura, on the Saturday night stage in a shaft of yellow light, Ariel sang.

“
You might be in a place where the old skin won’t fit.

You might feel as worthless as a cup full of spit.

Well some things don’t change, you know they never do,

but some things do change, they change with you.