He thought about that, and he progressed a step further into his own new world. “Will you help me?”
“What? Like, give you lessons? I can see that happening!”
“No,” he said. “Will you help me push myself?”
She looked at him across the table, across the half-eaten Reuben and the remains of a burger. It occurred to her that you might call this a ‘date’.
“Yes,” she said.
They sat for a while longer, until two young couples came up asking if they were who they thought they were, and Nomad wanted to ask Who do we think we are? but he was nice about it, he and Ariel had their pictures taken and the couples explained they wanted to get into the show at the Vista Futura but the doors closed, the fire code or something, and so they wound up over at Antone’s hearing The Crop Circles. Nomad picked up the check and paid it—My God, it really is a date, Ariel thought—and then they were out of the café and Nomad said he wanted to take her one more place and it wasn’t very far.
They watched the doughnuts file one after the other along the line. He ate a glazed and she ate a cruller. Then he asked her if he could tell her his story, about his father, and that he would like to drive as he told it, just drive, and keep driving toward morning.
They left the highway several miles out of Austin and followed the Texas roads. They passed towns waking up before the dawn. They passed dark fields and the lights of distant houses that seemed to be sitting on the edge of the world.
Nomad told his story, with the windows down and the pre-dawn air sweetened by night, and when he’d finished, when everything that needed to be said was said, Ariel leaned over and kissed him lightly, at the corner of his mouth, and she told him that yes, she did need him.
She needed the fighter, she said. She needed the rager against the machine. She needed the teller of truths, as he understood them to be. And if indeed some of his anger had dissipated, what had left him was self-anger, a crippling anger, directed at his own soul. She needed the man he was going to become, who dug deeply within himself, and pushed himself to create and to speak, to hear and to be heard, the man who said being just good was never enough. She thought she could love that man, if she didn’t already. And she told him never, ever, to forget that.
< >
Besides, she said, he was just such a sexy bastard.
They had to get some gas. At an intersection of four roads there stood a small station, lights on, a Mom-and-Pop kind of place. Looked like a miniature bunkhouse. Still a little swoony from what he’d just heard, Nomad pulled up to the pumps. Ariel got out to stretch her legs. The air was still and silent; it was turning blue, and the last of the stars sparkled overhead. Nomad was about to unhook the nozzle from the nearest pump when a man’s voice said, “No credit. Cash only. And here you pay up front.”
Nomad and Ariel found the source of that voice. An overhead bug light shone on a man sitting in a chair next to the front door. Beyond him, in the interior, were shelves of stuff: paper towels, bags of chips, motor oil, detergent and the like. A mini-grocery, too. The man wore a cowboy hat, a faded workshirt, jeans and boots. He held an acoustic guitar, had obviously been playing it when they’d pulled in.
“Pay up front,” he said again, his voice as harsh as dry wind. He strummed the guitar.
“I’ll want to get twenty bucks worth.” Nomad limped toward the man, taking out his wallet for the cash. He slowed down as he neared the cowboy, because though he couldn’t fully see the face beneath the wide shadow of the brim, he had the impression of looking at someone who was older than the hills beneath the hills. Someone fence-post lean and shaved-leather raw, someone who looked meaner than a broken bottle of five-dollar whiskey.
The cowboy continued strumming his guitar—it had a nice full tone—and then took the money in one sinewy hand.
“Get your gas,” he said. He began playing once more, a Tejano-flavored tune that Nomad did not recognize.
Nomad worked the nozzle. The gas flowed. Ariel walked a distance away. She lifted her face toward the fading stars, her hands on her hips. He thought she looked really hot in that outfit. He thought he might take her somewhere for breakfast. But he wasn’t quite sure where they were, and he didn’t see any signs.
“Sir?” he asked the man. “Where does that road go?” He motioned toward the intersection and the road that stretched east.
The guitar strumming stopped. Then it started up again, a slow, leisurely playing, all the time in the world.
“The road goes on,” the cowboy said.
Nomad felt a slight tremor pass through him, like something waking up deep inside.
“What say?” he asked.
The cowboy continued playing, some trills up and down the neck. Just showing off.
“Got some cotton swabs in there if you want to clean your ears out,” he said.
“John?” Ariel asked, coming nearer. “What is it?”
Nomad didn’t reply. He couldn’t speak.
It was the answer to a seventeen-year-old mystery. Maybe, too, it was a gift.
Johnny, there’s no roadmap…but…
…the road goes on.
If it was not an answer, it was as near as John Charles knew he would ever find.
< >
He smiled at Ariel. He felt himself smile widely. He felt a weight leave him.
It was a very good feeling.
“You okay?” she asked.
He nodded, and he replaced the nozzle when he was done. He closed the gas tank’s port. He stepped back and regarded his busted-up car as if seeing it in a new light.
“Sir?” he asked the cowboy, who kept his face lowered. “Do you have any spraypaint?”
“Cans of red, white, and blue. All out of red and white. Take your pick.”
Nomad chose the blue. He paid for it, said for the cowboy to keep the change, and then as the guitar strummed at his back he shook the can of paint, popped the top off, and sprayed four letters first on one side, under the driver’s window, and then on the other. Ariel stood beside him, incredulous, as the bright blue paint streamed down from the ends of the letters.
“You’re crazy!” she said, with a grin.
“I’m a musician,” he answered. That explained it all. His ankle was hurting him, not so badly but enough to want to rest it. He decided he needed some help. “Will you drive?”
“Sure,” she said, and she took the offered keys.
John Charles climbed into the passenger seat. Ariel Collier got behind the wheel. He suggested they drive east, toward morning. As they pulled out, the cowboy was still playing his guitar, and he never looked up from the strings.
John thought every ship needed two captains. One to take the wheel when the other got tired, or heartsick, or ever doubted their destination. Maybe the two captains of this ship would never know what the song was about, or who it was for. But maybe it was enough to know that it was out there, on fan web sites and on YouTube, and in the memories of the audience. The Five would be out there, too, on those videos and CDs. You just had to look to find them.
Still gigging, still alive, after all these years.
The Argo, blood brother to the Scumbucket, headed east toward morning.
The indigo light of dawn cast a transformation upon the earth. It created waves from sand hills and whitecaps from pale stones.
And somewhere ahead, it washed clean against a distant shore.
THIRTY-TWO.
She awakened to the sound of a guitar, drifting through the wall between them.