Ariel awakened and lay staring at the ceiling. A fan was lazily turning up there, creaking very softly. The sunlight was bright through the pale yellow window curtains. A dog barked somewhere along Benton Place, and a motorcycle went past. She turned her head on the pillow in search of a clock. The one on the bedside table said it was about ten minutes after ten, the hands in a pleasing symmetry. She stretched and heard her backbone pop, and she started to push aside the sheet but she decided she would lie there until ten-fifteen and try to absorb her dream.
She was in bed in the guest bedroom at Berke’s mother’s house, in an area of small but neatly-kept homes in the northeast section of San Diego, perched on a hill above Interstate 15. They’d gotten here last night, after a two-hundred-and-eighty mile drive from Stone Church. When they’d reached the house, they were so wrung out by their experience that all they could do was mumble some pleasantries to Mrs. Fisk and find a place to stow their bags before they crashed. Truitt Allen, though he’d driven the whole distance, had gone into the den with his laptop, cellphone and a cup of coffee and shut the door. Ariel assumed the white GMC Yukon with dark-tinted windows that had trailed them up through the winding streets and parked in front of the house was still there; she would check, just out of curiosity, when she got out of bed.
It was interesting, she thought, how they handled the gas situation. Last night when they needed to fill up, True had given some kind of code over his cellphone. When the Scumbucket had pulled up to the pumps at a Texaco station, the white Yukon and another Yukon, this one a metallic gray, had stopped on either side of The Five’s van and trailer. From each SUV two men dressed like True, in casual slacks and shirts, had gotten out to stand facing the darkness on the far side of I-8. They would have looked like ordinary business travellers stretching their legs except for the weirdly-shaped pairs of binoculars they were using as they scanned back and forth. “Night vision,” Nomad had told her. “Either that, or thermal.”
True had pumped their gas. A third man from both the SUVs had filled those tanks as well. There’d been a brief discussion among the agents and a pair of them went into the gas station and came out each carrying two bags of popcorn and four cups of coffee in a styrofoam tray. True had asked if anybody needed to use the restrooms, and when all the band members said they did, they got an FBI escort who waited outside the doors. Never was there a time when two of the agents did not keep watch with their night vision or thermal or whatever it was. Ariel had the impression that there was a fourth man in each Yukon, riding in the back, just from some movement she thought she detected and from the fourth coffee. Nine men on duty, including True. Ariel figured that had to be a lot of taxpayer money being spent, to safeguard the lives of four musicians whose deodorant had worn off a long time ago. Plus True had put their gasoline on his own—or his agency’s—credit card. No wonder this country was so deep in debt.
Ariel lifted her head and looked at the other single bed in the room. John Charles was still asleep, tangled up in his sheet as if he too had dreamed of blackberry brambles and the striding specter of Jeremy Pett. His face was turned away from her, toward the window. She hated to see what his right eye looked like today, because last night it had been swollen shut as tight as an oyster and colored a curious mingled palette of black with purple edges and olive-green highlights. The icepack they’d given him at the medical trailer had helped some, she guessed, and so had the supply of Excedrin Extra Strength.
He had saved her life.
She still couldn’t get her mind around yesterday afternoon. It had been just like the cliché: everything happened so fast. When John had stopped singing and the music had faltered, and then John had stage-dived like a lunatic…it was too much to handle. And later learning that the young man—nineteen years old on his California driver’s license, True had told them—had been aiming that gun at her…too much to handle.
The shooter had been taken away very quickly and efficiently. After The Five had gotten offstage and the techs had cleared their gear, Monster Ripper had started setting up about an hour later, but soon after that—past a visit to the medical trailer and brief interviews with reporters from the Tucson TV stations and Brad Lowell from The Daily Star—the Scumbucket had pulled out of that particular circus with True behind the wheel. On I-8 West, the two Yukons had gotten into position, the metallic gray in front and the white behind them, and that was how they rolled.
He had saved her life.
It was going to take her a long time to put this gift on a shelf, if ever.
He snorted a little bit, as if reading her thoughts. His hand came up to touch his eye, but even in sleep his brain figured he probably shouldn’t do that and his hand sank back down again across his chest.
True hadn’t told them the young man’s name yet, though he’d certainly seen it on the license. He’d said he would let them know what developed, and that was last night before he’d secluded himself in the den.
Ariel allowed herself to return to the dream, and play it back again. It was so bright and sunny and cheerful in the bedroom. There was the spicy odor of air fragrance, which maybe Mrs. Fisk had sprayed around this morning to counter their need for showers. It was difficult to think of dark things, in here, but now she must.
He is a vessel.
She remembered thinking that. What did it mean, exactly? She retained the vivid image of the crows, swarming at the fruit and tearing it from the vines. And she retained the vivid image of the girl.
The girl.
Walk with me.
Ariel was struck with a desire—a need—to see the song. The Kumbaya song, Berke had called it. She leaned over to the floor, where her fringed-leather bag was parked next to her blue suitcase. She opened the bag, removed from it her notebook with its glued-on gemstones of a dozen colors, and then turned to the page upon which she’d written what they had of the communal song. The last song, it was supposed to be. Performed at the last show in Austin, on Saturday the 16th of August. The song that was a testament to The Five, that was written by all of them together, that held a little of their souls in its words and music.
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, and what to leave behind, and like life it’s never easy.
I wish you safe travel and courage when you need it.
And that was it, so far.
Unremarkable.
A song in progress.
Something in progress.
Ariel scanned the lines again. What she’d written down, she realized, began and ended—to this point, at least—with words spoken by the girl at the well.
Sitting up on the bed with a pillow at her back, with a dog barking down the street and the sunlight streaming through the yellow curtains, Ariel felt a transcendent truth come upon her, a sense of wonder that had some fear mixed in with it too, yes, but it was like being locked in a tight and exhilarating groove of rhythm and tempo, the knowledge that everything was right, was flowing as it should, and that to break this rhythm, this strange and somewhat frightening connection, this forward motion that led to an unknown counterpoint, would not only be unprofessional, it would be tragic.
Ariel thought that the girl—whoever and whatever she might be—was helping them write this song.
“John?” she said. And again: “John?”
“No,” he mumbled, “I don’t want any.”
She was relieved, in a way. What was she going to tell him? How was she going to explain what she felt? And it was just a feeling, that’s all it was.