The Five (17 page)
What a
dumb-ass
, Berke thought. Mike had taken the notebook from the kitchen of the house they’d stayed in last night.
“Some of these…have been handed down in my family,” Berke said, figuring the trooper needed a stroke or two. “I guess I took it out to write something, I can’t remember.” She turned the pages.
Chickpea and Red Lentil Stew
…
Cornflake-Crusted
Baked Chicken
…
Amy’s Favorite Coconut Cake
. “Lot of love in here,” Berke told him. “Thanks again.”
“I’ll head on,” he said. “Sorry about your friend, and I hope I’ve helped a little bit.”
“You have.” She offered him a faint smile; she was thinking what must have sparked in his mind:
I’ve got to try for any female who can cook this stuff up
.
He said goodnight, Berke closed the door and locked it, and as she turned toward the others she thought to say to Mike,
News to the Street! I’m a lesbian!
But Mike wasn’t there.
“What’s in the book?” Ariel asked.
“Recipes, just like he said.” Berke began to flip through the pages. Chicken dishes, stews, soups and cakes flashed past. It was only a few pages from the back that she found where Mike had been writing. “Here,” she said, and she read it to herself.
I’ve started writin’ a song
, Mike had told her. “The Kumbaya song,” Berke announced. “Looks like he started it.” She held it out for them to see.
The page was a mess. Things written and scratched out. Written and scratched out again.
Girl at the well
written there, crookedly.
Welcome
written there.
Welcome
written once more. The third time it became a doodle, with tiny eyes in the ‘o’ and a devil’s tail on the last ‘e’. The demon of creativity, hard at work in Mike’s mind; Nomad, Ariel and Terry knew that devil, very well. Another line written down and scratched out, the word
Shyte!!
scrawled beside it.
Then there was a line complete and unmarred:
Welcome to the world, and everything
that’s in it
.
On the next page, there were two more attempts, two more scratch-outs and then:
Write a song about
it, just keep it under four minutes
.
“That’s it?” George asked, peering over Terry’s shoulder.
“
Girl at the well
,” Terry read, and frowned. “Is that supposed to be a title?” He looked up at Berke. “What was he doing, writing a song about that
girl
?”
“I don’t know what he was doing. All I know is, before he…” Go on, she told herself. It’s done. “Before he got shot, he said he was writing…this, whatever it is. You know. The…”
Kumbaya song
didn’t sound right anymore. It was not respectful to Mike. “The communal song that John wanted everybody to write. The one I said was busy-work shit.” Berke started to close the notebook, but Nomad held out his hand for it and she gave it to him.
Nomad read it again, first and second pages. Ariel slid over, sitting on the end of the bed next to him. They read it together. He was aware of the warmth of her cheek, nearly touching his own. He smelled her, the soft honeysuckle aroma. Maybe he had walked across a field sometime in his life where honeysuckles grew in wild and tangled profusion, and maybe he had paused there to take stock of where he was going. Her cheek was very close to his own. They were about to share a cheek-kiss. And then Nomad pulled away a few inches, looked at her and asked, “Do anything for you?” The words, he meant.
She also pulled away an equal distance, and kept her eyes on the tortured paper. One corner of her mouth pressed tight, as it did when she was thinking. “I don’t know where he was going with it. But maybe…we could do
something
.”
“Guys.” George’s was the somber voice of reality. “We’re going home in the morning. Tour cancelled. All done.”
Berke flared up. “Maybe they want to write a song for his
service
. Maybe we should have a last show, for
him
. A benefit. For his daughter, at least.”
“We could do that,” Ariel said. Then, to George, “Couldn’t we?”
“Absolutely,” he answered. “I’ll run that by Ash first thing.”
Nomad returned the notebook to Berke.
Welcome
, Mike had said last night in the Dallas backyard.
Good place to start
. Nomad didn’t see any destination in those words, but Ariel and Terry might take them somewhere. Right now, all he wanted to do was go home to his own futon on the floor, curl up and leave the world until he either had to eat or had to…
It was going to be a bad night, in this motel with the lariat-twirling cowboy outside. They would probably all wind up in one room, piled around like ferrets in a cage, breathing and jumping and gasping in their ferret-like slumber. If anyone could sleep.
He did, well after midnight. Among his last thoughts before he went under was that somehow—for some reason—that girl at the well had gotten into Mike’s mind. Had planted a seed in it. Just as she’d been trying to get into his own. Making him believe he had a fucking brain tumor, when he didn’t let her in.
Oh no,
he vowed.
Not me
.
Only he wasn’t quite sure what he was vowing against. And, really, he didn’t want to know. Whatever it was, he was too small for it.
About two o’clock, Ariel got up from her hour or so of sleep, put on her shoes, quietly unlocked the door, went outside and closed the door behind her. The neon sign had been turned off. East Broadway was silent, and stars covered the sky in a breathtaking panorama. By the yellow bulbs she saw that several more guests had checked in: along with the Scumbucket and trailer there was a white SUV, a silver or light gray Subaru and a black or dark blue pickup truck. The SUV had a New Mexico tag, the other two were from Texas. She noted on the pickup’s rear bumper a metallic sticker that said
Semper Fi
. She wanted to walk, to breathe the night air, to feel the soft breeze on her cheek like a lover’s touch. She started toward the swimming pool, and as she neared it she heard the quiet sound of movement in water.
Someone was in there, alone in the dark. Swimming back and forth, it sounded like. Not kicking, just pulling the water past them in a slow crawl. It seemed to her like a lonely thing, to be swimming back and forth in dark water under the canopy of night. She hesitated for a moment, listening, and then she decided to wander over that way, maybe to speak or maybe not, because she knew very, terribly well what it was like to be lonely.
THREE
Ballad of the Greek Potatoes
NINE.
When the sun was an hour old Berke was lacing up her running shoes, the black New Balances that had already taken her more than two hundred miles. Her oufit was spartan, meant to get sweaty. She tugged a black sweatband over the obstacle of her hair and got it positioned on her forehead. The streamers of sun coming between the blinds already carried a bite. This was going to be the hottest day yet, in a long summer of hot days.
The last time someone had died in her life, someone she’d cared about deeply, she’d gotten up from her bed the following morning, laced her shoes and gritted her teeth and gone out for a six-mile run. She didn’t know if she could do that today, but she was going to try. Everyone else was still asleep. She couldn’t believe that Mike wasn’t here this morning, stretched out on his back with his hands behind his head because he hated the feel of a pillow. She’d never asked him why, thinking it must’ve had something to do with the number of hicktown jails he’d been hosted in, and lice or ticks or bedbugs or something like that. She couldn’t believe she would never hear the rusty rumble of his voice again, and maybe that was the worst thing. He was really gone. He really, really was.
It looked to her as if she hadn’t been the only one whose night was tortured. The guys had wound themselves up in their sheets, and George had nearly worked himself off the baby bed. And Ariel? Ariel wasn’t in either room, or in either bathroom. She must’ve gone out walking, before the sun had even started to come up. Wherever she was, she wasn’t here.
Okay
, Berke said to herself.
Let’s get to it
.
Out in the parking lot, she saw the three new arrivals: white SUV, silver Subaru, dark blue pickup. The air was still, and smelled of hot metal. There were a few cars on East Broadway, but only a few. Monday morning here wasn’t quite like Austin. She stopped next to the U-Haul trailer for about five minutes to do a few stretches—Hang Tens, Lunges and Flamingoes, holding each one for thirty seconds—and noted the movement of a windowblind, in the room the pickup truck was parked in front of. Somebody else was an early riser, or else they wanted to be first up for the Cattleman’s breakfast. She decided to go to her left and follow East Broadway toward the northeast. She would walk a little while first, work her pace up to running speed, and so she passed by the swimming pool beyond the white fence, and there was Ariel.
Ariel was lying beside the pool on a blue lounge chair. She was on her right side, facing away from Berke. Her knees were bent, her legs curled up beneath her. One shoe was on, the other lay on the cement beside the chair. Berke thought that Ariel’s neck was going to be stiff today, the way her head was turned and her shoulders hunched up. That couldn’t be comfortable. She thought briefly of going over and waking Ariel up, but she decided no, she wouldn’t; Ariel might have had a tough time getting to sleep, and maybe had found some peace out here alone in the dark. So Berke walked on, picking up her pace, faster and faster. About two hundred yards along the street she started her run, heading away from the Lariat at a steady clip.
The detective with the cowboy hat had called last night at ten o’clock sharp. George had spoken to him. Any word on who did it?
They
can’t say much right now
, George had reported back.
But they’re going to come talk to us in the morning
. And that had been the extent of it.
Berke ran on, her breathing measured, everything easy. The red fireball was sitting two hands above the horizon, aimed between her jawline and her right shoulder. She passed the usual sights of any small town, in any American state: small businesses, parking lots, churches and strip malls. She passed the Subway they’d eaten at last night, and a half mile further on there was a Dairy Queen which she wished she’d known about because she did like ice cream. Then she came upon an area of small houses, and past that some car lots and places where cars and trucks were serviced, a litter of car hulks and tires and the like. In this area was where a man in a passing white pickup truck shouted, “
Hey, muchacha caliente
!” but she kept her head down and her pace unchanged. She
was
hot, that was true enough; she was sweating pretty good now, the sun searing her right side. A few cars and trucks passed by in both directions, and somebody else honked at her but she looked neither right nor left. She stared only at the cracked brown concrete one stride ahead, and that was how you got through any demanding run.
She was thinking of Mike, and how senseless it had been, and how much she was going to miss him. It was still unbelieveable to her, something from someone else’s bad dream. But so too had been the death of her running and rock-climbing bud, Melissa Cavanaugh, six years ago when Berke was living in Seattle and playing with the short-lived band Time Keeps Secrets. She had met Melissa at a coffee shop, a friend of a friend, and they’d immediately hit it off. Melissa had been a basketball player in college way down in Georgia, had been all-everything, an A-student, track star, student newspaper reporter, environmental activist, volunteer at a homeless shelter, lover of stray dogs and Kona coffee and The Clash’s
Sandinista
. So why was it that Melissa Cavanaugh, twenty-two years old and with a great future ahead of her in graphic design in the Emerald City, had tied a cord around a support in her closet of stylish but tasteful clothes and with the other end of the cord around her neck strangled herself to death on a Sunday evening?
There had been no sex between them, no kissing, no hand-holding. They didn’t talk about being gay, because in fact Berke was never sure Melissa
was
gay. She dated guys, and talked about how awful some of them were, and how some were really hot and fun but somehow…somehow…they weren’t what she was searching for. Berke figured that if Melissa was gay, she would find her own way to it, eventually. But they were good friends, and they enjoyed being together.
My folks are so conservative
, Melissa had said.
And I’ve never disappointed them
.
I’d die before I’d disappoint them, they’re looking for me
to be perfect at whatever I do, only perfection for our family
,
you can go back generations and see our accomplishments, our lists of awards and honors.
You can’t
disappoint a family of people
who throw themselves at challenges and always win
.
You know
?
Yes
, Berke had said.
I do
.
I know you’re not very religious, but I thank God we met
, Melissa had confided.
We can talk about anything
.
Except for that thing. The thing that was slowly killing her, and making her take notes in her mind of the strengths of different cords, and the perfect length she would need. Then when the time was perfect, and her mind perfectly fixed on this particular challenge, she had left this world because something in her could not abide the truth of her own heart, and she was too much the good girl to ever disappoint her family.
Berke had had no clue. Their last phone conversation, on that Saturday, had been about where they were going to eat pizza after they saw
Rabbit-Proof Fence
on Tuesday, their movie night. Melissa had said she was thinking about going down to Macon and spending a few days with her family. But everything had been bright, light, upbeat. Everything had been about the future, that blue-skyed place where all dreams come true and anybody can be who they want to be because This Is America. Melissa’s roommate had found the body, on Monday afternoon. There had been no note, no blame, no incrimination: just a silence, to endure the generations.