He didn’t have to tell me that. Push people like him far enough, and he’d solve the problem in his own way, regardless of consequences. I would guess that so far, only the influence of Rachel and Tobias had kept him from committing mayhem on the person of Henry Morrow. I certainly didn’t want to end up in court defending him on a manslaughter charge, even though, given who he was, he’d probably get off. But Morrow would be dead.
“Don’t assume I can’t understand how annoying it must be. Do you think he’ll be here tonight?”
“I’d bet on it.”
“Then, if you don’t mind, I’d like to come back and hear it for myself. Perhaps talk to him.”
He shrugged. “Talking to him is a waste of time.”
We carted Matthew off in spite of his wailing that he wanted to play with ’Lyssa. He was asleep before we left the driveway.
“Rachel’s nice,” said Judy.
“Not to mention so beautiful that she has an admirer who serenades her with a trumpet every night and whose devotion is likely to get him shot.”
She sighed. “Now, why can’t I have one of those?”
“Might be because while you are also beautiful, you ain’t rich.”
“I knew I was flawed in some way. What is it all about?”
I told her.
“Well, if you talk to him tonight, see if he can find some time for me. After taking care of a toddler and a house, and the laundry, and the shopping and cooking, any hardworking housewife could do with a romantic serenade to end the day, even on a trumpet.”
I pulled into our driveway, turned off the engine, and sat for a moment. “We’re laughing, but has it occurred to you that the situation has the makings of a tragedy?”
“Has it occurred to you that laughter is often used to chase away frightening thoughts?”
I drove back at midnight after calling Tobias to ask why it was so difficult for the most powerful man in town to get rid of a trumpet player who annoyed him.
So Tobias explained.
Morrow had arrived three years ago, a member of a tune-in, turn-on, drop-out contingent of acid heads who had taken up residence in the woods. That hadn’t spoken well of their thought processes, but then those had probably been burned out before they arrived. Not that maintaining a year-round back-to-nature commune in this climate was impossible. Native Americans had done it for thousands of years before being pushed out by the settlers, but they had never enjoyed the benefits of indoor plumbing and central heating. The contingent disappeared at the first sign of frost.
Except Morrow. He’d met Rachel. When and where wasn’t clear. To stay and woo the object of his passion, he needed employment and a place to live; otherwise he’d have been loaded aboard the first outbound Greyhound bus.
He found both easily. He’d dropped out of the Curtis Institute where he’d been studying trumpet, a tragedy according to the people there whom Tobias had contacted. Morrow was a musical genius. Very little demand for a talented trumpet player in a small town without a symphony or anything else classical, and rock and roll demanded guitarists and keyboard specialists.
However, although Morrow had been trained in the strict structure of the classical, there are some musicians to whom playing any type of music is as natural as breathing. And, being gifted, they inject their own interpretations and add their own embellishments, no matter what they are playing.
The town, like many others, had a large proportion of Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Czechs, and other ethnics who took second place to none when it came to having a good time at a dance.
So when he wandered into one clutching his trumpet and sat in with the polka band, the audience recognized musical genius when they heard it. They didn’t care who the tall man with the long blond hair and beard, wearing the worn, torn clothing, was. They didn’t care where he’d come from or what he thought of society. They didn’t care what substances he ingested for his pleasure. What they did care about was that when he lifted that trumpet to his lips, an average accordion player was suddenly inspired, a mediocre drummer acquired an extra arm, the floor shook, the walls trembled, and the roof threatened to cave in.
And their spirits soared, which is what music is supposed to do for people.
“Guess where they work,” said Tobias.
“Farr’s steel plant, of course. Almost everyone does. Are you telling me they’ll go on strike if he leans on Morrow?”
“That would be a contract violation. What they’ll do is invoke every comma and period in every clause. Very legal but very detrimental to production.”
“Farr says Morrow owns the island. Since when does a societal dropout acquire property?”
“Evidently when he’s lovestruck. The island was formed during a flood a great many years ago and simply grew. Morrow mooned around over Rachel for more than a year before he discovered no one owned it, so he homesteaded it under a law that hadn’t been used around here for more than a century. All he had to do was file a claim, build a home, and till the soil, three requirements that were the foundation of many of today’s large farms. So there he was on her doorstep. The serenading started last spring, along with several heavy-handed arrests, a peace bond, and the restraining order. But as I told you, Farr can’t step on him too hard, even if I were to permit it, without paying a heavy price. So far, I’ve managed to keep him in line, but—”
“I know. One of these days he’s going to erupt.”
“Exactly. Now, I don’t want you to think that your future here depends on finding a solution, but I will point out that if you do you will have very little to worry about.”
I arrived at the Farr home a little after midnight, Judy’s “Be careful. You know how unstable these flakes can be,” ringing in my ears.
They could also be very meek and mild, floating somewhere in intergalactic space.
I found Farr and Rachel on the patio. The autumn night had acquired a chill, the full moon so bright I could distinguish houses on the far shore.
It was as though an unseen conductor had been awaiting my arrival to lower his baton. The opening notes drifted up from the riverbank, gentle ripples of sound that gradually grew in volume. The silvery sound of a solitary trumpet, yet behind it you could almost hear the accompaniment of a full symphony.
When it came to music, I was somewhere in the center of the “generally ignorant” category, but listening to Henry Morrow was like walking into an art museum and being confronted by an obvious masterpiece. He was pouring out something pure and shining from his very core, and the beauty that emerged had Rachel mesmerized, her lips parted and her eyes dreamy.
She wasn’t being presented with the customary bouquet of roses. He was handing her a world full or orchids, wrapped in moonbeams and sprinkled with stars, but riding under that beauty was the primitive call of a male to his mate.
Farr was dealing with a Pied Piper of love, romance, and ecstasy, and he had to be thinking of the age-old method of handling a predator — shotgun. If Morrow was allowed to continue, the night could well come when Rachel couldn’t resist that call.
The notes were still drifting toward us when I started down the slope to a barrier of shrubbery and a break leading to a short flight of flagstone steps to the riverbank.
The last notes hung quivering. The tall figure lowered the trumpet and passed a hand over his lips. We had no trouble seeing each other clearly in the moonlight. I could swear his eyes glowed with an inner light.
“You must be that new lawyer,” he said. “Didn’t the old man tell you there was nothing you could do?”
“Don’t be smug, Henry. Sometimes we ordinary mortals possess enormous power.”