“Gracias, senorita,” said the girl, and then she added in English with a heavy accent, “You are very kind.”
“I just try to clean up the mess,” Ariel answered, which she realized she had been doing, one way or another, for most of her life. She saw the girl look past her. Ariel followed her line of sight to track the others who were returning to the Scumbucket. Nomad was backing up as if he feared being jumped from behind.
“You have a long journey,” the girl said, a statement instead of a question.
“Yes.” The U-Haul trailer spoke for itself. Ariel felt the need to add, “We’re musicians, on tour.”
Her eyes were on Ariel again, and she gave a broad, warm smile that made Ariel want to move in closer, to bask in it. Her teeth were white, but she needed braces. “Oh!” she said. “What is your…” She paused, seeking the correct word. “Place?”
“I play guitar and I sing.”
“I also like music,” the girl said. “Very happy.”
Behind Ariel, George tapped the Scumbucket’s horn twice. Come on, come on!
Ariel thought that this life she’d chosen—or that had chosen her—was like what they said about the military: hurry up and wait. But everyone else was in the van now, she was the one holding things up, and she ought to go.
A movement caught Ariel’s attention, and when she looked toward the blackberry field she saw the dark shapes of crows circling, circling, and then darting in to steal the fruit. They were coming in faster and faster, from all directions of the compass. Some of the other workers were already standing up, putting their workshirts back on. The labor had to be finished, or the crows would take the rest.
< >
Ariel returned her gaze to the girl. She said, “Adiós.”
“I wish you safe travel,” said the girl, and she frowned in search of translation for her next remark but settled on “y a valor cuando usted lo necesita.”
“Gracias.” Ariel figured the expression of care probably went back in the girl’s family for generations. She turned around and walked away from the girl and the well, away from the tarpaper-covered church and the hopeful houses, away from the shade of the oak tree and the sun-scorched field of blackberry brambles, away from the past into the future.
But first there was the Scumbucket and the rest of the crew. Ariel got into her seat, George backed up being careful not to plow the trailer into a tree, and in another couple of minutes they were pulling away from the road in a plume of dust and onto the pavement of East Lake Shore again.
“Some life they’ve got,” Terry said. “Not much of a place, was it?”
“Maybe they came from a worse one,” Berke said. “You never know.”
Nomad hit the dashboard with the flat of his hand, to try to silence the troubling hum.
“You’re going to break it,” George warned.
“Thing needs to be killed,” Mike said. “Put out of its misery. Didn’t you get it checked last week?”
“It’s putting out cool air, man, that’s all I know.”
“Barely cool,” said Berke. “We can hardly feel it back here.”
Nomad swivelled around to face Ariel. “What did she say to you?” When Ariel paused, taken aback, Nomad continued in an aggravated tone: “She was talking to you. What did she say?”
“Just…stuff. She said she liked music.” Ariel shrugged. “I told her we were musicians.”
“Were musicians.” Berke’s voice was hollow, an intonation of doom. “I like that.”
“She was weird,” Nomad said. “Anybody else feel it?”
Nobody spoke for a few seconds, and then George asked, “Weird how?”
“I don’t know.” Obviously, no one else had shared his jolt of vertigo or the first stage of heat stroke or whatever it had been. He wondered if he ought to have a physical when they got back to Austin. Check his brain for a tumor, maybe. He’d read about shit like this.
“You’re on the ball today, bro,” Mike told him. “Anybody’s actin’ weird around here, it’s you.”
“Oh,” Ariel remembered. “It’s not weird, really, but she did say something kind of interesting. Right when I was leaving.”
“What was it?” Nomad asked.
“She said, ‘I wish you safe travel, and courage when you need it’.”
“Nice,” said George. “Could be a song in that.”
“Hm.” Ariel considered it. “Could be.”
Nomad turned around, facing the road again. He slid down in his seat. Jesus, he thought, I hope I don’t have a fucking brain tumor. That had been a way-freaky minute right there. Shake it off, he told himself. Get the focus back, and jack yourself up.
One thing about what he’d seen back there, he thought, was that he ought to cast aside his pissy self-pity and concentrate on where he was and what he had. Things might be bad, things were not as he wanted them to be, but at least he was moving, he was on the road, he was going somewhere. The apartment he shared in Austin with two other working musicians had cable TV and good air-conditioning, and though he slept on a futon on the floor it was his own space, which suited him just fine. He was doing something he loved, something he felt had worth. He wasn’t trudging out under the burning sun and tearing himself up in a bramble patch. Hell, no. There were lots of things to be thankful for. And they had the tour going on and the video, and Felix Gogo might have been a shit but it was okay, it was the plug for the Dallas gig that counted.
Things could be worse, Nomad thought. And who knows? Either George or Terry could change their minds. Both of them could. Nothing was written in stone. So it was wait and see, but in the meantime just try to put everything else aside but what was really important: the music.
In about two hours, they’d be going through their sound check at Common Grounds. It was a long, somewhat tedious process that was absolutely vital to run a show, because it ironed out potential problems. During the actual gig, there would be different problems from those ironed out by the sound check. It was worse than Murphy’s Law, it was Finagle’s corollary to Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong in the worst possible way at the worst possible time.
Hi, guys. Thanks for coming out tonight, and we hope you enjoy the BZZZZZZPPPP.
This life made Spinal Tap look like a Bergman film.
Behind Nomad, Ariel leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She had a mild headache, from the heat. In her mind she saw the crows circling over the blackberry field, and the workers standing up to go in again, and the sun beating down from the pale sky and the shadow of the girl at the well lying across the ground at Ariel’s feet.
You have a long journey, she heard the girl say.
Yes, Ariel answered. And then she was aware of the shadows of the crows on the ground as well, circling above them, and more and more, gathering together into a darkness, more and more, from all directions of the compass, and thickening the sky in their whirling eager hunger.
Courage when you need it, Ariel thought, and she opened her eyes because she imagined she could hear the vibration of black wings around her, about to fall upon her like an ebony cloak.
But it was just the Scumbucket’s rumble and hum.
Just that, and nothing else.
TWO
Are you my pet