“Me?” Berke stood up. Nomad was not the only one to note that she took a quick glance at herself in the mirror over the dresser as she passed it, and winced a little at what she saw.
“Hello,” said the young man, when she peered out. If her eyes were swollen, her face blotchy and she looked like a five-car pileup, which she knew she did, his boyish smile didn’t show he noticed or cared. “Um…how’re you doin’?”
“Better.”
“Good, good,” he said. “I wanted to tell you…tell all of you,” he prompted, and she moved away from the door and opened it wider so everyone could see him all neat and scrubbed in the yellow bulb’s light, “that I apologize for losin’ my cool out there. Wavin’ my gun around and hollerin’ at you. Not my best day.”
“Hey, not ours either,” George answered. “But you just did what you had to, we know that.”
“Yeah.” He looked down at the ground and moved some invisible grit with the toe of a shined shoe. “I’m supposed to keep things under control. Supposed to make sure nobody’s got any guns I can’t see. You know, you train for the worst…but when it happens, it’s so fast.”
“Did they find out yet who did it?” Terry asked.
“No sir, but they’re still workin’. They’re out in the woods right now, goin’ through it with searchlights.” His eyes examined Berke’s face again and then he said into the room, speaking to all of them, “One thing I’ll say…and maybe I shouldn’t say it, but maybe I owe you…is that they haven’t found the brass yet.”
“The brass? You mean the shells?” George asked. His interest in Cops had just paid off.
“Yes sir, the ejected casings. There should be two. They’ve found some old ones, but not what they’re lookin’ for.”
“So,” Nomad spoke up, “what does that mean? They haven’t found the right place?”
“They’re where they calculated the shots came from, but…” The young man shrugged, indicating that was as far as he could go. He once more turned his attention to Berke. “Um… I know this is kind of a bad time…but… I was wonderin’…just maybe…if you’d want to go down the street and get a beer. The place isn’t too far, I’d get you back in an hour, or…whenever you say. Just thought you might like to talk. But I’m sayin’… I know it’s a bad time, I was just wonderin’.”
The others in the room were riveted by this display of bravery. The trooper had come to ask Berke out on a date. At least a semi kind of date, of the beer-and-talk-in-the-dark-bar variety.
There seemed to be a common stillness of breath.
Oh, what tricks time could play. What a slow river the seconds could become, flowing down to the sandy sea.
At last Berke said, very firmly, “Thank you, but no.”
“Okay, then.” The trooper nodded, and maybe there was a shadow of disappointment on his close-shaved face but no harm was done. “I found this on the pavement,” he said, and lifted his right hand from his side in what might have otherwise been a gesture to offer a bouquet of flowers or a box of candy. “I think it’s yours?”
She looked at the green notebook, there in his hand.
“I got a radio call before I could give it to you,” he explained. “I probably was supposed to hand it over to the detectives, but I looked through it and it’s just your recipes.”
“My recipes?”
“Yeah. It is yours, right?”
“Yes,” she said, and accepted it. She realized that if he hadn’t wanted a date with her, the notebook might have ended up in a trashcan. “Thanks, I thought I’d lost it.” She opened it, and on the first page was a handwritten recipe for Sunshine Lemon Cookies. A woman’s hand, certainly not Mike’s. The next page had the instructions and ingredients for White Chicken Chili.
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.”