He told them about his cousin Jeff, and Audio Advances, and his intentions. “But I’m telling you like I told John,” he added, into their silence, “I’m not bailing on you.” He didn’t think that sounded exactly right, so he tried it again. “I’m not leaving until the tour’s done. Okay? And even then, I’ll stick until Ash finds a replacement.” He hoped he could keep that last vow, because the Chicago job needed him by the middle of September. ‘Ash’ was their agent Ashwatthama Vallampati, with RCA—the Roger Chester Agency—in Austin.
“Well, damn,” Mike said when George was done. It was stated flatly, more of an expression of surprise than of opinion.
“Listen, man, I was going to tell you—tell all of you—further down the road. I wasn’t going to throw it at you, like, the last night or something.”
“You’re sure about that?” Berke asked, without turning her face from the window.
“Yes, I am. I want the tour to be a success. Got it? I wouldn’t have pushed for the video if I hadn’t.” George glanced over to get John’s reaction, but Nomad was staring straight ahead, watching the road unspool.
Nomad had decided to neither help George nor hurt him. This was George’s choice. George had to live by it.
Another silence settled in. Then Mike broke it: “Sounds like a plan. I wish you well, bro.”
“Same here,” Terry said.
George was so relieved he almost swivelled around to thank them, but as there was a black-and-white Texas State Trooper Crown Victoria parked over on the right where it could clock the passing traffic he thought it would not be in the best interest of the band. “Thanks,” he said. “Really.”
“You’re wrong, George,” Ariel suddenly told him, and the cool clarity of her voice popped his bubble.
“Wrong? How?”
“About having nothing. You have the Scumbucket. And you have us, too.”
“Oh. Yeah, right. That’s true.”
“Yeah, we’ll come to Chicago and move in with you,” Mike said, and George caught his lopsided grin in the rearview mirror. “Get a house with a big basement.”
“Home theater with a candy counter,” Terry suggested.
“Popcorn popper,” said Ariel.
“Automatic joint roller,” Mike continued. “We’ll have to come see you, man, because in a couple of months you’ll forget we ever existed.”
“Besides,” Ariel said, “it’s not like you couldn’t come back, if you wanted to. I mean…if things didn’t work out, you could come back. Right, John?”
Nomad wanted to say Leave me out of this, but instead he thought about it for a few seconds and replied, “Probably not as our manager. By then, Ash would’ve found somebody else for us. I’m not saying it couldn’t be worked out, but…who knows?” Ariel must not have liked that answer, because she didn’t say anything else. “But George could get back in the game, sure,” Nomad added. He figured he ought to lighten things up, before the cloud he felt he was under rained on everyone else. After all, he was the leader of this band, so he should act like a leader and buck it up. “Hey, we’re putting the cart in front of the horse, aren’t we?”
“Before the horse,” Ariel corrected.
“That’s what I meant. George isn’t gone yet, we’ve got a tour ahead of us, we’ve got an awesome video and song to promote, and anything can happen. So we go from where we are. Right?”
“What he said,” was Mike’s affirmation.
“Yes,” Ariel answered.
There was no response from Berke. Nomad looked back to see her curled up on her side of the seat, her head against the tan-colored cushion and her eyes closed. “Berke?” he prompted.
“What?” She didn’t bother to open her eyes.
“Anything to say?”
“I’ll wait for the written exam.”
Nomad knew there was no use in pushing Berke for an opinion. When she wanted to disappear, she went deep. She closed her eyes and submerged into a realm no one else was able to follow. The word “loner” had been created with Berke in mind, but Nomad respected that, it was cool. Everybody needed their space. The only thing was, Berke’s seemed to be so empty.
The highway stretched on between fenced-off fields in various shades of brown, with stands of bony trees here and there but nothing much to speak of except a few houses and barns in the distance. The route would take the Scumbucket past the small towns of Jarrell, Prairie Dell, Salado and Midway, then through the city of Temple and into Waco. The sky was bright and hot now, heat waves shimmered on the pavement, and dead armadillos drew the circling crows that dove in to tear off a swallow before the next tractor-trailer truck could scatter the feast.
“I’ve got something to say,” Terry announced, when they were about three miles past the Prairie Dell exit.
Nomad turned around to look at him. There had been an unaccustomed note of urgency in Terry’s voice. That wasn’t like Terry; he could be excitable, sure, but he was usually calm and measured, as precise in his speech as in his playing.
Terry adjusted his round-lensed glasses, pushing them back up his nose with one finger. The air-conditioner was working all right, but Terry’s face looked to be damp, and his full round cheeks—“chipmunk cheeks”, Ariel called them—were blotched with red. His light brown eyes, slightly magnified by the lenses, appeared larger still, and his shaved skull was shiny with a faint sheen of perspiration.
Nomad’s first thought was that Terry was having a heart attack, though Terry was in reasonably good shape except he was a little chunky and he had the beginnings of a potbelly, but he was only twenty-seven. Still, the sight of Terry in obvious distress unnerved him. He took off his shades, and there was a rasp of tension in his voice when he said, “Hey, man, are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m okay. I just… I don’t want you to blow up at me.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because,” Terry answered, and he blinked rapidly a few times as if he feared being struck, “I’m leaving the band too. After this tour.”
Beyond Terry, Berke had opened her eyes and sat up straight. She reached over to Mike, who had slid down in his seat and put his iPod on Shuffle, and pulled out the nearest earbud. He frowned at Berke and said, “What the fuck…?” but her attention was directed up front and he knew she wouldn’t have disturbed him for no good reason.
“Oh my God,” Ariel said, more of a breathless gasp. “Why?”
George glanced at Terry in the rearview mirror but did not speak; he figured his revelation had spurred Terry to make his own, and it was best he keep his mouth shut.
Terry looked agonized. He searched Nomad’s eyes for the red candles of rage before he spoke again. “I was going to tell you last night. After the gig. But…we did so fine…and you were so up, man. I…thought I’d wait a while. But I swear I was going to tell you before—”
“What are you talking about? Have you gone fucking crazy?” Nomad’s voice was angry and full of grit, but inside he just felt scared. If The Five had a retro/rock/folk vibe—as the promo materials from RCA said—then Terry Spitzenham supplied the retro component. Terry was the keyboard player who had his mind in 2008 and his heart somewhere in the mid-sixties, a time he lamented missing. He was particularly into the organ sounds of that era, the soul-stirring rumble of the B3, the high keening of the Farfisa, the gravelly snarl of the Vox and all their thousands of different voices. On tour he played a Hammond XB2 and a Roland JV80 with a tonewheel organ sound card, and he carried the Voce soundbox and enough effects boxes to generate whatever tone he could imagine. Terry could make his instruments scream, holler, growl or sob, as the song required. He could fill up a room with an immense throbbing pulse, or back it down to a nasty little chuckle. Nomad couldn’t imagine The Five without Terry’s keyboards, without his distinctive style and energy propelling everything forward. It was just goddamned unthinkable. Nomad had to draw a panicked breath, because he felt like all the oxygen had suddenly been sucked out of the Scumbucket. “No,” he said, when he could find words again. “No way you’re pulling out.”