“Yeah. Well, the trauma team here is the best in the country. That’s not just my opinion.” He glanced quickly at Nomad, who was sitting in a chair slumped over with his hands to his face. “Hang in,” he said, and then he left the room and shut the door behind him.
For a while no one said anything. At last Terry quietly breathed, “Wow,” which served to sum up their collective inability to grasp the fact that the Little Genius lay on an operating table with surgeons trying to keep him alive. Also, they were so tired they could hardly move. It was a bad dream, and at its center a worse one. How long George had been bleeding out on the ground before the attendant had seen him was still unknown, though the police thought it had only been ten or fifteen seconds. Still…ten or fifteen fucking seconds? While George had been down with two bullets in him, and one right in his chest near the heart? It was more than they could bear to think about.
The attendant—Castillo—had recognized the blue parking pass as being from Fortunato’s. Musicians parked their vans and trailers over there all the time, in a special area in the back. He’d called nine-one-one, reported a man down and unconscious and his chest covered with blood. About the time the ambulance and the first police cruiser had come screaming up, Nomad had walked out Fortunato’s stage door into the alley to see where George was, and when he heard the sirens he later told Ariel that he’d felt like a knife had ripped open his guts because he knew something very bad had happened to their friend.
At the hospital, Nomad had called Ash on his cell and had gotten the I can’t pick up right now, but—
“Pick up, you dumb shit!” Nomad had shouted into the cell. “It’s John Charles! Pick up!”
“Hey, hold on with that language!” There had been some hot spice in Ash’s heavily-accented voice. Little did he know how close he was walking to a burning crater in Hell. “Who do you think you’re talking—”
“Shut up and listen!” the emperor had commanded, and Ash had shut.
Ash was coming to Tucson, would try to get a flight out by afternoon or at the latest by Monday morning. In the meantime, he would make the call to George’s mother and father in Chicago. Ash had sounded stunned, and when he asked Nomad, “What is going on?” Nomad knew he was asking why two members of The Five had been cut down by bullets and to that there was no good or easy answer.
Nomad lowered his hands from his face. Terry was standing in front of him.
“Maybe we ought to pray for George,” Terry said, and he looked at Ariel and Berke to gauge their reactions. “Don’t you think?”
“I think we should,” Ariel agreed.
Nomad closed his eyes and shook his head and masked his pain with his hands again. Berke said, “I’m not what you’d call religious.”
“Can’t you be? For just a minute?” Terry asked, but Berke turned her face away. Terry went over and sat beside Ariel, and they grasped hands and put their heads together, and when Terry began with “Dear God,” Berke got up and left the room.
When their prayer was finished, Nomad sat back in his chair and rubbed his temples. If he’d only gone to get the van with George, he thought. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened. If only, if only…
“John?”
“What is it?” Nomad watched as Terry pulled a chair up in front of him and sat down.
“Don’t you believe in God?”
“No,” came the reply. “I believe in myself.” He saw his lamplit face reflected in Terry’s Lennon-specs. “God is a myth made up to keep people from freaking out about death.” Terry was silent, as if waiting for something else. “Listen,” Nomad said irritably, because Ariel was watching him too, in that expectant way she had when they were writing a song together and she was waiting for him to supply a line. “I want to rest. How about leaving me alone.”
“I’m just asking.”
“Don’t ask.”
Terry started to slide his chair back, and then he seemed to think better of it. He drew a long breath, as if preparing himself.
“What do you want from me?” Nomad asked, again on the verge of either anger or tears. “You want me to get down on my knees and pray for George’s life? You want me to promise I’ll be a good boy or some shit like that, so George will come out of that operating room alive?” He felt his mouth start to twist into a snarl. “It doesn’t happen that way. Praying to a myth doesn’t get it. Either he lives or he doesn’t. Okay? And anyway…if God wasn’t a myth, why should He care about George? Why should He care about anybody in this room, or this city, or on this fucking earth? Huh?”
“I don’t know,” Terry said, but the way he said it told Nomad that maybe Terry had already asked himself these questions, many times over.
“Damn straight you don’t know.” Nomad looked to Ariel for support, but she was staring down at the floor. “Nobody knows, and for damn sure those fucking preachers don’t know. So what are we sitting here talking about?”
Terry’s face was impassive. Whatever he had been preparing himself for, he was ready. He said, “Can I tell you a story?”
“What kind of story?”
“A true story. Something that really happened to me, in a church about—”
“Oh, shit!” Nomad interrupted, scowling. “Come off it, man!”
“Terry?” Ariel’s voice was quiet but firm. “You can tell me.”
Terry nodded, but when he spoke again he was still staring at Nomad. “In a church about forty miles northwest of Oklahoma City,” he went on. “A small town called Kingfisher. Did I ever tell you about my dad?”
Nomad didn’t speak. Ariel said, “You told us he has a furniture store.”
“Not just a furniture store. He’s the White Knight there. That’s his chain of stores. White Knight Discount Furniture. Two locations in Oklahoma City, and four other stores across the state. One in Little Rock and one in St. Louis. My dad’s loaded. I mean, his dad started the business, but he really made it go. He’s a hard worker. He puts his nose to that grindstone, man. But it takes its due from him, I can tell you. With that many people working for you, and jumping when you say jump…it makes you into a bully, always pushing for what you want. Which he was, when I was growing up. It was his way or the highway, know what I’m saying?”
“Everybody has it tough,” Nomad commented.
“Yeah, that’s right. Ever hear this: Be kind to everybody you meet, because everybody’s fighting some kind of battle?” Terry paused for a response, but Nomad made none. “My dad was fighting one. His dad was, and back and back. But the deal was…you never said ‘no’ to Clayton Spitzenham. The White Knight just wouldn’t hear it. So I was seventeen years old and I’d been taking piano lessons since I was ten, and I told my dad I wanted to be a musician because music just…spoke to me…it was like food to me. I said I wanted to make music. Maybe join a band, or start one. I said I didn’t want to go into the family business. But you think he listened to me? You think he heard me?” A bemused and slightly bitter smile moved across Terry’s face. “Don’t think so. He said I’d outgrow all that. He said, Terry, you don’t know your own mind. You don’t know what’s good for you. You look around yourself, he said, and you’ll see that everything you have comes from that business you seem to want to turn your back on. This is a family business, he said. You have to realize what your place is in this family.”
Know your role, Nomad thought, remembering Felix Gogo’s advice.
“We really went at it,” Terry continued. “I was sticking to my guns and my dad was making the plans for me to get a business education.” He shrugged. “Hey, maybe it would’ve been good for me. Maybe I would’ve come to it myself, in time, but it wasn’t what I wanted. But he was pressuring me day and night, cutting down my music, cutting me down…everything he could do to get me in the box.”