A silence stretched. Nomad was not good with hospitals; this was torture, wanting to be gone but needing to be here.
“I almost let go,” George said.
Ariel had composed herself. Her eyes were red, but she came forward to stand where she thought she should be, beside John Charles.
“It was up there.” George lifted his chin toward the ceiling. Toward the corner of the ceiling, up on the right where the curtain guide was.
“What was there?” Nomad glanced up to where George had indicated. Ceiling, curtain guide, nothing else.
“Folded up,” said George. “Sharp edges.” He took a few slow breaths before he spoke again. “I couldn’t see a head. No face. But I knew. It was watching me. It was like…the wings of a crow. Or like black origami. It was waiting. Right up there.”
“Waiting for what?” Ariel asked.
And George answered, “For me to die.”
Terry gave that nervous laugh again. “You’re not going to die, man! Get real!”
“You’re not going to die,” Berke said. “You’re past the worst part.” She hoped. “Listen, we probably need to go so you can rest. Okay?”
“That’s not all,” George said. “I was fighting. Really fighting. Hard. And I don’t know…when it was…but I heard somebody speak my name. It was like…a voice I knew. Maybe… a teacher I used to have. Somebody who cared about me. I knew that voice.” He made a noise that sounded as if he were struggling to breathe, and Nomad almost went for the nurse’s call button but then George said, “I opened my eyes and that girl was here.”
“Who?” Ariel asked.
“That girl,” he repeated. “Where they were picking the blackberries. You know.”
Nomad and Ariel exchanged glances. Terry looked quickly at Berke, but Berke was just staring down at the floor.
“Standing in the corner. There.” George lifted his chin toward the left-hand corner. “She said, ‘I believe in you, George,’ and then…she smiled at me…and she nodded. That voice…somebody else’s voice… I don’t know whose. I was afraid. Closed my eyes. Tight. I thought…if I burst a blood vessel…least I’m in the hospital already.” He had to stop and take a breather. “She was gone when I looked,” he said. His eyes found Nomad’s. “John… I thought…she was the angel of death. But now… I think she was the angel of life.”
“You had a dream,” Berke said quietly. “That’s all.”
“Right. A dream. But listen…if you guys…drove back there. To that place. She’d still be there…right? That whole place…it would still be there. Right?”
“Yeah,” Nomad told him. “It would.”
“Go back…and find out,” George said.
Nomad had no idea what he was talking about. It was time to leave; past time, really.
“Take the Scumbucket,” George said. “Old warhorse. Good for nothing…but following the music.”
“We can’t do that,” Ariel said. “It’s your van.”
“Done with me. ’Member, John?” His voice was getting weaker. His eyes were wanting to close and stay shut. “I said… I was with you guys. Said I’d take care of you. Like always.” He moved his legs again under the sheet, seeking some kind of comfort. “Dad’s got the keys. I’ll tell him.”
The young woman with the auburn hair came in. “George,” she said in a light, friendly tone, “I’m afraid your visitors are going to need to leave.” She made a quick visual check of the monitors and systems.
“Hey.” George roused himself from his impending slumber. “The song. Don’t you want my part?”
“The song?” Nomad shook his head.
Ariel knew. The song Mike started, probably the last song they would ever write. “Yes, George,” she said. “We do want your part.”
“I’m adding…what the girl said. To you, Ariel. I wish you…safe travel…courage when you need it.” The Little Genius offered them a wistful smile. His eyes glistened. “You need it now,” he said.
“I’ll see you on the other side of this,” Nomad vowed.
They said their goodbyes. Terry, who had been last going into the room, was the last out. Berke walked on ahead, moving quickly, her head lowered.
Ariel kept pace with Nomad. Heavy-burdened, they went back to the room where the suits were waiting, and where their new road manager had just gotten them eight hundred dollars for ninety minutes in the afternoon sun at Stone Church.
SIXTEEN.
“Tell me what I don’t already know about Stone Church,” said Truitt Allen.
“What do you already know?” Nomad fired back, from his seat behind Ariel.
“Damn, look at that fool!” Allen tapped the Scumbucket’s brake. The purple-and-blue spray-painted camper just ahead had swerved into the right lane without a turn signal. “Nothing pisses me off worse than a careless driver.” There were maybe a dozen stickers on the camper’s rear bumper, things like Eat Me, Not Meat and What Would Jesus Shoot?
Nomad thought Mr. Driver’s Education had better get used to it, because the train of huge recreational vehicles, campers, Volkswagen vans, pickup trucks and motley rusted-out mutts on four tires heading up I-10 was only going to get longer and more piss-worthy the closer they got to the junction of I-8 and the straight shot to Gila Bend.
The U-Haul trailer was an orange thumb that indicated they were on their way to Garth Brickenfield’s little bitty ole festival, as he’d described it to Allen over the phone. It was indeed thirteen years old, but it was no longer little bitty. The highway, at ten o’clock on Thursday morning, was already a demolition derby in the making. The troopers were out in force but so were the wreckmakers. A few minutes earlier, they’d passed the blinking lights at a fresh mess and seen crashed in a ditch one of those gargantuan black pickup trucks meant to carry Paul Bunyan’s lumber. Around it on the ground sat seven or eight people who looked to be made out of tattoos. One of the shirtless baldheaded young men was raging at the troopers as the plastic cuffs were being locked on his wrists, and none of The Five could fail to note on the man’s sunburned back a tattoo of a downward-facing pentagram with a red goat’s head at its center.
Have fun in the Pima County Jail, Nomad had thought. But what concerned him was that there were many more music-lovers just like that guy who weren’t going to crash their rides today.
It was going to be crazy on the two-lane road that left I-8 a few miles west of Gila Bend and twisted up into the mountains on its way to Apache Leap. The weathergirl on KVOA had said it was going to be cloudless skies and a hundred degrees at noon, so maybe at three o’clock, when The Five took the stage, it would be in the upper nineties. But it was dry heat, so they would bake instead of steam.
“I have a question for you.” It was the first time Berke had spoken since she’d climbed into the back seat about thirty minutes ago. She was dressed, appropriately for the weather of this 31st day of July and her current state of mind, in black jeans and a black wifebeater T-shirt. One thing new she was wearing was a small silver pin in the shape of a bass guitar that she’d bought yesterday in a crafts shop on North Campbell Avenue. “What handle are we supposed to give you?”
“What handle?” A pair of intense blue eyes glanced back in the rearview mirror.
“Your name,” Berke clarified. “Like…what? Allen? Mr. Allen? Truitt? I mean, if you’re pretending to be our road manager, then—”
“No,” he interrupted, and she stopped dead because she could tell when he spoke that word he meant it. “I’m not pretending. If I’m asking you to do…what I’m asking you to do…then you need to make some money off it. And if Pett doesn’t show up here, we’ll be ready for him in San Diego. Or Los Angeles, or wherever. But believe me…are you listening?” He’d seen her look away with a pained expression.