I said some bad words. Was the barn on fire? Maybe caused by one of my Fausto cigars? No, it was a cloud of dust that was coming from underneath. I went up the ramp and pulled open the barn door, which takes almost superhuman strength because it sticks. Half of the first floor was gone, fallen down into the underbarn, and with it had tumbled about a hundred boxes of books and papers. Most of my collection of old anthologies was down there, the edges of the books visible from torn and squashed boxes — also my father’s art books and his books on the history of chairs, and my mother’s books of medieval history, and boxes of family photographs and letters — all mixed in with miscellaneous junk, a catcher’s mitt, a sun-faded life jacket with mildew stains, my bicycle that I hadn’t ridden yet this year because the chain is broken, Roz’s old bicycle with the bent basket in front, scraps of plywood and planking, a sledgehammer. I saw one of my traveling sprinklers on its side, looking rusty and pathetic, on a box of something marked FRAGILE — STORE ON TOP. I was looking down at a huge hole in the barn with a lot of my life in it. I surveyed the scene for a moment and said, “Fuckaroo banzai.” I didn’t want to go below, in case more of the barn would give way and crush me dead.
I went inside and called Jeff, the barn repairman. A few years ago he’d fixed a sill that had been eaten to a punky powder by bugs. I left a message for him. “Hi, Jeff, it’s Paul Chowder, I hope you’re well. I’ve got a little situation here. Half the first floor of the barn has just collapsed. Things seem to be stable now, but I’d like you to take a look before I start hauling up the boxes.” I left my cellphone number.
Then I went back out. I took another look at the damage and shook my head. I noticed, however, that the steps to the second floor were intact. By holding on to a wooden hook on the wall I was able to sidle sideways over to them and climb upstairs. My little music studio was fine. The microphone was pointing unperturbed at my empty white plastic chair. My keyboard was just where I’d left it. My guitar had slipped from where I’d leaned it against the table, but it was unharmed. I stood in the middle of the perfect second floor, with its neat pile of swept-together bird droppings under one of the tiny side-sliding windows that don’t slide, and I laughed with relief. It’s just boxes, I thought, it’s just stuff. Everything’s fine. Everything’s just fine.
• • •
I WENT BACK to the house and gave Smack the rest of my sandwich and sat at the kitchen table for a while. Roz didn’t answer her cellphone, so I left her a message. I called Allstate and told a nice woman with a Hispanic accent what had happened. She said, “I’m very sorry to hear about the damage to your barn. We can help you with that.” She took down some details and told me to take pictures and said that a claims adjuster would be there later that afternoon. I thanked her and sat for a while longer. I took some pictures of the damage and wrote a paragraph for the record describing what had happened. I unrolled some wire fencing across the low entryway to the underbarn so that no pets or other animals would stray in. Then I climbed back up to the second floor. What the hell. Make some music in the wreckage.
Twenty
WHAT I REALLY WANT to do right now, I thought, is make a superfunkadelic dance beat. I want people to hear my music and smoke illicit substances and drink mojitos and chew Ecstasy, if that’s what they do, and dance. I want to make people dance. I began layering a seventh-chord rhythm using the Steinway Hall, with another keyboard called Late Sixties Suitcase for the offbeats, and on the fourth offbeat I jabbed in a chord from a clavichord instrument called the Dry Funky Talker — a Stevie Wonder sort of instrument. On top I snuck in a flatted sixth chord for an extra magic-ass squirt of funkosity. I brought in a low, fast double hit for the bassline, a C and a D, using the Bottom Dweller Bass, and I reinforced it with steadily humpty-dumping quarter notes from a different instrument, the Progressive Rock Bass, at a hundred and twenty beats per minute. I was in the middle of quantizing the bassline — forcing it to stick exactly to the beat — when Roz called.
“Are you all right, baby?” she said.
I told her I was fine, that the barn was still standing, and that the insurance guy was coming.
“What about all the boxes? Your dad’s books?”
“Not good. And the canoe is underneath them.”
“Oh no, the canoe! What can I do? Can I come over?”
I knew she was very busy. “You’re probably finishing a show.”
“Well, it’s kind of a madhouse here today. Nortin Hadler’s scheduled for an interview. This is the first time he’s been willing to talk to us. I could come later tonight.”
“I’d love that,” I said. “But it’ll be late, and really I’m perfectly fine right now. You want to come this weekend? By then I’ll know the damage.”
She said she’d come on Saturday morning.
I said that would be great. I coughed.
“Are you still smoking cigars?” she asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“Because that sounds like a dry cough. Is it a cigar cough?”
“No, I just swallowed some saliva.” I coughed again.
“That’s definitely a cigar cough,” she said.
“Maybe it is. Mark Twain smoked twenty cigars a day. When he stopped, he wrote nothing. The man at the guitar store — I mean the cigar store — the man at the cigar store says that a cigar takes the serrated edge of life and makes it into a straight blade.”
Roz said, “They’ll be cutting a tumor out of your neck with a straight blade if you’re not careful.”
“Jesus, honey. Let’s put that aside. It’s just a temporary crutch. The music is the thing, and it’s going forward at a hundred and twenty BPM. I’m hot, I’m smoking, I’m on a roll. In fact, I’m up on the second floor of the barn at this very minute writing a dance song.”
“What? Come down from there. That’s not safe. The floor just collapsed.”
“You’ve got to take some risks in life.”
“Please, baby, come down from the barn. Will you at least promise me you’ll come down from the barn?”
“I promise. It’s nice of you to worry.”
She said good-bye. She’s so thoughtful. It took three trips to move my equipment to the kitchen table. I clamped on my headphones and listened to what I had so far. It needed more. I went to work with the Trance Kit of sounds, which has a good kick drum and a nice synthesized clap with a hint of rimshot in it for the second and fourth beats. Then I had an idea: I played the plink of the egg slicer on top with some echo synced to the eighth notes. Tasty. I brought another chord rhythm on the Funky Talker. It sounded pretty good, frankly. I laughed and pursed my lips and windmilled my arms. It was pure retro Stevie Wonder, but with a dance beat.
Now I needed some vocals. I hooked up the pre-amp and adjusted the microphone so that it was right at my mouth, and I sang random things. “Egg slicer, ooh, ooh! Slice that egg, ooh, ooh!” Then: “Guan — tan — a — moe-hoh!” I ran my voice through Logic’s phone filter so that it sounded not like me. I sang, “Why can’t you close — Guantanamo?” Then: “Make no mistake — you betrayed our faith.” I’m so tired of hearing Obama say “Make no mistake.” “Make no mistake,” he said in his Nobel Peace Prize speech, “evil does exist in the world.” Which is why he has to ship arms to Libyan rebels and fly drones around everywhere and spread violence and kill people. It’s sickening. Make no mistake? His whole foreign policy is one long string of mistakes. And we’re supposed to get excited about health care. More tests, more drugs, more colonoscopies, more needless invasive procedures. Fuck it!