“You trust this water?” Victor asks.
“I don’t guess I do.”
“Then take a drink. Die with some purpose instead of wasting away on the mountain.”
Rosita shouts something from the sidelines, but I let my ears go deaf. Her voice sinks into the crowd’s white noise.
“The cameramen must be pitching tents in their pants,” I say. “If a terrorist rock star wasn’t enough to draw some coverage, the local recluse playing martyr should have the video on constant rotation.”
“Exactly,” Victor says.
I could just walk away. Victor doesn’t have any leverage, no real threats or ability to bargain. Eventually, the cops will just incapacitate him with some nonlethal means or a deputy will find an excuse to put a hollow point through his cranium. Either outcome sounds fine to me. Only, then no one will know about the water. The cycle will continue. Angela will keep playing my music. She might give me the credit as the writer, but I’ll return to being alone on the mountain, too afraid to perform the work I create.
“Give me the jug,” I say.
Victor hands it over. The officers move forward to stop me. If I’m going to drink, it’ll have to be fast, but I’ve enough time to consider whether this is the end. So many nights I’ve pulled the jigsaw pieces of my father’s final hours out and turned them every which way trying to decide what made him choose the rope. Was it the woman? Something as familiar as lost love, or something harder like acknowledging he’d spent his life as a counterfeit prophet, taking from those who already had next to nothing? In the end, it doesn’t matter much. Same result. This moment probably should have come for me earlier, so if Victor wants to murder me in front of these cameras, maybe at least it brings about some change. Besides, does anybody care about songs anymore?
The jug is surprisingly light. I’m certain about smelling licorice now. This sets my hands shaking, but I steady, close my eyes and try to fill my mind with a glorious final image. All I can see is Angela, young and wrapped in the sheets from our bed. I tip the jug back.
The water tastes clear. The night air has left it cold. I open my eyes and see Victor smiling. I’m still waiting for the burn. Waiting for my throat to swell and tongue to bloat, for air to be sealed off until I drown on land. Victor bends at the knees to retrieve another jug. I swat at him but slip on the wet asphalt and collapse to a knee. As soon as Victor uncaps this new gallon, I know it’s the real thing.
“Don’t want any of this on you,” he tells me.
Victor drinks deep, starts to raise the receptacle again for another sip and gags. He drops to his knees, clawing his neck as if some invisible hand strangles him. The water spills out as the police move in. One officer fumbles with a handcuff key, trying to get Victor unchained from the parking meter as he shakes. Vomit splatters between Victor’s shoes. His face turns red, lips swelling until the membrane of skin looks ready to split. The cop finally unshackles him as Victor collapses on the sidewalk.
Just outside the orbit of this chaos, Rosita steps forward, raises her camera and snaps some quick photos.
EPILOGUE
All I need is a bridge. The E, A, B arrangement came easy, the following chorus erupting as if always hidden inside. What I can’t seem to find is a set of chords that brings these two sections together. It could be my environment. Rosita’s apartment is spacious but feels unoccupied. The living room is nearly empty. Just a couch where I’ve been sleeping and a coffee table that’s weathered a lot of take-out dinners. In the bedroom, her mattress serves as a workstation. The body-shaped space on the bed is surrounded by books, laptop cords and photo equipment. The desk in the corner remains unused.
I’ve been a guest for two weeks. After Victor’s death, Sheriff Saunders questioned both Rosita and me about our involvement. Once convinced we didn’t know anything more about the strange suicidal spectacle, the sheriff dropped Rosita at the first hotel outside the county line and gave her the mountain tradition of a polite warning not to come back. That first night alone after Victor’s death was hard. I haunted the kitchen, unable to face either a guitar or the picture of Angela in my bedroom. Eventually, I took the frame down and sat up all night with a forgotten pack of Rosita’s Camels and my acoustic. I wrote the first of six new songs before daylight. Later, the lawyer Rosita helped me find mailed these tracks to Angela with a notice of the suit we’d filed over the wasteland lullabies. She paid for the new tracks without comment. I cashed the check.
It was Rosita that suggested I fly out to New York. Our story was major news after the video of Victor’s death went viral. The combination of my lawsuit against Angela for writing credits and the recordings of Victor’s death heightened enthusiasm for a possible album. The Troubadours settled out of court and added my name to the writing credits on all re-releases of the previous albums. Even with the exorbitant payment, Rosita still offered to buy my ticket. I think it was her final apology.
She’s tried to convince me to rent a place near her, but Brooklyn doesn’t appeal to me. No silence, no creeks running behind the house and no chickens to roust you from sleep. Nothing but a constant human noise that drones on even at night. In the end, I’ve not spent much cash. I might have purchased new shoes but found my father’s maroon wingtips in the back of the closet, hidden beneath the dead man’s biblical paraphernalia. We buried him in the black patent-leather ones I watched swinging in the trees, but I have some memory of these maroon counterparts. I’m wearing them now. The creased leather radiates warmth as if alive and the heel is equipped with a hidden platform that offers perhaps two extra inches of height. They describe the old man perfectly, false and vain.
What isn’t false is the work. Since I watched Victor strangle, I understand how limited time is and what I’m supposed to be doing with mine. In my imperfect, yet temporary mistake of a body, I have a rare perspective. I understand now that all bodies are glorious mistakes.
Only now, the song’s bridge still eludes me. I’ve searched all over the fretboard, down and up octaves, even tried to lower the tuning in the hope of discovering where it’s hidden. The melody was so alive in an earlier dream, but the notes evaporated as soon as consciousness hit. In the old days, I’d chase the muse until the idea was treed like a hounded squirrel. Now, I know that even with time always leaking away, it’s best to wait. Men like myself are better suited to the slow advance than sprinting after what we want.
And if this song eludes forever, that’s fine too. That night at the concert, picking Angela’s notes apart provided a sort of epiphany. Broken men are bluesmen by circumstance, forced to mold the catastrophe of their bodies into something artful. It’s the dissonance that matters in our lives, the jazz-like improvisation because plans will always crumble. Now, the music doesn’t always come easy, but what I finally seize is real.
* * *