The Angels of Our Better Beasts Read online

  He turns around to the others. “For the next twelve concerts we don’t have a fiddle player. We need to either cancel them, do without, or find a fiddle player.”

  “Kate is on that, Tommy,” Wayne says. “She’s trying to round us up some names.”

  I look at Eric, and at the others, and say, “Jessica Hawley.”

  They repeat after me: “Jessica Hawley.”

  There would be no mistake like we made with Jessica Hawley, pure and simple.

  Jimmy comes up to me when Tommy leaves and Eric leans outside the door to call something to him, and he whispers, “Remember Jessica Hawley, Carl. She was yours to lose.”

  >?

  In the long time we’d been together, only once had we needed a replacement for Amelia, when she sprained her wrist and we were forced to go in search of a temporary fix. It was hard—on the road—finding an experienced fiddler for tour dates already settled. But great musicians live everywhere; you just have to find them.

  Salina, Kansas. Jessica Hawley, twenty-six years old graduate of KSU, tall as a sunflower. She performed as often as she could at the Smoky Hills River Festival, in a part-time band with her family, The Hawleys. She’d also played with The Wilderness Poppies and The Thompson Brothers when they played at the festival and in local bars.

  We drove up to a huge place called “the City,” a youth centre with its own basketball court, three dance halls, and a café.

  Full moon was four days away.

  I remember we stood in a dance hall lined with black curtains, like a bar after closing. Jessica had blonde hair curling across her shoulders. She was nervous. I couldn’t blame her. This could be her Big Break. None of us would sit down because that energy was with us, like we were haunted. Her dad was there, hands in his pockets, a weathered look on his face. We introduced ourselves, shaking hands, and everyone smiled like popcorn in the microwave.

  She was familiar with our songs, looking over at her daddy for confirmation. “We cover ‘Walk With Me, O Saviour,’ ‘You’ve Got Another Thing To Bring,’ and ‘Fishing for Pearls’—but I’ve played your last three albums over and over. I can do it.”

  Tommy smiled on her, all around her—that was his magic, all right, and that day it just made things worse.

  She played “Walk with Me, O Saviour” and “Fishing for Pearls,” and then she played “The Son Goes Down Today”—and she was technically perfect, every note was there. Her daddy watched her, and I could sense that he was cheering for her, and that she wanted to make him proud. When she finished the songs, she was beaming.

  “Play ‘Wondrous Love’ for us, Jessica,” Tommy asked sweetly.

  The six of us tensed up, but she didn’t see it. “Gladly!” she said, placing the fiddle under her chin. She tapped her foot, mouthing one, two, three, four, and I can still see her in the trailer, standing in front of the locked, bolted, braced door, Tommy strapped down inside the room she can’t see. One, two, three, four.

  She lifted her elbow, cut across the strings, dipped, whined. I thought, don’t be good. Don’t be good. I can’t put you in there. She got to that part—“And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing and joyful be . . .” and she was smiling at us, hopeful. Little girl—can I look you in the eye and tell you what you will see in a few weeks? I looked away, acted like the music was touching my heart, but all I can see now is the moment when the door came down. How it was ripped down because this version—this version of the song was nice—but it wasn’t the version that Tommy needed. Her smile, so bright; the music pouring out, eager for us to like it. It begs us for a chance. We gave it to her.

  She let the last notes hang.

  Eric clapped for her. We all clapped for her.

  But when that door was ripped down and Tommy sprang out of it, she wasn’t fast enough. I was there. I shot twice. Missed him both times.

  I remember the moment we put her in front of the door. “All night?” she asked us, and I nodded. “I’ve been practicing—I can play for a long time, but I’ve never played all night.”

  “Little girl, you have to play like your very life is at stake,” I told her. I nodded to Amelia, who would be there to speak to Tommy through the door. To the beast that would know her voice even if the sound of the fiddle had changed.

  Wayne had welded the door shut, meaning that if all went well, we would need a blow torch to get Tommy out of there.

  But it didn’t.

  There he was, hanging in mid-air—mid-leap, claws extended, his teeth working through the extra rope net we’d hung in front of the trailer door. He shredded the rope. Jessica screamed and Jimmy had the car open, so she could run into it. But Tommy leapt over the lawn and was on her in seconds—her neck, sweet Jesus— I shot. Twice. I tried to hit him, but he ran into the Nebraska night, into the brush.

  “Sweet Jesus, help us!” I cried out.

  Eric was by Jessica’s side, her body folded on the grass. Blood on his hands. Her blonde hair covered her face. Jimmy came from the car, Amelia from the trailer. She said, “I tried to play—to help her. Oh God. Oh merciful God.”

  I backed away, cried, “I tried to shoot him. I tried.”

  “It’s okay, Carl,” they said.

  But Jimmy could smell the whiskey on my breath. He punched me in the face. “He’s drunk.”

  But I wasn’t drunk. I’d had some whiskey to steel my nerves—just a little—because I remembered how scared I was, and how calming it felt, just a couple of shots. I was controlling myself, my nerves.

  “Could you have saved her if you weren’t drunk?”

  That was the night I quit drinking for good, again, but it didn’t matter. Once a drunk, once an alcoholic, you’re never anything else to anyone who knows.

  Saying “Jessica Hawley” was the same as saying “Carl was drunk.”

  Tommy had told us. “I can hear it. I can hear the magic in her song. We’re going to be fine.” But I knew something might happen anyway, and I was scared. It was our first mistake. And they hung it around my neck.

  I remember Jessica smiling at us that first day like she was willing us to pick her—that this could be the moment the spotlight shined on her. This would be her great destiny.

  No man is worth this much to God. Tommy was not worth Jessica Hawley. Maybe I wasn’t either.

  >?

  “We save lives. Every night we save lives,” Tommy always says.

  He will tell you this in his defense: Tinderbox has raised more than three million for music education in Eastern European countries I can’t pronounce, education that is lifting whole families out of poverty. Part of that money has also gone to microloans for building businesses in Eastern Europe. Closer to home, Tommy took over an empty factory building in the middle of downtown Faber, Tennessee, and started the Tennessee Street Foundation, dedicated to building community spaces for the homeless. Our music sales have mostly gone to ministries—not to administration, Tommy would say—but to the “hurting people on the ground, those running from disasters just licking at their heels.” Yeah, his guilt has created opportunity for thousands of people.

  I wonder, though, if Tinderbox could just lose Tommy and still do good in the world. I pray to God to be a better damn shot. To have more courage, better aim.

  Less Mercy.

  But his songs, his way of making that banjo ache—a tense, racing ache that coils around you—I’ve never heard anyone do that. His songs make me weep. Because I know the monsters behind them. I know the secrets behind them. They are our entire band asking for forgiveness. They sing to God himself, begging Him to take away this monster, to forgive us our secrets. Our fans had been brought through dark times on Hiding from Your Face alone. That album could have sustained the hearts of all our fans, but we kept speaking the words that maybe everyone else with secrets and monsters could identify with. We got thousands of letters every month—pe
ople touched, moved, comforted because the dog, that devil, was right all along. Tommy had the ache now to help others who hurt.

  Right now, though, I’m torn; I’m ready to find a replacement for aching Tommy this time. I can’t have another Jessica Hawley on my conscience.

  >?

  I drive us through Kansas during the day, loving the Prairies, the slow roll of the hills, the clouds on the horizon, the sunshine and wide stretches where other people get bored. I’m not alone; I listen to Louis L’Amour books narrated by Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings. The thing about Westerns is that folks often say the characters are just gun-toting vigilantes, but it’s really the opposite. All Westerns are built around people trying to settle down someplace and make a family, and some other folks—bandits, unlawful ranchers, and otherwise hostile forces—trying to stop them. Heroes in Westerns are people who solve problems to get to their family at the end. Rarely are they about a Miracle Worker, a drifter who comes in and fixes things—someone who has no stake in what happens.

  Western heroes also do what they have to do—the hard jobs that no one else will tackle. Some big old rich rancher is trying to scare a town out of existence by sending in his henchmen? The other men of the town don’t stand up and fight; our hero has to do that.

  These stories are like pillows when I’m driving. I can rest inside of them as billboards and trucks go by, because the good guys will win and the bad guys will lose and the hero will do the hardest thing he’s ever had to do to save someone.

  Sometimes the bluegrass players come up and ride with me, to get a bit of a Western in as we drive. We don’t talk much because Johnny, Willie, and Waylon do all the talking, and I appreciate that most days. All of us have the same thing on our minds. They all know about the shotgun under the passenger seat.

  We pass through Salina. I look across the highway and nod in Jessica’s direction.

  It’s Saturday afternoon, and we’re on our way to Oakley to do a bluegrass camp for twenty-five kids between nine and fourteen years of age. They’re all excited to meet Tinderbox and Tommy and Eric and Jimmy and Wayne, and to work with them perfecting their music. Without Amelia, there isn’t anyone to help out the young fiddlers, to teach them songs, techniques . . . ways to control their future werewolves. Damn, I could see them growing up and having to do that one day. Who wants to have that thought in their heads? Amelia was this young once, with ambition and gumption and skill.

  This time, instead of staying out in the bus, minding my own business and listening to a Western, I head in. Not that I know anything about music, but I felt I should help out since they were short. Somehow I feel like a part of them, whether they want me or not—whether I want them or not. We are all linked together in a strange way over Tommy Burdan. It’s as if removing Amelia made us all responsible. We fill a vacuum.

  My daughter was this young once. I don’t know how old she might be now. I lost track of them. They let me lose track of them, or maybe I was always driving away from wherever they were. Her name is Janie Lee. She might be sixteen. I have no idea what she looks like now. You don’t get pictures when you’re branded a monster.

  When we walk in the elementary school gym, the kids run up in that stop-start way that kids have, some with their instruments in hand, hoping the band members might sign them. Blonde and brown hair flying out of hair bands, laughing, so flippin’ excited to meet famous musicians.

  “Who are you?” a kid asks me.

  I’m about to tell him exactly who I am when Wayne says, “He’s taking pictures for Kate.” He grins, places a hand on my back. “Would you do that? Here’s my phone.”

  Tommy is good with kids. He has a knack for speaking to them on their level, not talking down to them. He treats them like players in his band, with respect. He teaches them some new chords, and plays a few songs with them, getting the others to play with him—thirty of them playing “On a Rhythm and a Prayer.”

  He also decides that they should write a new song. They write the words and music right there.

  “What should our song be about?” he asks them, sitting on the edge of a stage.

  “Kansas! Oakley! My house!” they shout.

  “Okay, what about Oakley deserves a song?”

  “Xiphactinus audax! The Palace Theatre! Buffalo Bill! There’s a lotta songs about Buffalo Bill already!”

  Tommy points to one boy. “Xiphactinus audax, you say?”

  “It’s a big fish that used to live in the Cretaceous period and swim around here, and now it’s a skeleton in the Fossil Museum,” the boy says.

  “Does the Xiphactinus audax have a song that tells his story?”

  “Her story!” says a young girl with a fiddle in her hand.

  “Her story, then. Any song?”

  “No one sings about the Xiphactinus audax!” says someone else.

  “Well then we should!” Tommy roars, strumming his banjo.

  The kids laugh. “The X-Fish is our national fossil now,” says one.

  “Our state fossil,” someone corrects.

  “So he’s famous!”

  “She’s famous!”

  “She’s famous! But she doesn’t have a song? How can that be?” Tommy asks. And he strums his banjo a little, and asks for some facts about Xiphactinus audax. The kids tell him, “Seventeen feet long, with massive teeth! Fangs! She jumped out of the water to eat birds! And fish that were six feet long! Deadly! Massive!”

  Tommy looks over toward the guys with a weak smile.

  A boy grits his teeth and bellows, “The fiercest predator in the ocean!”

  “Here in Kansas?” Tommy asks, looking a little skeptical.

  “We used to be a giant sea, full of sharks and big fish with teeth!” they say. The boys are very excited, but the girls are, too, as the Xiphactinus audax was the meanest, baddest girl in the Kansas Ocean.

  “Okay,” Tommy says. “A song for the beautiful Xiphactinus audax then!”

  “Deadly! Fierce!”

  “Okay, the Fierce, Deadly Xiphactinus audax—”

  “Who was still beautiful!” a girl adds.

  “Who was very beautiful, yes,” Tommy says, strumming. “But this could be a problem, yes, being beautiful and being fierce and deadly—how will you make friends?”

  “You eat them!” yells one kid. They laugh.

  “She doesn’t have to eat her friends,” a girl says. “She chooses when she’s going to bite.”

  Tommy looks down at his hands, twists one of the tuning struts on the banjo. “That sounds like a great idea. She’s going to choose when to bite.” He strums a G-chord and exhales. “Okay, repeat after me, and we’ll see if we can build this song.”

  Oh, the beautiful but deadly (oh the beautiful but deadly)

  Xiphactinus audax (Xiphactinus audax)

  was swimming one day through (was swimming one day through)

  the salty North Kansas Sea (the salty North Kansas Sea)

  One kid corrects, “The Western Interior Seaway”

  “She met up with a shark!” someone shouts.

  “She ate the shark!” says another.

  The song-writing portion of this bluegrass camp has turned into a bloodbath. Sharks and Xiphactinus audax fighting and biting, blood pouring into the ocean, clouding the water, Xiphactinus swimming as far away as she could. And just when the kids shout for her to be eaten (okay, some are rooting for her), she turns and, with the help of friends, has a last battle, teeth flashing, and they kill two sharks.

  It’s magnificent, I think.

  “Yay!” the kids roar.

  Tommy says, “Now, did you get all the chords? G, C, G, then A7, D7, then back again to G, C, G, then D7 G.” It was basically “Angels Rock me to Sleep,” just faster and with more blood in the water. He plays it through again, with thirty of them following him on banjo and guitar,
one bass player, and three fiddle players trying to match him as best they can. They move in tandem, slowly, and then faster, adding their own grace notes and improvisations along the way.

  “And they never messed with her again. Never messed with her again!” they sing with gusto, and in harmony when at last they have the whole song. “The Ballad of Xiphactinus Audax.” She has a fight song now. “Never messed with her again!”

  I want to live inside these two hours of normalness, laughing, playing, and forgetting. I want Tommy to live here, too. He’s going to have to board the bus again, and all those what-are-we-gonna-do-now thoughts will meet him there. The kids hug everyone who came, even me. I didn’t do a thing, but the littler kids hug me just the same. Something about that just hits me wrong, or right, and I swear I almost start crying because I’m standing there realizing that the last child to hug me was my daughter.

  Tommy walks up to me, and something in his eyes tell me he could see what was happening. He pats me on the shoulder and gives me an I-don’t-know expression as the kids chant the chorus, “Go for the throat! Go for the throat! You better save yourself or that’s all she wrote!”

  We share a laugh. If God were a person, he might have looked at me like Tommy looks at me right then—as if he knows me. I want to believe that behind those eyes doesn’t live a monster, but I know differently. I can only see that thing waiting, as if in a tiny room inside Tommy’s eye, shackled in a chair, and it gloats at me, daring me to think of Tommy as Tommy Burdan, good man, banjo player, instead of teeth and claws. In one eye, God himself; in the other, a monster.

  We chuckle all the way to the bus, and continue down the highway.

  >?

  “His name is Arno Tomczak, and he’s in Kearney, Nebraska. Mike Florens says he’s the best thing he’s heard in a decade.”

  “And he’s not taken?” Jimmy asks.

  “He’s not taken, no.” Eric says. “But he’s a bit unorthodox. Lots of fire in him. He comes from the Canadian fiddling tradition—lots of Celtic in him.”