The Angels of Our Better Beasts Page 7

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “The judgment, I guess. I just didn’t want to have to explain it.”

  I lean against the kitchen counter, letting its angles press into my back, letting it hurt me. “But Amelia,” I say. “I wouldn’t have . . .”

  She sighs. “Oh, Carl,” and she says my name so sweetly. “You’re the hardest. You’re a good man, but I didn’t want to disappoint you, didn’t want you thinking badly about me. You would have. You would have been the hardest.”

  I wouldn’t have. For a moment, I can’t think of werewolves. I can only see Amelia’s face: her red hair, her kind eyes, eyes that told me everything, that shared everything with me. A woman I missed almost as much as I missed my ex-wife, Sarah. When I didn’t have Sarah, maybe it was Amelia I tried to be kind to instead, to do better than I did before. I knew there wasn’t anything between us—not from her, at least. But she never knew how much I cared about her, or that I would never have condemned her. Why didn’t she know that?

  “I would have been happy for you.” I stare at the wooden cabinets, waiting. “For both of you,” I add, feeling awkward.

  “Please don’t let Tommy come over here, Carl. Please. I can’t help him anymore.”

  “I won’t let him. I won’t let him near you,” I promise. I look around the bus, and the emptiness of it chills me. “Don’t worry, Amelia.”

  >?

  Another thing missing: my shotgun, missing from under the seat.

  “He’s got a gun,” I tell Jimmy.

  The windows of the trailer seem to pulse inward, as if the oxygen were leaving us.

  “Damn him,” I say to Jimmy. Part of me wonders if maybe he’s killed himself. I’m not ashamed of admitting that. Sure would make it easier. Let God embrace him up in Heaven, all fixed and all.

  “Maybe he got himself put in prison. That might hold him. A real jail,” Jimmy says.

  “He should have stopped after Jessica died. We lied to cover him up. He doesn’t even care,” I say, pounding the kitchen counter with my fist.

  “Now hold on, crackshot. You weren’t there when he came back,” Jimmy says. “He was broken. He was broken in two. We had to cancel those gigs, Carl. He wanted to turn himself in—he begged me to turn him in or shoot him.”

  “Well, you’re the reason I wasn’t there,” I say, remembering the week after Jessica’s death. Where was I? I was off the bus because Jimmy forced me to go into rehab. That was my punishment—as if I had killed her instead of Tommy.

  “I told him no. I told him we were doing good. I took him to that whiteboard and I wrote those numbers from our files, so he could see them, and when I hung it up, I pointed to those numbers and I said, ‘Here’s the evidence. If God was not blessing you, we wouldn’t be changing lives. These thousands of people would be going to Hell if it weren’t for you. You have to pull yourself together,’ I told him. He could be a killer, only a killer, or he could do his penance here on Earth and make Jessica’s death count for something—make our secrets count for something. He hates himself, Carl. He’s trying to do everything he can to make up for it. What would he do without this band? He’d be dead.”

  “You kept this all going?”

  “I have never played for a group that was making a bigger impact on the world, Carl. All because of him. That black dog was right—he is a better player, a better writer, a better everything—and because of that, we help the world. We do. He lets us be part of that. Only two people have died—only one under our watch. One. And that kid, that was before any of us.”

  When I came back to the band a week later, after rehab, the whiteboard was up, and Tommy was renewed, writing a new album, Redeem Us, that went on to be a huge seller. It bore the lyrics of his deepest regrets, written as if they were words anyone could sing; only we knew the truth.

  Wayne appears at the door. “I bet he’s at the Walmart Supercenter. He sometimes goes there to, you know, pray.”

  “The Walmart Supercenter?”

  “I don’t know. He says it helps him find himself, or something like that.”

  “He took my gun,” I say again. Was no one listening to me?

  “Who would he shoot at Walmart?”

  We don’t wait around to answer that question. We jump in the Bronco and head to the nearest Walmart.

  >?

  “Spread out,” Jimmy tells us when we get into the Billings Montana Walmart Supercenter. It’s a busy place. Shoppers with carts come in with us, a man unfolding his list, his girlfriend telling him what’s on it by heart. Children without parents carrying peanut butter appear at the end of a row, taking the corner fast and turning in front of the fresh flowers and into the produce.

  “Where would he be?”

  “Where would you go to pray in a Walmart?”

  “I prefer the bait and tackle section,” Jimmy admits.

  “Definitely Hardware,” Wayne says.

  I can almost imagine this. I shake my head nonetheless.

  “What? I get creative inspiration there, from all the projects that could be.”

  “Okay,” I say. “You guys check out those sections. I’ll check out the food. Maybe he’s just getting some snacks.”

  Jimmy touches my arm, a dark expression on his face, and whispers, “Maybe he went to get some bullets.”

  “I have plenty of bullets.”

  “Well, maybe we should check there, too,” Wayne says. “That’s in the sports section, near the bait and tackle. You check that, Jimmy.”

  We spread out into Walmart. I’d been there many times. I remember after my wife and kid left me I’d find myself standing in the music section just scanning the tapes, asking myself which song would save me from all this pain. I’d bring home the Charlie Daniels Band, Alabama, Dolly. Sometimes the names would blur and I’d look up and find out I’d been there for an hour, trying to find something to soothe the ache. I’d been here in the snack aisle, too: chips, pop, frozen pizza—newly single people stay here for a while before moving to the produce section and the meats, and start cooking again.

  Mostly I just see them using carts as walkers, slowly moving down the aisles, overwhelmed by all the possibilities they have to make that need disappear. Yeah, I guess, in a way, a lot of people came to Walmart to pray.

  Where would Tommy be? What part of this place would pull him in and give him hope? Jimmy is checking the bullets—because, yeah, that was one way.

  He would be in the music.

  I get to the section and there are other people there, sifting through a vat of Blu-rays looking at every single one—three for ten dollars the sign said. Binge watching. I can see that as a form of prayer, too. I can remember what it was like listening to Alabama’s “Lady Down on Love” again and again, stopping the tape and rewinding, like some damn prayer beads.

  He isn’t there. Shoot.

  I see the sports section, but know Jimmy is there, and I see Wayne coming out of the hardware aisle and picking up a wrench set thoughtfully. Yeah, there’s some prayer and inspiration happening there.

  I walk into the gardening section, through the sliding doors and into the warmer, humid room full of plants you could buy to spruce up your beds, and fertilizer bags lining the shelves.

  Tommy is sitting in one of them sample sets of outdoor deck furniture, the kind that looks too nice to ever buy but is in all the commercials. I call them the Happy Couples. In the commercials, they own the deck furniture, including barbecues. It’s usually a BBQ sauce, a mustard or a meat that’s being advertised, but they need to show you how to use it, and this is the kind of deck furniture they use.

  Tommy is in the chair. I take the loveseat.

  “Oh hello,” he says.

  “Hello, come here often?” I ask.

  He smiles. “It helps me think.”

  “Other people’s deck fur
niture?”

  “Just the space. The space helps me think. People are walking around. They don’t really look at you, or at any of the furniture.”

  “Been thinking about tomorrow?”

  He ignores the question. I feel like a bastard, being so flippant. “Walmart Supercenters are open twenty-four hours. Have you ever been in one late-late at night?”

  “No, been in a lot of Walmarts, but not in the am.”

  “They really get this eerie feeling,” he says.

  “I can imagine. It’s two am and hardly anyone is here.”

  “You’d be surprised. There’s a lot more people than you’d think at two am in a Walmart.”

  He looks over my shoulder at an older couple picking out a ceramic pot, something for an indoor plant, and they touch them all, saying, it seemed, blue or green or brown?

  “There are miracles all the way through the Bible, you know? Sarah has a baby when she’s in her nineties.”

  “That’s a curse, I think,” I say.

  “She wanted one. Some people think she got younger.”

  “They’re stories, though.”

  “Well, they’re stories to some people, and to others they’re real lives. They’re real to me.”

  “But they make people want a miracle.”

  He nods. “Yeah, I want one.”

  “You don’t think Amelia was a little miracle every month?”

  “She was. She was a little miracle.”

  “Kept you sane.”

  His eyes start to water.

  “Do you think Arno can do it?”

  “I don’t know. He’s practicing hard,” he says.

  I lean back on the deck furniture cushions.

  “I want God to do this one.”

  “I do, too.”

  He looks away. “I want to push him.”

  “Pardon me?” I ask, not sure I heard him correctly.

  “You still want to shoot me?”

  How can I answer that? I say nothing.

  He looks at me like he understands. I don’t even know if I understand. I just know that I know him better now than I did before, and don’t think that Tommy has to pay for the wolf.

  “Sometimes I come here because the plants make me feel like I’m coming to the Garden of Gethsemane, except everything has a price on it, and there’s no one staying up with me while I pray, and there’s soft rock playing—and I don’t know why, but that combination makes me—” he stops, chokes back some emotion “—beg.”

  He looks up, and I think, he’s searching my eyes for an answer. I know my eyes aren’t going to say anything, but I’m lost as you, I think. Or a silver bullet. That’s what I have for him, maybe all that I have

  I can hear Jimmy and Wayne entering through the sliding door. They’re talking about lures, and then they get quiet.

  “I’m not ready to leave just yet,” Tommy says to all of us when we stand around him. “I’m good here. Oh,” he adds. “I almost forgot.” He pulls my shotgun out from the floor on the other side of the chair. “I had it cleaned.”

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I say, knowing that I had cleaned it the night I snuck in on him writing that song, but I couldn’t tell him that.

  “You had a gun in Walmart in the gardening section?” Wayne says.

  “Montana is an open carry state,” Tommy says.

  “But that’s not something you see every day in Walmart. People could be frightened of you.”

  We all take a moment to look at each other.

  “Okay,” I say. “We’ll leave you here. You’ve got the other rent-a-car.”

  “I do.”

  We turn to go, and I looked around at all the plants and the people walking the labyrinth of aisles and things around us, slowly, pondering, and I hear the bell of the register ding and ding and ding.

  I turn back to him. “Do you want us to stay? You know, while you pray?”

  I think I catch him off guard. He chuckles, waves us off. “Thanks, but no. No, I’m okay. You don’t have to. I’ll be home soon.” He breathes in. “I gotta face the music tomorrow.”

  Wayne and Jimmy and I take our leave. On our way back, I notice how every person seemed to wake as I passed, turning from their wanting, their scanning, to watch us walk by. It’s the gun, I realize. It makes them see me. Makes us visible. They look us over, three men and a gun. I imagine that Tommy got the same stares. It makes me feel dangerous.

  Like a killer.

  And I don’t like it.

  >?

  It’s a short night for us. We don’t usually book concerts for the full moon nights, but our booking agent doesn’t know why, and sometimes she’ll just plant one on that day and we have to work with it. We’ve done it before. We just time it.

  Tonight’s full moon was set to rise at 9:10 pm. We had to be off the stage by 8:30, in the lobby signing autographs, and then out the door by 9. That wouldn’t be easy, except by moving the concert up to 6:30. And since it was a Sunday, we could do that, giving the audience the rest of Father’s Day to spend with each other.

  We typically had no opening act on nights like this. I would find myself wanting to watch the concert from the wings, and at intermission I’d go get the bus, park it in the back, have it ready for Tommy and Arno, leaving Wayne and Jimmy to play and jam with people after the concert was over.

  It’s June 20, and it’s an important night for the city of Billings. The mayor, a tall, lanky man with a moustache and wearing a western shirt takes the microphone. The crowd of about twelve thousand cheers. “We got some fine music for you tonight. Tinderbox!” More cheering, lasting for what seems like forever. I thought the guys would go on stage at that point. Usually they had a slightly longer introduction, but I’m glad it was short—this is no ordinary night.

  The mayor waits till the cheering dies. “Now, it’s also another special night. Six years ago this afternoon, we were hit with an EF2 tornado that ripped the roof right off this arena. One hundred and thirty-five mile per hour winds, that twister just sat over this arena for fifteen minutes. It destroyed where you all are sitting now. It ripped apart the Billings Dance Academy, Fas-Break Auto Glass was a skeleton of walls, tore up the laundromat and a hair salon. It toppled trees. It damaged homes and businesses. We declared a state of emergency because the damage was so severe. But you know what?”

  “WHAT?” the crowd calls out like they’re one person. They’d done this before.

  “Not one life was lost. Not one injury.”

  Cheers erupt from the audience again—I thought they’d never end. The mayor says, “We give praise to God for that day!” The noise rises like a wave, all over the arena. “He saved us from disaster! We lost things! But things can be replaced! Look around you! These things got replaced! You are sitting in the things that got replaced!”

  Wild yells and whistles for minutes. I look at my watch.

  “There were nearly four thousand people here the night before for an Outlaws football game. If it had happened the day before, people would have been killed. But the building was empty, by the grace of God, the building was empty!”

  The crowd was with him, almost speaking in chorus to the things he said now, like a great call-and-response song.

  “We lost things! We did not lose people! And we did not lose our faith! Tonight, to celebrate that miracle, to celebrate all miracles, we bring you the three-time Grammy Award-winning bluegrass band Tinderbox!” And the band members run on stage and grab their instruments—all but Tommy, who taps me on the arm, leans in, and says, “What you need is in the extra banjo case.”

  And then he runs on stage, and the lights have him, and he picks up his banjo and grabs the microphone. “Who wants a miracle?”

  I walk over, kneel down and open the banjo case. Inside is my gun, and a card with my name on it tape
d to the top of the inside of the case:

  It’s up to you. I don’t want you to miss this time. I know you had mercy last time. I know that’s what really happened. I know. This time, you can’t miss.

  I look behind me to the group singing, “Tonight, You’re Gonna Save Someone.”

  It’s then that I know something is very, very wrong.

  >?

  Tommy Burdan throws himself into this concert, probably thinking it would be his very last. Wayne and Eric and Jimmy played and harmonized, gonna save someone, gonna save someone. You can tell they believe it, too.

  Arno had assured us that he had it, though. He’d been practicing for weeks. “I can do this,” he said.

  Unfortunately for him, he had, to Jimmy’s shock, shaved the other half of his head, leaving only a mohawk.

  Which he’d dyed red yesterday. As red as a rooster.

  “Boy, what kind of fresh hell are you trying to get us into?” Jimmy said. “We run a respectable Christian bluegrass band.”

  Arno only smiled, “Aw, now, Jimmy, I give you a story. A little Celtic bad boy heathen in your midst. Who knows if they’re thinking you’ll convert me, or I’ll convert them. It’s charity or it’s danger,” he laughed. “Besides, you won’t care tomorrow.”

  Jimmy stopped and nodded, repeating, “I won’t care tomorrow.”

  I look at Arno now, dancing, the crowd going wild. He didn’t cover his arms; he’s wearing a jean jacket with the sleeves cut off, and his tattoos were dancing, too—Pan, Neptune, all those gods all over the stage, his music like fire, bow vibrating faster and faster, someone’s gonna get saved tonight, someone’s gonna get saved tonight.

  The crowd moves like an ocean of hands.

  I close the banjo case.

  Tonight, everything may depend on the battle between a shotgun and a fiddler.

  >?

  “What are you doing?” I ask Tommy when he comes off stage.

  “I’m gonna get me a miracle tonight,” he says.

  “What do you mean? What are you going to do? Why did you bring the gun here?”

  Tommy looks glassy eyed, like he’d seen the Risen Saviour on stage. “It’s all gonna be good tonight. You won’t need it really. I brought it just in case. You’ll be fine. Enjoy the concert.”