The Angels of Our Better Beasts Page 8

  “I need you to tell me what you’re planning on doing? Tell me we’re going to the bus at nine.”

  “Whatever you need to hear,” he says. Damn him.

  I grab him by the shoulders. He pulls out of my hands, says, “It all comes down to tonight. Everything gets fixed either way.”

  “If you’re thinking—”

  He pats my shoulder. “I got this. Can you feel it, Carl? Did you ever feel it so strong? Twelve thousand people with such gratitude—the air is thick with thankfulness, with joy, with miracle—it’s intoxicating.” He widens his eyes, knowing that word would hit me. “Yes, intoxicating. You can get drunk on that kind of prayer and belief. But it’s not a bad drunk; it’s a good drunk. Hope is a belief that lifts you, Carl. And I’m being lifted tonight. The boys are all being lifted. Arno is amazing! The beat. Did you see when Eric brought out the bodhran? Miracles are happening out there. It’s not going to be the end of something. It’s gonna be the beginning. You won’t need the gun. You won’t need it, but tonight you’re going to witness the power of God.”

  He’s drunk all right.

  He walks away, and I go to Jimmy. “He’s planning something, Jimmy. He’s going to do something stupid. He thinks God is going to save him.”

  Jimmy beams at me. “I feel it, too.”

  God, no.

  “If you were a spiritual man, Carl, you’d feel it, too. A little hope can build like a wave, and we’ve got waves out there. Maybe he’s right. Maybe Arno’s gonna save us tonight, and we’ll be back to normal. I don’t want to be frightened. I’m tired of being uncertain. It’s exhausting.”

  “But I think he’s planning on turning right here on stage.”

  “Naah,” he assures me. “That would be stupid. We’ll be off stage by eight thirty, no doubt. I’ll walk off the stage. I’ll bring him with me. Stop worrying. Sometimes I think you just need to believe more in us.” He slaps me on the arm. “We’re stronger than you think.”

  He isn’t listening; he’s drunk, too.

  “He put my gun on stage, Jimmy.”

  He just laughs.

  Wayne and Eric and Arno are snacking on salami and cheese and fruit, laughing, drinking water. They’re feeling so good.

  I’m feeling worried.

  Jimmy catches me before they go back on stage. “I’ll talk to him. I’ll make sure,” he says. “I’ll close it all down if he tries. If I have to break all my strings, okay?”

  They’re back on stage before you know it for the second half, and the crowd pulses like a field of sound. Arno pulls his bow back, scraping across the fiddle, one note, fluttered—a minor key. He scrapes it across again, and the crowd erupts, because Amelia had always done this song slow, but the ache, the ache that Arno put into it—and then bam, Eric hits the side of his guitar for a beat, and suddenly it’s a faster, more desperate version of “Valley of Darkness” than anyone in the crowd had heard before.

  Going down, going down, going through, going through.

  I leave and get the bus, bringing it ’round to the back.

  Tommy had said he was going to push God for a miracle.

  When the crowd is like that you can believe anything. Could I believe that God would contain him? Does Tommy want me to shoot him on stage? I sit in the bus, wondering if I could do that. Could I shoot him on stage?

  I could shoot a werewolf on stage. I imagine that; I imagine him turning into the beast. I think of my video, the one I made in secret, where Tommy’s face stretched into a muzzle with teeth, where his eyes lost all humanity. I knew seeing those eyes—he would kill us all. I could shoot that.

  I get out of the bus.

  Eight ten.

  I walk back in and they’re playing “Walk with Me, O Saviour,” the music flowing over everyone like water. Tommy has the mandolin out, playing it like a love song. I look over at the spare banjo case and my heart thumps.

  I know the set. “Walk With Me, O Savior”; “River Jordan”; and then the “Fiery Furnace Bluegrass Stomp,” which is typically their closer, with an encore of “Going to Heaven with a Chariot in Overdrive.”

  But something happens in “River Jordan.”

  Tommy appears to get lost.

  He has the microphone during the instrumental part, not strumming on his banjo, and he starts talking to the crowd: “Lord God, we’re with you tonight, deep in the waters of the River Jordan.” His hand goes up, and thousands of hands rise with him. “But we can’t get across. We’re waiting on a miracle.” The rest of them keep playing, just repeating the song. “We’re waiting to see your face, feel your hand help us cross. We believe tonight in miracles. We believe that you’re with us. And you can help us cross this deep, deep, powerful river.”

  Eight thirty.

  I stare at him, but he has his eyes closed. I stare at Jimmy; Jimmy and the rest of them are so into what’s happening they might as well be alone on stage.

  We have two more songs after this, gang. There’s no time for an altar call. No time to bring people forward to confess their—

  “Lord, help us cross, help us cross this river, the water—it’s taking over, it’s coming up over our shoulders. If you’ve felt like the whole world is running over your shoulders, if the problems of this life are about to pull you under, walk through this river with me, walk up here to the edge of the stage because we’re gonna pray.”

  And they start coming down from their seats. Hundreds of people—hundreds and hundreds of them. They leave their seats to the music, and they flow down like streams.

  Eight forty. They’re still coming, and Tommy is still speaking to them. Hundreds of people with their hands up, their faces tilted to catch the light as if it is the warmth of Jesus.

  “Ask him for his hand; ask him to lead you through the River Jordan, because if he’ll just give you his fingertips, you can make it. You need that hand. Ask for it tonight; ask for the real hand of God tonight. You are not asking for ways to feel good; you are not asking for some warm feeling; you are asking for that hand.”

  He’s completely off script. Eight fifty.

  “We don’t want nice thoughts, Lord. We don’t want wish fulfillment. You saved your people in the fiery furnace. You saved Daniel in the Lion’s Den. You saved David against Goliath. You gave Sarah and Hannah children when they’d lost all hope. You did things so long ago. You were more than a whisper in church from a friend, more than a sermon, God, you were real, and we’re asking for real.”

  Now the boys are looking at me. Jimmy nods. Eric looks like he isn’t agreeing with the theology.

  But the people, oh God, the people, they swarm around the stage. Still pouring down from the top deck, still coming through the entrances at every side. Their hands up and their hopes high, they want something real from God.

  Nine pm. Ten minutes! I go to the banjo case. Don’t make me do this . . .

  Tommy is so far out on stage their hands are almost all the way around him.

  “You have real people with real problems asking for real support, Lord. I know it’s difficult to answer every need, but we’re asking for a miracle. We’re asking for you to save us.”

  Nine oh-four. I have the gun out. I have it pointed at Tommy. All I can see in my mind is the video—his body becoming a monster—and it was about to happen here, in Billings, Montana.

  Arno sees me first. Sees that I’m pointing the gun straight at Tommy, and he steps in the way, seamlessly changing the song to “Wondrous Love.”

  Tommy’s hand is in the air. “I’m gonna push you, God. We’re gonna push you tonight. We don’t mean to be disrespectful. We don’t mean to ask for too much, but it’s always wait, it’s always be patient, and we’re drowning. We’re going to ask you for a miracle.”

  He’s threatening everyone with his change unless God himself stops it.

  Jimmy’s eyes go as big
as silver dollars when he hears the song, and then he turns and sees the gun pointed at Tommy. He looks at his watch and stops playing, walking over to Eric, who also stops. Wayne, thinking there’s a Dobro solo going on, jumps into the empty soundscape with his whining.

  Tommy falls to his knees, the microphone still in hand, his back arched, his face begging to God.

  “If you don’t give us a miracle tonight, we will all die.”

  “Wondrous Love” comes out of Arno’s fiddle as sweet and soul-searching as I’ve ever heard it.

  God, Tommy lurches. His arms crack. I can hear it.

  Arno, still playing, starts singing the song.

  “What wondrous love is this? Oh my soul, oh my soul.”

  Oh, get outta my way, Arno.

  People, now surrounding the stage, their hands lifted to Heaven, sing, what wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of Bliss to bear the dreadful curse for my soul.

  They’ve picked it up—all twelve thousand.

  I can’t see what’s happening to Tommy. If he turns here in front of these thousands of people, he’ll kill more than two. I move toward the group, walking with my gun, still protected in the shadows. I weave to get a shot, thinking of Jessica Hawley, thinking of Amelia, thinking of Sarah and Cleo. Thinking in a flash that this is my whiteboard—that if I make this shot, I could balance out everything I’d done; and that if I make this shot, I could never take it back. You’re asking me, God, to kill the star of our group, the man giving hope to millions in front of the world.

  When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down, oh, my soul, the crowd sings as they surround Tommy, on his knees, his face turned to the floor.

  Tommy’s face stretches; his muzzle, his claws, his teeth—and suddenly I have a shot.

  I fire, a crack so loud no one could miss it. The bullet shoots out at the moment the boys join in harmony with the song. And that’s when the miracle happens—the one I see in front of me.

  The bullet stops in mid-air.

  Later, the boys would say they never heard the shot. But I could see it, this little silver bullet hang there, spinning and spinning.

  Tommy is on the ground, as if he’s been shot. The song continues to rise, the whole arena singing. He does not look changed; he looks human. I run on stage. I had to see. I run past the spinning bullet, into the lights with my gun pointed to the ceiling. I run through the group at Tommy’s side. Could he have forced God into a miracle?

  As soon as I’m on stage, the crowd gasps, and their singing starts to falter, to stutter, just Tinderbox keeping the song going now. People must have wondered who I am and why I have a gun. I turn Tommy over. He has a face. A human face. Not the face I thought I saw a moment ago when I fired. I look back at the bullet and it’s still there, spinning. I can tell. It’s the only thing catching the light in the darkness of the wings.

  Tommy looks up at me and suddenly scuttles away.

  I put down the gun, put my hands up and in front of me, fingers wide, even in this crouched position. “It’s okay, Tommy. It’s okay. You got your miracle.”

  He looks from me to Jimmy and he jumps, dodging away from Jimmy.

  Eric tries to help him stand and he falls backwards away from him. “No!” he cries.

  The room is silent now.

  Wayne says, quietly so we can just hear it, “Look at you. It’s past nine ten. You’re the same. You forced a miracle. A frickin’ perfect miracle.”

  I stand and walk toward Tommy, and Jimmy and Eric are there, kneeling around him, whispering, “It’s okay.”

  He looks at Jimmy, whispers, “You’re all werewolves. All of you. All of you. You’ve all changed. I look at you—” He puts his hands in front of his face and he cries, and we try to pull him to his feet but he resists. “Tommy, Tommy, it’s Jimmy.”

  It’s Eric.

  It’s Carl.

  “No,” he yells. He gets up, breaking through our arms, and runs from us to the edge of the stage, as if he might leap into the crowd. There people are waiting, their hands outstretched, their expressions wondering what was happening. God loves you, Tommy. God sees your pain, Tommy Burdan. We can help you through your River Jordan.

  He stops, recoils, yelling with his hands out over the crowd, as if he were blessing them. “Oh God! Oh God. The entire room! The entire room! Everyone, everywhere! You’re all werewolves!”

  And you can hear the bullet drop to the floor.

  Old Lions

  If his mother were around, she’d be the heavy here, the one to tell him he can’t take the gun and shoot the old lions. But it’s me leaning against his bedroom door, eyeing the .22 on the bed—hardly the instrument to take down African lions, but enough to kill the two roaming the hill country of West Texas.

  “Where did you hear it?”

  “Tom told me.”

  “He doesn’t know shit.” I want to punch his friend, not my sixteen-year-old.

  “Well, I’m going to see for myself.” He finds the cartridges in his top dresser drawer.

  “You planning on shooting one?”

  “If he gets too close, yeah.” My son sits on the bed and cartridges roll down the slope his weight creates.

  I find myself leaning in. “You want to prove you can take a lion.”

  He concentrates while loading. “Maybe I’ll put him out of his misery.”

  My son looks up, sporting a face soon to be on the cover of the local newspaper: Boy Kills Lion. No “old” in that headline. Not ragged or tattered or bag of bones or flapping floor rug. No such thing as an old lion for a story.

  >?

  The lions came when I was seven. A Mexican circus ambled through with wild animals in a big yellow tent. No one knew if it had been negligence or compassion on the part of the circus, but two of the male lions “escaped” into a vacant canyon. The circus owners conducted a very short search, as good as any performance under the tent, and then they gave up. They let the tent drop to the dust, but a few of us boys stayed at the lip of the canyon, watching for signs of anything untamed. Our fathers asked to rope off the whole canyon. “Nothing you’ll want to see down there, sons. Leave them be.” But we heard roars at night through windows our fathers hadn’t shut.

  By morning, we’d slipped into the crevices to explore our new Serengeti, seeking glimpses of pulsing flanks among the rocks, chasing after any distant, echoed roar. They leaped on heifers wandering into the canyon; we’d seen the buzzards skulking, loitering sideways around the carcasses. They drank from a thin stream of water tangled in white stones; we’d found their footprints, side by side in the mud.

  And then, one morning, we found them. Two man-eating killers dozing against each other in the blue shade of a boulder, their manes caked in rust-coloured dust. One of them lifted his head and licked the other’s ear. The other stretched his white neck back, his head lolling gently on a familiar stomach, and let himself be washed. For twenty minutes we sat there against the chalky canyon walls and watched.

  Then one of us said, We could take them, easy. We beat the boy up, there against the rocks. I remember some blood from his lip on the ground under my hand.

  >?

  Today, my son swaggers past my hands, a half-smile on his lip, a grass burr for me in his gaze.

  I tell him, “You can’t give some people the truth. They do stupid things with it. Just like you can’t give some people whiskey—even if there’s nothing wrong with whiskey itself.”

  “Guess you would know about that,” he says, swinging open the screen door.

  >?

  I stand on the porch watching a pink sky. A hundred yards ahead the earth cracks open an entrance into which my son descended, a gash that deepens until the canyon walls are twenty feet high. The sky has drained of colour when I hear the shot. The second shot makes me sit down on the porch. I can’t go back in. I’ll wait
here until he gets back, and I won’t yell at him. He’ll be upset. He’ll be upset because he missed a lion, or because he shot and killed it. I have to comfort him either way. And if he drags something home, or comes to fetch me to help him cart it back, I will not remind him about the other lion, now alone. I’ll squat down and look closely at the lion in repose. I’ll note its large paws, its worthy struggle, its mighty head at rest.

  “That’s a fine lion, son,” I rehearse.

  The Moon Over Tokyo Through Fall Leaves

  Yumi’s husband was the eleventh person she texted the night his plum wine won gold at the Tasters Guild International. She typed, “Gold. Marconi’s.” This was nine pm. He wouldn’t show up. Marconi’s bar was crowded, with small lamps at every table illuminating faces from below. On the karaoke stage, pink, white, and yellow lights coloured the singers. She’d come with her husband’s coworkers, both her own age, but she felt guilty of the garishness. She could see it all through her husband’s eyes, and this was why he wouldn’t come. She remembered where she and Masato used to sit, and how he sang, “I see trees of green, red roses too,” how he closed his eyes, put his hand out over the crowd. Now, he’d close his eyes if she told him how much fun she still had here.

  On stage, Taro sang “Wake Me up Before you Go-Go,” and the two women cheered every time he found the melody. He got into it, charging the edge of the stage, his flat, blocky face exploding with emotion. He loosened his tie. He cocked his hips. The women laughed and clapped. Yumi knew what her husband’s excuse was—that he didn’t come because he was strengthening the evocation in the wine. But the wine was fine. It did win an award. Maybe he wouldn’t want to see them like this. She stood up suddenly, in the middle of Taro’s song, and cheered.

  Though it was their celebration, they weren’t allowed to drink Masato’s wine. Time-Wines weren’t served in public places, more so to protect the customers from theft and date rape, and the establishment from lawsuits. But every staff member who knew about the Kuri no Yumi label celebrated their win tonight with “normal” drinks on the house, the kind, of course, that could leave you wasted and riding home in a cab—so Yumi wondered what the difference was anyway. That night, she ripped out a steely version of “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” pointing the microphone out the neon-lit front window on every open beat in the song.