Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show (25 page)

He walked toward the truck, Jeremiah limping beside him. Allen knew of a vet down the road. Hopefully Luke could survive a detour to drop off Jeremiah. In the battle between man and angel, the dog had made his loyalties clear, and deserved whatever care could be provided.

Old Man Young already had the truck revved up. They had decided that Luke and Jeremiah would ride in the cab due to their injuries. Allen and Rachael would have to ride on the back. Rachael abandoned the rocking chair and pressed up next to Allen against the cab as the truck began to pitch and sway down the driveway. From the jumbled mounds of gear, she produced a heavy quilt and pulled it over them.

It was disturbingly intimate, to be sharing a blanket with a woman with whom he’d shared such an adventure. He’d not thought about women at all since Mary was taken. He had a lot on his mind, as he watched his house burn, filling the heavens with a plume of sparks and smoke. He was, in the front of his mind, still trying to figure out what the night’s events meant. But something in the back of his mind was more concerned with whether or not he should put his arm around Rachael, who was leaning her head on his shoulder.

Rachael, her voice soft and caring, said, “I’m so sorry about your house.”

Allen shrugged. It was what it was. He knew, deep in his gut, that the chapter of his life the house represented was over. The house for him represented magical thinking—the notion that there were things that could happen outside the laws of science. He was almost glad to be rid of it.

“Things will be all right,” he said. To his own ears, his voice was tired and thin, battered by stress and smoke. His lungs felt sandpapered, and his hands were starting to blister. To show that he meant the reassuring words, he put his arm around Rachael and drew her closer. It felt right. More importantly, the world felt right. The night had brought him a newfound faith in the essential sensibleness of the universe.

“Can I ask you a question?” Rachael said, her face inches from his.

“Sure.”

“Why did you have that circle drawn on your floor?”

Allen rolled his eyes. “It’ll sound stupid.”

“What?”

“I was trying to summon an angel.”

“Guess it worked,” said Rachael.

Allen’s mouth went dry. Rachael’s arrival with the cherub had just been a coincidence, hadn’t it? Old Man Young turned the truck onto the road and gunned the engine. Allen pulled the quilt tighter around them, to fend off the chill night air.

Afterword by James Maxey

When I wrote this story, my girlfriend Laura Herrmann was dying. Her cancer had spread to her lungs and liver; the radiation reports described the tumors as “innumerable.” Still, I couldn’t quite grasp why the tumors were killing her. Her oncologist would tell us gravely that a specific tumor had doubled from one millimeter to two. On a ruler, two millimeters is tiny. What did it matter if she had things smaller than houseflies growing in her lungs? Lungs are big things, right? So why couldn’t Laura breathe?

Four months after Laura passed away, I went to see “Bodies: The Exhibition.” This is a traveling museum of human cadavers that have been treated with plastic to preserve them. They are then flayed to various stages and posed to reveal the inner workings of the body. I finally saw an actual human lung. It was attached to a woman whose facial muscles were hauntingly similar to Laura’s. It was easy to imagine flesh over them once more. Beneath the face and neck, I was able to study adult female lungs. I had imagined them filling up most of the space under the rib cage. In fact, they are actually squashed up rather high in the chest. And they are small. I could easily have held a lobe in my palm. Suddenly, the threat of tiny tumors made more sense. There isn’t a lot of space to start with. This was further driven home when I studied a diseased lung riddled with cancer. While Laura struggled with her disease, I would have given anything to have X-ray vision; I wanted to know what was happening inside her. At last, I could see. I had been imagining the tumors as distinct objects, not really a part of her. Instead, the preserved tumors were the body’s own tissues twisting and knotting themselves. There isn’t a clear division between the disease and the healthy tissue.

When I left the exhibit, many of my questions about Laura’s death had been answered. I felt a sense of closure. It wasn’t the end of my grief, but it was a foot on the path to that end. It occurred to me that I’d written about a similar moment months ago, in “To Know All Things That Are in the Earth.” Allen, the protagonist, must learn to find order in a world where all he knew has been shattered. I identify with Allen when, in his frustration to understand, he plunges his hands inside the cherub’s corpse and begins to root around for answers. I wanted so badly to know what was going on inside Laura. Allen finds his path to understanding by asking “how” after too long banging his head against “why.” I found a measure of peace through a similar mental shift. “Why” may forever remain just outside the knowable. “How” lies within human understanding.

Jimmy Nesbitt
sat in the dark of a new moon on the Lincoln City beach and listened.

No wind.

No obnoxious birds.

No obnoxious lovers strolling.

Just Jimmy and his sound gear, capturing the roll of waves, the susurration of water over sand, the ticking of air bubbles popping as the water retreated back toward the ocean. It was the same sound he’d heard a hundred times before…until he detected something more, buried deep in the white noise of waves.

He looked around, irritated, expecting to see someone stomping through the sand with a portable stereo in one hand on the way to a midnight swim.

Nothing.

Even the occasional sweep of headlights had ceased, leaving the darkness unbroken and tranquil.

He was alone.

Jimmy reached quickly for his frequency filter, dialing the luminous knobs to try to isolate the pitch he thought he heard. His heart actually pounded in his chest—something music hadn’t done for him in quite some time.

And it totally surprised him.

The romance—if it had ever really been there—had long gone out of this job. Recording the ocean had been the only gig he could get once he quit session work in Los Angeles and Nashville, where musicianship had been replaced by packaging and sex appeal. If the market for
Pacific Oceanscapes
—the project that would take him up the entire West Coast—weren’t so lucrative, he could never have endured the mindless sound-tracking of splashing water.

He narrowed in on the frequency, methodically muting levels where he could not hear the strange sound through his headphones. The rumble of whitecaps turning over on themselves fell away; the sizzle of water creeping up wet-packed sand disappeared as well. He kept at it, eager to identify this new tone, something he hadn’t heard on any other beach south to San Diego.

After several more adjustments, his parametric equalizer began to spike only in the +10 megahertz zone.

Jimmy pressed the ear cups of his Sony Pro Studio reference phones tighter against his head, sealing out further noise.

He gave a smile.

No mistake.

A trumpet.

Another sound engineer might not have known what he was hearing. But Jimmy had spent several years mixing studio jazz albums in New Orleans in the years before New Age labels started throwing money at French Quarter musicians and recording the always hilarious “light jazz.”

He knew from a trumpet.

That wasn’t all, though.

If a little fuzzy through the processing he had to impose to create the discreet horn sound, the tone perfectly matched a Gillespie model horn—something only the men playing on Bourbon Street or in swank Manhattan dinner clubs in the early thirties would have used. Still, a badly soldered connection, an errant grain of sand, any number of things could have caused the tone.

But not when it moved in and out of melody.

Jimmy sat, compressing his phones against his ears, tweaking his EQ, recording snippets of what he was coming to think of as a song, then playing them back against the real-time music.

They were different.

The song seemed to live in the very rattle and hum of the ocean itself.

What the hell had he found? And could he sell it?

Watery light
dawned behind Jimmy in the east. He’d spent all night listening, recording, filling three hard drives with the unique tonal aberration. Life stirred around him, folks walking pets, a few morning runners. Still no one carrying a CD player or child’s musical toy. And certainly no one with an instrument, let alone a Gillespie model.

If nothing more, he wanted to know where the music originated. Through the night he’d listened, trying to make sense of the melodies and rhythms. Despite the enchantment of it—or maybe because of it—any form or structure eluded him.

But the thrill that he might have captured something previously unheard raced through his blood. Sound men lived for such discoveries, and extracting it from a remote beach in a sleepy seaside town only made the mystery and improbability greater.

Then sun struck the water, rays of light spearing the thick Pacific mist…and the music ended.

The abrupt departure seemed as much a mystery as the sound to begin with. It didn’t matter; he had it on file.

Jimmy packed up his equipment, and in the space of moments had left behind the endless turn of waves and dunes of sand for the tarmac of Highway 101.

A mile north he braked hard to a stop beside a yellow marquee announcing the sale of harmonicas, two for ten dollars. Max’s Music Maven was a converted home with two music rooms and an adjoining apartment. Jimmy had met Vincent, the proprietor, just yesterday. His store hours written on a paper plate taped inside the window told him Vince opened at 10:00
A.M.
This couldn’t wait three hours, so he rounded the side and found a door decorated with an endorsement sticker that read, “If it ain’t Gibson, it ain’t nothing.”

This was the place.

Jimmy began knocking, and didn’t stop.

Moments later, the door swung inward. Vincent stood in boxers, his pale skin stretched impossibly tight over ribs and shoulders. Thin, scraggly hair hung down in eyes that squinted in the strengthening light.

“We ain’t open, man. Come back later.”

“It can’t wait,” Jimmy said. “I need to ask you a few questions.”

“Ah, crap, you’re that New Age ocean guy. Man, I’m not having this conversation at seven
A.M.
I told you yesterday, I’m not going to carry mood music in my place. Try the Dirty Lap Dog or something. I got a rep.”

Jimmy would have smiled to hear it if he didn’t have important questions to ask. “Never mind that. Listen, I’ve got something I want you to hear. It’s not the same as yesterday.”

“You’re some piece of work. I don’t let my lady in this early, and you think I’m letting you in?”

Unable to hold it back any longer, Jimmy blurted, “I just recorded your little beach at the end of the D River.” He waited until the aging hippie looked at him straight. “And I captured the sound of a trumpet playing a tune.”

If the hippie had shown Jimmy any other response, he might have gotten back in his VW Beetle and driven away. What he saw instead was a suspicious eye peering from between kinky strands of hair.

That was all he needed to see. “You know about it? What the hell is it?”

The hippie left the door standing wide and retreated into the shadows of his one-room apartment. Taking it as an invite, Jimmy gladly followed.

Vincent poured some coffee from a pot still bearing the 7-Eleven insignia, which made perfect sense since the stainless steel coffeemaker it sat in bore the same logo. To the left in the corner, a mattress lay flat on the ground, sheets and blankets balled up on one side. A Stratocaster lay beside the bed, a litter of picks strewn around it. The scent of mildew and cat litter mingled in the air with yesterday’s cigarettes. Vince lifted his coffee mug in the direction of a door at the back of the room and led Jimmy in to the music shop.

The main showroom—nothing more than a fifteen-by-fifteen deal with a small selection of guitars and amplifiers—stood in shadow. It was here yesterday that Jimmy had met Vince, this holdover from the sixties telling him that he didn’t carry digital media for Jimmy’s hard-disk recorder. Vince had added that electronic gadgets weren’t real music anyway. The flower child hadn’t bothered to show Jimmy the second music room.

Just three steps up to a second door, they passed into an elevated space smelling of dusty wood.

Filled with pianos.

At one time, it might have been a living room, maybe even a dining room. Now it had been stripped of everything but the floor planks. Even the walls were little more than studs and framing. This space wasn’t about anything but the piano-forte, the clavier, and one irreparable harpsichord.

Dust lay in blankets a quarter inch deep over the tops of everything. As Jimmy and Vince stirred the air in their passage, it hardly moved the dust; the weight of time made a fabric of the accumulated motes.

The room smelled of antique wood, of metal casings and broken strings. It was like a graveyard of pianos packed so tight that only two aisles could be walked from one end of the space to the other.

“You only sell guitars and pianos?” Jimmy asked.

“And harmonicas,” Vince replied.

Jimmy reached one end of the room. “I came here to ask…”

The words died in his throat. To the left, sitting on a piano bench facing a windowless wall, was a trumpet case propped open. Inside, a silver horn bearing the dents and scrapes of use lay cloaked in the same fall of dust that coated everything.

A Gillespie model.

Vince came up beside him. “Been here since I bought the place in ’69. Old Doc Thurber told me just to leave it be. Didn’t much matter to me, I don’t care for brass.”

Jimmy looked up at the man. “This isn’t the instrument I heard. Can’t be. I just finished recording it less than ten minutes ago. This thing hasn’t been played in years.” He ran a finger along the tubing, clearing a path across the dull finish.

“You’ll need to keep an open mind about that,” Vince said. “Things are different on the Pacific. Stuff has a way of being less and more than you make of it. That’s no lie.”

“I’d like to buy it,” Jimmy blurted. “How much?”

“Ain’t for sell,” the hippie said. “Not to you. I can see the money in your eyes. Saw it yesterday when you came through talking about selling us the ocean on a CD.” He laughed. “You realize I just need to step outside to get that for free.”

“I’m not going to argue with you. What about five hundred for the horn?”

Vincent’s eyebrows lifted, but Jimmy soon realized it had nothing to do with interest in the five hundred. “I won’t take your money,” the guy began, scratching his nipple. “But since you seem sincere, I’ll steer you one port more. There’s a small theater up Nelscott way, the West End Theater. Judd Jensen is always around. Oldest guy in town. He was here when this was still getting some lip.” He pointed at the Gillespie horn. “Tell Judd I showed you the trumpet. He’ll know what to say.”

Jimmy spent several moments looking at the instrument in its stiffened velvet case, then strode the boards back toward his car. The very thought of the sounds in the waves caused him to quicken his pace.

Something about those songs.

The West
End Theater was closed until 6:00
P.M.

Jimmy spent the day trying to duplicate his findings at the beach, annoyed at the bystanders asking him a lot of stupid questions. He actually threw a bit of sand at a few pesky kids to shoo them away.

But the trumpet didn’t seem to accompany the waves in the daylight.

When dusk fell, Jimmy went to the theater, bought a ticket to a delightful rendition of
You Can’t Take It with You,
then lingered in his seat while the other three patrons wandered out.

When the rumblings of stage props ceased, a man with thick white hair stepped out onto the stage beneath the single bulb that burned above it.

“You waiting for me?” the man asked.

“If you’re Mr. Jensen.”

“I am.”

“My name is Jimmy Nesbitt. Vincent said I could talk to you about the trumpet,” Jimmy replied.

The old man stared out on the small theater, deep-set eyes hiding whatever thoughts they might have betrayed. “That so?” He titled his head back, staring into the weak glare of the light. “You know what that is?”

“No, sir.”

“Ghost light,” the man said. “Every theater leaves the one bulb burning on the boards to keep the wrong kinds of spirits away.”

“You think I’m a spirit?”

“Are you?” The head lowered again, leveling an uncomfortable stare at Jimmy.

“Not the last time I checked,” Jimmy joked. The humor fell flat on the empty theater.

The old fellow didn’t laugh, but came to the edge of the stage and out of the immediate glare. Now he was nothing more than a silhouette. “Then tell me what business you have with the trumpet, and I’ll tell you if I can help.”

“Just want to buy it.”

“Why?”

Jimmy suddenly felt wary of sharing his story. Perhaps he was afraid people would laugh, perhaps he was afraid they wouldn’t. “It’s an unusual item,” he said. “Is it yours?”

The man smiled then. At least Jimmy thought it looked like a smile; in the dark it was hard to tell. “What’s it sound like to you?” Jensen asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind, then.” The old man pivoted and had almost exited stage left when he stopped and turned to look back at Jimmy. “You a musician?” he asked.

“Used to be. Now I work on the other side of the board.” Jimmy began to get irritated. “Since when does anybody need to know how to play an instrument in order to buy one? No one would ever learn how that way.”

The guy nodded, but not, Jimmy thought, in agreement to what he’d said. “It’s been a long time,” the man answered cryptically. “Maybe this time we’ll get it right.”

“Get what right? What are you talking about?” Jimmy got out of his seat and began moving toward the aisle.

“It was 1938!” the man yelled. The boom of his voice shattered the theater quiet, freezing Jimmy midstride. “Vaudeville lost its luster, and talented acts were starving in the streets of New York. Some died, believing movies were a passing fancy, wasting away in tenements waiting for venues to reopen at a nickel a seat. Others went upstate, taking their acts to resorts, working for room and board and lying in the beds of the rich for a little extra on the side.”

The old man’s hair began to shift with the trembling of his own impassioned words. “A few got out. A few went south, touring nightclubs and bars along the eastern seaboard. Some came west.” He stopped.

Jimmy stood at the edge of the aisle, ready to either rush the man, feeling that he knew more than he admitted, or run from the theater, sure the coot was crazy as a loon. He did neither.

The old man continued. “George Henry found this place when his trumpet lost its appeal to both vaudeville and the New York uptown jazz community. But no one cared to listen to a horn out here, not for money. So George set to music of a different kind, learning the sounds of the earth, the sounds of nature, writing it down, learning the patterns.” Something entered the old man’s voice then. Fear, maybe. He whispered, the sound of it carrying in the empty hall. “There’s power in that, my friend. The power to undo. George learned it sure enough.”