by Tom Rich
Right now “those eyes” loved how her Urban Mountain Girl Chic contrasted with the Designer Label/Thrift Store Mishmash the rest of them couldn’t leave alone.
Screw ’em! Aly Roarke stomps out her own path.
And there stood her reward on the stage: the man melding the dance floor into a single writhing mass with the flame of his guitar.
The music kicked up a notch. A spotlight focused on Blue. He reared back, held his guitar high, then eased forward to wrap up “Ain’t Comin’ Back This Time” with his usual flourish.
The final note hung in the barroom, then faded with the dimming stage lights.
“You’re up, girl,” said Trish from behind the bar. She slid one of her infamous Tailgaters against Aly’s left hand.
“Finally.” Aly took a deep breath, exhaled. “A soundtrack for my life.” She grabbed the necks of Blue’s three Heinekens with her right hand and launched herself from the bar with a high step and a shove of the elbows. She paused, took a sip from her Tailgater, then made her way slowly into the crowd and toward the stage.
All of Night Town went dark.
Aly froze.
Was a power failure wiping out the single number of her debut?
A spot clicked on from above. The beam exposed a dark-haired girl standing at the far end of the stage.
A second light hit Blue. He held out a hand. “To complete our circle,” he said.
The dark-haired girl took a step forward, then another, dragging her light, each step a hard heel knocking on wooden boards. She stopped, inches from Blue, took a handful of long, black hair from her shoulder and flipped it back.
They kissed.
Except for the cold drinks in her hands, Aly went numb.
The stage-kiss lingered.
Several people slowly clapped. Others joined in.
Blue’s drummer raised his sticks overhead to gain control of the tempo.
All of Night Town fell into unison, save one.
The dark-haired girl turned to the mike just as Blue swung his guitar off his hip. “Exiled,” she announced, and the band kicked into the tune that Aly was going to sing to—one that she’d written lyrics for titled “Back in Time.”
Throw the damned Heinekens at Blue, was Aly’s next thought. But who would notice? The band, the singer, everyone on the dance floor was locked together in the music. And Trish was busy with a rush on the bar.
The crowd started to spin. Or Aly had turned from the stage. She wasn’t sure. Red lights spelling EXIT drew closer, so she’d turned from the stage.
Stig, the front door bouncer, said something.
Then Aly was outside in the balmy, late-spring air.
The sidewalks thronged with college students pumped by alcohol and the end of the school year. Someone wanted to talk; Aly didn’t know who he was. He stuck something in her hand as she brushed past.
She bolted onto McMillan Avenue. Two cars screeched and swerved to miss her, then swerved to miss each other. One driver screamed at her. Students shrieked and laughed.
Aly flicked a dismissive wave, crossed Calhoun and charged down Clifton Avenue, the soles of her hiking boots slapping out a tempo of rage-strangling-the-blues.
Two miles later Aly found herself standing on the Ludlow Viaduct, gazing at the late night traffic below tearing up and down Interstate 75.
Somewhere along the line she must have dropped the dime into her “Soundtrack of Human Misery,” because filling her head was Lead Belly crooning “Goodnight Irene.” Why that song, Aly had no idea. The one-two-three, one-two-three cadence of Lead Belly’s guitar abraded her sense of rhythm. And his voice—so ragged yet clear—mocked her abilities as a songwriter to string together an arc of lyrics graceful enough to span the wide chasm between ragged and clear.
Aly shook off Lead Belly. She needed her own song.
“Northbound!” Those were the vehicles on I 75 leading bullets of fire as they rounded out of sight over Mitchell Avenue. She leaned forward and clutched the chain link rising from the concrete guardrail. “Southbound!” Those appearing from around the same curve, chasing points of ice and disappearing beneath her feet. Tears welled. The highway blurred into ribbons of red and white.
Aly shook the chain link. “I can do this.” She tightened her grip. “Six lanes. Lanes. The hurt rains down.” She rolled her hips, seeking a rhythm. “Lanes, lanes, the pain rains down.” She rolled her hips the opposite direction. “Six lanes. Pain rains—”
A horn blared. Aly heard shouts from a car racing down the viaduct. “Ass” and “walking” were the only words audible. Obnoxious college boys bar hopping between Clifton and Northside. She turned and hurled a fierce, “Fuck you! Cars are killing the planet!” The hanging bumper sparked when the car bottomed onto Hamilton Avenue.
Aly turned back to the interstate. The same procession of lights, the same mad flight, but now the song she’d nearly had was gone. She gave the fence another shake, then continued down the viaduct.
She stopped, twenty yards along, when a single lamp eased around the curve at Mitchell and burned a hole into the night: a freight train, one notch down the hill from I-75. “Inbound, are you, Mr. Rolling Thunder?” Despite her christening the train moved toward her without a sound. “Yo! Woody Guthrie! Make those rails sing!” Aly pressed her forehead against the fence. “You’re awfully quiet tonight.”
Something so large moving in silence seemed unnatural. She craved for a spike of rail-yard steel on steel to ring out and pierce her heart. Couldn’t the world provide at least that single note for the soundtrack of her life? All she got was auto-wash from the interstate.
The green of a traffic light from the other side of the Millcreek caught the side of the first boxcar. Spray painted graffiti flared up like a comic book shout. Aly leaned into the fence. “All this to someone else’s lyrics. How perfect.”
She let out a sigh. “Why’d I give up on Cultural Integration Services thinking I could write songs?” She had traded in her social activism to be a guitarist’s muse; forsaken the concerned humanist seeking the light of day to become a hedonistic child of the night. And now that path had her standing on a bridge, talking to herself.
The faint note of a lone bird traveling the night reached Aly. She caught a fleeting glimpse as the bird soared over the valley then disappeared over the hill to her right—an unimpressive mound tucked amid the grander Seven Hills of Cincinnati.
In her next breath, Aly saw how the interstate and the train tracks and the Millcreek all wrapped around the hill in the same graceful arc. Each level contributed to an unexpected harmony of motion: the headlights and taillights in continuous tension as they looped in opposite directions; the blacker-than-night locomotive creeping forward like a low-slung predator; and the traffic light, now casting amber on the Millcreek, its soft glow shimmering on the water.
The vision falling into place cued the reprise of Lead Belly’s “Goodnight Irene.” Now, in the rags of his voice, Aly heard the man’s sorrow over the meaner circumstances of life, and in its clarity, his method for channeling his story into everyone’s.
Aly felt herself standing in the rain of creation.
More shouting.
And the fading blare of a horn.
Lead Belly’s acoustic twelve-string gave way to Blue’s electric Gibson. Aly succumbed to the image of the love of her life performing on Night Town’s stage; Blue closing his eyes as he approaches the microphone, opening them to settle his gaze on her, his lyrics a secret between them.
Then the dark-haired singer dragged her wicked light onto the stage.
Aly gazed at the Millcreek. “You probably found the skank that week you went up to Detroit.” The light on the water turned red.
“Sometimes I sing in the shower,” Aly half sang half cried, “Some day I’ll sing in Night Town.” She wanted the chain link to cut her hands. But thick, green paint rendered the metal smooth to the touch. “And sometimes I get a great notion, to jump in the Millcreek…” She lifted
a foot onto the guardrail.
She felt something in her hand.
The three Heinekens. What had she done with them? Her hand seemed to have its own tactile memory of holding them. Blue never took longer than a minute to knock back all three. Then he’d take her lips with the same thirst.
Aly remembered Stig grabbing the bottles and her Tailgater at the door.
“And sometimes I get a great notion, to jump in the Millcreek and… Who would stop to pull me down?” She looked over her shoulder. “Nothing but drunks on the viaduct this time of night.”
She looked up to measure the climb. The top of the fence curled back over the walkway. “Isn’t that just perfect.”
Aly vaguely remembered being handed a flyer when storming out of Night Town. She’d carried it two miles barely noticing she had it. She dropped her foot from the guardrail and smoothed the chain-link-creased paper on her leg. She read aloud, “‘Six months in Central America, all expenses paid. No experience necessary. Only a passport needed.’”
She folded the flyer and stuffed it into her hip pocket. She threaded her fingers through the chain link.
“Sometimes I get a great notion…to get eighty-sixed from this tired old town.” She sighed. “Lyrics by Aly Roarke. Music by…”
The locomotive went beneath the viaduct. The engines churning in the hollow of the concrete arch caused the roar of echoes falling into echoes.
“…the turning world.”
When she was little, the big kids said that locomotive noise far in the distance was the sound of the world turning.
“And when it stops, everybody falls off!”
Aly lifted a foot onto the guardrail. She pulled hard on the fence.
2: MNF
FIVE MONTHS LATER
Alvaro Xaman sensed movement in the night sky over downtown Indianapolis. Something approached, silent and invisible as the cold hand that would someday come to take him.
His unreasoned fear prompted the last words Alvaro had ever heard Don Delfino speak, thirty years earlier, on the day the soldiers came into the village of Cocay. “The darkness of a bitten sun precedes the collapse of heaven and earth. If from the devastation rise the white bird, the yellow bird, the birds of black breast and red, the struggle of life shall continue.” Like it was yesterday, Alvaro could see the ancient teacher raise a shaking, mottled hand. Long, twisted fingers then fell across Alvaro’s eyes. “But should the birds fail to rise, there will come the darkness of no sky, no earth, no meaning nor life.” Alvaro had felt proud that Don Delfino covered his eyes, and not those of his brother, Avendano. Alvaro had conquered his childish fear of the dark. He thought Don Delfino’s story of ultimate darkness a test.
And young Alvaro no longer believed, as Avendano continued to, that a handful of birds could someday save all life.
Then came the warning of the machete handle beating three times, then two times more against the teacher’s door. Alvaro bolted from beneath Don Delfino’s hand. He and Avendano scrambled through painted jugs and carved gourds littering the floor to hide inside the false wall. Avendano squirmed fiercely in the tight space to burrow room for Don Delfino, thus forcing Alvaro’s face against the slender crack of the secret door. Alvaro watched his teacher’s widening grin cave his yellow cheeks as the Kabilies—the Killing Machines—swept in with their M16 rifles and purple berets to disappear the defiant hombre de la maize.
The Kabilies had hardly made a sound.
Alvaro survived the years of war and became a man of science. He continued to harbor no belief in Mayan mythology, though he now catalogued those myths, along with Mayan artifacts, to provide his people their heritage.
Nor did Alvaro regard premonitions. He lowered his eyes from the Indianapolis skyline and took a second look at the man waving to him from inside a Ford station wagon. He could not imagine Kurtwood Franz collecting him in such an unostentatious automobile. Perhaps his wealthy host had to cancel at the last minute and had sent an employee to inform him.
Alvaro rose from his seat in the crowded sidewalk café.
The city’s lights blinked out in a rapid cascade. Alvaro tensed as darkness rushed in to claim the night.
The utter darkness of a bitten sun!
A single word scrolled across the sky in white light: INDIANAPOLIS.
Alvaro scolded himself for succumbing to Don Delfino’s imagery. The dark presence he’d felt a moment earlier was a blimp, now alight with advertising. He composed himself and approached the Ford.
The man in the automobile extended his right hand through the open window. “Mr. Xaman? Kurtwood Franz. Forgive me the informality of our introduction but I’m running a bit late. Monday Night Football waits for no man. Not even myself. And I consider it bad form to sneak in after kickoff.”
“Of course, Mr. Franz.” Alvaro took the offered hand. “I did not at first realize it was you waving me over.”
“How could you know? We’ve never met. What say we, you know, vamoose.”
They released hands.
Ninety minutes earlier, back in his hotel room, Alvaro had scanned a web site devoted to Kurtwood Franz. Just that weekend Franz hosted a Veterans Day barbecue for a handful of the 82nd Airborne who had dropped into Holland as part of Operation Market Garden. Franz made his entrance to the affair by parachuting into the city center from a World War II C47 transport plane he’d had a hand himself in restoring. The web site offered dozens of stories of the self-made billionaire sparing neither detail nor expense in his public displays. For this reason, Alvaro expected to be met by something much grander than a Ford station wagon. He considered the possibility of an imposter, of abduction.
“Alvaro!”
Alvaro straightened. “Yes, Mr. Franz.”
“Is that your coat? Draped over the chair where you were sitting.”
Alvaro looked back to the sidewalk café. His yellow ski parka stood out against the bright red outer wall of the restaurant. “It is, sir. Thank you. I would have left it.” He returned to the café and retrieved the coat.
“Not used to carrying one, are you.” Franz said as Alvaro settled into the car.
“I looked on the Internet yesterday,” said Alvaro. “I found that Indianapolis can be quite cold in November. When I spoke to my waiter about tonight’s warmth, he said it was due to Indian summer. This is a phenomenon peculiar to Indiana?”
Franz grinned. “Hardly. And your waiter got it wrong. Indian summer doesn’t occur until after the first autumn frost.”
“I see.” Alvaro waited for further explanation. When none came, “I have seen newspaper photos of you, Mr. Franz. I should have recognized you.” What the photos had not revealed was the taut physical energy charging the air around Franz. Not much larger than Alvaro, it was as if all the clawing, scratching, climbing Franz had endured to rise from poverty into wealth had translated into a purely physical struggle that left him with a lean, hard athleticism.
“Really.” Franz smiled. He made a show of adjusting and looking into the rearview mirror. “What was I wearing? How did my hair look?”
“I…apologize, Mr. Franz. I have offended you?”
Franz gunned the Ford from the curb and darted into traffic. A driver cut off by the maneuver slammed on his brakes.
Alvaro tensed at the screeching tires. He glanced over his shoulder to see a green sedan right itself as other cars swerved to miss it.
“A joke, Alvaro. I’m kidding.”
The offended driver quickly pulled even, drawing to within three feet of Alvaro, his sharp curses growing louder as his window slid down. Alvaro braced for further escalation. He had heard stories of American road rage while in Los Angeles.
Franz leaned across Alvaro. “I’ll do better from now on! Promise!” he shouted. Three fingers went to his temple and snapped crisply away.
The angry driver made an obscene gesture then sped forward.
Franz righted himself behind the wheel. “Your English is excellent,” he said. “But one can’t tru
ly know a language until knowing the humor of those who speak it.”
“I see.” Alvaro watched the offended driver turn right. “And your reference to your vanity is meant to be, perhaps, a type of reversal?”
“Self-deprecation as an attempt at humility. Though I suppose it comes across as irony.”
Alvaro had found that Americans exercised irony as a means to render serious matters entertaining. He wondered if Franz’s parachuting before war veterans was a way of imbuing himself with their heroism, his rash driving a pitiful means to add the danger of war to his aura. “I see. You believe yourself to be lacking in humility.”
“Some truth to every joke, so they tell me.”
Alvaro noticed the Ford to be in poor condition. The upholstery was pocked with burns, the temperature control had no knob, and the oil gauge was either broken or the engine would soon seize.
“Am I right in assuming this will be your first American football game, Alvaro?”
“That is correct. The university I am visiting in Los Angeles has a team. But I have not yet found the opportunity to attend.”
“Good. I’ll enjoy explaining the game to you.”
“That will be necessary.” When no explanation followed, “I would like to express my gratitude for all you have done for my country, Mr. Franz. I have heard much about the school and health clinic you sponsor in Zacapa. That is not so far from my home village of Cocay, just outside Chiquimula.”
“I truly love Guatemala and her people,” said Franz. “I spent time there as an archeology student in the Eighties. So I do know something about the difficulties your people have endured. Tell you what, though, let’s put all that aside for now. I want you to experience something of my country. Reach around and bring up that bag.”
Alvaro intended the mention of Guatemala to lead into an explanation of why Franz had brought him to Indianapolis. The question hung in the air as he unfastened his seatbelt. He found a full grocery bag standing on the backseat. Something orange and fuzzy bushed from its top. Before he could wonder about it, a black car raced up to the rear bumper of the Ford: its hood ornament a predator in mid-leap. Too close for comfort, thought Alvaro, but not the earlier car circled around for retaliation. The sun visor obscured the driver’s face.