The Dragon's Playlist

by Laura Bickle

  “Yes. Anything.”

  It came to the edge of the tree line. It settled into a snail-like posture, with its wings tucked in and its tail wrapped around its feet. “Just don’t...don’t call me Buzzard Bill.” Its tongue snaked out of its teeth, as if it were scrubbing away something that tasted bad.

  “Okay. Sure. What do you want me to call you, then?” I was aware that my words were falling all over themselves. “I’m Di.”

  “Are you? Who are you really? Are you Diana? Diane?”

  I said in a small voice, “Diamond.”

  “Diamond. There’s a lot of power in names, you know. Diamonds are hard and brilliant. Indestructibly so.” It seemed bemused.

  I didn’t feel very hard or brilliant. And certainly not very indestructible.

  “And if I shouldn’t call you Bill...” I began.

  “I suppose that I can trade my name for a song,” he rumbled. “Afakos. My name is Afakos.”

  I turned the name over on my tongue. “What does it mean?”

  “Falcon.” He wouldn’t say anything more.

  I set my violin under my chin and began to play. The song that sprang to my hands rose, tangling in the tree branches. It was an arrangement I’d been experimenting with in my free time, and I felt stupid when I started to play it, as if it wasn’t grand enough for him. But it had a beautiful, soaring opening, and I worked the melodic motif open, elaborating in glissades and ornamentation. Afakos’s tail swished in time with the meter, and his neck swayed.

  When the last of the notes rattled in the trees, he stood up and stretched to his full height, blocking out the stars prickling through the twilight sky.

  “That was lovely. What is it called?”

  “‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,’ by the Police,” I said, embarrassed.

  “Ah. Modern music.” He didn’t sound disappointed by my selection.

  “From the 1980s.” I didn’t know if Afakos knew what year it was.

  “Thank you, Diamond.”

  “But, Afakos...” I had questions for him. So many questions.

  He turned and stepped away into the brush. “Go home, Diamond. Go home and leave me be. All of you.”

  I stared into the dark, but he’d melted into it as if he were made of ink and not bone and sinew.

  I knew he was gone when the crickets began to sing again.

  *

  My mother thought I was in love.

  I banged into the house, kissed her on the cheek, and started to race upstairs to my room. I couldn’t wait to take some notes, sketch the dragon... My brain was whirling with plans and possibilities.

  My mother smiled at me. “Jason called. He’ll be by to pick you up in twenty minutes.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “Oh.”

  I’d completely forgotten about our date. Or whatever it was. I still wasn’t sure, and I didn’t want to analyze it now. I rushed upstairs, changed into jeans and a t-shirt, and shook my hair out of the headband that held back the blue streaks. My face was flushed, and I felt ready to burst.

  But I couldn’t tell anyone.

  Certainly not my parents. This was too special, too otherworldly. I was afraid that if I spoke of Afakos, he would dissolve like a soap bubble. This was my little bit of magic, mine and mine alone, and I hoarded it like gold.

  I doubted I could even tell Jason. I didn’t know which side of the fence he stood on, anymore: the side of childhood magic or the dusty, weary land of adulthood. I couldn’t be sure.

  Jason knocked on the back door, and my mother let him in, twittering over him like a sparrow. He’d scrubbed the mine dirt from his skin and smelled like pumice soap. He was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and holding a bright orange tiger lily. My favorite.

  He smiled at me, that broad, wonderful smile I’d loved since I was a girl. Reflexively, I smiled back. But it wasn’t really for him. I smiled past him, at the secret burning in my chest.

  “Hi, Di.”

  He extended his hand to me, and I shyly took the tiger lily. It was a flower without a scent, but it bloomed brilliantly, wildly, in ditches and meadows.

  “Thank you.”

  I filled a drinking glass with water and placed the flower in it. I set the glass on the windowsill, and his voice moved to the next room, saying hello to my father. With shame, I realized I hadn’t greeted him when I got home.

  I crossed to the living room. The ever-present television droned on a detective drama. Jason was sitting on the edge of the couch. I came up behind my father, kissed him on the top of his head.

  He reached up and patted my hand. “You kids have fun.”

  It wouldn’t be like it was in high school. Then, my father would wait up, leaving the porch light shining brightly across the driveway. With one or two of the guys I’d dated, he’d left his hunting gear in full view in the kitchen. A reminder that he was my protector, and I was his little girl.

  But I’d grown up, moved out from the shadow of his protection. As I followed Jason out to the driveway, I noticed that the porch light was dark. No one would wait up for me, anymore. That bit of freedom was both sad and exhilarating.

  Jason had always opened doors for me. It was ingrained in his character—I’d seen him open doors for everyone from little girls to elderly women. True to what I remembered, he opened the passenger truck door for me. The truck had been freshly washed and smelled of the lemony scent of paste wax. My father had always said a woman could judge a man’s character by how well he took care of his cars and his shoes.

  “The Funky Scotsmen are on tonight at eight,” he said as he cranked the engine to life.

  “I’m surprised they’re still playing.” Live entertainment that didn’t involve a frowning conductor seemed so far away and long ago.

  He put an arm behind the passenger seat as he backed up, the way so many men do. I blushed a bit and looked away. He dropped his arm awkwardly, turned the truck around, and headed out to the road.

  “Well, they’ve had a few changes in lineup. You know how flaky musicians are.”

  Oh, I knew. The Scots had been a few years ahead of us in high school, and their drama was legendary. Still, I teased him. “Oh do I?”

  “Well, not all musicians. Garage band musicians.”

  I would’ve elbowed him if he hadn’t been driving. “So the lineup changed?”

  “Well, the lead singer—you remember Clint?—was cited for indecent exposure when one of the girls close to the stage flipped up his kilt. He didn’t pay the fine and spent the weekend in jail. Over that weekend, his girlfriend hooked up with Big Plaid Al.”

  “Fabulous. Is he still the bassist?”

  “Not anymore. Clint and Al had a knock-down, drag-out. Clint was surprisingly scrappy and nearly blinded Al with a beer bottle. Clint quit the band to start a splinter band called the Has-Been Tartans. He took the drummer with him.”

  “Hee. Sounds like them.”

  “That’s not all. Al got busted a few months ago for driving a mobile meth lab set up in an old school bus, so Clint’s ex-girlfriend’s new girlfriend is subbing. And everybody lived happily ever after. This week.”

  “How does one acquire a mobile meth lab school bus?”

  “Well, if you send your parents to the old folks’ home and take over all their stuff, you can sorta retrofit the junk in their backyard. But it looks really suspicious in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart at 2:00 a.m. Especially when you’re trying to buy twenty-five pounds of cold medicine.”

  I let out a low whistle. “Must have more money than brains.”

  “I suspect it’s all Swiss cheese at this point.”

  “Aside from the lineup, has much else changed around here?”

  Jason shrugged as we wound our way down the road. “There’s the environmentalists. You already had a run-in with them. A couple restaurants closed, a couple new ones opened. Not much else.”

  “Has much else changed with you?” It was a loaded question, but I couldn’t help asking.
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br />   He thought for a moment. “The job at the mine. That’s the big thing. The folks are good, put in a huge garden this year. They’re thinking about selling the house and moving west when they retire. They think they want to go to Montana, but they’ve never seen it in person.”

  I nodded.

  “And I dated some after you were gone,” he said, with forced casualness. He was honest to a fault and would hold nothing back from me. “Nothing serious.”

  I stared through the windshield. I thought about asking if it was anyone I knew. Probably was, but I don’t think I wanted to know. At least, not now.

  “How about you?” he asked.

  I could’ve taken that question either way. I chose the high road, the ten-thousand-foot view. “School’s good. Got first chair violin at the college orchestra.” My voice shone with pride.

  “I knew you would. While maintaining a four-point-oh GPA, no doubt.”

  I blushed. “You forgot the glamorous gig at the student cafeteria.”

  “Tell me you got to wear one of those sexy hair nets.”

  “I did.”

  He pantomimed his heart fluttering against his chest, and I laughed.

  “Anyone special at school?” he asked. His tone was light, but he clearly wanted to know.

  I shook my head. I’d been out a few times, but hadn’t met anyone who’d really inspired me. I tended to meet guys who were either very focused on partying or who intimidated me a bit. A lot. I was very conscious of my accent and my roots. Not many big-city types understood. There was one guy I’d thought had possibilities, but he was three years ahead of me, and in ROTC. He wouldn’t have been around long, and I hadn’t really liked the idea of worrying about a guy half a world away. He played a good trumpet, though.

  “Not much time for that,” I said. “Too many As to earn and too many scoops of mashed potatoes to sling on trays.” My accent was creeping back into my voice. I’d tried to exorcise it from my speech at school, but I guess I didn’t really care anymore.

  He laughed. But he left it alone.

  We pulled into the parking lot of the Mud Devil’s Kitchen. Perched on one of the side streets in town, it was the site of a former feed store. Old hitching posts from the original store still stood out front. A sign depicted a cartoon salamander wearing a cowboy hat, stirring a cauldron of boiling soup. Mud devil, snot otter, and hellbender were names for the salamanders that lived under rocks in the cold, clear streams. They were incredibly slippery, difficult to catch...and ugly. Like cucumbers with tails. But the cartoon salamander grinned blissfully at us as we crossed the threshold of the restaurant.

  At least this much hadn’t changed.

  My eyes adjusted to the dimness of the interior. Lights made from old aluminum buckets pierced with nails were strung overhead, illuminating a huge aquarium full of mud devils. These were little ones, as long as my forearm, swimming in a cartoonish landscape of toys culled from fast-food kids’ meals.

  The walls were alternately painted with bright primary colors and chalkboard paint. The waitress handed us a pack of sidewalk chalk and led us to a booth. The top of the booth was decorated with peeling bumper stickers and a diorama of robots at war with green army men. The booth offered a good view of the tiny stage, flanked by two carvings of bears hewn from tree trunks by a local chainsaw artist.

  It was pure kitsch. And I loved it.

  I cracked open the chalk as soon as we sat down and doodled on the blank chalkboard beside the booth. It got washed down with the tables, allowing each patron a fresh slate.

  “Don’t bogart the chalk, Di.”

  I grinned and rolled a piece to him across the table. He snatched it up and drew a sky of birds on his side while I sketched the outline of the enormous dragon eyes I’d seen earlier today. I let Jason order for me. He knew what I always had there: a Reuben sandwich with a Coke and French fries. Tradition.

  A couple of girls hesitantly approached the table. I recognized them as the little sisters of a girl I’d gone to school with. One twisted her hair nervously around her finger.

  “Hey, you’re Jason Carroll, right?”

  “Yeah.” Some tightness worked under his jaw when he answered.

  “We, uh…we heard what you did at the mine.”

  A flush crept beneath his skin, and he ducked his head and sucked on his straw. “It wasn’t really anything.”

  A pang of something twitched through the pit of my stomach.

  “No, it really is. And it’s so awesome that you were there. We saw your picture in the paper. It’s like you’re Batman. And Superman.”

  The girls edged closer to the table, their shoulders pressing together. It was clear that they thought they were in the presence of greatness.

  An older man walked up behind the girls and rested his hands on their shoulders. The high school football coach. “Ladies, give our local hero some time to unwind.”

  “Hi, Coach Howard.”

  “Hi, Di. Hey, Jason. Good to see you. You kids have fun.” He steered the two girls away and gave me a wink.

  Jason picked up the chalk and doodled a stick figure on the wall. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Um.”

  “Does that happen often?”

  “Ehhh… Oh, hey, I almost forgot.” He rubbed chalk from his hands and dug into his pocket for the piece of obsidian he’d picked out of the field near my house. He set it on the table in front of him. “The mine geologist was really interested in this.”

  I paused in my scribbling. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. He said it was obsidian, all right. Just a really weird type. More brittle and sorta molecularly unstable. He’s seen it before.”

  My brow wrinkled. “Where?”

  “On Sawtooth Mountain. Or, more accurately, in it. He says there’s evidence of volcanism in the area of the mine.”

  I rested my head on my hand. “In geology class, we learned that there were volcanoes here, around a thousand million years ago.”

  “Exactly. But this stuff is more recent. Like...the stuff they find on fresh volcano sites in Iceland. And not just obsidian. Other minerals are in it, like basalt and zinc.”

  “Did you tell him where you found it?”

  “No. He just assumed it was from the mine. But I bet he’d like to see that field.”

  I frowned. I felt oddly protective of it. “Yeah, well. I’m sure he’s got enough on his plate, with the new mining on Sawtooth Mountain.”

  “Yeah.” He wiped condensation from his glass. “I dunno how that’s gonna turn out. The company wants to surface mine, remove the top of the mountain. If they can get approved to do it, that is.”

  “You mentioned that the other night. What all does that involve?”

  “They scrape the top off the mountain with blasting and equipment, and the rubble goes into the valley. After the coal is extracted, the land is reclaimed. They’ll plant some grass and trees on it to keep it from eroding.”

  “What will it mean for you?”

  He shrugged. “I dunno. They might decide to train us to do it, or they might bring in workers who’ve done mountaintop removal before. I’m hoping they train us...more hours, something else to put on the resume. I guess. I haven’t thought much about it, one way or the other.”

  “And if the permit isn’t granted?”

  “Well...the Army Corps of Engineers said it was okay. We’re just waiting for the EPA to do some water analysis and approve our data so we have permission from them to start. But...worst-case scenario, I don’t think they can shaft mine that mountain. The deposit they’re after is difficult to get to with shaft or slope mining. They tried to do it a long time ago and decided it wasn’t worth the cost. Now, they may put it off for a couple of years. Or maybe they won’t. Which would be bad news for us.”

  I nodded, swirling my straw in my drink, and wondering what it meant for Afakos.

  “What do you think about it?” I asked him.

  He wrapped his fingers around his drink. “Really?” />
  “Yeah. Really.” I leaned forward.

  He took a deep breath, as if he were confessing. “I need the money. I really do. But…if the mine suddenly went away tomorrow. It would be…” He seemed to search for the words. “A relief? Like my last tie to this place would be severed.”

  “And you’d have to leave.”

  “Yeah. Something that would kick my ass into doing something different. Otherwise…days turn into months. And it’s been a year.”

  A loud amplifier squeak emanated from the stage, and I covered my ears with my hands. The lights dimmed, and the Funky Scotsmen invaded the stage in all their tartan glory.

  They wore kilts, no shirts for the men, and loved metal. Loud metal. With bagpipes. Colored lights flashed over their tattooed skin, already glossed with sweat. As soon as they banged out the opening chords, girls approached the stage, waving and dancing.

  I wanted to perform music, but in a different way. The idea of being front and center on a stage terrified me. I wanted to be part of the large, seething whole of an orchestra, a cog in a vast sound machine, disappearing into the darkness in a black dress.

  But the Scotsmen’s music was just as good as I remembered. Radio covers with some wry bagpipe wit. A few new metal arrangements I hadn’t heard before, with catchy hooks and a nice bass line that thumped behind my ribs. Maybe they’d make it out of here, to play someplace really big...if they could keep their drama in check.

  I leaned forward to ask Jason whether they’d gotten together a tour schedule when he stiffened. He was staring at the door.

  I followed his gaze.

  At the entrance, a knot of men and women had arrived. They looked normal enough, dressed in jeans and t-shirts and smelling vaguely of coal dust. But these were the protestors—including the man who’d thrown the rock at my car and also Will, at the back of the pack. There were some girls I dimly recognized from high school, and a couple of men in Carhartts who looked like they could’ve come from the mine. A waitress hurried over to the group, probably trying to get rid of them, and some of the regulars had twisted around in their seats to cast poisonous glares at the interlopers.

  The waitress grabbed a handful of menus, seated them in the far corner of the restaurant.