Then Again

by Rick Boling

  I looked at Heyoka, whose beaming smile seemed to light up the room. And when I looked back down, the picture had disappeared, replaced by another; this one of me and Carol sitting together at the piano, her pointing at the sheet music, and me staring at the ceiling while I played. The view then shifted, panning around the 3D image until I could see the exasperated look on Carol’s face.

  “She never could get you to look at the music,” Heyoka said. “You were too clever for that. Savant-like, almost.”

  “I know,” I whispered, still shell-shocked by the intimate realism of the image. I’d always had an incredible ear. Before alcohol and drugs began to interfere with my musical abilities, I could memorize any song almost instantly. Once I’d tediously worked out a tune from the sheet music, I refused to look at it again, and that drove Mrs. Henderson crazy because she knew it would keep me from learning to sight read. Unfortunately, that talent applied only to remembering tunes and lyrics; when it came to the rote memorization required to make even average grades in school, I was a disaster.

  Absorbed by bittersweet memories, I had momentarily forgotten the impossibility of the images that sparked them, and when I came back to the present, the magic contraption fell from my hands and landed on the floor between my feet.

  “Don’t worry,” said Heyoka. “You couldn’t break it if you ran over it with a tank.”

  Just then, Fred arrived with my glass, once again filled to the brim. I took it in a shaking hand and drained it. “Wha …” I gasped as the warmth of the whiskey burned its way down my throat. “What the hell is going on here? Where did you get these … these, whatever they are?”

  “All in good time, my friend. All in good time. I hate to keep saying it, but the explanation is complicated and will require other demonstrations that can only happen in certain special places under certain special conditions. For now, let’s just say there’s more where that came from. Much more.”

  “More what?” I shouted, my anger overcoming my sense of awe.

  “More memories, Rix. A lifetime of them if you choose. And you must understand that it is your choice. If you don’t wish to see them, to relive those moments in your past, then all you have to do is say so.” He walked over to retrieve the now-blank screen from the floor. "Tell you what, you're probably whipped. So why don't we get some sleep and start again in the morning when we're both a little more lucid?"

  The suggestion of sleep brought on an involuntary yawn, and I realized he was right about my being exhausted. In fact, I was nearly dead drunk. However, I wasn’t about to give up yet. "Look," I said, "you can’t leave me hanging like this. I may be exhausted, but I won’t be able to sleep unless I know what’s going on. So I'd appreciate an explanation. Even if it has to be an abbreviated one, I at least need some inkling of what I've let myself in for here."

  "An inkling …" he said, turning to face me with his neon smile. “I suppose I could offer something like that tonight.”

  When he didn't continue, I said, "I'm listening."

  "You understand that I'm not going to go into any details until tomorrow?"

  I nodded.

  "Okay, let me think.” He paused, glancing up at the rafters. “How about if I pose a question? It’s a question you’ll need to answer sooner or later anyway, so maybe it’s best if you hear it now. That way you can sleep on it. If you consider carefully, the question will reveal the essence of what I have in mind, but I can’t elaborate until tomorrow. Will that work for you?”

  With what was left of my abused neurons once again drowning in a bath of ethyl alcohol, there was little chance I could comprehend any kind of complicated explanation, so I figured it was best to accept his compromise. Besides, it didn’t look like I had much choice in the matter. I tried to get my brain to communicate with my mouth, but the connection was so weak, all I could manage was a grunt and a shrug.

  Heyoka walked back to the couch and sat down, placing the viewer in front of him on the table. “Have you ever wished you could live your life over again?” he asked. “Or, to put it more succinctly: if you were offered the chance to go back to some point in your past and become your younger self, while still retaining all your accumulated wisdom and memories, would you choose to do so? And if you did, what point would you go back to, and what, if anything, would you change?"

  I opened my mouth, but he held up a hand to stop me. "Fred," he said to the Asian fellow, who had remained in the shadows near a doorway. "Show Mr. Vaughn to his room. Oh, and along the way, show him where the kitchen is, in case he finds himself in need of a snack before morning." Then, turning to me, he added, "There's a small bar in your room, should you want a nightcap, or perhaps an Alka-Seltzer. I'll see you whenever you choose to rise tomorrow."

  I hadn't intended to ask any questions. In fact, I had no idea why I'd opened my mouth, except maybe to laugh at this ridiculous old coot and his nutty questions. Still, as I followed Fred to the restaurant-sized kitchen, then on down a long hall to my equally-impressive room, I couldn't stop my brain from spinning. And it wasn't only because of the booze.

  After pacing for a while, I sat down on the massive feather bed, above which hung a stuffed bobcat preparing to pounce from a tree limb. The rough-hewn bedframe squeaked as I lay back and looked up at the sleek animal, feeling intimidated by the imaginary threat. Outside the tall windows, the mountain scene had faded into a fuzzy charcoal rendering in the waning moonlight. And with the dark closing in around me, I realized for the first time that I was trapped in this isolated complex. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my iPhone, not at all surprised to find there were no bars. So, not only was I several miles from nowhere with no transportation save what my host could provide, I also had no way to communicate with the outside world. Should I wish to leave, it would be Heyoka’s choice to provide me with the means to do so.

  Or not.

  The Prodigy

  There was a time when I could zoom down the aisles of a gigantic neural superstore, select from millions of memory fragments, and instantly reassemble almost any episode in my past. Unfortunately, I’d done most of my shopping over the years in the pharmacy and liquor departments of that superstore, and by the time I woke up in Heyoka’s guestroom I was lucky if I could remember how I got there, let alone the details of my early life. Nowadays, gaining even minimal access to those memories required a sensory stimulus: an odor, a sound, or, as in the case of his little demonstration the night before, a picture.

  I hadn’t thought about Mrs. Henderson in decades, and was amazed at how quickly my memories of her came back when I saw the incredibly lifelike images on that magical viewer. The experience was like looking through a window into the past; as if I were a disembodied spirit with total, but secret access to those intimate moments. And, apparently, the pictures had initiated an ongoing recall process, because when I began to emerge from the alcoholic catatonia of the night before into that nebulous dreamland between sleep and wakefulness, I once again found myself traveling back—this time to the day I met the woman who would become my musical mentor.

  The motivation for my first encounter with Carol Henderson was food. Mush to be exact. I had just turned four, and was playing in our side yard when the aroma of something frying caught my attention. This drew me to the outside staircase that led to the second-floor apartment Carol rented from us, and before Mom could stop me, I climbed the stairs and peered through her screen door. When Carol saw me, she opened the door and, waving at Mom to indicate it was okay, invited me in. I followed her to the kitchen and stood waiting while she went to the stove.

  “You like mush?” she asked, flipping something in a big iron skillet.

  I didn’t care for the sound of that word, figuring it must be something like the icky cream of wheat Mom used to force me to eat. But when Carol held the frying pan down for me to see, there was nothing mushy about what was in it. Instead, sizzling alongside several strips of bacon, were three thick yellow patties, fried light brown. When she aske
d if I wanted to try one, I decided to take a chance. She served it with butter, warm maple syrup, and crisp bacon, and the moment I tasted that sweet, cornmeal pancake, my friendship with Carol Henderson was sealed.

  After I finished, she wiped my face with a damp towel and led me into her living room where I found myself in a wonderland of musical instruments. Other than an occasional song on the radio and the distant sound of the choir I could hear from the nursery at church, I’d never had much exposure to music. So, at first, I had no idea what the items in that musical menagerie were.

  Carol must have seen the curiosity in my eyes, because she took me by the hand and led me around the room, introducing me to each instrument. The assortment included an upright piano, a small organ, a cello, a saxophone, and a bright golden trumpet that lay alongside two violins on a table. And when she reached down to tap out a simple tune on the piano, my life was changed forever. By the time Mom came up to see what was going on, I had learned to play Happy Birthday, Jingle Bells, and half-a-dozen other one-finger tunes, while Carol accompanied me on the lower keys.

  It wasn’t long before she had me singing along with the music, and after we serenaded Mom with a couple of vocal duets, the two of them retired to the breakfast room for coffee, leaving me to fiddle around on the piano. They talked for a long time, and when we left to go back downstairs, Mom asked if I would like to visit with Carol again. Of course I said yes, and for the next several days, I spent at least three hours every afternoon in the upstairs apartment. I had soon memorized dozens of songs, plus the names of all the notes. And, despite my small fingers, I even learned to use my left hand a little.

  At the end of a week, Carol sat me down at the breakfast table and got real serious. “Richard,” she said, “this is important, so I want you to listen to me carefully.” I took a bite of the banana she’d peeled for me, and waited. “You have a special gift,” she continued. “I know you won’t understand this just yet, but it’s called perfect pitch. What that means is you can do something only a very few others can, maybe one in ten thousand. That’s a big number, so … let me see … Has your dad ever taken you to a baseball game at Al Lang Field?”

  “Uh-huh,” I mumbled through a mouthful of banana.

  “Okay, imagine the stands there are full, not one empty seat.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to picture it. “That would be a lot of people,” I said.

  “Right. And you know what? Al Lang only holds about seven thousand. So let’s say we added some onto that, about another half as many as the full stands would hold. You know what a half is?” I nodded. “Great. So with the full stands and another half of the full stands, that would be about ten thousand people. And if you were there, you would be the only one in the crowd who had perfect pitch.”

  “What’s perfect pitch?” I asked.

  “I’ll show you,” she said, getting up. I started to follow her into the living room, but she shook her head. “No, I want you to stay here and listen.”

  Confused, I sat back down, and a few seconds later I heard her play a note on the piano. “Can you tell me what that note is,” she said, loud enough for me to hear from the other room.

  “B-flat,” I said.

  “Right. How about this one?”

  “D.”

  “Good. Good. Now let’s try a chord. Can you tell me all the notes in this chord?”

  “C, E, and G.”

  “Wonderful,” she cried. “Wonderful, Richard.” She came back and sat down at the table. “That’s what perfect pitch is. Being able to tell what the notes are without looking.”

  “But, can’t everybody do that?” I asked. “It seems so easy. Can’t you do it?”

  “Nope. I’d give my eyeteeth if I could, but I wasn’t born with that ability. Like I said, only about one in ten thousand people have perfect pitch, and half of them probably don’t even know it because they may never have learned anything about music. What makes your talent even better is that you have an amazing musical memory. That is, you only need to hear a song once in order to remember it. It’s what they call an ear for music, and when you add that to your perfect pitch, you’d probably be one in a million.”

  “How much is a million?”

  She thought for a moment, then said, “How high can you count?”

  “To a hundred. Mom says I could count to a thousand just by adding one hundred to each number and then two hundred and three hundred, until I got to nine hundred and ninety-nine, then the next number would be one thousand. But that would take too long.”

  “Okay, think about how long it takes just to count to one hundred. I once read that if you wanted to count to a million, it would take twenty-three days, counting all day and all night without stopping.”

  “Wow! That’s a lot.”

  “It sure is,” she said. “So you see, being one in a million is really special. But that’s not all. As an extra bonus, God gave you one more thing.”

  “Oh, yeah? What?

  “He gave you a beautiful singing voice. And when you add all those things together, perfect pitch, musical memory, and a beautiful voice … well, it would be hard to say how many people have that kind of talent, but certainly not many. All I know is that it means God gave you a wonderful gift, something you should develop and share with others. Would you like to do that?”

  “I guess. You mean I should teach people how to do what I do?”

  “No,” she said. “Unfortunately, you can’t. It’s not something you can teach, you have to be born with it. What I mean is you need to learn as much as you can about music, and then play and sing for other people.”

  “Like the people on the radio or in the choir at church?”

  “Exactly. Do you think you’d like to do that?”

  “I dunno. Sounds kind of scary, being in front of lots of people.”

  “Well, it can be at first, but you’ll get used to it. And once you do, you’re going to find that the people you perform for will be really happy because you did. And they’re going to show you that happiness in ways that will make you very happy as well. Do you know what applause is?”

  “You mean when people clap their hands? I’ve heard that on the radio when one of the bands finishes a song.”

  “How about at the baseball game, when someone hits a home run? You know how the people cheer and clap to show how happy they are?”

  “Sure. I do it too. It’s fun.”

  “What do you think it would feel like if you were that guy who hit the home run? If you were the one who made all those people happy?”

  “Good, I guess.” I was letting my mind wander, seeing myself running around the bases while all the people cheered and clapped for me. I liked the feeling, but I was really more interested in learning about music than hearing the applause. I felt that way right up until the day, three years later, when I stood in front of seven thousand cheering fans at William’s Park on Independence Day.

  The thunderous applause faded into a constant thrum of pain, as the memories dimmed and I succumbed to the waking consequences of a dehydrated brain. This was a familiar condition for me, ever since I’d sworn off drugs and replaced them with a daily quart or so of whiskey. Thank God Heyoka had fed me, or I probably would not have been ambulatory. I stumbled to the small bar and drank four tall glasses of water, adding the thoughtfully provided Alka-Seltzer to the last. Another half hour on the bed, and I was ready for something more substantial. Not food yet, but maybe a Bloody Mary? I found the makings at the bar and was working on my second, when a knock on the door startled me. But it was only Fred, proffering a breakfast tray. He placed the tray on a folding table, then stood back, waiting. I lifted each of the three domed covers one-by-one, replacing them over a steaming western omelet, three strips of crisp bacon, and a bowl of cheese grits—my preferred hangover repast.

  When I nodded my approval, he said, “Heyoka would like to see you in the music room, whenever you feel up to it. There is no need to hurry, but because th
is complex can be a bit confusing, here is a map.” He handed me a two-page diagram. I glanced at it, flipped to the second page, then looked up at him. “Those are the two levels, although there are actually three. The third—the lab—would be off to the right of the second page. It is below, mostly underground, but you needn’t worry about that. Heyoka will take you there when the time comes. The music room, as you can see, is on the second level, directly above the Great Room you were in last night. The elevator is down the hall to your left. Or, if you prefer, there are stairs at the end of the hall. Again, please understand that there is no rush, so do take your time. You’ll find towels and other things in the bathroom, and if you need anything else, we’ll do our best to provide it for you.”

  After Fred left, I managed to eat most of the breakfast without throwing up. Then, after a short nap, I took a shower, shaved, and brushed my teeth. When I emerged from the bathroom, except for a little residual sandpaper at the back of my tongue, I felt almost human again. I dressed in jeans and an ancient Grateful Dead t-shirt, and headed out the door in search of the elevator.

  The Fiasco

  The music room, like the Great Room downstairs, was framed on two sides by large windows that looked out on a crisp, green canopy of towering conifers. Paneled in redwood with beams of pecky cypress crisscrossing the high ceiling, it had the feel of a huge tree house suspended among the swaying limbs. When combined with my still-fragile condition, the sensation of movement led to a mild attack of vertigo. I reached to steady myself on what turned out to be a grand piano, then tore my eyes away from the windows to survey the room’s contents.

  What I saw reminded me of Carol’s living room, though a much larger and more elaborate version. Scattered around the black-lacquered Steinway were several guitars, a banjo, a couple of mandolins, and even a sitar. A glass-fronted cabinet containing what appeared to be an antique baroque guitar hung on one non-windowed wall. A dozen or so other stringed instruments were displayed on either side of the cabinet, among which I recognized a balalaika, a bouzouki, and a Japanese shamisen. There were violins as well, and below all of them stood a beautifully inlaid harpsichord, its open lid painted with a scene of a naked woman playing a viola da gamba.