War for the Oaks

by Emma Bull

  Eddi rubbed her hands over her face, trying to rub away her con­fusion, her anger, her fear. Finally she asked the only question she had left. “Can’t you get somebody else?”

  The phouka began to laugh weakly. “Oh, go to bed, Eddi Mc-Candry. You could befuddle a stone. Go to bed, and sleep soundly, and tempt me not into some foolish and fatal flap of the tongue.”

  She stood up and stalked off to the bedroom, wondering if she’d been insulted. She turned on the light, and looked back over her shoul­der.

  The phouka smiled crookedly, and winked. “Good night,” he said.

  But she did not sleep soundly. Half an hour later, she left off peering through the dark at her bedroom ceiling, and read the clock instead. Midnight. Too much coffee, she told herself. Or the thunder. But it wasn’t the thunder she lay awake listening for, or the rush of the rain on her window. She strained to hear any small noises from outside, and wasn’t reassured by their absence. She kept imagining faces in the irregular plaster of the walls. All the faces had an uncountable number of teeth.

  At last she flung the covers back, pulled on her robe, and opened the bedroom door a crack. The living room was dark. Something moved near the windows, and she felt her muscles lock up with fear.

  Then she recognized the motion—the phouka’s silhouette, a black shape against the slatted gray square of the window. He was watching the back of the building through the blinds. The bedroom windowsill would be visible from where he stood.

  She didn’t want to go out and keep him company; he’d only say something annoying. She wanted to go back to bed and try to sleep. Yet she stood peeking through the barely open door like a spy in her own house, fascinated by the sight of him in an unguarded moment. True, she couldn’t see much of him; there wasn’t enough light coming through the blinds to fill in color or even details. But Eddi suspected that, if he knew he was being watched, he would turn away from even so inadequate an inspection.

  His forehead, under the thick spill of curls, was high and straight, his nose unexpectedly long and aquiline. His lips were full, his chin jutted decidedly, and when he turned his head a little those ridiculous eyelashes made a sharp punctuation to the vertical lines of his face. He seemed at once real and unreal, as out of place as a celebrity seen in person. She frowned and thought again longingly of sleep.

  Then he raised one slender hand and rubbed his eyes. It was an ordinary gesture. But it was eloquent of weariness and sorrow in a way Eddi had never seen, and she was filled with the shapeless melancholy that music sometimes evoked in her.

  He lowered his hand and lifted his chin, and became a sentinel again. Eddi’s fingers ached from clutching the doorframe. She pried them loose and went back to bed, and couldn’t remember when she fell asleep.

  Dan Rochelle was an attenuated black man with an incongruously round face and a grin like a Buddha on speed. His hair was cut in an oversize flattop, and he wore glasses because he needed them. The frames looked like Lalique crystal, clear plastic brushed to a translucent matte finish. When he took them off, his face looked half-built. He liked to wear Hawaiian shirts.

  He’d been working in professional bands since he was sixteen, too young to drink in the clubs he played. And he could play the keys. He had a pile of equipment that Eddi only half understood, including three synthesizers, a digital sampler, a sequencer, and a few pieces of equip­ment that might have been stolen from NASA. Or maybe he’d built them himself, to frighten away guitar players. Under his hands it all came alive with some grand electronic passion. Dan’s mild face would be transformed then; he might have been hearing choirs of angels, or the singing of galaxies. Dan was tasteful, tuneful, and wildly imagi­native—a better keyboard player than Eddi had ever hoped to work with.

  Dan accepted everything with cheerful good will, even the phouka. “You from England?” he asked. “Plenty of brothers over there doing good music. You play?”

  “No,” the phouka said, with a show of charming regret. “I’m afraid I’m only the roadie.” The relish with which he used the word seemed obvious to Eddi, but Dan didn’t seem to notice. The phouka put out a hand. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “Yeah.” Dan shook the offered hand vigorously. “Uh . . . you got a name?”

  The phouka smiled, an expression of unholy satisfaction that Eddi had learned to dread. “Robin Goode,” he said.

  Eddi, waiting for some awful utterance, let out her breath.

  Dan had a solution to the problem of practice space: the third floor of a building on the down-at-the-heels manufacturing end of Wash­ington Avenue. Dan’s former band had broken up before the rental on the space expired, and Dan had the key.

  Eddi and Carla agonized over the ad for the classifieds in the Reader and City Pages. They settled on:

  Lead guitarist and bass player wanted. Strong backing vocals a must. Experienced pros only. New music, many originals. No metal-heads, cowboys, or wimps.

  “I don’t know,” said Eddi. “Wimps?”

  Carla looked stern. “Well, you don’t want any wimps, do you?”

  Eddi had to admit that was true. Carla delivered the ad to the papers, and for good measure, posted the same information on bulletin boards in places where musicians shopped—vintage clothing bou­tiques, music stores, and record shops. Then they loaded Carla’s drum kit and Eddi’s guitar and amp into the station wagon, and went to look at the practice space.

  The phouka leaped out of the car when they arrived, and shook himself fiercely. “Oh, there must be a better way to get from place to place than shutting oneself in a metal box.”

  “What do you want to do? Fly?” said Carla. “So buy a motorcycle or something.”

  He cocked his head. “An interesting thought.”

  Eddi led the way up the iron stairs that climbed the back of the building. Dan had arrived before them, and the door at the top was unlocked.

  The first floor was devoted to a foundering drapery manufacturer, and the second to its warehouse. In the company’s better days, it had probably had a use for the third floor as well, but hard times had turned it into an empty, open space under the rafters big enough to rehearse a dance company. The right- and left-hand walls were studded with windows, some of which weren’t stuck closed. On the street side of the room, double metal-clad doors would have led to the second floor, if they hadn’t been barred and padlocked. Bedsheets, put up by the last band to soften the room’s acoustics, hung from the beams and vent pipes like the ghosts of walls. Industrial carpeting lay loose on a large section of floor; under it were oak planks nearly a foot wide, sturdy enough for a machine shop.

  Eddi smiled down at the floor. “Do you get the feeling that nobody downstairs could hear us unless we played real loud?”

  Dan was moving around in his equipment, turning things on. “The Dead Kennedys could practice up here. It’s like havin’ the planet to yourself.”

  Carla rubbed her hands together. “I’m gonna bring up the rest of my stuff.”

  They didn’t have a proper PA, but they ran a couple of microphones through a little mixer of Carla’s, and used her drum machine speaker for output. In half an hour, they had a rehearsal setup. Eddi pushed a hand through her bangs and looked at Carla sitting behind her cymbals, checking the reach to all of her drum heads; at Dan, wearing head­phones, playing chords and checking heaven knew what; and at the phouka, who sat cross-legged on the floor watching her expectantly.

  “Oo-kay,” Eddi said, and slung on her guitar.

  They started out, a little tentatively, on Prince’s “When You Were Mine.” Dan unrolled the melody in front of them. Eddi kept the guitar pared down, letting Dan take over most of the effects. She sang the first four lines very simply, almost without style, feeling for the ap­proach that would grow out of this instrumentation, this chemistry of musicians.

  The simplicity became a style in itself. The pure notes she sang enhanced the stark, bitter lyrics and made them bite even deeper. After the firs
t chorus she let roughness creep into her voice, to bring in anger and outrage and trust betrayed. They went into the lead break with exhilarating power. Eddi let some fuzz sneak into her guitar mix, and Dan twisted the melody back on itself, adding buzzing overtones to notes that had once been precise and clear.

  Coming back into the verse, Eddi opted for another sort of clarity; she sang the last verse and chorus in a ringing clarion voice. Then she handed the melody off to Dan, and they wended their way out of the song with an instrumental recap and a final fade.

  “Awright,” said Dan.

  “Yeah.” Eddi nodded. “Not too shabby.”

  “Well, I want a bass player,” Carla sighed. “I could break a leg trying to keep you guys steady all by myself.”

  “We’ll get you a bass player.” Eddi turned to the phouka. “Whataya think?”

  “Play another one,” he said.

  Carla got her wish two days later. He called, saying he had seen the notice at Oarfolk and wanted to audition.

  “Or at least, I think that’s what he said,” Eddi told Carla, while they waited for him in the rehearsal space. “He sort of mumbled, and faded off at the ends of sentences.”

  Carla shook her head. “This doesn’t sound promising.”

  “Maybe not. But I figured it was worth a try. We don’t need him to talk on the phone.”

  There was a very small knock at the door, and the phouka answered it. The kid on the other side was the most unimpressive human being Eddi had ever seen. He was small and narrow-shouldered, olive-skinned, with haphazardly cut brown hair and heavy straight brows. His eyes were brown, too, half sleepy and half sullen. His cheeks had the sort of hollows that have less to do with bone structure than with lack of food. He was carrying an electric guitar case that looked as if it had just come from the store.

  Eddi stood up and stuck out her hand. “Hello, I’m Eddi McCandry. Are you . . .” She realized that he hadn’t given her a name over the phone.

  He mumbled, and Eddi caught the words “audition” and “bass.”

  “Right.” She turned to Carla, who raised one eyebrow. “This is Carla DiAmato, the drummer. That’s Dan Rochelle.” Dan was playing something through his headphones; he glanced up, looking vague and friendly.

  The phouka stepped forward and put out a hand. “Robin Goode,” he said, grinning. “A pleasure.”

  The kid’s face opened suddenly into a huge, sweet smile around a set of substantial teeth, and he shook the phouka’s hand.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask,” Eddi whispered to the phouka as the kid brought in his case. “What is this with the name?”

  “Don’t you think it’s a nice name?”

  “Oh, it’s a swell name. Where did it come from?”

  “I confess, I borrowed it. But I can’t imagine that its owner would object, under the circumstances.”

  Eddi rolled her eyes. “Forget it.”

  “Instantly,” he said.

  The kid was unpacking a brand new Steinberger bass. Eddi shot a look at Carla, who raised both eyebrows this time. He opened the accessory box in the case and took out a heavy-duty coiled cable, still sealed in its plastic bag. Then he mumbled something and went back out the door.

  After a moment of silence, Carla said. “He’s going to come back in here with a new Mesa Boogie amp with the warranty tag still tied to the handle. Do I hear any bets?”

  Carla was wrong; it was a large Roland amplifier. But it was certainly new. He plugged it in (the shipping kinks were still in the power cord), slung the bass over his shoulder, and plugged in the cable. Had he stolen it all the night before? She was afraid to ask.

  She did ask him how long he’d been playing, and who he’d worked with. He mumbled a little.

  Eddi reminded herself that this was not the only bass player in Minneapolis. The ads hadn’t even appeared yet. “Ahhhh . . . listen,” she said at last. “I’m not sure you . . . that this is a good idea.”

  And he raised his eyes from his bass just enough to look at her. His eyes were more fluent than his mouth; they blazed contempt and hos­tility, they pleaded for her forbearance, her indulgence.

  She winced and picked up her own guitar. “Ever heard Bram Tchai­kovsky’s version of ‘I’m a Believer’?” He shook his head, but continued to watch her, his fingers poised over his strings.

  “Start it,” he mumbled finally, and Eddi shrugged.

  The song did kick off with only guitar. Then Carla dropped in after a few measures with a series of snare drum punches, and Dan’s syn­thesizer yowled across it all.

  Then, in precisely the right place, the bass came in. It began as if the Rocky Mountains had begun to walk. It sounded like the voice of the magma under the earth’s crust, and it picked up the whole song and rolled it forward like water exploding out of a breaking dam. They were suddenly tight, all four of them, as if they were a single animal and that monster heartbeat was their own. Eddi listened wonderingly as they played the complicated stop beats in the chorus with respectable precision. She was dimly aware that she was playing some of the best guitar of her life.

  When they were done, Eddi looked around and saw her own amaze­ment on Carla’s and Dan’s faces. “Well,” she said, and, unable to think of anything to add, said it again.

  No one declared the newcomer to be the band’s bass player. It would have been beside the point. Eddi only wanted to see if they could make other songs sound like that. She had no idea if he could sing; given his willingness to talk, it seemed unlikely. But for bass like that, she could sacrifice a harmony voice.

  When they took a break she asked him, “Um, do you . . . I don’t think I ever heard your name.”

  He looked up—he was about Eddi’s height, but he always seemed to be looking at the floor, or his feet, so any time he looked at her, it was up. All she caught of what he said was “hedge.”

  “Hedge?” she repeated desperately.

  He nodded, and his smile seemed cautious, but satisfied.

  chapter 6 – It’s So Easy to Fall in Love

  When the ads they’d composed appeared in the two weekly entertainment papers, the phouka accompanied her down­town every day to check the reply boxes. At last, she’d sorted out three guitarists to audition, and asked them to show up on the third floor at scattered hours on Thursday.

  Four o’clock’s candidate had superb technique—he was one of the fastest and cleanest lead players Eddi had ever heard. But he didn’t seem to listen to the rest of the band, and his lead breaks, though complex and flashy, were too often just a collection of notes in the right key, as if he despised the melody.

  The six-thirty guitarist intruded his riffs on other band members’ showcase bits, and wanted to do most of the lead vocals. (He told Eddi that club owners in Minneapolis didn’t like to hire bands with female lead vocalists. Eddi smiled and told him she didn’t think he’d fit in. He left angry.)

  Eight-thirty was the best choice, Eddi decided: a woman with cropped red hair and a white Stratocaster whose solemn expression had seemed older than her face. After she’d left, Eddi called a break. Carla ran down to the Qwik-Stop for take-out coffee, Dan settled down to work over the patches on a synthesizer, and Hedge went for a walk. Eddi sat down on the edge of the carpet and resolved to liberate some seating for the place—if they found a guitarist and became a band.

  The phouka dropped down with his usual boneless grace beside her. Tonight he had chosen, from whatever mysterious closet he conjured his clothing, a double-breasted shirt of black-shot red, slim black bro­cade pants, and snakeskin boots. “So the tale is told? These are the three choices?” He’d found a Hershey bar somewhere; he held it out, and she broke off a chunk. She remembered to not say thank you.

  “Mmm. Either we go for the third one, or we run the ad for another week,” Eddi said.

  “What did you think of her, then?”

  “She had the chops, and she seemed like a decent human being. A little young, maybe. I’m tempted to go with he
r just for the sake of having three women in the band.”

  “But . . . ?”

  “I don’t know. She had something missing. Maybe a lack of imag­ination or something.” Eddi sighed and fell back onto the rug. “Maybe I’m being too picky,” she said to the rafters.

  “No. You can afford to wait. Find precisely what you want.”

  “All of today wasted, then.”

  “Why do you feel so pressed for time?” he asked. His voice was a little sad, and she looked at him in surprise. “If the band distresses you so, then you need not have one. I only threw in my lot with Carla because you seemed to want work.”

  Eddi shook her head. “Carla knows me better than I do. I would have gone bats without this. It’s the only thing I really know.”

  “But it seems to swallow you up. You’ve gone forward like a horse in blinders, seeing only ahead, only the band.”

  She frowned at him and looked away into the shadowed rafters. She realized with a rush of fear that there might be room there for some­thing to hide—and knew the answer to the phouka’s question.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “What’s what?”

  “I thought I saw you shiver.”

  Eddi shook her head. “Oh, hell,” she said finally. “Why act brave? If I think about the band all the time, you see, I don’t think about . . .”

  The phouka looked stricken. “Ah. About my people’s little quarrel, and your part in it. Are you so frightened, then?”

  Eddi discovered that ignoring the problem for several days only made her feel worse now. “Oh, for godsake, a bunch of people out of a horror movie want me dead! And I’m not supposed to be scared?”

  The phouka took both of her hands in his. His grip was hard, but not painful.

  “Eddi,” he said, “I will protect you. They will not—they cannot—get past me to strike at you.”

  She laughed hollowly. “You know, a girl learns to tell when a guy is making her a promise he can’t keep.”