Drumbeats

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “What?” Danny said, looking down at the deep brown skin covering the top of the drum.

  Anatole explained, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world, that whenever one of the chief’s many sons died, the sorcier used his skin to make one of Kabas’s special drums. It had always been done.

  Danny wrestled with that for a moment. On his first trip to Africa five years earlier, he had learned the wrenching truth of how different these cultures were.

  “Why?” he finally asked. “Pourquoi?”

  He had seen other drums made entirely of human skin taken from slain enemies, fashioned in the shape of stunted bodies with gaping mouths; when tapped a hollow sound came from the effigy’s mouths. He knew that trying to impose his Western moral framework on the inhabitants of an alien land was hopeless. I’m sorry, sir, but you’ll have to check your preconceptions at the door, he thought jokingly to himself.

  “Magique.” Anatole’s eyes showed a flash of fear—fear born of respect for great power, rather than paranoia or panic. With the magic drums of Kabas, the chief could conquer any man, steal his heartbeat. It was old magic, a technique the village wizards had discovered long before the French had come to Cameroon, and before them the Germans. Kabas had been isolated, and at peace for longer than the memories of the oldest people in the village. Because of the drums. Anatole smiled, proud of his story, and Danny restrained an urge to pat him on the head.

  Trying not to let his disbelief show, Danny nodded deeply to the sorcier. “Merci,” he said. As Anatole led him back out to the courtyard, the sorcier returned to his work on the small drum.

  Danny wondered if he should have tried to buy one of the drums from the wrinkled man. Did he believe the story about using human skins? Probably. Why would Anatole lie?

  As they left the sorcier’s homestead to begin the trek back to the village, he looked westward across the jagged landscape of inselbergs. At sunset, the air filled with hundreds of kites, their wings rigid, circling high on the last thermals. Like leaves before the wind, the birds came spiraling down to disappear into the trees, filling them with the invisible flapping of wings.

  When they reached the main village again, Danny saw that the women had returned from their labor in the nearby fields. He was familiar with the African tradition of sending the women and children out for backbreaking labor while the men lounged in the shade and talked “business.”

  The numerous sons of the chief and other adults gathered inside the courtyard near the fire, which the old sinewy woman had stoked into a larger blaze. Other men emerged, and Danny wondered where they had been hiding all afternoon. Out hunting? If so, they had nothing to show for their efforts. Anatole directed Danny to sit on a mat beside the chief, and everyone smiled vigorously at each other, the villagers exchanging the call-and-response litany of ritual greetings, which could go on for several minutes.

  The old woman served the chief first, then the honored guest. She placed a brown yam like a baked potato on the mat in front of him, miming that it was hot. Danny took a cautious bite; the yam was pungent and turned to paste in his mouth. Then the woman reappeared with the promised chicken in peanut sauce. They ate quietly in a circle around the fire, ignoring each other, as red shadows flickered across their faces.

  Listening to the sounds of eating, as well as the simmering evening hush of the West African hills, Danny felt the emptiness like a peaceful vacuum, draining away stress and loud noises and hectic schedules. After too many head-pounding tours and adrenaline-crazed performances, Danny was convinced he had forgotten how to sit quietly, how to slow down. After one rough segment of the last Blitzkrieg tour, he had taken a few days to go camping in the mountains; he recalled pacing in vigorous circles around the picnic table, muttering to himself that he was relaxing as fast as he could! Calming down was an acquired skill, he felt, and there was no better teacher than Africa.

  After the meal, heads turned in the firelight, and Danny looked up to see the sorcier enter the chief’s compound. The wrinkled man cradled several of his mystical drums. He placed one of the drums in front of the chief, then set the others on an empty spot on the ground. He squatted behind one drum, thrusting his long, lean legs up and to the side like the wings of a vulture.

  Danny perked up. “A concert?” He turned to Anatole, who spoke rapidly to the sorcier. The wrinkled man looked skeptically at Danny, then shrugged. He picked up one of the extra drums and ceremoniously extended it to Danny.

  Danny couldn’t stop smiling. He took the drum and looked at it. The coffee-colored skin felt smooth and velvety as he touched it. A shiver went up his spine as he tapped the drumhead. Making music from human skin. He forced his instinctive revulsion back into the gray static of his mind, the place where he stored things “to think about later.” For now, he had the drum in his hands.

  The chief thumped out a few beats, then stopped. The sorcier mimicked them and glanced toward Danny. “Jam session!” he muttered under his breath, then repeated the sequence easily and cleanly, but added a quick, complicated flourish to the end.

  The chief raised his eyebrows, followed suit with the beat, and made it more complicated still. The sorcier flowed into his part, and Danny joined in with another counterpoint. It reminded him of the “Dueling Banjos” sequence from Deliverance.

  The echoing, rich tone of the drum made his fingers warm and tingly, but he allowed himself to be swallowed up in the mystic rhythms, the primal pounding out in the middle of the African wilderness. The other night noises vanished around him, the smoke from the fire rose straight up, and the light centered into a pinpoint of his concentration.

  Using his bare fingers—sticks would only interrupt the magical contact between himself and the drum—Danny continued weaving into their rhythms, trading points and counterpoints. The beat touched a core of past lives deep within him, an atavistic, pagan intensity, as the three drummers reached into the Pulse of the World. The chief played on; the sorcier played on; and Danny let his eyes fade half-closed in a rhythmic trance, as they explored the wordless language and hypnotic interplay of rhythm.

  Danny became aware of the other boys standing up and swaying, jabbering excitedly and laughing as they danced around him. He deciphered their words as “White man drum! White man drum!” It was a safe bet they’d never seen a white man play a drum before.

  Suddenly the sorcier stopped, and within a beat the chief also quit playing. Danny felt wrenched out of the experience, but reluctantly played a concluding figure as well, ending with an emphatic flam. His arms burned from the exertion, sweat dripped down the stubble on his chin. His ears buzzed from the noise. Unable to restrain himself, Danny began laughing with delight.

  The sorcier said something, which Anatole translated. “Vous avez l’esprit de batteur.” You have the spirit of a drummer.

  With a throbbing hand, Danny squeezed Anatole’s bare shoulder and nodded. “Oui.”

  The chief also congratulated him, thanking him for sharing his white man’s music with the village. Danny found that ironic, since he had come here to pick up a rich African flavor for his compositions. But Danny could record his impressions in new songs; the village of Kabas had no way of keeping what he had brought to them.

  The withered sorcier picked up one of the drums at his side, and Danny recognized it as the small drum the old man had been finishing in the dim hut that afternoon. He fixed his deep gaze on Danny for a moment, then handed it to him.

  Anatole sat up, alarmed, but bit off a comment he had intended to make. Danny nodded in reassurance and in delight he took the new drum. He held it to his chest and inclined his head deeply to show his appreciation. “Merci!”

  Anatole took Danny’s hand to lead him away from the walled courtyard. The chief clapped his hands and barked something to the other boys, who looked at Anatole with glee before they got up and scurried to the huts for sleeping. Anatole stared nervously at Danny, but Danny didn’t understand what had just occurred.

  He rep
eated his thanks, bowing again to the chief and sorcier, but the two of them just stared at him. He was reminded of an East African scene: a pair of lions sizing up their prey. He shook his head to clear the morbid thought and followed Anatole.

  In the village proper, one of the round thatched huts had been swept for Danny to sleep in. Outside, his bicycle leaned against a tree, no doubt guarded during the day by the little man with the enormous cutlass. Anatole seemed uneasy, wanting to say something, but afraid.

  Trying to comfort him, Danny opened his pack and withdrew a stick of chewing gum for the boy. Anatole spoke rapidly, gushing his thanks. Other boys suddenly materialized from the shadows with childish murder in their eyes. They tried to take the gum from Anatole, but he popped it in his mouth and ran off. “Hey!” Danny shouted, but Anatole bolted into the night with the boys chasing after.

  Wondering if Anatole was in any real danger, Danny removed the blanket and sleeping bag from his bike, then carried them inside the guest hut. He decided the boy could take care of himself, that he had spent his life as the whipping boy for the other sons of the chief. The thought drained some of the exhilaration from the memory of the evening’s performance.

  His legs ached after the torturous ride upland from Garoua, and he fantasized briefly about sitting in the Jacuzzi in the capital suite of some five-star hotel. He considered how wonderful it would be to sip on some cold champagne, or a scotch on the rocks.

  Instead, he lifted the gift drum, inspecting it. He would find some way to use it on the next album, add a rich African tone to the music. Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel had done it, though the style of Blitzkrieg’s music was a bit more … aggressive.

  He would not tell anyone about the human skin, especially the customs officials. He tried without success to decipher the mystical swirling patterns carved into the wood, the interwoven curves, circles, and knots. It made him dizzy.

  Danny closed his eyes and began to play the drum, quietly so as not to disturb the other villagers. But as the sound reached his ears, he snapped his eyes open. The tone from the drum was flat and weak, like a cheap tourist tom-tom, plastic over a coffee can.

  He frowned at the gift drum. Where was the rich reverberation, the primal pulse of the earth? He tapped again, but heard only an empty and hollow sound, soulless. Danny scowled, wondering if the sorcier had ruined the drum by accident, then decided to get rid of it by giving it to the unsuspecting White Man who wouldn’t know the difference.

  Angry and uneasy, Danny set the African drum next to him; he would try it again in the morning. He could play it for the chief, show him its flat tone. Perhaps they would exchange it. Maybe he would have to buy another one.

  He hoped Anatole was all right.

  Danny sat down to pull the thorns and prickers from his clothes. The village women had provided him with two plastic basins of water for bathing, one for soaping and scrubbing, the other for rinsing. The warm water felt refreshing on his face, his neck. After stripping off his pungent socks, he rinsed his toes and soles.

  The night stillness was hypnotic, and as he spread his sleeping bag and stretched out on it, he felt as if he were seeping into the cloth, into the ground, swallowed up in sleep.…

  Anatole woke him up only a few moments later, shaking him and whispering harshly in his ear. Dirt, blood, and bruises covered the boy’s wiry body, and his clothes had been torn in a scuffle. He didn’t seem to care. He kept shaking Danny.

  But it was already too late.

  Danny sat up, blinking his eyes. Sharp pains like a bear trap ripped through his chest. A giant hand had wrapped around his torso and would squeeze until his ribs popped free of his spine.

  He gasped, opening and closing his mouth, but could not give voice to his agony. He grabbed Anatole’s withered arm, but the boy struggled away, searching for something. Black spots swam in his eyes. He tried to breathe, but his chest wouldn’t let him. He began slipping, sliding down an endless cliff into blackness.

  Anatole finally reached an object on the floor of the hut. He snatched it up with his good hand, tucked it firmly under his withered arm, and began to thump on it.

  The drum!

  As the boy rapped out a slow, steady beat, Danny felt the iron band loosen around his heart. Blood rushed into his head again, and he drew a deep breath. Dizziness continued to swim around him, but the impossible pain receded. He clutched his chest, rubbing his sternum. He uttered a breathy thanks to Anatole.

  Had he just suffered a heart attack? Good God, all the fast living had decided to catch up to him while he was out in the middle of nowhere, far from any hope of medical attention!

  Then he realized with a chill that the sounds from the gift drum were now rich and echoey, with the unearthly depth he remembered from the other drums. Anatole continued his slow rhythm, and suddenly Danny recognized it. A heartbeat.

  What was it the boy had told him inside the sorcier’s hut—that the magical drums could steal a man’s heartbeat? “Ton coeur c’est dans ici,” Anatole said, continuing his drumming. Your heartbeat lives in here now.

  Danny remembered the gaunt, shambling man in the marketplace of Garoua, obsessively tapping the drum from Kabas as if his life depended on it, until his hide-wrapped fingers were bloodied. Had that man also escaped his fate in the village, and fled south?

  “You had the spirit of a drummer,” Anatole said in his pidgin French, “and now the drum has your spirit.” As if to emphasize his statement, as if he knew a White Man would be skeptical of such magic, Anatole ceased his rhythm on the drum.

  The claws returned to Danny’s heart, and the vise in his chest clamped back down. His heart had stopped beating. Heart beats, drumbeats—

  The boy stopped only long enough to convince Danny, then started the beat again. He looked with pleading eyes in the shadowy hut. “Je vais avec toi!” I go with you. Let me be your heartbeat. From now on.

  Leaving his sleeping bag behind, Danny staggered out of the guest hut to his bicycle resting against an acacia tree. The rest of the village was dark and silent, and the next morning they would expect to find him dead and cold on his blankets; and the new drum would have the same resonant quality, the same throbbing of a captured spirit, to add to their collection. The sound of White Man’s music for Kabas.

  “Allez!” Anatole whispered as Danny climbed aboard his bike. Go! What was he supposed to do now? The boy ran in front of him along the narrow track. Danny did not fear navigating the rugged trail by moonlight, with snakes and who-knows-what abroad in the grass, as much as he feared staying in Kabas and being there when the chief and the sorcier came to look at his body in the morning, and no doubt to appraise their pale new drum skin.

  But how long could Anatole continue his drumming? If the beat stopped for only a moment, Danny would seize up. They would have to take turns sleeping. Would this nightmare continue after he had left the vicinity of the village? Distance had not helped the shambling man in the marketplace in Garoua.

  Would this be the rest of his life?

  Stricken with panic, Danny nodded to the boy, just wanting to be out of there and not knowing what else to do. Yes, I’ll take you with me. What other choice do I have? He pedaled his bike away from Kabas, crunching on the rough dirt path. Anatole jogged in front of him, tapping on the drum.

  And tapping.

  And tapping.

  Afterword: Stories That Fired My Imagination

  Neil Peart

  In the late ’80s, a novel called Resurrection, Inc. arrived in my mailbox, accompanied by a letter from the author, Kevin J. Anderson. He wrote that the book had been partly inspired by an album called Grace Under Pressure, which my Rush bandmates and I had released in 1984.

  It took me a year or so to get around to reading Resurrection, Inc., but when I did, I was powerfully impressed, and wrote back to Kevin to tell him so. Any inspiration from Rush’s work seemed indirect, at best, but nonetheless, Kevin and I had much in common, not least a shared love since childhood for
science fiction and fantasy stories.

  We began to write to each other occasionally, and during Rush’s Roll the Bones tour in 1991, on a day off between concerts in California, I rode my bicycle from Sacramento to Kevin’s home in Dublin, California. That was the beginning of a good friendship, many stimulating conversations (mostly by letter and e-mail, as we lived far apart), and regular packages in the mail, as we shared our latest work with each other—the ultimate stimulating conversation. In subsequent years I would send Kevin a few books of my own, numerous CDs and DVDs from my work with Rush, and there seemed to be a fat volume from Kevin arriving about every other month.

  Back in 1991, though, Kevin was still working full-time as a technical writer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He spent every spare minute working on his fiction, and though he would famously collect over 750 rejection letters, there was no doubt in Kevin’s mind about his destiny. Even as a child, Kevin didn’t “want to be” a writer when he grew up; he was going to be a writer.

  And so he was. To date, Kevin has published over 80 novels, story collections, graphic novels, and comic books, and he still spends every minute being a writer. Kevin doesn’t write to live, he lives to write.

  He has even found ways to weave his recreation, relaxation, and desire for adventure and physical challenge into the writing process, carrying a microcassette recorder on long hikes throughout the West, including the ascent of each of Colorado’s 46 “fourteeners,” (peaks over 14,000 feet).

  In a recent exchange of e-mails, Kevin and I were discussing writing styles and habits, and he offered this revealing passage:

  A long time ago, my friend and collaborator Doug Beason made a joking comment when I suggested that I needed a break, a sabbatical. He said, “Kevin, if you ever stop writing, your head would explode!”