Going Bovine

by Libba Bray

  The crowd whoops and hollers and chants his name. Junior puts the trumpet to his lips, but before he can blow a note, he staggers, his hand over his heart. A gasp rolls through the crowd. Junior stumbles over and grabs hold of my hand. “You feel ’im, son?”

  “Feel what?”

  Junior’s eyes go wide. “He’s here.”

  Looking out over the gray cigarette haze, all I see is a bunch of people waiting for Junior to give them a good time. The sharp tang of some harsher smoke tickles the back of my throat, though, and cutting through the crowd is a tall figure in black spiked space armor and a shiny helmet. The visor covers his face completely. I feel weak. When I look down at my protective E-ticket wristband, the first of the five listed kingdoms—Adventureland—is starting to lose color.

  “The Wizard of Reckoning,” Junior gasps. He pats my sleeve. “Get behind me, son.”

  “You come for this?” Junior waves the trumpet.

  The Wizard of Reckoning moves his head slowly from side to side.

  “What you come for, then?”

  The wizard slides a piece of paper out from behind his armor. It could be just another one of those missing posters plastered to the crumbling walls of New Orleans. I only catch a glimpse, but I could swear it looks like the guy I saw on the Internet. Junior shakes his head hard.

  “I cain’t let you do that.”

  The wizard seems to notice me for the first time. He points one gloved finger in my direction.

  “No, sir,” Junior growls, as if the wizard’s spoken. “He ain’t ready for you, yet.”

  A low murmur ripples through the club. Down on the street, revelers shout for Junior. They’ve come for a show and they’re getting pissed off about the delay. The candles on the tables flare suddenly. The Wizard of Reckoning squeezes his hand into a fist, and it’s like I can’t breathe.

  “All right, all right!” Junior shouts, and the breath comes back into my body. The candles die down. “I’ll make you a deal. I know you been wantin’ my horn for a while now. I’mmo play you for it. I win, you leave in peace and don’t come back. You win, you get the horn.”

  The wizard cocks his head. I don’t hear him say anything, but Junior must, because his face falls, his mouth set in a grim line. “All right, then. If that’s the way it’s gotta be. I accept.”

  “Accept what?” I ask Junior.

  “Never you mind,” Junior whispers. “If something happens to me here tonight, you take my horn with you.”

  “But you just said—”

  Junior’s voice is as tight as his lips. “I know what I said, son. You take this horn and someday, when you gotta, when there’s nothin’ else, you play it. You feel me?”

  “Okay,” I say, not understanding at all.

  Next, he hands me his dark glasses. His eyes are cloudy. “Now. You take these glasses and bury ’em under the angel and wait for a message. You need that message to keep on with your trip.”

  “I don’t understand. Is this about Dr. X?” I ask.

  “It’s about a lot more than that, son.” He blows air over his lips, loosens them for playing.

  “But what message? What am I looking for?”

  “That’s for you to figure on out. Now, I’ma school this fool. Back me up.” He points to the gleaming upright bass guitar that I swear wasn’t there a minute ago.

  “I—I don’t know how to play.”

  “Public education,” Junior Webster says with a sigh. “No more music, just tests and tests. Well, you be all right. Just slide from here to here to here and repeat,” he says, pressing my fingers against the strings in three quick moves.

  “But …”

  “Trust me. You!” He points to Gonzo. “You on drums. I need all the help I can get tonight.”

  Gonzo scrambles onto the scarred wooden stool behind the drums. He grabs the sticks like he means business.

  “You can play drums?” I whisper to him.

  “Only on Rock ’N’ Roll Simulator,” he says, wide-eyed. “But I made it to level five.”

  “Tonight, I got some special friends helping me out,” Junior calls to the crowd.

  “It’s one of them Last Wish thangs!” Miss D shouts next, and everybody cheers.

  “Junior,” I call. “I’m serious—I don’t know how to play.”

  “Sure you do, son. Just put your fingers on the strings like I showed you, let go, and keep coming back to one.”

  He pushes the glasses into the pocket of my Windbreaker, puts the trumpet to his lips, puffs out his cheeks, and lets loose with a furious noise. I’ve never heard anybody play the trumpet like that ever. It’s a crazy, wonderful sound. Hard, soft, sweet, mean, desperate, joyful—a whole life in fierce melody. And I’m backing him up on bass. My fingers slide awkwardly up and down the strings. It sounds a little like a cat being skinned, but it fills in the holes, and I guess people feel too sorry for us to complain. Gonzo’s keeping the beat with his entire body, and every once in a while he mutters, “Level five, level five …”

  Another sound cuts through the club. The Wizard of Reckoning has his own trumpet, and he’s matching Junior riff for riff. Notes rise and fall, swoop and soar. Junior’s dripping sweat. It slides down his cheeks and wets his collar. But he keeps swinging. I feel like I’m inside this music, and I’m starting to understand the weird, beautiful universe of jazz. It’s like that space-sky Junior showed me in his dressing room, a place so vast it seems like it couldn’t possibly be governed by any rules, but the more you’re floating in it, the more you find that it’s got its own strange, secret order to it after all.

  Junior’s on fire with the music. After one amazing run, the wizard falters. The room goes quiet, and I think we’ve won. But the wizard comes back hard, and this time, it’s Junior who looks like he might go down. He staggers into me.

  “You remember what I tole you, now,” he says. His feet are slow and unsteady, but he manages to get back to where he was, and the music takes on an extra dimension. It’s raw and a little scary. The wizard gives his notes the same intensity. The two of them trade riffs back and forth like fighters in the ring. And then something awful happens.

  The wizard takes a deep breath and blows, and nothing comes out. At least, I can’t hear anything. But Junior clutches his chest and falls to his knees, still holding tight to his horn. Gonzo’s crashing around on the drums, making a lot of noise. I can’t play the bass anymore. My fingers have lost their sound.

  “Gonzo!” I shout, and he silences the cymbals.

  The wizard holds out his hand, wiggles his fingers impatiently, waiting for Junior’s golden trumpet, but quick as a whip, Junior tosses the horn to me instead, and I catch it one-handed.

  Junior laughs down low in his chest; the laugh mixes with a rattling cough. The Wizard of Reckoning strides across the floor and straddles Junior’s body, towering over him. Slowly, he raises his visor. I can’t see who he is, but Junior can; his face registers surprise first, then amusement.

  “I’ll be damned,” Junior says, with a weak little laugh. “Don’t that beat all?”

  He wheezes once. And just like that, the old jazzman hits the floor, dead.

  The crowd is stunned into silence, but not for long, because the wizard’s not letting anyone off easy. He tilts his head back, lifts his arms, and lets loose with a screeching howl that’s part freight train, part missile attack. I feel it in every cell, like a force of gravity times one hundred, pushing down on me. He brings his arms down fast and the walls explode in flame; glass shatters inward. The crowd in the club screams; they crawl over each other in their panic to escape.

  The Wizard of Reckoning points his finger at me again, and my body screams in anguish, as if I’m on fire. It brings me to my knees, shutting my eyes against the searing pain.

  “Just relax, baby. You be okay.” It’s Glory’s soothing voice. I open my eyes, and she’s shooting something into my IV line.

  Glory? I hear it in my head, but I don’t know if I’ve said it
out loud.

  “Try to sleep.”

  “Cameron!” Gonzo’s cowering behind the high hat, using the sticks like a cross in a vampire movie.

  “Gonzo! We’ve gotta … gotta get out of here,” I gasp out.

  Gonzo’s frozen with fear. He’s not leaving the safety of the cymbals. People are pushing and shoving, doing their best to escape the fire. The wizard sees us, and he’s coming.

  “Gonzo, we’ve got to go now!” I scream.

  Miss Demeanor rushes the stage and pulls Gonzo off the drums forcibly. “This way!”

  She runs backstage to Junior’s dressing room. “But there’s no door here!” I shout.

  “Yes there is.” She puts the nearly catatonic Gonzo down and flips on the planetarium projector. The sky fills up with tiny moons and planets zooming into the great unknown of the black hole. “Follow me.”

  She walks straight for it, glittery and bright as a star, and vanishes. I can’t see a single spangle of her left.

  “Holy mierda! Where’d she go?” Gonzo bleats.

  “I don’t know!”

  “This way,” she calls, and now I see her perched on a small, rickety ladder that climbs up to the ceiling.

  The heat from the fire has reached us. Flames grab at the doorway and bring it down. I’m not sticking around to see what else they can do. I shove Junior Webster’s sunglasses and his horn into my bag and race for the hole. It feels like it’s pulling me in, but it’s Miss D. She grabs my hands and drags me to a hidden door in the shadows. One hard shove of her hip and the door opens. We spill out into the weak light of an alley.

  The place is crawling with cops and firefighters now. Blasts of water belch from heavy-duty hoses. Miss D pushes us down the street, away from the fire, till we’re far from the crowds and standing by a streetlamp near a storefront for a psychic.

  “You boys better clear on out of here,” Miss D says. Before we take off running, she grabs my hand. “Whatever Junior told you, you best do, cher. He’s never been wrong long as I’ve known him. And Cameron,” she adds.

  “Yes?”

  She flips the matches over in her hand. “Thanks for the light, baby.”

  We run for blocks until we reach the edge of the Mississippi River. I’m bent over, trying to catch my breath. Gonzo paces, taking in nervous gulps of air.

  “What. The fuck. Was that?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer. “That guy … what was …”

  “I don’t know.” I’m not about to divulge that particular info to Gonzo. He’ll freak and head back for sure.

  “He killed Junior Webster!”

  “Maybe Junior was mixed up in something big—gambling debts or, hell, I don’t know,” I lie. “We just need to focus on finding Dr. X.”

  Gonzo shakes his head. “This is fucked up, man.”

  “The sooner we get to Dr. X, the sooner I get cured and you get … whatever it is you’re getting, and we’re done. Agreed?”

  Gonzo squints out at the water like he’s thinking it over. The dawn’s sending out the early team to ready the sky. Gulls dive down for breakfast beside tugboats shining on the river like floating bones.

  “I’m hungry,” Gonzo says, and I guess we’re agreed after all.

  The French Quarter’s emptying out. The garbage cans overflow with plastic cups and the streets are a wreck. Horse-drawn carriages clip-clop on the cobblestones, heading home for sleep. A truck idles by a warehouse entrance. Gonzo and I find an all-hours café where they serve crispy, hot beignets and mugs of chicory coffee that taste like it’s been made with airplane fuel and stirred with an old stick. But it warms us up and chases away what’s left of the night, so we drink it anyway.

  “What was that thing he told you about his sunglasses?” Gonzo asks.

  “He told me to bury them under the angel.” I take them out of my pocket and put them on the table. They’re just ordinary sunglasses.

  “Which means?”

  “I don’t know. He said once I did, I’d get a message.”

  Gonzo eats another beignet. The powdered sugar coats his upper lip like a snowy mustache. “Dude, this is crazy.”

  He’s right. I wish Dulcie would show herself, drop us a hint or two or just give in and tell us where to find Dr. X. The bleary morning light is pressing against the café’s windows now, and I get a good look at the desperate crew inhabiting the diner with us at this otherworldly hour: a couple of hospital workers getting off the night shift, trying to laugh off the stab wounds and gunshot wounds they saw but not really shaking the lines that have settled around their mouths like parentheses closing off all the relevant things that could be said. A couple of homeless schizophrenics talking to themselves and drinking coffee with their few panhandled coins, though coffee seems like the last thing they need. A group of still-drunk college kids in wilting costumes trying to sober up over pancakes and toast. It’s a long way from the stupid, choreographed riding mowers of my safe little suburb, and something about it makes me feel both sad and exhilarated all at the same time, like now I know a secret the sleeping citizens back home don’t, even if the secret is basically how alone we can be out here in the dead-honest haze of six a.m.

  Gonzo’s going on about Captain Carnage and the time he beat a flock of Teddy Vamps. His voice is white noise. My body aches, and my arm’s shaking. I just want to sleep. My eyelids fall, closing out the world.

  I’m dreaming of Disney World, but it’s like a herky-jerky, grainy home movie with the sound turned down. Hotel bathroom, Mom smiling, rubbing my wet head with a white towel. Dad and me waving from the line to the Peter Pan ride. Mom holding Jenna, who blinks at the sun. A random shot of Tomorrowland looking like another planet made of colorful balls and gears. The dark of the Small World ride. Mechanical kids going around and up and down. A splash. Me underwater, sinking, opening my mouth wide.

  I wake with a gasp. Gonzo’s not talking anymore, and there’s a face inches from mine.

  “Buy me a cup of coffee?” One of the schizo dudes hovers over me. He’s as matted as a feral cat and smells like he rolled in his own piss. He’s got about four teeth left, and they don’t look long for this world.

  “Buy me a cup of coffee, please? I’m a homeless vet. Me and my wife got burned out of our home and I gotta support five kids and the littlest one needs an operation on her eyes and I wouldn’t do this, man, I wouldn’t be out here if it wasn’t for them, and a guy’s gotta live, you know, gotta make his way and find his meaning in life and love, and to do that he needs coffee, he needs coffee and coffee and coffee.”

  Gonzo’s shrinking down into his chair till I can only see his eyes and that huge ’fro, but I can tell by the redness in his cheeks that he’s holding his breath. The smell is pretty harsh, but I know Gonzo’s probably more afraid that he could catch some rare, untreatable disease just by sharing the same airspace as this guy.

  “Here you go, man.” I leave a dollar on the table and he snatches it up.

  “Thank you. Thank you. I got burned out of my houseboat and my kid needs an operation on her lungs so I need to get me some coffee and head out to the cemeteries to take care of things. To the cemeteries you just take the Canal Street cable car to the end, all the way to the end of the line, to the end where the angels live, and that’s where you go to bury things.”

  My skin’s tingling now, but it has nothing to do with my disease. “What did you say?” I ask the homeless guy, but the cook’s shooing him away.

  “Come on, Spanky, leave these people alone, now,” the cook says. He yanks the string to the front window shades and the café is flooded with light.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  In Which We Visit a Cemetery and I Receive a Message. Sort of. I Hope.

  We take the Canal Street car out to the cemeteries near the interstate. It’s a depressing ride. Sandwiched between the refurbished law offices, used-car lots, and prisonlike schools are tiny little houses that look like they could fall down any minute, all peeling paint and chipped shutters. S
ome of the wounded doors have red X’s drawn on them like animals marked for slaughter. Abandoned cars peek out from coats of dirt, rust, and leaves. On the corner, there’s a bent ONE-WAY street sign pointing to the ground.

  “End of the line,” the guy says, which is pretty funny, considering. All around us are cemeteries—left, right, center.

  “Now what?” Gonzo asks as we get off the cable car and cross over the tracks.

  “He said I’d know the one,” I say, eyes scanning the miles and miles of gravestones.

  Gonzo snorts. “Well, that’s helpful.” He calls out the names of the cemeteries around us. “The Odd Fellow’s Rest? That sounds like your speed, amigo. The Greenwood?”

  Gonzo’s waiting for some direction from me, but hell if I know what we’re looking for. Junior Webster’s sunglasses feel heavy in my hands.

  “Cypress Grove,” Gonzo says. “Or the …”

  “There’s one called Cypress Grove?”

  “Yeah. Over there. The small one.”

  “This way,” I say. We pass under the wrought-iron arch that spells out Cypress Grove and into the cemetery. A grass and gravel path leads us past limestone mausoleums, pretty little houses for the dead. Set into the ground are raised stone platforms with inscriptions that read OUR BELOVED BROTHER or OUR DARLING BABIES.

  “What are we looking for?” Gonzo asks.

  “An angel.”

  We scan the mausoleums and headstones. In this row alone, I count twenty-seven angel statues.

  “Could you be more specific?” Gonzo asks.

  “He said I’d know it. Let’s keep looking.”

  “Hey, check this out!” Gonzo yells, climbing up onto the platform of a coffee-colored mausoleum. “It’s like a fucking castle. Oh shit. Can you say ‘fuck’ in a graveyard or will that jinx you with the undead?”

  I suck in my breath. “Well, it’s too late now.”

  Gonzo’s eyes get huge and I can tell he’s heading for a full-on feardown. “Seriously. You don’t think there’s some voodoo action on this place, like hands sticking up through graves and stuff? Dude. For real?”