The Five

by Robert R. McCammon

  She said, “I’m still with you.”

  Something about that, he didn’t know what it was, almost made him cry.

  When they got back to the motel, twilight had deepened enough so the yellow neon sign out front was in its full glory. It was the kind rapidly disappearing from the landscape, an honest-to-God 1950s-style animated display of a smiling cowboy twirling a lariat over his head and then, in the next frame or step or whatever it was called in the neon sign lingo, twirling it around his boots. Ariel said she thought it should be in a book of photographs about motel signs, and Terry said maybe it already was, they should ask the manager. Yellow bulbs glowed in glass squares above every door. The Five had stayed in a lot of ratholes, a lot of dirty little motels where dawn brought forth a scurrying of disheveled women and sleepy-looking men to their separate vehicles of escape, but this place was all right. Nomad couldn’t help but wonder what Mike would’ve said about the lariat-twirling cowpoke. Looks like he’s aimin’ to rope hisself a big ol’ dick, bro.

  Ariel and Berke took a room together. In the next room, a coin was flipped for the first elimination, and then the second coin flip pitting Nomad and George for the remaining bed earned George the small rollaway. But within a few minutes the door that connected the rooms was open and Ariel and Berke came in to watch HBO. Berke had removed the sunglasses; she looked like a swollen-eyed wreck, but she made a comment about George having to sleep on a baby bed that said she was coming back.

  They weren’t in there more than half-an-hour, watching TV sprawled on chairs and beds like the members of any family on a road trip, when they heard a knock at the door. Not their door, it seemed, but the door to Berke and Ariel’s room, which was closer to the office. Ariel got up from her chair, drew aside the tan-colored curtain and peered through the blinds out the window.

  “It’s a guy,” she announced. “I think…it’s the guy from today. The trooper.”

  George opened their door. “Hi, can I help you?”

  The trooper no longer looked so official, or so threatening. He was wearing dark brown trousers with freshly-pressed creases. Tucked neatly into the pants was a white polo shirt bearing what George recognized as the flag-and-eagle logo of the Penney’s American Living brand, since he owned a few of those himself. A brown leather belt and brown lace-up shoes completed the wardrobe. The young man’s combed hair was as shiny as fresh tar. No razor, not even the ones with four freaking blades, had ever scraped a chin closer. He looked like a nervous highschool kid but he must have been in his mid-twenties, or so George supposed.

  “Um,” was the trooper’s first utterance, which did not bode well. Then: “Is the girl here? The black-haired girl?”

  George almost said Who? But then he looked over his shoulder at Berke, who was the only female presence in the room with black hair, but to call her a girl was so very, very wrong. Just not feelin’ it. He said, “I think he wants to see you.”

  “Me?” Berke stood up. Nomad was not the only one to note that she took a quick glance at herself in the mirror over the dresser as she passed it, and winced a little at what she saw.

  “Hello,” said the young man, when she peered out. If her eyes were swollen, her face blotchy and she looked like a five-car pileup, which she knew she did, his boyish smile didn’t show he noticed or cared. “Um…how’re you doin’?”

  “Better.”

  “Good, good,” he said. “I wanted to tell you…tell all of you,” he prompted, and she moved away from the door and opened it wider so everyone could see him all neat and scrubbed in the yellow bulb’s light, “that I apologize for losin’ my cool out there. Wavin’ my gun around and hollerin’ at you. Not my best day.”

  “Hey, not ours either,” George answered. “But you just did what you had to, we know that.”

  “Yeah.” He looked down at the ground and moved some invisible grit with the toe of a shined shoe. “I’m supposed to keep things under control. Supposed to make sure nobody’s got any guns I can’t see. You know, you train for the worst…but when it happens, it’s so fast.”

  “Did they find out yet who did it?” Terry asked.

  “No sir, but they’re still workin’. They’re out in the woods right now, goin’ through it with searchlights.” His eyes examined Berke’s face again and then he said into the room, speaking to all of them, “One thing I’ll say…and maybe I shouldn’t say it, but maybe I owe you…is that they haven’t found the brass yet.”

  “The brass? You mean the shells?” George asked. His interest in Cops had just paid off.

  “Yes sir, the ejected casings. There should be two. They’ve found some old ones, but not what they’re lookin’ for.”

  “So,” Nomad spoke up, “what does that mean? They haven’t found the right place?”

  “They’re where they calculated the shots came from, but…” The young man shrugged, indicating that was as far as he could go. He once more turned his attention to Berke. “Um… I know this is kind of a bad time…but… I was wonderin’…just maybe…if you’d want to go down the street and get a beer. The place isn’t too far, I’d get you back in an hour, or…whenever you say. Just thought you might like to talk. But I’m sayin’… I know it’s a bad time, I was just wonderin’.”

  The others in the room were riveted by this display of bravery. The trooper had come to ask Berke out on a date. At least a semi kind of date, of the beer-and-talk-in-the-dark-bar variety.

  There seemed to be a common stillness of breath.

  Oh, what tricks time could play. What a slow river the seconds could become, flowing down to the sandy sea.

  At last Berke said, very firmly, “Thank you, but no.”

  “Okay, then.” The trooper nodded, and maybe there was a shadow of disappointment on his close-shaved face but no harm was done. “I found this on the pavement,” he said, and lifted his right hand from his side in what might have otherwise been a gesture to offer a bouquet of flowers or a box of candy. “I think it’s yours?”

  She looked at the green notebook, there in his hand.

  “I got a radio call before I could give it to you,” he explained. “I probably was supposed to hand it over to the detectives, but I looked through it and it’s just your recipes.”

  “My recipes?”

  “Yeah. It is yours, right?”

  “Yes,” she said, and accepted it. She realized that if he hadn’t wanted a date with her, the notebook might have ended up in a trashcan. “Thanks, I thought I’d lost it.” She opened it, and on the first page was a handwritten recipe for Sunshine Lemon Cookies. A woman’s hand, certainly not Mike’s. The next page had the instructions and ingredients for White Chicken Chili.

  What a dumb-ass, Berke thought. Mike had taken the notebook from the kitchen of the house they’d stayed in last night.

  “Some of these…have been handed down in my family,” Berke said, figuring the trooper needed a stroke or two. “I guess I took it out to write something, I can’t remember.” She turned the pages. Chickpea and Red Lentil Stew… Cornflake-Crusted Baked Chicken… Amy’s Favorite Coconut Cake. “Lot of love in here,” Berke told him. “Thanks again.”

  “I’ll head on,” he said. “Sorry about your friend, and I hope I’ve helped a little bit.”

  “You have.” She offered him a faint smile; she was thinking what must have sparked in his mind: I’ve got to try for any female who can cook this stuff up.

  He said goodnight, Berke closed the door and locked it, and as she turned toward the others she thought to say to Mike, News to the Street! I’m a lesbian!

  But Mike wasn’t there.

  “What’s in the book?” Ariel asked.

  “Recipes, just like he said.” Berke began to flip through the pages. Chicken dishes, stews, soups and cakes flashed past. It was only a few pages from the back that she found where Mike had been writing. “Here,” she said, and she read it to herself. I’ve started writin’ a song, Mike had told her. “The Kumbaya song,” Berke announced. �
�Looks like he started it.” She held it out for them to see.

  The page was a mess. Things written and scratched out. Written and scratched out again. Girl at the well written there, crookedly. Welcome written there. Welcome written once more. The third time it became a doodle, with tiny eyes in the ‘o’ and a devil’s tail on the last ‘e’. The demon of creativity, hard at work in Mike’s mind; Nomad, Ariel and Terry knew that devil, very well. Another line written down and scratched out, the word Shyte!! scrawled beside it.

  Then there was a line complete and unmarred: Welcome to the world, and everything that’s in it.

  On the next page, there were two more attempts, two more scratch-outs and then: Write a song about it, just keep it under four minutes.

  “That’s it?” George asked, peering over Terry’s shoulder.

  “Girl at the well,” Terry read, and frowned. “Is that supposed to be a title?” He looked up at Berke. “What was he doing, writing a song about that girl?”

  “I don’t know what he was doing. All I know is, before he…” Go on, she told herself. It’s done. “Before he got shot, he said he was writing…this, whatever it is. You know. The…” Kumbaya song didn’t sound right anymore. It was not respectful to Mike. “The communal song that John wanted everybody to write. The one I said was busy-work shit.” Berke started to close the notebook, but Nomad held out his hand for it and she gave it to him.

  Nomad read it again, first and second pages. Ariel slid over, sitting on the end of the bed next to him. They read it together. He was aware of the warmth of her cheek, nearly touching his own. He smelled her, the soft honeysuckle aroma. Maybe he had walked across a field sometime in his life where honeysuckles grew in wild and tangled profusion, and maybe he had paused there to take stock of where he was going. Her cheek was very close to his own. They were about to share a cheek-kiss. And then Nomad pulled away a few inches, looked at her and asked, “Do anything for you?” The words, he meant.

  She also pulled away an equal distance, and kept her eyes on the tortured paper. One corner of her mouth pressed tight, as it did when she was thinking. “I don’t know where he was going with it. But maybe…we could do something.”

  “Guys.” George’s was the somber voice of reality. “We’re going home in the morning. Tour cancelled. All done.”

  Berke flared up. “Maybe they want to write a song for his service. Maybe we should have a last show, for him. A benefit. For his daughter, at least.”

  “We could do that,” Ariel said. Then, to George, “Couldn’t we?”

  “Absolutely,” he answered. “I’ll run that by Ash first thing.”

  Nomad returned the notebook to Berke. Welcome, Mike had said last night in the Dallas backyard. Good place to start. Nomad didn’t see any destination in those words, but Ariel and Terry might take them somewhere. Right now, all he wanted to do was go home to his own futon on the floor, curl up and leave the world until he either had to eat or had to…

  It was going to be a bad night, in this motel with the lariat-twirling cowboy outside. They would probably all wind up in one room, piled around like ferrets in a cage, breathing and jumping and gasping in their ferret-like slumber. If anyone could sleep.

  He did, well after midnight. Among his last thoughts before he went under was that somehow—for some reason—that girl at the well had gotten into Mike’s mind. Had planted a seed in it. Just as she’d been trying to get into his own. Making him believe he had a fucking brain tumor, when he didn’t let her in.

  Oh no, he vowed. Not me.

  Only he wasn’t quite sure what he was vowing against. And, really, he didn’t want to know. Whatever it was, he was too small for it.

  About two o’clock, Ariel got up from her hour or so of sleep, put on her shoes, quietly unlocked the door, went outside and closed the door behind her. The neon sign had been turned off. East Broadway was silent, and stars covered the sky in a breathtaking panorama. By the yellow bulbs she saw that several more guests had checked in: along with the Scumbucket and trailer there was a white SUV, a silver or light gray Subaru and a black or dark blue pickup truck. The SUV had a New Mexico tag, the other two were from Texas. She noted on the pickup’s rear bumper a metallic sticker that said Semper Fi. She wanted to walk, to breathe the night air, to feel the soft breeze on her cheek like a lover’s touch. She started toward the swimming pool, and as she neared it she heard the quiet sound of movement in water.

  Someone was in there, alone in the dark. Swimming back and forth, it sounded like. Not kicking, just pulling the water past them in a slow crawl. It seemed to her like a lonely thing, to be swimming back and forth in dark water under the canopy of night. She hesitated for a moment, listening, and then she decided to wander over that way, maybe to speak or maybe not, because she knew very, terribly well what it was like to be lonely.

  THREE

  Ballad of the Greek Potatoes

  NINE.

  When the sun was an hour old Berke was lacing up her running shoes, the black New Balances that had already taken her more than two hundred miles. Her oufit was spartan, meant to get sweaty. She tugged a black sweatband over the obstacle of her hair and got it positioned on her forehead. The streamers of sun coming between the blinds already carried a bite. This was going to be the hottest day yet, in a long summer of hot days.

  The last time someone had died in her life, someone she’d cared about deeply, she’d gotten up from her bed the following morning, laced her shoes and gritted her teeth and gone out for a six-mile run. She didn’t know if she could do that today, but she was going to try. Everyone else was still asleep. She couldn’t believe that Mike wasn’t here this morning, stretched out on his back with his hands behind his head because he hated the feel of a pillow. She’d never asked him why, thinking it must’ve had something to do with the number of hicktown jails he’d been hosted in, and lice or ticks or bedbugs or something like that. She couldn’t believe she would never hear the rusty rumble of his voice again, and maybe that was the worst thing. He was really gone. He really, really was.

  It looked to her as if she hadn’t been the only one whose night was tortured. The guys had wound themselves up in their sheets, and George had nearly worked himself off the baby bed. And Ariel? Ariel wasn’t in either room, or in either bathroom. She must’ve gone out walking, before the sun had even started to come up. Wherever she was, she wasn’t here.

  Okay, Berke said to herself. Let’s get to it.

  Out in the parking lot, she saw the three new arrivals: white SUV, silver Subaru, dark blue pickup. The air was still, and smelled of hot metal. There were a few cars on East Broadway, but only a few. Monday morning here wasn’t quite like Austin. She stopped next to the U-Haul trailer for about five minutes to do a few stretches—Hang Tens, Lunges and Flamingoes, holding each one for thirty seconds—and noted the movement of a windowblind, in the room the pickup truck was parked in front of. Somebody else was an early riser, or else they wanted to be first up for the Cattleman’s breakfast. She decided to go to her left and follow East Broadway toward the northeast. She would walk a little while first, work her pace up to running speed, and so she passed by the swimming pool beyond the white fence, and there was Ariel.

  Ariel was lying beside the pool on a blue lounge chair. She was on her right side, facing away from Berke. Her knees were bent, her legs curled up beneath her. One shoe was on, the other lay on the cement beside the chair. Berke thought that Ariel’s neck was going to be stiff today, the way her head was turned and her shoulders hunched up. That couldn’t be comfortable. She thought briefly of going over and waking Ariel up, but she decided no, she wouldn’t; Ariel might have had a tough time getting to sleep, and maybe had found some peace out here alone in the dark. So Berke walked on, picking up her pace, faster and faster. About two hundred yards along the street she started her run, heading away from the Lariat at a steady clip.

  The detective with the cowboy hat had called last night at ten o’clock sharp. George
had spoken to him. Any word on who did it? They can’t say much right now, George had reported back. But they’re going to come talk to us in the morning. And that had been the extent of it.

  Berke ran on, her breathing measured, everything easy. The red fireball was sitting two hands above the horizon, aimed between her jawline and her right shoulder. She passed the usual sights of any small town, in any American state: small businesses, parking lots, churches and strip malls. She passed the Subway they’d eaten at last night, and a half mile further on there was a Dairy Queen which she wished she’d known about because she did like ice cream. Then she came upon an area of small houses, and past that some car lots and places where cars and trucks were serviced, a litter of car hulks and tires and the like. In this area was where a man in a passing white pickup truck shouted, “Hey, muchacha caliente!” but she kept her head down and her pace unchanged. She was hot, that was true enough; she was sweating pretty good now, the sun searing her right side. A few cars and trucks passed by in both directions, and somebody else honked at her but she looked neither right nor left. She stared only at the cracked brown concrete one stride ahead, and that was how you got through any demanding run.

  She was thinking of Mike, and how senseless it had been, and how much she was going to miss him. It was still unbelieveable to her, something from someone else’s bad dream. But so too had been the death of her running and rock-climbing bud, Melissa Cavanaugh, six years ago when Berke was living in Seattle and playing with the short-lived band Time Keeps Secrets. She had met Melissa at a coffee shop, a friend of a friend, and they’d immediately hit it off. Melissa had been a basketball player in college way down in Georgia, had been all-everything, an A-student, track star, student newspaper reporter, environmental activist, volunteer at a homeless shelter, lover of stray dogs and Kona coffee and The Clash’s Sandinista. So why was it that Melissa Cavanaugh, twenty-two years old and with a great future ahead of her in graphic design in the Emerald City, had tied a cord around a support in her closet of stylish but tasteful clothes and with the other end of the cord around her neck strangled herself to death on a Sunday evening?