A Song for a New Day

by Sarah Pinsker

  She sighed. “For us, then. But it’s not like that. I’ve figured out a trick. I find a place that’s got shows going on, and then I make offers if I see anyone good, and then I fake StageHolo out with a fake venue to raid. I’ve done it in Asheville and Charlotte now. Everybody wins. The bands that want a deal get a chance, the venue stays safe, StageHolo is off everybody’s backs for a while.”

  I was a little impressed, but I didn’t let her see it. “Has anybody been hurt? Or arrested?”

  She looked down at her left ankle. “Me. Both. Getting hurt was my fault, and the charges are minor.”

  “Minor to you, but not to somebody who can’t pay the fines, or got in trouble in the past. Or the wrong officer gets called in on the raid, and somebody gets hurt for real. That sounds like a fun bait and switch, but you can’t possibly see yourself doing that forever. They’ll catch on if you get even a little sloppy.”

  “I know, I know. I know it’s not a real solution. I’m still trying. That’s why I’m here.”

  She’d clenched her fists into balls, the knuckles whitening. I softened my tone. “What’s why you’re here?”

  “I came to tell you I have another idea. Something bigger. First I need to ask: have you seen ‘Harriet speaks truth’?”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a vid you need to see.” She reached toward her neck, then dropped her hands. “Oh, crap.”

  I recognized the gesture for what it was: she was so rarely without her Hoodie that she hadn’t connected her promise not to bring it with her need to show me something.

  “Give me a minute.” She waited for their song to end, then headed into the musicians’ scrum to talk with her friend Nolan. I took the time to finally finish my dinner.

  She put his Hoodie on herself as she returned to my leaning post, then took it off to present it to me like a trophy. I’d never actually handled one before. I put my plate on the corner of the potluck table and accepted the thing from her like it was something unclean; in point of fact, it was vaguely damp, from either the rain or Nolan’s sweat. My choices were to hand it back or to put it on and find out what had her going, and I was curious. Once wouldn’t hurt, as long as Marcia and Silva didn’t see me; they’d never stop teasing me for my hypocrisy.

  The only impediment was my complete cluelessness. After I wrestled with it for what must have seemed to Rosemary an eon, she reached over and put it right. “You don’t have to do anything. I already queued it up.”

  The barn fell away. For one long second, I stood in blackout darkness. A moment later, I whizzed through the air just above the ground, following a drone that was following a noise. Oh. I was a drone, following a drone, hurtling across a lawn toward a wall. The sensation was disorienting and exhilarating at once. How had I never realized that all those hooded kids knew what it felt like to fly?

  Then I recognized the gate, and I knew where I was, and when. The disturbance was me. Graceland. However many months ago. This video was shot by one of the drones hovering on the other side of the gate, watching me lose my cool. “We’re still playing music in real life. Come find us.”

  I’d been eloquent that day. Poetic in my anger. I hadn’t thought about it since, but now, watching myself, it was memory and artifact at once, filling in things I’d forgotten. Some of it had been pulled from my song notes, from things I’d thought but never said aloud. It mostly left me thinking I’d neglected finishing that song for far too long.

  I struggled out of the Hoodie, momentarily disoriented. The other place had almost felt more real; no wonder these things were so popular.

  “So what? The video’s gone viral?” I couldn’t think of the modern term, but I figured she’d follow.

  “It’s everywhere. Millions of views. Not only that, though. Here, I’ll queue up—”

  I hung on to the Hoodie when she reached for it. “You can tell me without showing. It’s okay.”

  “You’ve got followers. People posting responses, saying what they’re going to do, like your instructions said. ‘Carve your initials into something. Brand them, paint them, shoot them, transpose them, change them entirely and sculpt yourself out of a new medium.’”

  Fuck. Up until that moment, I hadn’t entirely understood, but she had it memorized.

  “Do they, uh, know who I am? Or am I just some woman yelling at a locked gate?”

  “Nobody knew at first, but then somebody said you were a musician from Baltimore, and then there was a bunch of arguments about your band name, and they’ve decided your name is Harriet. All the videos say ‘Harriet speaks truth’ or ‘Harriet is right’ or ‘Be like Harriet.’ Well, except the ones that say ‘Lady loses it outside Graceland.’”

  Which meant in either case they hadn’t connected my name, or “Blood and Diamonds.” It wasn’t a nostalgia thing. They were watching because they believed in what I was saying. Or because they got amusement out of watching what they thought was a breakdown; I couldn’t help those people. But the others . . . the others were my people.

  She recognized the look on my face. “You’re thinking, ‘How do I reach them?’”

  “Yeah,” I admitted.

  “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I have an idea. We need you to say all that again for SHL.”

  I couldn’t believe we’d come round to the same thing again. “You said that wasn’t the idea.”

  “Not you signing for them—not you signing for us, I mean. You agreeing to do a one-time show.”

  “A, no, and B, didn’t you say those things are choreographed and timed? Am I supposed to ask them to block five minutes for me to trash them?” I handed her the Hoodie and retrieved my plate to make a leisurely circuit of the potluck offerings. I wasn’t hungry, but I put a sugar cookie on my plate to justify the movement.

  “You call it ‘five-minute vamp on D’ or ‘sixteen-bar intro’ so that everyone knows when to come back in,” she said when I circled round to her. “They won’t pay attention to the content as long as the time is built in.”

  “This is ridiculous. Why would you think I’d want to do that?”

  “Because it’s the largest platform you could possibly get. You could subvert it.”

  I put the plate with the uneaten cookie on the table corner again. “It’s not subversion. You keep working inside the system thinking you can change it from the inside. This works for them. They have zero incentive to change the way they do business.”

  “Better than not trying at all!” She waved Nolan’s Hoodie at the musicians. “These people are nice, but is playing for this group getting you anywhere?”

  We had reached an impasse. “Rosemary, you’re not listening to me. If you think I said something so important, why are you ignoring the actual message? I said fuck StageHolo and I meant it. I’d rather play barns and back rooms for a hundred years.”

  “And you’re not listening to me. You’re being stubborn. You want to burn it down, but you’re not interested in saving the people inside before you light the match? Take us with you! Tell us where to go.” A tear ran down her face and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. “Tell me what it would take to get you to do one show. One show where I promise I’d make a way for you to tell them what you thought of them, for everyone to hear.”

  “I’d still be taking their money. I’d be endorsing them.”

  “You don’t have to take their money. Or you could take the money and donate it somewhere. Argh. I didn’t come here to argue with you. Why are you so stubborn?”

  “And why are you so naive?” A couple of musicians tossed glares in our direction. I hadn’t meant to raise my voice.

  “You’ve given up on ninety-nine percent of the people out there, Luce. You’re playing to the people who know to come find you. You would’ve missed me entirely. Or I would have missed you. I don’t even know which it is. Forget it. If you can’t
understand this doesn’t have to make you compromise yourself, I don’t know how to explain.”

  She unclenched her fists and walked away. I thought of her making that same gesture as I watched her from my window at the 2020. She was letting me go again.

  I didn’t see her again that evening. She must’ve been somewhere around, since her friends hadn’t left the jam, but she didn’t come near me again.

  Our plan had been to sleep in the van, then drive back in daylight. At one a.m., having driven all day and played a show, I slipped out. The ground between the barn and the van’s side door was getting muddy, and I kicked my boots off under the bed before crawling into the backseat bed, hoping the others would do the same. Marcia appeared not long after, and we made out until Silva climbed into the front passenger seat a little while later, reclining it as far as it would go. The fiddlers were still playing, but it was a distant sound, a lovely soundtrack for sleep. One thing was for sure, they had more stamina than I’d ever had; my fingers would’ve fallen off hours before. I made a silent toast to musicians of all stripes before passing out.

  * * *

  —

  I woke before the others. It wasn’t physically possible to get out without climbing over Marcia. I tried to wait out my bladder, but that wasn’t physically possible, either.

  “Sorry . . .” I threw a leg over, searching on the floor for my boots, then reaching for the door handle. I slid out backward, feet first, into at least five inches of mud. It filled my low boots even as they sank. When I tried to step out of it, my left boot stayed behind.

  “Ack.” There was no place for my foot to go, and it was already covered in muck. I tried to find my boot with my toes, with no luck. At least it seemed to be mud run down the unpaved driveway, not manure. I gave up and settled my foot down into it.

  The passenger door opened. “Don’t step out,” I said, too late.

  “Well, that’s fun.” Silva lifted one muddy foot then the other, squelching. His sneakers had stayed on better than my boots.

  “Getting out of here is going to be even more fun.” The van was hubcap-deep. Had it been that muddy the night before? I didn’t think so. I looked up the hill. “It looks like the entire road washed out down here.”

  When I slid the barn’s side door open, the mud followed at a slow ooze. It had already made its way under the door and a few feet in. I used the bathroom, then investigated what remained of the evening’s potluck: chips, a bowl of apples and oranges, chocolate chip cookies; all of those looked safer than the potato salad. I chose an apple and a hamburger roll.

  “That’s a good look,” Marcia said, pointing at my feet. Hers were covered in mud, too, but her shoes had stayed on.

  “Everybody’s a critic,” I muttered.

  She joined me in snacking, then we busied ourselves looking for the tools to get the van out of the mud. She found some lumber behind the stage. I found a spade. I wasn’t sure where Silva had disappeared to, so I got to work digging, starting with the spot where I’d lost my boot. I found it after a few minutes, though the digging itself felt Sisyphean. Every spadeful replaced itself. It didn’t help that the rain hadn’t stopped.

  “I chose this life,” I repeated to myself. A mantra. “This is my journey.”

  Marcia had joined me with a rake. Neither of us seemed to be getting anywhere. The lumber would help under the wheels, maybe, but I didn’t want to try moving before Silva returned.

  About twenty minutes later, he came around the side of the barn, followed by a young man on a tractor, a long-haired blond farm boy out of central casting. The kid’s eyes went wide. “I’ve seen you!” he said. In this setting, after the biblical rains, I half expected him to say my ghost was roaming the hilltops.

  “You’re famous,” he said next, still staring. He turned off his tractor.

  “That song was a long time ago.”

  I started to say more, but he shook his head, dismissing my protest.

  “You’re, like, everywhere famous.” He motioned at his Hoodie. The video. “My dad said I’d like the music for once, but I didn’t bother to come down the hill. He usually has fiddle jams. Did you play last night?”

  “We did . . .” I almost apologized, then wondered what I was apologizing for. His fault he missed us, not mine.

  “Can you say all that stuff from the vid again for me to record? So I can say you were here?”

  That felt odd. Performative. “Let me think about how best to do that. I wouldn’t want to get this place in any trouble.”

  “What if you bought eggs from me up at the farm stand and I recognized you?”

  That seemed reasonable. “Okay, but after we get the van out of the mud.”

  His tractor made short work of the problem of our stuck van. We followed him up the hill at tractor’s pace.

  “What exactly are we doing right now?” Marcia asked.

  I scraped at the mud on my boot. “I’m not entirely clear on that myself.”

  The eggs he was selling at the top of the hill were multicolored, heirloom. He handed me a carton and I stared at them while he filmed me, wondering what I was supposed to say. It felt weird trying to repeat whatever I’d said on the video; profundities on demand were not my wheelhouse. I put down the eggs and grabbed my guitar.

  “This is a work in progress,” I said, launching into “Manifest Independence,” the half-finished song I’d started writing by the Mississippi. I still didn’t know how it ended.

  The kid thanked me and promised to wait until the next day to post the video, so we’d have time to make our getaway.

  “So you’re in the prophet business now?” Silva asked from behind the wheel as I got back in the van. “What’s the deal?”

  “Not prophecy. I’m taking advantage of a platform. Time-honored tradition.”

  “If you say so. That boy was ready to follow you anywhere.”

  I’d gotten the same feeling. I turned an imaginary mic on myself, trying to turn it into a joke. “‘Ms. Cannon, you’ve just found out that ones, if not tens, of modern youths found a video of you making a fool of yourself. How does that make you feel?’ ‘I’m glad you asked, Bob.’”

  “You can joke, but why? This might be a good thing.”

  “Hey, if I finish this song, do you want to record it sometime soon?” I asked to change the subject.

  Silva and Marcia both responded enthusiastically, and we spent the drive home discussing album concepts—in between the flashing lights, pull over, rinse, repeat.

  36

  ROSEMARY

  Remember Who You Are

  The second she stepped out of the barn, Rosemary realized her error. She hadn’t needed to leave. She could’ve sat with the musicians. She could’ve asked Nolan for his keys, or asked him to leave, though she’d have felt bad doing that when he looked so happy. She could’ve coolly approached the buffet and loaded a plate. Instead, she’d flounced out into the downpour.

  Her pride kept her from turning around, and her pride was not waterproof; she was drenched in seconds. The roof overhang didn’t help when rain came down sideways. Not just that; the floodlights outside the barn showed the entire road washing out down toward them in muddy cataracts. Not just that; this rain was cold.

  Her healing ankle complained as she followed a pipe railing uphill to an empty dairy barn. The smell was a familiar one if not one she particularly liked: she’d grown up with three milk cows. One produced more than enough milk for their family—they bartered the excess milk with neighbors or turned it into cheese and butter—but her parents believed that cows were herd animals and deserved a herd; funny how they didn’t apply the same logic to children.

  From the dry doorway, she watched the lower barn’s lights flicker as people moved around. The sound didn’t carry. Here she was again, watching community happen from afar, unable to take part. She didn’t play an
instrument. Everybody said that didn’t matter. They said things like, “Not everyone needs to play—we need an audience, too!” But how did that jibe with Luce’s carve something/play something speech? Was that screed only about music, or did it apply to other things, too? Maybe she was still getting it wrong, and that was why Luce wouldn’t listen to her.

  A big orange cat approached from the barn’s interior, and let her stroke his back before stalking away with his tail held high. She missed the farm more than she had in a while. Missing it somehow made her resolve stronger. She had to figure out what her life was supposed to be. Some combination of these things that she loved.

  Headlights appeared down below, then another pair, and she realized the jam must be breaking up. What time was it? She had no device to tell her. Late, anyhow.

  Three a.m., according to Nolan’s car. He had to manually drive it the first fifteen minutes, thanks to an error message with the navigation system, which kept telling them to find the road to proceed. It left her time to rant at him and Sadie about her conversation.

  “What’s so bad about working within the system, anyhow? The system pays us, and keeps our cars from crashing, and delivers groceries to people who can’t leave their houses. Sure, it needs a little subverting here and there, but that improves the system. What does she want me to do? I can’t do anything to help if I quit. The only power I have is in this job.”

  “Why do you want to please her so much anyway? Do you have a thing for her?”

  Sadie looked unusually interested in Rosemary’s answer to Nolan’s question. “No! I . . . I want to help her, and I want her to help me. I think if we work together, we can make bigger things happen. And anyway, she makes me want to be better. I’m not even sure if she’s as good a person as the image she projects, but when she sings she makes me want to fix the things she says are broken.”

  “Well, that’s a powerful gift, to make somebody want all that.”