“Try? I heard they do more than try.”
“Not today. They both wanted to see me this evening but I told them I wanted to watch you sing with your band.”
“Why?”
“I told you, because you invited me. And because I like listening to you play your guitar and sing.” She paused. “Are you trying to tell me your invitation was good for only one date?”
For some reason, right then, I couldn’t take it anymore. Here I’d been feeling miserable over Aja’s rejection and now she was telling me she wasn’t even aware what the word “rejection” meant. Or else she was trying to tell me she liked me. Either way what she was saying was so bizarre I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. Pulling her close, I leaned over and whispered in her ear.
“You may not know this but you’re one very strange girl.”
I assume she thought she had to follow my example. She whispered back. “Does that mean you want me to stay?”
I let her go and handed her a bundle of amp cords. “What I want is for you to get your ass in gear and help me set up our equipment.”
She took the cords and smiled.
And just like that I was happy again.
It was then I knew I was in serious trouble.
• • •
To the band’s relief, the crowd appeared open to almost everything we played. The nerds liked our oldies section and recent hits by U2 and Coldplay, and they even got up and danced—like normal Homo sapiens—when we played hard rock. They especially gave me plenty of applause when I played my own songs solo with my acoustic guitar. The only thing they hated was when we tried our hand at rap, which we couldn’t blame them for. We were way too white-bread to pull off Jay Z or 50 Cent.
This time Aja hung around for the show, standing on the far edge of the stage on my left. Janet even put her to work: having Aja bring us drinks between songs; helping us switch out our instruments when we went from acoustic to electric; swiping cans of beer from Mike before he could finish them. All in all it was a pleasant evening.
It was only when we were breaking down our equipment that I saw a group of people from the convention crowding around Aja. I was too far away to hear what they were saying but they had a collection of tablets on hand and appeared to be grilling her about something online. I asked Janet to check it out and when she returned she looked worried.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Remember when I told you the Rapid City Journal would be sending a reporter to our concert at the Roadhouse last week?” Janet said.
“Yeah.”
“Well, the reporter didn’t just write an article about the show. She taped it. She taped all of it. Even the riot part.”
I was busy putting my guitars in their cases. “Not sure I’m following you,” I said.
“Stop what you’re doing and listen.” She sounded serious. I did as I was told while Janet continued. “The reporter in question is named Casey Morall. She posted the riot on YouTube. Specifically, she posted the scene where Aja raised her arms and parted the Red Sea and miraculously got the mob to calm down.”
“So? What Aja said was probably true. They were probably fighting because they were scared. I know I’d be scared if I was being shipped off to the Middle East the next day.”
Janet shook her head. “You haven’t seen the video. Aja’s sway over the audience looks a lot more impressive on film. In fact, she comes across as some kind of faith healer.”
“Huh?” I said.
“There’s a part two. The next morning the reporter interviewed the soldier Mike hit over the head with the Jack Daniel’s bottle. The guy says when Mike struck him he was sure he’d cracked his skull. He says he was bleeding like a stuck pig and the footage appears to back him up. Then, and this is the weird part, Casey suddenly zooms in with her camera and shows that his scalp wound is completely healed. There’s only a faint trace of a scar.”
“That’s ridiculous. All that means is Mike never cut the guy to begin with. The blood probably came from one of his buddies. There was so much confusion right then. Who knows what happened?”
Janet sighed and glanced toward Aja, who continued to be surrounded by the growing gang. They weren’t actually hassling her; they just appeared curious. Frankly, from what I knew of sci-fi nerds, they were the last sort to believe in miracles.
“You’re preaching to the choir,” Janet said. “But Casey Morall is more interested in making a name for herself than in the truth. You’ll die when I tell you how many hits this video has.” Janet quickly checked her iPhone. “Two million, six hundred and ninety-two thousand.”
“God. How long has it been up?”
“Two days. The hits are growing exponentially. Come Monday it’ll be the craze at school. Like Aja needs any more publicity.” Janet paused. “I’m surprised we’re only finding out about it now.”
I nodded toward Aja. “How’s she handling their questions?”
“Okay, I guess. She keeps saying that she didn’t do anything.”
I shook my head. “I wonder why that soldier would put himself out on a limb like that.”
“It’s possible he thought he was telling the truth. We know Mike hit him with the whiskey bottle. Even a minor head wound can bleed a lot and then be gone the next day. You remember when that drunk threw a bottle at you when we played Kelsa High? You bled like you’d been stabbed. We were going to take you to the hospital. I was sure you needed stitches. But driving home the next morning, we could hardly find the cut.”
“I remember. What if you contact Casey Morall directly? Tell her the band feels uncomfortable about how she’s portraying us.”
Janet shook her head. “She’s already saying her video has nothing to do with Half Life. That it’s all about Aja and the soldier she healed.”
“What’s popular on YouTube one week is forgotten the next. It’ll blow over.”
Janet hesitated. “You’re probably right.”
Aja drove home with us this time—after I insisted she call Bart and explain where she was. She rode in the back with Mike, Shelly, and Dale. Naturally, the whole gang had heard about the YouTube post by the time we got on the road. Shelly had her tablet in her bag and we all got a look at the thing. Mike was excited at his fifteen minutes of fame, and that the video showed him diving into a crowd of bloodthirsty soldiers.
“It proves I’ve got more balls than the lot of them,” he said.
Shelly and Dale were less enthusiastic. They feared Mike’s behavior might make conventions, schools, and clubs reluctant to hire us. Yet Dale did remind us that any publicity is usually better than no publicity.
“At least it gets our name out there,” Dale said.
“Damn straight,” Mike said.
Although the clip was focused on Aja, she had little to say about it, even when the rest of us prodded her to speak. Yet, to my surprise, she did give indirect support to the soldier’s story.
“The man’s wound went away. Isn’t that good?” Aja said.
“That’s not the point,” I said from my place behind the wheel. “The guy’s acting like Mike split his head open when he didn’t.”
“Oh,” Aja said.
“I’m pretty sure I saw bone when I clobbered him,” Mike said.
“Me too,” Aja said.
Janet turned and looked at Aja and spoke in a serious tone. “But you agree you didn’t perform a miracle on the soldier, right?” she asked.
Aja hesitated. “Yes.”
Janet groaned and spoke to me in a soft voice that only I could hear. “If Casey Morall shows up in town, we’ve got to keep Aja away from her.”
“Agreed,” I whispered.
Since our route back to Elder took us near Aja’s home, we dropped her off first. Most people in Elder were familiar with the Carter Mansion. Before his death two years ago, Carter had been the town’s only truly rich person. He’d made his fortune in oil and promoting concerts. If only he’d lived a few extra years he could have kick
-started Half Life’s trajectory to the stars.
He’d lavished a good chunk of his wealth on his home, which sat in the center of a plot of land two miles in diameter. The terrain looked both rich and natural; it sloped up and down and was covered with plenty of trees and acres of carefully mowed grass. The house itself, despite its size, had been designed to resemble a log cabin; the rustic style allowed for numerous chimneys. I’d once read it’d taken over a thousand truckloads of lumber to build the place. Less than a quarter of a mile behind the home was a large lake. Basically, the Carter Mansion had it all.
As we crept up the long driveway, Mike asked Aja if she ever went swimming in the lake. “Every night,” Aja replied.
Mike was interested. “I bet you go skinny-dipping.”
“Skinny what?” Aja asked.
I grumbled. “Mike wants to know if you swim naked.”
“Sure. I don’t want to get my clothes wet,” Aja said.
Mike went to speak again but I slammed the RV to a halt. That shut him up. I escorted Aja to the front door. Despite the silly hysteria with the YouTube post, it had been fun performing in front of her. I’d never seen her smile so much; she really seemed to enjoy the show. She thanked me for the music and the ride as we stepped onto the porch.
“You can thank me by never going out with Bobby Dieder or James Caruso again,” I said, joking. But Aja must have heard something else in my voice. She touched my arm.
“This week at school, I felt you were unhappy,” she said.
I shook my head. “You just moved here, and we barely know each other. You don’t owe me anything. If you want to date other guys then do it.”
She looked perplexed, an unusual expression for her. “I don’t want what you think I want,” she said.
“So what do you want?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing at all?”
“That’s right.” She raised my hand to her lips and kissed my clenched fingers just before she kissed me on the mouth. Her lips felt as warm as the sun, although the night couldn’t have been darker. We kissed for a while, and I prayed the others couldn’t see us.
She whispered as we parted, “Talk to me this week at school.”
“Sure.” I let go of her and began to walk down the porch steps. I spoke over my shoulder, “Good night, Aja. I’m glad you came.”
“Me too.” Then she called, “Fred?”
I glanced back at her. “Yeah?”
“There’s no reason to be unhappy.”
“Then why do I keep finding reasons?”
“I’ll tell you later,” she said before turning and entering the house.
Great, I thought, another secret. From a girl who was full of them.
CHAPTER SIX
THE NEXT DAY I had to get up early to work the nine-to-six shift at the hardware store. Business was slow, though, and my boss ended up letting me go at five. I had my bike and was on my way home when on the spur of the moment I decided to swing by the town cemetery. From talk I knew that Mrs. Nancy Billard always visited her child’s grave Sunday evenings. I had no desire to intrude but Aja’s remark about their encounter over the summer at the cemetery gnawed at me.
Billard was sitting on a bench not far from her boy’s tombstone, a bundle of fresh flowers in her hands. Elder was too small a town to have many secrets. I knew what most people knew about the child’s death. It was a brutal tale, and far too common.
A decade ago, two-year-old Barney Billard had been playing in the family living room under the less-than-watchful eye of his father, Stan Billard. The story went that Stan had gone outside to collect firewood, but had left the front door ajar when he came back inside. It was a freezing February morning and all of Elder was buried under four feet of snow. Back in the house, Stan stoked the fireplace with fresh lumber and stretched out on the couch and dozed off. Barney, seeing that the door was unlocked and slightly open, did what most boys his age would’ve done—especially when they’ve been locked up in the house for most of the winter.
Barney went outside. A neighbor said she saw him making snowballs and throwing them at a bunch of birds, laughing delightfully. The neighbor hurried to scoop him up and take him back inside but before she could reach him the boy wandered into the street. As fate would have it a car came by at that exact instant. The driver—a salesman from out of town—slammed on his brakes but that was probably the worst thing he could have done. The road was icy; the car went into an uncontrollable spin. Barney was crushed, dead before the ambulance could arrive.
The driver was arrested but soon released. It had been an accident, the police said, nothing more. Mr. and Mrs. Billard separated soon after, with Stan moving to Florida. Perhaps he couldn’t bear the stares he’d get when he walked down the street. Everyone blamed the poor guy for his carelessness, although, over the years, I came to understand that his wife wasn’t one of them. The fact they broke up so soon after Barney’s death made me assume I had a less-than-complete picture of what had gone on in their house after the death of their only child.
Billard looked up as I approached. The sun hung low in the west, coloring the white carnations she held a haunting red. Despite the warm evening air, she wore a gray sweater. I was relieved she took my sudden appearance in stride.
“I hope I’m not intruding,” I said.
“Not at all.” She gestured to a spot on the bench beside her. “Have a seat. It’s not often I have company when I visit my son.”
Leaning my bike against a nearby tree, I sat beside her and stared uneasily at Barney’s tombstone, particularly at the stone cross set atop the heavy block of granite. Unlike Aja, I never visited the cemetery, probably because when it came to the “Big Questions” about life and death, I had no answers. Or perhaps I should say I had no faith in the answers I’d been fed.
Both my parents were Catholic and I’d been raised in the faith. From as far back as I could recall, I’d gone to church every Sunday; made my first communion when I was in third grade, and my confirmation when I was in seventh. Up until then I assumed the local priest and nuns had the inside track on getting into heaven and I didn’t give much thought to my immortal soul.
Come my freshman year in high school, however, the foundation of my beliefs began to trouble me and I spent serious time reading the Bible—a practice that wasn’t, ironically, encouraged by most Catholics. For me, it was a real eye-opener.
Because the Old Testament came first, I started there and by the time I got to Noah and his ark and two of every living creature on earth, I knew either my faith was as shallow as my trust in Santa Claus or else the book I was holding in my hand conflicted with every scientific concept I knew. Frankly, because I’d devoured at least a couple of sci-fi novels a week since the time I was ten, I knew more chemistry, biology, and physics than probably any kid in town.
It was probably unfair to Jesus Christ and his Gospels, but by the time I reached the New Testament I was 99 percent certain the whole Bible was nothing but fiction. Granted, parts of it were inspiring—I really enjoyed reading the Psalms—but as a so-called manual given by God to mankind to help him understand his place in the universe . . . well, I felt a lot safer in the hands of Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke—famous science-fiction authors that I worshipped.
What I mean is, I lost all faith in the supernatural. Reading the holy books of other religions did nothing to change that loss. When it came to the topic of religion, I now felt as Janet did. That “faith” was a code word for a circular form of logic. To put it more bluntly, “faith,” to me, now meant “Believing in something you had no logical reason to believe in.”
That’s why staring at the cross atop Barney’s tombstone made me uneasy. I feared in the next few minutes I’d be comforting Mrs. Billard, and that I’d have to say something like, “He’s at peace now,” or, “You’ll see him soon in heaven,” when I knew damn well I’d be lying. It had been a terrible tragedy but Barney was gone.
Ye
t Billard surprised me with her first words.
“You don’t go to church anymore, do you, Fred?” she said.
“No, ma’am.”
“Is it because you no longer believe or because you can’t stand the fact that Father Mackey is a senile old drunk and Sister Josephine took a vow of celibacy because the poor woman couldn’t bear to tell her parents that she’s a lesbian?”
I smiled. “Father Mackey and Sister Josephine have nothing to do with my crisis of faith. I can only blame myself.” I added, “But it’s not something I lose any sleep over.”
Billard nodded, a faraway look in her eyes. “I used to feel the same way, when I was young. I figured I’d grow old and die and that would be the end of it. But I did use to hope I’d go before Stan. I didn’t want to face losing him.” She stopped and stared at Barney’s tombstone. “Then I lost more than I dreamed possible.”
I was afraid to ask but the question seemed to hang in the air.
“Did losing your son rekindle your faith?”
Billard shrugged. “I thought so at first. The day after we buried Barney, I began reading tons of spiritual books. They didn’t have to be Christian. I read about near-death experiences; books on miracles. I watched videos of séances, and all those characters on TV who say they get messages from the dead. I drowned myself in New Age literature. I even went to see several channelers. Let me tell you those people weren’t cheap. Still, I got to the point where I was pretty sure there was enough evidence to believe in life after death.” She stopped and brushed away a tear that had crept over her cheek. “But then I realized something was missing.”
“What?” I asked.
“Proof. Hard-core proof.’ ”
“It’s a pain in the ass that it all has to come back to that.”
She looked at me. “But then I was given proof. The one thing I had prayed for since Barney wandered out our front door to play in the snow. I was given it this summer, sitting exactly where you are right now. All the proof I could ever have asked for. And it . . . it tore me apart.”
“I don’t understand?”
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