War for the Oaks

by Emma Bull

  This book is for my mother,

  who knew right away that the Beatles were important,

  and for my father, who never once complained about the noise.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks are past due to Steven Brust, Nate Bucklin, Kara Dalkey, Pamela Dean, Pat Wrede, Cyn Horton, and Lois Bujold; they always want to know what happens next. Thanks also to Terri, who thought it was a good idea; Curt Quiner and Floyd Henderson, motorcycle gurus; Pamela and Lynda, for the cookies; Val, for comfort and threats; Mike, for the keyboards; and Knut-Koupeé, for all the guitars.

  For the singin’ and dancin’: Boiled in Lead, Summer of Love, Têtes Noires, Curtiss A., Rue Nouveau, Paula Alexander, Prince and the Revolution, First Avenue, Seventh Street Entry, and the Uptown Bar.

  But most of all, to Will, for the whole shebang.

  On the Folly of Introductions

  Ideally, works of fiction don’t need to be explained. When I see one of those scholarly and well-crafted essays that always seem to precede a volume of Jane Austen or Dorothy Parker, I skip it. Yes, I do. If it looks promising, I come back and read it when I’m done with the fiction. But I’d rather not know beforehand that a character is based on the author’s brother, or that the author had just been cruelly re­jected by his childhood sweetheart when he began chapter 10. I like biography; but Charlotte Bronte isn’t Jane Eyre, and Louisa Alcott isn’t Jo March, and I don’t want to be lured into thinking otherwise if the author doesn’t want me to.

  I wonder sometimes how authors would feel if they read the intro­ductions that spring up in front of their works after they’re too dead to say anything about them. What if that character had nothing to do with the author’s brother but was actually based on the writer’s dad’s stories about what it was like to grow up with Uncle Oscar? What if the author was rejected by his childhood sweetheart, but it was secretly something of a relief to him by that point, though he never said so to anyone? And does chapter 10 – read differently if the reader knows that?

  It’s all just too darn risky, this business of introductions. If I weren’t me, I’m sure I’d be working up to declaring here that “Bull’s experi­ence as a professional musician clearly informed War for the Oaks.” But since I am me, I get to dodge that bullet. I’d had very little ex­perience as a professional musician when I wrote this book. I was extrapolating from things I’d seen other people do, things I’d read and heard. War for the Oaks was written from the backside of the monitor speakers, as it were, and it wasn’t until after the book was published and Cats Laughing came together (Adam Stemple, Lojo Russo, Bill Colsher, Steve Brust, and me, playing original electric folk/jazz/space music) that the novel became at all autobiographical. (By the time I became half of the goth-folk duo the Flash Girls, I was pretty used to the involvement of supernatural forces in one’s band. Half kidding.)

  But just knowing a few facts about the chronology of the author’s life doesn’t make introduction-writing safe. Writing a novel may be much like childbirth: once the end product’s age is measured in double digits, the painful and messy details of its origin are a little fuzzy. My firstborn book is a teenager, and its very existence makes it hard for me to remember what life was like before it existed.

  And as with teenagers, there’s a point at which your book leaves the nest. What War for the Oaks means to me matters less, now that it’s done and out of my hands, than what it means to whoever’s reading it. A book makes intimate friends with people its author will never meet. I’m not part of those people’s lives; Eddi McCandry is, and the Phouka, and Willy Silver, and the Queen of Air and Darkness. How can I describe or explain that relationship, when I’m not there to see it?

  Here’s what I can safely, honestly tell you about the story that fol­lows this introduction:

  I still love this book. I still believe in the things it says. When someone tells me, “War for the Oaks is one of my favorite books,” it still makes me happy and proud.

  Those are things only I could tell you; no writer of introductions, no matter how insightful, could deduce them from the text of the novel or the details of my life. But for everything else, the novel can, and should, speak for itself, and your relationship with it is as true as anyone else’s, including mine. All I can do now is step aside and say, “I’d like you to meet my story.”

  I hope the two of you hit it off.

  Los Angeles

  November 2000

  Prologue

  By day, the Nicollet Mall winds through Minneapolis like a paved canal. People flow between its banks, eddying at the doors of office towers and department stores. The big red-and-white city buses roar at every corner. On the many-globed lampposts, banners advertising a museum exhibit flap in the wind that the tallest buildings snatch out of the sky. The skyway system vaults the mall with its covered bridges of steel and glass, and they, too, are full of people, color, motion.

  But late at night, there’s a change in the Nicollet Mall.

  The street lamp globes hang like myriad moons, and light glows in the empty bus shelters like nebulae. Down through the silent business district the mall twists, the silver zipper in a patchwork coat of many dark colors. The sound of traffic from Hennepin Avenue, one block over, might be the grating of the World-Worm’s scales over stone.

  Near the south end of the mall, in front of Orchestra Hall, Peavey Plaza beckons: a reflecting pool, and a cascade that descends from tow­ering chrome cylinders to a sunken walk-in maze of stone blocks and pillars for which “fountain” is an inadequate name. In the moonlight, it is black and silver, gray and white, full of an elusive play of shape and contrast.

  On that night, there were voices in Peavey Plaza. One was like the susurrus of the fountain itself, sometimes hissing, sometimes with the little-bell sound of a water drop striking. The other was deep and rough; if the concrete were an animal, it would have this voice.

  “Tell me,” said the water voice, “what you have found.”

  The deep voice replied. “There is a woman who will do, I think.”

  When water hits a hot griddle, it sizzles; the water-voice sounded like that. “You are our eyes and legs in this, Dog. That should not interfere with your tongue. Tell me!”

  A low, growling laugh, then: “She makes music, the kind that moves heart and body. In another time, we would have found her long before, for that alone. We grow fat and slow in this easy life,” the rough voice said, as if it meant to say something very different.

  The water made a fierce sound, but the rough voice laughed again, and went on. “She is like flowering moss, delicate and fair, but proof against frosts and trampling feet. Her hair is the color of an elm leaf before it falls, her eyes the gray of the storm that brings it down. She does not offend the eye. She seems strong enough, and I think she is clever. Shall I bring her to show to you?”

  “Can you?”

  “B’lieve I can. But we should rather ask—will she do what she’s to do?”

  The water-voice’s laughter was like sleet on a window. “With all the Court against her if she refuses? Oh, if we fancy her, Dog, she’ll do. Pity her if she tries to stand against us.”

  And the rough voice said quietly, “I shall.”

  chapter 1 – Another Magic Moment in Showbiz

  The University Bar was not, in the grand scheme of the city, close to the university. Nor was its clientele collegiate. They worked the assembly lines and warehouses, and wanted un­complicated entertainment. The club boasted a jukebox stocked by the rental company and two old arcade games. It was small and smoky and smelled vaguely bad. But InKline Plain, the most misspelled band in Minneapolis, was there, playing the first night of a two-night gig with a sort of weary desperation. The promise of fifty dollars per band memb
er kept them going; it was more than they’d made last week.

  Eddi McCandry stared bleakly at the dim little stage with its red-and-black flocked wallpaper. The band’s equipment threatened to overflow it. She’d tried to wedge her guitar stand out of the way, but it still seemed likely to leap out and trip someone. She was glad the keyboard player had quit two weeks before—there wasn’t room for him.

  The first set had been bad enough, playing to a nearly empty club. The next two were worse. Too many country fans with requests for favorites. And of course, Stuart, as bandleader, had accepted them all, played them wretchedly, forgot the words, and made it plain that he didn’t care. They were the wrong band for this bar.

  “I think,” Eddi said, “that this job was a bad idea.”

  Her companion nodded solemnly. “Every time you’ve said that this evening, it’s sounded smarter.” Carla DiAmato was the drummer for InKline Plain. With her shaggy black hair and her eyes made up dark for the stage, she looked exotic as a tiger, wholly out of place in the University Bar.

  “It would have been smarter to tell Stuart it was a bad idea,” Eddi said. “Ideally, before he booked the job.”

  “You couldn’t know.”

  “I could. I did. Look at this place.”

  Carla sighed. “I think I’m gonna hear the ‘This Band Sucks Dead Rat’ speech again.”

  “Well, it does.”

  “Through a straw. I know. So why don’t you quit?”

  Eddi looked at her, then at her glass, then at the ceiling. “Why don’t you?”

  “It’s steady work.” Carla was silent for a moment, then added, “Well, it used to be.”

  “Tsk. You don’t even have my excuse.”

  “You mean I haven’t been sleeping with Stuart?”

  “Yeah,” Eddi sighed, “like that.”

  “Sometimes I take my blessings for granted. I’m going to go up and scare the cockroaches out of the bass drum.”

  “Good luck,” said Eddi. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  She almost made it to the stage before Stuart Kline grabbed her arm. His face was flushed, and his brown hair was rumpled, half-flattened. She sighed. “You’re drunk, Stu,” she said with a gentleness that surprised her.

  “Fuck it.” Petulance twisted up his male-model features. She should have felt angry, or ashamed. All she felt was a distant wonder: I used to be in love with him.

  She asked, “You want to do easy stuff this set?”

  “I said fuck it, fuck off. I’m okay.”

  Eddi shrugged. “It’s your hanging.”

  He grabbed her arm again. “Hey, I want you to be nicer to the club managers.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t look at me like that. Just flirt. It’s good for the band.”

  She wanted to tweak his nose, see his smile—but that didn’t make him smile anymore. “Stuart, you don’t get gigs by sending the rhythm guitarist to flirt with the manager. You get ‘em by playing good dance music.”

  “I play good dance music.”

  “We play anything that’s already been played to death. All night, people have been sticking their heads in the front door, listening to half a song, and leaving. You in a betting mood?”

  “Why?”

  “I bet the nice man at the bar tells us not to come back tomorrow.”

  “Damn you,” he raged suddenly, “is that my fault?”

  Eddi blinked.

  “You pissed him off, didn’t you? Why do you have to be such a bitch?”

  For a long moment she thought she might shout back at him. But it was laughter that came racing up her throat. Stuart’s look of foolish surprise fed it, doubled it. She planted a smacking kiss on his chin. “Stuart, honey,” she grinned, “you gotta grow where you’re planted.”

  She loped over and swung up on stage, took her lipstick-red Rick-enbacker from the stand, and flipped the strap over her shoulder. She caught Carla’s eye over the tops of the cymbals. “Dale back from break yet?”

  Carla shook her head, then inhaled loudly through pursed lips. “Parking lot,” she croaked.

  “Oh, goody. The whole left side of the stage in an altered state of consciousness. Let’s figure out the set list.”

  “But we’ve got a set list.”

  “Let’s make a new one. May as well be hanged for Prince as for Pink Floyd.”

  “But Stuart—”

  Eddi grinned. “I want to leave this band in a blaze of glory.”

  Carla’s eyes grew wide. “You’re—Jesus. Okay, set list. Can we dump all the Chuck Berry?”

  “Yeah. Let’s show this dive that we at least flirt with modern mu­sic, huh?”

  They came up with a list of songs in a few gleeful minutes. Stuart hoisted himself on stage as they finished, eyeing them with sullen sus­picion. He slung on his guitar and began to noodle, running through his arsenal of electronic effects—more, Eddi suspected, to prove to the audience that he had them than to make sure they worked.

  Dale, the bass player, ambled on stage looking vaguely pleased with himself. Dale was all right in his own disconnected way; but he liked country rock and hated rock ‘n’ roll, and consoled himself with dope during breaks. Eddi cranked up the bass on her amp and hoped it would make up for whatever he was too stoned to deliver.

  Carla was watching her, waiting for the cue to start. Stuart and Dale were ready, if not precisely waiting. “Give us a count,” she said to Carla. Stuart glared at her. Carla counted, and they kicked off with a semblance of unity.

  They began with a skewed version of Del Shannon’s “Runaway.” It was familiar enough to pull people onto the dance floor, and the band’s odd arrangement disguised most of the mistakes. Eddi and Carla did impromptu girl-group vocals. Dale looked confused. Then they dived into the Bangles’ “In a Different Light,” and Stuart began to sulk. Eddi had anticipated that. The next one was an old Eagles song that gave Stuart a chance to sing and muddle up the lead guitar riffs.

  Perhaps the scanty audience felt Eddi’s sudden madness; they were in charity with the band for the first time that night. People had finally started to dance. Eddi hoped it wasn’t too late to impress the manager, but suspected it was.

  Carla set the bass drum and her drum machine to tossing the per­cussion back and forth. The dancers were staying on the floor, waiting for the beat to fulfill its promise. Eddi murmured the four-count. Dale thumped out a bass line that was only a little too predictable. Stuart shot Eddi an unreadable look and layered on the piercing voice of his Stratocaster. Eddi grabbed her mike and began to sing.

  You told me I was pretty

  I can’t believe it’s true.

  The little dears you left me for

  They all look just like you.

  Ugly is as ugly does—

  Are you telling me what to do?

  Wear my face

  You can have it for a week

  Wear my face

  Aren’t the cheekbones chic?

  Wear my face

  See how people look at you?

  Wear my face

  See how much my face can do?

  They were still dancing. The band was together and tight at last, and Eddi felt as if she’d done it all herself in a burst of goddesslike musical electricity.

  Then she saw the man standing at the edge of the dance floor. His walnut-stain skin seemed too dark for his features. He wore his hair smoothed back, except for a couple of escaped curls on his forehead. His eyes were large and slanted upward under thick arched brows; his nose was narrow and slightly aquiline. He wore a long dark coat with the collar up, and a gleaming white scarf that reflected the stage lights into his face. When she looked at him, he met her eyes boldly and grinned.

  Eddi snagged the microphone, took the one step toward him that she had room for, and sang the last verse at him.

  I’ve seen the way you look away

  When you think I might see,

  You say I scare you silly—

  That�
��s reacting sensibly.

  Why should people look at you

  When they could look at me?

  It was Eddi who had to turn away, and the last chorus was delivered to the dancers. The man had met her look with a silent challenge that made her skin prickle. His sloping eyes had been full of reflected lights in colors that shone nowhere in the room.

  She almost missed Carla’s neat segue into the next song. She nailed down her first guitar chord barely in time, and caught Stuart’s scowl out of the corner of her eye.

  Eddi had wanted to close with something rambunctious, something the audience would like yet that would allow Eddi and Carla to respect themselves in the morning. Carla had hit upon ZZ Top’s “Cheap Sun­glasses.” Halfway into it, with a shower of sparks and a vile smell, the ancient power amp for the PA dropped dead.

  As the microphones failed, Stuart’s vocals disappeared tinnily under the sound of guitars and bass and Carla’s drums. Stuart, never at his best in the face of adversity, lost his temper. He yanked his guitar strap over his head and let the Strat drop to the stage. The pickups howled painfully through his amp.

  Eddi heard Dale’s bass stumble through a succession of wrong notes, and fall silent. She supposed he was right; Stuart had made it impos­sible to end the song gracefully. But for her pride’s sake, she played out the measure and added a final flourish. Carla matched her perfectly, and Eddi wanted to kiss her feet for it.

  The dancers had deserted the floor, and people were finishing drinks and pulling on jackets. She swept the room a stagey bow. At the corner of her vision, she thought she saw a dark-coated figure move toward the door.

  Stuart had turned off his amp and unplugged his axe. His expression was forbidding. Eddi turned away to tend to her own equipment, but not before she saw the club manager striding toward the stage.

  “You the bandleader?” she heard him ask Stuart.