But this was no fucking joke in here, this was a serious place. It was where the family car had alternated with Berke’s early—“junior”, the ad had called it—drumkit. It was where she busted some sticks and hammered some heads. It was where she’d been, many times, when the police car pulled up and the cop who got to know the Fisk family said if the girl just didn’t play so late at night, they could work this out with the neighbors. It was the bass beat that was coming through the closed garage door, so maybe they could muffle it with a few pillows?
Sweet sound of rolling thunder, crashing above the mediocre sea of the whitebread world. Dad would have understood. Dad would have said, Pump up the volume, kid, and don’t ever let it get so quiet that you have to hear yourself think.
“There they are.” Chappie motioned toward three large cardboard boxes lying side-by-side-by-side on the floor toward the back of the garage. Berke saw that the one on the left bore the black marker numeral 1, the middle 2 and the one on the right 3. They were sealed with regular white masking tape, but it wouldn’t be any kind of job ripping them open.
“Man, this is a lot of books,” Terry said, as he turned in a circle between Ariel and Nomad. “Wonder if there are any old keyboard manuals in here. Would you know?” he asked Chappie.
“I wouldn’t. This is special stuff that Floyd wanted to keep. You should see the backroom at the bookstore.”
“Did he make a good living?” Nomad asked. “Just selling old books?”
“He got orders from everywhere once he started selling on eBay. We weren’t getting rich, but he was able to pay off the house.”
There was an abrupt tearing noise as Berke stripped the tape off the top seam of Box Number 1.
“You got it?” Nomad asked.
She didn’t answer. She stripped the tape off the edges and pulled the box open.
Chappie stepped forward to see, because she had no idea what Floyd had left their girl.
Berke didn’t know what she was looking at. That pungence of old newsprint drifted up into her face, and she thought if she blew her nose the snot would be yellow. Whatever they were—papers of some kind—they were protected in the plastic bags and backed with cardboard. She brought the first of them out into the light.
It had a strange fold. She removed it from its plastic, and a few tiny pieces of paper spun out around her. Almost dust, but not quite.
There was a gray field of newsprint and a headline The High Cost Of Music and Love: Where’s The Money From Monterey?
There was a black-and-white photograph of John Lennon, unmistakably John Lennon in specs just like Terry’s, dressed as a British soldier with a webbing on his helmet, his eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun, his lips pursed in either surprise or the beginning of a whistle.
Above the photograph there was a logo that read Rolling Stone. And beside it was the date: November 9, 1967.
She handed it to Terry, who had also come forward to see. She took the next paper from its plastic. This Rolling Stone bore a cover photograph of Tina Turner—it said this young woman was Tina Turner, right there in the caption—caught in a blurred moment of dramatic intensity on stage, and there was a story with the headline Bob Dylan Alive In Nashville: Work Starts On New LP. The date was November 23, 1967.
“My God,” said Terry in a stunned voice, as he peered into the box of treasures. “It’s a mint set. The golden age of Rolling Stone.”
The third issue that Berke brought up had a photograph of a group of about thirty or so people in all manner of clothes sitting on a series of steps in front of a building. She spotted the Fab Four—Paul McCartney was so young—among them. The headline was New Thing For Beatles: Magical Mystery Tour. The date was December 14, 1967.
“Mint,” Terry said again. He shook his head in awe. But for the aging of the paper itself, each Rolling Stone looked to be right off the press.
Berke continued to bring them up from the darkness of the box, into the light. She looked at the papers, at the covers and at some of the pages within, and then she passed them back for her friends to see. A lost age revealed itself to her. It was captured in gritty and startling black-and-white pictures with colored borders. It was held in headlines like The Los Angeles Scene and American Revolution 1969 and Forty Pages Full Of Dope, Sex and Cheap Thrills. It was offered up from the past by the announcements that Cream had broken up, that the Rolling Stones were on the verge of the great comeback of their career, that Johnny Cash was playing a concert at San Quentin, that Janis Joplin might be the Judy Garland of Rock, that Fillmore West was closing, that Paul Is Not Dead, that the Underground Press of America was alive and well, that Chicago’s Conspiracy Eight was the Trial Of The New Culture, that contained in these pages was All The News That Fits, and that this publication would steadfastly present its Continuing Coverage Of The Apocalypse in this turbulent summer of 1970.
The second box held more, all pristine, all protected in plastic. In the third box, the front covers became full color and the paper quality slicker. As Chappie returned to the house to get some more coffee, Terry encouraged Berke to keep going to the bottom. It took Berke a while to get to the last paper, which was dated April 29, 1982, and had on its cover the black-and-white photo of a very sad-looking dark-eyed, dark-haired man whom the caption identified as John Belushi.
“An interview with Sun Ra,” Terry said, carefully holding one of the early papers open. The images and typeface bloomed large in his specs. He sounded like he might be about to faint from ecstacy. “Oh my God.”
Nomad was regarding a cover picture of Elvis Presley decked out in black leather. Ariel had just turned a few pages in the Stone she was holding and abruptly stopped. On the page before her was the wild, ink-spattered drawing of a distorted, one-eyed, American-flag-draped figure whose mouth was stretched impossibly wide, and from that cavernous drooling hole spurted forth a vomit of spiky missiles and speeding jet airplanes. The artist had signed a name in crazed and crooked letters at the bottom of the art, and that name was Steadman.
She closed the paper. It was a little too disturbing.
“Three hundred and forty five issues, give or take,” Terry said when he’d recovered himself. Most of them had been replaced in their plastic and returned to the boxes, though not in order this time. A few of the older papers were still lying about. “You’re gonna need another U-Haul.”
“Yeah.” Berke nodded. “I guess I am.” Her mind was reeling from the faces and names these boxes had yielded up to her: Van Morrison, Jeff Beck, Frank Zappa, Marvin Gaye, the Jefferson Airplane, Joe Cocker, The Grateful Dead, David Bowie, Cat Stevens, Joan Baez, MC5, the Doors, Steely Dan, Brian Wilson, James Taylor, Steve Winwood, Elton John, Pete Townsend and Roger Daltry and Keith Moon and John Paul Jones and…it just went on and on.
Ariel picked up another issue, because on the cover she recognized the face of a very young Joni Mitchell, whom she’d liked to listen to as a teenager in the solace of her room and who actually had influenced her own playing and writing. The date was May 17, 1969. Joni Mitchell looked out at the viewer with a hint of anger in her eyes, as if adamant that her private space not be invaded. In purple hippie-type letters was the headline The Swan Song of Folk Music.
“The letter.” Chappie had returned with her Eagles cup. “Aren’t you going to read the letter?”
“Oh. Yeah, I am.” Berke picked up the envelope from atop a set of encyclopedias where she’d put it aside. As she tore it open—carefully, so as not to damage the letter—she realized her fingerprints were being left upon it in forty-year-old ink. Chappie stepped back to give her privacy, and the others quietly continued their inspection of the long-dead counterculture, and from the two-page letter that was probably printed out on the computer in the den, Berke heard the voice of her stepfather.
Dear Berke, I hope you enjoy these. I found them years ago in a warehouse in San Francisco, and I’ve been saving them for you. I guess I’m dead now. Ha ha.
I didn’t really ha
ve a premonition of when it would happen. I just had a feeling that my time was running out. Through the hourglass, like on that soap opera your Mom watches. My hourglass was getting empty.
I’m no musician or expert on music, and I can’t say that I care much for the modern stuff. (When I say ‘stuff’, I don’t mean to be disrespectful :) I was a pretty conservative young man, everything Rah Rah and Apple Pie. I voted for Nixon. You can imagine.
But I did know what the Rolling Stone is. I read some of these from cover to cover, and they made me realize how proud I am of you. I know you didn’t want me around very much, or to come to your shows, and I understand that, but I hope that now you’ll give me a chance to speak.
You can look at these and see what you’re a part of. This world you have chosen to live in. I guess you chose it, but maybe it chose you???? I think you should know, if you don’t already, that you’re a citizen of a blessed and magic world, though I’m sure sometimes blessings can seem like curses, and there’s not much magic to be found in a dingy old motel room. (Your mom has clued in me on The Road. At least as much as a stodge like me can handle :)
I remember when we went to the Battle of The Bands in August of 1996. It was at the auditorium.
Oh yeah, Berke thought. She remembered it was something she’d decided to forget. Her mom and Floyd Fisk had just met and he was trying to get to know her.
I remember you were watching one of those bands and the drummer was going strong, and I saw you start playing along with him on your knees, just using your thumbs, and your foot was tapping the bass. He really tore it up (at least I thought he did) and when I asked you what you thought of him you looked me right in the eyes and you said, “He was good, but I can do better.”
You said it so positively, from that moment on I believed you.
I’ve seen you on those YouTube videos. You were right. But I never doubted you.
I wish you could have been my real daughter. Then again, I couldn’t have given you the talent that your Dad gave you, but I’d like to think that I gave you something.
So…these papers in the boxes.
If you ever doubt what your place is in your profession, or if you ever doubt what changes for the better music can make in this world, open these and start reading. Oh yeah, there’s the sex and drugs and rock and roll part of it, but I mean the soul of it.
I believe that at its best music exists to give a voice to people who sometimes can’t speak on their own. I believe it helps weak people find their strength, and frightened people find their courage. I believe it helps people understand with their hearts what their minds can’t comprehend. I think it may be the truest link to a higher power, if you believe in that. (And I know you don’t, but I had to get that last one in ;)
Never, ever doubt that you have an important place in this world. Look at these papers and see who came before you, and then think about who came before them, and on back to the hornpipe players and the troubadours and the poor man who played a Jew’s harp in a cold house for the pleasure of his family.
This may be hard to think about, but someday someone is going to watch you playing, either at one of your shows or on your videos, and they’ll say ‘She was good, but I can do better’. And that’s how your blessed and magic world works.
Please take care of yourself and your Mom. She’s the most fun woman in the world.
Love, Floyd.
Berke read again the final five paragraphs. Then she returned the pages to the envelope, and she sat down on a box full of dead men’s ideas and turned her face toward the wall, and she sat there so long without moving that her mother asked her if she was okay.
“Yeah,” Berke answered, her voice very soft and very distant. “Okay.”
It had occurred to her, sitting in this garage she’d not visited for many years, that pain had a way of pushing everything else out of a person. It had a way of owning you, and you didn’t even know you were being owned. She felt she had a long road ahead of her, to escape from that particular master, and maybe she never would—not completely—but it seemed to her that to recognize how it had enslaved you day-in and day-out for so many years was a first step in breaking the chain.
“Ariel,” Berke said, because sitting here holding the letter in her hand and surrounded by all these old decaying books and magazines that were once so new she’d had a sudden clear and pressing thought.
“What is it?” Ariel asked.
“Our song.” Berke turned around to face her bandmates and her mother. Berke’s eyes were red, but she was a big girl, a tough girl, a strong girl, and she was not going to cry today. “My part for our song,” she said, and she drew it up from memory: “Try and try, grow and thrive,” she recited. She decided to alter one word. “Because no one here gets out alive.”
“Weird,” said Terry, and Berke thought that was exactly how Mike would’ve expressed it.
“Have I missed anything?”
They all turned to see Truitt Allen, wearing a white polo shirt and gray slacks, standing in the open doorway. Before anyone could answer, True took stock of Nomad’s eye. “Ouch,” he said. “That even hurts me.”
“Where’ve you been?” Nomad asked.
“Why? Did you miss me?” True was carrying a leather satchel that held his laptop.
“Like salt misses pepper in vanilla ice cream,” Nomad told him. He still felt dazed and his eye was throbbing. “If I even liked ice cream.”
“I think you need to go back to bed for a few days,” True said. “But not starting today.” His voice had gotten serious, and he looked from one bandmember to another. “Come on, let’s go inside and I’ll tell you how you music stars are going to handle this…” He glanced again at Nomad. “Gig.”
TWENTY-THREE.
“I can tell you more about him now.” True was eating a bowl of vegetarian stew and having a glass of iced tea at the kitchen table. Joining him at lunch were Terry and Ariel, while Nomad, Berke and Chappie stood at various points in the kitchen. “His name and address on the driver’s license checked out, and his parents were notified yesterday evening. The information was released to the press while I was there, so it’ll probably be on the next news cycle.” By there, he meant the FBI field office on the corner of Aero Drive and Ruffin Road. He’d spent the morning planning security for the ‘gig’ tonight and smoothing everything out with the San Diego police, at the same time keeping a call in for details from the FBI and the police in Tucson.
“I told you already he was nineteen and from California.” True spent a few seconds to wipe his mouth with a red-checked napkin. “His name is Connor Addison. He’s from a nice middle-class neighborhood in Oceanside. From what we’ve learned, Connor took his father’s car on Wednesday afternoon, hit the San Diego Freeway using the dad’s credit card for a fillup, and headed to Stone Church. Where he got the pistol from, no one knows.”
“It was a .25, right?” Terry asked.
“Yeah, a .25 Beretta Jetfire. You’ve had experience?”
“I just figured, from the sound. My dad’s a pistol collector. He took me to the range a few times.”
“Small gun,” True said, speaking to all of them again. “Easily concealed.” He didn’t say that when he’d heard the pistol fire at Stone Church he thought it had been at least a .38, due to the sound being amplified by the microphone Nomad had knocked over. “Anyway, Connor lives at home with his parents. He doesn’t have a car of his own. He’s gotten into some trouble with meth and cocaine, flunked out of community college, lost a couple of jobs, wrecked his car last year…kind of a mess.”
“He was copycatting Jeremy Pett, wasn’t he?” Chappie asked. “That’s what Nancy Grace said last night.”
“Maybe.” True took a sip of iced tea, which was very cold and very minty. It had been released to the press right after the incident that the shooter was not Jeremy Pett, but Addison’s name hadn’t been put out there for the media until the details were taken care of. “He’s not talking. They c
an’t get him to utter a word.”
“He’s a nut,” Nomad said. “They ought to go ahead and throw him in the nuthouse.” He was a nut with a hard fucking head, though.
“Addison has an interesting story.” True continued to eat his stew, taking small spoonfuls and then some of the wheat bread that had been offered with his lunch. The agents outside, God bless ’em, would have to make do with trips to the nearest fast food window. “His family was in the news there in Oceanside in 2003. One evening his parents went out and left him at home to watch his eight-year-old sister. Addison evidently got pissed, called some friends over to do drugs, and he told the little sister to go out and ride her bike. She did, and that was the last anybody saw of her until her bones were found in a trashbag in the marsh just off Jefferson Street, five months later.” He took another drink of tea, to wash down the bread. “Some material in the bag was traced to a laundry, and they got a Russian immigrant who lived maybe five miles from Addison’s house. This individual’s great pleasure in life was driving through neighborhoods searching for little girls to kidnap, rape and murder, which he had enjoyed doing in Portland and in Sacramento. And oh boy, did he enjoy talking about it to the Oceanside cops. Just painted a very beautiful picture of it, which wound up in some of the sleazier news rags.” True decided he’d had enough lunch, because he’d seen the digitized articles the field office guys had pulled up for him.
The Five Page 39
