Guiding Daniel

By Rich Jackson

Guiding Daniel details the meteoric rise and ultimate self-destruction of an American icon. It is at heart a murder mystery, but it is also an examination of America's somewhat dark obsession with celebrity. In a culture where fame is accepted as a pronouncement rather than achievment, celebrities provide the reality through which adoring fans live a virtual life. Ultimately, disgrace and downfall are themes that familiarize celebrities in a relatable way. We see that they too, are as flawed and human as the rest of us.

Danny Cagle is a gifted poet and musician whose star is on the rise. When his wife Laura goes missing he must balance a burgeoning career, the care of his one-year old son and a search for answers to Laura's disappearance. Predictably, as his fame increases, so does his drug usage, leading him into the kind of self-destruction that so emphatically defines an American icon.

Guiding Daniel is a story of creative success, revenge, and a fall from grace. It defines graphically Dostoevsky's contention that: "As long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship."

Guiding Daniel has all the elements to engage the reader. It has a believable plot progression that provides clues, twists and a culprit whose motives evolve over the course of the story, and finally, a conclusive resolution.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479752591

Rich Jackson

Rich Jackson was born in Great Falls, Montana. He has lived in Minnesota, Louisiana and Pennsylvania and currently resides in Clovis, California. He has toured professionally as a musician and is a retired, secondary language instructor and soccer coach. He is an Infantry Army veteran and member of Post 147 American Legion in Clovis, CA. Rich Jackson performs music in a number of venues throughout the San Joaquin valley and writes contemporary mystery fiction. His pastimes include: golf, road-trips on his Harley, arranging and performing music with his brother, jamming with friends, following championship boxing and, when time allows, talking treason at the local Starbucks.

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Copyright © 2012 by Rich Jackson.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012921886

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4797-5258-4

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4797-5257-7

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4797-5259-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

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without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Part I

Prologue

Chapter One      Romance in 3/4 Time

Chapter Two      Show Me the Nail Holes

Chapter Three      A Soul Stirs Unremarkable

Chapter Four      A Bow-Shot Away

Chapter Five      Something Pivotal

Chapter Six      The Pass

Chapter Seven      Je Serai Poete

Chapter Eight      The Passenger

Chapter Nine      Guitars and Great Whites

Chapter Ten      The Session

Chapter Eleven      Call Me Paula

Chapter Twelve      Between Fire and Eclipse

Chapter Thirteen      The Sedate Grin of Villainy

Chapter Fourteen      A Complete Upheaval

Chapter Fifteen      Adult Education

Chapter Sixteen      A Not-So-Accidental Euphoria

Chapter Seventeen      A Ghost Yet Not

Chapter Eighteen      Perfect Offering

Part II

Chapter Nineteen      The Interview

Chapter Twenty      Natural Religion

Chapter Twenty-One      A Crew by Accretion

Chapter Twenty-Two      A Forceful Man Lays Hold

Chapter Twenty-Three      A Strange Genetic Drift

Chapter Twenty-Four      The Hidden Pavilion

Chapter Twenty-Five      Idle Fascination

Chapter Twenty-Six      The Beveled Edge of Violence

Chapter Twenty-Seven      Trial by Asphyxiation

Chapter Twenty-Eight      Caroline

Chapter Twenty-Nine      The Legal Ganglion

Chapter Thirty      A Radiant Misfortune

Chapter Thirty-One      Valley Forge

Chapter Thirty-Two      A Cold Barrel

Chapter Thirty-Three      Manzanitas Road

Chapter Thirty-Four      Heroic Charm

Chapter Thirty-Five      Hopeless Romance Junkies

Chapter Thirty-Six      The Trusted Quality of Calm

Chapter Thirty-Seven      Le Prix D’Amour

Chapter Thirty-Eight      Compulsive Intuition

Chapter Thirty-Nine      Another Gait, a Different Language

Chapter Forty      Approaching Sublimity

Chapter Forty-One      Found Highway

Chapter Forty-Two      Emissary

Epilogue

So long as man remains free he strives for

nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Every day we meet someone who needs to reach a certain destination, someone who needs our guidance. And none of us has ever met a mere mortal.

—Jeremy Lange, Delano Peak, Utah

Part I

Prologue

Life came easy for the boy. Notwithstanding the loss of both parents and a less-than-golden childhood, he seemed to move through things quite easily. He was not meant to blow away in the hard-luck winds of Montana.

Don’t rely on no one if you can help it, Till warned. There’s no man alive knows what’s better for you than you. And don’t trust people you don’t like, it was a straight send-off from the old man and made no claim to wisdom. The boy knew him too well for that.

He drove from the back of the two-story frame house. He looked through the rearview past the feed barn, yearling pens and outbuildings and curved up the gravel drive they spread by shovel from the back of a flatbed truck. This would be easier than he imagined. He felt confident now that he could look back without turning back, and that is the kind of decision that can shape a life.

The setting sun flickered through the Douglas fir and ponderosa lining the road and through the mirror his uncle’s neglected spread presented itself one last time. He saw yet again that irritable quarter section of badlands marked by breaks and ravines while, ironically, bordering some of the finest untouched grazing land in northwestern Montana.

His Uncle Till assumed legal guardianship after a second unexpected death in the boy’s family. His father, the brother of the man he watched in the rearview mirror, dropped stone dead out of a tree blind while posting for Whitetail near the Canadian border. The man responsible for pulling the trigger claimed trajectory ignorance and the accumulated effects of a three-day binge. Members of the hunting party described a loud argument the night before, but nothing was ever made of it as these things go.

The boy received fair treatment these past ten years and worked hard for the salvaged, six-window Chevrolet truck he drove up the incline. His uncle helped him install a short block and, as a graduation present, wired the vehicle front to rear. It was the first adult material possession he owned. He treasured it as a part of himself and had yet to learn that the things we own sometimes have a way of owning us.

He loved driving anywhere under the wide Montana sky and owed that to the old man. I’ll teach you how to drive goin’ into town, he advised, so you’ll know how comin’ home. The boy learned early to appreciate a meal of Dr. Peppers and Paydays while studying a print of Custer’s Last Stand above the well drinks in the Crowe Bar & Grille.

He planned to travel. He would stay west until he came to the ocean. He guessed distances and penciled the course in hundred-mile increments by approximating from the legend at the bottom of the map. He glanced back to check the provisions stored in the bed of the truck. An army surplus sleeping bag separated the lone suitcase and plastic cooler stocked with bread, bologna, mustard, and a half-gallon container of iced tea. On the seat next to him leaned a Harmony Sovereign guitar in a black cloth case. He understood machinery, was a fair carpenter, and carried a journeyman welder’s card. And he could play the guitar, an ability that came as natural to him as singing. He turned the radio dial and thought: Maybe I’ll just keep on going ’til I hit California. Try to get in a band or something.

Chapter One

Romance in 3/4 Time

I’ll be outside, the biker said. He had all the charm of a wet saddle blanket and looked like he’d been hit in the face with a load of buckshot. Well past forty, he still held to the illusion that he could get his motor runnin’. His wiry gray hair splayed over his shoulders and he had the eyes of a bad drinker. He sported a gold pirate’s earring in one earlobe and wore a brass belt buckle heavy enough to cause mayhem. His outdated, flared Levi’s covered fashionable chocolate Caribou cowboy boots not designed for the bell of a stirrup. Taller by a head than the man he spoke to, he flexed his shoulder and bicep muscles now gone round by a year away from prison steel. When you clowns are done, he said again, I’ll be outside, he looked over the bar and waited.

Danny nodded to let him know he heard. Place is full of road scum like you, he thought. What happened, cowboy, all that American steel chugging up and down jack up the testosterone?

He tried to work his way into a feeling about the man and knew it had to be genuine enough to believe; groping the woman didn’t offer up near enough grief. He needed something better or they would be peeling him off the pavement when the last motorcycle pulled out.

A conceit presented itself. The biker presumed a fundamental similarity between the two of them. He recognized a connection. This inflamed Danny’s high opinion of himself and provided the motivation he needed. I will leave my blood before allowing you to assume we are alike. Oh yes, much better.

He let the man’s pause run out, crossing the tribal boundary of saving face. You’re thinking we both know how things work around here and there’s still time to let it go and walk away. Think again.

Danny lifted the shot glass. I just bet you will, he said, be kinda hard to miss a big, good-looking guy like your own self, and it was on. He tilted back the two ounces of gold tequila and tapped his wrist at the bartender. Peach checked his watch and pointed to the stage.

Peach’s Place was a throwback bar, a real roadhouse—cigarette smoke to the ceiling and sawdust on the floor. People come in here to get drunk and we oblige, he bragged. It’s just good, clean American fun and we can’t even spell political.

Standing in front of the liquor display, Peach’s three hundred pounds reduced the label selection by a good dozen. His recorded biography was displayed in the jailhouse graphology that covered his arms. One particular inscription had a rather lyric, nostalgic quality: the SHU, Pelican Bay. It carried a twenty-year-old date all ink-blurred now and Peach had been seventeen at the time. Let’s go, Cagle, he said, with uncommon Ciceronian insight, I ain’t payin’ you to decorate my bar.

Two of Peach’s bouncers came out of the poolroom in back carrying a semiconscious drunk by the arms and legs for the count of three. An eggplant welt the width of a pool cue stretched across the man’s forehead. Dazed and loopy, he gazed up at his old friend behind the bar.

What happened, Peach? Where’m I goin’?

You just bin eighty-sixed, Streicher. They’re carryin’ you to another bar.

Danny made his way to the stage—Saturday night at Peach’s.

In Peach’s Place, business was a fact, and business had definitely been picking up. The new four-piece band he hired for the weekends generated a healthy bar count by any standard and he saw people who deliberately avoided this side of town. All word of mouth, but in they came, young executives coming off a week of corporate takeovers, asset plundering, and PowerPoint presentations and on the prowl for some primitive action. Peach had two problems these days—counting all the money and keeping the high-rolling civilians from drawing too close to the reality of what went on when nobody was looking.

What was that all about? the keyboard player asked him. It looked like you and Lee Marvin were getting ready to go outside, he nodded at the man watching from the bar, who is that guy, anyway?

Another pipe-head with a hard-on, Danny said. He strapped on his Fender Stratocaster, the perfect expression of his many moods, an instrument of Ash, dual pickups and electricity that could not have been more suitably crafted had its creator worked from a schematic of Danny’s personality.

Gimme an A, Stephen, he turned the string down low, then brought it up in tune with the key Stephen plunked on the electric piano. He harmonically tuned the remaining strings listening for the corresponding high-octave ping. He could feel Stephen’s discomfort like a cool vibration.

Relax, will you? I take guys like that apart in sections. They like to negotiate and paw the air, drum up a little crowd support. I’m too unexpected for someone dumb as that.

Stephen liked Danny a lot, and an intelligent friendship sprung up out of equal parts humor and their mutual love of music. The problem was Danny didn’t think enough about consequences and Stephen was a man on a mission.

He spoke to the top of Danny’s head. You’re crazy, you know that? And I mean in the certifiable sense of the word. You’re going to get us all killed or you’re going to get us all fired, take your pick. You hear what I’m saying? He groaned the gooseneck mike down over his keyboard, one more nervous affectation. He tried again, Danny, repeat what I just said—his friend looked up from the guitar like, Well?—Look out there in front of us, Stephen said, read the terrain. What do you see? Do you see what I see? Do you see an entire subgenre of hyped-up meltdowns who don’t exactly view us as brethren? Danny’s head nodded yeah I guess if you say so. Another thing, Stephen added, and with him it always was, that three-hundred-pound miscreant we work for, you know, the water buffalo with a neo-cortex the size of a grape? He is responsible for the only capital I happen to be generating at the moment. I cannot arbitrarily walk onto a job site or hook up with some road crew tomorrow. This smoky abyss, this garden of crotch rot and adrenaline—he blessed the hazy interior of Peach’s Place with hands outstretched—is my life.

Stephen had fallen into a good thing and knew it. He liked the idea of wringing out a living with three competent musicians who understood the nature of spontaneity, who thought and played alike. He took great satisfaction in the music they honed sharp as a razor and wire tight. He prided himself that local musicians swamped Thursday night after-hours to sit in and jam and he knew that no bar band in town could touch them. After ten years of band-hopping coast to coast, the keyboardist finally hit the right combination. He did not want his group’s momentum jeopardized by something as unnecessary as a bar fight. Whatever happens tonight, he decided, I am not going back to Snatch’s one-bedroom house to rehearse for another job. He would give LA one last shot, he reasoned, then pack up for the East Coast.

Say we smoke this last set, Stephen, and I mean no prisoners.

They played straight-up rock ‘n’ roll with no restrictions, and none of them would be able to hear right for two days. Danny played long distortion-filled leads built off of power chords while the other three vamped, finding the groove, creating a synthesis. He sang his throat numb, improvising verses on the spot, verses better suited to the flow of melody than the original lyrics. He learned something about himself when the alcohol or speed unceremoniously deleted the words to the songs he sung. He discovered that he had the necessary lexis for spontaneity and that he could fashion expressions with more punch, words that defined themselves better in a musical context.

The four musicians lit an unconventional fire under each top forty song they played. They did what every other talented, self-respecting band had done before them; they plundered like pirates, stealing every lick they could get their hands on, then stamped their own imprimatur on the music. It did not take long for people to connect the bar’s increasing popularity with the quality of the music.

They closed the last set with Nightride, the only original in their arsenal—a rebellious flag-waving southern rocker as American as Harley Davidson and designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to pull out the stops, jack up the crowd, and demonstrate, as Billy so aptly put it, that we kick ass from here to Utah. The song could have ended three times, and when the lights came on, they heard the unthinkable—whistles, drunken rebel yells, and scattered applause. Danny looked at Stephen and said, Whoa! Stephen said, What the… ?

Danny saw the biker standing at the bar talking to three men, and when he stepped down from the stage, two of the three slipped out the front door. The biker put his back to the bar, elbows on the rail, and the third man studied his half-empty beer like an unexploded bomb.

What’d I expect? he thought. His blood surged and details in the room crystallized. This was the way it worked for him. Amplified voices rang in his ears, and the dry click of pool balls connecting resonated like small explosions in his head. He felt light on his feet, ready for action, and the familiar rush of adrenaline made him anxious, wired up, invincible.

He scanned the bar for the light-haired girl with the nice hips and athletic shoulders; the presumed reason for all this. Flew away, he thought, escaped with her friends. And now he wouldn’t be able to use all this as an excuse to get lucky later on.

Peach stood at the end of the bar, waiting. Danny caught his eye and signaled toward the biker. Peach nodded and rolled a heavy rubber band off his wrist. Eubie, take the register, he said and twisted his thick red mane into a ponytail. He walked the length of the bar in front of Danny and the standing regulars looked way too concerned with their drinks. They approached the biker, and Peach put a huge freckled hand on the man’s shoulder, an ambiguous gesture.

Wade, this is between you ‘n’ him, hear me? he jerked a thumb toward the stocky musician. Anyone but you two gets busy in my place I’ll take a leg off, he was obliquely referring to a chainsaw with an eighteen-inch bar hanging above the liquor bottles, the instrument reportedly used in a previous amputation. He spoke to the biker in a soft drawl, and everyone knew that when Peach had to come out from behind the bar for whatever reason, all the rules went out the window. We all clear on this? he asked the biker but stepped to the side before the man could answer.

Danny brought the punch up from the soles of his feet, launching it with his legs, accurate and heavy enough to back up a sports car. The leverage alone should have stretched him on the spot, but the biker had plenty in his system to keep him upright. When he squared up from the blow, Danny saw too much clarity and rage in the man’s eyes. He had time for one quick, uncomfortable thought: If this turns into a brawl, size makes the difference.

Danny knew bar fighters were undisciplined headhunters with zero ring syllabus. He prepared to duck when the biker dropped his shoulder, setting up for that big roundhouse gleaned from too many action films. The first swing sizzled by Danny’s head and he used his crouch to dig hard into the man’s ribs, once then twice. The second punch snapped something inside, and the biker tilted forward to tie up Danny’s arms and catch his wind. He modulated his breathing to protect the broken rib, then backed off to even out his stance. The biker settled in now and began throwing out straight jabs with his left, keeping his right at shoulder level. Danny’s life went to fast-forward in his mind. My luck, this guy can box.

The biker’s jabs came ramrod stiff, and each found its mark, turning over on contact and igniting small bursts of light behind Danny’s eyes. His vision hazed up and he heard little beyond his own breathing. He felt the sharp impact of the jabs lessen, becoming analgesic too quickly, and he knew that as a bad sign. He’s saving the right. That’s his lights-out punch. It’ll have to travel the extra distance of his shoulders, he reasoned, that’s all the time I have. I’ll get one shot here.

He watched for the displacement of weight, and when the biker shifted to draw back, Danny threw a wide hook, catching the taller man’s neck. The telegraphed roundhouse had just enough to bring the man’s chin down to his chest, and Danny stepped in, chopping upward. He lifted his weight up on his toes and kept the uppercut within the radius of power he could deliver from the shoulder and upper arm. The short, compact punch came straight up the middle and caught the biker on the chin. His head whipped back and he fell into Danny pinning him against the bar. His size and forward momentum trapped Danny, and he held on while the stars cleared. Danny heard the man’s rattled breathing and from it an odor strong as cyanide.

That was my best, he thought, guy should have folded like a suitcase. This was serious. He knew Peach never stopped a fight until someone dragged the loser outside. Since I can remember grade school, he thought, I’ve never found a reason to lose a fight, never had to consider it.

With a movement recalled from a previous arrest, the biker slipped his right hand up around Danny’s neck. He remembered the twenty-second struggle with an undercover cop and clamped down hard on Danny’s carotid. Danny twisted but failed to break the taller man’s grasp. He had one clear, logical thought that held precious little comfort: No blood, no oxygen. I’m done. There were no stars this time, just darkness closing in on him like a television screen going black.

He drifted away to a regional championship high school football game and the image of a wide receiver barreling into his twenty-yard zone. He charged to meet the offensive player, and at the point of collision, the receiver lowered his head and drove it between Danny’s shoulder and neck. His right arm went limp and it felt like someone touched a high-voltage wire to the base of his skull. He awoke on a stretcher with his right arm in a plastic sling and the upside-down smile of a young EMT. Fractured collarbone, he winked, as he pulled the stretcher into the back of an ambulance. Be good as new in six weeks. Danny thought his neck was broken.

He brought both fists down on the biker’s forearms and gasped for a millisecond of oxygen. He hyperextended backward, straining his head over the mahogany bar and brought it forward with everything he owned. He picked the target so well marked a decade ago by a high school wide receiver and drove his forehead through the unprotected clavicle to the right of the biker’s neck. There was a sharp crack; a splintering sound like someone stepping on a small limb. The man’s right arm snaked down his side and his eyes rolled back. Danny stepped aside and let the man collapse to a sawdust-and-tile floor that was no stranger to such quick encounters.

Danny drew in two deep gulps of air and exhaled slowly. He relaxed from the sensory overload while the lights and sounds and people came into focus. He reveled in a moment of pure exhilaration, unsolicited and in its most primal form. When he felt like this, he could not remember having experienced any sensation that could touch it. He didn’t know that much about cocaine yet.

Eubie handed him a damp bar rag that smelled of beer, and Danny heard the dry squeak of ice rolled up in the center. He turned away from the bar and leaned his head back, spreading the cool rag across his eyes. He felt a dull pressure behind the right and knew it would be a mess in the morning.

He heard Peach’s voice from a distance: Conditionin’ what made the difference. My little singer here’s in dog shape from lifting that heavy microphone every night.

Danny smiled from under the rag at Peach and his entourage. Peach had his arms crossed like he had just reffed a WBC-sanctioned title bout. He signaled the two who carried out the pool cue victim and pointed at the downed biker. I don’t never want to see him in here again.

What Danny couldn’t have known, and not that it would have mattered, was that he had just made a number of unlikely alliances in a place where the common language was violent respect. He would learn about it later in the weeks to come when free crank and bottles of beer appeared out of nowhere. These gifts would signal the beginning of a deleterious tradition for the singer, but that tradition is a slow, indifferent process. In the present tense, here in Peach’s Place, Danny Cagle was unhooked and free as a bird.

He pressed the ice against his face. He tumbled off the rush now and felt a little disgusted. He knew that at some point he would have to make the decision whether or not he cared to do this anymore. He was twenty-eight, an ex-jock, ex-carpenter, ex-victim of modern compulsory miseducation, ex-Catholic, and most recently, ex-taxpayer. He was without direction and a bad example even unto himself.

The drummer Billy once described him as the kind of guy God placed on this earth to serve as a warning to others. He added this harmless asseveration: You’re nothing more’n a systems victim, man. You need to quit it all and just play music and drink. It’s all you really want to do anyway.

I need a drink, he decided.

He heard an old Eagles’ song come on the jukebox—Hollywood Waltz, a real tearjerker he used to play in his acoustic days. An arm brushed across his chest and heard a calm female voice as the towel lifted from his face.

Let me look at it, she said, and he was inches from the tawny-haired girl who had been manhandled earlier by the biker. Her eyes were stunning, wide-set and intelligent. He could see triangular prisms of forest green flecked with ice blue and surrounded by dark lashes. The color of her eyes contrasted perfectly with her caramel-streaked, light brown hair, and she reminded him of a young lioness. He saw not a trace of timidity in her demeanor and had to ask himself what he could possibly have been thinking when he stepped in between the two of them.

Oh, you’ll live, she said, and as though it just occurred to her, dance with me, yeah? I love that song.

Danny straightened. He placed the flat of his palm at the small of her back and guided her through the bikers’ legs radiating out from under the tables. As the couple passed, legs retracted and heads nodded. Danny said, That song’s in three quarter time, you know, he pressed his cheek to hers and whispered, and I’m a dangerous man on the slow ones.

Chapter Two

Show Me the Nail Holes

When they returned to the bar, the couple she came with stared at him like an accident victim. Her girlfriend swayed slightly, hanging on to a tall dark-haired man who did his best to look concerned. She had sexy eyes, he noted, but for the puffiness and Saturday night glaze that comes from long hours. She carried herself with a modicum of grace in spite of the weight, and her snug clothing hinted that it was probably a miserable, recent acquisition. He felt a little sorry for her and assumed that she had once been quite lovely. He sent her a telepathic message: The pace is too much for someone like you. Stay with it and you’ll become that splotchy, bloated regular in the downtown bars, wearing a print dress and high heels.

Great music, the man said, oozing charm and deceit from every pore. He had a wide chromium smile that was anything but disarming. Great fight. I’d pay a cover for this any night. He acted as though it had all amused him, and when he offered his hand, Danny read him like a comic book: Kind of guy that forces petty little favors on you so he can borrow money later. He hangs around places like this in a pressed shirt so he can pick up losers like that winner next to him. Talks about computers and finances with a high school GED and has mastered all the false cultivations like lighting cigarettes and saying, I’ll get that.

Danny took the man’s smooth, warm hand and felt as though he had just accepted an unwarranted intimacy. Yeah? Well, come on back next week, he said, returning the hand, I’ll see if I can’t arrange a knife fight.

The man came off a little too confident for Danny to believe, like a liar with no technique. He seemed more comfortable than the situation would allow, given all the toxic energy in the place, and Danny doubted that he could be this much in his element. Refusing to become further implicated in another male bonding experience he turned his attention to the girl beside him.

You owe me, he said.

I owe you what? she asked, and it was a much better question than Why?

At least breakfast, he said, and because she didn’t ask Why? again, he added, For putting my life on the line in defense of your honor.

Well, you got it then, Rocky, she laughed and kissed him lightly on the good cheek. But between you and me, I don’t think your little brawl had anything to do with you and me, her eyes changed when she smiled, and he could tell she was not being at all clever.

He had three sequential thoughts about the girl: she was bright, she was good-natured, and she had no business hanging around these two.

I’m Danny, he said.

Laura, and this is Alma, and this is Santo. Alma and I split a duplex. He sensed a definite icefall between her and the nice-looking hustler who groped his hand around and below the chunky girl’s waist, doing his best to look interested and civil with eyes that hinted a shared male experience. Danny already disliked the man.

This here’s Sonny Gastineau, Alma said, and it sounded more like an explanation than an introduction.

You can call me Sonny, he said.

Right—I can, but I won’t, Danny said while studying Laura.

There’s no need for that, the man said. His smile began to look like an abscess.

He straightened his right arm, and the threaded end of a metal pipe peeked out of the sleeve and into the palm of his hand, barely visible.

Danny looked at the taller man and advised, You better hold that thing in check unless you’re dead game to use it, then added, Sonny.

Laura, he said, let’s you and me go to breakfast.

Laura, Alma cut in, let’s us all go to breakfast. Confirming that they would be dining at Denny’s where people celebrate new friendships in an ambience fitting and proper. Danny could have sworn she said ambulance.

When they drove Danny back to Peach’s, Laura slipped the address into his shirt pocket. Mine’s the one on the right and Alma’s car will be in the other driveway. I’ll leave the porch light on—she gave him a friendly peck—now don’t show up empty-handed, whatever that meant.

It was after 3:00 a.m. and Peach had the front door propped open with a cinder block. Danny went in to see if gangsters had cleaned the place out or if they still had enough leftover after the drug deals to pay him off. Eubie sat on the customer side of the bar counting money by licking his thumb every fourth bill. His shirtsleeves were rolled to mid-arm, and Danny spied the butt of a Ruger nine millimeter stuck down the back of his pants. Peach leaned next to the service gate, drinking shots from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

Lil’ Daddy Cagle, he said, the man with the hard head. Come by here and have a drink with me.

Danny walked by Eubie who watched him with the eyes of a shoplifter. He stretched over the bar and lifted a clean shot glass from the drain and set it next to Peach’s.

Peach, he said, you guys look pretty inviting from out there. I could have walked in here with a shotgun.

Like this boy here, Peach said and pulled out a cut-down Remington break action, over and under. The shortened walnut stock had been worn dark as ebony, and in Peach’s huge fist, it looked like a kid’s miniature. Then there’s always Eubie over there, he said, and the smaller man nodded between counts.

Danny remembered he came in to get paid. He remembered something else about empty-handed and could only assume. Let’s you and me do a line together, Peach. I think I’m looking at a long night—he watched Eubie—you can take it out of my cut if that’s the way you are.

Peach’s business sense went well beyond the legal sale of alcohol, and it was no secret to his clientele or the sheriff’s department. He already had the drummer and bass player so tied into him for drugs that their current cut was less than half of what they earned and now he saw the opportunity for a third.

Do better than that, slugger, he said. I’ll fix you up an eight ball to go, one on me. How’s that sound? Suspicious, Danny thought, Hey, it’s your place.

Hey, Cagle, Peach called from a back room, how you spell the name of you guys? I’m gonna have a sign made up for the weekends.

START, Danny called back, trying not to laugh—he decided not to spell it on the off-chance Peach was joking, just like it sounds.

He repeated the word to himself, remembering how Billy the drummer named the group after their third rehearsal.

I’ve always been partial to the name Start. It’s short and sounds hard, has a lot of possibilities. Start up, Start now, Start here, Start something. I don’t know, man, I just like it.

Danny thought about the word then. He didn’t care for it as a name, but he liked the way it formed on the tongue and behind the teeth. You couldn’t say it without pausing before saying the next. It required a slight lingual readjustment and dropped off at the end. It’s one of those words that sound like the opposite of what it means. You can’t say it without stopping it.

Peach handed him a two-inch square sealed baggie with a generous bulge.

Keep an eye on Wade, man, he’s a snake. He’s outta my place, but what the hell. Anyways, you bin told. Eubie, he said down the bar, count out Cagle’s money for him willya. Pay him the skinny guy’s too. Peach’s eyes narrowed like nobody’s fool and added, Hold back on those two what still owe me.

With no explanation for what he did next, Danny peeled the baggie open and tapped a small white mound on the bar in front of him. The total number of times he experimented with cocaine in the past could be tallied on three fingers: twice at the same party, and once with Billy in Peach’s rear parking lot. He couldn’t recall if he felt anything magic or if in fact he felt anything at all. He held the bag up like a question mark and Peach said, Nah, man. Go ahead. That stuff’s real now, I don’t want you gettin’ hooked or nothing.

Danny leveled the small pile with a matchbook cover and divided it, forming two erratic lines. Peach shook his head and trickled Jack Daniel’s into the shot glass.

Danny took a twenty off the stack next to him and fashioned a clumsy tube, which he slipped up his right nostril. He blocked off the other nostril with his left index finger and lowered his face to the powder. He inhaled quick, like a real amateur, all the way up from his diaphragm. He chased one line with the twenty-dollar bill then reversed the process. He may have felt a cool numbness in the sinus cavities under his eyes and a taste like something bitter in the back of his throat, but that was about it. He waited—nothing. You kiddin’ me, he thought. Damn! Glad I didn’t pay for this.

Then it hit him, subtle as a tank pulling up to the front door. He would later describe it as a physical and mental euphoria so unique as to defy description. It was, in retrospect, quite a personal experience. The lining of his brain tingled with electric power and he could see out the front door and all the way down the street while everything interesting about life began coming at him in too many frames per second. He felt empowered by the distances he was putting between himself and all the things still hanging on to this world.

He remembered the piece of paper in his pocket and realized the limitless possibilities of good things yet to come. What he couldn’t know was that he was being enticed, lured by the promise of something to match something that didn’t exist because it wasn’t actually happening at the moment. It was subtly extending its pledge to the next moment or the moment after that. He was being lied to in the softest terms imaginable.

Danny was experiencing cocaine’s signature generosity. It happens the one time that it is chosen exclusively as the primary benediction of one’s worship, and like all things of evil description, it must be asked before it can enter, and he asked and he received. Standing at Peach’s bar, staring out into the street, Danny was high as a kite. He had no clue that he would have to chase the next twenty minutes around for the next eight years.

He found the duplex while navigating from a space ten feet above the roof of his Datsun. He couldn’t remember checking cross streets or curb numbers or if he even glanced at the paper in his pocket. He simply pulled up in front of a porch light and saw the door open. The girl stood in the doorway with one hand on her hip and the other on the doorjamb. She appeared a darkened physical quality, recognizable by the contours of her body, solid and mature. He saw a luminous, reflective aura of golden hair framed by a faint glow coming from inside the house—a small utility bulb shining from under the stove vent—and he amazed himself by taking in such detail. He thought what all men think in the presence of such unexpected bounty: I will unleash this woman.

He entered the living room and handed her the packet.

What’s this? she asked.

Cocaine, he answered, you said don’t show up…

I meant beer and pretzels—snacks or something. However—she held it up to the porch light by a thumb and index finger, measuring the contents—we do what we gotta do. Let’s go into the kitchen, she suggested, and closed the door. Danny heard the dead bolt slide, as personal as a lock pick at two in the morning.

The white powder made them both brilliant conversationalists and they couldn’t wait to interrupt and talk about themselves. They revealed small, capsule histories in which they glowed with intelligence and insight and laid out future plans that marked each of them uncommon and extraordinary. They experimented with commentary and observation searching for that most necessary of all human connectives, a shared sense of humor. And they found it.

She identified herself as Laura Bannon, a divorcee. She claimed thirty-two mysterious years on this planet, so he lied about his age. She had no idea who her father was, and her mother died of cervical cancer a year after giving birth. She spent her youth in foster families, she confessed, and had not one horror story to relate.

What kind of people do you think would volunteer to raise someone else’s misfortune? (The cocaine leading her into moralization.) Saints, that’s who. And every foster home I ever lived in had at least three other state kids in the house. You know who has the stomach to give up vacations and dream homes and new cars and restaurants for kids that always need something? Poor people, she said, that’s who. Lower-income families that work ten hours a day and then spend four hours a night in front of a cash register at Home Depot.

You’re bitter, he said, looking for the ingredient. Laura, you’re a bitter, complicated victim of dashed expectations who now has a truckload of unresolved problems and it’s only too obvious why your marriage hit the skids.

She picked up on the cliché and laughed, wondering how she must appear to him if she actually thought him serious. No, I’m not. She made it sound defensive, being deliberately coy. I’m just your average barfly sitting across the kitchen table from a total stranger. I bet we’re thinking the same thing too. What do you want to bet?

No such luck, he thought. I bet, he offered, that we’re both thinking how to find the balance between our similarities and superficial differences. We’re both wondering how far removed we are from the possibility of being suited for one another.

Whether we’re suited or not is unimportant, she observed. What matters is that we’re equal, and immediately he began feeling inferior in some unreachable place.

I don’t know how you could know that. We are, as you say, strangers.

We are equal, she explained, by virtue of being alive at this very moment and in this very room. Think of it. Of all the possible moments that have ever been or all that will be from now until eternity, we are sitting across from each other at this one, single instant in the history of life. That’s pretty profound. What’s it mean to you?

That we’re lucky to be alive, he said, and changed the subject. What is the one thing that scares you? he asked.

I’ve thought about this. She put her forehead on the table to think. Does cocaine always make people want to talk like this? I feel like the little chatterbox, she held the first part and sang the second, with all the curly locks.

I wouldn’t know what it does to people. I’ve never used it enough to really know. He might have mentioned the little sniff that put him in orbit at Peach’s, but that was years ago. So, he persisted, what scares you?

I’m afraid, she answered, that I won’t have the courage to give enough love away to someone to the point that there will always be more. He decided that all attributes considered, she was conceivably the loveliest woman he had ever been close to. She did not exude sex exactly, but the allure was undeniable, as though countless qualities stood yet to be discovered.

I’m afraid that I won’t trust that it is a renewable source no matter how the other person feels. And I know that the person who is capable of loving the most is always the recipient of greater love in return. She traced a path with her finger through the fine white residue they left on the table. What about you?

Well, since you put it that way, he answered, I think it would scare me to be the other person. The one who thinks he should be loved just because someone else has the love to give and the courage to go the distance. He leaned across the table and propped his chin, and she did the same. Mere inches now, soul-staring into each other’s eyes, he asked the dumb question, You ever going to get married again?

Yes, and with no hesitation, to a wealthy man in his fifties whose kids have graduated from high school and who loves to travel. I’ve had it with men my own age. She placed her hand, cool and soft, on his swollen cheekbone. What about you, doll, you ever going to get married?

You kidding, line of work I’ve chosen? I’m not sure I could deliberately be that cruel to another human being. He looked over her shoulder into the darkened doorway of the bedroom, and she went from his eyes to the room and back again. It was approaching dawn and soon the valley sky would lighten. There would be day noises from the nearby street and the beaded, rattling sound of tires on the pavement. If this didn’t work, he would find himself out on the porch in the harsh morning sun, wondering how he got here without directions.

You believe in recreational sex, Danny? I mean casual, strictly for the sake of companionship and entertainment?

I guess you could say that’s a fact, but I’m never sure when it begins working to someone’s advantage—like domination or power, things that work the ego. If it’s one or two nights, I’m usually pretty safe. I gotta tell you, though, I’m guilty of having used it for lesser expressions, like spite and revenge. So far I’ve been able to keep it away from things like rage or jealousy. I guess I just need proof that there is such a thing as casual sex. Like the man said: ‘Show me the nail holes,’ why? he asked. He decided that henceforth he would consider his answers more carefully.

Just curious, she said. They say one’s attitude about sex is microcosmic of one’s attitude about life—she extended her hand—care to see the rest of the house?

Danny and Laura were married in Reno, Nevada. Four months pregnant from their first night together, Laura asked him what he wanted to do, knowing that he was not in the least swayed by the bias other people put on the convention of marriage. I think we should get married, he answered. We can do it ourselves, he suggested, or go somewhere quick.

The lady who performed the ceremony part-timed as a psychic reader and sometimes lounge singer. So impressed was she by the open happiness of the handsome young couple that she threw in a warbling version of Hawaiian Wedding Song for free and gave them drink tickets without tacking on a charge to the chapel bill.

Chapter Three

A Soul Stirs Unremarkable

Laura began to regret she didn’t hold out for a man in his fifties who had money and liked to travel. She tried not to direct her ambivalence toward Danny who did his best to share the joys, sufferings, ideas, needs, and desires that came with the union. She just wasn’t convinced she had the energy to invest in a man four years her junior who turned out to be such a mixed bag.

He was considerate and affectionate, she had to give him that, and she couldn’t deny that he was entertaining. The problem was that he had too much unrefined independence in his nature and that made him unpredictable, which made him unreliable. It was never quite clear what he did for a living. He was either a good carpenter or a good musician, depending on his mood, and it bothered her that he was not in the least concerned about the baby or their financial future.

She learned that people were attracted to her new husband for many of the same reasons she was, and she also learned that excitement followed him around like a parade. It emanated from him in the same way some people exude violence or depression. He was charismatic in the way of all fallen saints, and she began to suspect that no one else quite knew what to make of him either.

One of his more noticeable traits was a tendency to express thoughts in unusual ways and only by insistence did she uncover his true feelings. He saw things that carried extraordinary significance in his own mind, and when brought out, his perceptions sounded fresh and unconventional.

Conversations with Danny took unexpected turns that proved to be more interesting and stimulating than had the discussion followed its own course. His observations, though not always profound or insightful, were nothing if not original. He had what Laura’s high school English teacher once described as an author’s detailed viewpoint which sees things as foreign to the rest of us as an ultra slow light pulse. Danny noticed the oddest details in the most ordinary setting, while the larger picture more often than not escaped his attention.

On their first visit to her gynecologist, they were ushered into an office furnished by a young professional who intended to look good while saving money. He was reading when they entered, and he absentmindedly dropped the book facedown on the corner of his desk. It lay there precariously on the edge as he arose to greet them.

When they left, Danny said, I don’t trust him. He’s reading a book he resents, which makes him a liar, and he’s physically clumsy. Also, he’s insolent enough to think that we should pretend not to notice he furnished his office from a cheap outlet store. He should have at least explained it to us.

But you know, she once told Alma, Danny never forgets what I say and has a way of making it seem the most important thing he’s ever heard.

I’ve been thinking about what you said that first night, he announced out of the blue.

I said a lot, what specifically?

You know about being afraid of not loving the way you expect to. Remember I said that I was afraid of being the other guy?

Uh-huh, and are you?

No way, I’m thinking there’s hope that I might actually be able to love someone beside myself and not for the sake of myself, but for the sake of the other person. He looked as though she understood perfectly but needed clarification. And that other person would be you.

Danny, I’m impressed you remembered and that other person better be me.

"I call it disinterested love, something I need to learn more about.

Disinterested? It didn’t sound so good now. Why would you say that?

Because ideally it should lift a person above the necessity of his own nature, you know—those acts that have nothing to do with someone’s humanity. If I ever get to the point that I can see there’s nothing in it for me, just freedom for the both of us, then maybe I can start ignoring the claims I always make on myself. ‘Course the real question is: how long can a person sustain so much purified self-disinterest? Not long is my guess. I’ll write a song about it for us. I’ll call it ‘No Blade of Grass, No Drop of Water, No Grain of Sand.’ What do you think?

Too long. Tell me some other things—education?

Well, not so’s you’d notice. I played four years of high school football and wrestled. State Champ at l45 if you don’t mind me saying so my own self.

I meant like college or something; something that might warrant a future for a new family starting out in this big world.

Oh well, that yeah, I guess so. Let’s see here, two years City College where I hold the distinction of being the shortest middle linebacker in the school’s history.

I take it you quit.

Yeah, soon as a guidance counselor told me what all the buildings around the football field were for.

Quitting school was a matter of complete indifference to him. By then he had discovered that he could make an exotic living with nothing but a guitar and his voice. He played mostly happy hours in the first years and then traded himself off to a series of bar bands looking for the right combination. He had entered the shadowy underworld of professional music, and it called to his soul in a way that no woman ever could.

Besides, what’s an education good for unless you want to be a computer hack or wear ties in a cubicle somewhere. Nah, I don’t need it for what I want to do. I’m a musician, he stated openly, I got the look, I got the talent, I got the attitude.

She studied him, Think so, huh? Then on weekends, she and Alma would go into the club for free drinks and watch him tame the audience and lead it around for four sets. Right on all three counts, my man, she would conclude.

Danny was turning out to be a blend of human possibilities that would have been segregated in most individuals. He could be aggressive or cooperative, thoughtful or inconsiderate, and each immoderation seemed to operate interdependently. He moved as the occasion required, and she seldom saw him in conflict with himself.

It grieved her somewhat that she hesitated to roll so easily into the marriage. She faulted herself that she might not have the tolerance or the stamina to stay with a person of so many contradictory extremes. She certainly