THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES
Abie finally gave up on the radio when five passes yielded nothing but shit-kicking music and indignant talk show hosts that tried too hard to be a cool they would never attain. Silence was preferable to that so he gripped the wheel and watched the headlights swallow highway.
When he saw the hitchhiker ahead, he considered it well-timed kismet. At least, he thought, it would be someone to talk to.
He edged the Ford to the shoulder and hit reverse. The dark clothed figure stepped into the scrub, out of the way, as he braked.
The door opened and Abie adjusted the guitar on the back seat to make room for a rucksack and what looked like a cello case.
“Climb in,” he said. “Toss your stuff in the back.”
Without a word, the hitcher pushed the gear into the back seat and pulled the passenger door closed.
“Where you headed?” Abie eased the car forward and back onto the road.
“Tahoe,” the girl said.
Abie went for a second look. Maybe it was her height, maybe the way she carried herself, but with the hood pulled up and the bulky overcoat, he’d been convinced it was a guy. Maybe that was the goal, he thought. Out alone on a Nevada highway, truly the middle of nowhere.
“So where you from?”
She stared out of the window away from him. “Could we listen to the radio?”
The shit-kickers still ruled the airwaves. He sighed and drove in silence.
Thirty minutes later, he picked up another hitchhiker. This time he wasn’t exactly sure why. He intended to drive past the dark clothed figure but found himself pulling over. He even climbed out of the car and moved his guitar to the trunk.
This one climbed in with a rucksack and a violin case.
“Where you headed?” he asked this one over his shoulder.
“Tahoe,” she said. Both were dressed alike. Both hid their faces in shadowing hoods and looked away.
He shook his head, trying to shake off the strangeness. It felt strange, like an uncanny deja vu, and yet he felt calm. Almost like that slight floating feeling after his first cigarette in two weeks.
Thirty minutes later, he stopped again. This time, he moved everything to the trunk and even helped the newest addition load her harp case. He had no idea how it all fit. It seemed like something out of a bad commercial with clowns and cars, only in reverse.
“Let me guess,” he said. “Tahoe?”
The slightest nod of the hood and he climbed back into the car.
Abie Kincaid still felt too good to wonder much. Three tall girls, each with musical instruments, each dressed alike, twenty miles apart on a deserted highway in the middle of the night. No big deal. Instead, he daydreamed about the shows he would play. Someday. He had a pack of songs he’d written along with the covers he’d learned. He’d fed himself a solid diet of folk and alternative rock. Dylan and McLean, the Goo Goo Dolls and Matchbox 20. It was, he thought, only a matter of time.
So what if Jessica thought he was terrible. She’d be the first in the line, he knew, when Abie Kincaid shoved the shit-kickers over far enough for him to have his own corner of the airwaves.
His daydreaming ate up an hour.
“We need to stop,” all three hitchhikers said in unison. When they spoke together their voices were liquid, blending into a tone that ran over his entire body like a warm, soft tongue.
They gestured to a small roadside bar. He pulled up and parked. “How long ladies?”
The first one he’d picked up turned towards him. “We’ve been untruthful. We are not going to Tahoe.”
He suddenly thought that perhaps this was their stop. His stomach sank as the bizarre well-being drained away like so much bath water. “Where are you going then?”
“Midway.”
He scratched his head, remembering senior history three years ago with Mr. Frunk. “The island?”
The second one shook her head. “No. Northern Idaho. On the border.”
Relief flooded him and he smiled. “Oh. I can take you there.”
“Yes,” the third one said. “We thought so.”
The slight buzz became a full-on drunk. “We might need a map,” he said.
“And currency,” the first said.
“And a new car,” the second said.
“Bring your guitar,” the third said.
So he did. They all walked into the bar and when they pushed back their hoods they were each uniquely and stunningly beautiful. Each wore their hair short, one copper, one brunette and the last blonde. Their eyes wouldn’t allow him to find their color — they were deep and wide and undulating.
Every man in the bar stopped what he was doing and watched, slack-jawed. Every woman did the same, only with hard glances that said step-off or something like it.
One hitcher moved to the wall of slot machines.
Another headed towards the pool table.
The last took Abie’s arm firmly and steered him towards the stage. A country western band was wrapping up an old tune about cheating hearts.
The owner came over in a hurry.
“My friend is a performer,” the girl said.
“Sorry miss. We already have a band for the night.”
Abie watched the magic work. A slight smile pulled at the corners of the owner’s mouth. His eyes glistened, too. He was catching whatever drunk she had tossed Abie. “They can play later,” she said.
“I reckon so,” he said, grinning. He walked over to the amp cord and yanked it. The lead singer came over, red faced. The room buzzed anger.
“What the hell you doing, hoss?”
“Change in plans.”
The girl laid her hand on the singer’s arm. His face remained red but the anger left it. Now he blushed.
Then Abie was on stage, tuning his guitar and doing a mic test. The girl opened his guitar case at the foot of the stage and fixed her gaze on him.
Abie lost everything in the room except for that pair of eyes. He lost the music. He lost the lyrics. He lost his soul. But he sang. Christ Almighty, for the first time in his life he truly sang.
When he finished, the guitar case overflowed with bills. The line of people, red eyed from crying, hoarse from screaming his name, slipped out of the bar into the dawn.
“We have to go,” the girl said, dumping the cash into a whiskey carton the owner had provided.
The other two joined them, each with plastic sacks. Near as he could tell, everyone including the owner must be going away with empty pockets. The slot machines were dark now, too, and silent.
They pulled onto the highway as a nondescript sedan with tinted windows pulled in.
They helped themselves to a used Chevy at Slim’s Quality Pre-Owned Cars and Wedding Chapel just outside of Reno. They left Abie’s car and two thousand dollars cash in the space where it had been, then turned north.
The girls talked more now. But still not much. They also left their hoods down.
“Where are you headed?” the redhead asked.
Abie’s high had peaked with the show. His face hurt from the grin. “Midway.”
The blonde laughed. “Before you picked us up.”
Abie glanced at her in the mirror. “Seattle.”
The brunette chimed in. “Home of Nirvana.”
They all sighed. Even Abie.
The miles spun away beneath them. They stopped for food, for gas, and for restrooms. They ate in the car, on the road, occasionally looking backward.
“Why are we going to Midway?” he asked as they passed through Sand Point.
“We’re not. We’re going just past it,” the blonde said.
“But why?”
They answered in unison again. “We have a performance there.” Abie laughed as their combined voices washed over him and enjoyed the growing lump in his jeans for another forty miles.
Twice in Sand Point and once in Bonner’s Ferry he thought he saw more nondescript sedans conveniently waiting at intersections. At one point, during a more secluded stretch of road, he thought he’d seen a black helicopter in his side mirror, low over the trees and silent.
His traveling companions seemed quieter. They’d seen, too, he thought.
They turned off for Midway, a small, out-of-the-way border crossing. It was choked with black sedans. The helicopter was there as well. Men and women in dark suits milled about.
“Do I turn around?” Abie felt panic eating away at his calm.
“No,” all three said.
“We don’t have time,” the redhead said. She sat beside him in the passenger seat and looked at the sky, studying it carefully. “We only have an hour.”
Abie pulled up to the stop sign in front of the guard station. The border patrol officer stood behind a man and a woman wearing dark suits.
“Where are you from?” asked the man.
“Where are you headed?” asked the woman.
Abie saw the snipers on the roof now, saw the men against trees just inside the forest. All this side of the border. The other side appeared to be business as usual.
He started to say Nevada, but the blonde touched his shoulder from the backseat. The redhead leaned over him. “I’m just a poor wayfaring stranger,” she said, “a-traveling through this world of woe.”
“But there’s no sickness, toil, or danger,” the blonde said, “In that bright world to which I go.”
The man and the woman backed up. “Please step out of the vehicle,” he said, reaching under his jacket.
Three car doors opened. Three voices joined together: “I’m going there to meet my mother, she said she’d meet me when I come.” It became song. “I’m only going over Jordan. I’m only going over Home.”
Abie watched as the three women converged on the two suits. As they took slow, deliberate strides, he watched rifles raised and pistols drawn. He held his breath. They continued singing. One by one, the guns dropped. Then the hands that held them. And then the bodies attached to the hands until the asphalt, roof and forest were a kindergarten classroom strewn with sleeping children.
They climbed back into the car. Abie felt the draw of the song and felt his euphoria battling the drowsiness that stole over him. He also felt the words. The desire to join in had gripped him from the start but he’d held back.
“Drive,” they said. And he did.
They left the highway not far into Canada and drove down a dirt road until it ended in the forest. A creek murmured past on their left and a trail wandered off on their right. The hitchhikers grabbed their packs and their instruments.
“This is it?” Abie asked. “Your performance is here?”
They nodded.
His soul became a leaking balloon, elation rushing out from it.
“You’re more than welcome to watch.” The redhead smiled at him.
“Bring your guitar,” the blonde said.
“Fifteen minutes to curtain.” The brunette broke the fern barrier and moved down the trail.
They went at a good clip; Abie followed after. Somewhere behind him, he thought he heard a car door slam but he ignored it. They walked for ten minutes, then stopped in a clearing.
The instruments came out with practiced speed. He sat on the edge of the clearing.
“Three minutes,” the blonde said.
Silence. Stillness. The sound of beating hearts. The sound of wind rustling leaves. Of grass bending beneath the weight of bugs. Of footsteps on the trail behind.
And then music exploded.
It burst from the instruments in a perfect unified chord. It burst from the throats in a honeyed tone that permeated the air. They began to sing and play and Abie watched.
The suited men watched, too, from where they stood at the end of the trail. They were helpless to act.
In the beginning was the song. They sang it, each voice strong and blended with the others. A song about long ago and far away, vast distances in space and time. A song about the Four who became Three because of terrible war far from home. A song about a song; one sung to bind the darkness in the Cosmos and halt the Hater’s spread. Abie had never heard anything like it.
And yet he knew it.
A song about long traveling in night to find the next binding place.
The words pushed at his lips and pulled at his tongue. His fingers fumbled with his guitar case. Still he held back.
A song about a Fourth found in the desert.
“Join us,” they said and he gave in to it.
Drawing his guitar like a great flaming sword, he strummed and added his note to their chord, added his voice to their choir, joining their war. He stood with them now in the clearing and watched the suits watch them. Their faces were washed with love and hope and wonder.
The Three spoke into his mind now. This binding will hold ten thousand years, they said. If we but sing true.
The ecstasy burst within Abie like a hundred collapsing suns, the heat pouring in on itself. He felt his sneakered feet leave the ground and saw that they too were lifted up. White beams shot from their instruments now and from their mouths and eyes. As the Four raised, their hair flowed upwards as if caught in a waterfall of light that defied gravity. The performance reached a crescendo and Abie knew, just as the girls did, that it had been a success. He also knew of other scheduled performances waiting ahead of them. Other worlds locked in the raging war. But first, to rest in the place that he was made for and made from.
He smiled and they smiled too.
Then light took the Four and carried them Home.