Vestige of Music

            I hum the melody of Gustav Holst’s Mercury to myself because I know, if I stop, I may forget it. Remembering what the old life was like gets harder with each new morning. Mercury brings me back: the theme song of my life before. You need things like Mercury to keep you grounded. It lets you know this world came from somewhere, grown awkwardly from a distinct time wholly separate from what we currently inhabit. People think the world’s gone bad, a soured antediluvian stew. It hasn’t. It’s the same cruel world with no tables turned or poisoned chalices switched or greener lawns. There’s just one table and cup for all of us. Grass may not exist anymore.

            I sit in a horse-drawn wagon—though it recalls more to a red Flyer wagon pulled by my brother—with four travelers, our sore bottoms jostling on the horizontal wood slats no wider than a hand. To ride, I paid the fare of two canned food items. A man sits next to the driver, facing us, a shotgun across his lap. He makes people call him Sir Gio Leone, and no one has ever been able to draw a weapon against him and try a second time. In hushed conversations, he is referred to as Bad G. At random intervals, he leans over and mumbles to the driver. Bad G grins jagged teeth at any person careless enough to glance his way. I detest whoever first gave him ammunition.

            We are a rough group: downcast faces, sunburnt bodies, and our clothes worn to patches and muddled grays. Even after five years, I wear safety goggles and a white-ridged facemask, the kind for flu season—back when people worried about normal illnesses. I’m sure if there were any more mirrors, I would examine the five-year-old indentations these have left on my face. It is warm inside my mask and condensation builds on my upper lip, like a portable tropic just for my mouth. My mouth is vacationing. Of course, no one stares at me and my gloriously warm mouth.

            The first time I heard Holst’s Mercury, I didn’t like the song. I hated it. Each movement taking me deeper into the song made me want to claw out of it, my hands totally useless. My mother loved that song. She played it for me as a baby, but this was not Mozart, the supposed master of producing baby geniuses, the short cuts to retirement. It was Gustav Holst, and he did not kid around. Where Mozart chose calmness, Holst chose clashes, clangs, and clamors. It was horror made audible, but my mother ignored me; my hands clamped over tender ears and tears streaming and fresh buckteeth exposed in my howling. She clucked at me and turned the volume up.

            The man across from me looks curiously from one passenger to the next, uncertain at first—small glimpses (peeks, really) before pretending to admire the uniformly scorched mountains—but steadily more brazen into interminable inspections. Shoulders tense, faces squeeze, and lips tighten under his gaze. Is this man trying to stir a fracas? He’s like a cobra charmer except his erstwhile trusty flute is hoarse and swollen with bad melodies. The other passengers are shrinking into their clothing. I briefly consider my escape options. My humming intensifies in my stress. The man’s eyes panic, wobbling in their sockets. He is so concentrated in his frenzied search. It’s as if a fly hazards to land on this man’s ear, and in vain, he attempts to command its orbit, his face momentarily ecstatic before returning to frustration. His redoubled efforts spike everyone’s anxiety.

            Mercury also happened to be playing as I received a formal letter notifying my legal demotion to insignificance by my significant other. I tore this notice up, shredded it with every ounce of finger strength in my body, until I felt the paper bits would denominate no smaller. I felt no better and the legalities were still in writ somewhere beyond my hands. I imagined it in an armored filing cabinet graded for atomic blasts and hurricane winds.

The house stood no chance as I stormed through it, throwing fabricated furniture and frames of frozen time, and reaching the radio, violently blaring Mercury, I smashed it. Standing in the wreckage, heaving, damp in the armpits, and struggling for breath—from anxiety and exertion—I contemplated more extensive methods of revenge. The radio had not been my idea to buy. Nor the gaudy leather couches beaten from the skins of some unexotic animals, normal creatures like me. I thought of various tortures but didn’t have the stomach for it. Punishment in the corporal world seemed… meaningless.

            The legal process took some time, longer still due to my uncooperative scheming. I battled it not for the sake of winning but simply for battling. The other side knew and hated this, making it all the more enjoyable. Back and forth we went for quite some years. Land purchased for our graves—again, not my idea—I ruined with the studious application of chemical waste. Like a snapping turtle edging toward your toes, I poured the chemicals diligently until the ground was so foul, so poisoned, that the cemetery was closed for visitation and its land for the dead no longer took new tenants.

These days, if a body might be buried, it isn’t, just left metastasizing to the earth. You don’t touch it. You try not to stare at it. You try not to think about where that person came from, who he or she was, what they were doing, if anyone loved them. You can’t focus on those things. Those thoughts must sink into the ground.

            I pause my humming. The man across from me, a bulky red-bearded vagrant of patched and mismatched clothing, examines my posture like Michelangelo sculpting David with his mind. I shift. Red clears his throat and leans forward, his beard, bristly and with flakes of mysterious composition, brushes against his chest, where more red hair bursts from his seams.

            Instinctively, I scoot back, my spine curving against rail boards that align under my shoulder blades. I gulp. “Can I help you?” I say. These are my first words in several days. They come out hoarse, and my mask muffles them. I think that perhaps this is better; perhaps garbled tones will prevent identification.

            This proves a massive miscalculation.

            Red’s eyes, huge whites with green yolks, surrounded by fiery reeds of eyelashes and eyebrows, go wide in rhythm with his mouth. There is food between his yellow teeth. “It was you that was humming,” he says, as if I stole from him. I should have known Red, his ears stuffed with overtures of autumn colors, would have such a discerning audial talent.

            I revisit the escape options. The other passengers, despite the small open-casket chariot we share, shrink against the rails with subtle leaning and curled legs and crossed arms—no doubt finding within their numerous folds the grips of small weapons. Individually, they just look cold. Context is everything. Bad G slides his tongue, undulating, over his crooked teeth and hefts his shotgun, but only shuffles in his seat. Entertainment is rare these days.

            “Is that a problem?” I say.

            “Very much so,” Red growls.

            An Army runt, I had stints in every manner of high school the country offered, while my family followed my mother. My father raised me in the way of his father: Listen to those who speak and those that don’t, respect people until they lose it, always show kindness, forget rudeness, make few assumptions. He called these precepts the earthy soul and said if everyone did these things, the world would be a better place. I believed him.

            My father didn’t like Mercury. I think I acquired some of that dislike from him. But my father loved my mother. He loved her so much that whenever she played Mercury, he would hum along and sometimes dance with her. Watching them was beautiful, though I don’t believe the song lent well to their bad dancing. Waltzing between the couches and prancing down the hallway and toeing up and down and up our stairs, they giggled and were madly in love on the cloud of Holst’s rhythms. If he hadn’t told me otherwise, I would have thought my father adored Mercury.

            We never thought that he would die before my mother. She became half-empty, her half-full part six feet under. I cried with her whenever Mercury played. 

            “Well, what happens next?” I say. My hands are crimped to the plank, hiding beneath my thighs. They are numb. I wriggle my hands free and shove them into my jacket’s shallow pockets, and I flex my fingers. There is a knife sheathed on my belt. I grip it through the hole at the bottom of my jacket pocket that I cut for this express danger—a standoff wherein the strength of the enemy is unknown. I wait for Red to speak. He is musing my question like a teacher responsible for an inane student.

            “You answer my next question,” he says. “And you answer it correctly.”

            “OK,” I say. My hand tightens around the knife’s hilt and slides the blade half way out of the sheath. Against the worn leather, the tempered steel is silent. I sharpen it often.

            “Are you looking for the music man?”

            I’m shocked and hope that my facial accessories hide the apprehension twingeing across my face. My hand briefly relaxes before retightening. What is the right answer to this question? What happens if I get it wrong? I always feared being called upon in the classroom, my teacher and peers looking at me expectantly. How could I not know the answer? It always seems obvious once you know it, but at the critical moment when you have to commit to a decision, put your identity on the line, your mind is rampant with sinister doubts.

            Red leans toward me. His thin, cracked lips strangely offset his massive face, made more massive by his thick beard. “It’s a simple fucking ‘yes’ or a simple fucking ‘no.’ What’s the answer?”

            I can’t help but disagree with him. This is not simple. It appears anything but simple. A quick glance at my fellow passengers tells me that they think it’s a complicated mess they’d rather not touch, but despite it not being simple, they really would like me to get it on with. I don’t want to rush into things. Red hasn’t stated what a wrong answer means, but his implications are quite fearsome. There go my mind tricks.

            A single bead of sweat forms on my forehead. My nervousness produces sweat in the most frigid of conditions. More beads are forming. I imagine a shiny bead necklace strung over my face. It’s a burden, displaying this overt indication of anxiety. I feel like I’ve just seen a seal burst above frothy waves, followed moments later by a shark.

            “…Yes,” I say. 

            “The music man only sees a few people a year. Why should he see you instead of me?”

            “I have to listen to a song.”

            “Gustav Holst’s Mercury,” Red says, nodding and thumbing—or rather swirling his thumb within—his beard.

“Yes.”

“And you’ve got something good enough for him to let you hear this song?”

“I think so.”

            “You know so,” Red says. “What makes you so confident?”

            I pause for a moment, unsure whether I want to continue giving away so much. Heartfelt admissions, even in the apocalypse, are still rare strands of the social fabric­—even if it is a torn one. “It comes from my heart.”

            “Bullshit.”

            “Why is that bullshit?” I nearly yank my knife out. “I’m not trying to hear this song because it was my favorite song of all time and it will be forever and all eternity. It’s not like that at all. It’s not because it’s the dying wish of some person I met. This song represents—”

            Red holds a hand up, and he’s not looking at me. He waves at Bad G.

            “Let us off here, Leone. I’ve heard enough of this.”

            Bad G nods, unperturbed at the show’s end. He leans over to the driver and the reins are snapped and the horses slow until we stop.

            “This is where we get off,” Red says.

            “I don’t want to get off. This isn’t where the music man is.”

            “This isn’t about where the music man is. This is about me and you. Now get off. I’d hate to expose everyone else on this wagon to our future. Afterwards, if you’re able, you can ride on the wagon without paying again. Leone promises.”

            Everyone on board is clearly intrigued by this. No one has ever spoken for Bad G. Their eyes are darting back and forth, but Bad G nods in agreement as Red gathers his things, unlatches the wagon’s back gate, and leaps gracefully down. He offers a hand to me. The other passengers will no longer accept my presence on the wagon. My escape options have dwindled down to a mandatory path. I refuse Red’s hand and lower myself from the wagon.  

            Some three years ago, walking the tepid wasteland of suburban America, I found emptiness in towns, white-picket homes, single-lane streets, swinging benches, trees, cars, restaurants, parks, alleys, and people. Empty people with souls so bare that you could look into their eyes, into the irises blossoming with bloodshot, and find no trace of spirit. The first person I met like this was Terry.

            He was a small boy and paper-thin. When I gave him my jacket for warmth, he nearly crumbled. His knees wobbled. You could hear them knocking together. I had to hold him up but not because he was too weak or malnourished—though those might have played a part. He simply no longer wished to live. But he did. He kept going, pushed by an animalistic indomitable drive to survive, and it was killing him. We spoke sparingly.

            Over time, I learned he was alone, like most of us in this world. He scrounged for food and found little, but could stomach less. I saw some of me in him, so I stayed. We kept each other company. I needed that, him.

            When he was too scared to sleep, I would hum Mercury to him. It’s not much of a lullaby—to that I can attest—but it was all I had, and I think he accepted it. Those were nice days. Nice days still exist in the apocalypse.

            One day, I woke and found him studying me. Terry smiled.

            “I think it’s time for us to grow,” he said.

            “What? Go where?” I said, rubbing dirt, hair, and sleep from my face.

            “Not go, grow. We need to grow.”

            “Grow? What’re you talking about, Terry?”

            “It’s been nice, staying here with you. But we have to move on so we can grow.”

            “So where are we going? I’m up for it.”

            “We have to grow separately,” he said. Something inside my chest was pulsing with pain. It hurt very badly.

            “But, why?”

            “Because then we won’t grow. I think this will help both of us. When we have both grown, we’ll find each other again. I believe that will happen.”

            “When did you get this idea?”

            “The other day.”

            “The other day,” I said.

            “Yes.”

            “And so that’s it?”

            “Are you upset?”

            “I don’t know. I think so. No, I’m not. I’m not, Terry. If you think this is what you need, then that’s fine with me. I won’t stop you, and I’ll be here waiting for you.”

            “No!” he said. Clutching my hands in his, Terry searched my eyes and I felt as if I was empty. “If you wait, you won’t grow. So you have to go on. We both will. I know that you need this just as much as me. You can’t let yourself disappear.” He looks away, and we both understand.

            I squeeze his hands gently. “I know, Terry.”

            So we went our separate ways.

            He travelled one way, and I the other. After a few miles, I stopped and went back, and I waited.

            Dust plumes from behind the wagon, spiraling into the blue sky. We watch the wagon disappear in its dusty backwash. There are only the two of us in a barren landscape of sparse shrubs, mountains pocked from detonations, and the single eroded highway upon which the wagon comes and goes. The highway markers explain the direness of the situation and the significance of losing the wagon.

            “Are you going to kill me now?” I say.

            Red stares at me, confused. “Why would I do that? Wait, don’t answer that. Let’s just have a nice little sit.” He drops to the ground and leans his head against his swollen backpack and props his feet on top of one another.  He looks up at me and pats the ground next to him. I stand.

            “You’re going to wanna sit.”

            “I’m fine, thanks. You’ve done so much for me already.”

            Red shrugs. “You’re a bit of a sourpuss.”

            “You don’t have to use your imagination to wonder why,” I said.

            “Would it make you happier to know that you don’t have to look for the music man anymore?”

            “I figured that was the case, anyway.”

            “Good, but did you expect him to look like me?”

            I stare at him, my arms crossed across my chest, and stare harder.

            “I had to become more conspicuous once people started looking for me. Strange, right? But it’s true. The man before you happens to attract less attention by drawing lots of attention. I don’t usually act so rash. It’s just been a while since I’ve heard someone looking for Old classical music. And now here we are: you’re looking for Gustav Holst’s Mercury and I’m the man who can give it to you.”

            My heart is pumping too much blood and my head is dizzy. “Will you let me listen to it?”

            “If you tell me why it will help you.”

            I wipe my sweating hands against my thighs. “Just a story?”

            “That’s all there is to it.”

            “How do I know you’re actually the music man?”

            Red holds up a slim silver device with headphones attached. He turns it on, shows me lists of songs, then turns it off. I haven’t seen a working music player in all my travels. A strip of tape on the back reads in black ink: Classical. “Obviously, I’m not going to hand it to you right now, but I hope that’ll be all the convincing you need from me.”

            I nod.

“Mercury is the world to me. It’s not even a song I like, but it holds significance in every meaningful memory I have. Listening to it again will bring some sense to everything I’ve endured. All the bad things I’ve seen and done. But… ” I pause.

            Red watches me carefully, lying in his relaxed position like a kid hearing a bedtime story.

            “What I’ve come to realize is that the song is holding me back; it’s forcing me to constantly remember what life used to be like. I don’t want that anymore. I don’t want to be reminded of that past. It’s not what I need. Life in this world is enough; I’ve come to realize that now. I’m alive, and that’s worth it for me. I said Mercury meant the world to me, but it meant the Old world. It doesn’t do anything for me now. I think that’s what Terry wanted me to see.”

            “Terry?” Red says.

            “A boy I met on the other side of the mountains.”

            “Smart boy.”

            I smile wistfully. “I owe him a lot.”

            Red rubs his jaw through his beard. “So, do you still want to hear the song?”

            I think about this for the first time in my journey.

            “No, I don’t think I need to hear it anymore.”