Heroes of the Frontier

XXI

COOPER LIVED IN A REAL HOUSE, a red-brick ranch with a black roof, which was surprising, though Josie didn’t know why. He’d told her he lived there in town, and he’d been wearing clean clothes when she’d met him, so did she really think he lived in a tent? Something about the hootenanny had her thinking of hoboes.

Josie and the kids had walked over the mountain trail and into town, and Cooper opened the door before she rang the bell. “Right on time,” he said. He’d told her to come at eleven, with the rest of the players trickling in after noon.

The kids entered the house reluctantly, but then Ana ran to the back porch, where she’d spotted an ancient hobby horse on wheels. Paul walked in slowly, looking around as if this might be his future home.

“I made some lemonade,” Cooper said. “The kids can drink it out there if they want,” he said, indicating the backyard, where Ana was already testing the horse for weak points. There were a handful of other playthings strewn about the porch, all of them weather-worn and missing key parts. “Or they could stay and watch.”

Ana was already outside and couldn’t hear him. But Paul stayed by Josie’s side as Cooper led them into a wide living room, most of it dark but for a cone of light in the center, coming from a bright round skylight. There were Persian rugs overlapping each other, a pair of drama masks, happy and sad, over the fireplace. Josie complimented the house, which was cave-like and clean. Cooper sat on a leather ottoman and gathered his guitar on his thigh.

“I figured we could start alone,” he said. “Just to get your bearings. Or for me to get mine.”

“And the rest of them? They’re all okay with a checkup?” Josie tried to conjure what tools she’d be able to muster and sterilize. She’d have to bend a paperclip. “And these guys are professionals or…?” She wasn’t quite sure why she asked. She knew they weren’t a band of professional musicians, playing parades and parks in Alaska.

No, no, Cooper said. They all had full-time jobs, or as close to full-time as anyone had in the town. A couple were seasonal oil workers, one was in commercial fishing, another had retired as a lumberjack. “Suki’s the drummer. She waits tables at Spinelli’s. And Cindy’s the new mailperson around here. She’s the singer,” Cooper said, and it was clear that there was something about Cindy — was she beautiful? Were she and Cooper involved? “We just found out a few weeks ago she could sing. She wasn’t at the parade.”

Josie didn’t know what to do with herself. Stand? Sit? She sat on the arm of the couch.

“So guitar?” he asked. “I play piano, trumpet…”

“Guitar is fine,” Josie said.

“You have in mind a song, or—” he asked. “I assume you have lyrics already.”

Josie didn’t have any words at all in mind. She had only the thousand notions from the night before.

“Maybe you could start with some lower chords,” Josie said. “It was when you were strumming yesterday, at the end of that last song, that I started thinking about this.”

Cooper tried a few chords, and then strummed one that sounded right.

“What’s that?” Josie asked.

“G.”

“Just G? Not flat or sharp or anything?”

“Just G. You want me to keep going?”

“I should be writing this down,” Josie said.

“I’ll remember,” Cooper said, then went to the kitchen and came back with a legal pad and a pencil. Paul was sitting close to Josie, silent and seeming to understand what was happening. She knew the important thing, now, was to act normal, in command — to avoid this being some pivotal moment where he realized his mother had left the rational world.

“Can you write for me?” she asked Paul.

He took the pad eagerly.

“Write down G,” she said, but he already had. He underlined it for her, and looked up at her, now involved, no longer concerned.

Josie asked Cooper for other chords that were low like G. He played two more, named them A and C, and Paul wrote them down.

“You have a piano here?” Josie asked.

Cooper smiled, and Paul reached across her lap to point at a small piano in the corner. Josie glanced out the back window, and saw no sign of Ana.

“Can you go check on her?” she asked Paul.

“No,” he said. Josie was stunned into silence. “I want to stay,” he said, his tone softening. “I want to hear.”

Ana reappeared from the side of the house, carrying the disembodied antlers of a deer. She seemed to be speaking to them, or to herself, animated but stern.

“Okay,” Josie said. She turned to Cooper. “While you strum the G, could I play with the piano?”

“Of course,” he said, and Paul wrote, “Mom on piano:”

She hit a key, and it sounded tinny and wrong. She moved twenty keys down, and that was all wrong, too. She found a spot in between and hit a note. It sounded like a bell. It sounded like Sunny. She hit it again.

“That’s nice,” Cooper said.

“What was it?” Josie asked.

“B-sharp.”

Paul wrote that down, and Josie had a thought, too soon to articulate. What she couldn’t say at that moment was that this sound from the piano was what should be her voice. In her head Josie heard this strumming, his low strumming, then heard a bell-clear voice, high in pitch but strong, lyrical but determined, and this voice was both hers and Sunny’s.

“Is that the note you want?” Cooper asked. “Any others?”

She tried some of the keys nearby, but none sounded as certain as that first one.

“Can you strum that G again?” she asked, and he did. “Now can you vary between G and F and D? Make some kind of song out of it?”

Cooper played the chords, and they sounded right for a moment, until he began filling the transitions with some kind of extra flourishes.

“No, no, not those,” Josie said, and mimicked what he’d been doing. He laughed, stopped, and returned to the regular rhythm he’d begun before. Paul was busy writing.

“Good, good,” she said, and returned her attention to the piano. She played her B-sharp, and then leaped a foot over and found another note she liked.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“G-flat,” he said.

Now she alternated between the two notes, the sound like a bad man walking up a set of very high steps. Her eyes welled and her breathing grew shallow, but her fingers continued, now with more force. It sounded like it happened that way. That’s the way it sounded, she thought, but she didn’t know what the music was describing, what exactly it was recounting.

“Should I keep going?” Cooper asked.

“Yes!” she said, not looking up. She saw only the keys in front of her, and she made the footstep sounds louder, then softer, faster and then slower. She paused, continued. It was exactly right, she thought, though she never wanted to hear it again.

“I’m going to check on Ana,” Josie said, and walked outside. She needed a break. It was too much. From the back porch she saw Ana in the shallow woods, holding the antlers on her head.

“You good?” Josie asked.

“I’m looking for a frog friend,” Ana said.

“Makes sense,” Josie said, and returned. Paul was scribbling furiously on his pad, as if to avoid eye contact with the two new women in the room.

“Couple new arrivals,” Cooper said.

One was introduced as Cindy, the singer. She was a blond, cherub-faced woman of about thirty, wearing a tanktop and the grey and blue pants of a mailperson. The other was Suki, Asian, lithe, muscular, in a fleece vest and shorts. The two of them were setting up Suki’s drumset.

“So you’re a dentist?” Cindy asked. “I haven’t had a checkup in a few years. Am I doomed?”

“I think you’ll be fine,” Josie said. “We’ll make sure afterward.”

“After what, exactly?” Suki asked. “Coop says you’re a composer?”

Josie looked over to Cooper, whose face betrayed no strategy. But Josie figured there was no harm in a reach of confidence.

“Amateur,” Josie said.

“We’re all amateurs,” Cindy said.

Cooper was looking at his phone. “The rest of the guys are coming in one van. But it’ll be a little while. Should we get started?”

Josie sat on the edge of the couch, her back straight, her hands raised a bit, indicating the position of a conductor.

“We’re improvising,” Cooper said to Cindy and Suki. “Just stay loose.” He began with G, and instantly Josie felt more sure. This chord seemed right and it gave her strength. It sounded as sturdy as the earth beneath them.

“Just tell Cindy when you want her to sing,” he said.

“Thank you,” Josie said. “Now vary between that and the F. You decide how.”

And so he strummed the F, then the G, and Josie looked over to Cindy, whose face was teetering between enthralled and afraid.

“Ready?” Josie asked.

Cindy nodded.

“Hit the B-sharp,” Josie said.

“Just the note? Any words?”

“Anything. Sounds or words,” Josie said.

Cindy sang a quick succession of notes, something like fa-la-la-la-la, and it was wrong. Josie grimaced, and Cindy saw her grimace, and stopped. “No?”

“Your voice is beautiful,” she said. “Maybe a little lower? And when you sing, it doesn’t have to be pretty. It could be Ya! Ya-ya-ya! Yaaaah-ya-ya! Or calling out to someone, someone about to cross the street in traffic.”

Cindy tried it and again it was wrong. She was tentative. She was mimicking Josie and it sounded false.

“Make any words you want,” Josie said. “But urgent.”

All the while, Cooper had been strumming loudly, and with more force. She nodded to him. Good, good.

Cindy’s eyes showed she was thinking of words to say, words that would fit the urgency, and the syllables, and the staccato pattern Josie gave her. She seemed to settle on something, and closed her eyes, and when Cooper hit a transition, the beginning of something, her eyes opened again, and now she was possessed.

“Now! Now no! No no no! Now now no!”

She was singing these words at a volume just below yelling, and it was wonderful. Josie forgot to breathe. Cindy’s eyes were open to the wall, avoiding Josie and Cooper. Cooper was looking at Cindy anew, and was nodding in approval. Finally she looked to Josie, needing to know if she should continue, and Josie nodded vigorously, because she loved Cindy very deeply now, because she was vocalizing the music inside of her. Paul had stopped writing.

“Okay, ready?” Josie said to Suki.

Suki raised her sticks.

“You have a sound in your head, Josie?” Cooper asked.

There was indeed something in her head, Josie told Cooper and Suki, and to describe it Josie made a rolling sound with her lips, a rolling bumping sound like heavy rain on a hollow porch. Suki tried to replicate the sound and succeeded immediately. It sounded very much like, and better than, the sound in her mind, and Josie asked her to continue making that sound, with any of the drums she had before her, as if there were a storm overhead, and the rain and sleet were coming in heavy waves. Suki began again, and now the storm did come in waves, heavier, then lighter, faster then slower, but always it was the same storm, the heavy rain and sleet on the hollow porch. Suki was the storm outside and Cooper was a pair of great wings flapping inside a house pelted by steady rain. Josie didn’t know where she’d heard this sound, but it sounded to her like some home she’d once had. Where had she lived with a porch like this? With a roof like this, with the rain and sleet in the darkness?

Josie waved to Cindy that she could join in again.

“Now now no! Now no no no! Now no no no no! Now now no!” Cindy sang, venom at the end of every line. Suki kept the tumbling coming, fast and slow, and Cooper strummed his low chords, the volume filling the dark room. Cindy continued, “Now now no! Now no no no! Now now no no!” adding one long “Nooooooo” that lasted as long as she had breath. It wavered wonderfully at the end, and it sounded so much like Josie’s teens, those forgotten years, and her twenties, a whole decade of wretched, regretful self-inflicted pain contained in that long Nooooo. Josie threw her head back and stared at the ceiling, spent.

“That was cool,” Cooper said.

Josie nodded seriously, inwardly blooming, so happy about his respect for what they were doing, as if he actually believed that the process had precedent and worth.

The door opened. Josie turned to find a man, tall and familiar. He was one of the musicians from yesterday’s circle. He was carrying a cello.

“Frank,” Cooper said, and walked to the cellist. He was wearing a fur-lined corduroy coat, far too warm for the weather, grey flannel pants and rubber boots. He and Cooper exchanged a few private words by the door, and Cooper went quickly to the kitchen to retrieve a pair of chairs, which he placed in the living room.

Frank approached Josie, extending his hand. His face seemed conflicted with itself — his face was long, jowls falling into his collar, but his eyes were small and bright.

There was a knock on the door, and another face appeared, a grey-haired man Josie didn’t remember, carrying a guitar, and a half-dozen more people immediately behind him. Two carried guitars, one a trombone, another a trumpet. The last in was an older woman with a violin. “Word got around,” she said, and closed the door.

“Getting weird out there,” Frank the cellist said, indicating the world outside, as he brought a chair from the kitchen and positioned himself near Cooper. “The winds are heading this way,” he said.

Josie wasn’t sure what that meant, but assumed this was a kind of shorthand for locals, that this meant something to them.

“So get set up,” Cooper told everyone. “We already got a good start. Everyone know Josie? This is Josie,” he said, and the musicians, crowding together in a two-ring circle, nodded respectfully to her.

Paul was writing feverishly. Josie peeked over his shoulder to see he was naming every instrument and some description of the person playing it: Old lady, red shirt, dirty hands.

Josie saw something outside and had an idea. “Can I move that in here?” she asked Cooper, but didn’t wait for an answer. She walked out to the back deck, the sky yellowing and wind gusting, took his weight lifting bench and carried it inside. Cooper held up his hands in surrender, and Josie carried the bench past him and set it in the middle of the carpet, between him and Suki. As the musicians warmed up and tuned, Josie lay down on it, her eyes to the ceiling, and it felt right.

“Everyone ready?” Cooper asked. “Start with the same thing?” he asked Josie.

“Actually,” she said, “can we start with the trumpet?”

The trumpeter, a portly man of about fifty, with a buttoned-up shirt and glasses, put on a comical air of self-importance, straightening himself in his chair.

“Your name?” she asked.

“Lionel,” he said.

“Something a little vaudeville, a little tragic, Lionel,” Josie said to the ceiling, and Lionel began, and it was better than Josie could have imagined. It was like so many of those old records they had in that Rosemont house, that sad old trumpet sounding like decay, like adults who let themselves regret and wallow. There was a sound like this in just about every musical she could remember. But why?

“Now the cello?” Josie said, knowing the sadness would be multiplied. It felt so good to hear this, she thought, knowing it was just for them, heard only by the people in this room. She looked around, seeing the musicians nodding, their heads tilted, some with eyes closed.

“A little snare?” Josie said.

Suki began, a slow march, and the three of them, being musicians, unfairly blessed with the power to weave together instantaneously, created what sounded like a real song, a slinky and seductive tune, that might announce the arrival of a femme fatale. Josie closed her eyes, and in a flash remembered a time when her mother appeared at the top of the stairs wearing an antique mink coat — something she’d gotten from her own mother. She’d sashayed down the stairs to some old song, her eyes encircled in heavy eyeliner. Josie had been twelve, maybe, and it had thrilled and confused her to see her mother this way, a sexual being, capable of theatrics and artifice. Josie had been at the bottom of the stairs, with her father. Holding his hand! She remembered this now, how strange it was to hold his hand at age twelve, but she had done that, hadn’t she? They had stood at the bottom of the stairs, and at her mother’s behest they’d put on a record. What was that record? And they had watched as she vamped down the steps, a nurse wearing furs and makeup, her hair curled and shiny.

“Josie?” It was Cooper. “Anyone else?” he asked.

Josie sat up, finding the faces of the other ten musicians, everyone at the ready. “Sorry,” she said. She looked over to Paul, whose eyes seemed on the verge of worry. “I think we’re ready for everyone now.”

“Continue from where we were?” Cooper asked.

“No,” Josie said. “Something different. Let’s start with your G. A faster tempo now. Just strum, the G and D and F, but faster.”

Cooper began, and she swirled her arm, telling him faster. He sped up, and the sound overwhelmed the room. She pointed to Suki now, who began a slow rumble, a self-serious rhythm.

“Now you,” Josie said, pointing to Frank. He began to play, and after just one stroke of his bow across the human curves of the instrument, Josie stopped breathing. The cello was a voice. More than any other instrument, the cello was a human’s voice. A dying man, a dying woman. Josie’s eyes quickly filled, and Frank noticed, and seemed ready to pause, but she gestured to him, insisting he continue. She pointed to Cindy, who began singing, but now at a lower register, responding to the cello in a way Josie didn’t expect but felt was correct, or correct enough for now. Suki, unasked, grew louder, and Josie liked that, and Frank grew louder, too, slicing his cello, vacillating between a few notes, Josie had no idea what notes, what chords, but they sounded like every disappointment, speaking for her terrible love of her poisonous past, every bit of it tasting bitter but filling her with a dark intoxicating fluid. The cello was the steady downward pull of lost time.

From behind her a violin leaped in, and she turned to find the older woman, now with her eyes closed, glasses atop her head. She was playing something different, though, a jauntier tune, and Josie nodded vigorously. It was time. She pointed to the violinist and smiled.

“Everyone like that!” she yelled over it all.

And now, one by one, the musicians joined in. The guitars doubled the sound and doubled it again. The trombone gave it the lumbering sound of everyday, the trumpet gave it the sun, the bursts of irrational joy — trumpets were the sound of laughter, Josie knew now — and on top of it all, the oboe and clarinet provided the madness. The woodwinds sounded like the insane, like loons and coyotes, a fighter plane twirling down from the sky to its doom, like a row of Rockettes. Now Ana appeared in the doorway, her antlers at her side.

“Come,” Josie yelled, and extended her arms.

Ana didn’t walk to her, but instead began sneaking over, the antlers held on her head, as if she were a deer trying to enter the room unnoticed. The musicians smiled, their eyes crinkling, and Ana fed on it. Josie was sure she was on the verge of exploding.

She was right. Ana dropped the antlers and raised her arms, as if drawing more power from every corner of the room. Now she sprinted in place. She turned on one foot, then the other. She danced with shocking rhythm and funk, shaking and twisting and periodically kicking one foot toward a musician — giving each of them, Frank and Lionel and everyone else, a kick of salute, never actually touching — a theatrical kick of fraternity and communal insanity. A kick for you! she was saying, and then would turn to kick another. A kick for you, too!

The musicians could barely keep it together. She was a star, a natural being of the theater, meant to exaggerate and eviscerate the attempted dignities of being human. Animals! her body was saying. You are animals. I am an animal. It is good to be an animal! She kicked high in Paul’s direction, then kicked again, this time knocking the legal pad from his hands. Delighted, she pulled him to the carpet, to dance with her. Not knowing how to keep up, first he simply lifted her into the air, and she went with it, raising her hands to the sky like a figure skater raised high by her partner. But she wanted down, and Paul lowered her, and now she circled him, and he followed suit, and they circled each other, growling and pawing, and finally just leaping straight up, again and again, urging each other higher. All the while the music grew louder, Cooper strumming with what seemed to be double the volume and depth. The pace was growing quicker, more urgent and frenetic, and Josie looked around to find that the musicians had left their own moorings. They were all on their feet, dancing, high-stepping, kicking, following Ana’s lead. Two were on the ground, their legs pedaling upward. The trumpeter was in the kitchen, playing into the fridge, and it sounded marvelous. It was all a maniacal wall of cross-cutting sounds, all of it separately desperate and tragic underneath but on top of it all, there was a lunatic spiraling, all of it sounding exactly like but completely different from any of the sounds she’d heard in her head for so many years, when she thought she had some music in her. She lay back down, luxuriating in the sounds, thinking she could stay here, not just at Cooper’s, but in this town, too. She could be a dentist again, as Cooper suggested, and every week could come to Cooper’s house like this, could further articulate this chaos inside her, could clean their teeth, and in exchange there would be this kind of release.

But now there was a new sound. Josie sat up, annoyed. It was an artificial sound, a man-made sound of panic. Sirens. They wove slowly into the music. And one by one the musicians stopped to listen, and phones began to ring, and it was all over.