Roscoe

Roscoe and the Silent Music

Roscoe saw Jack Diamond waiting for a trolley, and told Mac to stop and pick him up. Jack wore a shoulder holster with no pistol, disarmed in death. He didn’t say hello to Mac, but you can’t blame him. Jack, moving through the timelessness of his disgraceful memories, had insight into Roscoe’s destiny.

“Roscoe,” he said, “there’s chaos waiting for you. How will you cope?”

“I’m glad you asked that, Jack,” Roscoe said. “I’ll cope through virtue, and virtue I’ll achieve through harmony. The musical scale, always a favorite of mine, is expressed in harmonious numbers: the octave, the fifth, and other fixed intervals, all reflecting an order inherited by this earth. An equivalently calibrated heavenly order guides our planets and stars in their harmonious trajectories, generating the music of the spheres, which, though silent, is mathematically chartable, and always a crowd pleaser. Do you agree, Jack?”

“I try to,” Jack said.

“Virtue,” said Roscoe, “comes from heeding these unseen numbers, this silent music; also from the judicious exercise of power, contempt of wealth, and a prudent diet. The virtuous warrior who inherits the mantle must, with fire and sword, expel disharmony, amputate sickness from the body, ignorance from the soul, luxury from the belly, sedition from the city, and discord from the family, thereby ending all wars, and restoring music to God’s cosmos. This is my plan of attack, Jack. What do you think of it?”

“Virtue was always one hell of an idea,” Jack said. “Let me off at the corner.”