The End of Music Read online

  “And that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said Alice. “Do you have children?”

  “No.”

  “But look at you. You’re bursting for babies. Once they start coming you’ll want to clear out of here. No place for youngsters, old air force base.”

  But Gloria had already had her baby, and he seemed perfectly at home. Joyce had been to Chestnut Street just last night, and held him, all warm and powdery and washed clean. There was a deep scent from him that must have been the smell of fresh skin. New skin, bursting to life. Expanding like soap suds in a running bath.

  “We’ll be off the airport long before I have any babies,” she said. The distant grind of heavy equipment was unrelenting lately. The sound of land being cleared for the new town site, a couple of miles east. “They’ll put up nice homes in the new town.”

  “But the place will still be full of Russians and whoever. Negroes. Italians. My husband went through Italy with the Fusiliers. Took shrapnel at Monte Camino. He says the Italians know which side their bread’s buttered on, and no mistake.”

  Joyce guessed Alice to be six or seven years older than her. But having a husband in the war widened the gap between them.

  “He says around here it’s just as bad as the war. You know when those poor people got cut to ribbons? Just standing there at the end of the runway? Back in ’46.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Joyce. She had heard the story on her first night shift, from Mike Devine. Half a dozen folks had been at the edge of Runway 14, watching the takeoffs and landings on a warm Sunday evening after church. The roar of the engines so loud they had no idea of the Lancaster bomber coming in behind them. Cut to ribbons, Mike had said, nearly drooling with excitement.

  “Cut to ribbons,” said Alice. “It was Henley drove the ambulance.”

  “Who?”

  “Henley. Bernard. My husband. Picked them up and piled them aboard the ambulance. Piece by piece.”

  “Oh!”

  “My God, don’t be talking.”

  Gander took pride in its extraordinary tales of death and destruction. Everyone made a show of respectful silence, as if the tragedies were too awful to speak of. Then the silence would break, and you would hear about the tangled wrecks dotting the town’s perimeter. Massive American bombers crushed like eggs. Lightweight single-engines impaled on spruce trees. The DC-4 slicing through half a mile of brush, bodies flung from the wreck with enough force to contort their features and tear off their boots. A Fortress bomber that disappeared into the lake, sunk so deep that no one would ever find it. The men who went up Dead Wolf River and hacked through two miles of deep woods to rescue the survivors of the Sabena crash, and which of them stayed behind to burn the bodies and how they couldn’t even talk about it after. The disasters were usually unexplained, and this element of mystery was recounted with special relish. It’s the strangest thing, they’d say. Clean mechanical record. Experienced crew. Fuel and weight conformed to specifications. The last radio transmission was normal. The next thing you know…. They would sit back, scratch the backs of their necks and shake their heads.

  Alice laid her sandwich on its plate and rubbed her forehead. “No place for a child,” she said. “For a decent family.”

  //////

  Joyce got Flight 535 away and took a moment at her locker to unwrap a stick of gum and examine her fingernails. Resolved to stop biting them and stop picking at her cuticles.

  Gert came through the swinging door and headed to the bathroom stalls. “Gord Delaney’s asking for you out front.”

  “We’re doing the tribute night for Mr. Wells,” he said, when she appeared at the counter.

  “Good morning to you, too.”

  “It’s the seventeenth. Can you manage it?”

  “Who’s Mr. Wells?”

  “School principal. Drowned last fall, remember?” He tapped the calendar taped to the counter between them. “The seventeenth. Whole town’ll be out because the family’s moving back to Plate Cove and we’re putting up a few dollars to send them on their way.”

  “I didn’t think my singing was up to snuff.”

  He waved this away. So her singing was fine? Or it didn’t matter, so long as she was available? Joyce wanted to ask, but instead she agreed to do the show.

  British Overseas offered the Caribou Club, and the ladies from the school put on a spread. The widow Mrs. Wells stood and smiled for every envelope of cash from the school, from the churches, from Captain Geist on behalf of the airlines, from Newhook’s Jewellery where she worked, and from Oceanic Area Control where Mr. Wells had worked several summers. Joyce, still uncertain about the songs, sat in a corner, reading the words over and over from the sheet music.

  Finally the line of well-wishers ran out. The widow thanked everyone and said she was very sorry to be leaving town. She spoke as though she had failed some kind of test. They gave her a big round of applause as she handed the microphone to Gordon, who said it was time to get everyone on the dance floor. The band played a couple of instrumentals, and by the time Joyce stepped up for her first song—sheet music in hand, just in case—a nervous energy had taken over the room. Everyone relieved to be done with the widow and her tragedy. The band didn’t know how to respond, and the uncertainty held them back a little. That made it easier for Joyce, who remembered all the words and enjoyed herself, closing her eyes to sing. She didn’t mind anything, not even the awkward moment when Dr. Duchene asked the widow to dance, leading her onto the floor and clutching her waist to his for “That Ol’ Black Magic.”

  //////

  Jules travelled, and when Joyce saw him around the airport he was only in town for a night, or not even that, before setting out again. The morning after the show for the widow Wells, Joyce spotted him in his truck and flagged him down. “I’ll need a drink after work,” she said. “We were out till all hours with the band.” He offered her a ride.

  “I’d like to play with them,” said Jules, his unruly hair whipped by the breeze through the open window. “But I’m never around, and I’m not sure they’re respectable, to be honest.”

  Joyce laughed. “You sound like my father.”

  He brightened, appearing to take it as a compliment. “Your father must have been in the war.”

  “No,” said Joyce. “He had a general store. Do you really think the boys from the war are any more respectable than anyone else?”

  “They did their duty.”

  War veterans were easy to spot, and nothing like her father. They were comfortable in transit, slouching through the terminal, not bothering to stifle their yawns. Swore at small things, but shrugged off genuine irritants like mechanical problems and weather delays. They asked where they were, and laughed when she told them. Another far-flung outpost. “Keep your jacket buttoned,” Gert had warned. “They’ll look you up and down, bold as brass, and don’t give a hoot if you catch them at it.”

  “How long since your father passed?” Jules asked as they pulled up at the terminal.

  “Oh, he’s still very much with us.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Jules. “I thought, the way you were talking…sorry.”

  “I could tell you anything at all, and you’d never know if it were true.”

  “Yes, you could.”

  Joyce had a mercifully quiet shift and Jules met her at the Big Dipper shortly after four. Ordered a whiskey for her but nothing for himself.

  “Your crowd over at AOA,” she said. “They’ve had a Stratocaster on the ground for two days now.”

  “Propeller number four,” said Jules. “Feathering and stalling. They worked on it all day yesterday. It took off around lunchtime, I think.”

  “It didn’t get out.”

  “No?”

  “It started and gave out again.”

  Joyce had been delivering a mailbag to Flight 400 when the Stratocaster cal
led across the tarmac, its engines firing one by one, like notes climbing a scale. She had heard the fourth note die.

  “So you know all the business of this airport, do you?” He grinned at her.

  “You get to know a few things.”

  They lingered long enough that she thought he might offer her another round. He didn’t. But it was payday, so she and Rachel split half a bottle of whiskey from the Moakler fellow who kept a supply in his car.

  //////

  The band hardly stopped through the fall, into Christmas, and even after. They did the Rotary cookout at Deadman’s, where Joyce lost her shoes. The Port Blandford Lion’s Club, where only three couples danced. The RAF reunion, the Signals dance, the hospital dance. A curiously prim Catholic wedding at the Airport Club, and an Anglican wedding at the Skyways Club where everyone seemed sad. A mad circuit of Christmas dances. A farewell do for the Scandinavian Airlines station manager. Port Blandford again, with a few more dancers.

  They juggled three drummers and occasionally did without guitar, because Martin Molloy didn’t want to be at it every weekend. Joyce couldn’t get out of work for a dance in Lewisporte or the Air Force party, so they went back to Gordon singing a few. The Lewisporte dance ended early due to a brawl, the barman with his head cracked open, and half a flat of Haig Ale gone missing, all blamed on a tanker crew that had docked for the night.

  She knew the songs now, and knew the band. She still stepped on the piano a good deal. Gordon said it wasn’t her fault. “Eric ought to be in a proper jazz combo,” he said. “He learned his stuff down in the States, you know. Even made his way down to Kansas City for a bit. Saw Count Basie, in the flesh. You just ask him.” Joyce thought a man of such ability and experience ought to adapt to the situation. Perhaps he didn’t want to adapt.

  But Joyce didn’t mind any of it, not the difficult piano or Gordon with his nagging. Not the drunken fools, or having to push away their hands. Not the ridiculous hours or the train. She liked to sing, and liked how the microphone stand felt like a shield, protecting her from whatever shenanigans went on in the crowd. None of it bothered her anymore.

  Jules must have seen the change in her, because when they went for their usual drink on a miserable evening in February, he was much bolder.

  “They did well with you.”

  “Who did well?”

  “The airline. Putting you behind the counter. A man’s been flying all day, and the plane touches down in the middle of nowhere. He’s tired and he needs a wash. Then he looks up and sees a girl like you. A sight for sore eyes. I bet you could take your pick of those boys. Any one of them would love to rescue a girl like you and bring her home.”

  Joyce preferred seeing them in transit. Whenever she imagined a travelling man returning home, he was always diminished, falling into her father’s habits. Rising from an old mattress that held the shape of his frame. Calling for his porridge as he lingered over his morning bowel movement, and don’t forget to give it a drop of tinned milk. Leaving his shaving bowl on the counter, tiny bristles floating in grey scum. Scrubbing himself red with carbolic soap. Drenching his head before working in the pomade to set his hair smooth as a beach rock.

  “Oh, but they wouldn’t have me. I’m not respectable, you know,” she said to Jules. “I’m out till all hours with a crowd of men in a band.”

  7

  Will lifts his arms in the manner of a freshly scrubbed surgeon awaiting rubber gloves.

  “Look,” he says, using his chin to guide Carter’s gaze from the left hand to the right. The fingers on the right bend sideways like trees in a gale. Two knuckles are bulbous and white.

  Carter is in the doorway. The screen door crashes against the newel post behind him.

  “That’s what you get when you live the life. You see?” Will tilts to present the crown of his head. The shaved scalp shines blue in the streetlight, marked by lumps that must be scars. Fingers reach up, touching lightly on the scars as if counting them.

  “That didn’t tickle.” Carter has an arm braced against the screen door so it won’t crash again.

  “You better believe it. Down my back as well.” They’re both shivering from the stiff October breeze.

  “Can I come in, Will?”

  The living room looks barely lived in. The coffee table and the sofa set look new. Carter had been expecting a shabby house, overstuffed and eccentric.

  “I’m a lucky man,” says Will. “If Miriam wasn’t here for me I don’t know where I’d be.”

  Muffled voices rise in the darkened hallway, booming from behind a door. The television must be up on bust.

  “Look,” says Will, and raises his T-shirt to display a lean working man’s torso. It’s hairless, puckered and whorled down one side, the colour running to pink, white, crimson, and a rich, leathery brown. Carter is unclear on what happened in northern Alberta. A fire? About two years ago? More?

  “Is it painful?”

  “It’s okay now,” says Will. He reaches around and slaps the discoloured skin hard. “The feeling never came back.” He slaps again, and drops his shirt back in place.

  They are silent for a moment. Will looks at Carter like he’s trying to place the acquaintance and how well they’re supposed to know each other. They were never great friends. But there had always been a quickness in Will—the way his bass found the heart of a song; his ready grasp of numbers, details, money—that Carter can’t see anymore.

  “I really appreciate you doing this for me, a chance to hear the music.”

  “Yes, come on then,” Will says, as if Carter has been lagging behind. “Jordan’s in there, waiting on us.”

  The garage, like the living room, is fiercely lit, with three lamps and a naked overhead bulb. A young man with a brush cut and a black button in his earlobe sits in a wheelchair, facing an audio console, two computer monitors, keyboards, a pair of speakers, several slim black boxes, and a snaking mass of cables and power cords. It’s all stacked on an old Formica table, which bows under the weight.

  “Come on now, Jordan,” says Will. “Look alive.”

  Jordan turns to look at them through the small ovals of his glasses. Beyond a smooth goatee, his face glows with razor rash, and his pimples are little eruptions of inner vitality.

  “Bring up the master drive, the one with all the outtakes.”

  “Ready to roll,” says Jordan. He grabs the wheels of his chair and shifts closer to the table. Taps at a keyboard to bring the monitors to life.

  “Everything locked up this morning, you know. Had to reboot.”

  “You just got to be patient, Uncle Will.”

  “Now bring up the original mixer, like I showed you.”

  “I created a new mixer, Uncle Will. Do you want to see how it’s done?”

  “I know how it’s done.” Will stands over the boy. It feels like a standoff. Carter breaks the silence by introducing himself.

  “Jordan,” says the boy, working a mouse, opening files on the smallest screen. He’s suspiciously well groomed for a soundman, in a shirt and tie under a light blue cardigan. But the wheelchair is a good sign. An engineer needs to sit still. In his last email, Will had praised his nephew’s “flawless ear.”

  “You better not crash the system,” says Will, still at his shoulder.

  The system looks ready to crash. It’s coated with dust and fingerprints. Old strips of tape are twisted around the cables, and the white keyboard is nearly black with grime. The small monitor, which has a long crack in its shell, displays the music as coloured strips across the screen.

  “Relax, Uncle Will.” Jordan taps the space bar, and the coloured strips start moving.

  An electric tremor fills the garage, and expands to become scattershot guitar chords that Carter recognizes as his own.

  Leah sings.

  Callie wakes and says,

  Somethi
ng’s moving inside

  A touch nasally—allergies were her constant battle—but otherwise in good form.

  Carter shifts on his feet. There’s nowhere to sit except an old couch at the other end of the garage, wedged between a deep freeze and a dusty foosball table with several broken handles.

  “Very rough,” says Jordan. “Snare drum sounds like a side of raw beef.”

  Leah starts another line, but the guitar interrupts her with sustained notes that sound like random squeals, like spinning a radio dial between stations. The band grinds to a halt. The drummer, Colin, laughs and smashes his cymbals, does a rimshot like he’s working a comedian’s punch line. Leah coughs. Carter hears himself saying, Okay, okay, okay. He counts in and they start again.

  It must be from the sessions they did that last summer, when they were breaking up and Carter was repeatedly constipated. The pharmacist gave him suppositories and warned him not to stray far from a bathroom. Leah inserted the suppositories, and the following afternoon they started working all at once. Every ten minutes he was setting down the guitar and dashing down the hall.

  “Let’s move on,” says Will, reaching for the mouse.

  Jordan nudges his arm away. “No, Uncle Will. There’s a good take coming up.”

  Will takes the mouse, whacking it with his index finger and staring at the monitor. Carter remembers him as being always at odds with things, frustration tensing his body and contorting his face. This impatience had its uses in the group dynamic. But it didn’t make him easy to be with. Carter and Leah had talked about replacing him.

  “Goddamn it!” snarls Will. He jiggles the mouse furiously. The screen is frozen.

  “I told you,” says Jordan, rubbing the thin line of hair along his jaw. “You went too fast. The software is medieval.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Seriously, Uncle Will. You’ve got to treat this stuff with kid gloves.”

  Will runs a hand over his waxy head, and points to the black boxes on an overhead shelf. “I had everything digitized. Everything burnt to these hard drives. Took me a week. This format, this was the industry standard.”