T. Parker - The Jaguar

RAP

Steal back quiet to the City of Gold

Where the blood runs hot on the jungle stones

Get a reputation in the City of Gold

Better than money in the City of Gold

Trade it in for your empty soul

Well, no, thought Erin. Not empty soul. If I write that he’ll skin me for sure.

So she scratched through “empty,” then the rest of the line, but she couldn’t find the right words to replace it. It was a terrible feeling and one that she knew well-the fine and incandescent thing that brought the music to her mind was gone again, vanishing like a far-off filament of lightning.

She took the pen and notebook then walked around the tracking room, past the vocal and instrument booths. She imagined them staffed by professionals who could bring her song to life. Narcorridos were almost always sung by men, so who would have the best possible voice for it? Luis Miguel? Jorge Hernandez of Los Tigres? Flaco on accordion, for sure! And Ry Cooder on acoustic and maybe Mike Campbell would play electric, and her all-time rhythm section Sly and Robbie would show up with Sam Clayton for percussion and man, what if we could get Linda and Lila for harmonies, yeah, that’ll be the day Linda Ronstadt and Lila Downs sing backup on one of my songs. But now she could hear them playing and singing anyway. She stood still for a long moment, hearing fully detailed passages of the song, all of the instruments and vocals working perfectly. She closed her eyes and walked to the rhythm tapping the pen and notebook against her legs. Eyes still closed, she listened and tried not to interrupt in any way, scribbling across the pages and turning them as fast as she could:

Hunger grew in his belly like fire

He used his cenote like a telephone wire

To the Gods that he fed that he hoped to inspire

On the City of Gold they would build his empire

CHORUS (X2)

(Benji--)

Did what nobody else would do

(Benji--)

Lo que tenia que hacer!

LAST VERSE (TO BE SUNG SOFTLY, ACCOMPANIED BY ACOUSTIC GUITAR…)

But the Gods are a fickle crew

And Benji’s time had come overdue

A gun in the hand of someone new

Who simply did what he had to do

CHORUS REPEAT FADE OUT

(Benji--)

Ah…you do what you have to do

(Benji--)

Lo que tenia que hacer!

This corrido is going on forever, she thought. Maybe not the greatest narcorrido ever written, just the longest!

Then the music stopped. Erin was left standing in silence before the wall clock.

Ten-forty.

“You are hearing music,” said Father Ciel.

He was so close behind her, she felt his breath on her neck and she wheeled and stepped away from him, her heart racing.

“I was trying to. Why are you here?”

“My key to your room is missing. I have not told Benjamin. Did you take it?”

“How could I take it? I can’t leave my room. Now it’s gone? Who else might be sneaking up on me in my own room?”

He looked down on her. The cold blue light was gone from his eyes and in its place was a moist pity. She smelled his vanilla smell and she thought of what he was doing to the novitiates and she felt revulsion.

“I suspect Saturnino took the key. He is becoming increasingly active. I have come to warn you. You are perspiring and you look alarmed.”

“You scare me.”

He smiled and nodded as if her confession permitted him something. Then he unbuttoned his coat and let it fall open and reached out with his thin pale hands as if to accept her in an embrace. Erin’s eyes were drawn to the revolver in the waistband of his trousers and his bulge. She saw the lights reflected off his glasses and the air-conditioning moved his wisps of thin tan hair.

“Come, my child.”

“Do not touch me.”

His smile was dry and dreamy. “Who told you that you were naked? The serpent?”

“Don’t use those words on me.”

“Have you spoken to Owens?”

“She told me everything about you.”

“She can so easily beguile. An actor’s art. But she did not tell you the truth.”

“You should be ashamed.”

“You have listened to the serpent. Take my hands and let us pray.”

“Never.”

“Great men can be brought down by the lies of small people. Owens imagines that her sins are mine. She cannot comprehend that a man may devote himself to the Lord. This is common among the unfaithful. Here-take my hands.”

“Go to hell.”

“I know that Benjamin has given your husband one more day to deliver the money.”

“Why are you here?”

“To give you another day beyond that. And another and another. I can save you if you love me as I love you. In Christ. A holy secret between us. We will celebrate the Lord’s love and the flesh that he has given us to celebrate Him. Take my hands.”

“I’m not thirteen years old. I’m not overwhelmed by you or what you pretend to stand for. Get out of this room before I scream.”

“These rooms are soundproof. Who would hear you?”

“You’re worse than the devil. The devil is honest compared to you.”

He stared down on her for a long moment. She could not quite see his eyes, only the reflection of the lights off his glasses. A drop of sweat ran from his temple to his chin then hit the floor with a tap.

“Because you have listened to the serpent your child shall be born misshapen and an abomination.”

“And you’ll burn in the hell you frighten children with.”

“I can do no more for you.”

“You haven’t done one thing for me, ever.”

Ciel patiently buttoned his coat while he stared down at her. He was sweating hard now. She saw the waver of his chin and the tremble of his hands on the buttons. When she finally got a look at his eyes he seemed to be focused on something beyond her. Then he turned and walked quietly across the tracking room past the booths and the Yamaha and pushed his way through the door.

She watched him cross the mixing room and vanish into the lobby. She waited a few moments, then sunk to her knees and put her forehead to the carpet and hugged her middle and told the little life inside her to hold on. Hold on, she thought. We’re almost free. Please hold on, Baby McKenna.

She knelt there for some time, rocking side to side, listening to the whoosh of blood in her ears and the thump of her heart and the strange infinite silence of the studio, which was not silence at all. It was the sound of nothing. What a beautiful sound, she thought. What could be more pure?

Help us.

Help us.

Help us.

She rose and composed. First at the piano. Then with the Hummingbird in one of the instrument rooms. Finally just sprawled on a couch in the mixing room with the notepad and pen and the air-conditioner breeze drying the sweat on her face and neck.

And after what seemed like hours she finally took a deep breath and copied the song out in its entirety, neatly and clearly, in her best cursive handwriting. She set the time signature and wrote in the chords and the notes of some of the fills and tried to make some help suggestions as to tone and phrasing. She knew that corridos rarely began with guitar intros but she was a gringa rocker so she wrote out the notes to one anyway, figuring that Armenta’s guitarist would likely ignore it. “City of Gold.” It was different from the Jaguars’ corridos , not so much accordion, less of a polka, more stately and restrained. It had a little Carribean in it, too, a little ska. It sounded more like biography than legend, which is what she wanted. There was something almost mournful about it, up-tempo though it was. The melody built slowly and the narrative built slowly too but when she ran through it on the guitar, Erin thought she heard something big and compelling and lushly unpredictable in it. Something aimed at the heart. Something about a man alone. Something about the way things used to be in this world, and still are, and always will be. It took up twelve of the notebook pages, double-spaced, and she estimated it would run about seven minutes if you kept it up-tempo and nixed all solos, the guitar intro and the end fade. Or you could relax it, let the artists strut their stuff, and you’d have nine or ten minutes. She liked that idea. Why did a corrido have to sound like a polka on meth? And also: what did it matter? Who was going to hear it? Who was going to play it? In a moment of desperate optimism she wrote out her wish-list of musicians to perform the song.