Gary A. Braunbeck - Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys

“We’ve had people pass away before. The Reverend never forces anyone to leave if they don’t want to.”

“That’s good, because I don’t want to. Don’t have anywhere to go, anyway.” He ran his fingers through his hair, then stuck out his hand. “You are?” “Sam,” I said, shaking his hand. “What the fuck happened to that ear of yours?” I touched it, as I always do whenever someone asks me about it. “Frostbite.” “You hear out of it? No, huh?” “Nope.” “So I guess it was a dumb question.” “Not really.” He sniffed, then looked around the room. “Your Reverend, he wouldn’t have any booze stashed around here by chance, would he?” I knew the Reverend kept a bottle of brandy in his desk. I got it out and poured Knight a short one. “Is that a good idea?” I asked him as I handed the glass to him. “I mean, on top of the pain pills?”

He laughed but there was no humor in it. “Sam, I think I’m way past worrying about the effects this’ll have on my health.” He lifted the glass in a toast. “To your health, then.” He downed it in one gulp. “Oh, that’s nice.” He held out the glass. “One more? I promise that’ll be it.” I poured him another, this one a little higher than the last. This time he sipped at it. “I wish you’d stop looking at me like that.” “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just that…I was a big fan.” “That’s nice.” He sounded as if he really meant it. “It’s nice to know that someone remembers.” “You guys were good.”

“No, we could have been good. Fuck—we could’ve been great , but it just got too easy to hear everyone else tell us how great we were. ‘Better the illusion exalts us than ten thousand truths.’ Alexander Pushkin said that. Don’ ask me who he was, I couldn’t tell you. I read that line in a book of quotes somewhere. Always stayed with me.” He dug around in his pocket and produced a hand-rolled cigarette. “Yes, Sam, this is grass, and I’m gonna light up. I can do it in here or we can step outside, it’s up to you.”

I nodded at the joint. “That for the pain, too?”

“ Everything’s for the pain these days, Sam.”

“There’s a sheriff out in the shelter.”

“So? Here or a jail cell, at least I’ll be inside when I buy the farm.” He fired up a match and inhaled on the joint. The room was instantly filled with the too-sweet aroma.

“Want a hit?” he said, offering the joint.

“No. Go ahead and bogart it, my friend.”

He laughed. “I’ll bet the first time you heard that song, it was in Easy Rider. Am I right? Tell me I’m right.”

“You’re right.”

“Thought so.” He took a couple of more hits, then licked his fingers and doused the business end. “No need to use it all at once.”

The smoke lingered. A lot.

No, wait— lingered isn’t quite the right word. What this smoke did was remain . It didn’t drift off, didn’t start to break apart and dissipate, it just hung in the air, a semi-solid cloud that didn’t appear to be in a hurry to go anywhere. “That must be some strong stuff,” I said. “It does the trick, if used in combination with the right ingredients.” “Like brandy and pain pills?” “Give that man a cigar.” “Can I get you anything else?” He pointed to something beside the door. “You can bring me my ax, if you don’t mind.”

Turning, I saw the beat-up guitar case leaning against the wall. I picked up the case, noted that the handle was about to come off (the duct tape used to re-attach was just about shot), and carried it over to Knight. He opened the case and removed the guitar, a gorgeous, new-looking Takamine 12-string with a dreadnought-sized cutaway white-bound body, solid spruce top and rosewood back and sides, a mahogany neck with white-bound rosewood fretboard, a rosewood bridge, and a black pick-guard.

It was one of the most beautiful instruments I’d ever seen.

“Yeah,” said Knight, seeing the expression on my face, “she’s a beauty. I’ve had this baby for most of my life. Half the time—shit, most of the time—I took better care of her than I did of myself.” He gave it a light strum, and the room filled with that rich, clear sound that only a perfectly-tuned guitar can produce.

“So, Sam…any requests?”

“You should play what you want.”

“Hmm.” He began playing a series of warm-up riffs, nothing spectacular, then slowly eased into a standard blues riff, then the same with variations, something he described as the Blues Minor Pentatonic Scale, consisting of the root, the minor third, the fourth, the fifth and the minor seventh.

“Something to hear, if you know how to listen,” he said. “You know, it never occurred to me before how frighteningly easy it is to re-shape a single note or scale into its own ghost. For example, E-major, C, G, to D will all fit in one scale— the Aeolian minor, or natural minor of a G-major scale. Now, if you add an A-major chord, all you have to do is change the C natural of your scale to a C-sharp for the time you're on the A-major. Music is phrases and feeling, so learning the scales doesn't get you ‘Limehouse Blues’ any more than buying tubes of oil paints gets you a ‘Starry Night,’ but you have to respect the craft enough to realize, no matter how good you are, you’ll never master it. Music will always have the final word.”

And he continued to play.

“Mr. Knight?”

“You can stray here and keep me company, Sam, unless you’re gonna call me ‘Mr. Knight.’ The name is Byron.” “What happened after your solo album? I mean, I don’t want to pry, but you just disappeared. Everyone thought you were dead.” He stopped playing, flexed his fingers, and adjusted the tuning on the ‘E’ string. “Seen any other dead rock stars tonight, Sam?” My mouth went dry. “Yes sir.” “I’m guessing there’s more than a few legends milling around out there in the shelter, am I right?” “Yes.” “Anyone in that crowd seem…I dunno…a little out of place?” “Billie Holiday.” He looked up at me. “No shit? Wow. She actually showed up this time.” “Why her?” “because I loved that voice, Sam. Never has there been a sadder voice in music, never.”

I finally pulled a chair away from the Reverend’s desk and sat across from Knight. “They told us that they weren’t ghosts, that they were—” “—let me guess. They called themselves ‘ulcerations’?” “How did you know?” “Because I’m the source.” I stared at him. “I’m guessing that doesn’t really tell you anything, does it?” “Not really.”

He downed the rest of the brandy, looked at the empty glass, and said, “I’ll tell you one hell of a story, Sam. You’ll be the only person I’ve ever told it to, but it’s gonna cost you one more glass of the good Reverend’s hooch.”

I poured him one more glass. He sipped at it, then played a little as he spoke.

True to his word, he told me one hell of a story.

7

“It was right after our second album, Redundant Refugee came out. We were doing well enough, opening for bigger bands, being called back for a few encores every night. Things were moving along. We’d recorded maybe half the songs for the Mudman album but I still had no idea what we were going to do for the concept piece. We wanted something long, a whole side of record, and we were beating our heads against a wall. We decided to take two weeks off from the project and each other.

“I was involved with a model at the time—you might remember her, Veronique? Very hot at the time. She talked me into going to India with her. She was making her first stab at acting, a cameo in a big-budget art film.