Josh Malerman - Black Mad Wheel

Then a voice, so close to his ear, Philip would jump if he could move.

“That’s a good thing.”

“Hey!” Philip yells.

Some gentle laughter. It’s a woman.

“I haven’t scared someone like that since Halloween 1949,” the voice says. And the voice is the same he heard whispering when he woke. “Hid under my daughter’s bed. Wore a rubber dish glove. Grabbed her ankle.”

“Who are you?! Show yourself!”

“Relax,” she says. “I’m Nurse Ellen. I’m the one who’s been taking care of you for six months.”

A creaking chair beside him. A face emerging from his right.

She looks young. Fresh-faced. Bright. Freckles across her nose. Granite-gray eyes. Black hair. White uniform.

“Are you hungry?” she asks.

Philip doesn’t respond. He stares. When she speaks, her head tilts to the side. Does she realize how easily she moves?

“Let me get you something to eat.”

She rises and vanishes somewhere to Philip’s right again. Her heels against the unit tiles give him a better sense of space than his own voice echoing did. At what could be the door, she speaks.

“I can’t tell you how glad I am you’re awake.”

Then she exits and Philip listens to her footfalls in the hall.

He imagines other people, silent in the unit with him. Other faces, other eyes. And the faces he sees are military. And the eyes in those faces want to know more than if he’s hungry.

“Hello?” he asks, trembling, unable to abate the anxiety that’s consumed him since waking. The Danes. The Danes. Where are the rest of the Danes? “Is anybody else in here with me?”

The nurse, Ellen, taught him something very important in the half minute they shared: not only can Philip barely move … but he can’t know who watches him try.

And the faces he imagines open their mouths. And questions pour forth like grains of bodily sand.

The questions will come. Philip knows this. Questions about Africa and the source of the sound. Questions about the rest of the platoon, the Danes, what Philip heard and what he recorded out there. Crazier questions, too. Like who took Ross? Who took the others? And where did he take them? And why do you look so scared, Private Tonka, when we ask these simple things?

The questions will come.

And when they do, how much will Philip tell them?

How much will he sing?

Hey, Philip,” Misty says. “Looks like you’ve already been drinking.”

It’s always looks like with Misty.

“I’m all right.” Philip smiles.

“Looks like you’re recording a band of stiffs.” Misty nods to the Sparklers, who stand awkwardly farther down the bar. “What do they call themselves? The Bland?”

“The Sparklers.”

“Jesus H.”

Larry winks at Misty from over Philip’s shoulder.

“It’s our job to loosen them up,” he says.

“You can’t make a record with no grooves,” Misty puns.

“They’ll groove,” Larry says. Then he shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe they won’t.”

“Help us out,” Philip says.

“Sure. What do you want me to give them?”

“Something terrible. Something strong.”

Misty considers this. But not for long. It’s not the first time the Danes have brought a band into Doug’s Den on Beaubien Street. She arranges five shot glasses.

“And we’ll have the same,” Philip adds.

Misty smiles something maternal. Philip likes Misty. With her short dark hair and strong eyes she looks like she could be his sister. And she’s always been good to the Danes.

“You planning on getting any recording done today?” she asks, already pouring the shots.

“We haven’t made it past the drum kit yet.”

Thurston Harris’s “Little Bitty Pretty One” comes on the jukebox.

Duane, dancing as he moves, takes half the shots from Misty. Philip grabs the others. They carry them to the Sparklers, now congregated on the dance floor. But still not dancing.

“You guys like this song?” Philip asks.

“Yeah,” the Sparklers’ bassist says. Philip catches himself reflected in the kid’s glasses. He looks drunk. “It’s fun.”

“Good,” Duane says. “So let’s have fun.”

As he and Philip distribute the shots, the door to Doug’s Den swings open and Ross enters. His hands are stuffed into the pockets of his coat and he’s hunched, as he always is, even when playing the guitar.

The young Sparklers stare at Ross with reverence. After all, it’s his guitar line on “Be Here” that gave the Danes their instrumental hit.

“Sorry I’m late,” he tells Philip. “Long night.”

Philip understands. This isn’t the first time a Dane has pleaded hungover.

“Ross, meet the Sparklers.”

Ross checks them out. He knows Philip well enough to know why he’s brought them to Doug’s.

“You’re Ross Robinson,” the Sparklers’ guitarist says, eyeing Ross’s uncombed curly hair. “I curled my hair so it looks like yours.”

“You look like a clown,” Ross says. Then he takes one of the shot glasses, downs the whiskey within.

“Better?” Larry asks.

Ross wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his corduroy coat.

“Might be worse.”

Philip raises his glass, inspiring the Sparklers to timidly do the same.

Art, the band’s manager, rushes to stop this. His hair is wet with sweat. His tie is loose.

“Now hang on a minute! We’ve got a session to finish! My boys can’t be whooping it up like this!”

The music gets louder. Philip looks over his shoulder. Misty is smiling behind the bar.

“This is all part of the session,” Philip says. “This is tracking.”

Philip downs his shot, grabs the lead singer of the Sparklers, and dances with him. He places the kid’s hand on his back, asking him to lead.

The Path has taken Philip to amazing places, but sometimes, like when he looks into the naïve eyes of a younger musician, he wonders how far it can go.

These kids, Philip knows, haven’t left home yet.

Ross squeezes himself between Philip and the singer with another round of shots.

“No more of this,” Art says, stepping in. “I mean it. No more!”

“Little Bitty Pretty One” ends and Sonny James’s “Young Love” begins. It’s not yet noon and the regulars are watching the Danes. These men, veterans of the First World War, have been here since eight.

Larry starts dancing with the manager of the Sparklers. Art looks like a child in his arms. The drummer of the Sparklers unbuttons his shirt.

“There he goes,” Ross says to Philip. “He’ll be a drunk in no time.”

The Sparklers are getting loose. Strange dance moves. The guitarist is kissing a poster featuring an actress from a new monster movie, From Hell It Came.

The front door opens and daylight cuts a fresh silhouette of a man in the door.

Philip doesn’t see him.

“Think we’re ready to record?” the Sparkler asks Larry.

Larry smiles but shakes his head no.

“In about another twenty years.”

He twirls the kid.

Philip feels a tap on his shoulder. He turns.

The face he sees, the pale blue eyes, the set jaw, the manicured hair, is more familiar than it is friendly.

Military, Philip thinks. He hasn’t seen a face like this one in a long time. Veterans are one thing, and they change through the years. But the men who give orders do not.

The Path, it seems, is unsteady now. Different footing.

“Philip Tonka?” the man asks.

“Yeah?”

A serious expression grips the lower half of the man’s face, but his eyes still sparkle. Nothing shines, Philip thinks, exactly like military.

Could it be? Here?