The Children of Red Peak Page 7

She shrugged. “Okay.”

  Mrs. Young cackled at a nearby table. Angela winced as she settled into her new seat.

  “What do you guys do all day?” David said.

  “In the morning, we have to do our chores,” Deacon told him.

  The boy paused his chewing. “Chores?”

  “Yup.”

  “Wait—all morning?”

  “We peel potatoes, pull weeds, that sort of thing, wherever we’re needed. We all work together. It’s what keeps the farm going so we can live the way we want.”

  “Oh. Great.” David was obviously a city kid.

  “Then we get our schooling. After that, we can play.”

  He brightened at that. “What do you play?”

  “We explore the woods,” Emily jumped in. “We hunt for salamanders, fish the stream, play Kick the Can, whatever. Do you like trains?”

  “Sure.”

  “After lunch, I’ll take you somewhere that is super cool. You’ll love it.”

  “Count me in,” Deacon said.

  “And me,” Beth chimed in.

  While he frowned at her, his mom appeared at the table holding a pitcher of iced lemonade. “I need a volunteer to bring this to the elders’ table. How about you, Deacon?”

  “Okay, Mom.” He crammed as much food as he could into his mouth until his cheeks bulged. Hoisting the pitcher, he chewed his way to the elders’ table and started filling glasses.

  “Expansion,” Jeremiah was saying. “If we buy the tracts next to us, we could clear enough farmland to support another hundred people.”

  “We might focus on better managing the folks we have here now.” That was Shepherd Wright, fanning his craggy face with his wide-brimmed black hat.

  The Reverend sighed. “We’ve talked about this.”

  “If we aren’t vigilant,” the old man said, “demons will tear this place down.”

  Deacon flinched. The men stopped talking. He froze, flushed to his ears and aware the shepherds now stared at him.

  The Reverend gently gripped his arm in one large hand and took the pitcher away with the other. “I’ll take it from here, boy. Go back and eat.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As he made his way back to his seat, he overheard the Reverend tell Shepherd Wright that living with God was meant to bring joy. He missed the rest and didn’t care to hear it. He shook with guilt that he’d peeked behind the curtain at machinery he wasn’t allowed to see, and feared this somehow marked him.

  The divisions among the elders were well-known. One couldn’t live in a small, tight-knit community like this without gossip reaching even the kids, especially Beth, whose mom talked to everyone. Shepherd Wright and his allies thought Jeremiah was too liberal. He complained that the Family relied too much on medicine over faith, spared the rod too often in child-rearing, and had too much freedom to interpret God’s will instead of relying on the elders’ judgment.

  But everyone loved the Reverend. He’d built this Eden in the wilderness with his bare hands. He’d furnished a home close to Heaven for more than a hundred lost sheep, and given this home a soul.

  Without the Reverend, there was no Family.

  Demons, though.

  The idea made Deacon shudder.

  His eyes swept the congregants talking and laughing around the picnic benches, the men in their suit jackets, the women in their dresses and headscarves, the kids decked out in their Sunday finest for the baptism. Even a single demon could ruin everything, could divide and scatter the community they’d built here. A shadow seemed to sweep across the farm, filling him with foreboding.

  Demons will tear this place down.

  Then he looked again at the Reverend.

  No, he thought. Not with him on our side.

  The very idea was laughable.

  Deacon pitied the demon who would go toe to toe with Jeremiah Peale.

  The kids tramped through buckbrush until they found the deer trail winding through the oak woodland toward the Tehachapi Loop. Deacon marched along happily, finding a steady rhythm with a sturdy tree branch he’d scavenged from the forest floor as a walking stick. No chores and schooling today, just delicious food and singing and now plenty of free time to see and do and explore.

  A gloomy Wyatt followed twenty yards behind. He was crazy about trains and wanted to come along, but Josh had stayed at the farm to hang around Angela. Emily asked her friends to pause a bit so he could catch up, but when they did, Wyatt stopped as well and kicked at the brush while chickadees sang in the high branches. They shrugged and carried on.

  David gaped at the trees. “You guys aren’t scared?”

  “Oh, come on,” Deacon said. “You’ve never been in the woods?”

  “Wyatt said there are demons out here.”

  They turned as one to see the big kid laughing at them.

  “You’re a jerk, Wyatt Cornell,” Beth said.

  “What? Jeez, I was just kidding with him.”

  Emily studied David’s face. “Do you hear that? No demons. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Bobcats, though,” Wyatt said. “Mountain lions, wild pigs—”

  “Ignore him,” Emily said. “Let’s go, people.”

  The group moved on down the trail. Deacon walked at Beth’s side, intensely aware of her body next to his, though he stared straight ahead.

  Annoying and enticing, but right now, she was just enticing.

  He imagined holding hands with her, enjoying the butterflies racing between his heart and stomach. He didn’t dare. There was something about a crush that found a delicious balance between wanting and having. Push and pull.

  He bragged instead. “The Reverend visited again yesterday.”

  “What did he say?” Beth asked.

  “He told me to be myself.”

  The kids oohed at this bit of grown-up wisdom.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Wyatt called out.

  Deacon wheeled at the challenge. “It means I’m a good person.”

  “I think it means you’re sweet on the preacher.”

  He blushed. “I am not. Take that back!”

  Wyatt laughed. “You so are.”

  “Stop,” Emily said in a loud voice.

  The kids all froze.

  She walked up to Wyatt, who straightened his shoulders and frowned down at her. After a few moments, he turned away, his face reddening.

  “Come on,” she said. “You’re holding us up.”

  Wyatt followed her to the group, which set out again for the Loop.

  Deacon tossed his walking stick into the brush.

  “Hey, Deek,” Beth said.

  “What.” Wyatt had ruined his mood, and she’d only make it worse.

  “I think we need a song.”

  “I don’t really feel like it.”

  She gave him a playful shove that almost knocked him over. “Sing!”

  “Hey! Okay, jeez.” He sang, “I may never march in the infantry, ride in the cavalry, shoot the artillery. I may never shoot for the enemy, but I’m in the Lord’s army!”

  The kids joined in. “I’m in the Lord’s army!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “I’m in the Lord’s army!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  They took turns as lead singer until they cleared the forest and mounted the hill, which crested at the overlook. Aside from some mountain mahogany, there was little shade from the blazing sun. At the top, they whooped and clambered over boulders in search of their favorite seats. From here, they had a sweeping view of the chaparral-covered Tehachapi Mountains and the Loop.

  The Loop itself was a mile-long circular track. Trains going east emerged from a tunnel and swooped around the track to ease the grade getting through the Tehachapi Pass between Bakersfield and Mojave. Trains going west came down off the mountains and disappeared into the tunnel mouth. Sometimes, if a train was long enough, it circled itself like a coiled snake.

  David pointed to the hill dominating the mid
dle of the looped track. “Is that a white cross at the top?”

  “That’s a memorial for some railroad men who were killed,” Emily said.

  “Oh. So what happens now?”

  She grinned. “Now we wait for a train. It’s cool, you’ll see.”

  “How long does it take?” The kid seemed flustered at the idea of waiting. He’d come from a world of instant gratification.

  “Not too long,” said Wyatt, the train buff. “About forty trains a day come through, so we’ll probably see one. If we’re lucky, we’ll get to see two of them passing each other. That’s really cool.” He seemed to remember he was a bit of a bully, so he added, “I’m only telling you because you don’t know anything.”

  The kids sat on the boulders and threw rocks down the slope. This became a contest to see who could throw the farthest, which Wyatt won.

  A train emerged from the tunnel and looped sleepily around to the left.

  Wyatt raised his hands in exultation. “Sweet baby Jesus, we thank you for this train we are about to receive.”

  Scandalized, the kids howled with laughter.

  Emily said, “Amen.”

  Wyatt had warmed up to the younger kids and was establishing himself as a big shot in the group. Deacon liked it better when the kid sulked at a safe distance.

  Beth shifted on the rock next to him, sitting so close they were almost touching. Her fingertips grazed his hand, and a strange thrill made him shiver. His gut flipped, pushed and pulled in different directions. Out of the corner of his eye, he spied her smiling at the distant train.

  Was it an accident? Had she meant to touch him? Was she trying to tell him something?

  Like Scripture, one could spend a lifetime pondering the meaning of that touch.

  6

  SING

  The Wild Moon. Capacity: two hundred souls. A smaller concert venue, but when empty, the place seemed cavernous.

  Cats Are Sad walked in like gunslingers, bladders aching from excess coffee and preshow jitters. They were professional musicians, and they had a paying gig. They acted bored anyway, faces going slack with disinterest, though their eyes scrutinized the box like climbers gazing up at Everest’s summit.

  “Hey-yo,” Bart, the drummer, called out, doing his best Freddie Mercury. He flashed a grin, probably imagining a sea of screaming fans yelling it back at him.

  To Deacon’s ear, the acoustics sounded fine. Otherwise, he didn’t mind the smaller venues. Christmas was Christmas, regardless of whether you got the impossible toy you imagined you’d be getting.

  “And here we are,” a voice said behind him. “Another glorious day.”

  The band manager strutted up and whipped off his sunglasses. He was built like a potato but always acted like the room’s alpha male, making the most of the small part he’d accepted in LA’s sprawling script.

  Deacon didn’t mind him either. The band often bitched about its rate of acceleration, believing themselves destined for great things now rather than later, but Frank ran a tight ship. He kept Cats Are Sad playing twice a week and had helped them score the storage facility so they could practice and try out new songs.

  Otherwise, he handled the merchandise, facilitated a decent music video produced on a shoestring budget, and Whac-A-Moled all the bullshit involved in running a rock band as a business.

  “I hope the help showed up this time,” Laurie said.

  Frank grinned and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “See for yourself.”

  A pair of high schoolers grunted through the bright doorway, carrying armfuls of cymbals and extra stands from Bart’s van to supplement the drums included as part of the Wild Moon’s backline. Another long-haired boy hauled Laurie’s pedalboard and gear. Members of a garage band Frank hired to help with the setup.

  The kids grinned at the rockers they wanted to be when they grew up. The band scowled back to be cool, though it was more than that. They liked being idolized but didn’t see themselves as worthy of it, not yet. They were all in their twenties except for Steve, the bassist, but these high schoolers made them feel old. Time had a way of flying, and one day, they might be opening for these kids.

  “I’d better go talk to Jack,” Frank said to nobody in particular. Jack Denton operated the club, booking gigs but staying away from the talent, whom he famously regarded as needy and ungrateful.

  “See ya,” Deacon said, watching the bustle of the loading.

  The Wild Moon stage included a quality frontman cardioid dynamic microphone, so he had little to do until sound check. Waiting was part of the business as much as last-minute gig cancellations, failing lights, and sound problems. He sauntered to the green room. There, Laurie sat on the couch lighting incense, its scent struggling against the stench of spilled beer and flop sweat and general crud that had soaked into the very walls along with the graffiti.

  “Incense.” He wrinkled his nose. “Not very punk rock.”

  “Which is punk rock,” she said, completing an old routine.

  “You know that stuff gives Bart a headache.”

  “And this room’s smell makes me want to puke. Take your pick.”

  He had a bit of a headache going himself. He’d stayed up most of the night polishing his songs. What little sleep he’d gained was plagued with dreams of Wyatt’s father holding his son down and raising his knife. Over and over, Wyatt’s screams turned into a wet, choking gargle.

  “I have another sound challenge for you,” he said.

  Laurie snorted. His organ question had hardly been difficult. “Let’s have it.”

  “The Inception sound.”

  She nodded sagely, satisfied to face a pitch worthy of her batting skills. “The braaam.” The 2010 film Inception had popularized the sound, which even today was overused in movie trailers to convey drama and dread.

  “Yeah, but more like an om.” The primordial sound in the Hindu religion, the sound of God, ultimate reality, and the inner soul.

  “The braaam is a wall of sound made of layered French horns, bassoons, trombones, tubas, and”—she snapped her fingers a few times to jog her memory—“yeah, timpani. Hit the drum and let it boom with a round sound. Instead of a bassoon, I’d recommend a contrabassoon. The vibrations are great.”

  “Cool, cool. Now how would you do it with bone?”

  The first time Deacon heard a sound that reminded him of the horn blasting on Red Peak was a viewing of the movie Godspell, which opened with John the Baptist blowing a shofar to announce the coming of the Messiah.

  The Jesus figure showed up soon after to be baptized, and most of the rest of the film was him teaching parables to a bunch of people who’d abandoned their lives to follow him. Deacon amused himself by pretending the lead character wasn’t supposed to be Jesus, which turned the story into one about a hippie cult whose leader had a death wish.

  When the Jesus figure told his followers if a part of them offended God, they were better off losing the part than eternal life, Deacon stopped watching. This scene was a little too close to home. He kept thinking about the horn, however. The pitch was wrong, but there was something familiar about the timbre.

  The shofar was a horn, typically a ram’s horn, used by the ancient Israelites for certain ceremonies. In the Book of Exodus, a shofar blasting from a smoke cloud over Mount Sinai made the Hebrews tremble in fear and awe. These were the slaves who’d furnished the bricks for vast pyramids, who’d witnessed the Nile turning to blood and a fog killing the Egyptian firstborn, who’d seen Pharaoh’s chariots drown in the Red Sea.

  That horn blast must have been quite a sound.

  Deacon started playing around with whatever he could find. Ram’s horns, the vuvuzela, a didgeridoo. Some aboriginal peoples used a bullroarer, a wood instrument swung on a string that produced a ghostly sound like a giant cloud of flies, which represented the voice of spirits or ancestors. The closest he came was with the spiraled kudu, played at a very deep, rumbling pitch, though the sound he wanted was far bigger than that
. It was the sound of everything.

  For him, his search became a quest for theosony, the sound of God, represented by an alchemical mix of frequencies. He found it natural that music played a strong role in many religions around the world, from chanting and hymns to bells and gongs to drums and singing bowls. Music didn’t pair with religion. Music was worship itself, a way to join reality and the divine realm.

  This time, he’d find the sound he remembered and somehow re-create it.

  His album depended on it.

  Bart thrust his shaggy head into the green room to fetch them for sound check.

  “Coming.” Laurie eyed Deacon. “I don’t know if you’re being annoying or intriguing with this album idea.”

  “See for yourself.” He handed her his black songbook.

  She accepted it with something like reverence. “These are the songs?”

  “The whole album. I finished it last night.”

  Laurie started to pull back the cover but restrained herself. “I’ll take a look at it right after sound check.”

  They followed Bart’s hulking silhouette back to the stage facing the cavernous empty space. Flanked by the house speaker enclosures and woofers, the band plugged in and tuned their instruments. Laurie on guitar, Bart behind the drum set, Joy on keyboard, Steve on bass. Deacon took his frontman position behind the microphone and adjusted the stand’s height.

  “Ready when you are,” the sound engineer said from the control booth.

  Cats Are Sad was a professional band. They had their amp settings pre-dialed, instruments tuned, and pedals calibrated and powered by fresh batteries. They’d given the engineer their input list and stage plot in advance. They had their emergency box on standby with tuning pegs and wire cutters and backup strings and electrical tape. They were ready to sing their loudest and softest songs and stay quiet during line check.

  Laurie hoisted the first of her guitars and picked through the notes. She had spares, as well as guitars she swapped out between songs because retuning between extremes was difficult. She glanced at her bandmates, who nodded one by one as they settled in.

  “We’re ready, chief,” she said.

  First came the line check, where each musician played and sang until the engineer verified their equipment sent signals to his mixer. After that, the band started in on their most popular track, “Stood Up.”