Salt of the king, p.20
Salt of the King, page 20
“Uh … I know you think …”
“And we are not alike,” she said. “Not even a little bit. I am absolutely nothing like you. I plan to do something with my life.”
“You realize I can report you,” said Bellamy. “I’m betting if we searched your luggage, we’d find drugs, isn’t that right? I could report you.”
Helen had glared at him. “The ‘drugs,’ as you call them, are prescribed. My mom’s psychiatrist gave them to me.”
“Your mom gave you Quaalude?”
“It’s called methaqualone, and it is for my anxiety attacks. It’s from a doctor.”
“But you gave some to a boy you just met?”
“Just one.”
“Why?”
“Because he asked me nicely.”
THAT WAS ALMOST THE LAST TIME they spoke, that April, a year and a half ago. The next Monday, he’d reported her for violation of school policy but didn’t mention the drugs. There was a teacher–administrator conference in the principal’s office. Helen’s parents were both called in. They weren’t shocked, just annoyed. Helen had made no attempt to defend herself and mentioned nothing about Bellamy. She was suspended from school for three days and banned from school trips for the remainder of the semester.
There were no more out-of-town events scheduled anyway.
CHAPTER 26
The Ley of the Pluton
Nicky didn’t like taking days off. When he had nothing to do, he was prone to brooding, not a good place to be. But working twelve-hour shifts six days a week was exhausting, and he needed the rest.
This week, his day off was Wednesday. He made himself stay in bed an extra hour, then he got up and drove to the EAT café for his weekly treat of eggs and patty sausages. It was a sunny day with a clear sky, breezy but not cold. The kind of day where, years ago, he might have called a couple of friends and headed out to Lake Lenorah, where his dad owned a cabin and a small motorboat, to fish, drink beer, and get rowdy. Sometimes, he had taken Helen out there. She had loved the place, though it was hard to coax her into the boat. Mostly, she’d sat on the porch and watched the water. She liked the lake even on overcast winter days, when the water was cold and steel gray.
Nicky couldn’t go there anymore. Neither could his dad. Recently, the cabin had been put on the market.
Nicky took his time over breakfast, paid the check, and drove back to his apartment. As he pulled into the lot, it occurred to him that he hadn’t checked the mailbox in a couple of days. Not that there was much chance of interesting mail, but he didn’t want the box to fill up with advertising and grocery store flyers.
He located the mailbox key on his key ring, turned the stubborn lock, and opened the metal door. To his surprise, there was a package, not very large but bulky enough to fill most of the small mailbox. He quickly checked and discarded the rest of the mail—all junk—and inspected the package. The return label said A. Dunbar and listed an address in Lubbock. The name was familiar, and then he remembered that conversation at the lodge, one of the more interesting ones he’d ever had.
When he got the package inside and opened it, there was a book—or something like a book. It looked homemade, Xeroxed and bound with thin metal rings. The text was typewritten, with occasional hand corrections. The sheets weren’t just photocopies but copies of copies, with small wrinkles and bits of dust reproduced from earlier copies. The cover was made of cheaply printed cardboard. The title was Understanding Earth Energy, and under that was a longer subtitle: Ley Lines, Monuments, and Spiritual Geology of North America. The authors were Douglas Pyle and James Holland. Taped to the cover was a handwritten note:
Nick –
Here is the book I was telling you about. Please take care of it so I can get it back one of these days. The manuscript was never published, and there are only a few copies. One of the authors is the son of the original monument designer. I think you will find the whole book interesting. The part about the Pyle Monument starts on page 40. We will discuss next time I’m in Duro.
– Fraternally, Alex Dunbar
Nicky wasn’t sure when he’d get around to reading the whole book, but he was flattered that Alex Dunbar had singled him out. Few lodge members had displayed more than polite interest in Dunbar’s talk, but to Nicky, it was fascinating. Since he was first introduced to the monument as a child, he had believed it to be magical. Now he knew there was more to it than legend and superstition. It wasn’t magic after all. It was science.
After the meeting, Dunbar had spent some time explaining to Nicky his theory that the first Freemason monument, the small one, had been built in the right place, but a subsequent survey decades later erroneously concluded it was off by a significant distance.
Nicky flipped through the yellowed pages. In addition to all the paragraphs in typewriter font, there were many illustrations and maps. These were blurry and hard to make out, with lots of penciled-in notes. Most of the maps were of geological features at various places on the continent, with some highways and towns included for reference. He turned to page 40, which was a full-page map with several hand-drawn arrows and notations. There was another note from Dunbar:
Read what he says about the Wiberg rock and ley lines. The monument is in the wrong location!
The right-hand page was all text, with the heading “The Wiberg Pluton, Ferris County, TX.” The author wrote in geologist’s jargon, but the message was clear. The monument was near, but not actually on, the intersection of three major energy lines. The writer did not hedge his position.
Geological studies of the region have shown that the Wiberg Pluton, an extrusion of Precambrian schist, gneiss, and granite, extends from an unknown depth of several miles up through the surrounding Cretaceous and Quaternary formations. The Central Basin Platform subplate is extraordinarily stable and has not moved with respect to the rest of the North American plate in many millions of years. The existence of natural ley lines emanating from the exposed part of the pluton suggests that the focus of Earth energy has stayed with the rock even as the continent has drifted west, which astrocartographers at the turn of the century apparently understood. This fact could explain the discrepancy between the pluton and the 1937 survey. It is possibly the most underappreciated center of Earth energy in the US.*
The asterisk referenced a footnote that took up the bottom quarter of the paper:
*According to historians, local Jumano Indians believed that the rock, which they called “Nuktimi,” was the place where their ancestors had emerged from the underworld. The site was often used for shamanic rituals, in which medicine men would ask the spirits to save a severely ill or dying person or, in some cases, to return a deceased member of the tribe from the world of the dead. C. A. Browder, in his book Grandpa’s Lore of the Pecos, recounts the legend of two early explorers, one of whom was stricken suddenly by a heart attack and died. His distraught partner thought it too late in the day to dig a grave, and so he laid the dead body upon the top of Wiberg rock for the night. The man was astonished the next morning when the partner walked into camp, complaining only that he’d had a bad night’s sleep (Browder 1952).
Nicky studied the map. He did not remember ever seeing a large rock jutting out of the ground, though he had visited the Pyle Monument with his family many times as a child. On Sundays when there was good weather, the family would sometimes pack a picnic lunch and drive out to the Imperial sand dunes, which was in many ways the equal of the Sand Hills State Park, thirty miles to the north. There was no admission charge, since the dunes were on private land, but nobody ever objected. As a young boy, he’d enjoyed climbing on the monument, which was adjacent to a vast stretch of perfectly flat desert. Dad said it had been a lake thousands of years ago. He also said there was a powerful energy force coming from the structure, and Nicky imagined that he felt it, especially if he stood on top of the center obelisk, warm wind rustling his clothes. From there, he could see the salt flats extending for miles to the east.
But had he been in the wrong place all along? He looked hard at the map and tried to determine the rock’s location relative to the monument. The scale on the map was one inch to 1,000 feet, which would place the rock a little over a thousand feet to the southeast. The most useful thing was that someone had penciled in a compass direction, 144°, on the ley line that ran near the monument.
Nicky looked up at the clock. If he found a compass somewhere, he could drive out to the monument, get his bearings, and follow the trackway while counting paces. Even if the ley line was not visible, he could stay on course and, hopefully, find the rock.
He wondered where he could buy a compass that had degree marks instead of just the usual N, NW, W, and so on. Did he have time to drive out there? Could he let himself feel hope again?
DAYS WERE GETTING SHORTER in late October, but there was still a good hour of daylight left when Nicky pulled the Javelin off the highway next to the historical marker. He had skipped lunch, and his stomach grumbled. He should have grabbed a candy bar or a bag of chips before he drove out here, but there was nothing to be done, and time was critical.
He did bring a flashlight, in case he needed to stay past dark, and he’d stopped by the Boy Scout Shop on his way out of town to buy a good compass. The store was still in the same old building on Eighth Street, where it had been since he was a kid. An old man in a faded khaki uniform had given him a quick refresher on using this kind of compass: Don’t try to keep a constant direction by walking with your eyes glued to the compass, he said. You’ll just trip and fall on your face in a prickly pear. Instead, get your compass pointed right, then use the built-in sights to line up some object in the distance that lies in the path you want to travel. That way, if you have to walk around obstacles, you can stay headed in the right direction. When you get to your target point, do another sighting, and keep going.
He got out of the car and walked out to the monument. It was in a disgraceful condition. There was more trash around it than the last time he was out here, over a year ago. When he was a kid, the lodge had always maintained it, clearing away debris and weeds, even keeping the brass plaque polished. Now, tumbleweeds, shredded plastic bags, and yellowed newsprint were scattered around the base, and sand drifts partially covered one corner. On the lowest level, there were remnants of a campfire that somebody had made months ago.
If he’d had more time, Nicky would have tried to tidy up the monument himself, at least picking up the trash, but he had to keep moving while there was enough light to see. He stepped up onto the lowest tier, then hoisted himself up to the second and third tiers so he could reach the top of the obelisk. He reached up on top and felt around.
The ring was gone. It had been a nagging fear, and now it had happened.
What else had he expected? He had never retrieved the ring after the bad thing happened. Why? He couldn’t say, except that at the time the diamond engagement ring was the last thing on his mind.
Nicky climbed down off the monument and pulled the compass out of his pocket. It was a little tricky to work, but he lined up the arrow on magnetic north, then rotated the base so that the sights lined up with the 144° mark. Holding the compass up to his eye, he searched for a landmark.
There was not a lot going on out here, certainly no distinct rock or tree to use as a point of reference. The best he could do was a mesquite bush with a blue plastic bag caught in its thorns near the top. He walked toward it.
The old scouter was right. It was really hard to walk a straight line out here, with thick clumps of prickly pear, thistle, yucca with its deadly-sharp spines, and the ubiquitous mesquite. But he kept the flapping blue plastic bag in sight and kept walking. He wished he’d worn his work boots instead of flimsy tennis shoes.
When he arrived at the target mesquite bush, he didn’t have to do another sighting. He saw the pluton, about 400 feet distant, its dome of gray and reddish-brown rock weathered smooth. Funny that he’d never seen it before or even heard of it.
As he walked through the desert landscape, he devised a plan. The closer he got to the rock, the more sense it made. The thought was both thrilling and terrifying.
CHAPTER 27
Sweet Notes from a Makeshift Orchestra
At about eleven o’clock Wednesday morning, Harold began to believe. He should have had faith that everything would come together. It had happened before—a slow train wreck of a project slowly untangling its own wreckage, smoothing out, synching up, finding alignment with the universe just as all hope appeared to be slipping away.
The first clue that it was going to be a good day, a lucky, artistically successful day, was when he arrived at the studio a few minutes past nine to find a college-age woman, Spanish features, faded jeans, and a white cotton cowgirl shirt, sitting on the loading dock at Best Studios, waiting for him.
Harold was by himself. JJ had said he needed a couple more hours at the hotel, alone, to put the polish on the guitar solo that would follow the second verse. Harold said he’d pick JJ up before noon, official start time for the first rehearsal.
Harold parked the car and stepped out. Was this one of the classical musicians, arriving early? The woman hopped off the loading dock and came up to him.
“Good morning,” said Harold.
“Hi,” the woman said. “I’m Claire Kaine. Are you Allen?”
“No, no. I’m Harold. Harold Prensky.”
“Oh … good,” she said. “You’re the one who ran the ad in the Post. Are you still looking for classical musicians?”
“Yes, indeed,” said Harold. “Would you happen to be one of those?”
“I play cello with the Duro Symphony,” she said. “If you still need cellos, I’m definitely interested.”
“Yes, oh yes!” said Harold. “I have only one cello signed up. A guy from Lubbock named Garrett Miller. Do you know him?”
“Nope. Don’t know many musicians outside of Duro. I went to music school in Boston, but my husband got a job with Mercy Oil, and so here I am. I’ve been with the Duro Symphony about a year.”
“Are you good at learning charts?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” said Harold. “Do you have a cello with you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, bring it inside. You can look over the music and see if it’s something you want to do. Rehearsal doesn’t start ’til noon, but you can get a jump on everybody else.”
“How many others are there?” Claire asked.
“Umm … if you count the drummer, who isn’t coming ’til tomorrow, and the bass player, plus the seven classical musicians and JJ Johns, the lead singer, plus you, that’s … eleven in the studio when we get full strength. Actually, twelve if you count me; I have a piano part. Big crew. But we have a large room to work in.”
Harold went up the stairs and unlocked the metal door while Claire retrieved her cello from her car.
Allen Wallace wasn’t in yet, which surprised Harold. The owner had been eager to get going on the project and said he’d be in early to help set up. Harold went through the studio, unlocking doors as he went, then opened the double doors to the big studio, flipped on the lights, and stepped inside. Everything was ready as it could be. Folding chairs were set up in a semicircle, with stands ready for freshly copied sheets of music. They would need one more chair. Harold fetched one from the storage closet.
Claire took out her cello, tuned it, and began warming up. The soft, rich sounds of cello scale runs soon filled the warehouse. She’s good, thought Harold. Our luck is changing.
“Hey, you found another cello!” It was Allen Wallace. He stepped into the big room, rubbing his wrist.
“Yep, she just kind of dropped out of the sky,” said Harold. “I think she’s going to fit right in.”
He looked at Wallace. His eyes were puffy, and he was pale. Or maybe it was just the fluorescent lights in the warehouse.
“Are you okay?” Harold asked.
“Oh, yeah,” said Wallace. “Just a little under the weather today. I’ll be fine.” He turned around and headed back into the control room. He seemed a bit feeble to Harold.
Oh man, please don’t let him be drinking this early.
Over the next hour, one by one and two by two, classical musicians arrived. A bass guitar player from Tulsa had flown in the day before and showed up in a cab. He held the obvious moniker of Lizard, because his last name was Izzard. Harold had worked with him many times.
In all, there were four violinists, two men and two women; two violists, both men; and, finally, Garrett Miller the other cellist. Miller, who had cast doubts about how many string players would show up, had managed to persuade most of them. He had driven straight from Lubbock that morning.
While the musicians got acquainted and looked over the charts, Harold drove back to the Golden Sunset to retrieve JJ.
He expected his star to be packed up and ready to go, but when he got to JJ’s room, he could hear guitar notes coming from inside. Whatever he was playing, it wasn’t “Earth Is Crying.” Harold banged on the door.
“Hey, pop star! Let’s record!”
JJ opened the door. He was a little disheveled, but then JJ was often that way. His acoustic guitar was on the bed, along with sheets of paper.
“I’ll be ready in three shakes,” he said. “Let me hit the head and pack up the guitars. Is your orchestra ready to go?”
“They seem that way,” said Harold. “And you won’t believe it. A sweet lady was waiting at the door with a cello. A brave member of the Duro Symphony, risking the wrath of the conductor. We got the whole setup now.”
“Great. How about kettle drums?”
“Okay, no kettles,” said Harold. “But we have everybody else. I just hope we can get the song in good shape by tomorrow night.”
JJ went to the bathroom, washed his hands, gathered his papers and one guitar, and toted everything to the car. Harold carried the Telecaster in its heavy case.
