Black Mad Wheel. Josh Malerman
Philip can move more today than he could yesterday, but that little is frighteningly small. He remembers all of it: The Danes. Africa. The desert. The sound. But right now these memories must wait; the current state of his body is all that matters.
And the hospital. The motives behind this place. Philip has been around enough military to know that almost none of it is on the level. And the stuff that is is uneven at that.
He wants a drink. So badly he wants a drink.
He’s alone, looking to where the beige wallpaper meets the powder-blue ceiling, the colors of the Namib at noon. To his right, where he can’t see, a fan whirs. A radio plays, a quiet drama that does battle with the sound of classical music coming from another room farther down the hall.
Philip’s room is big. He knows this because he’s speaking out loud, gauging its size by the length of the echo on his voice.
“Mom,” he says. “I’m alive.”
Philip has been scared before. Many times, in many ways. From the basement in the house on Wyoming Street, the cellar where he learned the piano, to the flight to England in ’44, when he and the Danes and the rest of the army band were set to entertain a thousand young men who knew they were too young to die.
“Dad. I’m alive. I’m okay.”
But he’s not okay. And saying it doesn’t make it so.
There’s a musical instrument in the room. Philip isn’t sure what kind yet, but the sympathetic vibration tells him it has strings.
A guitar, then? Maybe.
A flapping to his left. He thinks it’s drapes, moved by a breeze. A window, then. So the light upon the ceiling could be sunlight.
He listens for a ticking. A clock. He finds one. Far off. So quiet that it could be coming from outside.
He counts along with it, desperate for something to relax the nerves he can’t stabilize. Meditation.
The Danes followed hoofprints in the desert. Only two. As if the beast walked upright …
Philip has to focus on something else. He closes his eyes. Imagines himself at that piano in the cellar. His sneaker tapping an intro on the dirt by the pedals.
“One, two, three, four …”
But counting one two three four reminds him of Duane on the drums, of a Danes song just beginning, of the fact that Philip can’t move a finger, will probably never play piano again.
“Duane,” he says. “Larry. Ross. I’m alive.”
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,”