What would he do if he lost her again? Would he have the courage -- hell, the simple straightforward Anglo Saxon guts -- to follow her, knowing what he did now?
She'd gone storming out without lunch, thin as that might be with the bare refrigerator. Mustard sandwiches, probably, on stale rolls from the bakery thrift store. Might have gone back to the nursing home, that shouldn't take more than an hour. After all, there wasn't a damn thing she could do beyond watering the flowers and letting the nurses know that somebody was looking over their shoulders.
She'd left about eleven. He'd called Adam right after. That contract and check had knocked on the door by two. He glanced at the clock again, wondering whether he wanted the hands to move faster or slower. Four thirty.
He couldn't help remembering that checking on Maureen at the Quick Shop that February night shouldn't have taken more than an hour, either. And Jo hadn't come back.
He shook himself. No reason to expect that to happen again. Besides, he had work to do.
Adam's letter had asked about new work, dangling another carrot in front of his nose. David had been gnawing at a poem, something that turned the epics on their heads. Iliad, Odyssey, Beowulf, Chanson de Roland, they all spoke of Heroes and Great Deeds. The good guys either won or fought their way home and kicked ass or died heroic deaths.
He'd been haunted by a memory of the sidewalk outside a grungy side-street bar, this gray-stubbled mumbling shell of a man huddled against slush-flecked bricks and begging the coins for another drink. The man had been wearing an army jacket, torn and stained but still carrying a nametag and the Combat Infantryman Badge, unit flash on the shoulder, the whole nine yards. He'd looked the right age for Vietnam.
Probably got the jacket in a thrift store or gift from the Salvation Army, but the image burned in David's memory. That was the hero of the modern world's wars, home again. Or maybe the flavor of Jeffers, At the Birth of an Age, the Volsungs meet Attila the Hun and everybody dies.
No, Jeffers drew the right images, vivid and apocalyptic, but his verse-forms wouldn't fit to music. David's image needed something formal like a chant.
Hiawatha?
God, that one would never make it into print these days -- plot development glacial, no "hook," cardboard hero and villain.
But the form could work. Toss in a rhyme scheme for the music audience . . .
"By the flowing Naskeag River,
"In the alleys deep with grime,
"Came the warrior fearless asking,
"'Buddy can you spare a dime?'"
This would be a song for Adam, the disabled vet, chanting with that dry sandy Desert Storm voice of his, maybe even a cappella. Or work the background with a bodhrán at a slow march, muffled and mournful, if they really wanted to pile it on heavy.
David set his back-brain loose on the project, giving words the time to ferment and age before putting ink on paper. Maybe with that check they could even get a computer, join the twentieth century now that it had rolled over into the twenty-first.
Pay the phone bill with it, numb-nuts. Then we can still connect to the nineteenth century.
He glanced at the clock, at the dusk gathering outside, paced the floor. Where was Jo? Why hadn't she called?
And what would he do if she didn't come back? That was the deeper, nastier question.
Maybe he should try a summoning spell. The aroma of coffee would pull Jo in from a block away, drag her out of the deepest sleep, smooth all but the nastiest of her morning moods. She was addicted to the stuff. He liked it well enough, but didn't need to mainline it.
The phone rang while he was measuring out grounds and water. Finally!
He picked it up. Silence. Not Jo. Again.
"Look, dude, we've got caller ID on this line. One more harassing call and we notify the police."
Click.
That was the sixth or seventh call of the day, none of them Jo, nobody speaking. David felt that itchy crawly question again, whether the perp was checking for empty apartments to burgle or was waiting for Jo to answer. Caller ID? Pure bluff -- they were lucky to have a line on their line. Those letters from Verizon were getting rude.
"In the forest, by the meadows,
"Came the warrior and the bard,
"Seeking heart-songs, seeking valiant
"Lovers, stolen past the guard."
Shit. His back-brain had other fixations. It didn't want to work on the anti-epic of a homeless vet abandoned by the country that had drafted him.
It wanted to work on dragons.
Horrible enough, but beautiful too. The gleaming eyes, opalescent black scales, flowing body sinuous like a modern dancer, the mind-speech almost like poetry itself -- hell, even the teeth and claws had the stark simple perfection of Danish stainless steel cutlery. If they weren't right in front of you.
The coffee machine started glugging away on the counter, spreading Jo-bait through the air. Spell of summoning, specific to one particular red-haired witch.
"Hair of fire and temper matching,"
"Passion and clear eyes well wed,"
"Witch blood drawing ever onward"
"Past the opal-armored head."
Well, that got the opals in, never waste an image once you've laid hands on it. Sometimes parts of a poem fell into place like pre-cut lumber. David had worked as a carpenter a few times, driving nails instead of playing gigs when the groceries ran short. One job had been a "panelized" house, with joists already sawn to length and wall panels studded and sheathed up in a shop. Trussed roof, the whole nine yards. They'd framed and closed in the entire house in one morning. Some poems went together like that. Others, well, others fought him.
No. "Past obsidian-armored head." Have to move the black opals back to
