'Nothing earth-shattering; I'm just getting old. But I'm not going to be able to play tomorrow. Can you get Ratso or Willy to sub for me?'
He nodded. 'So, did you get to ask your questions?'
'Yep.'
'And?'
'I've got good news, and I've got bad news.'
Garth set the glove and the jar of oil aside, looked at me, and frowned. 'Are you all right, brother?'
'Yeah. Just stiff.'
'In that case, give me the good news first.'
'I met Mary Tree. Damned if the love of your life isn't a long-term member of the Community of Conciliation who lives in that mansion of theirs in Cairn. As a matter of fact, I spent the better part of an hour talking to her. I told her what a fan you are, and she sent something for you.'
Garth stared at me for some time, his mouth hanging slightly open. He finally managed to say, 'Huh? Are you serious?'
'Here,' I said, handing him the plastic bag. 'These are for you.'
My brother took the bag, held it open by its plastic straps, and peered inside. 'You really met Mary Tree?' His voice was almost childlike.
'Yes, Garth,' I replied, smiling, 'I really met Mary Tree. Why don't you ask me what you're looking at?'
'What am I looking at?'
'Demo tapes; all new songs by Mary Tree, Harry Peal, and Dylan, performed by the light and love of your life. She mentioned that she's preparing a new album, but I'd guess that there's enough music in there for three albums. She thought you might enjoy a sneak preview. Oh, and by the way, she's invited us both up for a day of picnicking and sailing. If you can refrain from trying to jump her bones the moment you lay eyes on her, I'll bet she can even be persuaded to take out her guitar for a little sing-along.'
Garth looked up at me, his hazel eyes gleaming-a small boy on Christmas morning when he first sees the gifts under the tree. 'Holy shit,' he whispered.
'Close your mouth, Garth; it makes you look stupid. Also, try to remember to breathe; I don't think you're breathing.'
He dismissed my helpful suggestions with a wave of his hand, then reached down into the bag and took out one of the cardboard-jacketed reels, lovingly turned it over in his fingers. 'Mongo, she signed it. Mary Tree.'
'Sure enough,' I said, and broke into laughter. Unaffected joy radiated from my brother like fever heat, and it was impossible not to be affected by and share in it. 'What, did you think I was bullshitting you?'
'Holy shit.'
I watched him reverently place the one tape down on a folded towel on the bench, then reach into the bag and take out another one. 'Are you ready for the bad news?'
'Huh?' he said in a distinctly absent tone of voice. 'Yeah, sure.'
'The bad news is that your fly is open, your dong is hanging out, and the tip is covered with a thick, green fungus. It looks like New York City jungle rot to me, incurable. I'd say the whole thing is going to fall off in three or four days.'
Garth glanced up from the tape, blinked slowly, shook his head slightly. 'I'm sorry, brother. What did you say?'
I threw a heavy sigh at him and rolled my eyes toward the ceiling. 'That was just a test to see if you were paying attention. You're not. How the hell am I supposed to give you bad news when you're not paying attention?'
Garth grinned, then picked up the tape off the towel and carefully placed it back into the plastic bag. He rose, put one hand on the back of my neck, kissed me wetly and loudly on the forehead. 'Fuck the bad news,' he said as he stepped around me and headed for the door. 'As long as you're not seriously hurting, you can handle the bad news. I've got some serious music listening to attend to.'
Okay.
I spent the rest of the afternoon attending to my paperwork, analyzing and condensing crude private intelligence reports on some Arab potentates that a client of ours, an oil company, was thinking of trying to cut a deal with. Through all the hours, the music of Mary Tree wafted up from Garth's apartment on the floor below; the floorboards tended to wipe out the treble and boost the bass, but the music still sounded excellent, and by the third run-through of the tapes I found myself singing along with half the songs.
At seven I took a break, went out, and walked a few blocks in an effort to try to loosen up my stiff knee. I stopped at a deli for a roast beef sandwich and some salad, then returned to my desk.
Mary Tree called at 10:45. She apologized for the lateness of the hour, but said she thought that I would want to know right away that Harry Peal would be happy to meet with me the next day and had suggested that I come up around 11:30 for brunch. She gave me directions. I thanked her, told her that Garth was ecstatic over her gift, said I'd be in touch, and hung up.
I wanted to fill Garth in on what was happening, but the silence from the apartment below told me that he was surely sleeping, and I didn't think it was important enough to wake him. I set my alarm for eight, took two aspirin, and went to bed.
I stopped in Garth's apartment on my way out, found that he had already left for the softball games. I left a note explaining that I was going back upstate to take care of some unfinished business, and asking him to check with his NYPD buddies for impressions of and information on one Daniel Mosely, former NYPD cop, and now Cairn's chief of police. Then I rolled Beloved Too out of the garage and headed for the West Side Highway.
A lot of people, it seemed, were out for a little Sunday day-tripping. Traffic was heavy and slow-moving, and it gave me a lot of time to think; what I thought about mostly was the man I was going to see.
I'd lost a lot of heroes over the years, but two remained. The first was my brother. Garth had, both literally and figuratively, carried his dwarf brother on his broad shoulders throughout said dwarf brother's tormented childhood and adolescence, had, along with our mother and father, tenderly nurtured the fairly bright mind of a child and young man who could not understand, deep down in that part of him where rational thought ceases and explanations are useless, why his body would not grow as other people's bodies grew. As a child I learned a thing or two about human cruelty, and it was only because of the love and understanding of my parents and Garth that I reached adulthood and took control of my own life with mind and heart, if not exactly unscathed, at least not hopelessly crippled.
Harry Peal was a hero of another sort. In my opinion, he was a quintessential American, and he had carried the conscience and best ideals of an entire nation on his frail shoulders for more than five decades. A communist at a time when a good many decent people thought that communism offered the best hope for a nation being crushed in the coils of a merciless economic depression, Harry Peal had traveled the Dust Bowl with Woody Guthrie, gone down into the Pennsylvania coal mines with men who were dying of black-lung disease, stood on picket lines in teeming rain and freezing cold-all the while singing, and capturing in his songs not only pride in a magnificent land and its people, but also crying the need for social and economic change.
No pacifist, Harry Peal; he had fought in the Lincoln Brigade in Spain and was a combat veteran of World War II, having volunteered for the Marine Corps. When Stalin crawled into bed with Hitler, and news of the massive purges and the Gulag began to leak out of the East, Harry promptly and forthrightly severed his ties with the American Communist party. If his dream of a better America and a better world through communism had been shattered and brutally betrayed by Mother Russia, he would not betray his own ideals or his friends or his onetime political comrades; he cheerfully but firmly refused to cooperate with the HUAC and later refused to cooperate with the McCarthy committee, both times explaining that if he had a taste for trials, witch-hunts-even for real witches- and purges, he would have remained a communist. He'd said that he was not afraid of them, because they couldn't make him stop writing and singing songs, and that he didn't have much to lose because he never made that much money doing what he did anyway. And so this combat veteran, winner of two Silver Stars, had been sent to prison twice.
Harry Peal was one of the first to protest against the war in Vietnam, had laid his body as well as his songs on the line in the struggle for civil rights, and had been in the forefront of the fight for better working conditions for migrant workers. He was still tossed into jail on occasion in connection with some demonstration or another, but for
