章節 13: 13
Jack was wakened by the beeping of his digital radio-clock whose display blinked, "12:00, 12:00, 12:00 . . .". He surmised that the power must have just come back on.
Moving Yelina's kitten and extricating himself from the two sleeping girls, he went and took a quick shower, retrieved his paper from the front stoop, made himself a cup of coffee, sat at the kitchen table, scratched his freshly shaved cheek, and decided to take stock of things.
So far, it seemed, he'd been pretty much running on autopilot, having given very little thought to problems and consequences. But time was pressing. August would soon be over. September meant . . . with a cold feeling of shock, he realised that for the two girls, September meant school, and a whole new set of problems. Fake ID, getting them enrolled . . . and how the hell were they going to deal with the language barrier? Looking down, he noticed that the hands on his coffee cup were unsteady. Forcing them to stillness with a conscious effort, he mused, 'The best way to keep them hidden is to keep them in plain sight.'
But other thoughts soon encroached on his consciousness. What if something happened? What if something happened to him? Who would look after the girls then?
The paper forgotten, he found himself whiling away the morning, thinking deeply.
For the first time in ten years, Jack opened the garage and took stock of the mountains of accumulated junk topped with a thick layer of dust and grit. And with a feeling of determination, he set to removing every last piece of it to the kerb. He was almost half-way done when he heard his neighbour's door slam shut. 'Want some help?' It was Jason.
Jack gave him a look, knowing how much "help" teenagers usually were. 'Okay, if you're into it. It's all going out to the kerb.'
To his surprise, Jason threw himself into the task as though he needed the distraction.
'Where's Kiko? And . . . Yelina?' he added belatedly.
Ah, Jack thought wryly to himself as he dropped a box of junk by the garbage can, I wondered if he wasn't becoming a little enamoured with her! 'Probably still sleeping,' he said aloud. 'Storm kept them up a good part of the night.'
'Was she . . . were they scared?'
Jack smiled at that. 'Pretty much.'
'You're not throwing those out, are you?' Jason asked in alarm. In the back were a pair of dilapidated old drum kits, relics of Jack's and his older brother's teen years. Against a back wall hung a guitar missing most of its strings.
'As I've told you many times, you want 'em, you take 'em.'
Jason sighed. 'Mom would never let me.'
'Not even with your dad gone?' Jack asked him gently.
But Jason shook his head. 'She can't stand any kind of noise. All she'll allow is to have the radio or the tv turned on all day so low you can barely hear them.'
'She still drinking a lot?' Jack asked quietly.
'All day long until she passes out at night,' Jason muttered matter-of-factly, his visage bleak.
'She feeding you kids right? Is there anything in your fridge? Or is she leaving you to fend for yourselves?'
Jason shrugged, not looking at him.
Jack sighed. 'You remember how Family Services had me looking after you guys when you were small? When both your dad and mom were . . . pretty much out of control?'
Jason nodded, remembering.
'My wife was still alive, then, but I think we can still make that same arrangement, have you guys stay with me, with your mom right next door where I can keep an eye on her, and you can visit her any time you like. Does that sound like a plan?'
Unexpectedly, looking him in the eye, Jason said, 'Do you miss her? You've never said anything. You just kind of . . . stopped talking for a while . . . and then you put all this stuff out here in the garage, and you stay in your house all the time. You're not going to get like mom or dad, are you?'
Jack stopped what he was doing, shocked by this revelation. How long had it been since he'd gone out, hung with friends, visited someone or been visited, except by relatives, who themselves came by less and less often.
'That's why I'm cleaning out the garage,' Jack told him, hoping he meant it. 'All the old stuff . . . all the old pain and all the old memories . . .'
'But not the old music stuff?' Jason pleaded.
Jack chuckled, and smiled broadly. 'What, you want to start a garage band? Be my guest.'
Jack was just beginning to wonder whether he should wake the girls, when Yelina came out the side door of the house, kitten on her shoulder, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that oozed grape jelly with every bite. Kiko soon followed, munching on an apple. Yelina's eyes widened when she spotted the drum kits, which stood side-by-side on the carpet Jack had unrolled to cover the concrete floor. Without seeming to consider whether she should ask for permission, Yelina sat at the nearest drum set, the remains of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in her mouth, picked up a pair of sticks, and began methodically tipping and tapping each drum head. Something about the kick drum pedal seemed to annoy her, but she thumped it a few times to get the measure of it. She tapped a cymbal or two, wrinkled her nose, got up and moved them away from the kit. Jack watched in wonder as she arranged things to her own satisfaction. She considered the assortment of sticks, grimaced at the sight of the slender tips, turned the sticks around so that she was holding them butt-end forward, handed the kitten to Kiko, and then . . .
Jack knew enough about percussion to realise that the girl was methodically going through a set of rudiments . . . but it was no set of rudiments he was familiar with! The sound she beat out was at once primal and primitive, yet nuanced, complex, flowing. And the way she was holding the sticks, often with the backs of her wrists facing the drum heads! And the sheer power she was generating! She ended with a final flourish, but it was plain in her face that the set didn't meet with her approval. She got up, and instead of going to the other kit, Kiko handed her back the kitten and took her place, but not before replacing the cymbals. As Yelina had done, she methodically tried and tested everything, but spend some time getting used to the cymbals. Jack had to show here how to operate the hi-hat, the set of mechanical cymbals that opened and closed like a clam shell, operated by a foot-pedal.
Unlike Yelina, Kiko didn't eschew the use of the sticks' tips. And her technique was wholly different, with recognisable rolls, flams, paradiddles, flamadiddles . . . but her style! Loose, complex, fast, breezy . . . Jack could hear echoes in it of another music, of unfamiliar tonalities and harmonies, complex structure, echoes of another world . . .
'Okay, well, I won't be playing in this garage band,' Jason said wryly as he watched Kiko execute a complex pattern between snair, toms and floor tom.
Jack put a hand on his shoulder. 'If it's any consolation to you, I can't do half of that stuff either.' He chuckled. 'Maybe you 'n' me'll end up just being roadies.'
On the entire drive into Saskatoon, Jack was mum about where he was taking the three, but Jason realised where they were going as soon as they hit Circle Drive.
'We're going to Mike's Drum World? I thought you said you'd never set foot in that place!'
'Yeah, well,' Jack admitted, 'I knew if I ever walked through the front door, there would be big-time temptation staring me right in the face, and my credit-rating would never be the same again.'
They found Mike in the back, assembling a set of his own custom-made and designed drums. He stopped what he was doing when he noticed Jack. He was a huge man, in every dimension, his shaggy mane streaked with grey.
'I thought you said you were never coming near another set of drums!'
'Not for me,' Jack told him, though he felt a twinge of regret. 'These two.'
Mike looked the two girls over. 'Okay . . . you want something compact . . . electronic, maybe?'
'What I really need is something for Yelina here to really wail on. She doesn't play conventional North American drums. She needs something bigger, sturdier. And there's something about the pedals she doesn't like.'
Mike frowned, sceptical. 'Like what, for instance?'
'Got some paper and a pencil?'
Mike made a face. 'Do they still make pencils?' He opened a drawer in the counter, withdrew a scratch pad and a pen. 'Okay, kid, show me what you want.'
She just stared at the pad, mystified, until Jack pointed at a kick drum, then drew a rough pedal.
Giving him an uncertain look, she took the pad, and began sketching. As she worked, the two men began talking. Kiko and Jason, meanwhile, wandered off into another section of Music Mart, a mini-mall consisting only of musical instruments and equipment, of which Mike's Drum World was but one store.
Jack parried Mike's question about the girl's language by saying, 'Oh, it's one of those Middle European languages-' he was stopped by Yelina, who handed him the pad.
'What the hell kind of drum kit is that?' Mike blurted. 'And what kind of scale are we talking, here?' He showed Yelina her drawing and pointed to one of the drums. 'How big?' he said, indicating the drum head, then holding his hands up in the universal gesture of "this big", his face supplying the question. Yelina showed him. 'Hold that pose,' he told her as he got out a tape measure and calculated the distance between her palms.
'What is it?' Jack asked him, seeing the expression on his face.
'Well, if this is really what she wants, this'll be one big sucker of a kit . . . what the hell kind of kick pedals are those? She's got two on each drum . . . and they're not what I'd call a kick drum. She's got some kind of wooden stick on each one, and . . . what the hell! Would you look at this! The two "kick-sticks", or whatever you call 'em, are set differently, and have a different type of mechanism. One hits high, and one hits low . . . actually, that makes sense,' he huffed, 'if you were playing Japanese Taiko drums with your feet!'
Jack looked on, blankly. 'Can you build it?'
Mike gave him a withering look. ''Course I can build it! It'd be an expensive puppy, but I can build it.' He pointed. 'Look . . . see how all the drums are curved, down, then outwards? They'll have to be made of wood, steamed and bent.'
'How long will it take?'
'If you're serious about this, I can make you two sets- a cheap facsimile for her nibs to wail on in the meantime. I can do that in a week. But the wooden version . . . that'll take two, maybe three months.'
'Okay,' Jack told him, 'Let's do it.'
Mike put his hand up. 'Hold on, just a minute. Let me slap something together out of what I've got around the shop. I want to see what this kid can actually do, first., before you go wasting your money on some sort of expensive contraption no one can actually play. C'mere, Short Stuff,' he indicated with a finger, 'let's see if we can't get some idea of what you can do.'
It took an hour to set up the oddest-looking drum kit Jack had ever seen. Mike had mounted every long, skin-headed drum that could be mounted into a "C". As he worked, Yelina's excitement was becoming palpable. When he was finally done, she fairly bounced on the drum stool . . . but then she began examining it, trying to get it to do something it wasn't made to do.
'What, you want something that'll tip forward a little? Just a sec . . . I've got a stool with adjustable legs . . . here it is.' He showed her how to shorten the legs, left her to it as she got the idea.
The stool sorted, she began looking over sticks, apparently unsatisfied with everything she saw.
Mike made a "big fish" gesture once more. 'What is it? You want big sticks? Is that it? Big like this?' When she nodded, he left, went into the back, rummaged around a bit, then returned with an assortment of heavy-duty drum sticks.
'What the hell are those?' Jack asked him in disbelief. 'They must be an inch thick! And what are they . . . about eighteen inches long?'
'Close,' Mike told him. 'These are for Taiko drums-'
The two men stared as the little alien girl found a pair of sticks to her liking and began twirling them, through the fingers of one hand, then through the fingers of the other, back and forth. Then, as though she were rolling up her sleeves to go to work, she went to the newly assembled drum kit and began tip-tap-tomming, getting the feel of it. They were just beginning to wonder if she was actually going to play something, when suddenly she let loose with a thunderous volley, sticks and arms a furious blur of motion.
Jack and Mike exchanged a look, and simultaneously mouthed, Oh-my-god!
At that same moment, a girl, a smaller but sturdy carbon-copy of her father, poked her head out the workroom door. 'Wow!' She disappeared from a moment, then returned dragging a heavy amplifier, with a full-scale bass tucked under her arm.
'Whatcha think you're doing, Honey?' Mike asked her.
'Whatsit look like I'm doing!' she scolded, hastily plugging things together. 'This I have got to try out!'
'Um . . . Tina,' Mike hemmed and hawed, 'this may not be the best time-'
'Out the way, Daddy!' she ordered, cranking up her bass until it was one decibel short of squealing feedback. 'I gotta try this.'
Jack had heard of Tina's uncanny virtuosity on "slap" bass, but had never before heard her play. There was no fumbling around, no searching for an opening, no trying to find something that sounded half-way musical- she just jumped right in, instinct and performance-ability allowing her to do effortlessly what other musicians only dreamed they could do.
In response, Yelina let out a sound of pure delight, and like a seamless machine, the two threw themselves into their own private world of musical shapes and ideas, a world of concussions and rolling thunder, of rumbles and complex polyrhythms.
'Okay,' Jack heard Mike mutter to himself over the din, 'this is really different.' He watched in disbelief as Yelina switched from hands and feet to feet only, using the multiple foot-pedals to pound out complex rhythms that shook the floor. Tina responded instantly, dropping to her lowest string which was thick and heavy as wound piano wire. It was a six-string bass, so the low note was a bone-jarring low B, and Tina matched Yelina's complexity with complex polyrhythms of her own.
Eventually it occurred to Jack to seek out Kiko, to make sure she didn't end up feeling left out. He found her in another section of the mini-mall with Jason, trying through him to communicate with three girls her own age.
Two of the girls were sisters, Mary and Penny, the other was a friend of theirs, Asta.
The three shared something in common. All three were child prodigies faced with a life downhill from there. There was no place for them in the world of pop music, except as eye-candy, and none of them felt the call of jazz or classical music, though all three had extensive musical training.
The three were killing time, wistfully checking out the fabulous electronic toys they couldn't afford, and thinking dreamily of what life would be like, if only . . .
'I can't figure out what she's trying to tell me,' Jason told Jack. 'Something about that xylophone thing, and that electric drum kit.'
Jack stared as Kiko gestured. He did understand, but had no idea how it could be done.
'Got another project for me?' It was Mike who had come to join them with his daughter and Yelina in tow.
'She wants to somehow put electronic drums pads and a xylophone together, I think,' Jack told him.
Mike shrugged. 'Not a problem. All it would take is cutting up a bunch of electronic pad material and making a xylophone-controller, which you'd use to play modules.'
'You've lost me,' Jack admitted. 'I'm just a dumb ex-drummer.'
'It's simple,' Mike explained. 'It's like that electronic drum-kit, there. There's no sound in the pads. They're just controllers that transmit your playing information into a signal that in turn passes through a module, which can contain any kind of sounds you want. You can use a drum-controller to play drums, or bells or piano or wind chimes or violins, or whatever else your little heart desires.'
Jack reconsidered the situation. 'Okay . . . so what am I missing here?' This, to Jason.
'Kiko was watching them play xylophone,' Jason shrugged. 'They were all playing together a few minutes ago- Kiko was playing those electronic drums- and then she wanted them to somehow get electronic sounds of them.'
'We suggested synths,' the one named Penny told him, 'but I think she wants us to play something bigger . . . something we can really hit, that's got more oomph.'
'Both of you girls play xylophone?' Jack asked them.
'He's been living in a cave,' Mike apologised for him. 'Jack, Mary and Penny here play piano, violin and xylophone. They haven't had much experience with electronics, but I've heard them wail on synths, too. Asta, here, plays guitar and fiddle in Tina's garage band. And,' he added pointedly, 'they don't have a drummer, or drummers, plural, or synth players.'
'That's kind of an unbalanced lineup, don't you think?' Jack asked him seriously. 'It'd be a little heavy in the percussion department.'
'H'm. Something tells me not,' Mike told him, considering. 'Anyway, I've got stuff to do. You want me to build that set? Yes? And you want an electronic set with all the bells and whistles for the other one? Okay, what about this electronic xylophone idea? I'm willing to go halfers, just to see if there's something to the idea.'
Jack shrugged. 'In for a penny, in for a second mortgage, as they say.'
Mike gave him a look. 'Given what you made on Nortel stock? Please! Don't kid a kidder. Anyway- so what do you kids say? You want to try and play together as a band?'
Those who understood, nodded. Yelina and Kiko watched him expectantly.
'Okay, be here at seven on Monday. The place will be closed up, but I'll still be here with the key. Sound good?'
All the way on the drive home, the two girls turned around in their seats from time to time, trying to get a glimpse of their new toys. Jack found that he was smiling, broadly, simply because he felt good.
Jason chuckled. 'Well, we think about playing in a band, and end up putting a girl-group together instead.'
'It'll be fun,' Jack told him. 'I'm not sure how musical it will be, but I'm sure they'll enjoy themselves.'
Jack lifted his arm to allow Yelina to lay against his side with his arm around her. She had nodded off and was snoring, quietly.
As they neared Anaheim, they could see a flickering light against the clouds. Feeling apprehension tighten his belly, Jack slowed down and skirted around his home. As they neared the end of the block, they could see emergency lights. Jack felt a surge of panic, until he realised that they weren't parked in front of his house.
They were parked in front of the house next door. The Whyte's house was in flames!
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