Second Chance Read online

  SECOND CHANCE

  By Chet Williamson

  Crossroad Press & Macabre Ink Digital Edition

  Copyright 2010 by Chet Williamson & Macabre Ink Digital Publications

  Copy-edited, formatted, and checked for accuracy against the original paperback edition by David Dodd

  LICENSE NOTES:

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to your vendor of choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

  OTHER CROSSROAD PRESS BOOKS BY CHET WILLIAMSON

  Ash Wednesday – e-BOOK

  Ash Wednesday – Unabridged Audiobook – narrated by the author.

  Lowland Rider – e-BOOK

  Lowland Rider – Unabridged Audiobook – narrated by the author.

  Soulstorm – e-BOOK

  Soulstorm – unabridged Audiobook – narrated by the author.

  To the memory of my father, Chester Grover Williamson, and to all who, like him, love the land.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The quotations from Basil Creighton's English language translation of Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf are reprinted here with the kind permission of Henry Holt and Company.

  The author would also like to thank Paul Bea, Jr. for information on the machinations of lobbying and the Congress, and a Mayo Clinic physician, who wishes to remain anonymous, for information on airborne viruses.

  The discovery would be made . . . that there were floating round us not only the pictures and events of the transient present . . . but that all that had ever happened in the past could be registered and brought back likewise.

  —Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf

  Fall 1969

  The beam of light was as thin as the edge of a razor. Only by constantly moving the taped-over flashlight back and forth could she form any idea of what the hallway was like.

  She had an impression of worn floorboards, of institutional green trim framing the doorways on either side. But the boy ahead of her did not stop at any of them. He just kept walking slowly, and so softly that she did not hear a footfall, only the occasional creak of a tired board.

  Tired. The whole building was old and tired. It would die easily, come down like the mess of ancient boards and shingles that it was. She imagined the explosion, and the building groaning, giving a massive sigh of wood, a yawn of rusty nails, and then dying, so happy to rest, to cease from holding so much ignorance and cruelty in its walls.

  We had to destroy the building to save it.

  She snickered at the thought, and Keith stopped.

  "What?" he said. His voice was tense and brusque.

  "Nothing."

  "Then be quiet. We're here."

  She heard the knob of a door turn, and waggled her light ahead of her so she could see him push it open.

  Jesus. They were there.

  For a moment she thought about Woody, thought that she should have listened to him, stayed in her dorm, tried to talk Keith out of this, even turned him in before he could do it. But she hadn't done any of those things.

  Instead she was here in the dark with a boy whose sanity she sometimes questioned, and, as a result, she now questioned her own.

  But dammit, dammit, it was for a good cause, a violent means justified by a desired end. And no one would be hurt.

  That was what she had to remember. No one would be hurt.

  "Come on," he said. "Right in the middle . . ."

  She followed him to the center of the largest classroom, shining the sliver of light around the room. She saw an American flag, a blackboard with x's and arrows on it, another flag that she thought might be the flag of the Army.

  "Drop your light, Tracy!"

  Keith's hiss echoed through the room like the burning gunpowder she had seen and heard in movies. But they weren't using gunpowder. There would be no sizzling fuse. Just a clock. A clock and some wires and sticks of dynamite. She hadn't asked where he had gotten it, nor where he had learned to make a bomb. She just hoped that he had learned well.

  She dropped her light at his command, but the harsh order annoyed her. "You going to put it in the center?" she whispered.

  "Sure. Why?"

  "Put it against a wall, and it'll at least take that wall out. This way you might end up with just a hole in the roof."

  "Shit, there's enough dynamite in here to take the whole roof off. When that's gone, the walls'll fall down, don't worry. Now come here."

  She went grudgingly, bothered more by his attitude than by what they were about to do. "What?"

  "Hold these two wires." He held his own flashlight under his arm, shining its line of light onto a section of the crude device. "And don't let them touch."

  She wedged her own flashlight under her arm, and took the wires in her gloved hands. "You mean like this?" she said.

  She brought the wires close together, but one over the top of the other, so that they were still an inch apart. From Keith's position, however, it looked as though they were actually touching. This, she thought, will wipe that smartass smirk from his face.

  She expected him to leap back, or to gasp, or to freeze. What she didn't expect was that he would bring up his hand between hers in an attempt to separate the wires, bring up his hand so that she accidentally and actually let the thin lines of metal make contact with one another.

  "N . . .” he started to say as he moved, but he never finished saying No, and she thought that was so strange, since she had time to think about so many things as the bomb exploded in their hands, to think about fire and pain and dying, and most of all, before the blast tore into her arms, her chest, her brain, to think about Woody, God, Woody, and how much she loved him and how she would love him forev...

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  It couldn't last forever. He had known this time would come. Time for something different.

  Woody felt it as he listened to the playback, his long, supple fingers tightening around his Loree oboe. There was nothing wrong with the music, but it was just more of the same that he had composed and played for the last few years, sprightly, flowing patterns of melody interweaving with the other instruments in a latticework fugue, but with a tone that cut the soul like a scalpel. Finally, they had all listened. They came to concerts, bought his records, made him more money than he thought he would ever have.

  And now that he was as successful as he ever hoped to be, a glitch in his soul told him he had to change. People had caught up with him, and that meant he had been running too slowly.

  Time for something different.

  Woody Robinson had grown up in the sixties, and his first songs were of those years. He still remembered the lessons the decade had taught him, of the need to speak in your own voice, sing your own song. And despite the transformation of that ideal into pop songs and slogans, he had held to those tenets, and as the years passed, things came around.

  For over twenty years he had played "something different," whether it was called world music, avant-garde, or New Age, a term he loathed. And the audience had caught on. Their ears had become attuned.

  So it was time to rattle their ears again.

  Yet he didn't want to go any farther over the edge. He loved improvising, experimenting, exploring, but he loved melody too. He loved to make his instruments sing, and he would not trade in his songs for noises.

  But then what? For God's sake, what?

  Ron Dewey sat on a bare space on the recording console. His head bobbed in rhythm, st
opped when his solos on the Kawai K-3 kicked in. Then he listened without pleasure, concentrating only on imperfections, responding with grudging satisfaction when, as usual, there were none, or with fury when there were. Jim Columbo sat on the floor next to Ron, his hands flashing as they did on his percussion set, playing ghost drums, his eyes closed. Michael Lester, the final member of Woody's group, sat quietly in a chair, his arms folded, his face calm, his acoustic bass which he treated like a lover in the corner next to him.

  The music was fine, the playing was brilliant. Then why did it all sound so empty, so hollow?

  It wasn't the engineer's fault. Woody had used Drake Oppenkott for his two previous albums, and the recording and mix had been flawless. He held back a sigh as he watched Drake fumble in the deep pocket of his khaki work shirt for matches. Drake was the only sound man he knew who smoked in his studio. Though purists claimed that the smoke would degrade the equipment over a period of time, he continued, though now he was smoking a pipe rather than cigarettes. Better for the lungs, worse for the equipment.

  Woody listened to the take and watched as Drake picked up his pipe, a straight-stemmed briar darkened from smoking, reached beneath the console and took a tin that looked vaguely familiar to Woody, opened it quietly, reached in, took fingersful of flake, and tamped them carefully into the bowl. Then he closed the tin, set it on the console so that a startled Woody could see its familiar label of MacBaren's Virginia Blend No. 1, and lit a match.

  Woody smelled the aroma of the burning tobacco immediately, and at the same time heard himself on the tape improvising a four note riff that repeated several times—three minor descending eighth-notes, the fourth note a minor third below. At once he knew the derivation of the riff, something he had not realized during the recording. They were the first notes of the Doors' "People Are Strange."

  And the notes from the song he had not heard for over twenty years, the aroma from the tobacco he had not smoked for even longer, turned back those years, raised the curtain of memory on an evening in 1969, his friends around him, Tracy sitting next to him on the worn gray sofa, the sounds of dark and glorious menace coming from the speakers, the warmth of her against his arm.

  And now the thought of looking back, a thought he had so long refused to consider, became a desire, a demand, an irresistible impulse, and he closed his eyes, his own music faded away, and he went back, remembered . . .

  ~*~

  . . . the fall of 1969, and he was twenty-one and a senior, and in love.

  His inner eyes opened on the apartment, on a pair of legs next to him, revealed by a denim mini-skirt, and he turned and looked at Tracy's face, thinking how remarkable it was that a woman should have a face that smooth, the face of a child. Her hair, a lustrous brown, fell to her waist, covering her small breasts. The hair looked black under the light from the red bulb in the corner lamp that tinted the room the shade of blood.

  Woody remembered it all, saw it all. The sofa on which he sat looked across the room at another sofa, even more worn, if such a thing was possible. A window behind it was open, but did little to disperse the thick haze born of cigarettes, incense, and the occasional joint. Frank, his roommate, sat on that sofa with Judy, and they both looked decades younger than when he had last seen them in Atlanta. Frank held a can of Iron City Beer, Judy a cigarette. They were both nodding, eyes half-closed, listening to the music.

  Keith, the other roommate, was standing in the wide doorway to the dining room, leaning against the pillar, talking in a low but passionate voice to Sharla, whose afro bloomed like a crimson dahlia, and whose coffee-colored skin seemed the same shade as Keith's in the monochromatic glow. And there, sitting and standing about the two rooms, were all his old friends, Alan, Diane, Eddie, Dale, the living and the dead together, immortal in memory.

  The walls and the furnishings were just as they had been—thrift shop furniture, posters of the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Jimi Hendrix on the walls, along with Keith's favorite, Jesus holding a rifle, with the words, "Dig It!" Iron City and Budweiser cans were scattered on tables and floors, their metal tops peppered with cigarette ashes, a needle of smoke still rising from the openings in which butts smoldered. A Garrard record changer and a fat, Magnavox amplifier/tuner dominated the wall opposite the dining room. The amp's broad band selector provided the only light other than the red bulb and the orange of burning cigarette ends.

  And in the hazy room, in the glow of real and false fire, music reigned. Shamans sang the tribal chants, and Woody Robinson, holding the girl he loved and would lose, heard them all blended into one voice—The Doors, Hendrix, Janis, the Beatles, the Airplane, the Stones, the Dead—heard them young and alive again, singing of a different time, a different song . . .

  . . . and the time had come for something different.

  ~*~

  He opened his true eyes and found himself back in 1993, in the studio, the newer song drawing to its predictable close, fading away with no real conclusion, and it suddenly sounded to Woody like little more than meandering thoughts, purposeless, meaningless, soulless.

  His music sounded empty to him, and the thought deadened him, so that he looked at the expectant faces in the control room dully, shaking his head, his black, shoulder-length hair trembling as if it too were frightened of the truth of which Woody had become aware. Then his deep bass voice, a surprising contrast to the alto and soprano voicings of his reeds, filled the studio.

  "It's time," he said, "for something different."

  Drake Oppenkott frowned, then spoke through teeth clamped on his pipe stem. Smoke came with each word. "Is it the ambience?"

  "No, it's fine. I just don't like the tune."

  The six of them sat there for a long time. Finally Ron Dewey spoke. "You don't like the tune?" Woody shook his head. "You wrote it."

  Woody nodded. "Yeah, I did. But I don't even know what it's about. I don't even have a title for it."

  John Columbo massaged his tangle of hair vigorously with both hands, as if trying to force his brain cells into a coalition. "You said you were thinking about calling it 'Country Lane."'

  "Jesus," Woody said. "'Country Lane.' That's what it sounds like, doesn't it? Just strolling along, not a thought in your head. Not even anybody on the lane . . . just the lane itself. Well, where's it go? Why are we on it in the first place?"

  John shrugged. "It's just a tune, man."

  Woody looked at John and nodded. "You're right, Johnny. And that's the problem. It's just a tune."

  "What're you after, Woody?" Ron asked, a hint of irony in his voice. "Social significance? You wanta be Pete Seeger?"

  "I don't know, Ron," Woody said. "I don't know what the hell I'm after, but I know it's not 'Country Lane.'"

  The door opened and Chuck Hansen came in carrying a cut-off cardboard box with bags of sandwiches and styrofoam cups full of coffee. Although a producer for CeeWhy Records, he thought nothing of doing gofer work, and was not afraid to leave the studio to the musicians and engineers for a few minutes. Woody liked him for that, and for the creative freedom he had given Woody over the years.

  But Chuck was also perceptive, and now he stopped in the doorway, feeling the waves of discomfort. "Who died?" he said.

  "The album," Ron told him.

  Chuck sighed. "Well, in that case, I'm not paying for the sandwiches."

  The joke, though feeble, lessened the tension, and they all smiled. "Woody just had a whaddyacallit," said John. "The moment of truth thing."

  "An epiphany," said Michael Lester, the bassist. They were the first words he had spoken.

  "I'm not happy with the song, Chuck," Woody said. "I think I can do better. But I need some time."

  When Chuck looked at him, Woody could tell that he realized that there was something serious going on, more than dissatisfaction over a single tune. Chuck's eyes went from the glow of creative humor to the heavy-liddedness of corporate concern. "You're talking major overhaul." Woody nodded. "I guess we need to talk."


  "I guess we do."

  ~*~

  Woody, unlike many other musicians, liked to record in the morning. His mind was fresher then, his imagination freer. So the sun was shining when he and Chuck stepped out onto Powell Street. The rest of the group stayed inside to eat lunch, but Woody and Chuck carried their sandwiches to Union Square. The noon crowd was gone, and they easily found a bench. But the bags sat between them, unopened.

  "So what do you want to do?" Chuck asked.

  Woody looked at the pigeons at their feet, pecking at dropped crumbs. "Go in another direction."

  "You haven't mentioned a damn thing about this before. I thought you were happy with the new songs. What happened today? What brought this on?"

  "I'm not sure," Woody said. "Maybe a little time travel.”

  “What?"

  "I don't know." He shrugged helplessly. "Look, Chuck, I'm not saying that what we've done on this album is bad. It's not. It's certainly releasable. It's just that I think it's time to take a different direction."

  "I can live with that. You've done it before, and it's always been you." He paused. "You want to dump what you've got so far? That's four tracks."

  "No. But I want the rest to be different."

  "A transitional album."

  "Maybe."

  "So what do you want to transit to?"

  Woody thought, watching the pigeons. Then he whispered, "Get back, Jojo."

  "Huh?"

  "I want to go back. There are songs back there I never played."

  "What are you talking about? Songs back where?”

  “You're going to think I'm crazy."

  "I already do. Back where?"

  "The sixties."

  "Sixties. Like what in the sixties—Coltrane or Cecil Taylor or Satchmo singing 'Hello, Dolly' or what?"

  "Not jazz. Pop."

  "Pop? Oh Christ, what, you wanta do covers? 'A Day in the Life' on oboe? Or maybe 'Purple Haze' on English horn?"