An hour later, as dusk fell over The Lucky Dawn, Rufus was still churning over Mac’s words.
Had it been a story, or had the old man really lived through those events?
And even if he had, especially if he had, how reliable did it render his testimony. A schizophrenic mind, unchained imagination; none of it may be true. None of it.
But Mac’s reaction had been anything but imagined. The fear that had coursed through him, the anger of recollection, the clear imprint of memories. It was impossible to fake goosebumps.
It had been real. All of it. It had to have been.
But what is reality?
“What is it really?” Rufus whispered.
He stopped, suddenly self-conscious that he’d begun talking to himself.
The Lucky Dawn spread, empty, darkening and quiet around him.
He couldn’t rest, not while he carried this alone.
Rufus jumped to his feet, grabbed his jacket and headed into town.
* * *
Main Street was largely asleep by the time he walked its length. Shops and businesses closed, restaurants and bars coming to life to replace day traffic with night wanderers.
Rufus was surprised to find Tunes still open, some trance-like techno music easing from the speakers, creating a cocoon of ease; a localized chill-out zone.
He stepped in and scanned the small store.
A couple of teenagers browsed the vinyl over on the far side. Howard sat behind the counter, texting.
Rufus felt his spirits drop slightly; Danni nowhere to be seen.
Howard looked up from his phone.
“Hey,” he greeted Rufus.
“Hi,” Rufus walked up to the counter.
“How’s your day been?”
“You know,” Rufus shrugged.
“Did you smooth things over with Danni?”
“I…” Rufus began but stopped.
Don’t know, he thought. Their morning coffee seemed a very long time ago, across the wide sea of his weird conversation with Mac.
Howard was back to texting, didn’t notice that Rufus had fallen quiet.
“Is she here?” Rufus asked.
“Nah,” Howard said, still engrossed in his screen, “she left, like, about three. Headed home, I think.”
“Home?”
“Sure.”
“You got the address?”
Howard looked up, stared at Rufus. His forehead creased a little.
“Are you okay, man?”
“I’m… fine,” Rufus replied.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Really. But there’s some unfinished business from this morning, and I don’t want to sleep on it.”
“Oh,” Howard looked back to his phone, paging through his address book. “She’s over at Shaw Street, an apartment up on the… wait… Number seven, she’s on the second floor… Seven-B.”
“Thanks, man,” Rufus said, “which way’s Shaw?”
“Out past the police station,” Howard looked up, “out the door, turn left…”
“I know where that is,” Rufus interrupted.
“Oh. Well, Shaw is a couple of blocks up from there, on the way out of town.”
“Cool. Thanks, man.”
“De nada,” Howard said, “and listen… Go easy on her, okay? She has her moments, but she’s a good kid. Big heart. Sure, she puts on that angry front but that’s all it is: a front.”
Rufus looked at Howard for a moment.
Where did that come from? he thought.
“Dude,” one of the teenagers exclaimed, “they’ve got Deep Purple!”
Howard and Rufus both turned to look towards the vinyl racks and, by the time Rufus turned back to follow up his thought, Howard was already crossing the store.
“Made in Japan, one of the finest live recordings ever…”
Rufus walked out of Tunes, headed for the apartment on Shaw Street.
* * *
Shaw was largely derelict; empty houses, boarded up windows. Crab grass sprouted through cracks, moss and weed had largely over-run lawns.
What few buildings were occupied looked like they’d be condemned within months.
If this were a forest, it would be destroyed by wildfire at the slightest spark; dead wood waiting only the cull.
Rufus walked along Shaw, marveling at such desolation so close to the relatively bustling downtown area. The house numbers descended as he walked along the street, which took a curve before he reached number seven.
As he rounded the corner, he began to hear a beat; fast and funky.
He walked on, mosquitoes whining in his ear, fireflies blipping in garbage-strewn lots.
A house up ahead on the left glowed like a beacon into the street.
Number seven, he guessed.
As he drew closer, the light resolved to the glow of multiple candles and garden torches. Someone was out in the backyard. Rufus looked over the fences of the intervening yards, noted the train tracks on the far side, quiet now.
And there, in the back-yard of number seven, was Danni, all alone, dancing to the beat. Only her arms and head were visible above the fences, moving in time, waving and nodding.
Rufus smiled, clean in the moment, forgetful of his conversation with Mac, of eyes on milk cartons and boys on street corners.
He stood and watched for a moment; Danni bounced and cavorted in the music.
Eventually, Rufus took a step and closed the gap to number seven. He stepped around the side and entered the back-yard; stood there, watching Danni.
The music was coming from two speakers balanced on the window-ledge above his head, blasting heavy funk; Rufus wasn’t close enough to that scene to identify the artist, and allowed himself to drift in downbeat and syncopated snare.
Danni moved fluidly around the yard, completely lost in the music. She turned towards him a couple of times, but her eyes were closed and she continued on without seeing him. Rufus squatted down, enjoying the show.
It wasn’t just that she was dancing, it was the unrestrained energy and joy in which she flowed.
The song gave way to another and she hardly missed a step.
Round and round she went, bathing in the light of candles, tiki torches and a firepit, glowing red.
On the next turn, she did see him, opening her eyes briefly and locking stares with him. He expected her to stop, embarrassed to have been observed.
But Danni smiled, and that smile was all the welcome Rufus had ever wished to receive.
“Come on,” she laughed, “dance with me.”
Rufus didn’t move; suddenly so, so self-conscious.
“I don’t…”
“Dance!”
And she span over to him, her shoulder pumping up and down to the bass guitar, the snare-hit punctuation.
She reached for him, grabbed his hand, pulled him to his feet.
And the energy crackled from her hand into his; surging elevation.
Rufus jumped up, shocked by the force.
“Dance!” Danni smiled.
And now, he had no choice.
His body began to move, fighting against his will.
She laughed.
“Come on!”
He smiled back, felt his shoulders relax, his feet move, his stomach relax.
His head began to bob, his feet to move.
“Yeah!” Danni sang along with the song; exulting into the moonlit desolation of Shaw Street.
Rufus and Danni danced for the longest time.
* * *
Eventually, Danni collapsed on her back, breathing heavily, laughing up at the stars above the candle glow.
Rufus sat down with a bump, leaning back, tipping his head to the sky.
Danni reached under herself into the back pocket of her jeans, retrieving a remote for the stereo; a moment later, the music eased to chilled-out trance, swelling out into the quiet nighttime enveloping Shaw Street.
“Nice,” Rufus said, nodding his head a little.
“Mm-hmm.”
“That was fun. I mean… Really.”
Danni twisted onto her side, looked across at him. Stared.
Rufus grew uncomfortable with the scrutiny.
“What?”
“You,” she said, “I thought you were a musician.”
“I am!”
“Nope,” she shook her head, “not even close.”
“What do you mean?”
“You think you’re a musician because you make music.”
“Well, duh!” Rufus scoffed.
“See? You’ve got no idea.”
Danni sat up, drew her legs into a lotus.
“Put your hands on the ground,” she said.
“What?”
“Like this.”
She placed her hands palm down on each side of her legs. Unsure, Rufus mimicked her. She watched this with some amusement.
“Stop smiling!” Rufus complained, but his embarrassment was only skin deep.
“All right,” Danni smiled back. “What do you feel?”
“What?”
“What do you feel?”
Rufus decided to play along.
“Grass. Dirt.”
“Uh-huh. And?”
“Er… Twigs?”
Danni smiled at him. “Close your eyes.”
He did, the inside of his eyelids flickering with the diffuse light of candle flames. He watched the blurring, dancing redness.
“Focus on your palms,” Danni said quietly.
“I…”
“Shhh,” Danni chided, “it’s time to listen.”
Rufus focused on his palms, feeling the gritty dirt beneath the scrubby grass, fancying that he could feel the minute scurrying of ants against his palm.
“Feel beyond the ground,” Danni instructed.
He tried. Imagined his hands melting through the surface, blending with the darkness beneath. And as he did so, it seemed that the music coming from the upstairs window swelled, grew, magnified. The sounds of the night, crickets and stuttering flames, eased back and the music was everything, the air he breathed, the night around them.
“Oh…” he breathed out.
The bass pulsed through the ground into his palms, relentless, surging like the tides on an empty, pristine beach beneath the moonlight.
“Yeah,” Danni breathed out, a small affirmation amidst the swooning seascape.
Rufus floated into the bass, the lilting pads and textures twining in and out of his conscious thought, and it seemed that his pulse, the very beat of his heart blended to the tempo of the music.
“You feel it,” Danni whispered, “you feel it.”
“I do.”
“You feel it.” Her voice close to his ear.
“I do!”
“Open your eyes.”
He tried, but they seemed glued; held together by his desire that he never lose this moment of connection to the tempo and pulse that lived just beneath the surface.
“Open your eyes.” Her breath on his cheek.
And he did.
And found himself alone in the middle of the yard. Momentary panic washed over him.
“Wha…”
“Shhh,” Danni voice soothed from behind him, “I’m right here.”
He turned and, sure enough, she was there, leaning against the wall of the house, knees drawn up, a smile on her face. Something about her. Something…
“You went pretty deep,” she smiled, “I’m surprised.”
Rufus breathed for a moment. He could feel it calling to him, drawing him back, willing him to close his eyes and fall into that synchronicity, that connection; to become the music once more.
“No,” Danni said, and Rufus’ eyes snapped open.
“That’s enough for now,” she finished.
Rufus shook his head slightly, as he blinked his eyes, he saw the ebb and flow of the candle-light once more; it was all but a breath away. He exhaled, opened his eyes.
And saw it.
“You got changed?” he asked, filling with confusion.
Danni smiled. Laughed a little.
“I was sweaty,” she said by way of explanation.
“But…” Rufus began.
Danni shrugged.
“Are you getting it yet?” she asked. “You’ve been playing at being a musician, but you haven’t even scratched the surface.”
This time, Rufus didn’t interject, he didn’t complain, didn’t defend. He just stared at Danni.
“Music…” Danni paused. “Music is the between. Music is the air, the earth, the fire and water. Music is our blood, bone and breath. We are music.”
She stopped then, closed her eyes, sat quiet, and Rufus let her have the moment.
“You are so much more than a musician, Rufus,” she said eventually.
“You are music.”
The music swelled into the silence once more, though Rufus was now unable to feel that easy path back into its center.
Something like panic fluttered in his chest, turned his stomach.
When he blinked now, he saw Michael Ridenour’s eyes; haunted on the street, black and white and granular on a milk carton.
He jerked upright as if on strings, feet beginning to move him towards the path around the house.
“Where are you going?” Danni asked, surprised by this sudden animation.
“I’ve gotta go,” Rufus said, hardly aware of her question.
“What?”
“I’ve…”
But he was heading around the house and out onto the street, turning back towards town and, beyond, The Lucky Dawn.
“Rufus!” he heard Danni cry behind him, but he could not turn, would not turn.
Rufus ran to escape the condemnation of the gaze which met him with every blink.
You did nothing, it said, you did nothing!
RUFUS – A NOVEL is a novel-in-progress by Vincent Tuckwood, a Brit author living and working in Waterford, Connecticut, USA. Read more by Vincent Tuckwood.
