X-rays.
More than one of them look like hoofprints in the sand.
“I dare say,” the doctor marvels, “it’s the most breathtaking injury I’ve ever encountered. Some would call it … uncanny. Observe for yourself, Philip.”
More whispers from somewhere Philip can’t see.
“Now,” the doctor says, turning from the X-rays to face Philip again. “You’ve just woken up … just come to, and I realize this must all be a considerable shock. You’ve been our charge, comatose, for six months.” The number is impossible. The number is cruel. The number adds distance between himself and the Danes. “That’s six months you couldn’t possibly be aware of, and so now must begin the process of healing. Both physically and emotionally.” He brings a forefinger and thumb to his chin. “But there are questions.”
“Where are the Danes?” Philip croaks. And his voice is creaking wooden stairs. His voice is an old piano bench tested.
A whispered gasp from out of Philip’s field of vision. A female voice.
He spoke! it said.
“The obvious initial question,” the doctor continues, ignoring Philip’s own, “is … how could a man survive such a thing?”
A breeze stirs his manicured brown hair.
Philip tries to raise an arm, can’t.
The doctor easily extends an open, flat palm, as though showing Philip the difference, now, between them.
“But then … here you are … you’ve survived. And so the second, more urgent question is … what happened out there, Private Tonka?” He plants his hands on his knees, bends at the waist, and brings his blue eyes level with Philip’s own. “What did you and the Danes find in the desert? Or, rather …” The doctor waves his hands in the air, playfully erasing this train of thought. The gesture is so out of place as to seem irreverent. “Let’s forget your fellow musicians, your band, the Danes.” The cold measure in his eyes suggests he already has. Again, Philip sees hoofprints, a trail of them extending.
He hears a sound, too, sickening and sentient, creating a trail of its own, curling up and over the horizon of his memory. He tries to fight it with his own song. His and the Danes’. The song that kept him company as he slept.
But the doctor’s voice quiets it once again.
“The question is not what you found … but what found you?”
Philip is on the Path. That’s what he’s always called it. The Path. Not the Right Path or the Wrong Path. He’s careful not to specify. So when any of his friends or family ask him if he’s drinking too much, wonder aloud if he’s hanging out in the bars too often, he always answers the same way.
Hey, broom off. I’m on the Path.
Philip’s symbol for the Path is a single piano key, an F, worn on a necklace. The key itself was torn from the first piano Philip saw when he returned from the war, World War II: a trashed upright left on a curb not two hundred yards from the airport in Detroit, Michigan. Despite its missing leg, cracked wood, and flaked yellow paint, the piano was a portent to Philip; a welcoming committee couldn’t have given him a warmer reception. After hugging his parents hello, after stowing his bags in their new 1945 Chrysler, Philip asked them to wait, so he could bring a little of the piano home with him.
Into the future with him. Postwar.
Onto the Path.
Choosing the key was easy. F. Because F was the only note in both mnemonics for beginner piano players:
EGBDF (Every Good Boy Does Fine)
FACE
One mnemonic ends, another begins.
As ends war, so begins life … at home.
Life on the Path.
Twelve years later, at thirty-one years old, Philip may not have the same army physique he had when he and the Danes performed for soldiers in England, but he has the same philosophy he had back then. Let his acquaintances in Detroit (and there are many of them; the Danes are bar owls) think the Path is religious, unreligious, unhealthy, delusional, or insane. It doesn’t matter. After a world war and a hit song, living free is the only path to walk.
Today the Path has led him to a good place. A recording studio in downtown Detroit, at Elizabeth and Woodward, in this, the year 1957. The Danes (“the Darlings of Detroit,” as the Free Press named them) own it. A four-way split. Larry, the fun-loving bassist of the Danes, the long-haired freak, found the place. An empty square made of cinder blocks, once used for plucking livestock, the acoustics were too perfect to let go.
This is it, Larry had said months ago, extending his hands out, palms up, like the goofy host of the game show Who Do You Trust? on television. This is Wonderland.
But not all the other Danes were convinced. A former chicken coop didn’t quite feel like the place to make hit records.
You love everything, Duane said, the first time you see it.
And you, Larry said, pointing at the other half of the Danes’ fabled rhythm section, are way too conservative to play rock ’n’ roll. Did you see the elevator?
Duane frowned.
You mean the wooden box full of chicken feathers?
I like it, Philip said, already seeing the partition that would separate the control room from the live room.
Well, shit, Duane said. Once you got Philip on board it’s a done deal. He looked around the cold space and saw Ross was smiling, too. Shit again. We’re doing this, aren’t we?
Larry put his arm around Duane’s shoulder.
Can you see it?
Nope. I can’t see it.
Right there … a sparkling set. Larry snapped his fingers, as if capable of manifesting Duane’s Slingerland drums.
I don’t see it, Larry.
Oh yes you do.
I see a cold place to record come December.
Larry laughed. His leather coat crinkled as he pulled Duane closer.
Come here.
Where?
To the window.
The window was just a small square cut unevenly into the white cinder-block wall. The four bandmates pressed close together and looked out at Detroit below.
Look at that girl. Ross whistled softly.
I know her, Philip said.
Know her? Ross asked. How is it that you know every girl in Detroit, Philip?
Philip shrugged.
Girls like the piano, Ross.
Well, shit, man. All my life I heard that it was girls and guitars, guitars and girls. I picked up the guitar for girls. And now you’re telling me—
Look. Larry pointed. There’s another one. Just as fine.
The Danes grew quiet. Their ears were almost touching.
You