Author's note: I want to make The Perfect Song available to as many people as possible. That's why I'm posting it. If you would like to contribute anything, please send checks to The Perfect Song Scholarship Fund, Mansfield University Foundation, Alumni House, Mansfield University, Mansfield, PA 16933. All contributions are tax deductible and go a scholarship for future students who want to be writers.

  The Perfect Song

By

Damon

 

Forward

The skinny man shivered in the woods waiting for dawn so he could snatch a million-dollar scrap of paper rejected by a maniac.

It was an odd life, playing anonymous janitor to a shadowy, international genius.

But what the hell, a man had to have some kind of occupation in life.  Poul scratched his balding head and shoved his long skinny hands back into his pockets.  He kept his eyes closed to shut out the utter blackness of the forest.  He was a city man, and even after a year-and-a-half following this guy, whoever he was, Poul couldn’t get used to rural America .  He liked being surrounded by buildings, concrete, traffic hums and exhaust smells.  He didn't feel comfortable with people, but he liked the ambiance of them around him.

            He hated raw earth and was afraid of animals.  While he didn't quite believe that nature should be totally conquered, he had a strong conviction that it should be kept in its place, relegated to such areas as small gardens, manicured fruit orchards and foreign countries.

            However, money was money and you found it where you could.   He leaned down and picked up another paper.  He was going to be rich!

Chapter 1

 

 

Poul was tall, lanky. If someone spray-painted him green, he would resemble a praying mantis. He had tried his hand at a variety of jobs over the past 10 years. He had also tried marriage. Nothing seemed to click until recently when his job as a morgue janitor and his marriage ended at the same time.

It was at that depressing cycle of a thoroughly aimless life that Poul knew he needed a goal. Some direction. All his life he had wanted to be rich enough to not have to work for somebody else. He wanted to be independent enough to choose his own girlfriends and cars. Time wasn't going to wait for him. He had to take action.

So with no possessions or personal commitments, he set off in quest of money. If he wandered long enough, they would find each other. He knew that. This was America, land of discovery and overnight success. Humming and sniffing, he headed off in no particular direction. He scratched his chin and chuckled to himself. Damn, it felt

good to be free.

No more smell of formaldehyde and unresponsive company. No more wife whining about unpaid bills. Freedom and money.

America.

Damn!

***

Mendel stopped in a clearing, dropped his bag and sat down. He pulled the dark hair from his eyes and ears and shoved it behind his back. He was no closer to finding the perfect song than he was when he set out two years ago. He was tired and discouraged. A faded denim sleeve flapped loosely around his wrist.

As the sun began to set, his large, dark eyes turned to the bag beside him. He stood up, yanked it open and dumped its contents. Dozens of songs cascaded lightly onto the grass. He leaned down and picked up single sheets from the crinkled marshmallow pile, studied a few and tossed them.

"Junk! Just junk!" He pulled at his beard, then dug out the stubborn sheets that had clung to the bag as if in a desperate bid for survival. They were bits of the Bird Songs. He had spent months studying birds, watching them, listening to how they voiced rhythmic dialects, trying to be them until, in a burst of energy that settled into a steady volcanic flow, he wrote wild songs, hard songs, loud, crazy songs that flew in all directions and threatened to tear a listener apart with the sound of air, cries and clouds rushing past the ears. The bird music soared forth with a hum of joy controlled only by the slight confines of thin skin and flexible feathers. They were spacious, swooping songs sailing through the atmosphere where no obstacles forced you to veer from your path, where you fought air currents, then rode them a half mile above the earth with your wings straight out to the side of each eye, where tops of century old trees shrank to the size of dandelion buds . . . where nothing affronted the senses in this rush of pure freedom.

While writing, Mendel had reveled in a kind of madness. He had become the birds, flying upward, soaring through an endless sky, skimming over patches of fields and forests and farms that resembled the tattered quilt he'd slept in as a boy. Closer to the sun by only a few hundred feet, he saw it so large and bright it took up half the sky in its unfiltered radiance.

He dove and felt the power and control, the precise relationship demanded between eye and muscle to drift down and land gently on a willow branch or hurtle earthward at a mole, snatch it and push again upward.

The grace and freedom of bird life led him even further into energy patterns and exploding forces that lay beyond the rough barriers of the senses. Mendel wrote songs that would require an orchestra composed of madmen, maniacs, rapists, and terrorists. These frenetic musicians would be conducted by lovesick Kamikaze pilots, renegade

astronauts and unpublished poets.

These were songs of suppressed energy released in torrents before the conservative rationality of consciousness could grab control and rinse carmine to blotchy pink. They were songs of cloven-hooved angels swinging sky-length swords above the masses of people whose heads bent down in desperate prayer; songs of albatrossed men plunging through maelstroms of the self into lands where seabirds screamed and babies warred with demonic fury.

Mendel read the songs and flung them. Dozens of sheets, like slight, crippled birds, fluttered behind him into the distance. With the exception of a few which might have some potential, the songs were gone, flipping in the breeze, catching on bushes and fading from sight with the setting sun.

The years he had spent wandering, studying, gathering and writing, now were behind him with this final severance. And with this little death, Mendel's energy turned to anger. Even God's rage can't compare with self-anger. God annihilates. The self tortures mercilessly. Van Gogh knew it. Baudelaire made the journey once or twice. Hemingway could have filled in some blanks before he loaded his gun and turned it inward. Blast away the pain! All the agonies of the world's events are teacup tempests compared to the gnawing hell of one tortured soul.

Good lines, Mendel thought. He pulled out a piece of paper and wrote them down. As soon as he finished, his anger returned. He grabbed a stick and whipped the papers on the ground, sending them in all directions. The scraps reacted like men. Some scattered at the stick's fury. Some lay and took the beating while others hid in the dimming light of dusk.

Exhausted, Mendel flung the stick and sat down again by his bag. The act had been a matter of purging, something all men, civilizations and even worlds indulge in occasionally. He used the now diminished song bag for a pillow and fell asleep,

knowing he would rise tomorrow and continue his quest for the perfect song.

Many idle men and some of who have made an academic occupation of it

have questioned whether one man's action can change the world. Adam might give a discouraged but heartfelt nod. Plato would hedge his bets. Jung would dismiss it and argue that fate, destiny and even "willful" actions can often be reduced to synchronicity, a fairly common fusion that each day helps create marriages, business partnerships, babies, minor revolutions and major revelations.

As Mendel trudged down from the mountain the next morning, eyes on the

humpy Appalachian ridges, Poul headed up the other side. He walked slowly,

scratching his ribs and trying to devise a plan to package dead leaves into fireplace logs. The plan would serve a twofold purpose: it would make him rich, and it would rid the world of natural waste. Look at them, he thought, scuffing along, dirty little things lying here by the tons just rotting back into the damp, smelly earth. Nature’s dirty dump.

It was in this position in time, space and mental composition that Poul spied one of the crumpled song pages. Like a rooster pecking at a shiny object, Poul bent his long frame into a bony jackknife and picked it up. "Hmm. Strange." He scratched at his earlobe as he studied the musical notes. He looked around and began leisurely gathering up the discarded papers. He just might be onto something, he thought. It wasn't like an

isolated mountain to be harboring such oddball items.

Jung described synchronicity as a "meaningful coincidence," as opposed to a "chance grouping." Synchronicity, he continued, is not cause and effect but a "falling together in time," time itself being so elastic that it can be expanded forever or reduced to the vanishing point. In later years, Poul would often wonder if he would have found the papers had his aimless wanderings taken him a mere 50 feet to the right or left. Or, what if he hadn’t left the morgue and his marriage until a week later? Or what if the songwriter had been a man of a milder temper and saved the songs, (or of a more cynical nature and burned them?)

Poul concluded in the years to come that there are nothing but "if's" when humans are involved.

What happened did happened and it affected the lives of nearly everybody in the civilized world.

As he gathered the papers, Poul became so involved in tracking and collecting them that time did indeed seem to disappear. Before he realized it, the sun had quietly eased into the horizon's awesome girdle and he found himself trapped in dusk's new world.

"Damn!" His pale skin chalked even whiter as a new reality imposed itself. "I'm lost. Jesus-barefoot-Christ. . . . I'm lost." His reedy voice faded into his churning stomach. He tested several directions, panicked, and ran. A tree leaped forward and knocked him flat. Warm blood leisurely trickled from his beakish nose. He lay back on the dirty ground as stars partied in his eyeballs. He knew he was beat. He was not going to be sucker punched by another invisible tree.

When the bleeding slowed, he crawled cautiously to what felt like a large, neutral pine tree. Strange rustlings, rattlings and calls that seemed to emanate from neither man nor beast gave birth to themselves and grew in the flora-clad blackness. Poul cringed against the tree, lowered his head and covered his ears.

"Dear God, save me from all this and I'll be the most faithful damned servant you've had since Job." Then he cursed himself. "Damn me! I do everything goddamn wrong. My whole life is a wrong turn. Now I'm lost in this God forsaken nature and I'm gonna die for a bunch of paper scraps. Christ, I hate dirt. Where's a streetlight when you need it?"

With his bloody face imbedded between his knees, Poul scratched the back of his neck, cursed, prayed and felt time expand with malicious elasticity. Morning seemed an eternity arriving.

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

He must have dozed because Poul, who had never experienced dawn, missed this one, too. Joyous to be alive and rid of those awful night noises, he slowly stretched his legs. He gathered up his pages and limped back to the cheap motel he'd found the day before.

After breakfast he laid the songs out on the bed and studied them in these safer confines of the dirty beige room with the cheap painting of a 12-point buck staring with big black eyes. Poul circled above the pages like a one-man posse, walking around the bed and looking at them from different angles, nodding his head, sniffing and scratching nervously. "Hmm. Yes, yes." He lit a cigarette and chewed at his lower lip between puffs.

He took the painting down. He didn’t like woods or wild things. Then he spent the rest of the day in his room, smoking, drinking coffee and wondering what to do with this mysterious gift. He wished he understood music. It felt like he had something good. Late that night he put the papers in a box. Then, vowing never to venture outdoors if it might mean being caught by night again, he crawled into bed and fell asleep.

If Poul knew how drastically the little box of papers would alter his life, he might have thrown them away and returned to his leaf marketing study. If he knew the songs would make him one of the wealthiest men in the United States, he would have laughed and mentally spent the money in a thousand newly rich ways. If he had known he would never use his millions, he may have become suicidal.

But Poul didn't throw away the songs and to almost the last day of his life he was never really sure if he came out on the top side of his hunch.

***

The songs' original owner was perhaps the most imprisoned free man on earth. He had left home in his early twenties after spending all his the better part of his youth in the small town library reading everything from Aristotle to the rather lean selection of late 20th century works.

He spent every non-reading moment studying the guitar, piano and harmonica, the three instruments available in his small farm home. He studied songs with the meticulous greed of a bee poring over the season's last goldenrod. He played songs forward, backward, at different speeds and with different interpretations. He shoved himself inside them and burst them outward like melodic bombs.

By the time he hit his second decade, Mendel had read all he could ingest. He had also taken music as far as he could. He realized that he could not a find a song, the combinations of notes, chords and rhythm that was perfect. He began writing songs but quickly discovered that he didn't have the needed experience in writing or life. So with a canvas bag full of blank paper, a few pencils and the clothes he wore, Mendel simply left home to find life and write songs.

Eventually, he was sure, he would find the perfect song.

On his own, he quickly shed himself of time's burden. It was shelved in the same mental category as a chicken drumstick. It was something that for him was once solid and substantial, but was now only a thought. Time was a toxin invented by man who then gorged himself on it then wept when it was gone. Mendel went on a lifetime fast. Now, free of the false need for security and money, Mendel roamed, spending an entire season if he wished, studying the life of leaves from green bud to brown crust.

But within this new freedom, he was manacled by his drive to find the perfect song. He didn't care if it were published or heard by others. He just needed to find its parts and bring it to life. His gray bag bulging, Mendel walked. He avoided other humans. He scribbled a lot. Inside he was a seething sponge, gathering data, emotions, thoughts, fusing, synthesizing and with intermittent volcanic gushes, pouring forth dozens of songs at a time.

Right now he was on his hands and knees, one cheek to the ground, watching a grub inch its slimy way across the dirt to a slate chunk at a swamp's edge. He kept his eyes fixed on this little odyssey that took the grub over two dead maple leaves, 28 blades of grass, and two small rocks formed from layered semicircles of some form of carbon.

At one point Mendel stood up and frightened a hungry crow. The bird perched in a tree and cawed out a fury of obscenities at this human interruption. Mendel laughed. "Go find another! This one is helping me do research!" The crow screamed again and flew off.

Mendel made a note about a crow's temper. Nasty.

When the grub found its destination under a stone, Mendel, who had been lying on his stomach, turned over. "I wonder what something so slow thinks about?" He closed his eyes and placed himself in the grub world.

That night he wrote.

***

Yes, if the songs were to be exploited, it must be legal. Poul could never be a crook. This trait was not of his choice. It, and numerous other neurotic mind bumps were due in part to Miss White, his Sunday School teacher. When Poul was five, he lifted six pennies from the collection plate. In his young mind, it seemed not like stealing but sharing the wealth of the Kingdom.

But the dour old Miss White, a woman who was never young and ever childless, thought differently when she caught little Poul with his pocket full of the Lord's change. Her hard blue eyes were plunked like flint buttons in a face whose lips formed a granite slit in a square jaw. As she looked down at him, little Poul knew he was in very deep shit. In later years, Poul often shook his head and said that women like Miss White should not be displayed to little children and unstable adults.

It was during her sermons that Poul developed the nervous habit of scratching and sniffing. Miss White introduced Poul and his friends to the Walls of Jericho, Sodom and Gomorrah, Babylong (as Poul understood it), and the Serpent Satan, among other tales of violence, evil and destruction. She had one favorite story which she hauled out every six months.

"Today," she always began, "we will study Genesis, Chapter Seven." Then she'd pause, looking at each child's innocent expression. She'd take a slow, deep breath and in a tinny voice that could penetrate concrete, say dramatically, "The Flood." It sent chills down the kids' backs and the old woman judged her effectiveness by whether or not at least one child asked to go to the potty.

Then she would stand so the semi-paralyzed children had to follow the tight black dress up to her icy little eyes.

"And the children of God (which she pronounced "Gawd" in the tradition of many ostentatiously pious Christians to show their status above a common layman who just says "God"). "And the Children of God were eeevilll." She held her Good Book against her flat chest. "They imbibed themselves in eevilll ways . . . imbedding themselves in lechery, deecbouchery, alcohol, and sinful statues." She'd close her eyes. "And worst of all, they would lay down with men and women they were not married to." That seemed to bother her most of all, which was a mystery to the little Poul. If you're tired, you lay down. What does it matter if you're married?

"They were wicked fools!" Miss White would raise her hand, fingers stretched heavenward as the children prayed for God to send in their mothers. "Our Lord Gawd would not have this and grew sore angry and came drown from His almighty throne and said unto Noah: 'Noah, my children are exceedingly bad, exceedingly bad and I shall punish them verily with my Wrath and Fury. I am going to kill them all!'" Miss White would then glance with furious satisfaction at the terrified young faces. "'But you have been good, Noah,” she said now in a low voice, confident and smug in her role as God. “You have obeyed and feared me. Build an ark and collect a pair of animals so they can be saved and . . .flourish."

The woman took a long, slow breath that seemed to roar like a brimstone factory in the silent church basement. "And when the ark was finished, God made it rain forty days and forty nights and oh, oh, those wicked people cried in terror as the waters rose around them. And they cried out: "Dear God! Please have mercy! Don't kill us! Don't let us die!" But the rains continued and the waters rose until it covered them like fat wicked rats. Men, women, children and every living thing were soon dead, except for Noah, his family and his animals."

In Poul's mind, if only one family on the whole earth was good enough to live, God had some big improvements to make as a creator and role model. Here's a god

who lays out a rule saying “thou shall not kill,” then wipes out every living thing on the planet.

Obviously, omniscience isn’t everything.

The rest of the story was short, being a general cursory outline of the dove and new beginnings. Miss White's primary purpose was to impress upon the children the exacting wages of ongoing sin. She also meant to let them know they'd better keep an eye on their friends and neighbors, because in the end, everybody pays.

When the teacher caught little Poul with the pennies, her expression was a mixture of malice, glee and Christian anger. Forgiveness was, of course, out of the question. That afternoon she made Poul memorize the Ten Commandments and then recite them five hundred times. There was no way for him to cheat. She sat and listened to him, making a check after each complete recitation, then drew a circle around each set of 10 checks, then a line through each set of 10 circles.

The Ten Commandments were indelibly, infernally scrolled in mental cursive in the boy's brain, never to lose their power should he live to be a thousand years old. Sunday School made Poul a very nervous child.

In later years, he decided that God's punishment to adventurous children was to feed them to aging virgins in black dresses. And though he'd indulged in many small misdemeanors over the years, he had never stolen again, and never would. Miss White made a mess of his mind, but she'd straightened him out on stealing.

As it stood in his mind right now, the mountain had given him the songs. He knew an author was lurking about somewhere, but before he could make any kind of move, he decided to see just what the songs were, if anything. He took a bus to Syracuse, NY, to see his nephew Carl, a struggling young composer. The young man had recently earned his master's degree and worked as a musician in a small club and gave private lessons to spoiled children to support himself while he wrote.

He greeted Poul courteously. They barely knew each other. "You said you had some songs?" He asked, after the quick formalities.

Poul nodded and sniffed. "Yeah. I wanted to get your opinion."

Carl took the bundle. Though he was only 26, Carl's blonde hair was thin and receding. Must be in the damned family, Poul thought. "I can only give them a quick run through," Carl said. "I've got a lesson, then a gig downtown later."

Poul nodded and scratched the corner of his mouth. "That's all I wanted. “Thanks."

Carl played through a few compositions before the doorbell rang and a scowling boy with a stiff walk and a piano book stalked in. "Be right with you, Woody. Sit down over there," Carl said without looking up. The boy stared at the floor, dropped his book on the floor and plopped into the chair. Poul smiled uneasily at Woody who responded by flipping Poul the bird.

Carl ran through several songs before he stopped with an odd smile that contained pleasure and confusion. "A couple are a little rough, but there's some really good stuff here. A lot of power." He turned back to the last piece. "A lot of power," he said to himself, studying the arrangement. "I didn't know you wrote, Uncle Poul," he mumbled, lost in the notes on the sheet.

"Uh, I've just been fooling around. Boredom takes you in funny directions, I guess." He forced a quiet chuckle. "They're ok, huh?"

Carl nodded slowly. "I . . .there's something hypnotic about them. . . I. . ." He stopped, shaking his head to break the spell of the music. "I'm sorry. I have to give this lesson. I know a publisher in New York. He's one of the best. Send the songs with a letter using my name." He wrote out the name and address on the back of one of the sheets.

"Thanks for taking the time, Carl. I know you're busy."

"So they're yours, eh?" Carl asked rhetorically, as he escorted his uncle to the door. "They're really amazing. Let me know how you make out." They shook hands and said goodbye.

Had the young man just been polite and encouraging? No, there was too much surprise and awe in his voice. And his hands kept returning to the keys to finger out different passages, trying different interpretations, maybe trying to memorize them for his own use. . . . Poul's paranoia had always been a key to his survival. It had given his life a desultory edge, but it had also served to keep his senses sharp.

No, Carl wasn't bullshitting. He really liked the songs.

Acting swiftly for the first time in his life, Poul sent the songs to Carl's publisher friend, J.W. Beasely III, a young, ambitious businessman becoming well known for his ability to pick new talent, his maverick style of promotion and marketing, and his honesty.

Beasely had a reputation as a hard driver who left a lot of bodies by the wayside. The bodies were not victims of attacks, but rather those who could not or would not keep up with his frenetic pace and ability to read popular taste, a talent that was based as much on intuition as professionalism. It was widely known in publishing circles that Beasely's goal was to become the industry's top publisher, and nothing short of death would stop him. He was intensely hated and highly respected.

 

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

The phone rang six times before Poul picked up the receiver and very quietly said "hello." It was his experience, what with bill collectors, a greedy ex-wife and unfriendly relatives, that phone calls bearing good news were one of life's rarities.

"I'm looking for Poul." The authoritative voice was clear and direct.

Poul sniffed nervously and said, "That's me."

"This is J. W. Beasely." Poul's throat tightened and he bit his lower lip. He felt like a man being politely garroted. "Beasely, the publisher." Poul tried to get a word squeezed through his choking throat. "In New York! You sent me your frigging songs!"

"Yesh," Poul squeaked. He scratched at his throat. Open up! He cursed silently.

"Listen, we're both busy men,” the voice said. “I want the songs you sent." Poul's brain circuit panel crackled, threatening a red alert. His ears were experiencing auditory mirage syndrome. He nodded. "You want them. . . ."

"Yes. They're wild, a little –no, a lot -- on the far side. Different than anything being done today. But my gut feeling says there's potential. I want to take a gamble on them." Poul nodded. "Look, we need to meet but to tell you the truth, I'd like to see more material . . .see if you can maintain the momentum. If it has the same power as what I've got in front of me, we're in business." Poul nodded again, staring at something he couldn't see.

"Listen,” the voice continued, “I'm sending you a five thousand dollar advance. It's in the mail. We’ll talk contracts later. You're living in a motel, right?"

Poul nodded, trying to make some kind of sound that could be interpreted as human. He sniffed, cleared his throat. "Yes. A motel. I'm . . .on the road. Uh, you said, five thousand . . . dollars?"

"It's what I think is fair. You're an unknown and this is very different stuff, but I have a feeling. I've got enough for a 10-song disc and I'm going to go with it. But I want enough for a quick follow-up if it sells. If it does, we'll talk money." There was an uneasy pause. "You can send me more songs, right?"

Poul nodded as if they were talking face to face, then caught himself. "Yes, uh, yes! Sure." He swallowed. “More. . . .”

"I know this creative stuff takes time, but the sooner you can send me a new batch, the better. I'm having arrangements done of what I have right now. The disc could be out in just a few weeks."

A large, invisible hand reached inside Poul's stomach and squeeze hard, cutting out Poul's breath and forcing his heart to glop up toward his throat. What if the real writer saw the disc? Poul would not only be ruined and broke before he had a chance to be rich, he would have a permanent room in the iron bar motel.

"Don't use my name," he said quietly. "It has to be anonymous." There was a silence. Beasely's voice, when it returned was a monotone of disbelief. "I've never heard of an artist not wanting his name --"

"Please! It's very important. I'm . . .real introverted and my doctor says exposure could cause me to get, uh, suicidal. Worst case I could stop writing songs. And I'm writing as therapy." He scratched at his chest. "I'm a very bad case."

He could almost hear Beasely cursing under his breath. "Ok," he said finally. "Jesus, this is . . .artists usually have egos the size of . . . okay, okay. . .This time. But only because we're not emphasizing the artist as much as the art. We'll have to talk about this before I release anything else. If it sells . . . Christ, I think I'm crazy."

"Thanks, Mr. Beasely."

The publisher regained his ambushed authority and said briskly, "When you have more songs, bring them in person. Good talking with you." He hung up and Poul studied the phone, this bearer of incredible messages. Jesus Christ, he was about to be rich! Rich! Money by mail via some sodden songs lying on the dirty ground -- making him filthy rich! Ha ha haa!

But through the melody of greenbacks wafting before his unblinking eye came the wicked reminder that the songs belonged to some really anonymous crackpot who was probably still cavorting around that grimy forest scribbling and tossing away a fortune. At least Poul hoped so.

It was bothersome that the songs Beasely had weren't exactly Poul's to sell. But he would deal with that later. After all, he did find them. They were on state forest land in a free country. He was merely doing his job as a citizen picking up litter. Someone else probably would have thrown them away. Yes, he found them and . . . . A feeling of illness crept like a gentle, expanding flu into his body. How in God's name would he find more songs? How do you ask for a million-in-one chance twice? If he didn't find more, the game was over.

It was a quest in a land full of mines. If he found no more songs, he was finished. If the real author found out, he was finished. No, the author had relinquished the material. Still . . . . "Oh, damn," he moaned, rocking back and forth on his bony butt, feeling alone. He could feel the hairs along the sides of his head loosen as he scratched at them. "I'm going to be a bald con with a nervous condition," he thought. But, he thought, he would be a hairless, aging vagrant if he didn't at least try to seek out more songs.

He kicked at a bed leg. Why did life always get complicated? " God damn it!"

Money was being sent to him by a man he never met for some songs he'd found, songs written by someone totally unknown. Through the night he tossed in bed. God knew he didn't steal those pennies in church and He knew Poul wasn't stealing now, he told himself. He was sharing, making a commodity available. He was nothing more than a recycler, a retailer, giving something Party One didn't want to Party Two who did want it. And Party Two was paying him. So what if Beasely thought he was the author? Poul would rectify that in the future. Somehow.

As the sun washed out the night, so too did it seem to clean up his stream of consciousness. He rose, nervous and exhausted, packed a small bag and headed out the motel door to his future, praying that he could find more songs which meant nothing to him.

Nothing but money and freedom.

 

***

 

Wandering through the woods, he kicked leaves, turned rocks and tripped over hidden roots. "Damn stuff ought to be caged!" He mumbled and cursed as he traipsed the mountain. Mental conflicts and lack of sleep made his nerves raw. There had to be, he told himself, a composer in this mass of trees, field grass and rocks, and Poul had to find him. It was that simple. There was a hunter and a huntee. Reduced to that simplicity, Poul was able to keep his feet moving and his eyes on the ground. Whenever the complexities of money, morals, ownership and basic truthfulness sneaked into his mind, he chased them out again. A hunter and a target. That's all.

Survival.

But he found nothing. His second night in the forest was no easier than the night he discovered the papers. He was exhausted but whenever he dozed some rotten animal or a formless thing made a sound and woke him. He did not like nights without the comforting structure of rooms, streets and other concrete geometries. This damned nature was totally without form or any sense of purpose at all. And it was filled with wild things.

But when the morning light returned, the thoughts of riches drove him on. The end of the second day silently greeted the empty-handed man. He felt himself near tears at the prospect of yet another night alone in the woods. He built a clumsy fire, cooked some soup, then crawled under a bush after first beating it to scare away snakes.

For all the good it did. Fears rose like organic tombstones fertilized by the fecund darkness. His mind gave shapes to the sounds around him --a bear ready to maul him and eat his innards as he screamed his way to death; snakes slithering into his trousers to get warm and biting him with his first move.

There was no end to the monsters. Fortunately there was an end to night. The next morning, cold, stiff, and nearly delirious with lack of sleep, he vowed to quit. He found a small stream and drank. He ate the last of his granola bars. Then, cursing himself, his luck, and everything outside every city limit, he began walking.

It appeared as a mirage when he first spotted it. A little white, fragile, mocking mirage. He continued toward it, a scrap of paper scuttling softly over the landscape. When something in his mind convinced him that it was real, he broke into a shaky trot, then began running. A stone shot up in his path in front of his foot and he landed solidly on his face.

"Suvabithh," he mumbled, spitting out bits of grass. He pushed himself up painfully. Limping toward the paper, and wiping his mouth with a scrawny, quivering hand, he knew his nervous system was on the verge of total bankruptcy. He had to leave soon. "Lousy forests. Dirty, messy places . . . big, rotting junkyard of dead wood and deer shit!"

He reached the paper and picked it up, his tired, cynical mind not caring anymore if it were a song or a Big Mac wrapper. He smoothed it out and as he did, the notes unfolded as if by magic. He sat down on the ground without taking his eyes off it. As he studied it, each note seemed to melt away the delirium, the fears, and despair that had increasingly littered his mind.

"This is it! I've found it!" He yelled. "There are more! Oh God, I'm saved!" Yes, he could write more songs for Beasely! He could be rich!

He kissed the paper, then wiped the tears of joy from his eyes to study it better. Yes, there was no mistaking the hurried marks of a hand scurrying to keep up with the rushing mind. The silver black sheen of worn pencil, the lines of poetry under the hasty notes, and footnotes scribbled all around the edges. This was his man!

Though he found no other papers that afternoon, he knew there were more. He didn't know how he knew. He just knew. His night was blanketed by dreams of floating on warm, white pillow clouds in a sapphire sky and beautiful women in black satin dresses with diamonds, provided by Poul, draping their collarbones. Nights of love and laughter.

He awoke damp and shivering and stood up as soon as his stiff legs would allow. He brushed off stems and leaf bits and scratched his neck. His whole body itched. He was anxious to find more songs and get the hell out of here.

During his first three days of searching, Poul had devised a strategy should he find a song. He now put his plan into action. He began walking in widening circles until he found another paper, then another and another, until he established a paper trail in this wilderness. Creating a pattern he would follow for a long time, Poul stooped to snatch up a paper with one eye on it and the other eye searching for the next one.

During the ensuing days of the hunt, Poul thought about thousands of things, but primary on his obsessed mind were three thoughts:

-A fervent hope that the creator of these songs didn't discover him;

-The blatancy of the creator's rejection of the works and therefore the obvious claim to ownership Poul could make to them;

-The potential for the rich and happy life he was reaping in his gathering efforts.

The third thought always made him laugh with a sense of incredible luck and quiet victory. Success was as simple as picking litter!

By the end of the sixth day, Poul again began to despair for another reason. There seemed to be no end to the papers. They just kept appearing as he moved. He was exhausted. His food supply had run out two days before and he was forced to munch on strange plants, hoping none were poisonous. His clothes were ruined with mud, sweat, dew and sun. His sharp face was stubbled with a beard growth that itched constantly. He was living like an animal . . . with diarrhea. And he hadn't had a full night's sleep in a week. Nature was not a pleasant bedfellow.

That night he lay down, knowing he had to return to his motel or not return at all. His strength would not hold out much longer.

The morning light, to the attentive, always seems to bring some little gift. Now that Poul had nearly convinced himself that the songs were being manufactured by a band of invisible tune-crazed trolls, he found Mendel.

The man sat in a small clearing in the distance, hunched forward, head-on his chest, beard falling toward his crotch. He appeared to be in some kind of meditation.

"I'll be damned," Poul whispered. His heart kicked into fourth gear at the sight of the man. Poul had hit the end of the trail. He had come to the source.

Now what? In emergencies, the mind takes over and works swiftly, tromping over such obstacles as philosophies, moral and ethical questions and the possible consequences of various actions.

Poul hid.

A few minutes later the man came to life, his hairy head popping up from his chest as the arms reached for paper and pencil. He furiously scribbled on the paper, sat and studied it, then wrote again.

This went on for hours. Poul watched. The man was, Poul concluded, mad.

While he wrote, he threw all his energies into slamming marks on the paper, his dark hair fairly trembling with the might of his outpouring. Each time he stopped writing, he remained as still as an ancient philosopher who has busted beyond the constraining concepts of time and mortal life. When he lit into the paper again, his actions were those of a condemned man who raced against the dwindling hours to put down the last note.

The man was now on his twelfth page. After studying it, he quietly cursed, crumpled the paper and flung it. He repeated the process throughout the day, with the exception of a few pages that he stuffed into his bag.

Poul sat with his back against the tree in the distance, munched a grass stalk and watched the man create "his" songs and make him richer with each violent rejection. As he leisurely absorbed the man's image and actions, he smiled. Life never looked better, its beauty and promise never so glorious.

Life truly was a song. Poul thought of his nephew in his little apartment, who moved at the pace of a tranquilized turtle compared to this madman before him.

"Carl," he smiled to himself. "You want to know where real art is created? It happens in the middle of some big, dirty woods by a nut who hasn't had a haircut or new clothes in years, a man who writes songs then throws them away like stale peanuts. Carl, you ought to get out and see more of the real world. Heh heh."

Poul estimated the man to be about his age, maybe a year or two older.

It was hard to tell from the distance. All he could make out from the man's profile was the straight, proud nose that protruded rebelliously from the mass of dark hair and beard. He could, however, almost feel the waves of energy and frustration that emanated from the man as he struggled to translate what was in his mind onto paper.

Poul sighed and leaned his head back against the pine tree as he watched this man compose the rest of Poul's life.

"Keep on tossing those pages friend," he thought. "I'll clean up after you. Heh heh.

What a team. . . ."

 

 

 

CHAPTER FOUR

 

The crow's brash caws were like a file scraping open a rusty can as it helped sweep negative energies from the atmosphere. Mendel listened until the crow headed elsewhere. Then he lit a fire. He filled his pan with water and boiled fresh mushrooms and milkweed leaves. When he finished eating, he watched the orange flames draw inward, thin and small, licking out with weakening fury. Occasionally a flame shot

out above the rest, in futile defiance of its fate. When the final flame fell backward into smoldering nothingness, Mendel bent over the ashes. He idly wondered where fire went when it was gone. He looked at once playful and serious, as a child does when the doll it has brought to life recedes back into doll hood, closing off its wonderful dimension.

Mendel slowly covered the warm ashes and stared at the sky that dappled blue above the maple, oak and ironwood leaves. The warm, heavy smell of chicken, by some process of olfactory ghostliness entered his head. He saw his mother, thin and gentle, always smiling sadly, stirring the pot like a humble artist, creating a new work of recyclable art. Reminded of all he did not have, he packed his bag and moved on. There were so many missing parts to the song, and each time wrote, he felt he was only at the beginning.

It was as though the perfect song were a rain drop that fell and exploded into thousands of droplets, each of which fragmented into thousands more individual dots of moisture. And each of these broke into millions of atoms that were absorbed into everything he saw, felt, heard, smelled, tasted and thought. How does one collect all those parts and reassemble them when even a whole lifetime is but a fragment, an atom in the world which itself is but a fragment of a raindrop in a vast universe?

When Mendel disappeared over the hill, Poul cautiously moved in and picked up the papers. He scanned through them, moving his lips to the rhythm of the poetry beneath the notes.

"Hmm. Fine looking little tune here. Damn fine." Within a couple of months, Poul had memorized the man's habits, general speed and travel pattern. It was time to head back. He scratched his chest and back of his neck. Near as he could tell, he been tailing the writer a couple of years. Whenever he was near a town, he’d called Beasely to let him know he was still working. But, he realized now, he hadn’t called in several months.

His whole body was crawling with dirt and assorted bits of nature that seemed to assume a new life inside his clothes. But soon he would have a bath and would be clean and rich. He was going home to clean up. Heh heh. "Beasley, baby, here I come. Your little genius has picked up some new inspiration! Ha!" Yes, he could picture it all now. A bath, a cigarette, a little something from the top shelf. Wasn't life grandly orchestrated?

***

It felt great to back in civilization! Ah, Manhattan, city of cities, center of all that's wealthy! Home of Wall Street! Cars lined nose-to- bumper! Horns of all pitches honking in a music that Poul understood! Taxi drivers yelling in funny languages! This, by God, was life! Poul knelt down and kissed the sidewalk.

“Welcome to America,” a passerby said, thinking Poul was a new immigrant.

“Thank you.” Poul breathed in the smog-laced exhaust fumes with joy, weaving around people on the crowded sidewalk until he found the building containing the Beasely offices. As he rode the elevator to the 25th floor, the quick stares of business people in their tailored outfits made him self-conscious. He realized he should have taken the time to buy some new clothes and get a haircut. But he had been in too much of a hurry to get out of the mountains, and to deliver the songs to the publisher.

He entered the office suite, a ragged sight with torn, dirty clothes, and smelling musty. His beard, small dark eyes and bald head gave him the appearance of a maniacal prophet. The filthy canvas bag slung over his shoulder rounded out the picture.

A young brunette, with a picture perfect look that takes two morning hours to achieve, surveyed the grizzled, skulking man. Her disgust and fear were obvious. "I'm afraid you have the wrong office." Her words slid toward him on tiny cubes of ice. "I'm going to have to ask you to --"

He spoke quickly before he lost his nerve and ran from this iron angel. "I'd like to see Mr. Beasely. I'm--"

"That's impossible," she said, reaching for the phone.

"--Poul."

The secretary froze. She slowly drew her hand from the phone. "Poul?" She asked in a suddenly timid voice. He nodded, tentatively. "The . . .composer Poul?" He hesitated, shocked by the title. Then he nodded again. "The one who writes the songs?" He shrugged and nodded. Now it was her turn to feel intimidated and her face reddened with the silliness of the last question.

She stood up and Poul swallowed. She could easily be one of the women in his many dreams on the mountain. She was beautiful and built in a way that could make a man forget such small matters as time and power and maybe even money.

She was also smart and businesslike, realizing that saying anything more would be chancing inanity again. "Mr. Beasely has been waiting for you." She opened the door behind her and disappeared inside. Poul heard her whisper "He's here!" like an excited high school girl. A moment later she reappeared and opened the door, motioning Poul inside.

He cleared his throat and mumbled his thanks and she said, "You're welcome, sir," as he stepped inside. I'm in Oz, he thought, finding himself on a plush gold carpet in a room of teakwood walls decorated with gold records, autographed photos of recording stars and shelves with gold and silver mementos. In the middle of the room, behind a large oak desk stood a small man in a custom-tailored beige suit. The thick blonde hair

and deep blues eyes gave an intense, commanding air to the otherwise bland, round face. He stepped around the desk with his hand outstretched. "Poul! So happy to meet you finally. "I'm J.B. Beasely III." They shook hands. It was obvious by his quick, sure motions that the young publisher was a hard driving man who would never be content with just having. For him, life was the process of getting, with all its intricacies of business, personal relationships and strategies.

He motioned to the chairs and coffee table at the side of the office. "Sit down. Relax. You look like you've had adventures in Never-Never Land and barely survived to tell about it."

Poul sat down. He had never experienced a leather chair before. It was good.

Beasely stared a the spindly, dirty man with unabashed curiosity, until Poul sniffed and shifted uncomfortably. Beasely realized his impropriety and broke his gaze. "I'm sorry! It's just that I've been waiting so long to meet you." He pulled out a long thin cigar from a leather case and lit it. He paced before Poul with a nervous energy.

"You're just as I pictured!" Then he laughed. "Of course you are! I called your nephew Carl and asked for a description so I'd know you. Listen, call me J.B. All my friends do. Ok?" He puffed his cigar, shooting smoke from the corner of his mouth like a coal-burning engine gathering speed for an uphill run. "So where the hell have you been? I've been worried sick! Tried to call, no answer. Sent a messenger. Nobody home. I thought I'd lost you."

He spoke as if they'd known each other for years. Poul nodded, thinking the man was as intense and crazy as the loony songwriter he'd just chased through the mountains. Something about the publisher grated on Poul -- the energy maybe, the need to talk, deal, command -- but he also liked the man. He seemed like an honest guy and that was enough.

"Thanks for your concern, Mr. Beasely."

"J.B." Poul smiled and nodded. Beasely laughed. "Concern is an understatement. Poul, you are fast becoming one of the hottest composers in the country." He waved his cigar in the air as if it were a magic wand opening a new world. "There's no question but what you will be one of the hottest in a short time with the, uh, new material?"

He made a short jab with the cigar wand at the bag. His expression was a strange combination of boyish wonder, polite inquiry and lust. Poul nodded and patted the bag. Beasely smiled.

The lovely secretary entered with a tray of coffee and pastries. "I thought you might like these," she said to neither man in particular.

"Thank you Sharon. That was very thoughtful," Beasely said.

He sat down in the chair beside Poul and poured the coffee. "As you know, your records are selling around the country and picking up speed at an incredible pace. I don't have the figures in my head, but I can get them. I've never seen anything like it! Listen, Poul, I've been in the business for 15 years and my dad was in it for 30, and I'd stake my whole firm on the hunch that you'll be bigger than --hell-- anybody! His deep blue eyes were windy sea excited. He looked straight into Poul's face. Poul didn't like to look at anybody head-on and picked at the hole in his ragged jeans.

Beasely continued talking, telling Poul how he'd inherited the firm when his father, a laconic, pipe smoking Liszt lover, died of cardiac apathy, which his son interpreted as heartbreak, or at least a loss of hope.

“Dad always waited for The Big One -- an artist who would take him from a small, can't-complain business to a major label that commanded respect,” he said. He puffed reflectively on the cigar before his eyes grew hard. “But a nice, philosophical gentleman doesn't make it in this business.” He began pacing. “Young artists flocked to the company to cut their first record. If they had potential, larger companies sneaked in like filthy coyotes and bought artist. Then they’d push ‘em, burn ‘em out, even kill ‘em.”

“They killed them?” Poul said, puzzled.

“Figuratively, sure! Hell, an occasional fatality -- drug overdose the most common . . . suicide . . . plane crashes. Keeps a certain mystique about the whole business. Look at the icons the companies – and the public forged Morrison, Joplin, Hendrix, Kobain! Occasional death is just good business.”

Mentioning his father made Beasely pause. He looked over at the portrait of the man with the kind face and gentle eyes. His father was simply too friendly and easy-going to succeed. His wife, Beasely’s mom, tired of him and flew away with a French publisher of eroticism and the old man died a few years later. The young Beasely took over with a vow to become the largest in the business. And no one would push him around.

The vow was for his father, but his ambition was powered by that generator of so much human activity --fear. It was the fear of failure, disguised, as with so many men, as the positive desire for success. His father died a failure – a very nice man, but a failure. Beasely III would die a success or clawing his way toward it.

Poul slowly ate a donut, fighting his sugar-starved body's commands to gobble it whole. He also knew that keeping his mouth full would give him time to assimilate all this. He had not given any thought to the process of becoming rich, which in this case was the production and promotion of records. He had lived his miserable existence these past couple years solely on Beasley's promise that he would give Poul a lot more money for more songs.

Finally he cleared his mouth and said. "So the first batch of, uh, records, is selling well, eh? That's great to hear. What does that mean in terms of --"

"Royalties?"

Poul nodded. He was thankful for the interruption. He was about to say "money." Royalties was much more businesslike.

Beasely looked puzzled a minute, then nodded with sudden understanding. "Of course, you haven't been home. We've sent you a second check for $10,000, and a third for another $10,000. It's not much but it's early. The word is spreading like wildfire and we can't keep it stocked. We've stepped up production and we're widening distribution. There'll be more."

Poul nodded, rubbing his chin in wonder. Beasely pointed to the bag on floor. "How are these? Is there a theme like the last batch?"

Poul's stomach did a belly flop. He pulled a cigarette from the tray and quickly lit it, praying that the nicotine would still his quivering hands. Damn! What in hell had he been thinking about all that time in the woods? He had waltzed in here dirty, smelly and totally unprepared. He must have an asshole for a brain.

He took a deep drag on the cigarette. "Well, they're a little rough . . . I don't really think about themes. The stuff --songs -- just kind of appear, and I, mm grab them before they get away." He took another drag and dug at his ear. "They're like a gift and I don't really try to analyze too much, you know?" Please say you know, he mentally pleaded to Beasely as he knocked ashes into the ashtray. Please say something. He gathered his courage and turned to look at Beasely who was nodding.

"I understand. In fact, you hit it right on the head. An artist's job is to create, not to analyze." Then, almost to himself, he said, "I should have realized. The incredible passion of the first batch, that you don't stop to think about . . . and yet the songs are so, what? -- precise in their passion. . ." He broke the thought with a wave of his hands, jumped up and rushed to the intercom on the desk. "Send the Poul staff up and tell

the studio musicians to be ready tomorrow."

Poul's voice squeaked. "Poul staff?" What Twilight Zone had he walked into?

Beasely relit his cigar, took a puff and smiled. "I knew you'd be back with more songs. And I told you, I'm betting my existence on you, Poul. We're going to be big."

Clouds of smoke trailed behind him as he renewed his pacing. "You're one of those extremely rare geniuses in history with the good fortune of having the right timing. The public loves you. And they're buying your art while you're still alive and young enough to enjoy it. That doesn't happen often, at least not with good art. Now, I'll take some of the credit, between you and me. I assembled a hell of a batch of the best arrangers and musicians to interpret the material. In short, it's paying off and --" Beasely stopped and studied Poul with a look of mild alarm. "You're awfully pale. You're sweating. Maybe a touch of the flu. I'll call a doctor."

"No!" Poul leaned back in the leather chair feeling nauseous and weak. "I'll be ok. Really. I guess I haven't eaten much lately. Been working awful hard. And all this is new and scary."

Beasely nodded, then smiled and grabbed the phone. "Miss Stone. . ." A little later the beautiful secretary brought in steak, potatoes, green peas, pie and orange juice. Poul shook his head in disbelief. When his angel of nourishment began cutting up the steak and feeding him, he succumbed fully to this new world. Yes, being a songwriter was worth every second of the suffering. He chewed the tender meat and watched the silky blouse-covered mounds rise and fall before him with the perfumed rhythm of their own special song.

***

In the following days and nights, Beasely and Poul were together constantly. The publisher bought Poul new clothes, found him an apartment, took him to the best restaurants and to the studios where the second album was being constructed from the scraps of paper. Each day brought new reports of the debut album continually picking up sales. Poul was learning a lot, fast, about the business side of music. The people in the business -- especially Beasely -- ate, drank and slept music.

Poul loved it all.

But though the hectic days and melodic nights were fun, the forest and the real artist weighed on Poul. As the months passed, Beasely kept harping for more songs to meet his next deadline. For Poul, that meant returning to the forest, wallowing through that filth, lying awake nights, and worrying about animals. It meant living like one hunted himself as he foraged, constantly bending over to pick up songs and keeping his eye open for the composer, angry landowners, and rattlesnakes. Every time he thought about returning, the now well-dressed, slightly heavier Poul broke out into hives, chained smoked and itched.

One night they sat in a small, expensive restaurant that Beasely frequented. Poul finished his meal of sirloin and mushrooms sautéed in delicate sauce of butter imported from Switzerland and white wine. The waiter hovered about them, seeming to read their every desire. God, this was the life!

“Beasely, cities are God’s gift to civilization,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “It’s what he had in mind since the Old Testament.”

“I’ve never known anything but New York,” Beasely said. “I mean I spend some time in L.A. But all the rest . . . they’re consumers.”

Poul nodded, relaxed, more contented than he ever could have imagined.

He knew he had to go back. If he quit now, he could live modestly for a few years off the royalties that were mounting. If he gathered more songs, and they were as popular, he could become a millionaire within the space of a few years.

Besides, dirty as it was, it was his job.

A few days later Beasely flew Poul to Los Angeles where he'd hired an orchestra to play a demo set of the first songs. "I wanted a live orchestra so you can get the full effect of your work," he explained. He shook his head, causing his blond hair to slightly shake. "I know no group of humans can match the power and scope of your vision, but I think we'll come real close."

The orchestra took off on the second movement of the Bird Songs. Poul was so overwhelmed with the works that for awhile he forgot that he hadn't written them, so in tune were they with inner feelings he rarely expressed and often dismissed. The works carried such a power, grace and defiance of the earth and its gravitational chains that he felt he himself could soar into the heavens in total Mercurial freedom.

When the movement ended, both men were still. Poul was speechless, still struggling to return from the sky to solid ground. Beasely, too, wore an expression of distance and contented hypnosis. Finally he sighed and turned to Poul. "What do you think?"

"Fantastic," Poul nodded.

"A fairly accurate translation then?" Beasely asked like a boy waiting for approval.

Poul nodded. "Oh, yeah. You hit it."

Beasely relit his cigar which had gone out during the performance. "The next set contains material that you just brought back. I haven't heard this stuff myself. The men sat back and listened. The songs were about leaves, birth, lust, rain, aging and dying. They were pretty, but quieter than the bird songs. There was a gentleness about them. There was much about harmony and the necessary violence of survival, but the violence carried no anger or bitterness, nor even understanding – just acceptance. The only sadness was the moment a dead leaf was finally ripped from its limb by the wind and fluttered helplessly downward, accepting its transition as it landed upon its bed of earth. The song tore through the hard facades of the two listeners, and they wept.

When the set was finished and he knew he could speak without his voice cracking, Poul said, "You did a wonderful job."

Beasely blew his nose and sighed. "Thank you."

On the return flight to New York, Poul lit a cigarette and nearly said, "I don't know that much about music--the business part." He exhaled, mentally warning himself to be more careful. " New York is full of musicians, Beasely. Why did you go to California for them?" Beasely smiled, his round face looking at once innocent and wise. "LA is the only place where we could find musicians desperate, wild and crazy enough to truly interpret the anarchy of the music. If you knew the background of some of those guys -- and women -- who just played for you, you wouldn't have entered the place without a machine gun and a dozen bodyguards."

Poul nodded and leaned back, thankful for ignorance.

"I don't want to push you, but when can we plan on more songs?"

Poul thought a moment and shrugged, wondering how long it would take to track down his man and if there would be anything to pick up "When I find -- the, uh, inspiration. You know what I mean." Shit. He wondered if he subconsciously wanted to get caught.

Beasely was silent, staring out the plane window. Did he catch the slip? Poul felt uneasy. Finally Beasely cleared his throat. "I'm trying to figure out the promotion timing. I'd like to have an estimate -- if it's possible," he added almost apologetically.

Poul nodded again, wondering not if he were in over his head but how far over. "Let me think on it."

"Ok."

Poul crushed out his cigarette and dug at his thigh. Somewhere, 14,000 feet below, the crazy man was writing, he hoped. The immediate danger of getting caught had passed and Poul slid back into semi-confidence. Yes, he was sure the man was writing. He had to be. Poul's career depended on it. Hell, so did this crazy artist's career depend on it. I've made him what he is today, Poul thought. He'd be nowhere without me.

Beasely puffed on his unlit cigar, still working out promotion strategies. "Oh yeah, about using your name this time. How do you want --"

"No!" Poul was yanked from his reverie. "No," he said more quietly. "I'm sorry, I can't. . . Not yet."

"Why not, for God's sakes?" Beasely's round face showed confusion and anger.

Poul thought quickly. "I'm afraid of being found out." It was the most honest statement he'd made yet about the music.

Beasely took a gulp of his scotch straight up. The drone of the planes engines covered their silence. "I don't know if I can go any further without a name, a live composer."

"You have to, Beasely."

"It will hurt us both, everything."

"You said the music speaks for itself."

"I need promotional material. You can’t promote what doesn't exist!" Beasely squeezed his glass to control his anger.

Poul looked him directly in the eye. "Work with what you've got this time." The tone of his voice said there was no room for an answer.

The next 1,000 miles were flown in silence as the plane pushed heavily through the darkness.