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On what is arguably the
ugliest stretch of interstate in the whole United States,
somewhere—or I should say nowhere—between Little Rock and
West Memphis, Arkansas, there is a gargantuan Love’s gas
station. An asphalt oasis with clean bathrooms and air
conditioning, the Love’s marks the turnoff to a nondescript
southbound road that meanders past overgrown fields,
tumbledown barns, and dormant farm equipment on its way to
the Vampire Truck Stop. Nothing more than a dive bar and
pool hall in an oversized tool shed, its owner used to be a
roadie for Lynyrd Skynyrd—or maybe I’ve got that wrong, I
only remember it’s some flavor of testosterock—and he lets
walk-in musicians play for tips on Friday and Saturday
nights.
And that’s me—the
walk-in musician. A slight girl, maybe you’d call pretty,
maybe not, with brown hair and eyes to match, and a guitar
almost as big as me slung across my back, I am what the
inhabitants of my own universe call an echo. Were you a
member of a federal investigative agency in my current
universal zip code, you’d most likely refer to me as a
vampire. To the nasty gang of universe-hopping bounty
hunters who are currently the greatest threat to my
existence, I’m a soul sucker. They’re better than anyone at
tracking down echoes, though they’re more likely to take you
alive than the feds.
Yeah, I’m public enemy
number one, but the irony is back home I’m nobody. I divide
my time between working as an espresso monkey at the local
suburban coffee boutique, ambivalently attending classes at
the community college across town, writing songs I never
play for anyone but my cat, and staying up until the wee
hours gaming online. In this particular incarnation of the
universe I am different, and I don’t want to go home. This
is also due in no small part to the fact that a freak
accident involving a blender and an upended mop bucket
brought me here, and I’m not entirely sure I’m still alive
in my universe of origin.
But there is one
drawback to my new existence, which if you’ve been paying
attention you may have guessed by now. I’m not exactly,
well, solid, in this universe. I mean that literally—there
are days when you can see right through me. I have to stay
on top of that because if I disappear completely I don’t
know what will happen to me. No one does. These are the
known outcomes for echoes in this universe:
1. Forced
return to the appropriate universe, including facing charges
for anything illegal you may have done on holiday.
2. Termination
by federal law enforcement, who view echoes as no better
than serial killers. Which is fair enough.
3. A life on
the run sustained by feeding on the unsuspecting
unfortunates whose universe you’ve invaded. (Welcome to my
world.)
4. Full-on
fadeout resulting from refusal to feed, which for lack of
evidence to the contrary we have to assume has the same end
result as #2.
It’s not like I enjoy
sucking the life out of people. And to be honest I’m not
half the badass I’m making myself out to be—most of the time
it’s not even voluntary. Take this morning, for example.
Before hitching halfway across Arkansas, I woke up in an
unfamiliar double-wide in the dinky little burg of Heavener,
Oklahoma (that’s heave-ner, not heaven-er, thank you very
much). Sprawled beside me was an achingly cute cowboy, fully
clothed and white as a sheet, but with a big grin on his
face. This tableau was all too familiar—I knew my one-night
stand had become a midnight snack.
So now I have to
disappear—someplace big enough to hide my trail. I think
I’ll try Memphis first—take a stroll down Beale Street,
maybe pay my respects to The King—and then drift on down to
the Big Easy. But hitching sucks, so I need bus fare.
And that pretty much
catches you up to the present moment, which finds me
standing in the dandelion-splattered gravel parking lot in
front of the Vampire Truck Stop, feet apart, hands in the
back pockets of my ragged blue jeans, sweat beading across
my forehead even though the sun has just gone down behind
me. I know about this place not because it’s famous, and not
because I’m a vampire, but because my ride and me parted
ways at the Love’s, and after I came out of the bathroom a
local kid asked me about my guitar. When I told him I was
looking for a gig, he told me about the Skynyrd roadie and
his tavern.
So I’m thinking maybe
it’s too early for anyone to be here when a dented 1950’s,
matte-black Ford pickup crunches across the parking lot and
pulls up next to the building. A big man—as in VW bug
big—levers himself out of the driver’s seat and ambles
slowly toward the garage door that appears to be the
establishment’s entrance. He’s breathing liked he just
climbed ten flights of stairs, and sweat is dripping down
his face. He has on a giant pair of paint-stained overalls,
and a ponytail hangs down past the middle of his back.
As I approach him he’s
fiddling with a glittering jumble of keys that moves like
it’s alive. He singles one out and bends over to unlock the
door. As he yanks up the handle, a wave of
stale-cigarette-smoke-tainted air washes over me. It’s dark
inside, but I can make out a half dozen or so tables with
chairs stacked on top, and a narrow platform that looks like
a stage.
“Excuse me?”
He whips his head
around, looking surprised. “Nearly gave me a coronary, girl.
How long you been standing there?”
I grin at him. “You
drove right past me.”
“Well you ain’t much
bigger than my pinky finger so it’s no wonder. What can I do
for you?” He shoves a stray lock of damp hair out of his
eyes with the back of his hand.
“I met a guy named Steve
at the Love’s. He said you have acts on the weekend?”
His eyes flicker over my
guitar and he nods. “Yeah, you play?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s tips only—I can’t
afford to pay. This place costs me more money than it makes
most weeks.”
“That’s fine,” I assure
him.
He frowns at me. “I
oughta warn you, this ain’t really a Lilith Fair crowd.”
I chuckle. “That’s okay.
That’s not me.”
I’m not as confident as
I sound. But it’s the truth that I’m no folk singer, and for
a little girl I’ve got a big voice. I never would have the
guts to do something like this in my home universe, but for
some reason everything is different here. As real as it
feels, it’s almost like living in a dream.
“Well, you’re in
luck—what was your name?”
“Oh, sorry.” I hold out
my hand, and he wipes his on his shirt before shaking it.
“Clementine O’Connor.”
He grins. “That’s a
mouthful for sure. I’m Big Jim Glover. As I was saying,
you’re in luck, Clementine, because the band we had lined up
for tonight called to cancel right before I left the
house—drummer’s in jail.”
“That’s terrific—well,
for me anyway.” I’m relieved, but also a little nervous.
“What time do I go on?”
“Place usually fills up
by about ten on the weekend.” He checks his watch. “If you
wanna come on in I can offer you a cold one to help me get
the place opened up.”
“Sure, sounds great.”
I follow him into the
hot, stale-smelling cave, laying my guitar case down on the
stage. On the side of the room I couldn’t see from outside,
there’s a bar and a pool table and a few more tables. A
joint, no question. But I’d played in lots of places like
this. I actually kind of preferred them. Most of the time
nobody listened, and I could do my own thing—play what I
wanted and zone out completely. If by chance someone did
listen, it was a very personal connection—just me and them.
Sometimes they’d get friendly and buy me a drink—maybe even
follow me outside and offer me a smoke. If it was one of my
“thin” days I’d invite them back to wherever I was flopping,
or maybe they’d invite me to their place. Like the cowboy
from last night. It was usually all a blur after that. I’d
wake up feeling amazing, I’d realize what I’d done and the
guilt would set in, and finally I’d run like hell.
I take down all the
cheap vinyl upholstered chairs and then start emptying
ashtrays, and Big Jim brings me a bottle of beer. He flips
on a classic rock station and The Doors are playing Light My
Fire. A pair of circa 1980s speakers is suspended on either
side of the bar. It looks like the customers have been
entertaining themselves by shooting cocktail toothpicks out
of straws into the foam covers. Numerous neon signs
advertising beer or liquor decorate the wall above the bar.
Dead center is a grinning, cartoon-like vampire that’s so
tacky it might just be cool.
“Where’d you get that?”
The proprietor stops
wiping the bar and looks over his shoulder. “My mom died a
few years back. Found it in her garage with a bunch of
Christmas decorations and stale Halloween candy. I don’t
think the woman ever got rid of anything.”
“Well, I love it.” I
empty the last ashtray and sit down at the bar with my beer.
On one end of the bar I
notice a sink, a microwave, and a toaster oven. The trash
bin on the floor next to the counter is full of
individual-size frozen pizza boxes—an attempt at compliance
with arcane liquor laws. I decide against ordering anything
to eat.
“So, Big Jim, you get a
rough crowd in here? Lots of truckers?” The butterflies have
officially started.
“Nah, the truckers don’t
make it out this far from the Love’s. I just thought
‘Vampire Truck Stop’ was catchy—looks good on a sign, ya
know? Really it’s local folks mostly, most of them old as
dirt like me. The occasional ugly drunk. Sometimes strangers
like you on their way to Little Rock or Memphis.”
I decide Big Jim’s all
right, and I’m just about to ask him if he was really a
roadie for Skynyrd when he pulls an empty pickle jar out
from under the bar and places it in front of me. Taped to
one side is a cocktail napkin with the word “tips” written
on it.
“Here ya go.” He smiles
good-naturedly. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
No sooner do I place the
jar on the edge of the stage than the customers start
showing up—middle-aged, blue collar types like he said.
I sit down at a table
with my now warm beer and wish for at least the hundredth
time that I smoked. It was a convenient habit in situations
like these, when you didn’t know what to do with yourself.
But within fifteen minutes there are a dozen people in the
place, and beyond looking me over curiously as they walk
through the garage door, no one is paying any attention to
me. I flash everyone a friendly smile, hoping to warm them
up for later.
All too soon Big Jim
signals me from the bar. There is now a capacity crowd of
about thirty. I step up onto the stage and curse myself for
not remembering to seed the tip jar.
I unpack my guitar and
spend about a minute tuning it before turning to face my
audience. Big Jim switches off the stereo and there’s an
expectant silence. I don’t introduce myself, and neither
does Big Jim—I just start banging on the guitar.
I love to watch people’s
faces when I first start to sing. I’m five-foot-three and
about a hundred pounds, but I can belt out a song like Janis
Joplin. I play all my own stuff—all with a classic country
or honky-tonk flavor, but with a hard, dark edge. I’ve got
love songs too, sweet and melancholy, but I save those for
the end when no one is paying attention anymore, because
sometimes I make myself cry.
So I actually manage to
get through Swamp Stomp, Blood Rose, and Tears for Texans
before they start talking over me, which in a place like
this is a good night. Just about everyone has put something
in the jar, and I see at least one fiver. That’s the beauty
of a small venue—everybody knows you know if they don’t tip.
As I sink down in my
chair to take a breather and a few sips of water, I see a
tallish man with a battered guitar case approaching the
stage. He’s the youngest person in the audience by at least
ten years, and I wonder why I haven’t noticed him before.
Thin and angular with black hair and a couple days’ worth of
stubble, he looks a lot like one of my all-time favorite
dead rock geniuses, Jeff Buckley.
“Mind if I join you?”
I shake my head and set
down my glass of water. “Please do. Safety in numbers.”
Grabbing a chair and
planting it next to me, he unpacks his guitar and starts to
tune. Like mine it looks like it came from a pawnshop on the
wrong side of town. But it’s caramel-colored and comfy
looking and obviously well loved.
“You were great,” he
says, flashing me a million-dollar smile. “You’ve got an
amazing voice.”
“Thanks.” I smirk at
him. “As you can see I brought down the house.”
He shrugs. “It’s what
you expect from a place like this, right? You’re young and
pretty, so you know they’re gonna tip whether they listen or
not. You’re lucky.”
Yeah, lucky. Did he just
say I was pretty? “I’m Clementine.”
He slips his pick
between his teeth and holds out his hand. “Nick Gentry,” he
says around the pick. Wow, he even has a rock star name.
“This is your party,” he
tells me when he’s finished tuning. “What are we playing?”
“I dunno. Seem like a
Cash crowd to you?”
“Perfect,” he nods.
Like those amazing white
teeth. “Ring of Fire?”
“Always a crowd
pleaser.”
So we stand up together
and play the hell out of Ring of Fire, and a few drunks at
the bar whoop and raise their glasses while everyone else
goes on shouting over the music. But it doesn’t matter
because this is one of those nights I know I was born to do
this. And he and I might as well be the only people in the
room.
We play a couple more
Cash tunes, and finish up with Misguided Angel by the Cowboy
Junkies. After that we sit back down, figuring no one is
going to notice if we take a few minutes to get to know each
other.
“So where you headed?”
he asks.
“Memphis, I think. Then
New Orleans. You?”
He smiles. “New Orleans
is home—I’m on my way there now.”
“No kidding?”
“You should look me up
when you get to town—you’re welcome to crash. No strings or
anything. I got a couch.”
I’m so there. I won’t
even eat you—at least I’ll try not to. “Wow, that’s really
cool of you. I should get your number—I’ve got a pen in my
guitar case.”
As I scrawl his number
across the back of my hand, the loud conversation in the bar
is drowned out by the roar of tailpipes in the parking lot.
A whole pride of Harleys has rolled up, and they’re parking
in a neat row in front of the garage door. In the glow of
their headlights I can see an oblong box on a trailer
attached to one of the really big bikes. It’s time to
disappear.
“Nice playing with you,
Nick. I gotta go.”
Hells Angels trailering
a coffin can only mean one thing—bounty hunters. The
coffin’s to keep me from zapping anyone before they can get
me back home—I need physical contact to suck a soul.
Nick looks startled, but
I’m on my feet and headed for the backdoor before he can say
a word.
Then I feel a hand close
round my wrist, and he’s right beside me.
I glance over my
shoulder—three of the leather-clad bikers are already
striding toward us. “Nick, I really gotta go!”
“She’s on the run!”
someone shouts.
A big bear of a guy with
a black mustache and goatee upsets a table, and people start
yelling. Before my eyes the situation escalates into a
glorious chair-smashing, Hollywood-style barroom
brawl—locals versus bounty hunters—that I would have
thoroughly enjoyed watching from behind the bar if I wasn’t
desperate to get out of there.
Nick is dragging me
toward the back door when something whizzes so close by my
ear it burns, and out of the corner of my eye I see the
smirking vampire sign explode. Then Big Jim is hauling a
shotgun from underneath the bar, pointing it at the biker
who shot at me. We don’t wait around to see what happens
next.
Nick yanks open the
door, and there stands one of the Harley guys, the light of
the full moon glinting off his shiny bald head. I don’t
watch karate films—I don’t even eat Chinese food—but Nick
does something with his body that’s too fast to follow with
my eyes, and now the bounty hunter is lying unconscious on
the ground.
“Let’s go!” He grabs my
hand. “I have a car.”
“I think I love you,” I
tell him as we run around to the front of the building.
He stuffs me into a
black Jetta parked close to the road and then scrambles
around to the driver’s side. He starts the engine and
screeches out of the parking lot.
“You laid that guy out!”
I exclaim, fumbling with my seatbelt. “Where’d you learn to
do that?”
“Took karate in high
school.”
He’s driving like a bat
out of hell, and I brace my feet against the floor. I swing
my head around to look out the back window. No one seems to
be following us, though I’m sure I hear at least one chopper
engine revving up.
I look at Nick. “You’re
my hero, you know.”
He grins. “Care to
explain what all that was about?”
“Not really.”
We drive on ten or
fifteen miles, and he makes so many turns I don’t even know
which direction we’re going anymore. I’ve stopped worrying
about the bounty hunters at this point—I don’t know much
about motorcycles but I’m pretty sure people don’t buy that
kind because they go fast.
Then out of nowhere it
occurs to me I have to pee. I mean I really have to pee.
“Nick, I need to stop.”
He gives me an odd look.
Nervous, I’d call it.
“Sorry, I gotta pee.
Beer always does this to me. And nerves. It’ll just take a
second.”
He nods and whips the
car off onto a dirt road. “I guess they’re not likely to
catch us now.”
“Are you kidding? You
drive like a maniac! I don’t even know what state we’re in.”
He laughs at that, but
it has sort of a sad undertone, which I don’t get.
After about a quarter
mile he stops and cuts the engine. I notice that the silence
of Backwoods, Arkansas, isn’t silent at all—the crickets and
cicadas are as loud as those old farts in the bar.
I hop out of the car.
“I’ll just be a sec.”
I walk a few feet into
the trees, but before I can even get my jeans unbuttoned,
he’s calling my name.
Turning around I see
he’s followed me. The moon is washing his long, narrow face
in white light, and because I’m again thinking how much he
looks like Jeff Buckley, I don’t notice at first he has a
gun pointed at my chest.
“Whoa! Nick?”
He shakes his head
regretfully. “I really hate to do this to you, Clementine.
You seem like a nice girl. Besides that you’ve got a great
voice. But I have to take you out.”
He raises the gun a few
inches, looking down the barrel and holding it with both
hands. He’s good at this, knows what he’s doing.
“No way! You’re a fed?”
I back away from him and trip over a tree root. I try
scrambling away crab fashion but he stays right on top of
me. “Why now? Why didn’t you just shoot me back at the bar?”
Maybe he doesn’t have the heart to do it.
“I have to recover the
body—couldn’t risk losing you to the bounty hunters.”
Frigging rock-star
gorgeous federal agent—it’s so not fair. God he was
good—from the pawnshop guitar and road-weary case, to
knowing Johnny Cash songs, to “crash on my couch when you
get to New Orleans.”
I look up at him through
my thick eyelashes, letting my hair fall over part of my
face in a way I have discovered guys think is sexy. “It was
a great gig, you gotta admit. At least shake hands with me.”
I reach my fingers out
toward him and he takes a step back.
“Yeah, it was a great
gig. But I’m not a complete idiot.”
I downshift from sexy to
pathetic. “Couldn’t you just let me go? Please?”
“Clementine, you’ve
killed twelve people.”
“It’s not like I want to
do it. It’s just something that happens when I start to
fade.”
“I know. But it can’t go
on. I’m sorry.”
And with that he
actually shoots me. Game over. The impact knocks me to the
ground and everything goes black.
* * *
My eyes flutter open and
Nick is staring down at me. Only he’s dressed different, and
clean-shaven. And he looks sort of happy to see me.
“Welcome back,
Clementine.”
Blinking sleepily, I
raise my hand to my head—there are little suction cups all
over, with wires running out of them. I seem to be reclining
in a dentist’s chair.
“Do you remember where
you are?” he asks. “It can be a little disorienting.”
“You just shot me,” I
mutter, dropping my hand to my chest.
His face breaks into a
wide grin. “Wow, that was me? We don’t get visuals, you
know, only text. Privacy issues.”
I stare at him in
hopeless confusion. Is he speaking Japanese?
“Sorry,” he says. “Take
a deep breath—it really does help. And take your time.”
As he begins to gently
pry off the suction cups, I notice he’s wearing one of those
ultra dorky company logo polos—it says Dream Games Inc.
“Nicely done, by the
way,” he continues. “This is going to big seller. There’ll
be a check waiting for you at the front desk on your way
out, per our agreement. I think you’ll be pleased.”
He removes a small disk
from the machine next to my chair and tucks it into a
plastic case. He fixes a label to it that reads “Clementine
O’Connor: Showdown at the Vampire Truck Stop.”
And finally it all comes
rushing back. Last week one of my online gaming pals told me
that the largest game developer in the U.S.—which happens to
be headquartered in my city—uses something called “dream
catching” to come up with new game ideas. It’s sort of like
paying people to give blood. They hook you up to a machine
in a dark room, give you a sedative, and suck out your
dreams while you sleep. It sounded easy and painless and
potentially profitable—right up my alley. So earlier that
day I’d checked into the sleep lab at Dream Games Inc.
As all this sinks in I
feel incredibly let down. I felt more alive in that dream
than I ever had in my real life—until the part where I died,
anyway. I find myself wondering about the commercial
availability of that sleeping pill they gave me.
“It’s rare we get a
narrative this coherent,” the
rock-star-federal-agent-turned-computer-dork tells me.
“Maybe one out of a hundred has any real potential. You
should think of applying here. They’re always looking for
new game designers.”
“I’m a musician,” I hear
myself say. I ignore the uproarious laughter coming from my
internal peanut gallery.
“You really are?”
“Is that so hard to
believe?” I ask a little testily.
“Not at all,” he assures
me. “It’s just that we never know how much of a donor’s
dream is real and how much is fantasy.”
“Oh, right. Actually,
I’m still trying to get my first gig.” This itself is a
stretch. But the coffeehouse where I study, just down the
street from the community college, features student artists
and musicians. It seems like as good a place as any to
start.
“I’d love to come and
hear you sometime,” he says hopefully. “I mean, if you don’t
mind. I’m really into music. I sort of play sometimes
myself.”
Really he’s not such a
dork. In fact, he seems sweet. And if I squint my eyes just
right he still looks like Jeff Buckley.
“That’d be great.” I
flash him a smile. “I should get your number.” |
