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Pioneers, O Pioneers; the race begins
The East and West coasts see more ships in their harbors, sails taught like drum leather; people breeze through towns on trains with carriages packed tight with the sounds of hooves kicking the walls. Newspapers around the world are stamped with thick, black letters, the ink rising off of the thin paper as if it, too, is ready to sprint. The destination is San Diego.
Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah; Soundman
There is talk of building a wall around the village. Too many white men come by, asking politely for some water, some bread, their kind tones making their request all the more sickening. Bile coats the throats of the residents at the sweetness in asking for what little they have left that hasn’t been taken. They all say they are passing through to San Diego, but no one trusts that. Soundman avoids them all, the villagers and strangers alike - the white men arrive with faces red and peeling, raw skin beading with pinpricks of blood, their light eyes yellowed and bright. His Bible tells him who the Devil is and these men are him.
Magnificent Seven Theme; staring line
A city has sprung on the beach. The newspapers say the finish in New York City rivals what has arrived on the coast, all densely packed tents humming with a thousand voices in a thousand languages. All the horses stamp their hooves into the ground, and people press their ears to the earth to hear the erratic heartbeat they breathe into the dirt. Vendors set up shops that sell flashy, glinting revolvers with ivory handles inscribed with prayers, and tough leather boots that shine darkly like plum skin. Spectators gawk at the foreign contestants, at the Egyptian man who prays on his rugs, and the Japanese man who eats raw fish. The promise of the new falls on the beach like gold dust, everything shimmering when the sun hits it just right.
Ballad of a Well-Known Gun; meet Gyro Zepelli
He stopped going to church at age 9, when his father began his training, and Sunday mornings were spent at a short service inside the courtyard before his boy hands were knuckle deep in cadavers. But Gyro is a man of miracles. Each step lightens his burden, the little boy’s soul feeling like a breeze on his shoulders, his innocence firm in Gyro’s faith. His smiles are easy as he watches the golden slats of light fall through the slits in his wide-brimmed hat, across his face and chest, rays fanning out like the halo on a saint. The divine must feel this confident.
Ribbon; Johnny joins the race
The memory is drawn up once the kid in the wheelchair starts shouting: The gunshot in the street called him outside the hospital from a routine checkup, his father away on a housecall. The country street was spattered with people staring at a twitching, growling dog, bile-colored foam leaking between locked teeth, blood seeping out from the protruding rib cage. The crowd clung to the sides of the road as their unblinking eyes watched the rabid animal’s body submit to death. A young man, fifteen at most, tried to trot over with a shotgun in hand, but Gyro held him off. He touched the body with his shoe before kneeling, pressing the cool head of his stethoscope against the sticky red chest just to make sure the boys could cart it safely off into the fields. A thunderous heartbeat pounded into his ears and the dog’s eye, frozen, a fat drop of black rimmed in white, caught the sun’s glare and reflected the heat of it into Gyro. Now, Gyro stands in an American street under the purple shadow of the registration shack, and he swears he sees the young man’s eyes catch the sun, blue irises vanishing as a disk of light spills across them. He’ll be followed by them if he wants it or not.
Secret Sons of Europe; the executioner of the kingdom of Naples
The work in the hospital feels like muttering the prayers he is expected to say as he washes his hands of the smell of steel. His soaped palms come together under the water, and he feels the vibration of his father’s voice as they prepare for surgery, the white fabric of their uniforms clean and stiff in the way Gyro imagines the dresses of marble angels to feel. At sunset, the sky is pink with a hot pulse that now flows properly, the world rerouted in health which Gyro admires by relaxing behind the cool shadow of the hospital. It is interrupted when the court sends a message of their next execution. He reads the letter three times, then almost asks if his father knows about this, their duty to kill a child, before his open mouth shuts. The messenger leaves and Gyro’s fingers dig into the stone wall of the hospital, retching onto the grass and his hair.
A Rather Lovely Thing; Lucy in the rain
The rain soaks Lucy’s clothing, and the air is filled with the smell of mud and the horse she stole. The plains that surround Kansas City let the sky stretch on forever, looming with low, dark clouds that rush over the land in mottled blue light. She was lucky once to see a photograph of the sky streaked in a violent blur, a mistake in the camera causing the clouds to run as quickly as a bullet. The world looks like that now, and she feels ruined like the rain piercing the air, the horse’s hooves tracking in the mud. Everything is marred, so she curls over the papery fabric, and her hands know despite herself that they are curled around a femur. Across the flat plain behind her, the storm breaks with a smear of the sunlight on the horizon that she misses like a bone misses its flesh.
All Things Beautiful; Sugar Mountain takes
He knows solitude and loneliness, has felt numbness from his spine wrap itself around his heart to dull the truths of self-loathing, but nothing compares to this. It isn’t the sudden disappearance among the branches on the wall that make him feel regret; it is the loss of feeling as his hands fist into the snow, dragging his body up the short stairs and into the street to scream at a faceless man’s back. If Gyro were here, he would hand him gloves, hold his frozen fingers between his own and talk on about the red and blue veins he can see beneath Johnny’s skin, blowing hot air into his palms until Johnny feels too much and pulls away. The trade is easy; Johnny reminds himself he never worth much anyway. But later, with Gyro in the hotel lobby again, his warm fingers curling into Johnny’s snow-wet hair, he knows that this was all he ever wanted.
Elizabeth’s Theme; a good day
Some days, they ride through the weather, the land flat enough to see the start and end of storms, trotting through the shadows of clouds like the dappled light shining through the gaps in leaves and branches. The race is sluggish and there are no teeth at their ankles. Gyro likes the pace. The sun sets behind them, the world bathed in honey and the charming song of violins fills his mind as their shadows stretch ahead into first place. He never notices when Johnny lopes behind him, contented by the familiar sound of their horses letting him know his friend is still there, until his heart kicks against his ribcage when a gallop echoes across the plains. Before he can turn around, Johnny slams his hand into Gyro’s head, ripping off his hat and laughing into the dusk. It takes a moment for the game to hit him, admiring the instant Johnny turns around with Gyro’s hat on, the sun lighting the underside of the brim in a gold halo; he looks beautiful. He turns back and Gyro remembers the race inside Johnny’s heart, and he chases after him.
Happy Land; catalogue
Gyro buys a guitar at a startup town and drags his fingers in a cross over his chest to prove that he can play it. It has no case and a woman’s name is scratched into the varnish under the fat curve, and they make guesses on how beautiful Ms. Georgia May was as they set up camp. Johnny pretends to take inventory while Gyro sits across the fire, hair covering his face, his fingers hovering over the strings before striking a chord. He plays the same song over and over with childlike deliberation on each note, cared for by his soft fingers, and Johnny forgets to tell him he can’t play.
The Demise of Barbara and the Return of Joe; the death of Gyro
When he places his hand behind him, on the shoulder of the young girl, her skin turning warm and thrumming with a baby bird’s pulse, he remembers Johnny’s voice. No particular words, just the cadence of it, a song without lyrics that Gyro can’t get out of his head. It’s full of purpose like a country’s anthem punctuated with cannon fire. The sea is loud as it floods the land and curls around him and the President; his only option the one a fool would make, to charge at a gun. His desperation to save every broken thing is the ruin of his family, but he knows now, that he is the only man who could stand on the divide and leave faith to his fall. His hand slips from Lucy’s shoulder and onto the painful stretching of his skin, the bullet’s serpentine twist to his heart making his teeth lock until he feels sandy grit between them. He reminds himself that voices are made for singing, and he counts: this is lesson five.
L’Arena; Johnny fights Valentine
Valentine calls them lambs for slaughter, and Johnny’s shaking body stills as hate fills him up and dries him out. Fighting for others is always easier than fighting for himself, and now he thinks of the dead, mangled and useless in shallow graves packed down by stampedes of horses. His resolve builds gradually, the way a spark ignites a field of yellow grass, until his eyelashes burn from all the heat pooling in his eyes. It feels like running, his legs twitching from the effort and his lungs raw, holding the breath that he aches for as Valentine hesitates before the gun. The air in him explodes, hot and dry when Valentine makes their choice.
Battery Kinzie; let's go home
Johnny heard of Napoli, and the way the teal sea fills the air with a mist that catches the light, laying a shine down on the kingdom that is always beautiful, even when hands are flaky with rusted blood. He remembers Gyro’s voice, his palms filled with fruit seeds and gauze, and the memories he shared of his home. Johnny mulls them over as if they are his own, scratching out a eulogy to give to Gyro’s family, knowing - the Zepelli home is on the outskirts of the city, but his father is always at the hospital, close to the country to store corpses beneath cool fields of black farmland. The sunlight in Napoli is constant, his childhood home rich in the color of wealth and wheat. The familiarity Johnny feels in seeing the wooden front door with the gleaming handle collapses when the family, Gyro’s eyes and hair and hands, cry over the coffin. Gyro’s father stands in the shadow of the doorway, and looks at the fresh pine box like it is a stone so old the name chiseled into it is no longer legible. This was not Johnny’s home, and Gregorio thanks him before turning this man, who is not his son, away.
We All, Us Three, Will Ride; years later, after the race
He wakes up beside his wife before the sun rises, when grey light sifts through the blinds and coats his remembrances of dreams in a haze. His hand is warm as he thinks of a small wooden house in the Midwest, the inside covered in dust disrupted by Gyro’s fingers, leaving clean trails over the wobbly kitchen table. Gyro stands, youthful and strong in front of the large bed, asking Johnny if they should find this place again after the race. In some dreams, Johnny’s son is there, but never his wife; in them all, Johnny can’t walk. He dreams of Gyro’s bare shoulder curving out from under the covers of their bed and how warm it is to lay his hand on his skin before: waking up beside his wife before the sun rises, when the grey light sifts through the blinds and coats his remembrances of dreams in a haze.