May 16, 2004
Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin
The bar was already beginning to fill with people when the band arrived that evening. Word of their performance the night before had spread, and even though they were a small, unknown band, people wanted to hear them.
A tinny-sounding piano had been set up near to their performance area, but it was so out of tune that they soon decided to sing with only their guitars for accompaniment. After tuning their instruments and warming up their voices in back of the bar—a move that made the neighborhood dogs yelp and howl in misery—they were ready.
Tim insisted upon opening the show, though he looked worse than ever and coughed so much that the bartender offered him a drink, free of charge. He accepted it, but it didn’t help much. The cough came from his lungs, from the tuberculosis infection, and not from his throat, where a cold drink might have helped, and the alcohol served only to make the cough harder to control.
He was fully awake and alert for a change, though, having refused to take any cough medicine or any of Daffodil’s herbal preparations, and after Rose had sang a couple of songs, he wanted to participate in a group performance. The others were uneasy about the idea, but let him join them.
At first, it worked well enough. Tim was a good comedian, and he made up a routine that was actually enhanced by the cough, one that the others quickly caught on to. It was when he tried to sing, though, that the trouble started.
The first song the group sang, a collaboration by all of them, was only interrupted once by his cough, at which time Daffodil elbowed him in the ribs to warn him to stop singing, but the second song, sung by Tim, Rose, and Angel, was his downfall. The effort caused him to cough harder than ever, the sound magnified by the microphone.
Rose and Angel tried to take over, but the sound of Tim’s coughing almost drowned them out, and their efforts to pull him away from the microphone were met with angry resistance. Finally, Jim came up to the microphone, and with Angel’s help, he pulled Tim away while Rose announced a break.
In spite of Tim’s angry protests and struggles, the four other band members managed to maneuver him out the back door and into the alley behind the bar. He tried to pull away from them, but his weakened body was no match for the strength of the rest of the band.
Daffodil confronted him, standing back far enough that he couldn’t cough on her.
"I thought I told you to take that cough medicine I gave you. I even mixed in some Tylenol with codeine that I got from that dealer we met in Chicago."
"I hate that stuff. It tastes terrible, and it puts me to sleep."
"You need rest!"
"I need to be on stage! This is my band." He doubled over, coughing violently.
"You can’t even talk without coughing. What makes you think you can perform?"
"I’m fine. I just needed to get something out of my lungs."
"What you need is some powerful antibiotics and some anti-AIDS medicine, but you won’t listen."
"You can’t tell me what to do, Daffodil."
"I’m the closest thing you have to a doctor. I most certainly can. And I’m telling you that you don’t belong on that stage. You can’t sing when you cough like that. All you do is make a noise that even a drunk can’t stand."
"Goddammit, Daffodil—"
"Goddamn you, Tim. You’re too damned sick to be here. Go back to the motel."
"Fuck you. I’m not going back until our show is over."
"I’m not working with you," Rose interjected. "You were coughing blood all over the microphone. I’m not even going to touch it. It might be infectious."
"Shut up!"
"You were coughing up blood? Tim, that’s bad." Daffodil came closer, straining to see in the dark. "She’s right. You were."
"It’s nothing. It happens all the time. Just give me some of your herbs and I’ll—" He was interrupted by another fit of coughing.
"—be fine?" Daffodil finished. She handed Tim a wad of tissues from her pocket. Watching him, she shook her head. "You need more help than I can give you. At the rate you’re going this time, you’ll bleed to death like one of those consumptive characters in historical novels."
Rose stared at him, the words "bleed to death" echoing in her mind. She had seen one man who had bled to death, and it was a terrible way to go. She could hardly imagine a person’s final moments under such circumstances, especially if they were coughing, choking, and struggling to breathe.
"Daffodil’s right, Tim," she told him, still keeping her distance. "This could kill you."
He shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. "It will eventually anyway."
"Dammit, Tim!" Rose exploded. "You are such an idiot!" Taking a deep breath, she went on. "There’s a hospital here in town, St. Joseph’s. I saw it while I was exploring. You’re going there, now, if I have to hit you over the head with a beer bottle and drag you there! You can be blasé about some things, but not about your life!"
Everyone turned to stare at her, startled by her outburst. The arguments between Tim and Rose were usually mutual shouting matches, with Tim accusing Rose of trying to take over his band, and Rose screaming back that she couldn’t care less about his band or anything else associated with him. This time, she sounded worried.
Tim shook his head, coughing again. Angrily, Rose moved toward him, but Daffodil stopped her, then wrestled Tim to the ground and sat on him so he couldn’t get away.
"I think we’ll all need TB tests when this is through, but for now, Tim, you need more help than I can give you. Jim, please go and get the van. Rose and Angel, you’re the best members of the band anyway, so you can take over the performance."
Rose looked as though she was about to argue with her, but then she sighed and nodded. "We’d better do that, then, before our audience thinks we’ve left."
Tim tried to get up. "No, dammit! I told you, I’m—"
"—fine. Yes, we know." Daffodil refused to move. "Go ahead. I’ll watch him. Tim, if you move, I swear I’ll do what Rose threatened and hit you over the head with a beer bottle. It might actually improve things."
Tim started coughing again, but still managed to make a rude gesture to the other band members. Rose returned it, scowling at him, before going back inside, Angel trailing after her.
*****
By the time Rose and Angel had returned to the corner of the bar they were using as a stage and cleaned it up, Jim had returned with the van, and he and Daffodil had dragged a no-longer-protesting Tim into it and set off in search of the hospital.
Rose tapped gingerly on the microphone, still reluctant to touch it even after it had been disinfected. Some of the bar’s patrons turned to look at her.
"We apologize for the long break. As you could probably tell, one of our members had a medical emergency, and has been taken to the hospital by two other members. It’ll be just Angel and me for the rest of the show, but everyone say that we’re the best anyway, so you’re in for a treat."
Some people laughed, although a couple of drunks at a nearby table glowered at her, angry that her speech had drowned out their conversation.
After bantering with the audience for a few more minutes, Angel and Rose launched into a duet, after which Angel stepped back, playing the guitar and letting Rose sing.
Rose had rarely had so much of the audience’s attention focused only on her—the other members of the band had always been in the background, playing instruments, singing backup, dancing, and even milling around while she was singing. Angel was there, but he managed to blend so well into the dark corner that few people paid attention to him after a few minutes.
Rose sang several of the mournful songs from the night before—the lingering sadness inside her was still there, no matter how hard she tried to ignore it—and was surprised when several people sang along with her. It occurred to her that most of what she sang was probably copyrighted, and singing those songs for profit was illegal, but no one had yet objected to any of it. She shrugged off the thought. She wasn’t hurting anyone, and if no one objected—or noticed—it must not be too great a crime.
Most of the people in the bar were respectful, listening to her, or at least keeping their own conversations quiet, but the drunks at the nearby table grew progressively louder. Rose and Angel weren’t the only ones who noticed. A number of other patrons, and the bartender, were looking at them angrily.
Rose raised her voice to be heard above them, but they, too, grew louder, as though in competition with her. One of them was loudly expressing his support for the war, his voice carrying to the microphone and echoing through the room.
Rose turned to them, wondering if speaking to them would do any good, but the man who was expressing himself so loudly just smirked at her. She gritted her teeth, realizing that he was doing it on purpose. Then, smirking back, she realized that two could play that game and pulled the microphone from its stand, walking over to them and launching into an anti-war song.
It took him a moment to realize what she was doing. Then, his face contorting with rage, he flung his beer into her face, dousing both her and the microphone. The microphone crackled and went dead.
Rose wiped the beer from her face, anger rising inside her. Tossing the dead microphone aside, she stood over the man, glowering at him.
"You son of a bitch! I was trying to sing!" she shouted, taking the pitcher of beer from the table and flinging it aside, enraging him further. Angel stepped from the shadows and tried to pull her away, but Rose shook him off. "You just ruined this show for everyone else, you know!"
"You’re a fucking bleeding heart liberal bitch!" he shouted back, standing. "Where did you learn all this shit from? My fucking nephew?"
Rose gave him a confused look, wondering if he was crazy as well as drunk. Then, looking at him, she realized who he was. "William Dawson, moral compass for the rest of the world, I presume?" Her voice was laden with sarcasm.
"Don’t fuck with me, bitch! You hippies come here and get my daughter all upset because her cousin’s dead. He should have died years ago!"
A crowd was gathering, watching with interest and egging them on. Rose yelled back.
"Don’t you talk about him that way! He was three times the man you’ll ever be! You aren’t fit to kiss his dead feet!"
"Bitch—"
"My name is Rose, not bitch! And stop cussing at me! You sound like a—a gutter rat! Didn’t anyone ever teach you any manners? It’s a wonder that people like Jack and Emmaline are related to you. You’re an embarrassment to the Dawson name!"
Enraged, he took a swing at her, but his drunkenness had slowed his reflexes, and Rose ducked out of his way before he could touch her. Angel rushed to Rose’s defense, hitting the man in the jaw.
William looked at the other man from his table, but his drinking buddy just sat back, enjoying the show. Another fight broke out, and then another, and soon the bar was full of brawling, yelling people, a few standing on the tables and chairs to watch, while others ducked behind the bar or under the tables to stay out of harm’s way.
Rose chose to duck under a table. She had never been in the middle of barroom brawl before, and the noisy free-for-all shocked her. She’d never thought that brawls like this one happened in real life; it had always seemed to be something that only happened in books and movies.
The bartender stood atop the bar, yelling, but no one listened until the roar of a shotgun reverberated through the room, shocking all but the most enraged brawlers into stopping.
A piece of the ceiling caved in, nearly hitting the bartender—he’d fired at the ceiling, where no one could be hurt by the blast. Rose had noticed the much-mended quality of the ceiling, but hadn’t known the reason for it until now.
"Goddammit!" the bartender roared.
The few people who were still fighting stopped, staring at him. Broken glass and furniture littered the room, while beer and hard liquor lay in puddles on the floor and dripped from the tables and even the ceiling.
Rose slowly crawled out from under the table, shaking. Her simple peasant blouse was soaked with beer, making it almost transparent, and her red curls hung damply in her face. She looked at Angel, who sported a black eye and a split lip, and then at the bartender, who was waving the shotgun around wildly.
She started to move toward Angel, but he gave her a warning look, waving her away. "It’s your fault this time," he hissed, glaring at her.
Rose was about to reply when the bartender’s voice boomed out again, echoing through the room.
"All of you get out before I call the cops! The bar’s closed for the rest of the night!"
A few people grumbled, but most hurried to leave, not trusting the shotgun-waving man. He pointed the shotgun at the little group who had started the trouble.
"I don’t want to see any of you in here again! You’ve wrecked my goddamned bar!"
"You’ll fix it," slurred the man who had been sitting with William.
The bartender ignored him. "Get out! All of you!" He looked at Rose and Angel. "And you can forget about getting paid for tonight. With all this damage, you’re lucky I’m not turning you over to the cops. You didn’t even give us a full show!"
"That was his fault!" Rose gestured to William Dawson, who was halfway out the door. He turned to glare at her, but a look from the bartender sent him on his way.
"I don’t care whose fault it was. You’re not getting paid. And if you make an issue of it, I may make an issue of those copyrighted songs you were performing. Got it?"
Rose looked at him, her jaw set. "We’ve got it, all right." She stalked away, mumbling under her breath.
When they got outside, Angel lit into her.
"What the hell were you thinking, getting in that guy’s face? You knew it would start trouble!"
"He was disrupting our performance! And anyway, how was I to know that he would get violent? I didn’t even know who he was until he mentioned his nephew! And, lest we forget, you played the music when I got after him!"
"That’s typical, Rose. Just typical. You want to blame someone else for the trouble you started!"
"I didn’t start it! That son of a bitch William Dawson started it!"
"He’s your relative!"
"He’s not related to me! Dawson is a very common name. Besides, I used to go by DeWitt-Bukater."
"Yeah, I wonder what your real name is."
"You know what it is, but we’re not going to discuss it. Suffice it to say that I’ll be glad to leave Chippewa Falls behind."
"We could have gotten more gigs here—"
"Shut up!" Rose raised a threatening hand at him. "Don’t you think we’ve gotten into enough trouble for one night, without starting a fight out here? At this rate, we’ll wind up in jail!" She took a deep breath, counting to ten to calm herself. "You can do what you want. I’m going to find the hospital and see if the others are still there. Then I’m going back to the motel. Just stay away from me, and we’ll all be happy."
*****
Rose arrived at St. Joseph’s Hospital half an hour later, after getting lost once in the darkened streets of Chippewa Falls. There was no sign of Angel.
Jim sat in the waiting area of the emergency room, looking bored. Daffodil stood at the counter talking to a nurse, waving her arms animatedly as she discussed Tim’s case.
Rose sat down next to Jim, frowning when he wrinkled his nose at the smell of beer on her. Her blouse had dried, but it was stiff and still smelled strongly of the beer.
"How did the show go?" he asked. "Did you drink the beer, or are you just wearing it?"
"I’m just wearing it. It ended in a brawl, we didn’t get paid, and we are forbidden to return to that bar—ever." She tugged at her stiff, sticky blouse, pulling it away from her skin. "How’s Tim?"
"He’ll live—for now. But they want to keep him here for a week or so, to start treating the TB and get him started on AIDS drugs. He finally gave in. But until he’s released, we’re stuck in Chippewa Falls."
Daffodil came over to them, some notes on Tim’s care written on a couple of sticky notes in her hand. Her eyes widened as she looked at Rose. "What happened to you?"
"The performance ended badly."
"Yeah, you look like it. What did you do, get into a barroom brawl?"
"I hid under a table. Angel did the brawling—along with Emmaline Dawson’s father and most of the other patrons of the bar." She looked up as the door opened and Angel came in, his eyes narrowing when he saw her.
Daffodil went up to him to see his black eye and split lip, but he waved her off, giving Rose the finger. She returned the gesture, then put her hand down when the nurse at the counter cleared her throat disapprovingly.
Daffodil looked from one to the other. "Let’s go back to the motel now. You guys can tell us what happened on the way there. Jim and Angel can sit up front, and Rose and I will sit in the back. That way, no one will get hurt."