Moonlight Water by Win Blevins Read Free Book Online

meals that hadn’t had time to cool off.
    When the time came, and it would, he would tell Winsonfred all that he saw.
    *   *   *
    Zahnie sensed the music, but she didn’t hear it. Always when it came, this was the way, feeling without hearing. It was soft and languid and delicious and it stroked her hair, silk-scarf smooth. Orchid petals, soft and shuddering, a pulse of purple.
    The pulse was not silk or orchids but the music itself. She could feel it clearly now, a soprano sax gliding over her skin. Why could she never hear it? Swirling from the sax, it was a gentle waterfall gliding note by note down her shoulders. Floating sound-feeling sensuality.
    Zahnie startled awake. She searched inside the half-dark room. She shook her head, realized she’d been dozing in the recliner where her great-grandfather Winsonfred always sat. Where was Grandfather? Must be outside. He would be getting chilled in the cool evening. She stood up, scraped the door of the assisted living center open, and saw the old man on his bench. “You’ll be getting cold, Grandfather,” she said in Navajo.
    She helped him stand and held his elbow as he climbed the few steps to the front door.
    â€œI saved you some tapioca pudding, Grandfather.”
    He smiled at her. Then he said gently, “I saw something.”
    She didn’t exactly let her eyes roll, but she knew his mind.
    Winsonfred told her, “Something’s going to happen.” And she thought maybe he looked a little afraid.

 
    8
    ADVENTURE AND CATASTROPHE
    Don’t stand on high rocks. They will grow into the sky with you.
    â€”Navajo saying
    Â 
    Now, by God, now, today. Moonlight Water late this afternoon. Weeks of wandering, of wondering, weeks of strangers, today all that would end when he met up with Gianni. A friend to hear his stories. A friend to report what was happening back in San Francisco, if Red decided to go into that at all. A friend.
    What a month. That first night, when he blew up his life, Red pointed his van east with no idea where to go in the vast hinterlands of America, which to him meant anywhere outside the Bay Area. True, he had touched down in this or that town on tour, but in those alien spaces he’d experienced almost nothing. The band had a big tour bus with the rear half cleared out for a rehearsal area, and Red (well, Robbie) spent all his time in the bus asleep in a reclining seat, never taking in the scenery that whizzed by at seventy miles an hour. In the cities they toured he saw the faces of thousands of fans, backstage areas, the walls of hotel suites, and, when he wasn’t married, the geography of some female bodies. His knowledge of the interior of his country was less than what anyone might get out of the Sunday travel section.
    On that night he’d pointed the bumper of the van along Interstate 80 toward the deserts of Nevada and—he felt a trill of fear—maybe deserts of the spirit. But I’m going to explore.…
    All past now. Red was one entire month old and had spent those weeks on the road soaking up experiences. He’d visited national parks (without getting laid). He’d burrowed into diners with heavy white china cups and waitresses who called him Hon. He’d stopped by Carhenge—a tribute not to the old Celtic gods but the modern American ones—and it dazzled him. He also made a point of visiting Cadillac Ranch, a line of old luxury sedans buried nose down in the flat Texas prairie outside Amarillo and angled like the Great Pyramid of Giza. Aside from the originality of what could be done with rusted auto hulls, Red’s mind was pinwheeled by the way visitors had spray-painted the cars into a graffiti co-op, leaving spray cans around for the next people who made the pilgrimage.
    Occasional days were as flat and featureless as the bed of a dry lake. He deliberately refused to spice them up by writing music, playing music, or even listening