Some Velvet Morning: Four
(Part 4: “We’ll Be Coming Soon.” “Some Velvet Morning” begins here.)
“This thing, whatever she was…She smiled at me. And I knew then, weren’t the Devil come after me, it was maybe some kinda angel. But angels are supposed to be a comfort. Whatever this was…well, my horse was dead and I didn’t know where or when I was supposed to be, so how is that a comfort?
“And then she stared at me, with these big black eyes, pitch black, but shining somehow. And she asked, ‘What’s your name?’ And I felt like I shouldn’t tell her. Don’t know why. Just make something up, I thought. But I told her anyway, I couldn’t stop myself. And her smile grew. I asked, ‘Well, what’s your name?’ And she told me. But I can’t recall it no matter how I try. All I know is hearing made me wanna eat my gun.”
I found myself glancing down at his hip. Wherever his gun was, it weren’t on him, and I took that as a relief.
He kept on, not telling the story to me no more, nor 
anyone in the place. He was looking at himself in the mirror again. Telling himself the story, trying to get it right in his own mind.
“She put her hand on my face, stroked my cheek, and said, “We’ll be coming soon, Bill.’
And I asked her, ‘Comin’ from where?’ She waved a hand behind her, at the fields, and I could see more eyes like hers, big and black like birds, peaking from the green. And she said, ‘From here, Bill. From right here. Don’t you want to be here with us?’ And the way she asked it, I knew it weren’t really a question, I knew whatever I said, she already knew what was coming.
“And part of me wanted to say, ‘Yeah, I’ll stay.’ It was so beautiful I could barely breathe, and I wanted to…shit, just have her in that field. But that feeling. I don’t know, it just sent me back to my senses, and I yelled ‘Put me back!’ Like I was a kid who wanted his mama. I started crying, I wanted back to the range so bad.
“And she just gave me this look, like I answered wrong. Like I’d pissed her off. And then it was like the world just sucked into itself. I looked up, and the blackest clouds I ever seen covered the sky. Opened up and rained down. Soaked me good, and then…it just stopped. And I turned around. And I was back where I was. The sky was normal. Clear.
“So I just started walkin’. Till I got here.”
And then he looked around the room like he’d never seen it before. And he looked at me like he ain’t seen me in forever. “Shit, how long I been here, Joe?”
The question pointed at me shook me out of a stupor. It took me a lot longer than it should’ve to tell him, “Couple hours.”
“Shit,” he said quietly. “That don’t feel right at all. Nothin’ feels right no more, truth to tell. Like I’m in the wrong place or somethin’.”
He looked at me, grabbed me by the arms, hard. There were tears in his eyes. “I think I gave her the wrong answer, Joe. An’ I don’t know how to make that right.”
All I could think to do was pull him close, hug him like he was my own son. I told him, “Hey, come on, now. Wherever you went, you’re back home now, among friends. You didn’t call nothin’ wrong.”
His muscles tightened, and I knew the hug had been the wrong move. He pulled out of it quickly. “Come on now, Joe,” he muttered. There was a little humor in his tone.
I don’t believe in no Devil. But at that moment, I believed in God, and I thanked him for that bit of lightness in Bill.
“There you are,” I grinned, giving him a punch on the arm. “Shit, son. Had me worried there.”
He looked down at the floor, shook his head. Even smiled a bit. My friend had come back to himself.
And then a flick of guitar strings ruined it all.
“Some velvet morning when I’m straight…I’m gonna open up your gate…and maybe tell you ‘bout Phedra…” Davey Keen sang in a deep lilt to himself in the corner, idly strumming a dark tune.
“And how she gave me life…and how she made it in…”
Singing in a voice that didn’t quite sound like his.
(To Be Concluded.)
