The Bard drove south on I65, stuffing Wonder bread into his mouth from the bag, two slices at a time. Every four slices, he’d pick up a stick of beef jerky and cram it in too. He debated making a sandwich out of it, but didn’t want to take the time. On his dashboard was a dirty box that might once have been silver. Inside was the scrap of paper from Esmerelda Jackson. The lid of the box had a glowing marble that was not paying attention to inertia resting in a track cut into the top. The marble was a cat’s eye. From time to time, the marble would shift slightly and the Bard would look at and then the map unfolded over the passenger seat, which covered the lyre.
Masterson and Rand stared at the sign, “Welcome to Kentucky,” and then looked at each other.
Rand drummed his hands on the dash. “Leavin’ jurisdiction…”
“Fresh pursuit,” Masterson countered.
“I don’t think that ever passed in the courts, Bill.”
“Listen. No lardbag with a harp is going to make fools out of us. We’re going to find him, get him back in jurisdiction and process the due out of him.” The words “sheep” still burned in Masterson’s head.
“And headquarters? What do we tell them?”
“Hey, it’s either this or waiting for DUI’s outside of Crothersville.”
Rand sighed. “Let’s roll, partner.”
Mr. and Mrs. Gong sat down at the kitchen table for an early dinner.
“Did Brad call today?” Mr. Gong asked.
“No. That boy never calls.”
“Did you try calling him?”
“I did. I left a message.”
“Did it ring? Or just go to the voicemail?”
“I don’t remember, dear.”
“Hm.”
“Hm. Maybe I should try again,” Mrs. Gong furrowed her brow.
“Da, he’ll call when he has time. He’s probably just busy.”
“Busy with what?”
“I don’t know.” Mr. Gong finished his pork chop and cleared his plate before casting around the kitchen for dessert. Mrs. Gong was still halfway through. She’d grown accustomed years before to being the last one done.
Louie shifted in his chair. On his desk were all the birthday cards he had gotten from his grandmother that he’d saved. He had culled them out of several large piles of letters and cards stuffed into several quarter full boxes of memories. He always started a new box, forgetting about all of his old ones, rendering the idea of having a central place to store things moot. Each year a letter had come, with a check inside for $20. None of this savings bond stuff for Louie’s grandma. His mother told him to deposit the checks and he would and then he’d ask his mom to withdraw the twenty for him a week or two later. Mrs. Stern would just give Louie a twenty from her purse.
He wished she hadn’t. Every time he needed cash, he knew he could just go to his parents and ask for it. But he hated to do it. He worried about going to college, away from the easy flow and yet not, since he had a credit card. He tried to pay for the items that weren’t food or gas, but his parents never cashed the checks. Or if they did, they just remembered the times they ripped them up. So, it was just a worthless gesture.
“We provide for you so you won’t have to get a job and be distracted from your studies, Louie. Your job is to do your best.”
Getting high grades. That was how he was to repay the debt. He hated it. He wished that he could just use his money on his own. But inside Louie knew that it would run out quickly and he’d just be back to asking. Why was he thinking about this crap? Oh, yeah the birthday cards.
Louie looked through the theme cards. Cartoon animals saying, “Today you’re FOUR, my dear GRANDSON.” They probably had cards that said, “Happy Birthday to THE COWORKER IN THE CUBICLE THREE OVER from THE GUY WHO IS DATING YOUR GIRLFRIEND’S COUSIN.” He opened the cards up and read the little paragraphs where Grandma had written messages that Louie hadn’t read on his way to the check.
“I’ll have… the shepherd’s pie,” Brad decided at the last minute. “No wait… what would you get, the cheeseburger or the shepherd’s pie?”
The waitress stared down at him from under three coats of eyeshadow and from over a large gold nose stud. Her nametag read, “Cassandra.” “Everything’s good here,” she said in a tone that would need a defibrillator to be raised to the level of cordial.
“Uh, pie.”
“And for you?” Cassandra said to Callie.
“I’m fine with water, thank you,” Callie answered, covering with one hand her piece of complimentary bread, which was glowing with ambrosia. Cassandra huffed, thinking “Cheapskate” until Callie narrowed her eyes.
“I’ll be back with your orders in a sec,” Cassandra breathed warmly, before walking away slowly on unsteady legs. A beatific smile was on her face.
“Would you like to order a beer? She will not question you,” asked Callie.
Brad ran through all of the beer commercials in his head, trying to think of the most manly, yet sensitive ad campaign. The last beer he’d had was bought by an older friend and pressed into his hand in Louie’s house and it had tasted like cold soda water. He did not want a beer.
“Nah… I’m driving. What did you do to the waitress?”
“I placed some ideas into her head. They are happier ideas than the ones that were in there before.”
A still smiling Cassandra carefully slid the shepherd’s pie right in front of Brad. She centered it and rotated it and positioned it perfectly between his place setting and said, “Enjoy!”
Brad poked a fork in and began eating one edge, trying not to disturb the mashed potato layer. “So I ask again… what sort of situation am I in? You can tell me. I mean, I’m pretty embroiled right now, ” copying her formal tone.
Callie looked at him, who was as centered on her answer as his plate in front of him. She could have blasted his mind and left him raving in the booth, but that seemed a poor thank you to someone who really meant well with an ill timed favor.
“I am trying to get my family home.”
“That funny, I’m trying to get away from my family.” She shot him a look that asked, “Do you want an answer or not?” which quelled his usual conversational instinct to riff on whatever the other person said. “Sorry,” he said, turning back to his shepherd’s pie and assorted garnish.
“I am not a normal woman,” she continued. Brad nodded; remembering the lack of cuts and bruises from her road dive. “I am a muse.” She paused, gauging his comprehension level.
“You don’t look Greek.” Memories of one of the first two hundred plus page books he had read cover to cover: a large light brown tome with the words, “Classical Mythology” staidly printed on the cover. The book was bound in plastic, like a library book, when his mother realized he was reading it so intently. Inside, the standard canonical tales were illustrated in brilliant color pencil. Brad had used that book for several school reports in elementary school. So had Ashley Edson, but Ashley had just copied her story and picture right out of the book, figuring no one else had that exact source. Funnily enough, Brad had felt odd when he saw her poster also, like they shared a relative in common.
He paged through the book in memory. “Callie. Calliope.”
She smiled slowly. “Your country can’t remember anything that has not been turned into a Disney cartoon.”
“And I thought you had no sense of humor.”
Cassandra breezed back and cleared his plate, and then plopped down a chocolate sundae with two spoons. “It’s on the house,” she beamed like a kid trying to please the school photographer.
“I have a great sense of humor,” Callie puffed. “The Iliad is full of my jokes.”
“Yeah, that’s what I turn to when I’m looking for side splitters.”
“’And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it / neither brave man nor coward, I tell you-- / it's born with us the day that we are born.’” She said, eyes closed. “It is funny to me.”
Brad skipped over judging himself brave or cowardly. He decided on coward for this conversation and changed the subject before she recited more stuff he couldn’t parse. “So, you want to get home. That’s normal. What’s with Bluto?”
“He is the Bard. He is one of the gifted.”
“It’s so easy to get a 1600 these days… How did he fit in those tiny chairs?” He was rewarded with another glare. He grinned at her and caught a flicker of an answering crinkle at the edge of her mouth before she tamped it down.
“The Bard has my sister Erato’s lyre. Leaving it on this Earth in mortal hands would be disastrous.”
“So we have to kick his butt and steal it back?” Brad played a mini filmstrip in his head where the Bard punched over as ninja Brad ducked, punched him in the stomach, then twirled and dumped the giant on the floor.
“That would probably turn out like this,” she said. Brad saw his fist get swallowed up the large man’s stomach, then a backhand across ninja Brad’s ninja face. “Thankfully, he is willing to trade the lyre for the Inspiros.” She held up a hand, stopping his forthcoming question. “Which is the statue I am carrying presently.”
“How do we get in touch with him now?” He had snuck the last “we” in there, and was now retesting it hopefully.
“I need to find a transmitter, a sending place.”
“I have a cell phone.”
“The Bard does not. And even if he did, he would not believe just a voice claiming to be me.”
“Why can’t you just, I don’t know, give him some inspiration or something? An image?”
“It’s not quite that simple when I am in this form. There are limitations. A sending place will be much easier.”
“And you know where there is one in Georgia?”
“Red Top Mountain State Park. Just north of Atlanta.”
“Then let’s blow this joint.”