Names
I pray a day comes when they can tell me their names. I remember all their faces, but I've never been good with names.
You can't save everyone, and I know that. It's the nature of the job. You lose people.
But for some reason, when it happens, I always hear music. After the silence, that is. Someone dies in front of you, and there's a moment. In that moment, I hear music, but coming from inside me somehow. I can feel it. The music is, I guess, something like peace. Like weight being lifted. And honor? I'm privileged to have shared someone's last minutes with them. There's some shame there, too.
But it sounds like this music.
I'll be a fireman until I physically can't. Being called to help on the worst day of someone's life? It’s why I do it. But some days, I do it for a different reason.
I do it because I might get to hear it. This music.
Because maybe it means I might get to see them all again. I might get to know their names.
"What did you–? Were you just talking, Mikey?"
Sarah's voice barely pierced the wall of concert noise, but it was enough to pull Mikey out of his head. He placed himself in the crowd of at least a few hundred and his impulses kicked in again: Check for threats. Signs of something off. Alert and ready. Aware.
Mikey buried the thoughts before they could morph into panic. It's fine, and totally normal, to be in the middle of a bobbing mass of human bodies every waking moment of this three-day hippie-fest. Sarah was as surprised as Mikey was when he agreed to go with her to this music festival. Especially with his headaches lately.
"Mikey?" Sarah insisted, her face sobering up.
Mikey shook his head, wondering whether it was worth the effort to explain the music to her, especially in this pulsing throng. He had never told anyone about it before.
"It's this music!" Mikey tried. “I know this music!" He said it in fits, pausing to choose easy words to shout. "I hear it all the time. At work!"
Sarah eased out of her pursed listening-face and rocked back, smiling. "You like this artist?"
He huffed, defeated, then decided it was easier just to nod. He turned back to the stage.
Mikey scanned, pointing his focus to the speakers. The music coming from them pulled him, almost physically, upwards. The sound was definitely coming out of the towers, black dimples vibrating faster than his eyes could see. But it was coming from inside him, too. Like it always does.
He squinted at the artist, a DJ behind a huge metal table. He was wearing all white with a globular helmet. He looked to Mikey like an alien piloting a space ship.
Mikey's senses flashed in warning.
The man in front of him tripped alarms. But only because he wasn't moving: one still atom in this buzzing molecular structure, totally stiff.
The music grew louder.
He scanned the man's back. Something about his clothes seemed off before he could form the complete thought. He was wearing a striped polo shirt, tucked into navy golf shorts. You don't see many leather belts at music festivals.
Mikey jumped back when the man began to turn. The wave of people behind them crested, floating Mikey forward again at the crowd’s whim. Panicked, he glanced to Sarah, who seemed in another world. She faced the stage again, where flashing lights washed her in colorful monotones.
Mikey braced himself and returned to the man, trying to decide whether any of this was real. His senses certainly were registering the gentleman now facing him.
He was older, arms covered in hair and with a bulging gut. All of him seemed out-of-place in this field-turned-music-venue, but his neatly-trimmed grey beard and slicked hair felt oddly familiar to Mikey.
He knew this man.
"Chuck Kaufman," the old man said. He formed a smile, especially at his eyes.
The man named Chuck Kaufman held out his palm, fingers straight.
Mikey, carried by the music pouring out of him, reflexively raised his arm. Slowly, reverently, the two men shook hands.
"Michael Miller."
More stillness in his periphery pulled at his attention. Two, three, then dozens of faces turned toward Mikey. They ranged from young to old. All kinds and all types. All walks of life.
And Mikey remembered them all.
The music pulled him upward, like he was floating.
Mikey took easy steps as he moved to each one to learn their names.