Down the street they went until Steve thought he could actually hear the sound of the wide Mississippi River fast approaching. Beale Street did not go on forever, and the streetlights seemed to darken the further down it they went. One bar they passed advertised all sorts of drinks, but had no visible space for food of any kind. Another was an ice cream parlor so rank with stumbling bodies failing at both eating and holding down their dessert that Steve didn’t want to even attempt approaching it.

   Gore stole a cheeseburger from a passing tourist who’d just purchased the sandwich from a red painted diner. Upon taking a bite, Gore threw the burger back at the tourist, knocking the man over and giving him a partial concussion.

   “Your burger’s meat was tough as Gore’s socks!” Gore said, yelling back at the tourist. “You should have thought better than to buy tough meat. But you didn’t think about that, did you? Because now you’re on the ground.”

   “Because he’s unconscious, Gore,” Steve noted.

   “Then he should remember to not buy over-priced, awful burgers.”

   “After he regains consciousness.”

   Burney screamed.

   “No, Burney you can’t take his burger, it’s still imprinted on his face,” Steve noted. “Dawn, aren’t you going to say something?”

   “He’ll be fine,” Dawn said. She tossed a bunny back in the unconscious man’s direction and pointed toward a bright light at the very end of Beale Street. “What do you make of that?”

   The streetlights quietly faded to a hazy blackness where shattered glass littering the pavement marked the spots where light had once been. Restaurants had boards over doors, broken windows, and for a whole half block there was not a light to be found. And yet this all served to make the white brilliance of the bar at the end of Beale Street all the brighter, its music more entrancing, and the calls of patrons eagerly flocking to the doors all the more inviting.

   “Last place on this street,” Steve said, walking through the darkness toward the lighted bar. “Better have sandwiches.”

   As Steve and the group approached the white-lit bar, they quickly saw that not only did it have sandwiches, but the bar had pizza as well. And hot wings. And chili. And a man in a pristine white suit and top hat shouting for everyone and everything to come inside.

  “Join in, come in. Welcome…” he cried, his eyes closed in a sing-song invitation, “to the Tethered Soul.”

   The wooden floors creaked when Steve entered the Tethered Soul. The white light emanating through enormous windows did not feel too bright, and while it was crowded, there was plenty of room for Steve to weave through the dancing and clapping customers.

   A dance floor made of worn wood echoed the cries of drums and trumpets. Above the dancing patrons, on a drum-shaped wooden platform, a four-piece band played with sweat drenching their faces. Three girls, sparkling in dresses of black and white sequence, hummed impossibly loud and so beautifully they stopped Steve dead in his tracks.

   This caused Dawn to stop behind Steve, Gore to stop behind Dawn, and Burney to slam into Gore’s back and get caught on the pommel of Gore’s sword. Burney screamed, struggling to free himself, but couldn’t be heard for the wailing guitar the lead singer began to caress.

   His face raining sweat did not in any way diminish the purity of the lead singer’s white suit. And as he ran loving fingers along the fret of his electric guitar, he took up his white top hat and gave it a little twirl before striking at the microphone with a wail that broke through the noise of the entire bar.

   The combination of exultation and wear, fear and joy punctuated by the thump of the bass, set even Gore’s head to bobbing.

   “Come on, there’s the cashier,” Steve said, pointing out a space on the long, stained wooden bar where people were turning over cash in return for an assortment of food and drink. “Let’s get in line.”

   “Gore does not wait in line,” Gore commented.

   “Gore does not have any cash.”

   “Which is why Gore does not wait in line.”

   “Gore will wait in line if Gore wants Steve to pay for his sandwich.”

   “Dawn will grow quickly tired of talking in the third person and might just drive a city bus through the window while you argue about waiting in line,” Dawn noted.

   “Gore would like to see this,” Gore added.

   “I want to thank ya’ll for comin’ out tonight,” the singer in white proclaimed, extending his neck toward the microphone and swaying with exhaustion as he spoke. “I want to thank you for coming out to the Tethered Soul.”

   Cheers accompanied this nearly tear-filled expression of gratitude. The man in white twirled his hat as the bass player thrummed in rhythm with the motion while the sequenced girls hummed along.

   “You know we have the best of times here at the Tethered Soul,” the singer continued. “We got to. We got ta, got ta, got ta…” This continued for some time, along with various musical accompaniments and enthusiastic jumping. “…got ta, got ta, got ta have a good time! Else we not gonna get a good time no place else — no sir, no. I’m gonna do another number her for ya. It’s a little low one, but we gonna make it so it don’t stay too low. It don’t stay low else we get where…”

   “Is this the song?” Steve asked.

   “I suddenly find jazz infuriating again,” Gore noted.

   “I like it. He’s different,” Dawn said as the line to the cashier grew steadily shorter.

   “He’s in need of medication to correct that stutter,” Steve countered.

   “Now what I need from ya’ll,” the singer said, having completed a long speech about what the song was going to be about, which may or may not have been a part of the actual song.

   “What he needs,” the sequenced girls echoed, mmmhmmming where appropriate.

   “What I need from ya’ll is to bear it out right here. Bear the whole thing right here with me and let’s wear it. Wear it and be it. Feel it. Can you feel it?”

   “I have no idea what he’s talking about,” Steve answered as the rest of the bar cheered, “Yes!”

   “Can you feel it?”

   Even Burney screamed a “yes.” Of course his “yes” was more like a “Noooooo!” of pain, but that wasn’t really his fault.

   The singer began to actually sing then, the band playing and wailing along. This was interrupted by the singer asking questions of the audience, ranging anywhere from, “Can you feel it!” to “Does it hurt?” to “When and where the why of who is how we, how we, how!”

Stolen novel; please report.

   Burney was unsure how to respond to that last one.

   “Hey. Move! Come on, I just want a sandwich,” Steve said as the three people still in front of him at the cash register were too distracted by the song to complete their order. “Hey, lady! Bartender lady! I need a sandwich! Pulled pork!”

   Unfortunately, the bartender was as mesmerized by the singer as everyone else, and was not receiving or taking orders.

   “Come on!” Steve shouted.

   Unfortunately, this particular shout occurred during a lull of the song, a down-stroke of the music where the singer in white was down on his knees. He looked to be begging music into the microphone, veins tensed on his forehead as he took a breath. But the singer had heard Steve’s shout and shot up, bouncing as if the motion had been involuntary.

   “Come on!” the singer in white echoed. “Come on, come on, com’on! It’s something cooooooomin on!” The singer waved as if underwater, his motions cheered on by the sweating crowd, and finally looked straight at Steve and his companions.

   “Dear lord almighty! Fire does walk this room, ladies and gentlemen,” the singer belted out, emphasizing the word fire in a wail. “Fire and those who walk in it. And the maaaaaaaaaaan who walks among them. I see you see, I feel you. I hear you comin on and I want to know, got ta, got ta know how ya feel.”

   The singer extended an open palm to Steve, the crowd quieting. The only sound was the muffled bass and a few “Hmmmms” from the sequenced girls as all eyes turned to Steve.

   All Steve could think to say was, “That’s okay. You can keep playing.”

   “We need not deafen our ears to the wails of that which needs be spoken. Speak. Speak it!” the white-suited singer demanded, dancing and twirling so lost in his world and music that Steve thought something in the singer’s mind might have broken.

  The crowd, meanwhile, was really into it.

   “We need to hear it. We need to sing it and feel it. Feel it for me, brother,” the singer in white sang, and patted his trumpeter on the back, who blasted a tune that silenced all. “And come up here. We want to see with our eyes and hear what you gots ta say, ya feel?”

   “No,” Steve replied.

   “Help me out, ladies and gentlemen, help me feel it. Won’t you feel it with me!”

   “I’m starting to get uncomfortable with the amount of feeling in this room.”

   “Help him feel it. Come on clap along and help him feel it. And the iron man too, the lady in grey and the fiiiiiiiiire.”

   “Come on!” the crowd began to chant and clap along with the singer’s instructions. “Come on!”

   “Come on,” the singer sang, turning the chanting and the beckoning into a song in itself, playing with such appeal that not a soul present could hesitate to pull Steve toward the stage.

   “Hey, hey! Lay off, I’m just here for a sandwich,” Steve said as a few in the chanting crowd tried, and quickly failed, to pull Burney toward the stage. Gore was left untouched, and Dawn somehow gave a look that made all present back away.

   “You get your sandwich once you join us on the stage. We want to feel you. Bartenders, keep them away from the grill till we hear them up in ‘ere. Go on now. We want to feeeeeel you. Go on and help them feel it, ladies.”

   “He wants to feeeeeeeeeel,” the sequenced ladies sang.

   “Get on the stage, Steve. I require the knowledge of how much force it will take to compress a man’s skull into the bell of a trumpet,” Gore said.

   “You will not harm this hilarious man. He’s too good a singer to shove inside a trumpet,” Dawn said.

   “Then I will compress his guitar into the trumpet.”

   “That will be fine.”

   “Skewering the trumpet player!”

   “Don’t push it.”

   “Come heee-yah,” the singer encouraged, holding out a hand from the round, high stage. The crowd pressed and rubbed against Steve so closely that they forced him to the stage like water flowing out a hose. Gore followed behind so he could kill the singer, Dawn to stop him, and Burney because he was happy to be part of the group. Plus, the band was making his screaming a part of the song.

   Once Steve had been pressed to the front of the stage, the singer put his arm across Steve’s shoulders and said, “Come up here and look down upon those who wish to feel wich ya.”

   Cheers and screams of delight rang through the crowd. A wave of brass and high notes from the sequenced girls heralded the others standing and looking down at the crowd. Dancing and plastic cups erupted in delight, and soon the singer had to wave and twirl his top hat to ease the excitement of the crowd. When he returned his white hat to his head, the band simmered to an ever-present rhythm and hum, melancholy and urgent, with a rolling momentum behind it.

   “Now tell us your name. Tell us your, your, your naaaaaam-ah,” the man in white sang, rolling as if in a daze.

   Steve wasn’t sure if the singer actually wanted him to say his name or just sing the question repeatedly. Eventually, however, the microphone, caressed in the singer’s hand, was tilted toward Steve.

   “Steve,” Steve answered the question after it had been asked one last, elongated time.

   “Steve the man who lives with the fire. The fire in your heart — I can see it. I can hear it in the words from your mouth and I feeeeeel it in your soul. Do you feel it? Do you feel the fire?”

   “Well, that’s just Burney. He feels the fire plenty.”

   Burney screamed to double emphasize that statement.

   “But as long as I don’t go too near him I’m fine,” Steve added.

   “Don’t touch the fire and the fire can’t burn you — truer words were never spoken, ladies and gentlemen!” the singer cried as the sequenced girls echoed, “True worrrrrrds.”

   The singer hugged Steve tight as if Steve had shared a heart-wrenching secret. Despite the fact that the singer’s face was dripping with sweat, his white suit was completely dry, making the hug only half as uncomfortable as it could have been.

  “And who is your friend here, Steve?” the singer asked.

   “That’s Gore,” Steve pointed out. “And that’s Dawn.”

   “He has hugged Steve. That at least allows me to remove his arm, right?” Gore asked.

   “You can take an arm off an audience member,” Dawn conceded.

   “But I wish to maim the man in the white suit!”

   “You can take my arm!” a bone-thin woman in the audience called out to Gore.

   “Do not tempt me, woman, lest I obliterate the very essence of what you call a meager existence and pull down upon what remains of your pitiful shell the building and floor in which you stand!”

   “Don’t listen to him, he’s just hungry. Bad sandwiches tonight,” Dawn said, laughing as Gore menaced, glaring his blood red eyes through the slits in his helmet and causing the bone thin woman to collapse in a panic-induced unconsciousness.

   “And he walks amongst those armored in the blackness, and those who sit only in gray,” the singer chimed as the sequenced women echoed, “In graaaaay.”

   “Tell me now,” the singer said to Steve, “tell me what it is that troubles you.”

   “I’m hungry,” Steve replied.

   “Hungry for what?”

   “For a sandwich.”

   “Just a sandwich?”

   “A really good sandwich.”

   “Ree-lee gooood,” the sequenced ladies cried.

   The audience cheered and danced, calling out that Steve should be given a sandwich, or that Gore should play Freebird. Gore threw a drum stick at that man’s head. It was okay, though, because the drummer had another pair of sticks.

   “Is that what you really want? A sandwich?” the singer asked.

   “Yeah, that’s pretty much it,” Steve replied.

   “Pretty much iiiiiit,” the sequenced ladies echoed.

   “You can’t just want a sandwich, my friend, you can’t,” the singer sang, going down to his knees as if to beg Steve to listen. “There’s got to be so much more to life.”

   “Than a sandwich?” Steve asked.

   “There’s got ta. Got ta. Got ta…”

   “Yeah. Gotta.”

   “Be more to li-hiiiiiv for… than just a sandwich.”

   “Look, I’m just trying to get some dinner. A sandwich, come on man.”

   “Come on maaaaaan,” the sequenced ladies cried.

   “Why is it that if your life’s desire is to get some meat between slices of bread and cheese,” the singer said, once more wrapping Steve in his arms, “that you walk about life with a man of iron and a man of flame and a woman of gray?”

   “They’re my friends,” Steve answered. “And I don’t really like—”

   “Friends of the damned. Thrice damned and twice before with these who walk, who cra-ahl, who fall to the flames and the heat.” The singer broke off from Steve, took a handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe the sweat from his face, and threw it at Burney. The handkerchief burst into flames and was incinerated in seconds, much to the adoration of the crowd.

   “The fire consumes! You see the fire you walk amongst,” the singer in white continued.

   “Can I just get my sandwich?” Steve asked.

   “Not till you feel me, my brother. Not till you feeeeel.” The singer went to his knees as he held a long note, earning a cheer from the crowd before he leapt back to his feet. “The words that I got ta say.”

   “That sounds like a physical impossibility,” Dawn noted.

   “Feel with your heart, not just your mind.” The singer approached Dawn and practically towered over her, casting eyes downward with his hat held firm and his back to the audience. “Feel with what you know.”

   “I shall feel your bones break!” Gore challenged, preparing to bare his sword.

   “And feel it! That’s the feel — you embrace that feel!” the singer said, going down on his knees with his neck bared.

   Gore decided that instead of bearing his sword he would simply grab the singer by the neck.