Phoenix Rising Read Online Free Page A

Lucas said. Parking the Impala was like landing a whale.
    The sign outside the club said you had to be twenty-one to enter, but nobody stopped us. The tiny, dark room was jammed with tables and faces, mostly black, and a thick layer of blue cigarette smoke.
    Lucas moved toward the makeshift stage, where a band was playing, me trailing him like a shadow. He leaned against the wall next to a man with yellow eyes. The man looked Lucas over leisurely, lingering on his protest button. It’s from the sixties. It says STOP THE WAR .
    â€œWhich war?” the man asked.
    â€œAll of them,” Lucas said.
    â€œRight on, brother.” The man smiled, then turned his attention back to the stage.
    There were four guys in the band; three black, one white, playing music like B. B. King’s. But different, too, full of heart and juice. The walls were shaking. The whole audience was moving like one big multilimbed creature. I was moving too, because it feels so good when the music’s right and you can hear how much the musicians love to do it. I understood Lucas better than I ever had before. Music moves through Lucas like currents through water. Water through water. Music through Lucas.
    â€œWhat do you think?” he shouted in my ear.
    â€œI like it!”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI like it!”
    The band members recognized Lucas and asked him to sit in. As he strapped on the guitar, I went tight with fear. What if the crowd didn’t like him? What if they turned away and left him naked onstage, Lucas stripped bare to the bone?
    They loved him. They loved the place he took them. He played a liquid lead, the notes as clear as water; no show-off stuff, no ruffles, no extras, because you only need to do it right.
    He was so good I forgot he was my brother.
    I wondered what my parents would think if they could see him. It would probably make them sad and proud. Sad because Lucas was so into the music, he wasn’t in this world anymore. And proud because he’d found someplace better.
    When he finished the audience clapped and shouted, “All right! All right!” until Lucas couldn’t help himself—he smiled.
    Driving home, he even put on the heater. It smelled funny but it warmed my toes.
    â€œLucas.” We were almost home.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou were fantastic.”
    He grunted but I knew he was pleased.
    My father was waiting up for us, pretending he wasn’t, watching “The Tonight Show,” which he hates.
    â€œHow was the concert?”
    â€œTerrible,” my brother said. “The man’s sold out. But we went to this blues club—”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œIn the city.”
    â€œWhere in the city?”
    â€œDown around Tenth.”
    â€œYou took your sister to a black blues club?”
    â€œNo, Dad! I took her to the Black and Blue Club! It’s an S and M bar! What do you think?”
    â€œCan we all please stop shouting?” I said. “We had a wonderful time and now we’re home safe. So everything’s fine. We had a great time, Dad.”
    â€œBut not at the concert,” he sighed. My father never gives Lucas what he wants, no matter how hard he tries.
    â€œThat’s not your fault,” Lucas said. “The warm-up band was good.”
    I left them watching TV and went into the kitchen. Then we all drank tea and watched some red-haired comedian. She was screaming, “What a world we live in! Rush, rush, rush! If I died right now—which apparently I am!—it’d be a week before I had a chance to lie down! My schedule! I’ve got more irons in the fire than an arsonist at a golf club! But seriously!”
    Dad conked out. Lucas and I kept sitting there. I didn’t want the evening to end. And I didn’t want to fall asleep.
    â€œYou should go to bed. You look tired,” he said.
    â€œI am.”
    â€œYou still having those dreams?”
    Lucas looked at me and I understood why