THE PROBLEM WITH THE Traveling Symphony was the same problem suffered by every group of people everywhere since before the collapse, undoubtedly since well before the beginning of recorded history. Start, for example, with the third cello: he had been waging a war of attrition with Dieter for some months following a careless remark Dieter had made about the perils of practicing an instrument in dangerous territory, the way the notes can carry for a mile on a clear day. Dieter hadnât noticed. Dieter did, however, harbor considerable resentment toward the second horn, because of something sheâd once said about his acting. This resentment didnât go unnoticedâthe second horn thought he was being pettyâbut when the second horn was thinking of people she didnât like very much, she ranked him well below the seventh guitarâthere werenât actually seven guitars in the Symphony, but the guitarists had a tradition of not changing their numbers when another guitarist died or left, so that currently the Symphony roster included guitars four, seven, and eight, with the location of the sixth presently in question, because they were done rehearsing A Midsummer Nightâs Dream in the Walmart parking lot, they were hanging the Midsummer Nightâs Dream backdrop between the caravans, theyâd been in St. Deborah by the Water for hours now and why hadnât he come to them? Anyway, the seventh guitar, whose eyesight was so bad that he couldnât do most of the routine tasks that had to be done, the repairs and hunting and such, which would have been fine if heâd found some other way to help out but he hadnât, he was essentially dead weight as far as the second horn was concerned. The seventh guitar was a nervous person, because he was nearly blind. Heâd been able to see reasonably well with an extremely thick pair of glasses, but heâd lost these six years ago and since then heâd lived in a confusing landscape distilled to pure color according to seasonâsummer mostly green, winter mostly gray and whiteâin which blurred figures swam into view and then receded before he could figure out who they were. He couldnât tell if his headaches were caused by straining to see or by his anxiety at never being able to see what was coming, but he did know the situation wasnât helped by the first flute, who had a habit of sighing loudly whenever the seventh guitar had to stop rehearsal to ask for clarification on the score that he couldnât see.
But the first flute was less irritated by the seventh guitar than she was by the second violin, August, who was forever missing rehearsals, always off somewhere breaking into another house with Kirsten and, until recently, Charlie, like he thought the Symphony was a scavenging outfit who played music on the side. (âIf he wanted to join a scavenging outfit,â sheâd said to the fourth guitar, âwhy didnât he just join a scavenging outfit?â âYou know what the violins are like,â the fourth guitar had said.) August was annoyed by the third violin, who liked to make insinuating remarks about August and Kirsten even though theyâd only ever been close friends and had in fact made a secret pact to this effectâfriends forever and nothing elseâsworn while drinking with locals one night behind the ruins of a bus depot in some town on the south end of Lake Huronâand the third violin resented the first violin following a long-ago argument about who had used the last of a batch of rosin, while the first violin was chilly to Sayid, because Sayid had rejected her overtures in favor of Kirsten, who expended considerable energy in trying to ignore the violaâs habit of dropping random French words into sentences as though anyone else in the entire goddamned Symphony spoke French, while the viola harbored secret resentments against someone else, and so on and so forth, etc., and this collection of petty jealousies, neuroses, undiagnosed PTSD cases, and simmering resentments lived together, traveled together, rehearsed together, performed together 365 days of the year, permanent company, permanent tour. But what made it bearable were the friendships, of course, the camaraderie and the music and the Shakespeare, the moments of transcendent beauty and joy when it didnât matter whoâd used the last of the rosin on their bow or who anyone had slept with, although someoneâprobably Sayidâhad written âSartre: Hell is other peopleâ in pen inside one of the caravans, and someone else had scratched out âother peopleâ and substituted âflutes.â
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