One last song before we go to bed

At the end of every line,
you'll find a light so bright,
it could light up the world.
And if you could find at the end of the line,
the light so bright you'll want to stay home tonight.
With a light so bright,
we'll find the right to fight,
for the light so bright at the end of the line.

She heard the tune, while propped up in her bed, at Mersey Place, a rickety facility in upstate New York that catered to those at the end of their lives. A place where stark contemplation took place among the rusty gurneys, IV carts and row benches that at this moment propped up an old Victrola. Someone had come into the room, strapped this Victrola down on to the benches, lifted the jade handle, and dropped the needle onto the shellacqued 78.

It was Marzine's first record with the Moonstruck band.

Mike, Hank Ketchum's oldest son, had made the 400 mile journey to play this, the only existing record of Marzine's career that wasn't burned at the tail end of the Red Scare. Marzine lost her vision a few years before, so she sat propped up with her sunglasses on, and somewhere inside the hunched up 89 year-old's life that was shaped and guided by pain, lay the remnants of the little girl, the wide eyed doe of optimism that had written that song for her father. Hershel didn't visit anymore, and hearing this brought Hershel and his overalls directly into the room, she could feel the thick denim of his overalls, hear his laugh and feel the bristles of his whiskers against her face when at age 13,she was recovering from the chickenpoks.

She fell asleep and into a reverie that walked the fine line between fantasy and reality, fact and fiction, and Hershel's myth and who he was. She felt how it applied to her, and somewhere in her mind, she traveled instantly to the harbors of Shanghai, the labrythinan streets where Hoover's boys almost shot her, how she hopped on a rickshaw and found herself in the rolling fields of New Mexico a few years later. The looming image of her bunker raised forward, as her coal car skittered into the bunker, taking her back to the touring days of the Moonstruck Band, meeting Elvis and the fight with Turfula, the love found in the cradle of absinthe and her sea captain, in the village shaking hands with Bob Dylan, looking at his hair lip as it jumped around when he sang at the Village Tavern that night, where for one hour he owned the world, and Marzine had seen where she had come before him, and how because of her, folk music could now evolve into what she knew it always could be.

Hershel was there with her, smacking his Black Jack gum, but the coal car had other plans and veered off towards the leftward path in the bunker, passing through the blood-stained alleys of the village on that night, the bullets in Ed's demanding torso, the yellow tape, and the sirens that would not end. The coal car's journey continued to China, as the opium based halos of the streets of Shanghai passed by her, and the ratatat of the gunfire passed by before Robert's face came to the surface and the needle of the record finally stopped, and the handle clicked as Marzine lay still, propped up as Mike held out his hand, wiping away the last tears, as she still stunned managed a bloated and groggy "Thank You."