SHE COULDN’T BRING herself to move.
“Just lean back. Trust the rope. This is the scariest part.”
The shape of his body in the moonlight reassured her. Nick wouldn’t put her in danger. Day leaned back into the rope, letting some of it out. Abruptly, with the stomachflying sensation of a roller-coaster ride, she was upside down, her feet up by the ledge, her head and shoulders in blackness, the wall cold against her back. Day hung in the dark, her heart racing.
Nick’s voice came from above her. “Are you okay?”
“I’m upside down.” Since she wasn’t going anywhere, it actually felt fun, but she was sure it wasn’t supposed to happen.
“I know. The Austrians do it that way. See if you can bring your feet down the wall.”
Soon she was in the right position, leaning back in space with her feet on the wall. The beam of her headlamp shot white light over the marble wall of the quarry. Letting some rope slide through her brake hand, she descended a few steps, walking down. It worked just as Nick had said. Easy to stop.
Adrenaline raced through her as she lowered herself farther into the black vault, moving out over a ledge where marble had been removed. She watched her boots in the circle of light from her headlamp, then trained it below. The ground was less than a hundred feet down.
Depressing reality crept over her.
Too soon she reached the ground.
Day touched one foot down, then the other, on sand and marble talus. Getting her bearings, she discovered that the ground extended twenty feet or more from the wall, running the length of the entrance. Beyond lay water, giant slabs of marble and wooden catwalks.
It was a wondrous place, a giant’s cathedral of stone.
She remembered Nick.
Directing the beam onto her harness, she unscrewed the gates on the carabiners and freed the rope. The belay plate fell to the ground and she picked it up and tied it to the end of the rope, knotting the cord twice.
“On rappel,” she whispered. “Rappel off.” She yelled it. “Rappel off!”
Her voice echoed through the quarry.
The rope went up, slowly at first, then rapidly.
After a moment, she saw Nick’s silhouette far above her, looking over the ledge.
He said, “Are you okay?” More echoes.
“Great. How do we get out?”
“There’s a shaft. We’ll walk to it. I’m going to lower our packs.”
He lowered the packs and ski poles, which she untied. Then he rappelled down and stood beside her. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
Nick unfastened the rope from his harness. “Was that fun?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes were shining. But as soon as they met his, she looked away, down, and he could only see her lashes against her cheek.
Emotion avalanched through him.
“Stand back. I’m going to pull the ropes down.” He’d rappelled using both tied together with a Flemish bend, so that he could slide the length out of the anchor at the top.
They backed away from the wall, and he pulled on one end of the tied ropes. The other half came free at the top and snaked down, falling in a heap on the ground, sending soft echoes through the quarry. While he untied and coiled the ropes, Day asked, “How many times have you been here?”
“Five or six. They took the marble for the Lincoln Memorial and for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier out of this quarry.”
Day had never seen either monument. The farthest she’d ever been from Moab was the Grand Canyon.
Nick packed their gear and took off his harness. Even without her gloves, Day had trouble with the knots in hers. Her hands grew cold.
“Here.” He helped. “Put your gloves back on.” She did, her stomach hot. Nick… Day closed her eyes, aching. I love him so much. How can I ever get over him?
Nick put on his own gloves, stowed all the equipment and helped her with her pack. Carrying all four ski poles in his left hand, he reached for hers with his right. “This way. Be careful.”
His hand swallowed hers as he led her over a narrow wooden catwalk with a wire railing.
“Hold on to the wire.”
She did. Alongside the narrow plank, ice floated in the water, water cold enough to die in. Day clung hard to his hand, followed the bobbing light beam and his tall form until they rounded a corner of marble, and moonlight shone down a wide slanted shaft littered with marble talus and boulders. When she saw the path out of the quarry, Day released a breath.
Nick squeezed her hand and drew an extra breath himself. Why did I bring her here? Why did I do this to both of us?
The shaft opened out onto a snowy plateau, a parking area for quarry trucks. Slipping off her pack to put on her snowshoes, Day admitted, “You know, I was a little nervous we were going to be trapped in there.”
“Don’t trust me?”
Day recognized the question’s undercurrents. He didn’t
believe she trusted him to make decisions at Rapid Riggers. “There’s no one I trust more, Nick.”
Nick fastened on his own snowshoes, chastened by her answer. He didn’t deserve her trust.
THE RENTALS and borrowed climbing rope had to be returned in the morning, so they stopped in Redstone and got a cabin for the night.
There were two rooms. Nick took the couch, Day the bed, and when she had stripped down to her camisole and panties and slipped between the sheets, she listened to him running water in the bathroom. Walking around. Cracking a window.
From the other side of the door, she imagined his body. She knew his wildness, his absolute virility. She knew the scope of what he had to give. How would another man, an ordinary man, be enough after Nick?
She tried talking to herself as a friend—or a therapist—might. It will happen. Just trust, Day. He’s hurt you. He’s used you. What he’s given you is crumbs, and you deserve a banquet.
It didn’t help.
She could remember sleeping next to him, even the first time, on a river trip when she was seventeen. She’d snuck into his tent, and after they’d made all they could of the waking hours, he’d turned her back to his chest and whispered, Sleep with me this way. It feels good.
Bundling the sheet against her lips, Day shut her eyes, shut out the world, trying to keep from crying. The truth was in her heart. He never used me. It never was crumbs. It never was cheap. It was always love, and it was beautiful.
It was also over.
WHEN THEY REACHED Grand Junction the next day at noon, Bob was in surgery. He’d had another seizure and stopped breathing, and the surgeons had gone back in to take pressure off his brain. Nick and Day sat down to wait.
At about three, weary of the strain of being with Nick and yet not with him, Day found a pay phone and called Grace to tell her where she was and what she’d been doing.
“You rappelled into the Marble Quarry at night? In winter?”
Taken aback, Day said, “It was wonderful.”
“It’s dangerous! That’s incredibly dangerous. Nick knows better than to do something like that.”
A lump swelled in Day’s throat. It was special. It’s all I have, Grace. That and seeing him first thing in the morning and remembering when we were lovers. She wiped at a tear on her cheek. “I had fun.”
“Good.” Day heard her sister catch her breath. “I’m glad you’re all right.” Grace paused. “Are things better with Nick?”
“No. Nothing’s changed. It’s not going to. He’s leaving for Salt Lake tomorrow.”
Grace said, “I’m sorry.”
Day said, “I’m not.”
THEY LEFT GRAND JUNCTION at five, after Bob had been out of surgery for an hour and they’d been allowed to see him. Still in a coma.
Nick drove Day to her house, though her bicycle was still at Rapid Riggers. When he stopped the Suburban beside her mailbox, she said, “Thank you, Nick. For taking me to the quarry.”
“You’re welcome.” He couldn’t stand thinking about it. Or about how she’d looked in the morning when he’d peeked into her room. Day in bed.
She was opening her door. “Have a safe trip, Nick.”
“Thanks.”
They parted without an embrace. Without the word goodbye.
NICK RETURNED to Grand Junction the next morning to see Bob again before heading for Salt Lake. He sat with his friend as often as the staff would allow and told Bob’s unconscious body about rappelling into the quarry with Day. “She did good. You would’ve been amazed. She leans back to rappel, and all of a sudden I’m looking at the soles of her boots.” Nick laughed, remembering, then frowned at Bob’s motionless face with the ventilator mask over his mouth and nose.
As he listened to the rhythmic whooshing of the breathing machine, Bob stirred, rotating his head a few degrees.
Nick’s heartbeat sped as he rose slowly from the chair. “Bob, it’s Nick. Come on.”
Bob’s eyelids fluttered. As he moved one arm, the alarm on the ventilator went off, beeping loudly. Nurses rushed in, and Nick stepped back as they worked, listened as they spoke to Bob, explained where he was, what had happened to him.
NICK SPENT THE night camped at Colorado National Monument. When he returned to the hospital in the morning, they were extubating Bob, taking him off the ventilator. After that, he could talk, with great difficulty. He spoke little, in a laryngitis voice, and he couldn’t remember who he was, who Nick was. He was terribly confused, and at the first sign the patient was tiring, a nurse banished Nick from the room.
When she came out later, Nick said, “He can’t remember stuff. Things I said two minutes before.”
“It’s posttraumatic amnesia. This is the next stage.”
“How long does it last?”
She lifted her shoulders. “That’s always the question.”
Susan and Grace arrived at the hospital soon afterward, saying that Day was busy at the office.
Right. We all know it’s the height of the season.
Nick didn’t blame her for avoiding him. He was relieved she had.
Leaving Bob to other hands and hearts, he headed for Salt Lake. He had already contacted friends there and located a place to live, a house with two other EMTs, both ambulance attendants who spent every free hour skiing. He had his own tiny room, but there was also a screened gazebo in the backyard, and the two lovers of the outdoors did not find it unusual that he often chose to sleep there.
He studied intensively, medical terminology and pathology for paramedics, and he volunteered on a city ambulance, earning training hours. There were coeds all over campus and a few pretty women in his classes, but he declined invitations to study over coffee, to grab a beer after class.
Shep had been his last casual relationship. Bob’s accident had changed him, changed his priorities. What if it had been him, instead of Bob? What if he died suddenly? He didn’t want his tombstone to read, HERE LIES NICK COLTER, WHO CLIMBED MOUNTAINS, ROWED RIVERS AND MADE MANY WOMEN CRY.
He drove to Grand Junction to see Bob two weekends in a row. His friend had left the stage called posttraumatic amnesia—apparently a good sign. But as far as Nick was concerned, Bob was still a complete mess, having difficulty with the most basic functions, with eating, with speech. On both visits, Nick ran into Fast Susan. In the hospital cafeteria after one brief visit, she poured her worries into his ears.
“What if he can’t work again? What’s going to happen to him? Who’ll pay for his care?” Susan had moved Bob’s things out of the place he rented, taken them to her house. No one knew when he would be able to live alone again.
Nick told her, “We’ll work it out, Susan.”
He’d pay Bob’s bills, bring him to live with him, if it came to that. Bob was a good friend. On one memorable day in Chile, they’d reached five different summits together. Nick didn’t plan to abandon him on this mountain. Anyhow, if he had to leave Rapid Riggers, had to leave Moab, it would be good to take one friend with him.
But no matter how he tried, Nick couldn’t imagine leaving Moab forever.
When he had been in Salt Lake for a month, Grace called. His roommate Jack summoned him to the phone.
After greetings Grace said, “I wanted to let you know that the lip-sync contest is the Saturday night of Presidents’ Weekend. It’s a benefit for Bob, for his hospital bills.”
“Thanks for telling me. I’ll try to be there.”
“Also, Zac and I are getting together some people for a backpacking trip in March. We’re going to the Maze. Think you could get away?”
Nick hesitated. He had a break then. But Grace was Day’s sister. Too close. “I’ll let you know.” He heard a British-accented voice in the background. It didn’t sound like Zac. “Is Pip still there?”
“Actually yes. He’ll be here for another week or so, and I think he’ll be back in the spring for the grand opening.”
Nick’s housemates were drinking beer in the living room, just feet away, so he schooled his features. “Well, maybe I’ll see you at the lip-sync.”
When he’d hung up the phone, he wondered whether or not to go, whether it was too soon to see Day. She would be on that stage. She always was.
And she almost always won.
Nick edged around the kitchen counter to see the calendar beside the phone. The lip-sync contest was one of the best parties in Moab. But it was more fun to be a participant than just a spectator. Impulsively he picked up the telephone receiver and dialed the River Inn.
“Hey, Grace. It’s Nick again. Is Zac around?”
WHILE HE WAS in Salt Lake, Day kept busy.
She visited Bob in Grand Junction at least once a week and cycled to work daily. Saturdays she told stories at the library, Tuesday afternoons at the museum. By the second week in February, Day tried to convince herself she was healed, almost over Nick. If she could just meet the right man, she’d be completely cured.
Unfortunately the right man hadn’t yet materialized. And Rapid Riggers worried her. She lacked Nick’s physical strength, and she couldn’t do his job. When the new rafts and life vests had arrived, she’d had to call Zac, and he and Pip had driven over and helped her move everything to the equipment shed.
Pip was back in England now, and Day was glad. Whoever waited in the wings to cure her of Nick Colter, it wasn’t Zachary’s brother.
The Friday evening before the lip-sync contest, an Anasazi pottery exhibition opened at the Moab museum. Archaeologists were scheduled to present a slide show and lecture, and Day had been asked to tell a Native American myth.
For the evening she selected a Southwestern-style outfit, a blanket jacket with silver conches on it, boots, suede pants, and silver and turquoise jewelry. She reached the museum early and had time for a coffee with Verna, one of the museum volunteers, in the gift shop. Verna was flipping pages in a new collection of Navajo myths, with Day reading over her shoulder, when Zac and Grace arrived. They waved to Day as they headed for the refreshment table.
Verna shut the book. “It’s a nice one, don’t you think?”
“Yes. I’d like to buy a copy. Will you hold one for me, Verna?”
Leaving her friend, Day slipped out into the main section of the museum. The stunning brick building was just a few years old. Indoors, the architecture was modern, with cream-colored walls and displays and a curving staircase leading up to a mezzanine. Rows of chairs arced in a semicircle in the back of the main room, facing a lectern and slide screen.
When Day joined them, Grace and Zachary were peering into a display case at an Anasazi basket found by some local children. With her jeans and denim vest, Grace wore hand-tooled red cowboy boots identical to Day’s.
“Geared up for tomorrow night, cowgirl?” Day asked her sister.
Zachary winked at Day. “I like those costumes.”
“Why haven’t we seen yours?”
Grace’s eyes slid toward Zac’s, and she smothered a smile. “You will.”
“Is this a solo act?” asked Day.
“No, as a matter of fact,” Zac said. “You’ll just have to wait till tomorrow night to find out more.”
The lip-sync contest would be held at the Dry Gulch Saloon. Dress rehearsal was at three the next day.
“Hi, guys.” Fast Susan stirred some powdered creamer into coffee in a plastic-foam cup. “I just saw Bob at his new place, the rehab center.”
“How is he?” Day had seen him Wednesday at the hospital. She still hadn’t gotten used to the change in Bob, that someone who had once been so vital and sharp could now have so much trouble just speaking.
Susan sighed. “Not too good. And as if he’s not having enough problems, he’s worried about money and work.”
“He’ll always have a place at Rapid Riggers,” said Day.
Everyone was sober. No one knew if Bob would ever row boats again.
They sat in the third row, and the program director introduced an archaeologist from the University of Utah.
“We’re going to start our presentation,” the archaeologist said, “with an educational film on pot hunting, which should also help to explain the value of a professional dig.” The sound track began with a somber flute melody, and a female narrator’s resonant voice set the tone, hinting at history buried in the land, talking about the Ancient Ones who had made their homes in the Four Corners centuries before, then mysteriously vanished. Why did they leave? The answers lay in the land. The history belonged to all, but it was being stolen…
The film panned over an Anasazi ruin that had been plundered with a backhoe. Day was sickened by the sight. Unfortunately pot hunters were, at least in part, the product of twenty-percent unemployment in some of the southern counties. And many pot hunters had been born into families who’d always dug for artifacts. Even Day’s father had amassed an arrowhead collection of his own, which she and Grace had donated to the museum after his death. Removing artifacts from public lands had been illegal since the turn of the century, but it was only recently that the public had begun to respect the issue.
Nothing in the film was news to Day. As an outfitter, it was part of her obligation to see that passengers on trips were taught to respect the natural resources of the area. That included archaeological sites.
When the lights went on, the archaeologist discussed possible explanations for the disappearance of the Anasazi. It was the oldest question of the Four Corners, and Day was bored until he said, “Findings of New Mexico archaeologists suggest that during the period from A.D. 900 to 1200, the Anasazi may have practiced ritual cannibalism.”
He explained that recent excavations had uncovered burned human bones, the ends polished from hours of simmering in a cook pot and bones scored with fine cut marks. They had been processed the same way the Anasazi butchered and cooked antelope and prairie dog.
Beside Day, Grace whispered, “Wow. This changes a person’s picture of the Old Ones, doesn’t it?”
When the program director introduced Day, she took her place in front of the podium, where she could use her hands and her body in the telling of the tale. Facing her audience, she panned the faces.
Nick was in the back row.
He winked at her.
Day forced her eyes to move on. Nick. Had he come back to Moab to attend the lip-sync contest, for Bob? Why had he come here? He wasn’t interested in archaeology.
He came to hear my story.
She told it for him.
With a smile she introduced the Pueblo folktale “The Man Who Married the Moon.”
“Now, Na-chu-rú-chu, whose name means‘the bluish light of dawn,’ had no parents. The Trues themselves created him, and his powers were second only to theirs. He was a weaver, and he possessed remarkable gifts of healing, but besides all this, he was tall and strong and handsome, and the girls of the village thought it a great pity that he didn’t take a wife…”
Nick listened with reverence. When Grace and Zac had told him what was happening tonight, he couldn’t stay away; he’d wanted to hear her story. He hadn’t planned to see. a film defaming pot hunting.
The story helped take the film and the slide-show images from his mind.
“The most determined of Na-chu-rú-chu’s admirers were the Yellow Corn Maidens. The Corn Maidens possessed every gift of grace and beauty—and magical powers, as well. But they used their magic for evil. They were witches…”
As she told the tale, Day addressed all the listeners. But the one who really mattered to her was Nick. His arms were folded across his chest, his eyes closed, and he seemed as peaceful as he had the night they’d rappelled into the Marble Quarry.
Why did you come? Why did you come?
The moment her story ended he got up and left, and the fact of his presence and abrupt departure played a cruel trick on her.
It made her hope.
THE RIVER ROAD took him home along the Far Far Below River, past the campgrounds on the shore, past the wall of red rock Bob had hit to the sandy track leading to his land, his spot at the edge of the Colorado.
He turned down that path with a sore heart. He’d always dreamed of building a home here where the trailer sat. A place with lots of windows. Now it shamed him that he had bought this land with money from stealing pots.
Everyone at the museum tonight had been in accord with the archaeologists. As a child in Covenant in southern Utah, Nick had understood something different—that public lands belonged to the public. Pot hunting wasn’t stealing; it was taking what was yours.
His second foster father had told him that. Nick could barely remember the first. He’d been with that family only days, and he must have done something that disturbed them, but no one ever told him what. The second family took in foster kids for the money. They never said so, but Nick could tell. He had run away in the end, after more than a year, and there were gaps in his memory. He didn’t know why he’d left or who had found him. In the third home, the man had taken off his belt once, and that was enough.
It wasn’t until he met Sam Sutter that Nick knew he’d been taught wrong, about a lot of things. He hadn’t agreed with Sam about the pots. There were times in childhood he’d never had a cup or a spoon, and the Old Ones had left dishes everywhere. Nick loved the primitive people who had been so civilized. He liked their houses and the things they made. That they stored food. They might have been his own ancestors, and the treasures he found had seemed like gifts to him.
Till recently.
The trailer smelled stale and enclosed, so he decided to sleep outside. He took logs from the lean-to beside the trailer and arranged them in the fire pit and returned inside for kindling and matches. Crouching in the dirt, he touched the match flame to newspaper and watched the sparks fly.
As he let the blaze heat his body against the frosty night, he remembered Day’s story of Na-chu-rú-chu and the Moon, whom he took for his wife. After the wedding, the jealous Yellow Corn Maidens drowned her and buried her. But Na-chu-rú-chu picked a flower from the earth over her grave where she lay and set it between two mantas he had woven. Singing to her and shaking his gourd, he made her body grow from the single blossom and brought her back to life.
More pleasant than doing CPR on the dead.
Nick liked the magic in stories. The enchantments of Arthurian legends. The magic of Day’s Pueblo weaver. If Nick had known magic like Na-chu-rú-chu, things would have been different with Kelly. In the firelight he saw fuzzy memory, her little face with her flattened nose and malformed lip, the kind of lip people had named for a rabbit.
Did anyone ever fix it, Kelly? Or did he lie to me?
Later, when he laid out his ground cloth and mattress and sleeping bag, it was Day’s face that came into his mind. Nick let himself imagine her slim white body and her laughter, her clothes that were all the colors of daylight, of the world outside, like a garden of flowers. Her arms around him, stroking his hair. Caressing his scars. She’d done that the first time, when they were teenagers figuring out sex together. She’d touched him with her hands and with her lips. Nervous, he’d said, What are you doing?
Unhurting you.
He shut his eyes, missing her.
THE BACK ROOM of the Dry Gulch Saloon was the women’s dressing room for the lip-sync contest. Beside shelves lined with empty kegs and cases of beer, Day readjusted her chaps over the suede bikini she wore, being careful not to smear her blue body paint.
In the bar the Talking Heads played. It was Bess Gordon’s act. She was a fifth-grade teacher whose lip-sync group, the Benders, always participated in the annual competition.
Fast Susan cracked her bullwhip experimentally, and Shelley Gonzalez, a seasonal ranger at Dead Horse Point, said, “Yahoo!”
Grace peered out the door. “It’s packed out there.”
Day wasn’t surprised. Though the cover charge of six dollars was a little steep, everybody knew it was for Bob and wanted to help. Day had seen people putting twenties in the hat.
She wondered where Nick was. The hope she’d fell the night before had turned to frustration when he hadn’t even stopped in at Rapid Riggers all day. When she’d arrived at the Dry Gulch with Grace and Susan earlier that evening, she’d spotted his truck in a far corner of the lot, but she hadn’t laid eyes on him.
“So, Grace,” said Susan, “why wasn’t Zac at the dress rehearsal? Doesn’t he have an act?”
“He has a secret, and I may as well warn you, my husband does not like to lose. They’re going to give us a real run for our money.”
The Talking Heads song ended, and the bar erupted in applause.
“We’re on,” Grace said, picking up her rope.
Susan cracked her bullwhip again.
Day straightened her hat.
In the next room the emcee, Bud from Wild Whitewater Expeditions, said, “And now, the Blue Cowgirls!”
WATCHING THE STAGE from just outside the broom closet—the men’s dressing room—Nick willed his hard-on to go away. It would destroy the effect of his costume.
But he couldn’t take his eyes off Day. Her attire was nothing unusual for the lip-sync. It shouldn’t have bothered him or made him feel like dragging her off the stage and wrapping her in a sheet.
He wasn’t crazy about the song she’d picked, either. “My Baby Thinks He’s a Train”?
Beside him Zac said, “I don’t know how Day will like England. We sure don’t have anything like this.”
Nick spun his head. Zac’s eyelashes were blacked with mascara, his dark hair covered with a dishwater-blond wig. His stage experience had come in handy. With makeup and costuming, he had transformed them both. They’d put together their act in two days of practice upstairs at the River Inn, with Grace standing by as coach.
But this was the first Nick had heard about…”England?”
“Oh. It’s nothing.”
England?
On stage Grace swirled a lasso over her head. Nick’s eyes flowed past her to the insides of Day’s blue thighs, showing where her chaps were open. No. Day wouldn’t go to England to see Pip. Trying to sound like it didn’t matter, he asked Zac, “So, what? Is she going to visit your brother?”
The crowd howled as Grace lassoed sixty-year-old outfitter Carl Orson.
Zac smiled indulgently. “Visit? No. Come on, let’s go get our props and the rest of our band. We’re on.”
The cheers for the Blue Cowgirls were deafening. Day doffed her hat, along with Grace and Susan, then exited the stage in single file with them, heading down into the crowd to watch the other acts.
Lew from Current Adventures wrapped his arm around her and held a beer in her face. “Congratulations, MayDay! To the lip-sync queen of Utah!”
Laughing, Day freed herself and helped herself to one of the beers that Jackie, a waitress friend of Susan’s, had brought them.
Boatman Bud took his place at the mike in top hat and tails. “And now, as a special treat this evening, in honor of Dirty Bob, we bring you straight from Atlanta, Georgia, his favorite duo and their band—the Indigo Girls!”
Whistling and screams shook the floor, and Day watched two high-school teachers and a woman who worked at the state liquor store walk on stage and take their seats with a drum, a cello and an electric bass. They were all members of the community theater. Two very tall women in flannel shirts and jeans, carrying acoustic guitars, followed them.
Susan said, “I think we’ve been outclassed.”
“They haven’t done anything yet,” Day grumbled. She hated to lose. Especially to Nick. “I can’t stand it when he cross-dresses.”
“I love it.” Grace panted exaggeratedly at her husband.
A woman’s sandpaper-rough Southern drawl came over the speaker, and Nick lip-synced perfectly with the words. “We came here tonight for our friend Bob, and we want to play his favorite song for him, so he can watch it on video while he’s mending.”
Day’s jaw dropped. “How did they do that? That really sounds like one of the Indigo Girls.”
“Zac,” said Grace. “That was his voice. Can you believe it? Isn’t my husband the best actor in the world?”
As the high-school teacher at the drums began his perfect movements, in sync with the music, the voices of the Indigo Girls filled the bar, singing Bob’s favorite song.