I found The Reverend standing in our field, Bible open in his right hand as if about to prophesy to all creation.
“Where have you been?” my father asked.
“Down by the creek.”
“With Mr. Freemont’s guitar?”
“Yes.”
The Reverend’s disapproval always read like apathy. It made me wonder why we bothered speaking at all.
“Has the Lord given you skill?”
Even then, I knew any ability had been acquired through diligence. The belief of inherent talent is false. My earliest attempts were an offense to the ear. Any improvement in art comes the same as in masonry. Building weak walls until the apprentice hones their trade. That’s the great lie that no artist will ever tell you. They need the myth of talent to make them feel chosen and to weed out competition. Teaching myself without even rudimentary materials helped chip away that conceit with every new sound I discovered. Not that The Reverend wanted to hear that. He needed to know if the Lord finally granted me a gift.
“I don’t believe so,” I said.
“I’ve wondered why God has seen fit to give you so little. I’ve prayed on it. I would never question his will, but I long to have understanding. Or lacking that understanding, some sort of peace.”
It’s the most my father ever said on the subject, but by then I didn’t need to hear it. I understood life was largely just a roll of the dice. Lightning must strike somewhere. Waves must break against rocks until they are eroded down, and with enough rain the creek must rise. Some days this randomness is still a comfort. Other times, I wish there was a force I could lash out against. A God to curse instead of whatever internal mechanism inside my body failed to perform. In certain moods, celestial tyranny is still more comforting than poor luck.
“Make yourself presentable,” The Reverend said. He pointed to the mud caked on my boots. “We’re going to town.”
* * *
• • •
The downtown we saw that day didn’t last. In those early years, the main thoroughfare was a constant throb of people, men and women exiting shops with parcels under their arms, wallets lighter than on arrival. Children roved in mischievous packs, laughing and nearly ungovernable now that they finally had concrete underfoot. Lights shone from every storefront and cars belched exhaust on every corner.
Most of those downtown buildings are gone. The department store at the corner of Main burned when I was twenty-five, a mystery blamed on insurance fraud, its remnants looted for copper by vagrants. The Methodist church was eventually abandoned, the windows busted by kids and the pews filled by drifters needing a night with a roof overhead. Other structures endured the sharp decline, but eventually the sort of decay my father liked to preach about seeped in. It wasn’t divine punishment that crippled my home, just the cold economics of a state where energy companies have a monopoly on jobs and a society that has little need for men to toil underground extracting coal anymore. After outside money gutted this place, the mines closed. As I look back on how it was, now Coopersville is only the memory of a town. The streets littered with solemn reminders of what once occupied each corner.
That morning, I watched families shop while The Reverend drove. Mothers in their best dresses, fathers smoking or shoving wads of tobacco into their jaws. Teenagers in stone-washed denim. A few of the rich kids walked with headphones in their ears as if worry were a foreign concept. I sweated at the prospect of exiting the truck. I didn’t want people looking at me.
We made a left turn at the end of Folsom Street and parked in the lot behind Perkins Hardware. The marquee above Carver Music greeted us with its tall, black letters. Even before The Reverend rounded the truck, I knew we were selling the guitar.
“Come on,” he said.
Inside, the display floor was filled with blinding fluorescent lights. Scents of wood polish and wax filled the air. Dented brass instruments hung on the walls as decoration. The shop was laid out in sections. The pianos, both the upright and baby grand variety, positioned near the entrance. Giant music boxes with pools of black wood and elegant ivory keys. I’d never seen anything like them before, and if I concentrate hard enough, I can still feel that distant awe at so much space devoted to tools of creation.
A small man, his shirt pocket overflowing with loose cigarettes, came past the drum kits where cymbals hovered like midnight movie UFOs. Something about seeing him made me realize my true purpose in the interaction. I was a bargaining tool. A sad sight to elicit enough pity that the owner might fork over real money.
“I’m looking to sell this,” The Reverend said. He held out the guitar as if it were something unclean.
“What were you looking to get for it?”
“Whatever it’s worth,” The Reverend said. “We’re putting the money towards my church. Repairs and the like.”
The church comment was also meant to soften the man, but the owner remained unimpressed.
“I ain’t the expert on guitars,” the man said. “Best check downstairs with Eddy.” He pointed to a staircase descending into the basement of the shop.
“Let’s go, son,” The Reverend said.
The carpeting hadn’t been fully installed downstairs. Just cut in long strips and tossed over the concrete. It might have been cream-colored before stains darkened the shade. Guitars hung around us on every wall. Seafoam-green Fenders and sunburst Les Pauls. A blood-red Gibson SG, its body resembling some sort of sleeping bat. I’d never seen instruments like that in person. We had no television or Internet, but I heard plenty of rock on the radio despite The Reverend’s attempt to shelter me from such evil. A man can’t battle all the invisible waves coursing through the air. I remember a profound sadness knowing he wouldn’t let me touch one.
An amplifier hummed at the end of the row, feedback whining as a mustached man sitting on another amp toggled the switches on his guitar. A girl with deep-red hair sat beside him. Freckles dusted her nose and mascara branched from her eyes like some Egyptian princess. Her solid black clothing was covered in patches of various rock bands I’d never heard of. Everything about her felt sharp-edged and violent. Even her boots ended in a long stiletto heel that tapped in time with the music emitting from her fire-red Stratocaster.
Watching, I noticed her fingernails were the color of overripe blackberries. Her plump lips smeared with the same shade. The only women I saw on the mountain were modest girls from my father’s congregation who feared painting their faces and wore dresses that hung shapeless over their bodies. Even if the young runaway look was a staple for rock chicks wishing to be Joan Jett, I couldn’t have imagined a girl like Angela Carver before seeing her.
The man let his fingers hammer on the strings before bending them high. He only stopped playing because my father cleared his throat.