“You got any antiques I can borrow? I need that tone.”
“I can’t believe you don’t have anything in that music room of yours,” Caroline says. She thinks she’s whispering, but the drugs have her talking loud. “You’d think all that old shit would be useful.”
My collection isn’t any secret in Coopersville; still, I don’t like Caroline mentioning it. Poverty has made Coopersville a dangerous place, and fear of my grotesqueness is the only real protection I have against robbers. If some of these men knew the true rarity of my memorabilia, they might come take it.
“Wait here,” Murphy says. He retreats into the back of the store. Business pretends to go on, only I remain the main attraction. Most are polite enough to glance while a few stand slack-jawed. Finally, Murphy returns with a seafoam-green Stratocaster and small amplifier.
“Seventy-three,” Murphy says. “Will it work?”
I need the whine of a Tele, but I’m desperate. “I guess.”
“Try it out,” Murphy says.
He holds the guitar out like a squire offering a sword. I haven’t played in public for years. Haven’t played with a band since my twenties. All I do is pop my pills and write alone in the house. On a rare occasion, Caroline will get a song out of me. I sweep my eyes over the room. Most patrons have stopped pretending to shop. They stand holding the items they were ready to hock, waiting to see if I’ll do it. I’m afraid, but it’s not the old fear of the spotlight and it’s not fear of failing. If I can do anything, I can play guitar. This is something deeper. A concern that if I let the least bit of oxygen reach whatever embers are still smoldering inside, I’ll feel the old pull like before.
“Why not show off a bit?” Caroline says.
Sounds harmless, but it’s the same as holding sour mash under an alcoholic’s nose.
The amp looks as if it’s been banged in and out of a thousand touring vans. The screen protecting the speaker is full of small holes, but I’ve made do with less. Before The Troubadours, Angela and I begged to use the equipment of bands we opened for. Murphy plugs a cord into the amp.
The guitar won’t fit my body while standing, so Caroline pulls a stool over from behind the counter. Once I’m seated, it happens the same as always, my fingers proving they are the only part of my body that hasn’t betrayed me. While the rest of my genes are hell-bent on destroying themselves, my hands feel noble grasping the rosewood neck. They slide up and down the frets independent of thought, instinctually aware of the right sound to create in the quiet. Music begins to provide, the way it always does, and for one blessed second, I’m not a hunchback playing in a pawnshop. There is no separation between my imperfect flesh and the sublime sounds emitted from the amplifier that crackles out the notes.
The amp has neither distorted channel, nor the vintage whine of the tube amplifiers that provide such voice on my favorite blues albums, but it manages some twang. I drag it along like I’m spurring a horse nearing collapse, force it to create the transition from melody into a solo. Most young musicians are concerned with playing fast, but Angela taught me the real secret is groove. From an early age, she showed me how to slow the tempo and bend the strings until the guitar weeps out a serenade that might scratch the surface of some emotion buried inside any listener. Because that’s all I’m doing when I’m playing or singing a lyric. I’m trying to find the emotional pressure points inside the audience. I’m manipulating you as easily as if I could reach out and caress your skin. That’s all art has ever been. Unlike other manipulation I’ve encountered, there’s something pure about it.
I don’t need to look up from the floor to know the expressions on the shoppers’ faces. It will be the same look of awe that blossoms across Murphy’s. I let the notes dissolve, then slide back into the chorus. Suddenly, I realize what I’m playing. The first song I ever wrote with Angela. We worked all day in the basement of her father’s music store, her acoustic guitar finding the perfect complement to my electric licks. We had no idea the hit the song would eventually become, or what the band we built would go on to achieve. The memories start to hurt, so I strike the final chord and let the amp crackle feedback.
“I’ve always loved that one,” Murphy says. “You don’t write any originals, do you?”
I’ve written most people’s favorites. Of course, I’m contractually obligated to never utter that this song is an original.
Looking at him, I know this will be a story for Murphy. Perhaps not anytime soon, but one day he will be sucking on a beer with friends, swapping tales of strange things they’ve witnessed in their time, and he’ll share about the day a hunchback played guitar in his shop. The listeners wouldn’t understand. Just have a few laughs at the bizarre nature of the tale, but the pawnbroker will keep trying to explain the way he felt. In the end, he won’t be able to manage. It will remain something that only he understands.
THE FAN
Two Days Before the Contamination
When we step outside, the protest is winding down. Signs sag forgotten as most of the college kids stand quietly conversing with one another. Most look bored yet prepared for a few more hours of tepid resistance. The cadence from their singsong chants is gone, replaced by a light breeze that billows through the dirty streets. They’ll drift home soon, proud that they took a stand against corporate greed. Only, the toxic chemicals will still be dumped in vacant mine shafts on the blasted mountains, the groundwater still contaminated by years of sludge pond seepage and other pollutants. This anger was only a gesture to make them feel like they’d done something against the inevitable. That sounds like harsh condemnation, but really, what more could they have done? When you’re as powerless as we are, even a gesture is something to be admired.
One figure moves through the mass of wilting kids. A long-legged man wearing a dark denim jacket, a brown felt western hat pulled low over his face. His boot heels clack on the asphalt as he hands out flyers. Though he is likely among allies, there is nothing friendly in his demeanor as he hands over the pamphlets. It seems an obligation, the sort of unpalatable task that makes a man commune with those he despises. The college kids don’t seem to notice. Most take the papers with a nod. They read with furrowed brows, eyes lingering on the ground as the man moves on to the next cluster of bodies. The cowboy moves fast through the young ones but slows to chat with an elderly couple. He nods in agreement to something said by an old man wearing reflective orange mining stripes on his workshirt. It’s during this conversation that I notice the gun belt slung low on the cowboy’s hip. The wooden handle of a revolver juts from underneath his denim jacket. Plenty of men in Coopersville County wear guns. Even more own at least one rifle for hunting or a shotgun to kill varmints. Still, the fact that he displays it, out for all to see, it reminds me of the sort of men who walk the aisles of grocery stores with assault rifles on their backs. Carrying a gun for self-defense in a dangerous town is one thing. Walking around with one on display seems to be waiting for the opportunity to use it.