Photo by Jefferson Santos on Unsplash
I jutted my hips to pull my bunched, wet trunks out of my stifled lap.
The two boys were asleep in the back and we rocked quietly, my wife and I, down the canyon road.
I drove barefoot and Julia had her feet flat up on the dash like she used to.
"We should stop at the store," Julia said and broke the thrum of the wind through the windows as she picked at her chipped polish. “I don’t have anything for dinner.”
"Mmm." I turned the radio on to my mix tape. The songs from when I busked.
I sang, "...and the sun got the blues about…," while the radio garbled mid line. I reached out to stop the radio and swung the car into the oncoming lane.
Julia swung us back and turned off the radio. “Eyes on the road.”
I ejected the cassette and its twisted, tangled insides.
"Just leave it,” she said looking at me look at it.
"I'll splice it together." I'd driven this car since they made cassettes. This wasn't my first eaten tape.
"Give it up. Just make the playlist on your phone."
I looked in the rearview to see Ben and Jack slept quietly. "It's just I’ve had that tape – I can’t replace it."
Silence. Winding turn. We swayed and bounced.
"I did always like the guitar bits between the verses on that one," Julia said changing the subject, if slightly.
"The turnaround? Ya," I said, letting her.
I played every one of those songs outside, in the heat and in the rain, guitar case open. I dropped the first $5 in the case as a sacrifice to the songs, and the old guy who wrote them.
"Both boys need shoes," Julia said as she scraped the red on her thumb. "It’s school soon."
I pursed my lips with a glance. Julia worked the old polish diligently and glanced back. The light still shined. Behind her eyes, she was the same and more, but on the surface, she was sapped.
"When we considered the act of making kids," I said. "I never thought we could never consider the act of making kids again." I gave a one-sided smile, looked to her without moving my chin and grabbed her thigh across the console. It's an old joke. But it's ours.
“Stop it,” she said and removed my hand.
Truth is: when we got home, the boys would wake up and run until all of us collapsed for the night.
"They say these are the days. That the good old days are always the days of love and little kids."
"That is what they say," I said.
"Yep,” she said. “Anything from Robinson?”
"Nope.”
“Rent won't pay itself."
The damn tire blew.
I pulled to the shoulder and took the spare from the trunk. Ya, flat. Nothing but dust on the road and no bars on the phone.
"I'll go find something," I said putting on my steel toes and piling the towels and cooler back into the trunk. "Nobody's passed us."
"We'll be here," Julia said and quietly climbed in the back seat between the boys.
I set off down the road to find some sort of help. I pulled my shirt over my head and my wet shorts out of a bunch with a crooked step.
Oaks and Sycamores on each side, I scuffled in the dirt shoulder and kicked rocks as I went. In the silence and beat of my step, I realized it wasn't quiet. The movement and the whistle of the canyon gave me an inkling. That wind ran through the branches like sirens chasing legend. The creek boomed and crinkled down there. Syncopated mocking bird chirps and beeps surrounded me, broken only by the steady thump of my boots.
My mind unattached explored. I heard the world around. I hadn't done much of that lately.
I emerged from the winding canyon to a straight stretch. Ahead was a road t-boned directly into the highway.
An old man in a rusted-out truck watched me, index fingers paradiddling on the wheel - left-right-left-left, right-left-right-right - The old step-side looked abandoned when we passed. It seemed fine now. At the very least, he looked to be an answer to my predicament.
"Ho! Can you offer a little help? I got a flat a way up the road. Left my wife and kids there," I said.
The stranger hit the ignition, smiled, "Hop in."
The engine rumbled.
"I'll need a tire or a tow."
The truck smelled of grease and dirt.
"Not too far up ahead for some help. Want to grab your people?"
"No, they'll be fine while I'm gone,” I said. “They won't fit in your cab, anyway. Let's just get the tire."
"Suit yourself."
Clambering down the winding road, one of the turns revealed a roadhouse with an empty dirt patch for a lot.
"Won't take long," he said. Dirt crackled under the tires as we rolled into that lot.
"I'd like to get my tire. My wife and little ones are waiting on me."
"Won't take but a minute. C'mon in. You can grab a beer."
Rotting wood, sawdust and the stink of old beer held this place together. It was nothing more than clapboard and 8 penny nails.
I loved it. I had spent more nights than I could remember in joints not as good as this.
"I guess a quick one won't make much difference," as I opened the ramshackle door.
Red lights hung across the doorway. A leather padded bar filled one side, some tables and a small stage the other. The glow of beer signs lit the room more than the greasy, smoke covered ballast lights on the ceiling. A guitar wailed in the background. Blues guitar.
The old man ordered two Buds from the solitary bartender and I walked to the back for the pay phone. I spotted the bathrooms but there was a hole in the wall where a phone used to be.
"Hey, you got a phone here?" I asked coming to the bar.
"Just that one," the bartender said.
"That one? Ain't no phone there."
"Phone company come out and took it this morning. Be back tomorrow."
"Car broke down and I need a tire or maybe a tow," I said.
"Zeke here's got the tow truck," the bartender said nodding to the old man.
"He's bad like Jesse James" came rolling out of the juke box. John Lee Hooker moaning and groaning at the bad that people can do in life. Cheatin' and killin'.
Zeke looked up in to the air and listened, turned to the bar and said, "Robert Johnson was always my favorite. Nobody played like him before. Everyone played like him after."
"That's John Lee Hooker on the box, Zeke," said the bartender.
"John Lee Hooker would’ve said the same," the old man Zeke said. "Nobody gets that good without making a choice. Robert Johnson died young. And, he made his choice."
"The Crossroads," I said.
Taking a long pull on my beer, light faded into the bar as a gust of wind pushed the entry door open then clacked closed.
"Fact is, he lost his wife and the baby in childbirth," I said. "Legend says he traded it all for his guitar."
"Did he now?" said Zeke. "Seems I've heard that one."
"Zeke, go out back and get your truck. You picked this young man up," the bartender said. "Left his family on the road. Something bad could happen."
"Come along, then," Zeke said. "We'll see what you got out there."
Zeke headed out the door. I finished my beer in a swallow.
With beer and a grin on my lips, I climbed in the beat-up tow-truck and we rambled on up the road.
With old Zeke driving, I spied around the cab and spotted a guitar behind the seat, "Mind if I play?"
"That's what it's for."
I grabbed the guitar and strummed a few chords just to test out the sound; to get a feel for its personality. No name on it but this was a beauty. Had a shining finish over a natural yellow-tinged spruce top. Dark rosewood sides and back. Really, this was a nice guitar and a lot like what I'd get if I had the chance.
"Where'd you get it?" I said.
"Made it."
"You mean you?"
"Yep. Can't get no good unless you make a bunch and play a bunch," said Zeke.
"Man, that's something I'd love to do."
"What? Make 'em?"
"Sure, that'd be nice but I'd really like to play ‘em all the time."
"Would ya? Funny you say that," as Zeke slowed to stop on a dirt track off the main road.
"I have one of my customers, he lives up off this track - He's always lookin' for players. I mean real players, that play. From here," touched his heart, and grabbed his nuts, "but mostly from here." He stopped. Silence for a beat. Zeke laughed the guttural laugh of old guys that always know more and share less, "Whatchoo got?"
I had been fiddling around and looked up. "Well, here's something I was just messing with the other day," and I broke into a quick lead in melody to a honky tonk beat. Bump ba bump, ba bump ba bump ba... dropped in some details and brought it to a nice turnaround before it started all over again. Bump ba bump, ba bump ba bump ba...
Zeke watched, "Interesting. Maybe I need to show the way."
Zeke took the guitar --Ba bump ba bumm bumm -- and without barely moving his fingers played something that let me know Zeke was there. There to play. All day. Every day. "Maybe you got a little more where that came from, son."
My blood boiled a bit. My fingers lit fire. My heart skipped a beat.
"Now, I'm not saying I do but..." and I broke into the most tear jerking, honk tonkiest, straight down the hill solo you've heard come out of an acoustic guitar in a car by the side of a road, let alone in a club. Let alone in a stadium. You need a wristband to hear someone play like that.
This was more than I had ever played before. Not on the streets and surely not all of the scales I had run at home while the babies slept. All the songs I had run while on a borrowed guitar out in the street. The ache of practicing, the pain of caring. All the stolen moments pushing the strings after I had gotten up in the middle of the night to care for ear aches and shitty diapers, sick spouses and piss on the wall. I laid all of that into this one run, this one time. I left it all behind.
I laid it all right there in the front seat of a '54 Ford pickup with a tow boom to an old man on a dirt road.
"That's something but let’s dig a little deeper," Zeke said.
"Deeper?" I said. "I don't think I have..." and I felt it. That inkling in the back of my mind. Inspiration. If the last bit was a solo, this was a song. Chords are always the same. There are only 12 notes in 4 octaves on a guitar and they never sounded like this. Not to me.
I pushed forward and there it was right there. All I needed. Julia. Ben and Jack. The family I had created. A song of strength and togetherness. Luck of love - a wife with the power of a mother; giving all she had. A family bond with trust and admiration, unbroken. Yes, this song was more than I thought I had and everything I knew I needed. More than scales up and down the neck, this song had a melody. I heard the birds in the trill of the notes. The giggle of my babies and the smile of Julia carried the harmony between my voice and my instrument. No more following the directions of stolid frameworks, I flew through the song on the wings of a nymph. The sirens showed me the way I already knew and just then I remembered my family was in a car on the side of the road, and I stopped.
"That's a lot of time spent. It's a nice song with something to it." The old man smirked through the crackle and smell of a freshly lit cigarette. "If you like, we could run up the hill here and see. Maybe there's a place for you. A chance to use your gift - a time to call your own - an audience out there. Travel. Lots of people could hear you play."
"Who's this guy?" I said.
"Doesn't matter," Zeke said. "Only thing you need to know is he can bring you your audience. He can give you all you need. When you got what you got."
"No, we should get going and get my tire fixed."
"They'll be fine on the road. We can call from his house up the hill. Send out another truck and they'll be good. Your wife and kids, they'll meet us up there."
"Just the same, I'll do it myself. I see that now."
"You don't get a chance like this again, he's just around until he's gone."
"The same could be said for my kids. My wife. My home. I can do it for myself. For my family. Just the same, I'd rather do it myself."
"Suit yourself," Zeke said and put the beautiful guitar behind the seat with a tonk and buzz from hitting the strings on the back of the seat like he had no use for it.
#
Zeke drove us down the road a bit, round a corner and there seated in the back seat of my broken-down heap was my family. Julia sat as Ben and Jack crawled all over her. They all smiled and jumped upon seeing me and my heart jumped the same.
After Zeke changed out the tire and stepped to climb in his truck, he stopped and looked at me. "You never said your name."
About to answer and just as I handed Zeke two twenties, Ben jutted his head out the window of the jalopy, "C'mon, Daddy."
"They call me Dad."
"So you said. Better be gettin' back to it. Rent don't pay itself," and Zeke rolled off down the road.
Julia looked over, "Who the devil was that?"
With many years blending technology and creativity for government and business, Jeffrey Messineo runs an award-winning web shop and is a certificated film geek and former video editor. Find him in Southern California, on twitter @jeffmessineo or jeffreymessineo.com.