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SINISTER

13.

“So what’d you decide about the guitar?”

Garren stood in the Rock Garage showroom. The new guitars stared down upon him from their places on the wall. They were watching. Most likely they were growing envious, too. Not of him, he knew, but of her, because she’d found her home and someone who would love her.

“What do you mean?”

“Are you going to try something else or keep that old guitar?”

“Course I’m gonna keep her,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Okay,” CJ said, his hands up like he was fending off an attack. “Sorry I asked.”

Garren had paced around the showroom waiting for him to finish up with another customer. It was late now, almost closing time.

“I need strings,” he said. “That’s the first step in restoring a guitar, right?”

“Not at all, but what size strings do you want?”

“They come in different sizes?” He scanned the guitars hanging around the room. “They all look about the same length to me.”

“They’re not. Classical guitars have 19 frets. Electric guitars have 21 to 24 frets. Your guitar is a Stratocaster knock off, so it has 22 frets. I’m not talking about length, though. What I mean by size is gauge. How thick do you want your strings to be?”

Garren shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Okay, what kind of music do you want to play? Lots of guys who play Blues like a thick string. Other guys who play – .”

“I don’t know what to call it,” Garren said, then touched his head with the hand that wasn’t clenched around the guitar case’s handle. “I can hear it, though. I’ve been hearing it for days.”

“You hear music in your head?”

Garren nodded, serious.

“You know what they call people who hear music in their heads?”

He stepped back a bit, noticing the way CJ looked at him, like he was wary now and maybe a little scared.

“Musicians,” he said.

“I thought you were going to say crazy.”

“Crazy is a pretty good answer, too. You got an extra smoke on you?”

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t we go outside and burn one, then I’ll teach you how to string your guitar. Good deal?”

“That’d be the second coolest thing to ever happen to me,” he said. “The first being when you gave her to me.”

“I probably caused you nothing but pain and suffering, but time will tell.”

Garren set the guitar case down, careful not to jar the guitar that was inside, then shed his backpack. CJ went to the front doors and secured the entrance. The sound of a metal bolt sinking into its chamber made a loud thud. He flipped a row of light switches off and darkness coated the store. Enough silver light came in from the street to cast an eerie glow.

“We’ll go out back,” he said.

He followed CJ through the store, past the spot where he’d first laid eyes on her, and into a hallway. He passed the restroom’s closed door and saw the room opposite it was open. A metal desk took up most of the space. The wall behind it had pictures of a man playing guitar, each photograph was from a different stage.

“Is that you,” Garren asked, stopping.

“Yeah, from my hey day.”

“You used to be a rock star, that’s cool as hell.”

“Used to be.”

Outside, the wind flowed in from the mountains. It was crisp and cool and it stole the flame off Garren’s lighter. They had to cup their hands around their cigs to get them burning.

“You never really quit these things,” CJ said, “you just switch to OPCs.”

“Switch to what?”

“Other People’s Cigarettes.”

“That’s funny,” he said. “I have no desire to quit, though. I like smoking.”

“Wait until you’re hacking up a giant blood nugget every morning, you’ll wish you’d never started.”

It was good, Garren thought, to smoke cigarettes and talk to somebody. He’d stayed away from the smoking bench at school. Those guys weren’t assholes the way Todd LaFebie was an asshole, but they weren’t exactly friend material either. Some of them already had criminal records.

He leaned against the brick wall and asked, “How long you been into music and stuff?”

“Let’s say forty-five years, give or take six months. I was the drummer in my first band when I was about four.”

“No way, really?”

“Played my mother’s pots and pans while my brother sang,” he said. “We gigged every Friday night until we got sent to bed.”

It felt good to laugh, too, he thought, especially with someone that wasn’t Anthony. “Guess I’m getting started pretty late in the game, huh?”

“It’s never too late to start playing.”

“I don’t want to just start playing,” Garren said. “I want to know everything there is to know about the guitar. I mean everything. Then I want to take it a step further. I want to be the real thing, a real guitar player.”

He watched CJ suck on his cigarette. When he exhaled it came out like a long, sad sigh.

“Do you know how to get the world’s greatest guitar player off your front porch?”

“What would the world’s greatest guitar player be doing on my front porch?”

“Pay him for the pizza and he’ll go away.”

“That’s not funny,” Garren said.

“Do you know the difference between a pan of lasagna and a professional guitar player?”

“I hate lasagna.”

“The lasagna can feed a family of four at least one time. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“That’s not funny either,” Garren said. “You’re saying that professional guitar players go around broke all the time – and delivering pizzas!”

“I rode my guitar all over the world and I’m telling you, it is not easy. You spend your life going from one gig to another, one band to another. One day you wake up and realize your life’s half spent and you don’t even have a steady girl, much less a bank account.”

“I don’t care about any of that,” Garren said.

“I can tell,” CJ said and flicked his butt into the alley. “You got bit hard by a guitar with no strings.”

“Guess so.”

“Only one thing to do, put some size nines on her and teach you how to play.”

Garren drew the last mouthfuls of smoke from his own cigarette and followed CJ back into the store.

“I already know some things,” he said, “like all the open chords.”

The door banged shut behind them, a single, loud drum beat.

“How much do you charge for guitar lessons? I have some money saved, but I was going to use it to buy an amp. I don’t know if I can afford a guitar teacher and an amp.”

“Just grab your axe,” he said, moving behind the counter and sliding a package of strings off the rack.

“Okay.”

He went to his guitar, unsnapped the lid and took her in his arms. He held her awkward shape with both hands, one under her body, the other supporting her neck. He pressed her close to his midsection.

“’Bout how long will it take? I have a long walk and I’ll get in some serious trouble if I’m late.”

“Strict parents?”

“Not strict, no. Just… Different.”

“I’ll give you a ride,” he said.

CJ turned on a lamp and brought a box of tools out from under the counter; Allen wrenches, thin screwdrivers, small bottles of polish and cleaning rags.

“Let me see.”

CJ’s hand was out, waiting to take the guitar, and for a long moment Garren didn’t want to give her to him. It seemed improper, like telling another guy he could hold your girlfriend for a little while.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, feeling like all the blood had slipped out of his face. He handed her over. CJ spun her in the air, a little too fast and a little too rough, and positioned her in the air so that the headstock was far away from his body. He closed one eye and stared down the neck.

“Look at that,” he said.

“What?”

“The neck’s not as twisted up as I thought,” he said. “It’s got a little more bend to it than I like to see, but we can probably fix that with the truss rod.”

Garren stood silent, his throat dry. His breathing had gone shallow. He put one hand on his chest as if checking his heart. CJ took the cap off a squat, yellow bottle, displaying a spongy tip.

“Lemon oil,” he said and pressed the sponge to the neck’s first fret.

Garren leaned in and saw the liquid sink into the wood, like the rosewood was consuming it. CJ darted the sponge across each fret, swiping each spot with oil. When he reached the body of the guitar, the frets near the headstock were dry. The wood had darkened to a rich shade of near-black, revived.

“She’s getting healthy,” Garren said.

CJ flipped the guitar over. He removed the screws from a rectangular piece of plastic and pulled it off the guitar’s body, exposing the cavity that held the bridge and tremolo springs. A thin white wire ran below the two springs on the left, disappearing inside the guitar. The springs and bridge hardware had been silver, but corrosion covered all of it now, giving it the look of a blackened antique.

“The wiring’s new,” he said, pointing. “The rest of it’s a relic, that’s for sure.”

Garren watched CJ drop the new strings into the bridge holes, flip the guitar and feed them, one by one, into the tuning pegs. He tightened them with a plastic wrench, then snipped off the extra with wire cutters. His fingers worked fast and it didn’t take long.

“Let’s see if she sings.”

He trailed after CJ and his guitar to the stacks of amplifiers.

“An old guitar like this needs an old tube amp,” CJ said and connected her to a ratty black amplifier.

“Maybe I should be the one to do it,” Garren said and cleared his throat. “I mean, you gave her to me and she’s mine. So I should be the one to see if she plays.”

CJ’s eyebrows went up, then he held the guitar out. Garren took her, kneeled down so that he could cradle her on one knee. She felt different now, with steel strings where they should be.

“It might help if we actually turn the amp on,” CJ said and flipped the switch.

The sound reminded Garren of a gun’s trigger being cocked. A red light came on in the amp’s controls, a red eye glowing in the darkness. A moment later, as the electricity woke up the tubes and gave them heat, it unleashed a low, electrical hum. Then, with all of the other guitar’s watching, Garren ran his half-eaten thumb across the strings from the thickest to the thinnest. She rang. It was loud and convoluted but, Garren thought, beautiful.

“God, that’s awesome,” he said.

“What do you mean awesome? Nothing’s worse than an out of tune guitar.”

“I knew she’d play, that’s what I mean.”

“Yeah, I’m shocked about that. So tune it up, kiddo, and show me what you know.”

“I’ve never tuned a guitar before,” he said, “and I have to get home, really.”

“Come back tomorrow and I’ll teach you, sound good?”

“Seriously? Yeah, sounds great.”

“So why’d you put new latches on the case?”

“What are you talking about?” He glanced over at the guitar case on the floor. The silver latches each reflected a tiny bit of pale light.

“I didn’t.”

“Oh, really?”

“They’re the same ones it came with.”

“You’re a very strange kid,” he said. “I like that in a guitar player.”

* * *

Thanks to CJ’s ride, he made it home in time to avoid punishment. He’d fidgeted on the drive, gnawing the tip of his left thumb while CJ rattled off jokes about guitar players. Once inside his house, he slid the guitar under his bed, hiding it like contraband. Then he’d showered and sprawled on top his comforter, his hair still soaked. One thought raced around his mind…

My guitar has strings.

The guitar, he thought, would live. No, the guitar was already alive. Just like he’d known she would be.

My beautiful guitar has new strings.

He kept his backpack beside him and he dug two books out of it, Music Theory for Advanced Students and the leather bound book that had come with his guitar. He opened the black book first, fanning its pages to a random spot in the middle:

Today’s practice:

Name the note exercise – 15 mins. did really good

Finger Strength exercise – 20 mins

Picking exercise 1 / up strokes only – 2 mins

Picking exercise 2 / up down on alternating strings 2 mins

Chords / Barre Chords / Progressions – 1 hour

Scales and arpeggios / 2 hours

Original composition / 5 hours

 What a good idea, he thought, to keep a practice journal. Her previous owner had been pretty dedicated. After his warm ups he’d worked for 8 hours, most of that on original music. Impressive. Garren flipped ahead to see if enough blank pages remained for him to add his own practice hours to the book. He found one page that was almost empty. It read:

She hurt me today.

The words were black pencil on a yellowed sheet. He immediately thought that the guy, whoever he’d been, must have had a girlfriend and that she’d done something to hurt his feelings, like tell him she didn’t like him anymore. It had interrupted his practice schedule, so all he put in his journal that day was that four-word note. He flipped to the next page:

Sometimes she loves me, I know it’s true.

Sometimes she hates me, that’s true, too

Sometimes I hate her back

But not enough to ever let her go

We all reap – what we all sow

“Cool as hell,” he said.

He read it again, savoring the cadence of the lyrics. Too bad the guy had never completed it. Or maybe it was finished? The sloppy handwriting was in the center of the page, so maybe that was all there was? He heard their car then, parking in front of the house, his parents. He licked his lips, his tongue running over dry, chapped spots, and listened. The back door opened and his mother entered first. He knew her footsteps, waitress shoes against hardwood. His father’s work boots made hollow, heavy thuds behind her. They entered the kitchen. The refrigerator door opened and closed. A moment after that, his father opened his door.

Garren sat up in bed. He wore only underwear, ratty white briefs, and wished he’d been under the covers. The man – the daadee ¬– stood in the doorway, a bottle of beer in one hand that was stained with black grease or motor oil. The man looked at him, mute.

Garren kept his expression neutral, keeping all emotion out of his face. The man’s silent stare could mean a lot of different things. As his unblinking eyes scanned for provocation, Garren imagined saying Learn to knock before you come in my room and dismissed the thought in half-a-second. What a shit storm a comment like that would unleash. Probably end up in the basement until the black eyes healed. No, probably worse…

“Got work tomorrow,” the man said. “Need you on the job, so don’t stay up readin’ all night.”

Garren said, “Yes, Sir.”

The man nodded. Stared another moment. Then slashed at the wall, turning off the light and shut the door. In the darkness, with the sounds of his parents moving about outside his room, he felt something like mourning, a grief for everything that was his life.The assholes at school who tortured him. The teachers who ignored it and, therefore, encouraged it. Mostly, for the parents he’d been born to and how they made everything miserable, especially the daadee. The daadee drove that heaviness into him like nothing else because he knew the daadee’s goal was to make life unbearable.

His narrow mattress was aged. Its springs had little resistance left in them and he sank into the bedding as he stretched out, legs pointed toward the far corners. Dread filled him. It was a physical sensation, like he’d guzzled ice water and chilled his insides. Usually, when he felt himself slipping away, he reached for his journal. The dayscenes purged him, but tonight he only waited. He stared into the darkness, waiting, nibbling on the edge of one pinky finger until it hurt and he tasted blood.

Then, when the house was quiet, he slid off the bed and kneeled on the floor. Tiny bits of debris dug into his knees as he inched the guitar out of hiding. He pressed the latches, careful to catch them with his fingers so that they didn’t make a sound when they flipped open. He raised the case’s lid. The guitar lay in front of him, curved and sleek. Even in the dark, he could see the damage to her wood. Her scars were her glory, he supposed.

He lifted her from the case, gentle, then eased back to sit on the floor and held her, stroking the body, accepting comfort from it. And in his mind the music flowed, an intense wail of melody, an entire symphony from one guitar. She was made to sing, he thought. No, a guitar like this wasn’t made. She’d been born. He leaned over her, wrapped one hand around her horn tight and pressed her against his abdomen.

He whispered in the dark, “I hear you.”

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