New Strings

A short story. This is a rewrite after I received some valuable feedback from an editor I trust. Hope you enjoy this bitter-sweet tale.

New Strings

I stand in the corner, in shadowed gloom. A venerable old lady. Sad and neglected in my widow’s weeds of dust and cobwebs. He hasn’t touched me for months, not since...! My strings have oxidized and gone black. My frets are as dusty as old railroad tracks. Sometimes he picks me up and cradles me as though he were embracing a woman. He comes to me now, plucks a desultory, out-of-tune chord, sighs, and stands me back in the corner.

Mike left his soul in that beautiful box. God knows! He shed blood and sweat onto its steel strings. Not to mention a few tears.

He remembers they had to live on baked beans for months when he bought me. 4,000 bucks! Hells bells he said! It cleaned him out. But Marie had encouraged him to get me, wanted him to buy me, needed him to do it.

‘You got to have a good guitar, Mike,’ she said. ‘The tone on that Japanese thing sucks _— too thin and jangly.’

‘Yeah, you’re right. But 4,000 bucks?’

‘You like the guitar, don’t you?’

‘Honey! I love it. The tone is so rich and she plays real nice. She’s a dream machine, almost as beautiful as you.’

Marie smiled at that. ‘Buy it!’ she said, emphatically. ‘I order you to buy it. We need a good instrument for recording our songs.’

So he bought me and they lived on baked beans for a while. Marie kidded him that he paid more attention to me than to her. But she was pleased. She loved to listen to him picking, and his playing really blossomed. Furthermore, she needed a professional tone to sing to, one that would complement the golden phrases she conjured out of her mouth. And she had that in me, the thoroughbred that became their workhorse.

She is indeed a magnificent guitar: a Martin D-28, a big bodied acoustic, known as a dreadnought: solid spruce top, turned a rich orange colour with age, with sumptuous East Indian rosewood back and sides. A richly resonant beast of an instrument. She made a hell of a noise in his hands. This noble machine, built by C. F. Martin & Company of Nazareth, Pennsylvania, would resound with gorgeous bursts of fingerstyle that blossomed from his fingers like wild and wonderful flowers; but now, she is reduced to the status of a dust-blown ornament.

Sometimes, at night, when he is lying in bed, the silhouette of the guitar catches his eye. She looks so lonely there, cast off in the corner, as if she were saying, ‘What happened? Why have you forsaken me?’ While his guitar was gently weeping, he would turn over and think about Marie and life on the road. They were going places. Literally. Tonight, Abilene, tomorrow Kansas City, the next night St Louis, and so on.

And I went, too, of course. Without me, it wouldn’t have been possible. After all, Mike had to speak through me to make the music.

He has hardly played me for almost 18 months now. When he picks me up, all he can hear is a golden voice soaring in his mind in perfect counterpoint to the plucking and strumming of the strings. I’m a Martin D28 and he used to play everything on me: ragtime; old country tunes; the blues; a little bit of jazz; neo-classical; Irish and English folk tunes; the Beatles; Bob Dylan, and Mike and Marie’s own songs.

Mike goes to a shelf and pulls out a CD. He stares at the cover: a boy and a girl. The boy holds a Martin D-28, trying to look cool in front of the camera, like Johnny Cash; the girl wears a black cowboy hat and blue jeans like the boy. She is slim and beautiful. Her long hair cascades from her hat in luxuriant chestnut waves over her shoulders. She is smiling at the camera with eyes the colour of desert sands. The legend on the CD reads: Mike and Marie.

He remembers the recording sessions they did for a small independent label in Nashville. Half the songs were their own compositions and half were standards. Somewhere Over the Rainbow was one. He recalls Gerry the sound engineer weeping when he was mixing. ‘She has the voice of an angel!’ Gerry kept saying that as he mixed the tracks.

They launched the CD to some critical acclaim. One writer repeated what Gerry had said. It was published in black and white for all the world to read: Marie Shines has the voice of an angel. They began to get radio play. They trailed round the country singing their songs, promoting their album. It was an adventure out there on the road. They were young, in love, and in the groove with their music. A repertoire and a reputation were being built. Mike and Marie had a bright future.

He is sitting on his bed looking at the guitar, remembering her rich, ringing tones: solid bass response, bell-like trebles and clear, mud-free mid-tones. The guitar is staring back at him. The sound hole resembles an agonized rictus, a mouth screaming. Suddenly, a blackbird flies in the open window. Strangely, it doesn’t flap about the room, panic-stricken, like birds normally do in confined places. Instead, the bird alights straight onto the Martin’s headstock. It stays there for a few moments, calmly regarding Mike. It seems like the bird is appraising him. A musical reflex starts him humming, Blackbird singing at the break of day… The blackbird cocks its head and flies out of the window.

He lies back on the bed, hands clasped behind his head, and ponders this startling event. Was it an omen of some kind? Was the universe trying to tell him something? Perhaps there was no significance to it. A blackbird had simply flown into his room and back out again. Just a random, meaningless event.

However, the next curious thing that happens makes him think the universe is actually yelling at him. On the radio, a song finishes and another begins. Instantly recognizable, it stabs at his heart, sharp as a thrust from a dagger. He picks up the guitar and hugs it tight to his chest. There are tears in his eyes. Somewhere over the rainbow…The voice of an angel swells from the radio, an achingly beautiful soprano that touches his heart and ravages its strings.

On a winter’s night, after a gig in Buffalo, he lost control of the pick-up, and slid off the road into a tree. And that, as they say, was that. No matter how many times he badgered her, Marie was always lax about wearing her seatbelt. For Mike, that was the day the music died.

Mike goes to the window and stares out: a flotilla of clouds drifts down the blue lanes of the sky, and a warm breeze is blowing, teasing the thin green curtains into a gentle dance. Too nice to stay indoors! he mutters to himself.

He leaves his small apartment and goes for a walk in the park, down to the pond with its willow trees weeping along its banks. But he doesn’t feel like weeping with them. Not today! Yesterday, he might have. Today, he has a different feeling. He remembers that he and Marie would often stroll down to the pond and feed the ducks, speak duck language to them, quacking like fools, and then shriek with laughter. On fine days, they would bring the guitar and a picnic. They would gaze into each other’s eyes and play a few tunes.

On the way home, Mike stops at a music store and buys some new guitar strings.