I wasn’t in too much of a rush that day. The world was in a lull, so why should I be any different? It was dim; that overcast kind of day that exhaled a breeze somewhere between summer and winter. I noticed the city was quieter than usual, too. The streets sounded muted. The traffic lights dull. This was the worse time of the year. I never knew what to wear. I kept putting my gloves on and taking them off again. Coat goes on, coat comes off. I’m sure you know what I mean.
I walked my usual route home from work. I just got text-dumped by Jessica on my lunch break that afternoon. That’s two years and three months I’ll never get back. She certainly thought a lot about me to text- I suppose a phone call is too much to ask for nowadays. Texting was so much cleaner, so much neater: no messy public outbursts, no arguing, no pleading, no excuses; just small bits of information for you to cut your throat on as you’re swallowing them. The way things were going I’m not sure that I’d want her or those years back anyway. Sure, I could try to fix things; be the man she always wanted, but what was the point? As it stood, it was just another Friday night starring me down. Maybe some frozen pizza and M. Night Shamalan tonight. I didn’t want compassion or company, I just wanted to be left alone and blot the world out of my mind for awhile. People always have the same stupid advice anyways. Better to have loved and lost… If you love something then set it free… A bird in the hand... I’ve got your bird right here.
I turned the corner on my usual path. I almost went headlong into a pole, but teetered on the edge of the curb. A strong breeze might just be enough to blow me into traffic. Walking close to the street was sort of a hobby of mine. It always gave me a false sense of excitement that was just enough to keep me busy. It was a cheap thrill in a grey world. A few fall leaves brushed past my face. The leaves this time of year always reminded me of my life in general: a month ago so full of life and promise, a few days later wilting and blown away. That was always the way; all is vanity, or as I like to say it: everything turns to shit. Straight A’s mean nothing to the guy you’re delivering a pizza to. Hell, even a high IQ can’t keep a woman from walking away. Those leaves mocked me as they fell, reminding me that my life was just as pointless and short as theirs, good for nothing but to be trampled on as soon as you’re down. The real problem wasn’t just that life was pointless, but that it was also ugly. Same grey sky, same brown leaves. Same kids starving in some country I couldn’t find on a map, same families and relationships being torn to shreds. Real beauty couldn’t exist in a world of pointlessness and vain suffering. The same held true for my life- one pointless ugly day heaped on top of another until I wither up like those leaves and die. No beauty there, just some good ol’ fashon’ reality. My life was your classic existential dilemma.
Another vagrant’s cry went up to the gods in front of me. I didn’t think that it’d rank very high with all the other important prayers going on in the world. This guy just wanted whiskey. Not exactly a “Mother Theresa”. He worked my street every Friday: same wild smile and vacant eyes that told me that my life could be worse- and probably will be someday. What the hell, toss him a buck; all he needs is a drink. I’ll be joining him eventually anyways- good karma for a dollar, you just can’t beat a deal like that. Besides, there was always the off chance that God really was looking down in my neighborhood this particular time of the day. Maybe if I showed him how to answer a bum’s prayer he’d take a hint or at least some notes.
Up ahead was someone new, and that meant someone interesting. Not the kind of interesting that meant much, but the kind of interesting that was a kissing cousin to the same cheap thrill I got from walking too close to the road. Besides, this junkie/ cowboy had a guitar and seemed to know how to use it.
The wind hit me just right and dragged a mangled version of his song along with it. The Blues. Just what I needed. He didn’t say much. Just leaned against the wall and plucked the catgut on a beat up pawn shop special with his case open at his feet, lean and hungry. What the hell, another dollar for a song.
I walked up and threw in a handful of change. That got some attention. I saw a stubbled grin peek out from under the weathered cowboy hat.
“Story or song, stranger”, I couldn’t tell if it was a question. He mindlessly continued his plucking as if it didn’t matter.
“How ‘bout both?” and I threw in another handful of change.
He looked up at me. Gaunt, pale and whiskered- like a man whose seen death and knows it on a first name basis. Blue eyes, sharp and clear, met with mine. He pulled out a Marlboro (of course) and lit it up, then offered one to me. Why not? It felt good to pull on a cigarette again.
“Here’s my story, stranger, for better or for worse. Hope it does you better than it did me”, he fine tuned his tattered instrument and began. The notes were slow and sad; his voice like an old dirt country road, full of dust and gravel, but it got you where you needed to go:
“I’d tell you my name, but if it’s all the same, I’d rather not waste the time. I’m a man who had a girl- a story as old as rhyme. I had a smile since blotted out, by only tears of grief and doubt. Hers was mine, and too in time, we’d ‘ve made a happy pair. But life’s a bitch and cut her thread- left me hanging in my own despair. Into loneliness I thought to walk, and sever each tie of mine. My girl, my heart, had died.
But then it came to me one day to challenge the divine.
One last hope I found in hell: to go down and get her back. I slung the only weapon that I’d ever known, this guitar, across my back. With gritted teeth and both fists clenched, I stormed the iron gate. I won’t tell you where, but I found it there somewhere between brittle hope and black despair. The gate was high and locked up tight- I was out of luck. I banged until my knuckles bled. The sound dropped down both cold and dead. The bars did rattle not. With quaking fingers I pulled my card: the blues would do just nice. I figured there in the stale dead air, the sound would cut just right. A few bars later the gate would quiver and open to a broken heart.
My girl, my soul, I’d demand the devil both deliver.
So with head held high and guitar in hand, my boots went in a’ clanking. I followed down the path and sound of other hearts a’ breaking. I came up to the river man and played my song to him. With tears in stream he ferried me though fire and steam onto the other brim. The hound of hell, he too I soothed with notes and gritty song. He slept along the damn’ed throng that’d been held there far too long. And I kept walkin’ farther down the throat of hell into the ground.
Down I walked and played the song, more horror in it than the sound of woe. A tear strolled down each one who heard- a thing in hell that seemed absurd: to weep for another’s soul. And when they learn’t of lost love’s plight and how I stormed this curse’d night, they wept and gnashed in fits and throes.
I’d tell you more of the journey down, though little good it’d do. Though I may, there’s quite no way, to describe the way into your own ruin.
But, at last, it came to pass that I stood there face to face with Ol’ Scratch.
He wasn’t like you’d picture him: red and pointy- no he was pencil thin. Hair a-mess and clothed in dress that’d pass for rags at best. He was a horror not of fear, but of loneliness and woe. A pity came quickly to me, but passed when I caught sight of her. She met me there in the shade of Hades, and I almost lost my breath. Thanks to God I’d the sense enough to save myself from death.
I strummed before a word was uttered, knowing that on my skill my errand hang. I played before he moved a muscle, before he could bear his fangs. Strike the devil first, I thought, cut right through his heart and play. Stab him through the heart with song, it was the only way. Heap on coals of love’s lament, bury him in lover’s loss, make him taste what he’d never know, make him eat your words swallow all the bitter gall of true and lasting sorrow.
And under the devil’s stoic sadness I played with all my art. It was a magic unknown to most the world that notes could speak like cries and tears to move a stony heart. I played my grief and love with slowly metered rhyme. I played until my fingers bled.
I played until the devil cried.
Up he jumped, with fire and scream. Down from his throne he ran, air waiving from his heat. He scalded me with flaming words that I had added to his woe; saying that hell was bad enough without me here, me and that damned guitar.
Take your love and take your girl, hell cannot contain such hearts,
that suffer fire willingly for the ones they love.
I beat the ol’ devil at his game, I beat him in the halls of hell. But he’s a bastard, sure enough, and would get a second round. One mistake he knew I’d make, and so he let me go, knowing that I was doomed to make it out of there alone.
And so I was told, and then was warned, to travel out from there. Take my girl to breath once more God’s blessed evening air. One thing had I but do, and she’d be with me now: keep my feet upon the path, and never turn around.
My hope had led me to my heart, and my love had stolen her from hell, but in faith I was doomed to walk until I breathed the living’s air.
Her footsteps sounded sweet to me. I could feel her right behind. I was close now, too close for words and I couldn’t help my eye. It was too much for mortal man, left alone, to then withstand. The smell of perfume, the feel of skin, the glitter of her golden hair caught my heart and stole my mind, and what followed too much for eyes to bear.
So close to heaven back on earth, so close through hell’s black teeth. Almost, but for one foot out, I’d’ve had a happier meet. Instead I turned ‘round too soon and the last I saw was she: sorrow, anger, “shoulda-beens”, flashed across her gentle eyes, then dragged down in agony. They pulled her down and pushed me out, stole from me back my soul.
I wandered back into the world of men, dejected and alone.
So here I wander and sing for change and re-live my greatest loss. The “one who got away” that day was truly my own damn fault. I have a mind to try again, though the devil won’t have it so. He’s got the gate locked up too tight; but, then, (ha) he’s also got my soul. I’ll get back there, don’t you fret, but it might take some time. One day when my last chord plays, and my eyes are all but blind, I’ll stroll right in with a shit-eatin’- grin, and take back what I call mine. I’ll find her there with her golden hair, to have been waitin’ all this time. Through the fire and the flame our hearts will come entwined.
I’ll have my heaven down in hell, and in fire forge our love for e’re.”
A tear fell from the old cowboy’s cheek. My eyes stung a little too. There was an honesty in his voice that dared me to ask him if the whole thing was true. Dared me, practically pleaded with me, to find out. It was a dare I couldn’t accept. It was the kind of knowledge I knew I couldn’t live with: like finding out that there really is no meaning to life or, worse, that there was meaning to everything and you missed the boat. I thanked him and headed home, not bothering about how close to the street I was this time. The air was that same in-between breeze. The leaves still fell and crumbled under the feet of the same passers-by. The sky was still that same dim shade of bleak that it had been just a few minutes before, but it seemed different now- almost as if I could, for the first time in my miserable life, sense a sweetness in that gloom. It must have always been there, waiting for me.
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