THE GUITAR -
A Rock & Roll Fairy Tale - by Randall Peterson
Copyright © 2012 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
We all know angels walk the earth, disguised as mortals. – Well, almost everyone knows this. And if those who don’t know about the heavenly spirits, those invisibly-winged creatures that walk among us, gained a little knowledge, they would be better at being kind to others and surely watch themselves in all of their day to day interactions. The power of angels sometimes seems to contradict our preconceived notions of good and evil, right and wrong, or positive and negative. Their works are not always what we expect, but it is a thing of great value that these creatures leave behind … it is beauty and truth in its purest form. It is a wish from a broken heart that, somehow despite all odds, comes true. It is hope and love. It comes to us when we least expect it, and it is everlasting. |
At about 11pm two angels stood outside Glens Lounge in the oldest section of Cloverdale. Flachen - the most beautiful un-winged creature in the universe, and dangerously enticing, stooped next to the dirt engrimed brick wall. If any mortal man were to look upon this ravishing creature in her true form he would most certainly fall to the ground, surely be blinded, and would probably die of ecstatic shock; if unable to pry his adoring eyes away from her. But on this night Flachen’s form took that of a weathered ancient from days long past. She was wrinkled and filthy, leaning against an old rusted shopping cart that contained all her worldly possessions. She was what the well-dressed men who drove past in their comfortable luxury cars called “A bag lady”.
The angels say Compacta, the grape, was once beautiful herself; almost as beautiful as Flachen. But that was many long ages ago, so long in fact that no other angel could remember it with any kind of distinction. Compacta was as ancient as time itself, and just as charred and wrinkled, hence the nickname the grape. She was already old before the sun was born from its own swirling gasses. And having acquired this enormous age she was gifted from the Eternal Power with an enormous wisdom, which she used for the assistance of all mankind. It was a strange kind of knowledge she was armed with. Man did not often grasp its true purpose, and even Flachen questioned her unusual businesses … but so it is, and so it has ever been.
On this night Compacta had taken the form of a lady of the night. There were no deep-trenched wrinkles cascading down her dried face. She was on the verge of being too young. She had skin as delicate and creamy as whipped topping and just as delectable. She was irresistibly stunning and devilishly enticing.
The Grape pulled herself away from the wall where she had been leaning, swaying her hips to the dull throbbing of the music that seeped through the brick wall. She leaned in toward Flachen and whispered through a mouth full of grape bubble gum just before the nightclub door opened. “It’s been so long since I’ve talked to a human, let alone a guitar player. I hope I can remember how to act.”
She performed a sexy little dance that made the tassels on her tight dress wriggle. Flachen giggled as she watched her much older teacher getting into character.
Two grey haired retirees, a man and a woman, were ambling by on the sidewalk holding hands. They didn’t see the sexy dance or hear the delightful giggling. Angels speak a special language and perform special actions for each other that are purposefully confusing to mortals, so that normal people hear and see what they believe to be true or what they expect to see.
The old couple watched the prostitute viciously shove the bag lady and scream, “Get out of here, you old hag, this is my street!” They turned and gazed at each other, fifty years of looking out for each other, reflected in their loving eyes. Coming to an unspoken agreement, they walked away a little faster.
The nightclub door swung open, and Jim Teabs emerged from the smoke and loud music into the cool night air. He carried a 1950 Fender Broadcaster wrapped in a duct-taped cardboard guitar case; in his other arm he lugged a Gretsch Red Wheeles amplifier and a handful of power cords.
It wasn’t a good night. He had just auditioned for a lead guitar spot with a local band, but he didn’t make the cut. Not for lack of trying. He tried almost too hard, but the music never came easy for him. When he played he got nervous, his hands shook, and the sounds never came out right - the only time his guitar sounded the way he wanted, when the music came out like it was supposed to, was in his dreams. His reality was becoming more and more a nightmare.
The wrinkled bag lady tugged at his black leather jacket as he moved past “Do you have any spare change?” she pleaded.
Wars are won, fortunes are made, and worlds are changed by the smallest of choices. Jim changed his world on this day by setting his amp down and reaching into his pocket. He thrust a crumpled ten dollar bill toward the grey haired woman. The prostitute quickly slid herself between them. “I’ll give you something a lot better than bad breath for that dinner-note mister”.
“No thanks. I’m not in the mood.” Jim dropped the bill into the boney hand just before it closed like a trap. He lifted the amp and walked toward the street.
“Maybe I am losing my touch," Compacta said as she and Flachen watched the young man with shoulder length blond hair lug his equipment toward a rusted van with “Back Off” painted on the windowless side. She swayed her hips in exaggerated circles, pushed out her chest and began to strut back and forth in front of her friend. Flachen laughed so hard she doubled over. A glass bottle fell from her shaking cart and broke on the cement sidewalk.
“Don’t do that,” she scolded. “You know once I start laughing, I crack up!”
Compacta was relentless. She made kissing noises with her bright red lips and humped an invisible lover while Flachen was brought to tears and begged her to stop.
Jim looked back just before he reached his van. He watched the prostitute punch the homeless lady in the stomach and try to grab the ten dollars from her tight-fisted hand. What an evil world he thought.
The two angels had their loving arms wrapped around each other as the young magician set his guitar case down on the paved street. He swung open the van’s back doors and slid the amplifier and cables across the carpeted floor.
Flachen noticed Compacta staring down the dimly lit street. She turned and watched a speeding pickup truck come careening around a corner and roar down the street toward the van. The young musician flung himself backward onto the curb as the vehicle sped past. There was a low thump, as the truck’s tire crushed the guitar case, and the sound of breaking guitar strings. The smiling driver craned his head, looking backward, but he didn’t stop.
“What on earth did you do that for?” Flachen accused, as she pointed toward the young man who stood stunned on the curb. “… and with him being so kind to me!”
“Maybe I’m jealous because he gave the ten dollars to you, instead of buying my favors.” Compacta smiled as she walked toward the musician, who was now holding his head in his hands.
“I might believe a lot of things, but never that you would be jealous of me.” Flachen pushed her grocery cart as she followed behind her friend. “But I do wish you would let me know what you were up to, before you make these accidents happen.”
They watched as Jim pulled his broken guitar from its crushed case. The broken neck dangled from the guitar’s body like a marionette by its strings. Jim dropped his destroyed instrument on the ground then sat on the curb and buried his head between his legs. He was too full of despair to examine it further.
Flachen looked at Compacta accusingly, then pointed toward the pile of misery. “Well?”
Jim raised his head, as the scantily clad prostitute strutted up beside him. “Too bad about that!” She pointed toward the wreckage of the guitar, smacking her lips while chewing a mouth full of gum. “I know this guy who repairs things. He’s a friend, not a customer. He’s got a shop on 7th street, next to the clinic. Tell him Bunny is still hopping, he’ll come by for a visit,” She smiled at her own joke. “He’ll know who you mean.” Compacta dug into a clutch purse and dropped a business card into his lap. “I shouldn’t be doing you no favors, since it’s a fact you’re one of them perverts who lusts for the wrinkles.” She pointed at Flatchen, who had discovered a pile of empty beer cans and was stowing them in her cart. “But you’re going to get tired of that old dry-meat stuff real quick, so maybe I’ll see you around.” She gave him a sexy wink, then turned and strutted away. Her hips made exaggerated rolls that jingled the tassels on her short skirt.
Jim gazed at the card in dismay, then he called after her. “Great, but I just gave my last ten bucks to her.” He pointed toward Flatchen, who was desperately trying to shake a pebble out of an empty can. “I know nobody does anything for free in this town”.
“He ain’t Nobody, give him a try” Compacta ordered. She didn’t turn around but shook her head back and forth like she was listening to head banging heavy metal music that only she could hear. “He’ll probably let you sweep his floor or something,” She tilted her head back, and yelled toward the sky. “Just don’t lose that card, and remember who your friends are!” She paused, then suddenly turned and marched back to where Jim had just risen to his feet. She gently caressed his cheek with her long red finger nails, then tweaked his nose and gave him a long wet kiss that bent him backwards. She trooped away. From ten yards out, he could hear her chewing her gum like a cow gone mad.
The next morning, Jim pulled up in front of the small shop on Cloverdale’s Wallace Avenue. He wasn’t impressed, he looked at the card again and at the dusty storefront with cracked, taped, windows.
The old man inside looked like a crippled dwarf with braces on his legs, he shuffled sideways across a floor covered at least an inch deep with sawdust and small and pieces of wood. A china cabinet stood in the center of the room, waiting to be finished. The dwarf shook his head sadly, from beneath a mop of grey hair, when Jim showed him the broken guitar.
He turned his back and went back to work, but he became interested when Jim mentioned the hooker and showed him the card. “I believe I will do something with this … yes I’m sure I can repair it”, he muttered, as he held up the shattered neck and studied it in the light.
Jim stuffed his hands in his pockets, and moved the sawdust around with his feet. “Problem is,” he stammered. “I don’t have any money right now, but if you could wait a couple of days I could…”
“You can clean up in here and we’ll call it good”, the old man interrupted him.
Jim didn’t know what to say; he just stood there gaping. He wasn’t sure at all that the guitar could be fixed. “Will it be playable? I mean that’s a pretty bad bunch of breaks, if it’s just going to end up a piece of junk, I shouldn’t be wasting your time.”
“It won’t be perfect, but it will be right for you, it will be what you need.” The old man looked sideways at Jim as he laid the broken guitar on his workbench. “What are you waiting for?” he pointed to the floor as he handed Jim a broom “This place looks like a pool hall!”
Jim worked the rest of the night sweeping and cleaning up, and when the old man who admitted that his friends called him Crab, closed his shop for the night, he told Jim to come back in the morning.
Jim looked at his guitar. The old Crab hadn’t touched it he’d spent all day working on the cabinet. And from the way it looked, it wasn’t going to be done anytime soon.
Jim drove back to his apartment, wondering if he should have taken his guitar to the old carpenter. Maybe this was all some kind of scam, but he couldn’t figure out what the con was. The guitar was obviously worthless in its present condition, and the old man didn’t really need his place cleaned.
And besides, I’m not that good at sweeping he thought.
Jim showed up at the carpenter’s shop early the next morning. Crab was waiting for him when he walked through the door. “All done." he said, as he handed him the guitar.
Jim looked at his Fender Broadcaster. It looked like a monster. Gobs of dried epoxy ran everywhere down the back of the neck, where it had been glued. “What the hell?” Jim mumbled, as he gaped at the guitar.
“You already paid yesterday,” Crab said, as he took the guitar and gently lay it back in its smashed case, then handed it to Jim. He gestured toward his twisted legs. “Looks aren’t everything. Look at me … I’m still a wonder with wood.”
Jim placed the wreck that used to be his guitar in his trunk, and glanced back at the dirty shop window where Crab stood watching. “You’re a wonder all right,” he muttered. He burned rubber as he left the shop and never looked back.
When Jim got back to his apartment, he sat on the front steps of his building and decided to see if the guitar was at all playable. It was such a sloppy repair job, maybe the strings were glued down. He pulled the electric guitar that had been his friend for the last five years out of its taped up case and laid it across his lap.
He wanted to cry when he looked at it. He brushed his fingers slowly across the strings and a cold rush like snorting high quality cocaine slowly drifted down his spine. He closed his eyes and tried to catch his breath. For the first time in his life, he heard the sound angels make when they are playing before God.
He crossed his fingers, then played the rhythm riff from the rock classic Johnny B Goode. It took his breath away. His old Broadcaster was no longer just a guitar but a ring of keys major and minor, that opened the door that led to the Stairway to Heaven.
For the first time in his life, Jim would rather listen to himself play than anyone else in the world. By the time he finished his first set and danced up to his apartment, a crowd of twenty people had gathered around, begging for just one more. They moaned when he finally quit, and two girls actually broke into tears. The world had changed for Jim Teabs….
Flachen and Compacta stood outside the concert stadium moshing with the crowd, who were all eager to meet the rock stars, and get autographs. Flachen was disguised as a fat pimpled boy wearing a dirty AC-DC T-shirt and the standard torn jeans. Compacta was a platinum Goth, dressed in satin grey with a white face and black lips.
“That show was screamin creamin dude! I could have forked it down, all night long”, Flachen thundered as she slugged a boy with pop-bottle glasses who slumped next to her. The kid with the thick glasses gave her a toothless grin, blood streamed from his nose. He probably took the violent assault he had just received as a sign of brotherhood.
“I wish I could have been there,” he said, as he adjusted his broken glasses. “I didn’t have enough bread to get in the show. I brought along their new CD. I’m getting it autographed. I know every song Teabs does by heart. When momma bakes enough bread for my guitar, I’m going to rock the world just like he does.”
“You better put that shake in your butt, before you start,” a tattooed skin-head behind him laughed and pointed. Flachen looked down at the boy's trembling hands, he tried to stuff them in his pockets.
“I guess that’s one reason I want to play like him,” He nodded toward the stadium’s back door where the band was just emerging. “I read in the Rolling Stone, that his hands used to tremble too.”
“Here they come,” someone shouted. The crowd surged forward to meet the most popular rock and roll band in the world.
Jim jostled through the crowd, hugging his battered guitar case. His manager and an entire entourage of stage hands, groupies and the rest of his band surrounded him. He ignored the requests for autographs, although several of his band mates stopped and obliged. He scrambled into the backseat of a long black limousine followed by his manager, and the driver sped into the night. The huge crowd began to break up and small groups began to drift away.
Flachen and Compacta watched as the boy with the thick glasses staggered slowly away, clutching the unsigned CD. “Hey, what’s your name kid? Just in case you’re famous someday,” Compacta yelled.
“Don,” he said. “Donald Williams.” He put his hands on the bridge of his glasses to keep them from falling, wiped a smear of blood from his chin, then disappeared into the dark.
“Looks like you created a monster,” Flachen said. He poked the Goth in the side and they both watched the limo turn the corner and vanish.
“No, a star on this night is born,” declared Compacta, as she gently laid her hand on her friend's shoulder.
A car full of squealing teenage girls drove by in a parent’s SUV. They stared at the Goth chick who had a punk rocker wearing an AC-DC T-shirt pinned to the ground. She had him kneed in the spine, and pulled his hair back as he screamed in terror. They were looking for a friend they lost at the concert, but they didn’t want to stop right here.
Inside the luxury car, Jim’s manager leaned toward him. “There’s something that I’ve been meaning to talk to you about for some time,” he said.
“What is it?” Jim asked. He poured himself a double shot of Scotch from the mobile bar.
“It’s that damn guitar of yours,” his manager said in exasperation. “The thing is totaled. You’re the biggest rock star in the world. Why do you still play it? You could have any guitar you want. You could have Leo Fender personally make you one out of solid gold and your bank account wouldn’t blink.”
Jim tried to think of a reason as he touched a rolled up 100 dollar bill to his nose and snorted the two lines of white power that were spread across the fold down table. “I don’t know…” Jim’s mind was a fog. “I guess because I’ve always played it.”
“Well it’s becoming an embarrassment!” his manager grumbled. “Most of the stage hands laugh about what a piece of crap it is. They can’t get it in tune. It’s been broke all to #%$% then repaired by some sorry idiot, who didn’t know what the #%&$ he was doing. Oh, I’m sorry” his manager said with a fake smile. “You didn’t repair that thing yourself, did you?”
“No I didn’t," Jim mumbled, the cocaine was beginning to work, it don’t lie he mused.
Wars are won, fortunes are made and worlds are changed by the smallest of choices, Jim changed his world with his next words.
“Pull over right up here,” he ordered the driver. The limousine pulled over next to a large dumpster and Jim tossed the guitar case in. “I’m a star,” he said. “It’s time I started acting like one.” His manager smiled and as the long black car passed under a street light he looked truly demonic.
At the next night’s concert a sweating Jim Teabs fumbled his way through another song playing on a twelve thousand dollar custom made Les Paul. The audience, those who were still sticking it out, sat on their hands. Deathly quiet greeted the end of each number. Jim stared off stage left, where his manager, paced back and forth and kept screaming “What’s wrong? What the #%$k are you doing?”
Jim had no answers, he felt like all the love in his life had just become smoke on the water.
At month later, a young boy named Don Williams sat strumming a guitar in front of his apartment. It was an old, beat up, heavily glued Fender Broadcaster he had found in a dumpster. It was as ugly as the worst kind of sin, but it looked just like the one his hero Jim Teabs used to play. Don looked up and smiled. A crowd soon began to filter down from the shabby apartment buildings. They came every night now, to gather around and listen to the magic … and to dance as he played. And the guitar had found a new home, and the boy and the people who loved to hear him play that crazy rock and roll music … they all lived happily ever after.
THE END.
Tweet to Randall @itsonlymeandyou or visit his website for a treasure trove of short stories, serials and original sketches:
There's Magic in Everything.
The angels say Compacta, the grape, was once beautiful herself; almost as beautiful as Flachen. But that was many long ages ago, so long in fact that no other angel could remember it with any kind of distinction. Compacta was as ancient as time itself, and just as charred and wrinkled, hence the nickname the grape. She was already old before the sun was born from its own swirling gasses. And having acquired this enormous age she was gifted from the Eternal Power with an enormous wisdom, which she used for the assistance of all mankind. It was a strange kind of knowledge she was armed with. Man did not often grasp its true purpose, and even Flachen questioned her unusual businesses … but so it is, and so it has ever been.
On this night Compacta had taken the form of a lady of the night. There were no deep-trenched wrinkles cascading down her dried face. She was on the verge of being too young. She had skin as delicate and creamy as whipped topping and just as delectable. She was irresistibly stunning and devilishly enticing.
The Grape pulled herself away from the wall where she had been leaning, swaying her hips to the dull throbbing of the music that seeped through the brick wall. She leaned in toward Flachen and whispered through a mouth full of grape bubble gum just before the nightclub door opened. “It’s been so long since I’ve talked to a human, let alone a guitar player. I hope I can remember how to act.”
She performed a sexy little dance that made the tassels on her tight dress wriggle. Flachen giggled as she watched her much older teacher getting into character.
Two grey haired retirees, a man and a woman, were ambling by on the sidewalk holding hands. They didn’t see the sexy dance or hear the delightful giggling. Angels speak a special language and perform special actions for each other that are purposefully confusing to mortals, so that normal people hear and see what they believe to be true or what they expect to see.
The old couple watched the prostitute viciously shove the bag lady and scream, “Get out of here, you old hag, this is my street!” They turned and gazed at each other, fifty years of looking out for each other, reflected in their loving eyes. Coming to an unspoken agreement, they walked away a little faster.
The nightclub door swung open, and Jim Teabs emerged from the smoke and loud music into the cool night air. He carried a 1950 Fender Broadcaster wrapped in a duct-taped cardboard guitar case; in his other arm he lugged a Gretsch Red Wheeles amplifier and a handful of power cords.
It wasn’t a good night. He had just auditioned for a lead guitar spot with a local band, but he didn’t make the cut. Not for lack of trying. He tried almost too hard, but the music never came easy for him. When he played he got nervous, his hands shook, and the sounds never came out right - the only time his guitar sounded the way he wanted, when the music came out like it was supposed to, was in his dreams. His reality was becoming more and more a nightmare.
The wrinkled bag lady tugged at his black leather jacket as he moved past “Do you have any spare change?” she pleaded.
Wars are won, fortunes are made, and worlds are changed by the smallest of choices. Jim changed his world on this day by setting his amp down and reaching into his pocket. He thrust a crumpled ten dollar bill toward the grey haired woman. The prostitute quickly slid herself between them. “I’ll give you something a lot better than bad breath for that dinner-note mister”.
“No thanks. I’m not in the mood.” Jim dropped the bill into the boney hand just before it closed like a trap. He lifted the amp and walked toward the street.
“Maybe I am losing my touch," Compacta said as she and Flachen watched the young man with shoulder length blond hair lug his equipment toward a rusted van with “Back Off” painted on the windowless side. She swayed her hips in exaggerated circles, pushed out her chest and began to strut back and forth in front of her friend. Flachen laughed so hard she doubled over. A glass bottle fell from her shaking cart and broke on the cement sidewalk.
“Don’t do that,” she scolded. “You know once I start laughing, I crack up!”
Compacta was relentless. She made kissing noises with her bright red lips and humped an invisible lover while Flachen was brought to tears and begged her to stop.
Jim looked back just before he reached his van. He watched the prostitute punch the homeless lady in the stomach and try to grab the ten dollars from her tight-fisted hand. What an evil world he thought.
The two angels had their loving arms wrapped around each other as the young magician set his guitar case down on the paved street. He swung open the van’s back doors and slid the amplifier and cables across the carpeted floor.
Flachen noticed Compacta staring down the dimly lit street. She turned and watched a speeding pickup truck come careening around a corner and roar down the street toward the van. The young musician flung himself backward onto the curb as the vehicle sped past. There was a low thump, as the truck’s tire crushed the guitar case, and the sound of breaking guitar strings. The smiling driver craned his head, looking backward, but he didn’t stop.
“What on earth did you do that for?” Flachen accused, as she pointed toward the young man who stood stunned on the curb. “… and with him being so kind to me!”
“Maybe I’m jealous because he gave the ten dollars to you, instead of buying my favors.” Compacta smiled as she walked toward the musician, who was now holding his head in his hands.
“I might believe a lot of things, but never that you would be jealous of me.” Flachen pushed her grocery cart as she followed behind her friend. “But I do wish you would let me know what you were up to, before you make these accidents happen.”
They watched as Jim pulled his broken guitar from its crushed case. The broken neck dangled from the guitar’s body like a marionette by its strings. Jim dropped his destroyed instrument on the ground then sat on the curb and buried his head between his legs. He was too full of despair to examine it further.
Flachen looked at Compacta accusingly, then pointed toward the pile of misery. “Well?”
Jim raised his head, as the scantily clad prostitute strutted up beside him. “Too bad about that!” She pointed toward the wreckage of the guitar, smacking her lips while chewing a mouth full of gum. “I know this guy who repairs things. He’s a friend, not a customer. He’s got a shop on 7th street, next to the clinic. Tell him Bunny is still hopping, he’ll come by for a visit,” She smiled at her own joke. “He’ll know who you mean.” Compacta dug into a clutch purse and dropped a business card into his lap. “I shouldn’t be doing you no favors, since it’s a fact you’re one of them perverts who lusts for the wrinkles.” She pointed at Flatchen, who had discovered a pile of empty beer cans and was stowing them in her cart. “But you’re going to get tired of that old dry-meat stuff real quick, so maybe I’ll see you around.” She gave him a sexy wink, then turned and strutted away. Her hips made exaggerated rolls that jingled the tassels on her short skirt.
Jim gazed at the card in dismay, then he called after her. “Great, but I just gave my last ten bucks to her.” He pointed toward Flatchen, who was desperately trying to shake a pebble out of an empty can. “I know nobody does anything for free in this town”.
“He ain’t Nobody, give him a try” Compacta ordered. She didn’t turn around but shook her head back and forth like she was listening to head banging heavy metal music that only she could hear. “He’ll probably let you sweep his floor or something,” She tilted her head back, and yelled toward the sky. “Just don’t lose that card, and remember who your friends are!” She paused, then suddenly turned and marched back to where Jim had just risen to his feet. She gently caressed his cheek with her long red finger nails, then tweaked his nose and gave him a long wet kiss that bent him backwards. She trooped away. From ten yards out, he could hear her chewing her gum like a cow gone mad.
The next morning, Jim pulled up in front of the small shop on Cloverdale’s Wallace Avenue. He wasn’t impressed, he looked at the card again and at the dusty storefront with cracked, taped, windows.
The old man inside looked like a crippled dwarf with braces on his legs, he shuffled sideways across a floor covered at least an inch deep with sawdust and small and pieces of wood. A china cabinet stood in the center of the room, waiting to be finished. The dwarf shook his head sadly, from beneath a mop of grey hair, when Jim showed him the broken guitar.
He turned his back and went back to work, but he became interested when Jim mentioned the hooker and showed him the card. “I believe I will do something with this … yes I’m sure I can repair it”, he muttered, as he held up the shattered neck and studied it in the light.
Jim stuffed his hands in his pockets, and moved the sawdust around with his feet. “Problem is,” he stammered. “I don’t have any money right now, but if you could wait a couple of days I could…”
“You can clean up in here and we’ll call it good”, the old man interrupted him.
Jim didn’t know what to say; he just stood there gaping. He wasn’t sure at all that the guitar could be fixed. “Will it be playable? I mean that’s a pretty bad bunch of breaks, if it’s just going to end up a piece of junk, I shouldn’t be wasting your time.”
“It won’t be perfect, but it will be right for you, it will be what you need.” The old man looked sideways at Jim as he laid the broken guitar on his workbench. “What are you waiting for?” he pointed to the floor as he handed Jim a broom “This place looks like a pool hall!”
Jim worked the rest of the night sweeping and cleaning up, and when the old man who admitted that his friends called him Crab, closed his shop for the night, he told Jim to come back in the morning.
Jim looked at his guitar. The old Crab hadn’t touched it he’d spent all day working on the cabinet. And from the way it looked, it wasn’t going to be done anytime soon.
Jim drove back to his apartment, wondering if he should have taken his guitar to the old carpenter. Maybe this was all some kind of scam, but he couldn’t figure out what the con was. The guitar was obviously worthless in its present condition, and the old man didn’t really need his place cleaned.
And besides, I’m not that good at sweeping he thought.
Jim showed up at the carpenter’s shop early the next morning. Crab was waiting for him when he walked through the door. “All done." he said, as he handed him the guitar.
Jim looked at his Fender Broadcaster. It looked like a monster. Gobs of dried epoxy ran everywhere down the back of the neck, where it had been glued. “What the hell?” Jim mumbled, as he gaped at the guitar.
“You already paid yesterday,” Crab said, as he took the guitar and gently lay it back in its smashed case, then handed it to Jim. He gestured toward his twisted legs. “Looks aren’t everything. Look at me … I’m still a wonder with wood.”
Jim placed the wreck that used to be his guitar in his trunk, and glanced back at the dirty shop window where Crab stood watching. “You’re a wonder all right,” he muttered. He burned rubber as he left the shop and never looked back.
When Jim got back to his apartment, he sat on the front steps of his building and decided to see if the guitar was at all playable. It was such a sloppy repair job, maybe the strings were glued down. He pulled the electric guitar that had been his friend for the last five years out of its taped up case and laid it across his lap.
He wanted to cry when he looked at it. He brushed his fingers slowly across the strings and a cold rush like snorting high quality cocaine slowly drifted down his spine. He closed his eyes and tried to catch his breath. For the first time in his life, he heard the sound angels make when they are playing before God.
He crossed his fingers, then played the rhythm riff from the rock classic Johnny B Goode. It took his breath away. His old Broadcaster was no longer just a guitar but a ring of keys major and minor, that opened the door that led to the Stairway to Heaven.
For the first time in his life, Jim would rather listen to himself play than anyone else in the world. By the time he finished his first set and danced up to his apartment, a crowd of twenty people had gathered around, begging for just one more. They moaned when he finally quit, and two girls actually broke into tears. The world had changed for Jim Teabs….
Flachen and Compacta stood outside the concert stadium moshing with the crowd, who were all eager to meet the rock stars, and get autographs. Flachen was disguised as a fat pimpled boy wearing a dirty AC-DC T-shirt and the standard torn jeans. Compacta was a platinum Goth, dressed in satin grey with a white face and black lips.
“That show was screamin creamin dude! I could have forked it down, all night long”, Flachen thundered as she slugged a boy with pop-bottle glasses who slumped next to her. The kid with the thick glasses gave her a toothless grin, blood streamed from his nose. He probably took the violent assault he had just received as a sign of brotherhood.
“I wish I could have been there,” he said, as he adjusted his broken glasses. “I didn’t have enough bread to get in the show. I brought along their new CD. I’m getting it autographed. I know every song Teabs does by heart. When momma bakes enough bread for my guitar, I’m going to rock the world just like he does.”
“You better put that shake in your butt, before you start,” a tattooed skin-head behind him laughed and pointed. Flachen looked down at the boy's trembling hands, he tried to stuff them in his pockets.
“I guess that’s one reason I want to play like him,” He nodded toward the stadium’s back door where the band was just emerging. “I read in the Rolling Stone, that his hands used to tremble too.”
“Here they come,” someone shouted. The crowd surged forward to meet the most popular rock and roll band in the world.
Jim jostled through the crowd, hugging his battered guitar case. His manager and an entire entourage of stage hands, groupies and the rest of his band surrounded him. He ignored the requests for autographs, although several of his band mates stopped and obliged. He scrambled into the backseat of a long black limousine followed by his manager, and the driver sped into the night. The huge crowd began to break up and small groups began to drift away.
Flachen and Compacta watched as the boy with the thick glasses staggered slowly away, clutching the unsigned CD. “Hey, what’s your name kid? Just in case you’re famous someday,” Compacta yelled.
“Don,” he said. “Donald Williams.” He put his hands on the bridge of his glasses to keep them from falling, wiped a smear of blood from his chin, then disappeared into the dark.
“Looks like you created a monster,” Flachen said. He poked the Goth in the side and they both watched the limo turn the corner and vanish.
“No, a star on this night is born,” declared Compacta, as she gently laid her hand on her friend's shoulder.
A car full of squealing teenage girls drove by in a parent’s SUV. They stared at the Goth chick who had a punk rocker wearing an AC-DC T-shirt pinned to the ground. She had him kneed in the spine, and pulled his hair back as he screamed in terror. They were looking for a friend they lost at the concert, but they didn’t want to stop right here.
Inside the luxury car, Jim’s manager leaned toward him. “There’s something that I’ve been meaning to talk to you about for some time,” he said.
“What is it?” Jim asked. He poured himself a double shot of Scotch from the mobile bar.
“It’s that damn guitar of yours,” his manager said in exasperation. “The thing is totaled. You’re the biggest rock star in the world. Why do you still play it? You could have any guitar you want. You could have Leo Fender personally make you one out of solid gold and your bank account wouldn’t blink.”
Jim tried to think of a reason as he touched a rolled up 100 dollar bill to his nose and snorted the two lines of white power that were spread across the fold down table. “I don’t know…” Jim’s mind was a fog. “I guess because I’ve always played it.”
“Well it’s becoming an embarrassment!” his manager grumbled. “Most of the stage hands laugh about what a piece of crap it is. They can’t get it in tune. It’s been broke all to #%$% then repaired by some sorry idiot, who didn’t know what the #%&$ he was doing. Oh, I’m sorry” his manager said with a fake smile. “You didn’t repair that thing yourself, did you?”
“No I didn’t," Jim mumbled, the cocaine was beginning to work, it don’t lie he mused.
Wars are won, fortunes are made and worlds are changed by the smallest of choices, Jim changed his world with his next words.
“Pull over right up here,” he ordered the driver. The limousine pulled over next to a large dumpster and Jim tossed the guitar case in. “I’m a star,” he said. “It’s time I started acting like one.” His manager smiled and as the long black car passed under a street light he looked truly demonic.
At the next night’s concert a sweating Jim Teabs fumbled his way through another song playing on a twelve thousand dollar custom made Les Paul. The audience, those who were still sticking it out, sat on their hands. Deathly quiet greeted the end of each number. Jim stared off stage left, where his manager, paced back and forth and kept screaming “What’s wrong? What the #%$k are you doing?”
Jim had no answers, he felt like all the love in his life had just become smoke on the water.
At month later, a young boy named Don Williams sat strumming a guitar in front of his apartment. It was an old, beat up, heavily glued Fender Broadcaster he had found in a dumpster. It was as ugly as the worst kind of sin, but it looked just like the one his hero Jim Teabs used to play. Don looked up and smiled. A crowd soon began to filter down from the shabby apartment buildings. They came every night now, to gather around and listen to the magic … and to dance as he played. And the guitar had found a new home, and the boy and the people who loved to hear him play that crazy rock and roll music … they all lived happily ever after.
THE END.
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