The bench seat had been fine embroidery once, hand toiled no doubt since what was visible had the human element of inconsistency in it, unless a machine had been assigned to mimic that. Now with who knows how many peoples’ asses on it, the threading was thin, practically nonexistent in some places. A dog was apparent in the washed out mosaic of threadbare colors, as was something about “home.”
From her side, the bench at least, seemed safe enough to approach and so she did. It scraped the cement floor as she pulled it out, grinding to a halt at what she determined to be the optimal distance: far enough away for feet to work the pedals without leg cramps and close enough for fingers to hang above the keys, wrists loose, ready to hammer out what was coming.
She gave the piano a firm push just to make sure it wouldn’t crumble upon her, and then sat. It took a moment to adjust bench to bottom, as there was a nail (or something?) that was sticking into her flesh, and so it took a few tries to situate things so as not to be impaled from the bottom up as she prepared to visit with the long-lost friend. She had made this opportunity for herself, and knew it may yet have a cost, but she was here now, and wanted more than anything to be in here, with this, than to be out there, with that.
***
She hadn’t wanted to look inside the building, as there often lurked nasty surprises in the few dwellings she had come across in her roaming, but you never knew what was possible to find that might save your life, and it had been her turn.
The structure was low and flat, rectangular in shape, had no markings whatsoever and the pitted cement had been consumed by sand and wind and who knows how much time. She approached as slowly as she could, crouched down, muscles taut, ready to fight whatever might come at her. She had been attacked before and had scars to prove it but she had strangled the puny beast before it could do her any more damage. She had been lucky, as some things were much larger, with bigger teeth and human strength, and that’s because they were human; or used to be what passed for one. She had seen how some of that had gone, an experience not soon forgotten. Now she edged up to the window and as slowly as is possible and still be moving, raised her eyes above the windowsill then dropped back down immediately. It wasn’t enough to get a good look; it took two more tries, carefully spaced apart and leaning in hard to listen for movement before she felt it was safe enough to risk a real full look.
The window (intact remarkably) was clean enough to see through, something she hadn’t expected, and it was plain that the building, which consisted of one big room had nothing whatsoever in it. Except for a piano, which had caused her to grab out a gulp of air and hold it for several seconds as her overburdened pulse quickened further still from where it was already. When she finally remembered the mechanism by which she breathed, she exhaled, gave the all clear signal, and a few members of her group moved forward. It was not uncommon for traps to be set, in order to lure more into the open, so they came out fitfully and not fully persuaded.
“Any water?” asked a man.
“There’s a piano,” she answered.
“Food? Any food?” pushed another.
“I don’t think so.” she replied.
One of the braver (or hungrier) among the group at the back edge of the compound motioned for someone to come with him, but no one was taking the offer.
Finally a middle-aged woman wearing several bandanas around her neck (she always thought of her as “Bandana Woman”) joined him and they carefully moved behind the house, walking nearly back to back for mutual cover. It only took a few seconds and they were back around front again. “Nothing…” the woman spat as they passed her; hissed in an accusing way as if it was her fault there was nothing for them. It might not have been meant as personal (little was) and she could understand how they might feel that way.
The group then turned as one and continued on again. No one looked back except to make sure they weren’t being followed, and if they did see that she hadn’t come along, no one cared.
She should have joined them, of course, and as quickly as possible. But it had been years since she had seen a piano, let alone touched one. And to find one here, out in the middle of nowhere, in some dirty cement building straddling a nameless track on the way to what the map said was clean water was nothing short of amazing. She was taking a chance, for her group was already out of sight, having gone on down the narrow gulley in search of that which might sustain them. It wasn’t a large group and didn’t provide much protection anyway, so she felt she had time, a few minutes at least, to stay behind before it became too dangerous not to catch up. She wasn’t surprised that no one had cared to spend any more time here than necessary, for water was what mattered now more than ever, and any place that didn’t have any was a place to be gotten thru as quickly as possible. It was also no surprise that the group hadn’t so much as given her a second thought as they left her standing alone besides the building. It was like that, the group: it lurched forward not so much out of any union of the bodies it contained but simply out of automatic remembered motion, and a fear of staying still too long. “Group” was in fact too cohesive a word, for people came and went with astonishing frequency. Some perished on the side of the road, seemingly out of the blue, fine one minute and dead the next, and some just drifted off, into a reverie known only to them, oblivious to the calls of others, if there were any. Those thus chosen simply could hear nothing else but whatever drove them back in their heads, and after having seen it happen to a great many people, there was a general understanding that it wasn’t individual madness, but something about the land itself that picked off the innocent and weak and led them out into the night and nothing.
In any event it was not a good idea to get close to anyone, because it was just too easy to put feelings into the comfort of companionship and too hard to have it ripped away without a moment’s notice, to be left, once more with only you. And yet, that was the way it was, wasn’t it? A school of fish (remember the ocean?) has more important things in common with the water it lives in than with the other fish it travels with. And just so with the groups that had formed and reformed with whatever humanity might be available since the big change; swimming on and on, looking for what it needed next to survive, but more individual sharks than fish, never resting, and with no conscience but for the next meal.
But she wasn’t moving now. There was no restless forward motion pulling her feet along as if led by a thin string that she’d better keep up with, by God. She was inside, and sitting (and not sleeping – not that real sleep was ever fully possible), and not moving and not searching and that was a first in a long, long time.
She tried a key, afraid a gentle push might see it vanish beneath her imperceptible touch, but it held. There was sound: a thrumming of vibration, a wooden tingling of string and hammer. She let her head fall back and the echoes of the note faded away against the walls and her mind before all returned to silence.
She tested a lower pitched key and it hummed more slowly, slowly enough that she could count the uneven cycles as it too lived, died and returned.
Then she tried another and then another till she was convinced that nearly all the keys (at least the ones that mattered) worked well enough to proceed. The fact they were severely out of tune didn’t bother her as she had come to accept as a matter of course an only tenuous stability in all things anyway.
What to play? There are so many choices, but really, very little time. Music was mood; and she wanted to play something that would improve hers, but it was also hard to magically pull off the “Happy Song,” if her heart wasn’t in it. It was better to be the mood your music was in and let it take you where it would. At least you were on the same page. What would fit her now?
Her father had loved to hear her play. What would he like? He said he liked it all, everything she played. And some parents might say such a thing, but she knew it to be true when he said it, because he would come sit beside her, turning the pages of the music for her (even he got the hang of where the notes lay on the page after some practice) or just sat and did nothing at all but just be with her as she worked the keys. And of course he had been the one to find the best way ever to be with a piano, and that was to rest your forehead right on the wood and play long slow deep notes (preferably an octave) and let the vibration sift through your skull, a wonderful humming that lit up her whole body. She would do this for some time, over and over: the sound pulling her from her body, her spirit following the deep slowness till there was nothing left to follow and she found herself back inside her skin, ready to begin again.
Her father had been a nice man, wore his long sleeves rolled up and kept pencils in his shirt pocket: he was always and everywhere scribbling notes in small books; but she never knew what he used them for. He was the kind of father that made sure that all your friends got to where they needed to go (like a play or a party or some educational school event) even if their own parents wouldn’t take them there. He was like that. And when he passed, she had never really felt he was gone, only separated for some short time; that was the depth of understanding between them.
Her mother, though not abusive, hadn’t been the same kind of fellow traveler that her father had been, but she had given her something else and very different in her life, and that was music and grit. Not that anyone can “give” you music, but her mother had provided the framework for the work that she would do, and thereby taught her the value of persistence towards an end. Even when she faltered (and she did many times) her mother had insisted on sticking religiously with the piano lessons that her mother herself was teaching, almost as if to say that once a bargain is struck with me you can never be free of it. This was difficult for her younger self to understand: the mindless repetition, the physical strain, (her back hurt most) but through the narrow appreciation of her growing abilities she almost began to relish the sheer slog of it. It was hard; very hard at first, but later it brought her much joy.
She fancied herself back at the side of the gray salt Cape Cod style house listening to her mother playing the piano. They were very young at that time; both of them, and wanting to be closer to the music, she gently wriggled through the rose bushes to hide near the open window. Looking up, she saw her mother swaying slowly as she brought forth sounds that made her yearn to know whatever mystery it contained. She must have made some noise that gave herself away, for her mother stopped playing suddenly and looked down upon her, no smile or particular kindness upon her face, and said nothing for a long time. There was open water between them and neither knew how to swim. Finally her mother asked plainly, “Do you wish to learn?”
It was an imposing question, for surely she did and at the same time it meant that the gatekeeper to that magic would be the woman towering over her. Her mother noted the emphatic nod of the head, turned away from the window and rolled, ever so slowly, the music over to a different page. “We shall see,” she said.
And so it had been. Through all the things that had happened, good and bad, she had always had music, if not in front of her, out loud, then at least in her heart. And now, in this time, in this moment, even just sitting before the instrument was a way of pleasing her father, and giving thanks to her mother, wherever they were now.
And so she emptied herself and rested the tips of her fingers above the keys.
When you have done something over and over for so long, your body knows what it wants to do – you are just a rider on a horse that knows the way better than you, so she sat still until she could hear the music that was rising and knew it was time…
And she began to play.
It was a wreck of noise as her fingers fought against what her brain told them to do. She pulled the hands away as if burned, and clasped them tightly in her lap. Time and the hard work of survival had made them brittle and uncooperative. She unfolded them, and as she studied them more openly now, she admired them for what they had become: tools to live by. There was satisfaction in knowing that her hands had toughened and strengthened to the point where they could do things more important than music (was there such a thing?) Perhaps they weren’t meant for art anymore, but the chief art of life consisted in staying alive and that, her hands had helped her do. But she was not easily dissuaded and never had been. She had always been willful and was able to withstand humiliation, pain and inconvenience for great lengths of time in order to get to her final goal. This was, in many ways her mother’s solitary but vital gift to her, so she relaxed her wrists and focused intensely on harmonizing mind and body. “Let’s pull it together here guys,” she thought, and hoped she was ready. Now, with more deliberate care, she started ever so slowly again. It did no good to try to play what she remembered being able to play, and since her hands were the choke point, she let them take the lead.
It was a familiar piece, Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, and her fingers traced it out so slowly that each note spoke hesitantly as it came and went, before the next note, similar but different than the one before it took its place in that which flowed past her into the distance. She was lost to it all as soon as the stately rhythm asserted itself, and her eyes, fixed on the dirty wall in front of her began to blur, see nothing, and then, see everything.
There was green. Nothing was brown except what you wanted to have that way. There were irritations that you could laugh at as luxurious diversions now. There was plenty, enough. But also there was not enough for some, and that imbalance was what had started the changes that had led them to where they were now. Small things become large things if left unchecked and no had cared to notice till it was too late. She smelled roses and tasted the blood in her mouth that came from the sucked finger a thorn had pricked as she looked up into the window to touch the sounds that drifted towards her on the May day that it was. There was dirt between her toes; dark moist earth that had much alive growing in it. She could feel the connection to the dirt and what connected the dirt to all the earth. And as the melody rose and fell, she saw the smiles of her father and they let her know, “You are okay, and everything is all right.” And knew that for the two of them, it was true.
Clouds of innumerable shapes and sizes became what they would as they drifted on the delicate breeze with just hints of summer tucked in it, and the cold shadows that fell on her bare shoulders were banished and made warm as the restless mists above made way for a moment’s slice of blue and sun. I am okay. And everything is all right.
A key stuck, dead, and her finger hung on it as if nailed there and everything stopped. She was surprised in the way that someone who didn’t see their own death coming finally realizes it at the last vital second of life, and says quietly, “Oh…Already?” She wondered how one tiny thing could change everything so quickly. The clouds outside were black, the nail had found her backside, she was cold and the wind outside was coming up. The light was changing; the yellow flecks that had played upon the walls a moment ago were pulsing slowly redder now, larger, then smaller, each pulse a breath, a coiling in on itself, and a giving in to the lack of fuel and what was to come. She knew she should go, so she stood up, but her hands wouldn’t leave the position they were in; they wanted to stay. They were not done.
Lowering herself down again she wondered by what method she might be allowed to leave and reclaim some possibility of safety before it got dark, but the song pushed all that away. She heard it plainly; it was not her song, or anything she had ever really thought about, she had never seen the music, but she knew she could play it. And although she had never been a singer (and had been told so by many uncharitable or perhaps, real friends) she wanted to sing this now.
A loving, out-of-tune intro played through her and she hummed the melody she would attempt to breathe life into.
She knew the first six words, “amazing grace, how sweet the sound…” but that was all, so she sang just that much of it for every verse, changing it to match what she remembered of the tune. Her voice rasped in her ears (probably from the dust that never ceased to be in everything) but she didn’t care. If she was out of tune, there was no one there to tell her, and it felt good to call up her own human voice and make it heard. She realized that maybe she had never really sung at all, and when she finished the last chord, she remembered a few more words and sang, “now I’m found.”
It was a religious song, she knew, but she hadn’t been brought up that way. She had been taught to respect all life and to be compassionate where she could and that she had a place. But they didn’t have a book, or mantelpiece shrine that proved it to them. It was just how they thought about things. And though they had rarely spoken about such matters, there was, in watching the way her father (especially) spoke and behaved with other people, a clear example to follow, a way of being.
But things here were at their core now. There was life, and it was to be commended, cherished and if she felt a twinge of joy in seeing morning dew dancing on a spiders’ web, it was as much for the water she would gather from it (though it didn’t provide hardly anything, but you didn’t need much if you didn’t ask for much) as it was for the sheer beauty of it. For there was beauty and grace and an odd comfort in being so close to your life, to your actual living. There was no place to get to, there was only what was right in front of you and the choices to be made about which direction to travel next.
In the times before, there had been days that flowed together, each very much like the last, so much so that they all seemed the same, and she would tick them off lazily as if there was an inexhaustible supply. It was as if you were on a train you felt was moving only to find that it was the train next to you that was the one actually moving, giving you the illusion of movement, when instead you were only being left behind, in the same place you had been all along. But if there was a dirty orange sunset, it meant that she had lived another day, and if the burning yellow of morning appeared, it meant that she had survived another night. The days were not all the same now, they were of a piece – from beginning to end, and stood on their own as yet one more day of having made it, and that was enough.
It was then that she felt the voices; she felt the voices before she heard them. Whispers at first, and a strange sensation crawling along her arm down to her hands in a not unpleasant way, and she was playing again, this time accompanied by warm and wonderful voices within arm’s reach.
Amazing Grace with a small chorus of strong clear intent lifted her own voice above all the rest and carried it up on the wind till it was lost in the swirling dust outside. She only knew the six words, so she sang them like they were the only ones that mattered.
When she sang what she knew for the last time and played down to the last note, she let it ring, and laid her forehead on the wooden instrument in front of her, letting the falling sound fill her head. And fill it, it did: with her father, and music, and joy and spiders and the tiny hope of another day, and a deep forgiveness for anything that she had ever left undone that had hurt someone, and then it was gone.
There was no sound now, the wood had stopped speaking; there were only wind and shadows and her own slow deep breaths.
***
“Where are the others?” a quiet voice said from behind her.
She jerked her head up in instant fear of anything that had gotten this close to her without her noticing.
It was Bandana Woman and several more from the group.
“We heard voices,” said a man. “Where are the others?” he asked, confused.
She turned and looked at them across the room, a distance measured more than in feet, and her mouth fell open in astonishment.
“Why did you come back?”
There was no answer, because there was none to give. There was a shuffling of feet, shrugs and pained looks of inquiry between them, but the truth was they didn’t know why they had come back at all. No one had thought about it, no one knew who had started it, and now that they were here, they couldn’t remember why they did. It was Bandana Woman that finally spoke, and almost disbelieving it herself, said hesitantly,
“We…thought we should.”
It was like a door that had been so long in disuse that the first one through it found it almost impossible, but others that followed found no resistance at the threshold for the way had been made. There were nods and a general agreement that what she said indeed represented what the group had intended.
“You thought you should…?” she slowly repeated back to them.
What you see with your eyes is never the full story. It is only the thinnest veneer of world that you can grab with them. Bandana Woman looked at her and she looked back and it seemed from her perspective that there was something they had in common and had known about all along but had refused to admit. And it was right in front of them now.
“There are no others…” she responded apologetically.
Some looked down, others wore wondering looks, trying to decide who had the sickness, her or them, or if all of them would be led off into the night by demons in their heads they could only imagine and would soon be acquainted with.
A man stepped forward, “You have a nice voice.”
It took her muscles a few moments to remember how to smile, and once she did, that seemed to break apart whatever was left that stood between them.
“We should go,” said Bandana Woman.
They all knew it was true. Night was coming, and there was distance to cover.
Outside and moving again, they walked back up the hill they had come by. As the rutted path veered up and away from the cement structure, she glanced back over her shoulder and saw it was fast sinking into the faint red glow that surrounded it, the last of the light. It had been a good moment, and you never know when you get them if you’ll ever get another, so it was important to hold onto them when they came along. Her eyes traced the lines of the keyboard, her hard fingers felt uneven ivory through their roughness and her ears found voices at the edge of her consciousness wishing her grace. She was filled with a thrumming, slowly cycling gentle waves that carried her forward like a current wanting to be a tide wanting to be an ocean.
Bandana Woman put her arm around her shoulder and guided her round toward the trail and the group again and said encouragingly, “Maybe we’ll come by this way again.” It was a nice thing to say, a simple touch of kindness that had been absent from their lives for a very long time, so she smiled and nodded back, and they were humans again.
With the final rays of sun taking the warmth with it, it got cold quickly and the twilight deepened. She saw the first stars appear overhead and was grateful that she had again lived one more turn of the wheel. It almost seemed like this might be the beginning of better days to come, but she couldn’t be sure and it was dangerous to hope, so she hummed quietly to herself and kept walking forward.
***end***
