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Prolific Writer
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Baton Rouge, LA
Gender: Male
Posts: 464
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Charlie the Musician
Charlie the Musician
Charlie the musician could taste the fresh ryegrass as he scoured the yard on all fours, intent on finding his guitar. A river was only a few slabs of muddy rock away from his vacation home, and it was so untainted that Charlie could always see the bottom sand and the occasional passing gator.
The swamp milkweeds lining the riverbank caressed Charlie’s face, but he was careful not to disturb them in his search for the solid-top acoustic that he had so carelessly misplaced. When his fingers grazed the mud and algae that daubed the growing riverbank, he stood and watched the river suddenly evaporate, the water amassing over his head before it coalesced with the sky. It was an awesome sight, and Charlie could gawk in no other manner but sheer disbelief.
Clambering over the bank’s brush, Charlie the rising musician decided to explore the sandy remnants. He kicked aside the gasping fish and carefully stepped over a few writhing cottonmouths. Perhaps he lost the guitar out in the river, Charlie thought, though he knew better than that. It was a river for which he had aligned stepping stones, but they were stones on which no one had ever stepped.
Up ahead, Charlie could hear an old familiar jazz waltz. What was that song? Who wrote it, and who was playing lead on the horn? The style reminded him of his father, who would practice the trumpet late into the night until the fatigue was so intense that even Charlie the aspiring musician could no longer feel his own lips.
He walked faster, but the ground began to soften; it sank him and sucked him in. Step after step in the doughy mush quickly grew tiresome. Charlie the struggler’s old age and feeble muscles would no longer allow him to travel up the river to continue his search. He simply shrugged and turned back to shore.
Instead of his home, though, there stood a gray stone wall that seemed to continue forever each way, elevated miles above his head, impossible to climb. He had spent far too long in the empty river. The bank was gone, replaced by a canyon through which Charlie was destined to continue his uncertain pursuit.
The trek continued as far as Charlie’s body would allow him to go. He listened to the trumpet resounding from the canyon walls and echoing the sweet melody of his favorite childhood song. It was certain that Charlie would be standing face to face with his father when the journey finally came to an end – if there was an end.
Along the way, he stopped to rest and visit with old friends and family who stood at the river bends. They, too, had been trapped, each on a similar, but detached unique path.
“Have you seen my guitar?”
“You know I have, and I do not want to see it anymore, Charlie the first-born,” replied his younger brother, David, who held hands with their mother. Charlie the lost musician set aside a moment to mourn his mother’s untimely death, something he had forgotten to do in the past fifty years. But this was interrupted by Brianna, his first love.
“What did you do with my guitar?” He asked, regretting his vicious questioning immediately.
“I didn’t touch the thing,” she said. “I do not want to see it anymore, Charlie the dreamer. Come with me and we’ll walk from this river together.”
Brianna reached out and touched his hand, and Charlie the adherent did not pull away. Using every ounce of will remaining in his slowing heart, he still strained to hear the music over Brianna’s love.
From beyond the next bend in the canyon, in such a manner that seemed so sudden and unwelcoming, approached Sharon, the teacher who his father held responsible for ruining what both he and Charlie the impressionable boy really wanted. And Sharon held that shiny new guitar, the one that made Charlie forget all about playing the trumpet.
Sharon strummed a simple tune, blocking out the faraway trumpet, but it was a delightful song nonetheless.
“Where is my guitar?”
Each time he repeated the question, Charlie’s face grew hot and his heart weakened. The trumpet was gone; the guitar was gone; Brianna was not, and Charlie still did not let go.
“I know where it is,” said William, his best friend, emerging from behind Brianna.
William pulled him until Brianna’s hand slipped from his feeble grip, and he brushed past everyone he knew. They wore expressions of worry, judgmental stares and desperate hands reaching out for Charlie the follower, but he was no more interested in them as he was in anything else that could detract from his mission.
As he and William walked, the ground was no longer sinking, and each step became easier than the last for Charlie, and his father's music again grew louder. But they walked for miles, and he began to wonder if William knew the way, if Charlie was really going to finally reunite with his guitar.
Finally, they came upon a cave embedded in the canyon wall. Dark, strange, ultimately a waste of time to search through nothingness, Charlie thought. Where had his companion brought him?
“We’ve arrived,” William said, and he told Charlie the weary to lead the way.
“In here?”
“In there, my dear friend.”
“I don’t think I will find anything. It’s too dark.”
“It’s only darkness on the outside. Please come with me, Charlie. I can help you.”
They entered without another word.
It was true. The darkness was only on the outside, for the interior of the cave was decorated with neon lights illuminating the odd-smelling fog. It created an ambience that soothed his anxiety and put an unfamiliar smile on his worried face. The walls were covered in glowing painted words, purple inspiration, green success, white indulgence, black love. He approached a painted wall, entranced by its life and beauty.
“This place is magnificent,” Charlie said to William.
Though there was no William anymore. No guitar. But Charlie did not leave the cave, rather, he stayed to rest against the mural of words. For years. The cave was promising. He was sure that it would help him figure it all out, finally realizing where to look. Or if he really needed to look anymore. Charlie the influenced closed his eyes for a very long time, and the lost years of his life flew by in a wasted mass of betrayal and loneliness.
The soft sound of footsteps pulled him out of a deep sleep. Charlie opened his eyes to see her standing over him, hands on her hips, casting her shadow over his unmoving body as she always had.
“Brianna,” he choked.
“Come with me away from here,” she said.
“I never found it.”
“You don’t need it anymore.”
Charlie did not say anything. Instead, he allowed Brianna to pull him to his feet. They left the cave, where Charlie finally felt the night air again. It filled his lungs for the first time in as long as he could remember, but it was not the same.
Nightfall should have brought comfort, but the moon was all wrong, not bright and serene as it once had been. The moonlight truly matched Brianna’s sick, unwelcoming eyes. Charlie shivered and turned back to the cave. It had always been the same in there, and it always would be. The music still played.
“Thank you for bringing me out of the cave.”
“No one else would have done so.” But Charlie the wise could not believe such a terrible lie. “Now walk with me, back to our friends.”
She turned away from the music, but Charlie did not move.
“Charlie the fool, you’ve failed. Either come with me or live the rest of your days in that cave.”
With a fading expression of endearment, he looked at Brianna for one last time. Who was once the girl for whom he could give up his life, was now part of a muddy river, an inescapable canyon, and every dark diverging path.
“Thank you for bringing me out of the cave.” And Charlie never spoke to her again.
The rest of the way was a sprint to the finish, ignoring anyone who offered a helping hand along the path. It was a journey he wanted to make alone. And when he could finally see his father playing the trumpet, everyone dancing and laughing around him, Charlie knew it was worth it.
His father stopped playing when Charlie approached the stage, and the devoted crowd applauded. He reached down to pat his son on the head, and Charlie the son shut his eyes tightly, sealing off the burning tears that came with the realization of letting down the only person who ever cared. And Charlie the ingenuous but growing boy could no longer hold in his apologetic sobs. When Charlie opened his eyes, his father only smiled.
“I have something for you,” he told his son.
Charlie held the guitar at his lap just as his father had told him, and his shy fingers brushed over each fret, dreaming of knowing them all. The pick hung loosely from his thumb and forefinger, resting on one knee while he eyed the fine-tuned strings.
“Go on; try it.”
Charlie the old man tried to take a deep breath, but the pain in his chest was so excruciating that his lungs refused to subject him to such torture. He sat in his favorite easy chair, still keeping itself intact after all those years. And his old acoustic guitar, too, resting on his lap and waiting to be played once more – if Charlie could muster the strength to strike his final chord.
And he did. As his body grew colder with each short gasp, Charlie positioned his fingers firmly, lifting the pick and lowering it in a swift, exhausting motion. The sound resonated throughout his home, and Charlie was face to face with his audience – a proud father whispering under the repose of gentle harps.
Last edited by StephenP2003 : 09-15-2006 at 01:25 PM.
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Junebug61753
