------------------------------------------------------------------------ This story is copyright 1999 by Mark Meiss. All rights reserved. You are welcome to read this story online, but please do not make any printed or electronic copies. If you want to share this story with someone else, please direct them to the URL: http://death.uits.indiana.edu/~mmeiss/writing/ If you enjoyed this story, want to contribute criticism, or if you managed to find it someplace other than the site above, please e-mail me at mmeiss@indiana.edu. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Hearing the Blues by Mark Meiss The age of nine was as good a time as any for me to learn how to hear the blues. When the final bell rang at school that day, and Mrs. Kimball told us we could go, I was the first eager fourth-grader to jerk open the art-covered wooden door of the coat closet and grab my blue nylon windbreaker and my tattered red book bag and hurry out the door. For the first time that week, my battered paperback copy of Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring stayed in my backpack as I ran-walked past the suspicious eyes of the sixth-grade crossing guards. Then I fumbled to get my housekey out of my shirt, where it hung around my neck from a thick and scratchy loop of yarn. Once I was inside, it wasn't time for a Coke and Buck Rogers, not today, not on the day. But first, I had to fulfill the letter of the law. My soft boy's hands, their fingers already long at the age of nine, picked up the phone and dialed my father's work number, disobeying twice and pressing the wrong buttons. "Dad can I go to the park today please Dad I don't have any homework yeah the dishes are done yeah I won't be late this time okay Dad okay I said okay great thanks bye." I leaned over the kitchen table to hang up the phone and knocked over a plastic peanut butter jar in the process, but I decided that today I didn't care and dashed out the door. First I had to stop behind the house to retrieve my old red scooter, my pride and joy, my excuse for the fact that I didn't know how to ride a bike. Then I pushed myself across the street and across another street to the great wooded growth of Helmberg Park, the faint smells of rotting leaves and fallen sticks and uncut clumps of grass making my nostrils feel that home. I pushed off with my right foot, then lifted it, let it dangle above the ground as the twigs crackled under the solid rubber tire - and then again, and then again, and inside of two minutes I had reached the playground and Cinderella's Coach, a garish orange sheet metal pumpkin large enough to seat four. It was certainly large enough for myself and my best friend Bobby and, more importantly, for Stacy and Shelley. And big enough for a game of Truth or Dare, oh yes. * * * Brett narrowed his eyes and glanced around, but the other kids weren't anywhere to be seen yet. The tornado slide stood empty, begging for excited children to twirl down on makeshift mats of waxed paper. The stand-up merry-o-ground didn't have Bobby on it, trying to swing his foot forward and back in a straight line as he flew around. And Stacy and Shelley weren't on the jungle gym, trying to hang upside down from their knees while protecting their young modesty with hands keeping their shirts from flying up. But over by the shelter house, Brett could see a mountain bike leaning up against the rough concrete blocks of the storage building. The bicycle was jet black except for rough swirls of red, yellow, and orange paint along each length of the frame, a clumsy attempt at a flame job. Please, God, thought Brett, don't let Darrin be in the park, not today, not with Stacy coming, it's not fair. A cough behind him alerted Brett that the tall, red-haired sixth grader was not only there but had already noticed him. He spun around to face the sneer of Darrin Brimley, the older boy's braces gleaming like steel teeth in a patch of sunlight that fell through the trees. Darrin held Brett's scooter aloft with one hand, making it look like a pathetically childish plaything. "I thought I told you to stop riding this pussy thing," Darrin said. Brett recoiled a little in fright, and his mouth opened and closed once before he said, "Just give it back, Darrin. Please." "I told you to stop riding this pussy thing," repeated Darrin, and without warning he grasped the scooter by its handlebars, swung it in an arc over his head, and smashed in into the hard-packed clay of the ground. An axle bent, a washer shot off like a gunshot, and a wheel rolled lazily off under the coach. Dumb with dismay and fear, a growing reservoir of pure hostility welling up inside, Brett curled his hand into a fist and swung wildly at Darrin, missing. A split second later, the older boy's fist lashed out like a striking cobra and struck Brett on the jaw. "Hit me again," taunted Darrin. Brett swung at that hated freckled face, and again he missed, and again Darrin's fist cracked into his jaw. Swing, miss, crack. Swing, miss, crack. The pain and the rage and the helplessness made each of Brett's blows more wild than the last, and he failed to connect even once before he saw that Stacy and Sherry were standing at the edge of the playground, quietly observing the confrontation. Then humiliation washed over him like a flood. * * * Brett's arm dropped to his side, and he turned and ran back through the trees. Darrin did not run after him, but he did smile and rub his knuckles gently and laugh out loud for a few minutes. Then he straddled "Black Fire" and cycled away from the playground, the smile not disappearing from his lips. Brett was too far away by then to see that Stacy and Sherry entered the playground and then left a minute later, Stacy carrying the wheel and Sherry carrying the rest of the scooter. He had already almost reached his house, and by good fortune, no cars passed by as he raced across the street, the tears in his eyes making it impossible to look left and right first. At the door of the house, Brett pulled out his key again, but he found that he had left the door unlocked before. His brow furrowed at this, and his jaw trembled, and he slammed the door behind him and ran into his room. There, stretched on his stomach across the soft plaid quilt on his bed, Brett sobbed into his folded arms until his breath came in great heaving gasps. Choking on his tears, he sat up on the side of the bed and punched at his bookcase, kicked at a bin of Legos. Then he let his hand fall into his hands and let his elbows rest on his knees. He sat there silently for a long time as the tears slowly dried up and the trickle of mucus from his nose stopped and his jaw began to hurt. Quietly, Brett stood up and walked over to the basement door. He opened the door and plodded down the unpainted wooden steps into the den. This was the room, lush with shag carpeting, where his father kept his old stereo and the big boxes of vinyl records. Brett turned on the amplifier, and pale greenish light spilled across the face of the tuner. He fell to his knees and flipped through the records until he finally picked Howlin' Wolf's The Back Door Wolf. He put the record on the turntable and put the needle on the record. The stereo hissed and popped as Brett turned off the lights, and then the music began. Brett sat down in the dark and heard the blues for the first time.