FEATHERS

The last thing I expected on the pier was to hear broke-down acoustic bayou. I was there that day like every day after jazz band, to be alone with the swish and swoosh and no other sound but the seagulls, and to wonder how come reflections in the water from stuff like the wreck of the old dock always follow you instead of just making one big circle of reflection. I don’t remember the old dock but Lori does because her dad stepped on a nail there and it came right out the top of his foot. She’s the only person I ever talked to about the reflections, and all she said was, “It’s because of your perspective,” as if she was telling me something I never thought about. It pissed me off, because even though we’re best friends, we’re chalk and cheese-whiz. Lozenges and lasagna. Molotovs and mazel tovs. So I started going to the pier after practice instead of going to her place so I could just be me and hang off the guardrail watching the cookie-cutter tourists in their polo shirts tucked into khaki shorts and braided belts and Birkenstocks always, always, always carrying those paper takeout coffee cups. I went into the café just one time and tried a mocha because the kid at the counter said it was sweet, but it didn’t beat the pants off a chocolate malt, and really nothing does, especially after you smoke a bowl and everything turns to gooey gushy chocolate luscious yum. But it was too cold that day for a chocolate malt and there wasn’t any weed. Just the old sad sky and dangling seagulls. Free like people weren’t allowed to be. That’s when I heard that sweet steel fingerpicking. 

Okay, yeah, it was twelve-bar blues. Predictable. But those chord leads and vibey high notes like melted metal hit the sky and sent me sailing down the river. So I shoved my flute case deeper in my knapsack and ducked around the corner to check the maestro.

The dude was at least forty. He looked homeless — cracked old leather jacket, jeans patched up in all the wrong places. But those gnarly fingers sticking out of those cut-off gloves reached straight across six frets and man he made that steel cry with a tin tube on his little finger, singing doctor gonna do all that he can, but what you gonna need is a undertaker man in a voice that only comes from hopping freight trains and walking a thousand miles of dusty roads with a guitar slung across your shoulder. I got so caught up in grooving to that scene, I didn’t even hear it when he said my name.

“Calypso,” he said again. “That it, ain’t it?” 

For a second I was too pissed off to even be surprised, because what the hell kind of mother gives a girl a name like mine? At least my old man said it was her idea, but I never met her and I never would and so I just tried not to think about it even though I had this fantasy she wasn’t just some whore with a needle in her arm who dumped me off to live with a drunken psychopath and that someday she’d get her shit together and come save me. But that wasn’t about to happen and I was still trying not to think about it when that old blues dude knocked a Newport into his mouth and lit it with one hand, looking down at me from his broken-looking nose.

“How you know my name?” 

“One them talents I got.” He took a drag and spit smoke into the sky. “Sometimes it scares me.”

“Who are you?” 

“Chicago,” he said, and jammed his cigarette behind the nut and started tuning up.

I couldn’t think of anything to say so I stood there staring at my shoes, remembering how they used to be this beautiful blue until I stepped in whatever my old man’s car leaked all over the driveway and I washed them till they were almost white and still they were never clean. When I looked up, the dude was staring at my flute case.

“You gonna play that thing or what?”

Like fuck I was. “Nah. I play jazz.”

“Good enough,” he said, like it was some kind of joke. 

That pissed me off all over again. “Whoever heard of a flute with blues?” 

“Ain’t nobody heard of it. Play.”

So the next thing I know I’m blowing through a G scale, he starts riffing in the major key, going easy on me, keeping it to I-IV-V. I switch to minor pentatonic, try to add the major third but I miss the beat. Then I pause to blow steam into my fist. He starts throwing out these sharped and flatted ninths, like in bebop, then he hangs back. I get a little motif up and he starts pulling out these harmonies with that little finger tube and we funk it up till my hands are frozen.

I figured I’d just buy something hot to wrap my hands around. I told Chicago I’d be back. But soon as I got halfway up the pier to the café all the tourists started closing in on him, and his guitar just sounded like a buzzy scraping scratch. The seagulls sounded clearer. I zoned out, staring up at them with their wings spread out like that, just thinking how weird it was that birds could fly, that really anything could move by itself instead of just getting blown around by the wind like the trash on the sidewalk, and I got to thinking how weird it was that anything even was alive because everything just being dead would’ve made a lot more sense. 

The sun was going down, I guess, even though I couldn’t see it. I was overdue in hell.

Whenever my old man stopped at the bar on his way home I could tell by the screech of his wheels in the carport. Soon as I heard it I knew it wouldn’t matter what I did, but I’d try anyway to nuke some mashed potatoes because the first thing he’d be mad about was that I didn’t cook anything. Then he’d start on me. All I could do was wait it out till he was done. It’s funny what you think about at times like that, waiting for the worst pain to be over. I’d picture my fingers on my flute going up and down, chromatic and diminished, right there with the purple flowers bursting in my eye sockets and I’d know it didn’t matter what he did to me because I had my own flute paid for with my own damn money and he couldn’t take that away and I sure as hell wasn’t about to let that motherfucker see me cry. 

Then he’d storm off into the bathroom and take a piss with the door open and I’d try not to hear it. Somebody’s TV was on. A car went by outside the window with the radio on full blast with happy voices coming in so close for just one second that it almost seemed like they could rescue me. 

I could count on Lori not to say anything. She could see my eye, no doubt, but she knew there wasn’t any point in saying so. She was the only reason I could still stand coming to English class. I didn’t turn in anything after the first assignment because when I started out like There was this dude named Hamlet the teacher put a fat red X through it so I didn’t even look at it because what the fuck. Then she started in on me about some book report slip and I’m like, Hell if I know, I drop my folder, I don’t pick up half the stuff that falls out. And nothing else good for the whole rest of the day, even lunch, which is just a soggy puck-shaped piece of shit, but Lori made me laugh talking about her cat puking up shaving cream but I know by the way the other girls look at me when one of them talks about wanting to leave home they can all see my bruises. Then Lori says she wants to leave home too, but who’s going to rent to a seventeen-year-old with no job who wants to bring her cat along?  

Well, somehow I got Lori to come with me to the pier, even though she was like, “That jazz shit’s boring. Why do you like that stuff?”

I’m like, “It’s blues. And anyway, it’s all about the dude.” 

She kept shaking her head while I pulled her along through swish and swoosh and tugboat horns until finally we found the music. 

Chicago had his back to the guardrail and was dueling on the sickest licks with a dude even older than he was, a dude in a leather cap going ape shit on a twelve-string and all kinds of tourist money flying into their open cases. 

Won’t some sweet mama take a chance on me? I ain’t so bad. 

The way Chicago belted out that line I could see he knew what love was. Even with a broken nose he wasn’t bad looking for an old guy, and I figured he just didn’t have anybody right then and that’s why he looked all tore up. I couldn’t really picture what love was like, though, I’d never had a boyfriend and didn’t want one, so I just blanked out, grayed out,  staring at the river looking like a giant pinpricked iron slab, thinking that even though it would drive away the gloom like a bowl of chronic, maybe if I took a chance on a cappuccino it wouldn’t be so bad. 

I pulled Lori into the café with one eye on Chicago and the other dude in the window while the kid behind the counter banged out shots and foamed the milk and made me wish my fingers on my flute were as slick and speedy as his were making coffee. That’s when I saw the Help Wanted sign. 

All I knew was that if I didn’t ask for an application and fill it out right then and there, I’d forget about it. I went to turn it in and this lady came out saying she was Bonnie and she owned the place and could I work on weekends? I think I told her yes, but the rain was coming down and I had to catch Chicago. 

I yelled his name because I had to yell something. Then when he looked at me I had to say something else. So I dragged Lori out and asked him what her name was. 

He looked pissed off and spit out a wet cigarette. “Middle the fuckin’ rain? Lauren, Laura, some shit like that.” 

Lori pulled her jacket up over her head. “You told him about me?”

“I didn’t tell him shit.”

“The good Lord whisper things,” Chicago heaved up his guitar case, pointed to my fucked-up face and then to his. “Up to you whether you want to listen.” 

Then he was gone. After the other dude. To wherever it is old blues dudes go. 

We ducked into the souvenir and T-shirt shop where it was warm and light and dry and Lori said, “Maybe the dude’s a man-witch. You’ll wake up in the morning and you won’t wake up.” 

In the back of the shop the TV played a dramatization of a rescue call, the paramedic bursting in on this old lady choking, the lights all dim and actors without makeup on so they looked greasy and authentic, the paramedic tries the Heimlich maneuver and the old lady dies right there in front of him.

“You wanna get baked?” Lori said. 

“I always wanna get baked,” I said. 

At Lori’s house everything was cozy. She packed a bubbler with a big sweet nugget sparkling with crystals and all these purple veins and itchy fire in my lungs turned the world into love. Lori’s doily curtains and her lava lamp were love and her picture frames made out of seashells were love and those pictures of her cousins smiling sunshine in the Philippines and everything was love. It’s no wonder she didn’t want to move out. Even though we both knew her mom would kick her to the curb if she found out we were up there getting stoned. But her mom never came up. She just yelled out something in Tagalog and Lori yelled back and let in her beautiful purring kitty who’d be beautiful puking up shaving cream. The TV was on and Lori was asking if I ever noticed how whenever a politician made a speech they’d have every race represented in the background, and before I could think of anything to say the president was gone and there were all these naked bodies twisting under flashing lights with a tin can soundtrack played by robots. Lori was going on about how her boyfriend never talked and she was always doing all the talking, and the gyroscopic bevy fractured into fractal squiggly lines that grew and shrank through time and space and tentacles of manufactured melody made loops and domes and fuzzy flights of string cheese. 

Then my phone buzzed and I had to pretend I wasn’t stoned.

It was Bonnie from the café, asking if I could start work Saturday. I think she said the number nine. I drew a hoop and tail on my hand but then I wasn’t sure any number really looked like that. When I hung up Lori was watching this rerun of The Simpsons where Lisa was playing sax with that big hunched-over jazz dude and cracking up saying that was me and Chicago. Which pissed me off because for one thing Chicago played guitar, not sax, and for another thing he didn’t wear fucking Birkenstocks like a fucking tourist. It killed my high and I was almost crying. Right then and there I wanted nothing but to play the blues, to really play the blues, and I made my mind up that when I saw Chicago again I’d make him teach me really how. 

For the rest of the week I waited for Bonnie to call back saying, You know what, never mind, we don’t need your stoner ass. But she didn’t. I made it through Friday afternoon, and on Saturday morning I waited for my old man to leave and took a shower I wished would never end because I have to put on cold stiff clothes as soon as I turn off the water, but I had my fuzzy muffler and my warmest coat and kept my hands in my pockets all the way to the pier. 

I didn’t really think Chicago would be there. I just really wished he would be. 

Halfway to the café I saw him. Leaned over the guardrail, his back to me, the back of his head bone white and jacket all beat up and a cigarette between his fingers. 

“Must be Calypso.” He didn’t even turn around. Just kept watching the seagulls bank and dangle in the sky. 

“I got a job,” I said. “I start this morning.” 

He nodded and turned around, and he gave me this look I can’t even describe. It wasn’t even like any expression, really. He just looked way older than I remembered. Maybe he’d always looked that way. He looked away and mumbled something about the Lord and turning the other cheek. Then he looked at me and said out loud, “Don’t turn the other cheek, Calypso. Just run like hell.”

After a minute I said, “You been where I am.” 

“Been there and worse,” he said. 

“What’d you do about it?”

“I shot him.” Chicago took a drag and turned back toward the sky. “But I did seventeen in the big house for it, so don’t be gettin’ no ideas.” 

Suddenly all those images of dusty roads and freight trains and romance with all kinds of women disappeared. Everything I thought I knew was wrong. And I knew there was something out there for me and I just didn’t know what it was yet, and the big gray sky was some kind of clue. I saw three seagulls and thought about the Trinity, and something made me ask, “If you had three wishes, what would you wish for?” 

Chicago watched the seagulls too, and after a long time he said, “I’d wish I could fly.” 

“What about the other two?”

He took a long time to answer before he said, “I guess if I could fly, nothin’ else’d matter.” 

My phone was buzzing. Before I even got it to my ear Lori was gushing that she got a job. “Listen, I know this is crazy, but my cousin’s friend has this apartment he can rent us cheap. Next month I turn eighteen, that’s old enough to sign the lease, I’m gonna start work next week, and you’ll be getting paid…” 

I thought about how much money the two of us might have between us, and I knew it wouldn’t be a lot, but it’d be enough for food and rent and chronic. Maybe there’d be other expenses. Maybe we’d have to switch to schwag. But it’d be worth it. In my mind I saw everything I’d take: my flute, pipe and lighter, most of my clothes. It’d all fit in my knapsack. I’d be out of there before my old man even knew it. 

I was all set to tell Chicago. But when I turned around he was gone. To wherever it is old blues dudes go. 

Where he’d been standing I saw three seagull feathers coming down. I reached down and picked them up. I still have them now. I like to think maybe he put them there. Or somebody did. Or something.

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Tremain Xenos is a writer, translator, part-time teacher, mediocre flautist, and very clumsy paragliding pilot. He lives with his wife, cats, and chickens in Japan’s smallest and least productive prefecture. A repeat contributor to Fraidy Cat Press, ergot. and Propagule, he has also had stories in such magazines as Channel, The Dark City, and Rivanna Review, among others.