Afternoon Musician [short story]

***Street Musician by Paul VanDerWerf https://flic.kr/p/2jbEkVj***

In the mid-1980s I was living in Fullerton on the top-floor of a one-bedroom duplex, newly married, working for the phone company by night and continuing my educational odyssey by day. The duplex stood behind a small three-store front strip mall and I could imagine my protagonist spending his afternoons in front of the corner liquor store. Enjoy (2024-02-18).

The August sun lay at eye level on the late afternoon horizon as the street corner guitarist stepped up to his customary perch. In a decaying Los Angeles neighborhood whose hulking remains spoke of an era of mom-and-pop stores and bungalow architecture, the guitarist personified something once tolerantly called “a bit of local color.” But now, now as he stood on the littered sidewalk in front of the last liquor store in L.A. not owned by 7-11 or ARCO, the slightly disheveled musician was merely an anachronism. He was a ghost from the past ignored by the steady stream of tinted-windowed European and Japanese sedans escaping the freeway in desperate search for an alternate route.

The ignored minstrel wasn’t an old man, but the life seemed to be washed out of his stringy hair, greying face, and tattered clothes. The sidewalk was abandoned except for the empty bottles and cans and a few faceless souls walking in and out of the liquor store. Either unconcerned about his lack of an actual audience or unaware of the futility of his task, he bent over and removed his rose-colored guitar from its cardboard guitar case.

The traffic continued to buzz by. Clouds gathered and the sky grayed to the color of the street corner. From across the street you could see him as he began to strum his guitar but you couldn’t hear him play.

The handful of people who passed by him paid him no mind. Either distracted by his appearance or drowning in their own thoughts they missed a sound that might have changed their disposition. The musician, his old army coat, his smoldering cigarette, his cardboard guitar case open to an audience of cold cement, they all belonged on this littered street corner. But the sounds his guitar made, the songs he played were from somewhere else. His songs belonged in a neatly trimmed city park with children laughing and playing on the swings; a park with brightly colored table cloths on picnic tables brimming with ice chest and wicker baskets; a park populated by moms and dads cooking fat juicy hamburgers on the barbeques.

Then the sun disappeared into the dirty orange-grey horizon and the cars turned on their headlights. People continued to walk in and out of the liquor store as its neon signs came on. A torn dollar bill blew across the pavement as the musician placed his guitar into its case and a few coins in his pocket. A crowd of youngsters walked passed him on their way into the store and he disappeared.

A week or so later the musician stood on the same street, a solitary figure on the edge of an ever-flowing stream of nondescript metal boxes. He sighed, closed his eyes tightly and began to play.

Music jumped off the guitar strings as his fingers danced across the shining ribbons of sound. It was a pure sound, a happy sound, a sound as rustic as the mountains, a sound as clean as the first morning of Spring. Like dew on blades of uncut grass, like butterflies in a meadow of flowers, his fingers danced on the shiny strings of his guitar.

He opened his eyes as a car in traffic made a sudden stop. Horns honked, a pair of motorists flipped each other off. The light changed and traffic rolled by. He stared blankly for a moment and then looked down at his open guitar case. It was empty except for some sand from the street and a broken guitar

pick. He sighed. Two Mexican boys came out of the liquor store and one of them tossed a video game token into his case. He closed his eyes again and began to play.

He thought about happy times. He thought about the day his little boy was born. He thought about little infant fingers clutching strands of blue and red yarn; Bright happy eyes, maneuvering spoonfuls of baby food into a smiling mouth; Soft leather infant shoes scattered on the floor and socks that never seemed to stay on; Singing and splashing in the bathtub, and taking naps together on a puffy comforter in the middle of the afternoon. His little boy he thought about the way his little boy left out his “S”s when he said “Stevie.” Little ‘tevie… He remembered the way little ‘tevie waved good-bye as he drove off with his mother and never came back.

The guitarist opened his eyes to find an old woman staring at him. She gave him a smile and he weakly returned the smile. “That was very lovely,” she said. “Thank you,” he replied. He looked down at the empty guitar case. She reached over and gave him a kiss on the cheek, then turned and slowly made her way across the busy intersection. The sun had now set and the neon lights came on. He paused. Putting his guitar into the empty case, he tightened his coat belt and slowly began to walk home trying to find solace in his thoughts about little Stevie.

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