By Alan Good
Jes was on the front porch picking. Playing always made it better, even when it didn’t. An uptempo version of “Shady Grove,” faster than his fingers would really go. The mosquitoes were bad, which they had in common with everything else, and dad always said if you picked fast enough the vibrations would shoo the mosquitoes away. Back then it seemed like it was true. A lot of things still seemed true then. Things were more in tune.
There was no one there to clap when he was done, or tell him that someone who didn’t play would not have even noticed how he’d flubbed that change. He drank on his beer and sort of casually looked around the neighborhood, not trying to make eye contact with anyone but still signaling that any and all players, regardless of ability, were welcome to drop in. He thought maybe Sammy or Little t or one of the boys might stop by, even though they hadn’t replied to his texts. There was a time this porch was like a nightclub. Dad would step out with his old Martin and by the time he had it tuned up (by ear) there’d be guys showing up with guitars, banjos, fiddles. There’d always be different players, and strangers driving by would stop and listen. If they had an instrument they’d park and drop in for a session. They’d play into the night and it was so beautiful you never wanted it to stop.
But it did stop.
He finished his beer and wiped the sweat from the can off on his jeans before touching the neck of his guitar, which was really his dad’s guitar. His dad’s Martin. His dad’s house. Nothing had ever really been his, aside from his mistakes.
He settled on a slower tune, something his less dexterous fingers could keep up with. “No Deal.” Old Townes Van Zandt song. A good song to play when you’re drunk, or just not a great player, just three chords, D, G, and A7, and you can pick it sloppy and you don’t have to sing good to be able to pull it off. If you did sing good it would come off inauthentic.
On the verses you just talked the lyrics, Woody Guthrie-style, but he really put his heart into it on the chorus. Let his voice crack on the long “Nooooo.” He skipped the third verse, where the speaker is in love with a girl who’s underage. Sometimes he’d just change “fifteen” to “eighteen” but that still felt a little pervy. If the neighbors were actually listening he didn’t want them to get that impression of him, even though it was just a song. The last verse was about him. He really had come through life a stumbler. He really could expect to die that way. These were the facts. This was his biography.
From “No Deal” he went straight into a couple of his own songs. They weren’t any good, and he knew it, but he liked to play them anyway, mumbling the lyrics so he didn’t have to hear how bad they were. They were songs about drinking too much and loving someone who doesn’t love you anymore. Also one about bigfoot, just for fun, because he liked bigfoot. Country songs trying too hard to sound country.
His phone lit up, his heart along with it, until he saw it was just a spam message about ED pills, not Little t heading over with his harmonica. That would make a good song though—“Spam Is My Only Friend.” He played some more songs. He played them loud, with more heart than skill. He didn’t have any embarrassment or sense of shame, the way he once would, singing. Didn’t matter if he was any good or not, singing was better than crying. It drowned out the voice inside him, the one that says life would be so much easier if you were dead. He thought maybe he’d play all night. He had nowhere to be, nowhere to go, didn’t want to go inside that empty house. It’d be more fun if there was someone else to sing harmony or pick out a line while he played rhythm. Used to be all you needed for a party was a guitar and someone who at least sort of knew how to play it.
He drank more beer. He played more songs. He checked his phone and there was always nothing. He couldn’t blame the boys for not coming over. He couldn’t blame her for leaving. The lightning bugs were out now, asking for an encore.
Little while later a police car rolled up. Jes held up his guitar as the cop walked up. He said, “You play?” The cop just told him to take his concert in the house. It was late and this was his one and only warning. Jes wanted to say no deal, but he just said, “Oh. Yeah. Okay.” Sure felt dumb. He’d really expected that cop to walk up and want to do “Pancho and Lefty” or something.
You couldn’t have a concert in that house. Bad acoustics and it smelled like death. The party was over. It wasn’t like the old days. A guy and a guitar, they didn’t mean nothing.
Alan Good is a writer from southwest Missouri.