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  The blues? he said and looked down queer at its mentioning, considering he wasn’t sure of my meaning, so I had to explain. I had to tell him the blues was a whispering away, really, that it was a dying down, too, and a rising up. That it was everything and nothing at once.

  A dying down?

  Well, sure, I said. And it’s a name you cannot speak, not entire. It’s something made of bone and ash and smoke. And it blows out your fingers and toes, from your eyes and teeth. Blowing out in song and chanting across the sad salt sea, when it first made its way here to mark us from the beginning. This is my prayer, son. And I say it every night to the darkness. And every day to the brightness. And you got it, too, I swear. You got it through and through.

  Got what?

  In your bones and teeth and throat. And you can go ahead and call it a song or poem or whatever you want, whatever you’re always humming. But you’ve got to make it your own one day, to deal with it no matter what.

  He was silent then and not sure of any of it, and I might have lost him entire with my soliloquy, of turning him on to the blues side of life. But the universe has a way of bringing you what you need at exactly the right moment, even if it can take everything away, too. All I had to do was sit there and watch as a gaggle of girls stepped around the corner. O we were hushed then because of it, and always reminded of our place when the students happened on us in our reveries and administrations, but that was all I needed. As A.D. watched them go by, I seen a small spark flirt about his lips as a certain young thing dropped some sheet music, before bending down in a flurry of spangles and rose-printed dressings to retrieve it, and then I knew he’d got it. The blues, for sure. He’d felt it as she hurried off.

  Well, now, he finally said, not looking at me in the least, not budging from his broom neither, but just watching her go. Shoot, he whispered. The blues. The boy must not have seen women his whole time roaming the city. At least, not like the ones at the Peabody—Southern belles and rich Northern ones alike—girls who might make him forget about all the troubles that had been set upon him from the beginning. Sent out shivering into the darkness as he was, after his father burned down their house with him in it. The fire. A.D. was always remembering that fire, and how he’d hid on the raw edge of it. Watching as the water wagons appeared and the folks from town mumbled about the remains of the family they’d found inside, which only filled one measly flour sack. The memory of it all, smoldering in the center of him, a moment that had both contained him for what he’d lost, a cruel and inattentive father, but released him for what he’d gained—his freedom. Considering everyone thought he’d been burned up, too, before walking the twenty miles into Baltimore, leaving behind as much as he could of his sad, damaged self. So he just stood there whispering the blues, the blues over and over, even with the sunlight falling in the high upper windows that we still had to wash. I think the word might of rearranged him in some sense. Even if I knew it was probably just that girl that had done it, moving him toward the blues side of life, toward the feelings and desires he’d hid in his smoldering shell for so long.

  The blues, I said after I let him linger there long enough. That’s what that is and I need it every day to remind me. And every night to sing. We all need it to remind us.

  Remind us of what?

  Of what we had and want to have again. Of what we still need.

  Need, he said and looked at me, but didn’t say anything as he turned to the empty hallway and seemed to sniff something. Or waft his hand up slow and steady, churning the fragrance of the girl’s departed air, before looking back as if the essence of what he wanted was out there somewhere. Just out of reach. Tantalizing him. For here he was with the luxury to ponder inside himself finally, to absorb sight and sound unseen, all at his leisure—even if he did have to push a mop for the privilege of it—and the boy didn’t know how to begin. So I just listened to him. I listened as he was quiet, and quiet some more, until finally I outlasted him and another bit of his shell came chaffing off as he cleared his throat. That’s funny, he said.

  What is?

  Need. Because I never thought I needed anything before this, and he nodded to the hallway, the windows, to the bucket and mop and invisible path the girl had taken, before shaking his head. I thought I just had to move. That it was all I was, that it was all I’d ever be, and he shook his boots out to show me the strength of him, for his muscles practically pulsed at the end of his long skinny legs. He was a specimen, truly, of moving, of walking miles and miles untold, of the sheer perseverance he’d made of himself (and which probably served him well later driving night after night through the mountains and farms to find his songs, all the precious songs he needed). But as he looked at his feet and relished them a moment longer, I watched as something new seemed to take hold. As if all that packed muscle and bone had flowed up inside him, spreading over his thoughts and mind and dreams—which were still bathed in blackness as far as I could tell—or streaked with the flames from living as fast and easy as he had before this. But which seemed contained now all a sudden. Caged even.

  Moving’s the easy part, son. It is. For I know what you’re thinking: Where’s this been my whole life? And: Why now? and other such things as that. Well, don’t fight it. Not a bit. Fightin’s the easy part, too. It’s all anyone can do. It’s the staying and accepting that takes some doing. It’s the staying that really matters. That makes up who you are. That proves it.

  That proves what?

  That you’re real. With real feelings and needs. And then I watched as he mouthed the word twice for he seemed to be trying out the notion of it even as I spoke it. Even as he knew his whole life had been the exact opposite in nearly every way.

  Real, he finally whispered. That’s a word I thought I didn’t need. Not a once. I just thought I’d move and always move and that’d be it. That nothing would ever take hold of me. That nothing would ever last except the moving, the freedom.

  But it does last, son. It does. It lasts longer than you could ever know, and I had to turn my eyes then and wipe them, for I was thinking on my wife and baby girl then. The ones I used to sing and dance for down in Bristol, Virginia, but had to leave years past (and so of course, that was why I loved dancing for the kids here, too). But I didn’t tell him none of that. Not with him being just a boy, and one who thought his whole life would be a movement away from something, from whatever he felt was dragging him down. His sadness? His lonesomeness? Who could say? I had the same sadness in me and the moving hadn’t helped no matter how far I went. No matter how hard I tried to get it back and right the wrong I’d done, and so I just looked on him instead. I looked and thought of the only thing that might make him listen for once, that might make the idea take hold. You’ll see, I finally said, and shook my head to show him I meant it, that the words mattered, that they were true. Because it stays with you, no matter what you do. No matter how far you move. Your life—it’s always there, always watching you—that much I know.

  He looked at me and nodded as if he’d truly heard it, but then sung out real soft and slow, Honey, so I knew that was the refrain I was meant to sing back. So I sang Honey in the hallway until he sang again. There you go away. There you go. Then I didn’t say nothing, because it sounded like the song was finished. And I watched instead as he mopped the same spot for the next half hour, mopping around the puddle of his life that was, and the fast glistening streaks he thought it might soon become.

  III

  Ms. Clara May Staunton ~ Dumbstruck in the wide rows ~ Guitar lessons and composition ~ The true chord and metronome ~ John Hill Carter ~ On the James River ~ Cataloging his affections ~ White perfect circles ~ A birdcage ~ The canaries

  SHE WAS FROM NORFOLK, VIRGINIA he found out soon enough. Ms. Clara May Staunton, and I did not like it one bit, I told him, even as he changed himself so the girl might notice him when everyone else in the school either walked past or couldn’t have guessed his intentions. Each morning he stood at the sink and combed his
brown hair. The same shag I’d cut after he’d first seen her, considering he’d come in all curled up and wavy and you’d a thought he was something Poseidon mighta dragged in from the salt sea to glimpse him. O he was adding all kinds of flourishes to his appearance, and even fiddled with his belt buckle too, shining it up with a tin of old Brasso I had lying about for instruments and door handles and other surfaces in a school such as that. The good old librarian even brought all sorts of hand-me-downs and holdovers from her own nephews and kin, so that in no short order he had a wardrobe that beat out mine all the way through.

  Of course, he spent most of his free and working time in the library, as did I. And often, he saw her reading there or combing through the great books and stood beside her as if poised in the midst of his stated occupation—polishing up floors and tabletops or straightening the card catalog. Though more often than not, he’d succumb to a more tortuous and pressing anticipation and creep up as close to her as he could get. It was agonizing to watch, but humorous, too. He’d often hover there on the other side of the shelves, watching through the cracks. But after a spell of waiting that might of burst his young cleaving heart, he’d kind of curl his paper-thin self up closer to listen. While on the other side, she was so entranced with whatever she was reading, she couldn’t have known the drama unfolding in his soul as he stood there on the precipice of connection, of being noticed by her in the slightest. This went on for weeks, I assure you, and months—and even past his nineteenth birthday. He was so affected by the trials of worship he put to her appearance, it began to keep me from my own guitar playing, and the lessons I’d taken to teaching him each evening, even though he didn’t prove to be such an easy study as I’d hoped.

  Relax, I told him. You’re young yet, son. Move your hands like you want them to. Let them flow. Let it all go. He set beside me and had gotten his own beat up guitar, a Lyon & Healy we’d found stowed away in a practice studio and whose silky strings were much easier to finger than the steel ones on my guitar. It was something we didn’t mention to our supervisor, Mr. Vickers, or to the Peabody director, Dr. Alpionaire, the one old Runnymede had shook down for money all those months ago. We just let it pass as sometimes I often would during my years in such matters. So that when nobody raised a fuss about a missing instrument, we’d play each evening when we had some time of our own to devote to it.

  O he was devoting all sorts of time to other things as was set down by Ms. Mary Frick Garret Jacobs in her sponsorship of his employment, consigned as he was to a rigor of courses over the semesters. He’d taken a drawing class offered at the Peabody, and an English class for the classics (which he’d already mostly read), and a music composition class that he so hemmed and hawed over, before finally deciding on what he hoped to accomplish with it, that I never saw him so concentrated, so charged. As for Runnymede, I should say it now, as it’s most likely obvious to anyone with eyes, he still loomed over everything A.D. did. The boy still thought on emulating that great man he held so highly in esteem, for he was determined now to do it, to raise himself up to those great heights, to reach some higher purpose. And I didn’t disbelieve him in anything he set himself to, except maybe his guitar, which was a terrible thing to listen to, truth be told. But still I held out hope.

  I can’t do it like you, he said, I can’t, and he set his guitar aside. We were working on chords, for he’d found a few to his liking, but the fingering had caused him a considerable strain, and I was thinking of showing him a barre chord instead. Something to much easier approximate the sounds he saw me conjure and that delighted him most nights into a mimicry of my technique.

  It’s practice, son, that’s all it is. Practice them and then you’ll get them and you won’t have to think about it as you play. You won’t even have to look. It’ll just be like you’re walking down the street, moving over the land, and often you might rise up your foot without even noticing a stump or crack in the sidewalk. It’s just something that comes to you. Like moving up through your body. A feeling, as they say.

  Sure, he said, a feeling, and he looked at his feet.

  That’s right, look at those feet. Look at everything that keeps you balanced and moving because it’s part of you now. It’s something that flows out of you all natural and easy and it’s all just practice, son. Practice for anybody. Even me.

  Shoot, he said, anybody but you, and stretching his long fingers, he pressed on the strings strumming, but the vibrations buzzed up as he played. He hadn’t pressed hard enough on his smallest finger and the note wasn’t true, and thus the chord wasn’t true. Jesus Christ, he fumed and stood as if he might smash the instrument to the floor and fling the splinters into the furnace that had flared up just then as if on cue. It was a terrible winter that year, and the sleet and ice kept up such a steady ticking as of a metronome on the greased window, that I thought it was the noise itself causing his frustrations.

  What? What is it, son? I said as he stood with his back to me. I was on my cot, my foot tapping the worn floor. We’d the rest of the night off and it was close to Christmas anyways and the long marble hallways were quiet and sad, and it gave me pause to think on my wife and daughter then for whole hours some days. Thinking on what they could be doing so far away from me after so many years. And I did not like it one bit, I told him, this idleness to consider things. I did not like it in the least.

  I seen her today, he said.

  So. You see her every day.

  No, he said, and still he hadn’t looked at me. He’d set his guitar down and plucked now so quietly on the fretboard, the plinking of his fingers echoed with the skittering icedrops against the window. I seen her with a fellow, he said, and then he turned to me. His face moist beneath his eyes. His cheeks drawn and red. His hands shaking white.

  O, a fella, I said, and was quiet as I bowed my head.

  JOHN HILL CARTER WAS NOT WHO I EXPECTED to find consorting with Ms. Clara May Staunton, I assure you. But considering A.D.’s luck in things thus far in life, I figured it pretty much held in line with all the other things that generally conspired against a man’s very notion of right and wrong. John Hill Carter was one of the older students at the Peabody, and one of its most distinguished composers. And a first class ass to boot. I cannot say it any other way. It’s as soft as it gets. I did not like him ever since I seen him that first day his big granddaddy dropped him off out front, stepping as they did from their horse-drawn carriage. The one they’d hired special at the train station to carry them in with all of John Hill’s accoutrements and furnishings. Old Dr. Alpionaire was out there himself to greet him, and Mr. Vickers, my boss, mentioned I should help too as we both descended the steps and unloaded the various suitcases and trunks John Hill pointed to as if I were too black to understand their importance for his grand arrival at our backwash of a town.

  He was from one of the oldest tobacco families in Richmond and made it plain to hear how much money he’d brought to spend on the frivolous little things he’d need to keep himself satisfied in a northern outpost such as this. He said all of this to Mr. Vickers as I hauled up crate after crate of what all I know not—lead most likely, it felt like to me on my back—and then took out the slickest silver lighter I’d ever seen and lit up cigarette after cigarette describing the strain of the plant, and the gross of the yield, and the general conditions that comprised the flavor he now gloried in. He just stood there pontificating as he smoked. As if he were still on the James River, enjoying a warm summer’s day, drinking mint juleps and cavorting with the pretty young things there in their silk parasols, transporting in the earthly light as if it was all his in its making. He did all this as I dried my forehead and cussed him under my breath and then watched as he blew out the smartest white smoke rings I’d ever seen.

  John Hill is not the man to truck with, I said, and that seemed to shake A.D. from his moping. It was January, late afternoon, and the students had been back a few weeks, but he’d not seen Ms. Clara May yet, though he’d been thinking of he
r all break. He’d even taken the notion of writing her a love song to win her affection from this John Hill Carter. This man who’d just unwrapped the finest silk sheets for her that he then paraded through the grand arcade. Or the rosewood bookcases, delivered from a boutique in New York City, and that Mr. Vickers had A.D. and me carry up to Ms. Clara May’s room. So in this way A.D. finally saw where she slept and memorized all she had in case John Hill brought in any more belongings or had them delivered to her door. Now I didn’t think A.D. meant to stop John Hill from bringing in more treasures for Ms. Clara May, only to find out what he was up against, to somehow steel himself to the wealth of it. To use it as ballast upon which to build the song he’d started crafting slowly at first, over the Christmas holidays, but then faster the more John Hill and the students were awash with the excitement of his latest exploits.

  O he knew he was poor, A.D. did, and that he couldn’t possibly compete in that line of wealth. But was it too much to ask for it to stop, he moaned at night as he hemmed and hawed over a chord progression, or the few scant lyrics he felt aright themselves beneath the anguish of his tongue. For surely all his emotions tumbled to the page as he scribbled with the pencil nubs he’d found sweeping the hallways, as the great wadded paper littered his side, and then the floor. Before stuffing it all into the furnace as it shot up a dark blue flame. Is it too much to ask? he repeated.