The Creekside Sonata

I was a violin player in the local symphony orchestra. Early one October evening, I was walking down a country lane with a few other members of the string section. We were all headed for a performance at the town hall. We all had on white shirts and black bow ties. My hair was slicked back and wet, and my freshly shaved face stung in the crisp air. I was carrying my violin case and a handful of loose sheet music, and as we were crossing over a cobblestone bridge, a gust of wind caught the pages of sheet music and blew them out of my hands. I grabbed for the loose pages in the air, but the wind swept them over the side of the bridge and down to the muddy bank of the creek that ran beneath it.

I told the others to go on without me, and I said that I would catch up with them after I went down and gathered up the lost sheet music. They shrugged and continued on their way. I climbed over the railing of the bridge and stumbled down the hill to the bank of the creek. I had to grasp at the loose soil to keep myself from falling a few times, and already I had mud splattered on my sleeves. Still, I was trying to keep my clothes as clean as I could, even as I felt the heels of my dress shoes pressing softly into the wet mud. I had to resist the impulse to brush off the few loose specks of dirt that were stuck to the front of my white shirt, because I knew my dirty hands would only make the mess worse.

Finally I got down to the edge of the creek where the pages of sheet music were scattered. I grabbed a page by a corner and carefully peeled it up out of the mud. I worked my way a little down stream, towards where the creek flowed under the bridge, gathering more pages, until there was just one last page that was just out of reach. The bank had washed away at that spot, and I had to place one foot on a smoothed stone that was out in the water. I braced my shoe against the stone and stretched to reach the paper, but just as the tips of my finger got a hold of it, the sole of my dress shoe slipped off the stone and I stumbled on my knees into the water and the mud.

I cursed and swore, looking down at my shirt and pants that were completely wet and filthy now. But then I looked up and saw something on the page of sheet music that I had been trying to reach. The mud had somehow spattered on it in a pattern of musical notation, eighth notes and half notes, beats and measures, sharps and flats. I could kind of make out the tune from the notes, and I hummed it a little to myself, trying to get a feel for it.

But I had to play it to really hear it. I popped the clasps on my violin case, and the violin sat in its pocket, clean, the wood perfectly polished. I grabbed the bow and took up the instrument in my muddy hands. I pulled the first sweet note across the length of the bow. From there the melody mounted in clips and steps, building to some fragile height. It trickled on soft fingers through the water. It quivered in the trees all around. The falling leaves seem to drift to Earth on trembling currents of vibrato as I slowly drew the whole notes across the strings. It was the most heart-breaking piece of music I had ever heard or played. And there was no one, absolutely no one, around to hear it.

Perennial Regards

I flew back to visit my family in Ohio. My mother was living in an old red brick house that had ivy along the walls. She had started a flower delivery service with her sisters, and they ran the business out of her house. I took a nap when I got in, and after I woke up, I found them all working in the front room. One of my aunts was typing out the messages for the cards on a black typewriter; another one was running a sewing machine, embroidering these silk cloths that they wrapped around the flowers; and my mother was at the island in the kitchen, clipping and boxing the bouquets and getting them ready for delivery. There were pastel colored rotary phones, pink and orange and blue, all around the room, near where each of them were working. From time to time, all the phones would ring at once, and they would all grab for the call, and whoever picked it up first would take down the person’s order.

There was a pot of coffee made, and my mother still had the same coffee cups up in her cabinet that I remembered. I poured myself a cup and took a seat in an armchair in the corner and I watched them all bustling around. I sipped my coffee and listened to the whir of the sewing machine’s needle and the punch of the typewriter keys. My mother got off the phone and called over to me from the kitchen. I brought my empty coffee cup to the sink, and she pointed to a set of keys hanging on a hook near the wall calendar, and she asked me to go to the garage out back and get their delivery vehicle and pull it around to the front of the house.

I threw on my coat and went out. There were a couple of acres of land out behind the house, and as I followed the long dirt driveway, I passed a couple of greenhouses set up in an open field. The driveway wound around under the shade of a few maple trees and eventually led to the very back of the property where there was an old carriage house that they were using for a garage. The doors to the garage were open and there were standing puddles from the recent rain in the muddy yard in front of the garage. Parked just inside the doors, there was a shiny black station wagon with the front end pointing out and ready to go. The name of the flower delivery business was stenciled in white on the side of the door with the phone number underneath. In the back I could see the loose clippings and fallen petals and snagged thorns from countless deliveries. I jangled the keys in my hand and smiled. It was nice to see that things were going well back home.