Upstairs Room

The whole family slept in this big farm house. It was in the earliest hours of the morning, and the shapes of the house and the fence and the cars parked in the driveway and the tire swing that hung over the worn dirt patch in the back yard were all black against the first red hints of daylight. The family was scattered in beds around the house, my grandmother and grandfather snoring away on a king-sized bed in the master bedroom at the front of the house, and my aunts and uncles in various rooms above. There was a big bedroom in the back off the kitchen that I shared with three of my cousins, twin beds fitted every which way into the corners with my bed right under the open window and the curtains tickling at my ear as I dozed there still half-asleep.

There was a room that was in a kind of nest at the top of the house that I wished I could have had to myself, but my one uncle had claimed it already. I thought about this room as I laid there and heard the muffled ringing of his alarm clock bell going off two floors above. It was a great little room that rose up out of the roof of the house and it had windows that could look out over the land on nearly all sides. It was a cozy room with just enough space for the bed and the dresser where my uncle left his cigarettes and laid out a set of folded clothes for the next day. The alarm bell was cut off abruptly, followed by the crackle and buzz of an electric guitar amp being flipped on. This was what he had to get up for every morning. This was the basis of his claim to the room at the top of the house. I knew I would have to learn to play at least as good as him if I wanted that room, probably better. The first few licks peeled out, breaking the quiet, and I knew he was up there, sitting on the edge of the bed and watching out the windows at the sunrise creeping around the houses and into the fields and the roads for miles around.