Free 9 Letters by Blake Austin Page B

I
just started playing some chords. A-minor, now there’s a good
chord. Goes right into E major, D minor. No specific song, but it’s
all the songs, also. The same pattern builds up half the songs ever
written, but each one is unique. The same pattern built me up, but
I’m unique.
    As soon as I got comfortable, the
thing fell out of tune. New strings. I retuned it, went back to
playing.
    My callouses were long gone, but
I pushed past where my fingers hurt and kept playing. Started playing
some country, some folk. Started to sing a little, cautiously. Kept
retuning.
    King had never barked that I’d
heard him, not once, but when I started singing, he started baying,
the same howl he’d let out when I tried to leave him at the
rescue. A singing dog. That was alright with me. A clean house, a
singing dog. It wasn’t so bad.
     
    There were only six letters left.
It wasn’t enough. I wanted letters from now until I died. I
wanted to open up all six of them, I wanted to devour her words. I
wanted to stare at her handwriting, at the little loops she put on
her letters even when she wasn’t writing cursive. I wanted to
see her little turns of phrase.
    I wanted to never open them. I
wanted to always have them, in case I needed them, unopened and
waiting. I wanted to read them at ninety on my death bed, so I could
drink in Emily’s thoughts, one last time, before pneumonia took
me to meet her in heaven.
    I decided on an in-between. I’d
keep following the letters, but I wasn’t going to open the next
one right away. I’d give it some time.
    Leave it to Emily to come up with
such an incredibly perfect way to give me something to look forward
to, such an incredibly perfect way to get me out of bed in the
morning. I wasn’t better ,
not by a long shot, but getting out of bed is a good first step to
getting anything done.

 

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    “Well look at you,”
John Lawson said, as I walked up to the bar. I was whistling. Felt
alright. The spring air was perfect and I could smell the trees
coming into bloom.
    “Hey John Lawson,” I
said. “I just want to say...”
    “You don’t got to say
it,” he said. “You just got to mean it.”
    I meant it. I was sorry. I
reached out, and he clapped me on the shoulder, and it was done. I
was forgiven. Would have been different if I’d hurt him, but a
man like John Lawson doesn’t bruise easy, nor does his ego.
    I was about twenty minutes early
for my shift, but I got up to the bar, grabbed a rag, started wiping
it down, bussing some dishes.
    “Damn, Luke,” Jake
said, watching me work. “You win the lotto or something? Royals
win the pennant last night and I forgot to watch?”
    “I’m just in a good
mood, that’s all,” I said.
    I thought about it a moment
longer, decided I should tell him more. Impart some wisdom learned
from my not-particularly-advanced years.
    “When everything’s
dark for so damn long and your eyes get used to it,” I said,
“just a little glimmer of sunshine lights up the whole world.”
    He nodded, then grabbed a bus bin
and headed back into the kitchen.
    Warren though, Warren wasn’t
impressed. He was sitting by one of the daytime barflies, but he’d
stopped talking and was just watching me. I was on thin ice, and I
knew it. I couldn’t afford to lose my job. A heartbroken,
drunk, angry widower is probably as unemployable as the average
ex-con.
    I came on at the end of the day
shift. Warren liked tending bar during the day, because it meant just
shooting the shit with the regulars. That day I had a smile for every
customer, sparse words of wisdom like day drunks want to hear.
Tending bar wasn’t my dream. But to hell with letting that make
me lazy. I kept the place clean, I poured drinks like I cared.
    I was getting into the swing of
it when happy hour kicked in and a few more people filtered through
the door. Couple of middle-aged bikers, a retired couple that parked
their RV out front. And Maggie. Of course Maggie came