Free Sweeter Life by Tim Wynveen Page B

dreams.
    All that afternoon Jimmy tossed and turned. When he finally opened his eyes, the sun had begun to fade. He looked straight at Ronnie and then sat up slowly, calmly, as if all along he’d been expecting a stranger to appear.
    Ronnie offered his hand in greeting. “I can’t tell you what an honourit is to meet you at last,” he said. “Your playing has made an enduring impression on me, that much is certain. Would you believe me if I said you had changed my life?”
    Jimmy leaned forward over his knees, his hands gripping the edge of the mattress. He was dressed in the same clothes he had worn on
American Bandstand
, and they had seen much better days. His beard had grown shaggy, his hair a riot of intentions. “You’re not an American,” he said.
    “No, you are right about that, but I love your country more than my own, and I love American music more than anything I can think of. And your solo—”
    “Man, I don’t want to hear this.…”
    Those words startled Ronnie. “What I mean is your music, your solos, they lift us up, don’t they? They show us the better side of our nature.”
    Jim slumped to his side, his head resting on the mattress again, and groaned as if he might be sick to his stomach. But Ronnie pressed on. “Do you … I mean, surely you believe your music has made a difference.”
    “Difference? I don’t know what in hell you’re talkin’ about.” Then he turned toward the wall and was soon asleep again.
    Ronnie found a small wooden chair that had somehow been overlooked in the general fouling of the place, and he sat for hours and watched Jimmy sleep. Sometime before dawn, he slipped away to an all-night convenience store and bought plastic-wrapped sandwiches and beer. He brought in his suitcase and covered Jim with a sweater.
    Next morning Jim accepted a sandwich and seemed genuinely pleased when Ronnie handed him a quart of Schlitz. But he still wasn’t talking much. About noon, Ronnie tried another approach. “You’re originally from around here, aren’t you?”
    Jim’s only answer was to take a bite of sandwich. Then, with a grunt, he struggled to his feet and walked to the window that overlooked the bay. He leaned against the frame and touched his index finger to the jagged spikes of the broken panes, one by one. Finally he said, “My daddy moved us here from Arkansas. Got hisself a little fishin’ boat. Back then, we rented a cottage not too far down the shore from here. Hardly remember it myself. So long ago it’s like a dream. Trouble was he never could make the payments on the boat andhe lost it to the bank. Bit of a drinkin’ problem. Drifted around some. Ended up on the docks down in Erie. Wasn’t a big man, you understand, not what you’d think of as a longshoreman, but he was stronger ’n a team of mules. I guess that’s how I remember him best, like Marlon Brando in that movie there.
You
know …” He turned to fix Ronnie with a questioning look.
    “On the Waterfront, you mean?”
    “That’s the one,
On the Waterfront
, that was my daddy. Coulda been a contendah …” He laughed darkly and then turned away from the window. “Where you from, if you’re not American?”
    Ronnie was in a space and time that seemed to vibrate with unseen possibilities. He cleared his throat and said, “I was born in Scotland, but even when I lived there it never really felt like my home.”
    Jimmy snorted, a grudging acknowledgement that he, too, had known the feeling of rootlessness. “Where does, then?”
    “Feel like home? I don’t know. Maybe nowhere. But I always thought I’d know when I found it. Maybe I haven’t been paying attention.”
    They continued to talk throughout the afternoon, continued drinking. Jim seemed most interested in reminiscing, his stories jumping all over the place so it was hard to follow. In return, Ronnie told Jim about his early days in Glasgow and the way he had dashed his father’s dream that they would both one day be men