I froze, blinked my eyes, and swallowed down the lump in my throat. I started to turn around to Papa but never made it. Instead I looked back to the window to blink a few times. Joe—Papa’s childhood friend. They used to run around causing trouble when he was a kid, younger than me. Papa and Joe bet Marvin Peel he couldn’t pee across the electric fence.
When I’d caught my breath, I took a seat. I forced my attention to Papa, to the dull gleam in his eyes, ignoring the wet burn in my nose. I shook my head, knowing I had to be home soon, but soon would have to wait.
“Joe’s place, huh? Nope. What happened?”
You might say there were better ways to spend my twelfth birthday. But hearing his story again, about how poor Marvin Peel got lit up like the county fair, wasn’t so bad. Papa laughed his way through the end with a few new details, a few new words and chuckles. And by the time he was done, I had him carrying on and he’d forgotten all about being upset about movie night.
With my job done, I wandered out past the nurses’ station where a new nurse had taken Miss Cheryl’s post. I found my bike and started home, where Mom was waiting, ready to fuss because I was late.
All because I went to see Papa.
My own father took off before we could get acquainted. Left and found himself another family down in Florida. Papa said he was a dud. Mom called him a lot worse. And while it was a rare thing for Papa and Mom to see eye to eye on much of anything, they both agreed my daddy wasn’t worth the pile of beer cans he left behind.
To make things worse, Mom’s family died in a car crash before I was born. All I knew of them were stories to match the pictures in the frame. But Papa Clem had taken it upon himself to do the job his own son didn’t want.
From the time I was little, he used to pick me up every weekend so I could spend the night with him and Grandma. He taught me to fish, how to clean and gut the fattest ones we didn’t throw back. He showed me a few tricks with the mower when it wouldn’t start and how to patch the inner tube on my bike when I got a flat. But maybe most important of all, Papa taught me music.
He and two buddies made up Mayfield’s very own Corn Cobb Blues Band. Papa played guitar and sang lead, and they traveled all over the state. I even got to tag along occasionally, at least until Mom put a stop to it. Mom never liked me to have too much fun. Personally, I think she’s scared I’m going to turn out like my daddy, and since Papa is my daddy’s old man, those two never saw things level. Put Mom and Papa in a room together and it wouldn’t be long until they found something to fight about. Usually me.
After Grandma died, Papa got old fast. Too old for gigs anyway, and too old for sitting at home and sulking by himself. When he set off for Autumn Springs, he gave us the house he’d lived in for fifty years. You’d have thought giving her a house would’ve hushed Mom’s griping, but she still found plenty of things to fuss about—me and Papa usually being at the top of the list.
I loved my Mom more than I could explain, but she’d been downright unbearable this summer. Every day she came home grouchy and complaining. Clean the tub. Cut the grass. Wipe down the counters. Dishes. And if I managed to do all my chores you think she noticed? Nope, she just found something else for me to do.
A few weeks ago she grounded me for a weekend because I forgot to come home for a dentist appointment. Grounded. Even after the lady at the dentist office said it was no problem to reschedule. “Not good enough,” Mom had said, launching into a lecture about responsibility.
So when I came home a little late that day—after finally convincing Papa to watch Casablanca—and found a pepperoni pizza, chocolate cake with twelve candles, even a couple presents wrapped and ready on the table, well, I needed to make sure I was in the right house.
Mom scrambled to get the candles lit. “I won’t say a word about you being late, okay? Happy birthday, honey,” she said, ramming cheeriness in her voice with the same force she used to shove the last garbage bag in the can on trash day. “I wanted to invite some friends over, but, well, I didn’t know who I should call.”
Mom always made a fuss about me not having friends. But I wasn’t exactly dying to make friends with kids who teased me about my old shoes or because I wasn’t much interested in sports and didn’t listen to music from this century. And if they weren’t laughing about that stuff it was because they were too busy yukking it up about my crooked teeth.
I did have friends, by the way. Only most of them had four legs and fur and lived at the shelter. Mom wouldn’t budge on getting a dog, or a cat, or even a turtle. Yet here she was with cake and presents on my birthday, even though her eyes were heavy and she looked beat. Birthday or not, Mom still worked two jobs.
“Wow, Mom. Thanks.” Truthfully, I felt awful she’d gone to all the trouble on my account. She smiled at me, fixing my hair like I was five, asking about my day. I made the mistake of thinking she was honestly interested.
“Okay, well, I did stop in and said hey to Papa. He was all sorts of worked up about movie night, saying how they always show the same sappy movies with no musical credibility. He didn’t want to eat, but I talked him out eventually after he told me the story about Marvin and his electric pee. So yeah, that’s why I’m late.”
She’d checked out once I’d said Papa, rubbing her temples and sighing, probably thinking about all the stuff she had to get done tonight. I swear, put Mom on the beach and she’d worry about how the washing machine wouldn’t drain. Sometimes these talks with Mom were like playing a game Jenga: make one wrong move—cut your eyes the wrong way—and crash, it all came down.
I switched gears and told her about how Miss Cheryl had asked me to come down and help out with reading to some of the lonely folks at Autumn Springs. Mom nodded through it all, told me to blow out the candles, and started dishing out the pizza. “Well, that’s one way to spend your birthday,” she said with a sigh. “Okay, here, I have a few gifts for you. Nothing much because of the car trouble and all, but some things I thought you might like.”
“Thanks Mom.” I tore into the first present. It was a good one, too. A Robert Johnson biography. Mom patted me on the knee.
“Anything to get you reading.”
Pizza, cake, a Robert Johnson book—not a bad birthday for me. But Mom was smiling something sneaky. I noticed something bigger behind her back. My heart started flopping around again, because this one looked like it just might be, or could be, what I wanted most of all.
Mom reached behind her back and said, “Now, it’s nothing special. Just an old something I managed… Well, here, open it up and have a look.”
She didn’t have to tell me again. I ripped into the paper, then into the cardboard and came face to face with a guitar. Nicked and scuffed with spots of wear on the neck, it was perfect.
“Mom!” I shot out of my chair and wrapped my arms around her so hard she made an Umph! sound and laughed.
“Oh, Caleb. I sure wish you’d get as excited about school as you did about music.”
I turned to the guitar again. It didn’t have a label or even a brand, which I thought made it look like a real bluesman’ s guitar. I held it up again. Mom went on about how she’d had it on layaway at the pawn shop.