Winner of the Fox Tales “Music” Contest
Dad’s guitar bites back. That’s why Grace never could play it, even when Dad tried to teach her before he left for France, so you can play for me when I come home, Gracie, don’t you cry. When, yes, Mother was crying over his Army uniform, but Grace was full up on anger. The same way she’s angry now, with the February chill of Aunt Eva’s kitchen stoop seeping through her heavy skirt and Dad’s guitar on her lap.
Mother is upstairs in her room, like always. The last thing she managed to do, after she got the Army telegram, was get herself and Grace on the train out of the city. Now, in the drafty old farmhouse, her face is china-fragile against Aunt Eva’s lace-trimmed pillows. “It’s just ’til I get my feet under me,” she told Grace again this morning. But after one bite of the shredded wheat Grace brought her, she dropped the flimsy tin spoon as if its weight would crack her bones.
Grace didn’t yell, the way she wanted to. Instead, she dragged Dad’s guitar case out from under her bed—she’d dragged it along on the train too, carried it thumping against her legs all the way from the station—then ran downstairs and outside.
She runs a stiff finger across the strings. The sour notes jangle. She knows how Dad used to fix that, but the pegs won’t turn when she tries. Maybe it doesn’t matter. If she can just find how to start.
(She hadn’t believed the telegram. Didn’t Dad always fix things at the last minute? Musicians didn’t earn much, but he’d scrape enough for roses for Mother’s birthday, or candied oranges at Christmas. So she’d known he would step off the train, the very last of the homecoming soldiers.)
She grips the guitar’s neck and presses the strings. The cold metal wants to slice through her skin. She grits her teeth. I love you as I loved you, he’d sung, to Mother’s sunrise-bright face, when you were sweet sixteen…
The neck seems to twist. Her right hand, trying to pluck, is icy-stiff. The strings cut at her fingertips.
(Dad fixed things at the last minute. But he got himself killed at the last minute, just before all the guns went silent.)
If Grace could sing a note or two now, make Mother smile. I loved you as I never loved before… But it’s hopeless. Only Dad coaxed songs out of this old box. Besides, the only words she can think of—How could he? What if she dies too?—are wrong.
Tears burn her cheeks. She clutches the guitar, hanging onto the pain.
Something warm touches her hand. A voice says, “Gracie. Let go.”
Someone lifts the guitar away. Arms slip around Grace, holding her close in a scent of lavender. Mother, in her nightdress.
Grace clings to her. Together, reaching through tears for each note, they hum.
I love you as I loved you, when you were sweet sixteen.
About the Author:
Kris Faatz (rhymes with skates) is a Baltimore-area writer and musician. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including Santa Barbara Literary Journal, Atticus Review, and Typehouse, and most recently was longlisted for Dzanc Books’s 2023 Disquiet Prize. Her second novel, FOURTEEN STONES, was released in 2022 by The Patchwork Raven (Wellington, NZ), with an American edition forthcoming in 2024 from Highlander Press (Baltimore). Kris teaches creative writing and is a performing pianist.
