Wheel
Benjamin Harrison
Charlie Meehan
Count backwards to one summer night. You and I reclined on lawn chairs in your father’s yard, listening to the whir of the pool filter and shining flashlights at the stars. You told me that the stars were actually beams from flashlights of other kids in far away galaxies. I said that you had gone to see Star Wars one too many times. When the mosquitoes became annoying, we followed the sounds of jazz coming from the wood-paneled den in the house. With the door cracked opened and light oozing across the floor, we spied your father hugging his upright bass. We sat cross-legged in the hallway and listened to the smooth timbre of wound steel slapping against acoustic mahogany. Your father’s fingers looked like a hairy, drunk tarantula as they walked up and down the fret board. You whispered that he often cradled the bass in his arms at night, holding it like he held your mother before she had died. You never talked much about your mother dying and I never saw your father cry. Later, as I walked the maple-lined street toward home, I still heard the faint sound of your father’s playing echoing in each step I took. When I got home, I wrapped my arms around my mother’s waist and cried the tears I heard in your father’s den.