At 6:50 PM, a crowd filled the parking lot in front of the sheriff’s department. People stood or sat on the hoods of cars. They were laughing, talking, taking selfies, or live streaming videos onto the various tubes and metaverses—and the congregation grew denser and more excited as the minutes ticked away.
“I can’t let them in,” said Gwen. “Where the hell did they all come from?”
Alan and Mickey were inside the department, staring out at the phenomenon with Gwen and Deputy McGreevy.
“We need to do something,” said McGreevy. “But I used to work concerts, and the one thing you learn real quick is that people who come to concerts don’t like it when there’s no show.”
“Why?” asked Mickey. “Why do anything? We haven’t done anything up to this point. Why get involved now?”
“Because you can’t hold a concert in a jail,” Gwen said.
“Johnny Cash gave a concert at Folsom Prison. Best music he ever made,” replied the lawyer.
The clock on the wall indicated five more minutes to go. The monitor displaying Francis’s cell showed the boy sitting cross-legged on his little bunk. The next monitor displayed the Gretas. They all knelt in a semicircle as if in prayer; except for the tall one who was standing, gripping the bars, and staring at Francis.
“I don’t know what’s happening here,” said Alan, “but tomorrow they’re shipping him to Deer Lodge. Gwen… I mean, Deputy Wolf, Deputy McGreevy, I realize this might be a huge breach of protocol, but I’d like you to look the other way for a moment. I don’t want you to get in trouble for this—and if you need to, you can arrest me, but I’m opening that door in two minutes. I’ll deal with Comstock.”
“Alan, as not your lawyer, I highly recommend you not do that,” said Mickey.
Gwen stepped in front of the door and faced Alan, hands on her hips. “The hell you will, Smith,” she said.
He didn’t want to argue with her, but he knew the danger Deer Lodge posed to Francis. Boys like him went in all the time, and if they ever came out, they were not the same. He’d seen how his mood had changed when he saw the concert poster. If he could do one thing to bring him a shred of happiness on this of all nights, he was going to try.
“Gwen, please. Tomorrow, they’re taking him—”
She held up a finger to silence him. “If anyone is going to stick it to Comstock, it’s gonna be me.”
She opened the door and stepped outside. The crowd went silent.
“Folks, I realize you all are here for a concert. Against better judgment, I’ve decided to let you in. I need you to move slowly, and do not push or shove. Please be quiet and respectful. I am a cop, and this is a jail, as crazy as that sounds. I will arrest you if I need to.” With that, she propped the doors wide open, and the people began to stream inside.
“Oh, shit. Orderly now, folks,” hollered McGreevy, the diminutive officer disappearing in the line that had quickly found its way down the hall to the holding cells.
Alan pushed against the flow of people to get outside and bumped into the old hippie.
“Hey, dude, right on! Glad you could make it!”
Retrieving the blue guitar from his car, he carefully carried it back to the jail.
It was a full house now; no one else could get in. Those outside were getting comfortable. A group of rough-looking youths in black clothes surrounded the door, their faces painted with heavy scramble paint meant to confuse facial recognition cameras. For a brief moment, he thought they were going to jump him, but as he approached, they reverently parted.
Whispers traveled among the people.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Make way!” someone shouted, and a narrow path opened for him into the jail.
In the cell room, they squeezed in shoulder to shoulder. As he moved forward; he had to lift the guitar over his head. Francis smiled when he saw him. It was just narrow enough to slip through the bars.
The boy, in his Lake County orange detention jumpsuit that sagged off his skinny limbs, raised his arms to receive the instrument. All while holding Alan with a penetrating gaze.
He inspected the instrument almost lovingly. His hands glided gently over the faded body. Seemingly satisfied, he faced everyone and said, “Listen carefully,” then turned and sat on the cement bench with the guitar on his lap.
“Maji,” someone said.
“Maji,” said another.
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and brushed his fingers over the strings.
Alan heard nothing, neither the sound of the strings nor Francis’s voice when he opened his mouth to sing. Shoved into a little jail in the midst of the Rocky Mountains, he heard only the silence of the people who’d come to listen. He noticed the biker mom and her son. She held the boy in front of her, arms across his chest. They swayed back and forth, enraptured.
Next to Mickey, a big, burly man with cut-off sleeves and chains hanging from his vest clenched his fists, eyes fixed on the young Native American musician behind the bars.
A tall man in a suit and tie had his AR glasses pushed up on his forehead. His lips moved silently.
Two young lovers held each other, kissing and singing along to a song beyond a wall of deafness.
He caught Mickey’s eye, and the lawyer shrugged.
After a few minutes, Francis stopped playing. He stretched his shoulders and flexed his fingers.
“That was an oldie just to warm up,” he said like a pro. The crowd broke into rapturous applause.
“Right on,” said the hippie, Carter Nash. And then they got quiet again, very quiet.
Francis spoke. His soft words held a resonance that Alan suspected even those outside sitting on cars could hear. “Maji, you’ve come a long way. I will take your fear now.” He looked at Alan with sadness on his face, a deep pain in his youthful eyes. “If this is your first concert, come here and close your eyes. Draw near the music if you cannot hear.”
The crowd adjusted to allow a few people to the front of the room. Deputy McGreevy grabbed the bars—Gwen next to him, a head taller. The Gretas were standing in their cell, their pungent smell mixed with the sweat and body odor of others.
Alan closed his eyes. They were as heavy as lead weights.
He was in a dark place, surrounded by people he did not know. Pushed against people. Pushed against the cold, unyielding bars of Francis’s cell. Panic threatened to take him, the childhood symptoms of claustrophobia rushing back.
The darkness was vast and deep, a measure he could not fathom. A labyrinth of memories shrouded in shadows, and despite all those pressing in around him, he was alone.
In the dark distance, he thought he could smell water. The lake? No, not the lake. Larger than a lake—an ocean big as the sky, and a warm, damp wind blowing against him, at first softly, then more forceful. He was afraid that the shadows would be blown off the memories, and he would at long last be forced to look upon his shame—his terror; and that would crush him like that frozen night of sorrow long ago. He needed to get away from this trap of despair, away into the stillness.
Just when he thought he could no longer bear it, that his bones would break along with his heart and mind, he heard the music. So soft, so delicate. The gentle brush of the boy’s fingers against the strings. Each note, each chord of the music, reached out to him. He heard Francis take a deep breath, pulling him in, sucking in the weight that was burying him down.
The boy’s falsetto rose in a chant that, though he’d never heard it before, was familiar as a primal sound, the sound from the womb, the warm yolk nourishment of the unborn, the sound from childhood, the rhythm of laughter and tears. The sound of time: ebb and flow, growth and decline, taken in and emptied out. The music directed him to one place only, the jail cell, sung from this boy’s mouth, off his tongue like honey.
Alan wept.
He felt something warm on the top of his head. Perhaps someone else was crying on him, but when at last he opened his eyes and looked up, his tears were washed away by the rain.
The ceiling of the jail was a bank of clouds, where lightning flickered deep within, red and green and purple. The clouds rolled, thunder rolled, another crackle of light, and the room sizzled with ozone.
Next to him, Mickey Verona held the steel bars, his head pressed into them, his shoulders shaking. Next to him, the hippie Carter Nash tried to keep a stoic face, eyes red with his salty tears.
Alan looked for Gwen and saw her pressed between two large men in cowboy hats. She had her hand cupped over her mouth to hold in her sobs, and she was shaking her head.
The old hippie looked at him and smiled. “Builds A Fire brings the rain,” he said in his thick accent.
The rain came from those clouds. It poured and washed all the people in that room, all those who could hear, soaking them to the bone, soaking Francis and his guitar.
There was no accounting for the passage of time, and then it was over. The note died with the closing of those swollen lips. Francis set the instrument on the bed. He got up and came to Alan, lifted his hands to the clouds, and like any boy would do in a rainstorm—even if that rainstorm was inside his own jail cell—he opened his mouth, stuck out his tongue, and tried to drink the raindrops, laughing, finally laughing.