A Prelude to Blues

by Stephen Wiley

Almost two years had passed since the casualty officer and the Army chaplain knocked on the door to offer their condolences. It was just me and my mom at home when they arrived and when she saw the chaplain she turned and went straight down the hallway to the back bathroom. The chaplain stepped into the entry way and put his lean hand on my shoulder while the officer made his way to the bathroom and stood outside the door. He spoke deliberately without a response, then he slid the packet of papers under the door and she let out a string of profanity. He stood attentive and undeterred until her words slowed and transformed into an indecipherable beseeching. I was 17 and that March day in 1972 was the first time I'd thought about my brother in nearly a month.

In the weeks before he set off to basic training, and subsequently to Vietnam, the sounds of a particular Miles Davis record jumped from his stereo and poured out from his room, filling the hallway and the back of the house in a somber mist of bleats and rhythm. They would grab me when I got home from school. I'd wrestle with them and resist them. Then one day it stopped and the sad drone of Miles's trumpet looped through my head. Four quick notes, over and over, the first two sequentially rising in pitch and the second two lowering. They filled my head that day at Music Au Go Go near Sunset and Vine in Los Angeles and I didn't hear her walk up behind me. She was 18 and into the Moody Blues. I was 19 and should have seen it coming.

It was mid-January and I was killing time until I went back to school. I didn't want to return without that record. The rain fell in soft, thin sheets against the store window as I sifted through the rack.

"Bitches Brew. Interesting cover art." She took the record from between my fingers. "It makes me think of voodoo. And sweat. Where does it take you?"

I watched her fingers trace the figures depicted in the artwork: an African couple standing in tribal dress, embracing as they look out over the ocean, with a storm brewing on the horizon. Behind them is a burning flower, the flames licking at their backs. Yet, as with his music, the sleeve itself comprised subtle elements waiting to be noticed.

"Do you talk?" she asked.

"My brother used to get stoned and stare at this cover. Every time he'd concoct new meaning. But no matter what, the burning flower never made any sense. To me or to him."

"I'm Kelly."

"I'm not sure if that's a violet or a lily. But with the flames and the storm over the calm waters, it tells me not to trust the peaceful moments or the deceptive quiet."

She placed her hand on my forearm and gave it a gentle squeeze, "Shall we try this again?"

I took a deep breath, "Aaron."

She slid the record back between my fingers. A lanky boy walked down the aisle toward us. The small record store was stuffy. The kid looked me over and put his arm around Kelly's waist. He didn't want to know me any more than I cared for him.

Kelly introduced us and we shook hands.

His grip was soft. He had long hair that made his head look too big for his skinny neck. There was just the hint of a beard on his chin. I saw in him the same youth and vulnerability that reflected in the pictures of my brother, the ones that sprouted up around the house in the days after the officer and the chaplain notified us that he'd been killed in action. This kid rubbed his hand up the small of Kelly's back.

"You ready to go?" he asked her.

She looked at me a moment, then turned to the kid.

"In a minute. Wait for me outside."

He blinked at us, then skulked to the door.

"I wouldn't mind hearing that record," she said. "And I've got one I think you'd like."

"What about him?"

"Let me worry about him. You go pay for that."

She stepped out into the rain, said a few short words, and returned as I gathered my change. Wet footprints followed her for a few paces before fading. I wondered what she told him. She wiped stray brunette curls from her cheek and tucked them behind her ear.

"Won't he be a little angry?"

"Forget about him," she said. "He's not all that interesting."

I didn't consider myself all that interesting either. I guess I was just different from what she was used to.

"What is it you want me to hear?"

"Suddenly you can't stop talking." She took the bag with my purchase from me. "Why this one out of all those records in the store?"

"I used to hear it all the time."

And the thought of hearing that record again gave me hope. But I didn't think that would make an impression on her. That day the news came, and after the officer and the chaplain left, my mother locked herself in my brother's room. Two days later she came out, but the door stayed locked. I wanted to get in there and get that record. I felt that if those solemn notes were allowed to travel they would find him and guide him to wherever he was headed. And comfort me until they did.

Kelly and I stepped out of the store and into the steady rain. She slipped her arm through mine and huddled close under the umbrella as we walked along the puddled sidewalk. Anemic trees poked through holes in the concrete. Our steps took us to her house and through it, down a narrow hallway. Ancient faces lined the walls, peering out from the frames. I felt their eyes on my back as I crossed the threshold.

She went straight for the shelf and pulled out a Moody Blues record. I sat on the floor and leaned against her bed. The lyrics floated on a thin line of incense smoke and hovered above me in a cloud. The rain tapped against the window. She lay across her bed, her eyes closed and her fingers drumming the rhythm. Our nervous words kept quiet. She got up once to flip the record, slipping lightly from the bed to the stereo and back.

When it was over she wanted to know what I thought.

"It would take a second go-around to be familiar with it," I said.

"That's noncommittal." She sat up and pulled her knees to her chest. "You weren't listening."

I couldn't remember a thing about it and I wasn't really interested in talking about it, so I made my move. I opened the gatefold and slipped the first record from the sleeve. The glimmer of light off the new, black vinyl brought all the old moments back. I turned away from the record player. A slow smile spread across my lips. She gazed back at me as "Pharaoh's Dance" slithered from the speakers. I could almost see my brother lying across his bed, immobile and stoned. The steady licks from the bass gave me courage, but the anxious play on the piano took it away. I looked to the speaker in the far corner for advice. I could feel her eyes on me as I paced about the room.

"Just listen to this." I said. "It takes some getting used to. Give it a minute."

"How much time is this going to take?"

"I wanted to hate it too the first time I heard it. But then it became one of my memories."

With each step along the carpet the low notes trembled at my feet, reaching up to remind me and hold my weight as they carried me toward my brother. He walked with me then as he did on that one final walk from our house to the waiting cab. Mom and dad followed close behind and we stood out on the sidewalk in silence, all of us unsure of the extent to which this would be goodbye. "Be cool, kid. Do right," he said, slipping into the cab. I have my own words for him now that are different from those I formed when his cab pulled away.

Kelly continued to look at me and said, "What is it you're cooking up in that head of yours?"

"Just letting the music take me," I said.

"You're not getting out of this that easy," she said. "Seems to me you had something figured out."

"No. I think that's the problem. I don't have it figured out."

"Is that right?" she said, getting up from the bed. "I'd hoped you'd be a little different. Maybe a little stronger."

My tongue rolled around between my teeth and couldn't find a firm hold. She moved toward me, slow and agile. My body tensed and shook. I'd been too willing to let her guide me to where she thought I'd go on my own. Before a conscious thought could sweep through me, I'd already turned to run.

Immortal faces marked my retreat. The frames stretched in a wide grin along the wall-figures frozen in time, generations of soldiers and mothers giving of themselves, gathering their brood about them, sheltering them. The quick bleats and fluctuations on Miles's trumpet moved with me to the door, floating on the thick air from her room, and escorted me out. The front door closed behind me.

The notes faded but my brother did not. I envisioned his last moments as he lay with his unit in the brush, looking out over a rice paddy, assessing it, waiting for the cover of dark before moving through it. At night, curled up in my bed, I always imagined them surrounded and taken prisoner. But that afternoon, as raindrops cascaded across the soft skyline, he crept out from under the cover of the sparse brush and worked his way across the paddy, under the thin haze of a crescent moon. The bullet that strikes him doesn't have a sound associated with it and I imagine him to still lie where he fell. What he said to me that last time wasn't meant to comfort me. They were words of strength to prop him up. I shed a layer of my old self. I am stronger, but no less anxious.

Copyright © Stephen Wiley 2003