McKenzie and Sons by Ed Davis

The kid sneaks in here every day, which is crazy because I’ve done my best to keep him out of my store. It wouldn’t be the first time a guitar, fiddle or banjo walked off. Kid likes to slide in while I’m with a customer talking trade or repair, head straight for the vintage instruments in the back room, get down the 1924 Gibson A-4 and start messing around.

I’ve caught him a good dozen times now, told him if he ain’t considering buying it then to put it back. It’s almost enough to make me regret I haven’t put those precious pearls under glass yet. Pop insisted they be kept out and played as often as possible, like running your horses, to keep their muscles and lungs strong. Since his death last year, I haven’t had the time and money to even change the outside sign from McKenzie and Son. But I intend to. The son sees a few things different from his daddy.

Outta the corner of my eye, I see the boy creep in while I’m deep in discussion with Dougie Rivers, up from Grundy, looking for a guitar to replace the Gibson he lost in a fire. A guy from Green Branch just traded in a 1943 Martin D-18—same model Elvis used— and I am hell-bent to sell it to Dougie. It would go a long way toward making the payment on the second mortgage Dad took out near the end. I knew finances weren’t great, but I had no idea how deep a hole Pop dug by hanging on to Granddaddy’s business. Anyway, the D-18’s a total fit for Dougie. That gal will sing, weep and goddamn holler if you treat her good. Friday jams, I’ve plumb give her a workout. She’s never let me down.  

So I’m more than a little pissed when I hear the sound of muted mandolin curling around the corner, reaching me and my customer where we’re hunkered at the counter. I know if I round on that boy right now, I’ll lose my temper. Me and Dougie are at the point in negotiations where blinking too often might scuttle the deal, so I let the little sonuvabitch play (he ain’t half bad). I got eyes enough to focus on Dougie as well as the space between the other room and the door.

After a little while, Dougie finally lets me put the D-18 in his hands. Takes him thirty seconds to declare its tone gives him goosebumps. Hell, maybe it was Elvis’s, but I ain’t gonna claim such unless I know it for sure. Pop stayed in business by stretching the truth sometimes to make a sale, but I like to sleep at night. Plus, stuff like that comes back to bite you in the butt.  

Just when I think Dougie’s gonna ask will I throw in some free strings, his eyes flick toward the other room.

“Who’s that?” he says.

I shrug. “Some kid.”

“He’s pretty good.”

I shrug again. The moment’s killed as sure as when you get a bouquet handed back to you (the ring, too—I been there. Never again).

He hands back the guitar I desperately need him to buy and says he’ll let me know.

Soon as the door shuts behind him, I whirl around the counter hissing steam like a locomotive straining up Big Walker. Praise God the store’s empty. There’ll be no witnesses to murder. But what is that tune the kid’s picking?  Sounds a lot like “Savannah Girl,” Pop’s instrumental inspired by his first love from Georgia. Not but a handful ever heard the melancholy tune. Pop was a Saturday night feedstore picker, and he never tried it till after midnight, when there wasn’t two people left to hear it. A song that haunts, like floating in a flat-bottomed boat down the bayou with mist coating your eyes and tongue.

My hand on the wall is trembling. Then I round the corner.

Clad in a faded blue flannel shirt and torn jeans, the kid’s looking right into me. Long greasy brown-blonde hair flops around his face as he keeps on picking. It is Pop’s tune. He’s better than I thought. He ends each phrase with authority after layering on detail and embellishment. Tasteful with a sure touch. I’m frozen in place as the tune meanders downstream toward roaring falls.

Boy’s older’n I thought, too, more like sixteen, the age I settled on guitar as my instrument. I’m shocked to discover I’ve still got the D-18’s neck in my left hand. I’ve decided not to bash this boy’s skull in with it. It ain’t just his playing that’s paralyzed me. Kid’s got the blazingest blue eyes beneath a high forehead with a widder’s peak. Just like Pop’s.

Just like mine.

Rather than hang the Elvis axe back on the wall, I sit down on the picking stool and wrap my arms around that bitch-angel. My fingers, shaky but no longer trembling, find chords to slip in behind the melody. I’m looking at the brother I didn’t know I had, dropped out of the sky from God-knows-where. He might eventually tell me his story. And I’ll listen, I will. For now, though, this lonesome old song is plenty enough.

Ed Davis

Image by Karol Pokojowczyk from Pixabay Very close up of the strings on a Gibson Guitar.