Wailing Guitar by Steve Sibra 

I was barely thirteen when my big brother Jimmy came home from school with a wailing guitar.  We were two kids caught up in an ongoing dispute between our parents over things we could not really understand, and we feared they were going to split up and we would become casualties of a broken home.   As a byproduct of this trauma the two of us had bonded over a budding and mutual love of rock music.  Somehow our mutual interest in rock guitar music had given us something to hang onto as our parents became more and more involved in petty bickering and outright bursts of anger.

I heard Jimmy come through the front door and then there was a loud burst of guitar music.  My mother, cooking dinner in the kitchen, began to scream at the top of her lungs, attempting to be heard.  “Jimmy!  What are you doing?  Are you okay?”  I was upstairs in my room.  The entire house seemed to be shaking.

I started down the stairs.  The good dinner china was rattling in the cupboards like a rhythm section.  “Jimmy, whatever is going on, make it stop!  Your father will be home from work any minute and you know he will blow his top over this!”  From the top of the stairs, I could see Jimmy in the middle of the living room floor, sitting atop a guitar case. 

From the case came the signature riff of the Black Sabbath song Sweet Leaf.  The volume level was blistering.  Before Jimmy had shown up I could hear my mother’s radio in the kitchen  playing some Benny Goodman number.  Those notes had disappeared as if chaff in the wind.

 About the time I hit the bottom of the stairs, my mother entered the living room from the kitchen.  I had a big grin on my face, but the scowl I got from my mom sobered me, reminding me of the tense atmosphere we were all living in.  I had not seen such a look from her since the incident involving the snapping turtle in the toilet bowl.  The music from the guitar case abruptly changed to the repetitive opening phrase of Aerosmith’s Walk This Way, as if it were daring my mother to try and interfere.

My mother was wringing her hands in her balled-up apron.  “Jimmy, make it stop!  Your father . . .”

My brother and I did not know what the problem was with our parents.  In recent months their relationship just seemed to be unravelling.  They constantly accused each other of breaking up our once-happy home.   My father had a horrible temper and that was a big part of the problem.  I did not tell Jimmy, but I was terrified I would end up with Dad if there was a split.   I could not imagine anything worse.

Sure enough, at that moment, my father’s car pulled into the drive.  Cheap Trick was blasting from the case.  I caught myself wanting to move with the music.

My dad worked in a foundry.   He was a hands-on, take-charge type of person, not known for his patience.  He was cussing a blue streak by the time he got the front door open.

“Miriam!  What the Billy God Damned Hell is going on in here?”  He threw his lunch box on the floor and peeled off his jacket like he was getting ready for a back alley brawl.

My mother’s face was an ocean of despair.  “It’s Jimmy!” she shouted.  “Your son brought this – this THING home from school and into our lives!  I cannot imagine what he was thinking!”  She turned her face away, as if she could not bear the sight in front of her, then retreated to the kitchen.  Her dramatics had contributed to the rift between her and my father.

His face red, my dad turned to his oldest son.  “Jimmy, I don’t know what you are up to, but make this damned racket stop.  Right this minute!  First you bring home a damned turtle and have it living in the toilet, and now – and now – what the hell is going on here anyway?”

Jimmy just stared at my father.  “I said, MAKE IT STOP!” my dad erupted.  Jimmy’s reply was a shrug, followed by a simple “It’s a wailing guitar, Dad.”

Dad’s short fuse was down to a stub.  “I don’t give a good God Damn if it’s Ethel Merman with a red-hot poker stabbed in her ass!” he yelled.  “Put a stop to this ruckus, or else I will!” 

“It wasn’t doing anything when I checked it out from the music room at school.”  My dad stared at him for a moment, then turned and stomped out the front door.

In less than a minute, he returned from the garage, brandishing an aluminum baseball bat.  After a couple of practice swings, he advanced on the guitar case.

“Open it,” he commanded, the bat perched on his shoulder, his biceps bulging.  My brother Jimmy looked doubtful.

“Open the God Damned case, NOW!” my father roared.

Jimmy reached over and flipped the latch.  The guitar was playing an inspired version of the intro to Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Scuttle Buttin’, repeating the frantic notes over and over.  When the lid opened, the volume tripled.

As if aware of my dad, the wailing guitar changed its tune.  My father pulled back the bat to deliver a blow,  but he was slammed by a Jimi Hendrix shock wave of distorted feedback.  The force was too much.  My dad stumbled backwards and fell to the floor.  I was holding my ears.  I glanced at Jimmy.  His face was blank. 

Grimacing, my father managed to reach out with the end of the bat and poke at the case until the lid fell shut. The volume, though greatly reduced, was still penetrating.  I noticed a tiny trickle of blood from my dad’s right ear.

However, at that point, I was beside myself with excitement.  As soon as the case had opened, my attention had refocused.

As noted, I had become a big fan of guitars and wanted to learn to play.  Jimmy had started some lessons at school.  I often played his old records, listening closely to all the different styles of the serous rockers, from Slash to Angus Young. 

Ever since Jimmy had arrived home, I had been pondering the fact that there were no signs of any amplification and yet the guitar was cranking like a stadium concert was taking place.  My random thoughts over this fell away when that guitar case opened.  My heart nearly stopped.  I could hardly believe my eyes.

After the case had closed again, I ran to Jimmy’s side, ignoring my father’s predicament.  “Did you see that?” I screamed.  “A Fender Stratocaster, with the surf pearl finish.  Those are impossible to find!” 

My brother said, “Of course I saw it, I was the one who checked it out at school, it just showed up there today.  But are you sure it isn’t a Telecaster?  It has that country twang to it, at times.”

“No way – the Telecaster never came with the surf pearl,” I replied.

There was no time to continue the debate.  A blood-curdling howl came from the kitchen and we all turned to see my mother rushing into the room, a large pot filled with boiling water in her hands.  “Die, you horrible six-stringed homewrecker!” she shrieked, and threw the water on the guitar case.

Jimmy stepped back.  I dove for cover, but my father was still on the floor, and some of it splattered on him.  His foul curses joined with the general wall of sound and for just a moment I thought I heard a few notes of the Elvis staple, Burnin’ Love.  The wailing guitar then segued into Zappa and the Mothers, and I recognized the bridge from My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama, the third track on side two of the LP “Weasels Ripped My Flesh.”

When my father recovered, he bellowed, “Get that fucking thing into the trunk of my car, right now!”   He did not specify how this was to be carried out.  In the end we pulled it from the case and wrapped the squalling Fender Strat in a heavy throw rug, which lessened the racket only slightly.  It was spewing tremolo, and the effect was head-splitting.  As the nosy neighbors looked on, we carried the thing to the car and stuffed it in the trunk.  It was now dusk, soon to be dark.

Everyone got in Dad’s big Chrysler sedan and we headed out.  Wrapping the guitar in the rug and stashing it into the trunk, I felt like we were dealing with a dead body in some television crime show. 

I tried to guess where my father was headed.  My mother was busy throwing guilt on him over this unexpected chain of events.  “Leave it to you, Roger,” she said, “to instill insubordination into our children with your temper tantrums and other endless examples of bad behavior.”  My father kept his eyes on the traffic but peeled his lips back into a sneer.  “Oh, is that right?” he snarled.  “If it were up to you, Miriam, there would be zero discipline in this house, ever!”

My mother’s response was as calm as it was snide.  “This is not a house,” she said.  “It’s a Chrysler Imperial.”

My father drove us to the big bridge over the East River.  There was a pullout in the middle of the bridge, for emergency stops.  “If this is not an emergency, then I don’t know what the hell is!” my father declared as he swerved into the spot.

I got out with my dad and we opened the trunk.  My brother lagged back.  “Jimmy!” my father yelled, “Get out here!”  My brother came with us to the edge, but still stood a few feet away.  Then, to everyone’s surprise, my mother also appeared at the edge of the bridge.  “I don’t know how this all happened,” she said, “but it looks like it’s a family problem now.” 

We positioned the guitar on the rail, then overbalanced it and off the high bridge it soared.  As the Stratocaster tumbled through the air in the dark, I could make out Jeff Beck’s powerful lead strain on the Yardbirds’ hit, Over, Under, Sideways, Down.  There was too much night in the sky to see it hit the water, but we heard the splash, then listened as it floated downstream, the notes growing fainter.  I turned to Jimmy.

“Hear that?”

“Yes.”  His voice was almost a whisper.  “Clapton.”

Not much was said as we headed back into town, but somehow it seemed like once the wailing guitar was cast into the void, the anger and resentment in my parents had dissipated.  My mother said with more sadness than anger in her voice, “dinner was ruined.  That was the bean water I threw on that awful thing.”  My father glanced over at her and the look on his face softened.  “We’ll stop,” he grunted.  “Get some burgers.”

My brother sat silent with me in the back seat.  He had an odd expression on his face.  I reached over and nudged him.  “What are you thinking?” I asked.

Jimmy looked at me, then tilted his head back toward the river.  “What if we have not heard the last of the wailing guitar?”

I thought for a minute.  “You’re right,” I said.  “That was just a killer performance, and a show that strong – it’s not rock and roll without an encore.  What will be do if it somehow comes back?”

In the front seat my mom and dad sat, humming along with some old big band music on the radio.  Jimmy looked at me and nodded in their direction.  I had not seen them do anything together for so long, it was a true surprise.

“If somehow we see it again, I guess we will just try to deal with whatever comes with it – as a family,” Jimmy said.

I put my head back against the seat and closed my eyes.  I reached into my pants pocket.  My fingers touched the guitar pick which I had snatched up from the carpet in the living room as we were wrapping the guitar inside the rug.  I thought I could feel it vibrating at the touch of my thumb and index finger.  A feeling like electricity coursed through my veins.

“We will just keep on rockin’ in the free world,” I said, surprising myself.  My voice was almost imperceptible, like the fade-out notes on Sgt. Pepper’s  A Day in the Life, but Jimmy heard me, and smiled.  “Amen,” he pronounced.

Steve Sibra 

Image: A multicoloures depiction of music flowing through the air with notes and a treble clef from pixabay.com