DAY IS DONE

 

 

 

California 1975

 

            The war was over.

            The times had changed.

            The music too.

            Bobby sat on his bed, curled into a ball, lost in thought; away; far away; where nobody could reach him. A cool breeze brushed up against his window. The sun shone brightly, casting its beams across the land like a warm embrace, but Bobby felt cold.

            In the corner of his room, a record player spun to a stop. The click startled him. He wiped his eyes. He watched the arm as it slowly lifted into the air. It retracted toward him then came to a rest beside a vinyl as black as night. He could see dust on the needle. But he didn’t dare clean it. He liked it there. He liked the crackle it made when he played records. His records.

            Bobby slipped off of his bed and crawled over to a small collection of them in a wooden crate. They were the only ones he had. He thumbed through them like memories in a picture album. Faces, once strange, flashed past his searching eyes in changing hues of color and shadow. Cat Stevens, Carly Simon, Elton John, Denver, Taylor, and Dylan... Bobby stopped.

            Two men, on a road to nowhere, paused to look over their shoulders at him. Simon and Garfunkel. One of his favorites. After a minute, Bobby allowed his thumb to relax. The musty covers raced past his vision again, the album titles like sacred stories written long ago. Days of Future Passed, Willie and the Poor Boys, Tapestry, American Pie, Life and Times, the Best of this and the Greatest Hits of that. Bobby stopped again.

            A man with dark hair slicked back over his head and a criminal gleam in his eyes looked out from his album cover as if her were looking through a window into Bobby’s room. But this man, unlike the two walking down the road, wasn’t going anywhere. He wasn’t running from anyone. He faced Bobby—like a man—and stared deep into his eyes; then beyond them to a place very few had been over the last nineteen years of his life. Bobby read the album’s title. Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. He shivered.

            In the back of his mind, he could hear the prisoners shouting. He could see them in the commons, jumping up and down; cheering; whooping and hollering like kids at play; chanting for Mr. Cash to take the stage and play the hell out of his guitar; calling for him to ease their burdens with song; to grant them forgiveness and send them packing down the road of second chances where redemption is granted and dreams long forgotten come to light.

            As if he were there, Bobby stepped back to admire the crowd. He felt the cold wire of a security fence against the back of his neck. The atmosphere was tense. And powerful. At any other time; in the present, he would have been scared of these men. They looked terrifying. They had broken the commandments straight from the Good Book. They had ignored its sacred stories. They were vandals and thieves; murderers and rapists. They dealt drugs to the lonely and they beat their wives and children because they couldn’t control their liquor; or they simply had nothing better to do. But above all, to Bobby, they were sad.

            He looked past the numbers above the breast pockets on their blue shirts and into their eyes--also blue, green, brown, and grey. He scanned the group, searching for one man in particular. And then he saw him; in the far corner, as close as he could get to the stage, dotting at the corners of his eyes with his sleeve, watching with sacred wonder as Johnny took the stage.

            Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.

            Under normal circumstances, a man in prison might get beat for crying. Maybe even killed. But not that day. That day was different. Bobby watched the other inmates as they too brought the cuffs of their sleeves to their tired eyes. They choked back tears for the Man in Black and his Cocaine Blues. They choked them back for the son they once played catch with; for the daughter who turned her first dance with a step-father; for a girl; their girl, sitting on their bed, crying herself to sleep night after night after night. They cried for The Father and The Son and the Holy Ghost. But most of all they cried for themselves; lost, alone, and afraid.

            Bobby wiped his eyes again. He tried to hang on to the moment as he imagined it in his mind, but the vibrancy of the images began to fade; the men blurred and the powerful harmonies softened. Bobby reached back through time to take his dad’s hand. And for a brief moment, he felt it. It was hard and rough, yet at the same time, soft and smooth and warm. He felt his dad give a gentle squeeze, but then no more.

            Bobby opened his eyes to find himself back in his room, staring at the Cash album like it was the first time he’d seen it. Hands shaking, he removed the record then tipped the cover upside down. Several letters gently floated down, down, down, covering the brown shag carpet like winter’s first snow. They were all addressed to him. They were all from Folsom Prison. His fingers fumbled with one in particular, post marked January 13, 1968. The envelope was smudged from being handled so much; the folds all but tears in the delicate piece of paper now. But he didn’t really need to read it. He knew it by heart.

            Dear, the letter began, Son.

            Bobby stared at that last word for several minutes. He remembered the first time he had read it. He remembered how strange it looked to him. How uncomfortable it had made him feel; how hurt and angry. With guilt, he remembered what he had said to his mom when he first got the letter and how she taught him a lesson he would never forget. But now--now the word was not so strange. And Bobby liked it. He read it again and again. Then he let his eyes wander, almost against his will, to the remainder of the letter.

            Mom told me about your Uncle Tom, it read in the first line. I’m sorry.

            I am sorry.

            I am sorry.

            I am sorry.

            Three simple words yet with the weight of the world on their shoulders. Bobby knew what his dad had meant though. This was about more than just his uncle. Bobby brought the record tight against his chest. Through it, he felt his heart stir. For Tom. For his mom. For his dad. For the Sinners in Folsom turned Saints under the influence of an acoustic guitar and a deep, brooding voice--like a train, rolling ‘round the bend.