A Fistful of Rain

in the military, still had the haircut. Black hair with gray scattered through it, as if it was coming in a strand at a time, with no rhyme or reason.

The muscles jumping in his neck.

“What are you doing to Miriam?” he asked them. He set down his jacket and briefcase without taking his eyes from his boys, then moved to where I was on the carpet, lifted me to my feet.

Brian tried to answer. “Nothing, sir, we were just—”

“I heard,” their father said. “I heard everything you said.”

“But—”

“Don’t move. If you move before I come back, God as my witness, I will put you both into the hospital.”

Their father put a hand on my elbow, turned me back toward the kitchen. He set me in a chair at the table. There was perspiration on his upper lip. His hand felt like it was shaking when it let me go.

“Stay here,” Mr. Quick said.

I nodded.

He was removing the belt from his waist as he went out of the kitchen.

When he returned, the belt was again at his waist, and he was carrying a suitcase and my missing sneaker. He told me that he would get the rest of my things later, but for now he was taking me to a hotel, because he didn’t think it was fair to keep me under the same roof as those boys after what they had done, after everything that had happened. He told me that his wife would stay with me if that would make me feel more comfortable, and he told me that he was so very sorry.

Two days later I was placed with a new family.

When I left the Quicks, all I wanted was a place to stay, to be safe, and all I expected was another one of fate’s split-finger fastballs right to my head. I figured if I remained with the new family, whoever they were, for more than six months, it would be a miracle.

The new family was named Beckerman, Steven and Joan.

I was with them for almost ten years.

They had a room ready, and the first thing that made me feel like this was going to be a good thing was that it wasn’t decorated in pink. It didn’t have stuffed animals on the bed. It was a girl’s room, not a princess’s.

And it had its own stereo, a real one, not a boom box, but an old four-component Denon unit, tuner, cassette, CD, and LP, hooked to two brand-new bookshelf Bose speakers. There were headphones, already plugged to the output jack, and it was like they were sending me a message—this is yours, use it whenever you want, but remember that we’re here, too. No cautions about volume. Just, here’s the headphones, knock yourself out.

Steven repaired instruments for a living, mostly tuning pianos. Joan taught music at various high schools throughout the Portland district. After hours or on weekends, they gave private lessons. Each of them called those things their jobs, what they did to keep the roof over their heads from leaking. Their jobs, not their work.

Music, that was their work.

They did it together, and I blame them both equally.

June, and school had ended, though I was scheduled for summer school in just a few weeks, a desperate attempt to bring me back in line with my classmates. I’d been with Steven and Joan just shy of two months, and the time hadn’t been easy, because as much as I liked the room they’d made for me, I sure as hell didn’t trust them. The longest conversation we’d had so far had concerned how I could get a letter to my brother, and if I could go and visit him soon. The answers were yes and no; I could write him all I wanted, but Mikel wasn’t allowed visitors for the time being.

So for two months, I’d been quiet and self-absorbed, testing their boundaries, stealing their cigarettes, and getting more chores heaped on me as punishment. I wasn’t as bad as I’d been with the Quicks, but I was getting ready to escalate.

They’d done their best to weather it. They’d seen me poking at the various instruments around the house, fiddling the keys on a trumpet, striking notes on the Steinway. Both of them had asked me if I had any interest in playing any of the instruments they had around. The flute, for instance, or the violin, or the clarinet, or the piano.

“No,” I’d said.

A lie. But the last time I’d played an instrument had been when I was ten, and though I could still remember the thrill of it, I remembered the rest, too. The weakness of my hands and the failing of the guitar; Tommy’s impatience with my inept fingers; my mother’s annoyance, her telling me that I shouldn’t play so loudly until I could at least play, you know, well.

It is impossible to practice an instrument quietly. Music, by its very definition, must be heard.

Dinner was finished, and I had cleared the table, doing my appointed chores. I finished drying the last of the dishes just as Joan was pouring coffee for herself and Steven. They both looked at me, the kind of look that always made me nervous. They looked pleased, and that had to mean that I’d done something wrong.

“Go to your room,” Steven told me. He was smiling.

So was Joan.

“Why?”

“Go to your room and see.”

Stupid games, I thought. Stupid people. Don’t know anything about me. Don’t know who I am or what I want and don’t even care.

Making it as clear as possible with body language that I was doing them a big favor, I went to my room.

The guitar was on the bed, resting in an open case.

“Yours,” Joan said. “Do whatever you want with it.”

Steven added, “We’ll be downstairs.”

They left us alone.

It was a used Taylor acoustic, scratches on its body, gouges in the wood around the pick guard. The steel strings seemed to float just above the mahogany neck.

I sat down beside it on the bed and just stared at it, trying to figure out if I wanted to be bought this easily. It wasn’t as sophisticated a thought as that, of course, but that’s the only way I can think of it now.

The Taylor won out in the end.

I picked it up, held it the way I had seen Steven holding his guitar. I put my index finger on a string, it was the sixth string, the low E, and I struck the note.

I went downstairs with the guitar held in both hands, by the neck, and found Joan and Steven in the piano room, sitting side by side on the bench. Steven was smoking a cigarette and singing softly along to what his wife was playing, and then she saw me and let the notes trail off, and his voice followed.

I pushed the guitar out in front of me, toward them, and said, “Show me how.”

Joan laughed, and Steven got up and went to get his acoustic, and we settled on the couch, and he started to teach. It was just after nine when he began, and he knew what I was after; he didn’t talk about chords or sevenths or octaves or diatonic scales. He explained only the barest facts that I needed, just enough to get me playing notes that combined to make music that I could recognize. He showed me everything he was doing on his guitar, never touching me or mine, letting me mimic him. I was clumsy and awkward and my fingers kept slipping. My back ached from this strange new posture, the muscles in my neck throbbed because of the way I was craning my head, trying to watch both of my hands at once. The steel strings dug channels into my fingertips. My left hand, my fretting hand, cramped up.

“Stop,” Steven said. “Take a break.”

So for five minutes I stopped, massaging my hand, amazed at the blood on my fingertips, blood on the strings.