face.
“They wouldn’t have been here if it weren’t for you,” he said.
“Who?” his father said.
They blinked at each other in mutual surprise. Then his father said,
“I was talking about your mother. She passed away two nights ago, in her sleep. I thought that you should know.”
Joe took a deep breath. Then he kneaded his fingers over his forehead, closing his eyes against the lance of pain.
He wasn’t completely numb yet, after all.
“She was a good woman,” his father said, tentatively. “She did her best for you. By her standards.”
Joe nodded. He couldn’t speak.
“I was thinking,” his father said. “I could take you back to see her, if you want.”
Joe looked up. “You could do that?”
“I could,” his father said. “She would have liked it.”
“Did you—?”
“I was with her at the end,” his father said. “She’d forgiven me, by then.”
Joe tasted a story he’d never know, and let it go. “Fine,” he said to his father. “Take me.”
That was the night Joe found out what it meant to be his father’s son.
They flew some way as crows at the beginning of the journey, but crows weren’t fast or strong enough for an ocean crossing. They turned into smoke for part of that, then caught a lift on the wings of a military airplane.
Flying in the cold, thin altitudes, half disintegrated into smoke, Joe felt the wind blow through the pain. Pure, freezing numbness overcame him, and finally, he thought he understood what his father always felt.
Freedom. He could have flown forever, and never had to touch his pain or memories again.
At the end, well past midnight on a dark, cold Ohio night, they shifted back into human shape to jimmy open the window of the funeral home and crawl inside to the room where Joe’s mother was laid out for viewing.
Joe touched her cold fingers and tried not to cry in front of his father.
“She was the prettiest girl in Kravarsko,” his father said. “She wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone. Not even me.”
“She turned us into a team,” Joe said. He looked down into his mother’s face, calm beneath the layers of paint, and for the first time in over a year, he felt a clear point of resolution form underneath the brittle shell of numbness and the swirling, scattered layers of pain that had been hidden underneath. “She’s the reason we all take care of each other.”
“Well. That.” His father cleared his throat. “I heard about your brothers and what happened. So. I guess there isn’t going to be a band, after all. No more plans of Hollywood.”
“Hollywood?” Joe almost laughed as he looked up from his mother to his father’s fierce golden eyes. “You still don’t get it, do you?”
“I didn’t cause your brother’s death,” Joe’s father said. “But it’s been some time since then. I thought you might be ready to move on.” He took a breath. “I thought you might be ready to come with me, now. Now that you know what it’s like.”
At that moment, Joe glimpsed something he’d never expected to see on his father’s face. It was fear, pure and simple … and there was something else mixed in.
Flying high above the ground, you could always feel free. Now that Joe had tasted that freedom, he felt the difference himself, standing thick and heavy on the ground, weighted down by human concerns, all the cares and sorrows that his father would never know.
But that wasn’t enough.
“I’m sorry,” Joe said, speaking to his father gently for the first time since they’d met. “It’s too late for me now. It’s not your fault. But I need to get back to my unit. I’ve got responsibilities.”
“But—”
“There might not be a band,” Joe said. “But my brothers and I are still a team.” He hesitated and drew a breath, releasing the anger he’d carried with him for so long. “You could come and stay with us sometime. Anytime, really. I—”
Before he’d even stopped speaking, his father shook his head. The golden gaze shuttered, but not before Joe glimpsed the raw pain hidden behind the fierceness.
“Too late,” his father said, and it sounded like the harsh cawing of a bird that knows it’s lost all hope. “Too late.”
Three of them came back from the war: Joe, without a saxophone, Karl, without a hand, and Niko, whose goofy lopsided grin had turned into a mask of sorrow. They gathered in their mother’s house and huddled together, waiting for inspiration.
Ivan had always been the one with the big ideas. Ivan was gone. But the brothers were still a team.
Joe was cleaning out the attic one hot and dusty afternoon when he found his father’s final message to him. Buried underneath the rubble of twenty years, he glimpsed the corner of a shining black leather case.
At first, he didn’t know what it was. Then he lifted away the piles of old clothing that had covered it and saw its sleek rectangular lines, and his breath caught in his throat.
He undid the clasps and swung the case open.
A perfect, golden saxophone lay inside, gleaming and new.
Joe stared at it a long moment, caught between sharp, prickling emotions.
Finally, he reached out and picked up the saxophone. It fit perfectly into his hands.
As he lifted it out of the case, a black feather slipped out of the bell of the instrument and fluttered onto Joe’s knee.
Joe let out a huff of breath that could have been either a laugh or a sob. A box of fresh reeds sat tucked in the case. He took one out and moistened it, even as tears blurred his vision. He fitted the mouthpiece onto the of the sax and closed his eyes as he lifted it to his lips. He could already hear the wailing tune that wanted to be born.
Within a year, that tune would make his name in the nightclubs of Youngstown and Cleveland.
Five years from then, every jazz fan in the country would know the names of Blue Joe and his backup band —Niko on drums, grinning the loopy, lopsided, visionary grin of a man who’s touched despair and been reborn into hope; and Karl, playing the keyboard like a demon with only one hand, worshipped by jazz fans everywhere for the uniqueness of his vision.
But at that moment, as Joe accepted his father’s gift, he only knew one thing:
Maybe it wasn’t too late after all.
THE WERE-WIZARD OF OZ
by Lavie Tidhar
EXT. EMERALD CITY—DAY
Emerald City. A dark and dangerous place. City blocks tower above mean streets and open sewers. The sky is the colour of blood. There are winged monkeys circling slowly in the air, searching for prey. Under a broken street lamp stands OZ, smoking a cigarette, his fedora pulled low over his eyes. His face is in shadow.
OZ:
Emerald City.
OZ:
Shit.
OZ lifts his face. The light of a passing car illuminates them. He is unshaved, and his eyes are red.
OZ:
It’s always dusk in the Emerald City.
