Page 25 of A Boy Called Lovesong

And before I could hit the brake and change my mind, we were off.

CHAPTER 6

He preferred his window down,his sniffer working overtime and his ears flapping in the wind.

I preferred the windows up to keep the autumn chill out, although the farther south we drove, the warmer it got, the southern states seemingly defying the seasons, snubbing the natural order of things.

In the end we compromised. I let him point his nose up toward the open window when we drove through the countryside, his little wet nostrils flaring and his snout twitching at the smell of every faraway squirrel and rascally raccoon that had left its scent on the wind. Then when we reached a city, the windows went up, keeping out the fumes of the traffic and the stench of the steelworks in Allentown and the suspicious smell of burnt motor oil that wafted up from under the Dynasty’s hood every now and then.

Somewhere outside Harrisburg the engine started to splutter.

As we passed the sign that read “Welcome to Shippensburg” the car began to rattle.

As we rolled into a mechanic shop in Chambersburg, the Dynasty wheezed and smoke billowed out from under the hood.

“Come on, Joan Collins,” I said, slapping the steering wheel. “You’ve got more fight in you than that.” That’s when the car was officially named.

Joan Collins she was.

I’m sure she would have approved of the handsome young mechanic in Chambersburg who looked under the hood, rattling off words like “radiator fluid” and “fanbelt” and “head gasket.”

Unfortunately for Chet and me though, it meant spending the night in a motel with no Wi-Fi, which at least provided a sense of calm and relief that the choice to cut myself off from the world was not mine at last.

In the morning the mechanic mumbled a few more words that meant nothing to me. Six hundred dollars later, Chet, Joan, and I were back on the road.

Somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia I took a deep breath, mustered my courage and finally pushed the cassette tape into the deck.

Forest trees passed us by.

Birds circled the skies.

And from the tape deck came the voice of a man, his tone low and slow and sort of shy as he formed his words with a deep southern drawl.

“Ah, hey y’all. Not sure who’s listening to this. Or if anyone’s even gonna get this. But for what it’s worth… my name’s Lafayette Valentin, but everyone calls me Lovesong. I don’t really know if I should even be doing this. Reverend Jim says the world outside ain’t exactly a place to take kindly to someone like me. Then again, he don’t even know I’m even doing this. So… here goes. I guess I’ll start with something classier than I’ll ever be. Hope y’all like it.”

There was a pause.

Then the delicate touch of fingers on keyboards.

The keys sounded loose.

But the fingers were confident.

More confident than the man’s voice or his rambling words or the keys that sounded like they might pop out of the piano he was playing, like teeth giving in to the passage of time.

Then suddenly I recognized the piece and caught my breath.

“Oh shit. That’s Rach three.”

Rachmaninoff’sPiano ConcertoNo. 3in DMinor.

Notoriously one of the most difficult pieces of music ever written.

It was a piece that not even Joel could conquer flawlessly.

His students stumbled over it so often he discouraged them from playing it at recitals, telling them to focus their talents on something less risky, something they could tame, rather than letting the piece run wild and losing control of it. Yes, he had always wanted his students to be courageous and explore music, even experiment with it, but he never intended his pupils to fall victim to it.

Rach 3 was a sacrificial altar on which he never wanted to see his students perish.

---