Being Henry David - By Cal Armistead Page 0,27

I’m good with my hands, adept at drilling into wood frames and thinking through how things should fit together. Building stuff comes naturally to me. My hands remember. Maybe my dad taught me.

Then I recall the voice I heard in the woods this morning, calling me. It wasn’t Thoreau and it wasn’t Thomas either. It was my father. I know this. Although I can’t conjure a picture of him in my head, at least there’s no warning slash in my gut when I try.

“Hey, you.” There’s a voice coming from somewhere above my head. I glance up to see Cameron standing on a platform above the stage. “Can you bring up that spotlight for me?”

He points to a black unit by my feet, with metal flaps in front of a large bulb, and a loop on top like a handle. “Sure.” It’s heavier than it looks. The only way up to the platform is a makeshift ladder, blocks of wood nailed into the wall. With one hand carrying the spotlight, the other grasping the ladder, I climb up to where Cameron is kneeling at the edge of the platform. It’s hard to stand there and lift up the light without losing my balance, but I manage.

Cameron waits a beat longer than necessary to reach out for the light, like he’s hoping maybe, just maybe, I’ll slip and fall. I see it in his eyes. He reaches to lift the spotlight out of my hands, but just as I’m letting go, he releases his grip and the weight of it comes down on me. Asshole. Instinctively, I reach for the spotlight with both hands, afraid to let the unit go crashing to the floor, and I almost fall backward off the ladder. Just in time, Cameron grabs my arm. “Sorry,” he says, not looking in the least bit sorry. “Lost my grip.”

I smirk at him, drilling into him with my own unflinching eye contact. “Yeah, right.” I say.

He turns away from me to hang the spotlight, standing on a narrow catwalk and reaching up into the blackpainted rafters. The platform at the top of the ladder is not a big area, just about the same size as Thoreau’s cabin. Still, there’s enough space for a guy to stand and hang lights. Or hide.

“Okay, good work, everybody,” Ms. Coleman calls out. “We’ve made a lot of progress. Let’s clean up and have some lunch.”

In the kitchen, there are boxes of pizza somebody ordered for the cast and crew. I feel awkward around the other kids, like an intruder, but the last thing I’d do in my situation is refuse free food. So I take a couple of slices of pepperoni and chow down. The other kids sneak glances at me, but nobody talks to me. Fair enough. I don’t try to start a conversation either. It’s hard to talk to people when I’m a stranger, not just to them, but to myself.

I look for Hailey, but Cameron has taken her aside, doing his possessive act again, telling her some long involved story (she keeps looking in my direction; am I only imagining she wants me to rescue her?), so I casually slip out of the kitchen.

With nothing better to do, I wander into an open room adjoining the auditorium. There are music stands, lockers, instruments, and random pieces of sheet music scattered on the floor. The band room. And there in a corner, somebody has left an acoustic guitar. It’s not a fancy or expensive guitar, just a dusty old Yamaha, but for some reason, I’m drawn to it. I pick it up, run my fingers over the wood on the neck. Placing my fingers on the top frets, I play a D chord, and wince when I hear how out of tune it is. So I twist the pegs, get it in tune, and start playing a song I don’t recognize, but my fingers seem to remember by heart.

Now this is cool. I know how to play guitar. Music, as it turns out, feels as natural to me as breathing. Feels so good, I forget where I am. Close my eyes, let my fingers fly, and play the hell out of that old guitar.

At first I think I’m imagining things when I hear singing. But I open my eyes, and there’s Hailey, leaning against the lockers.

“No, Hank, keep playing,” she says. “I love the Beatles. My mom played their stuff all the time when I was little.”

So the song I’m playing