Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #3

Short Story for MM https://substack.com/@choosefiction

Light surrendering to heat roaring inflammable grist. And in that moment where it is just a flash it spreads onward forward upward the splendor of the entire spectrum in uproarious communion bright alight with grace. But not yet sound. The old man saw the lightning strike through the grocery window to his back. He just had time to stiffen himself before the wave of thunder came rushing over him and pinged the window as if it were a bell. His jacket caught the short-sleeved shirt that he was wearing. It was only a single solitary light in the back, and he read dimly in the streetlamp that the convenience store was closed.

He had not checked whether they would be open because he was used to the city where it was not a question. He turned around and faced the main street of this town and a few bars of his favorite concerto. He was very near the end of the bus line and the commercial Street had just about ended and was transitioning to a car-oriented center of urban population. He had a car but thought that doing the mile or so to the convenience store to pick up a quart of milk and real butter would do his legs some good. A mistake all the way around. There was nothing here to get groceries and by the time he had walked back towards the ginormous grocery store, it would be closed. He preferred the milk from here because it was local though he knew that the difference in taste was slight but appreciably real.

He looked at the light and saw the cluster of benches around the petunias and other flowers maintained by some business. His limbs were slightly chilly, and he decided to sit down for a few minutes and take shelter under the sycamore trees that came up from the apartment buildings that were located in a long-abandoned Victorian school building. There were only a few lights on, but that was not unusual since it was for seniors on Social Security. He needed to get back home to do other things before practicing the piano. He was not anywhere near good but the flash of opening a score was tremendous and invigorating.

Once he sat down on the bench, he could hear the droplets on the leaves, and he could see the drizzle only a few feet from him. He turned the jacket up to protect himself and then started back to his place of residence. He lived one more time at the collection of businesses that held that the lower price of rent justified the longer track: a frame shop, an after-school cram center, and a Chinese restaurant that serves the most debased kind of American food with soy sauce on top.

He wended his way down the main street for a few minutes when he saw the first open business available, it was of course a Dunkin’ Donuts and was open 24 hours for the people who truly needed to stay awake just a little bit longer. He saw a bus stop with a bench and decided that he needed to sit down. The coffee and flavored grease called him, but he easily resisted because he did not want to be one of the fat people who lazily ambulated the sidewalk. He remembered when people were thin. As he taught he wondered whether everything was enlarged for the enbiggend people. He decided not to think about it. In the street, there was a crow feeding on the light and sound.

Clearly, it was time for him to go.

He went slowly down and reached the library. The library itself was grand because once upon a time this was an upscale town near a steel mill. He could imagine doctors and lawyers chatting their way up the stairs beneath the stained-glass rendition of the mill. That was a long time ago. Much water under the bridge.

But now he had to make a decision, the bus line continued along the main street, but his house was more quickly reached by cutting across the hills. The one problem with this is that there were very few streetlights because they were too expensive for the town as it was. He looked down at his boots and decided that the less time walking was better for all concerned, especially his bunions.

He selected a single street remembering that during the school year, his daughter had gone there to preschool. He remembered the row of sycamore trees and the old high school fortress that was halfway back to his house. In a few minutes, he looked at the red brick building and remembered how good it had been to introduce his daughter. She enjoyed looking for ants and wondered at the tall sycamore tree that was out front. He rested on the park bench near the old high school building watching the raindrops slowly fall from the leaves. This way he could pretend that the daughter was still with him and his wife. Those times were good.

Then in the distance, he heard a laugh, but it was probably just the rain on the leaves.

He huddled down inside his jacket because the rain had slowly eased over to wet droplets of snow. He gripped his keys inside his pocket and decided to cut through the graveyard because it was just a bit shorter.

The stones that marked them were eight feet high and shaped like an obelisk. Another bolt of lightning cast them in sorted shapes of black and white and he could see a lion’s head one-third of the way up. There was a faint ringing in his ears that echoed as a roar. He was freezing and he knew that he had to get back quickly now.

At the halfway point between the front entrance, which he had gone through, and the back there was a bench meant to honor a pianist from the 1800s. it was the only person of note buried here and he decided to rest a moment because the quivering creaky air had gotten inside his jacket.

Then came another lightning bolt and he shivered as the crash came through the graveyard, then at once, ghosts appeared lifting lilting lasting up through the trees and into the suddenly brushed-out full moonlight. The pianist drifted out and called to him giving the score for him to turn the pages. And he lifted his feet and drifted away as the snow came down. Flying with the other ghosts a fain over the sycamore trees unto the endless dance.

-

The corner looked carefully at the documents. It was a 47 -year-old man, who was divorced after the child had died. His car was parked behind his home with no gas. The man had missed payments on the mortgage since he had been out of work for an entire year since the steel mill had finally closed. The corner made certain assumptions which were all probably correct. The corner stamped the death certificate as an accident from the recent early snowstorm.

The only thing that was odd was that he was found carrying the score for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #3