Copper Heart by Leena Lehtolainen

Author:Leena Lehtolainen [Lehtolainen, Leena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Mystery, Crime Fiction, Murder, Women Sleuths
ISBN: 1477848428
Amazon: B00CYPPRFM
Publisher: AmazonCrossing
Published: 2013-11-12T06:00:00+00:00

A strange pling came from Jaska’s guitar, and I wondered whether he was thinking about Aniliina too. Or was he thinking of the twisted orange angel lying on the gravel at the base of the Tower? Only the keyboardist and drummer carried the song through to the end.

Johnny had turned toward the music shelf. I didn’t know whether he was really looking for something or if he just wanted to hide his face. When he turned back toward us, his expression was suddenly mischievous.

“Do you remember this, Maria?”

It was a handwritten Finnish adaptation of CCR’s “Who’ll Stop the Rain.” The boys in the Snow Tigers had played it one year for the battle of the bands during the town festival and had taken the top prize. But one of the big men from the mining company had been in attendance and got all wound up over the verse: “My daddy done died, fallen down in the mine. I guess the boss and his men couldn’t get him up in time. That was the day, made up my mind, I ain’t goin’ down that hole.” The local director of the mining company called Johnny directly and forbade him from playing the piece at the county music competition. I couldn’t remember exactly what the threat was, but he succeeded in getting Johnny to promise not to play the song.

At the county festival, I remembered sitting with sweaty palms in the audience, nervous for the Tigers and nervous about whether Johnny would play the banned song. When the familiar opening riffs blasted over the speakers and Johnny started to sing, I almost cried. Johnny was a hero. No one could tell him what he could and couldn’t play! Afterward, we had been pretty disappointed when no one made a big deal about it.

I would have known this bass line even if you woke me up in the middle of the night. C, E, F, A. Da-da-da. Da-da-da. I smiled at Johnny. When he smiled back, my knees went weak and my mouth dried up. We all screamed the refrain, “I ain’t goin’ down that hole!” Even though we ended up laughing, there was something melancholy about it. When we were kids, we thought we really had a choice. We just had to shape our lives to be exactly what we wanted. Life would hand us everything on a silver platter if we just got out of this little town.

“Now some noise,” Jaska demanded when we finished a John Fogerty song. So we ran through a few early Eppu Normaali and Pelle Miljoona pieces, which left the ankle biter on the keyboard completely out in the cold. Then Johnny sat down on the edge of the table, clamped a capo on the neck of his guitar and started plucking, repeating an E-minor arpeggio sequence. I listened for a few seconds and then began strumming the bass tonic and then the melody.

“Are you going to Scarborough Fair…” The boyish brightness was back in Johnny’s voice. “Scarborough Fair” was one of the few songs we had always sung together.

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