The Metaphysical Ukulele by Sean Carswell

Author:Sean Carswell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781632460271
Publisher: IG Publishing
Published: 2016-04-05T16:00:00+00:00

Unfortunately, Flannery was so flustered when Erik dropped her back off at Andalusia that she forgot her ukulele in his car. The next she heard from him, he’d taken a six-month leave of absence from work and returned to Denmark. Whether or not he took her ukulele with him is not clear. Either way, both were gone.

The autumn turned to winter and the subsequent spring limped in without the usual sense of rebirth. Flannery’s doctor took her off the adrenocorticotropic hormone and put her on an experimental drug called Meticorton. Flannery’s thirtieth birthday came with a cane that she would need to get around that summer. One year after the kiss, Flannery purchased the pair of aluminum crutches that she’d ride for the rest of her life. These crutches helped her out to the mailbox, where she found her final letter from Erik: the one in which he announced his engagement.

Flannery stuffed the letter in the pocket of her wool coat and hobbled through the magnolias and red oaks, the chrysanthemums back in bloom and the sweetgums carpeting pathways with their fallen leaves until she made it well into the back forty of Andalusia, to a shack that an old black man had built, that Regina knew nothing about and everyone else ignored. The man’s name was Coleman. Flannery liked him because he had skin that wrapped around a bag of bones in the same ill-fated manner as Flannery’s. She caught sight of then turned a blind eye to the moonshine still he used to make his money. She tapped on his door with the rubber end of her crutch. Coleman groaned and cursed his popping knee joints and kicked over a tin plate that never should have been left on the floor to begin with and eventually opened the door. Of course, he would’ve known from the knock that it was Flannery and of course he would’ve known what she was there for. He invited her in. He lit the fire in his little chimney and set a kettle on to boil. He asked, “Would you like some coffee, Miss Flannery?”

“Yes, please, Coleman.” She lowered herself into an old cane chair next to Coleman’s one table. She hesitated to ask. Surely, Coleman would get to the matter in his own time. She leaned the crutches against the back of her chair and folded her hands in her lap. She could still feel the crumpled letter in her coat.

Coleman watched the kettle come to a boil, then set two mugs of coffee on a slow drip. He smiled wide enough for Flannery to catch a glimpse of his foremost tooth: the lower right canine. He reached from behind a chest of drawers and pulled out his latest work of art: a cigar box ukulele made for his favorite dying girl. He handed it over.

Flannery grazed her fingers across the frets, tapped the soundboard of old, dry redwood, and tuned the strings. It wasn’t quite the masterpiece of dark mahogany and

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