Bow Grip by Coyote Ivan E

Author:Coyote, Ivan E.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781551522739
Publisher: Perseus

I fooled around on the cello some more after Kelly left, liking the way the strings whistled under the callouses that were beginning to bud on the tips of my fingers. I had the TV on real low in the background, one of those Bollywood-type movies was on, where the rich young bachelor wants to marry the beautiful maiden from a lower caste, but her father threatens to kill her if she marries him, and castrate him and all of his brothers and nephews, meanwhile every ten minutes or so everybody breaks out in a killer musical number. I sat with my butt cheeks right on the edge of the mattress and just scronked along with the music.

I still didn’t really know how to properly tune the thing, and I have no idea how it must have sounded from the other side of the wall, in Hector’s empty room next door, but I had a good time. I learned to cradle the cello with the inside of one leg, giving myself something to lean into as I drew the bow across the strings. I liked how it felt in my body when I managed to get a string to sound, resonant and clear. I could feel it humming in my tailbone, straight up through my back and arms. At eleven o’clock on the nose, I wiped the cello down with the soft rag, carefully laid her inside her case, and stowed her back in the closet.

I knew I should have felt tired after the day I had, but I couldn’t even make myself lay down yet. Every time I stopped moving, my brain started turning so fast it made the stitches in my head itch. I put a sweater and coat on, patted my pockets for my lighter and smokes, and headed out for a little walk.

Hector’s truck was back already, the cab dark behind the fogged-up windshield. I guessed his date hadn’t gone too well.

I found a little footpath on the other side of the ditch alongside the entrance ramp onto the highway, right next to the tree line. It felt good to stretch my legs, and the chill wind stung my nostrils and cooled the burn gathering in the hair follicles surrounding the gash in my scalp.

The path led me alongside the highway for a while, and then through a scruffy field tufted with Safeway bags caught in bare willow branches, broken beer bottles, and an upturned shopping cart missing two wheels. I could smell wood smoke, and underneath that, the tang of car exhaust. The far end of the field sloped down towards the Bow River, and I walked along through the frosted bull rushes and horsetails under an arching steel bridge painted red.

“Buddy, you wouldn’t spare a cigarette, would you?” The voice jolted me out of my thoughts, and I nearly jumped when I first heard it. It belonged to a small man whose face was almost buried in his beard, which was shot through with silvery whiskers stained bronze with nicotine.

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