Bless you son, the card from the stranger said. It’s not much but here’s a litle something for gas mony.
Martin took the wrinkled five-dollar bill and placed it on his desk.
The card and envelope with the return address went in the small filing cabinet he picked up on Craigslist.
Some of the cards were from Guam and Sierra Leone, places he might never be able to afford to go, but praise The Lord he was gonna answer every card, every letter.
He learned hundreds more songs in the twenty-two months he had been singing at hospice bedsides.
Kurt Krall’s signed photo hung on the wall. The reporter with the marble cheekbones and perfect hair had made Martin and Songs of Peace and Comfort famous in the Toledo area.
The network had run the piece on their Sunday Morning Talk Show after their studio guest had last-minute canceled.
Linked it to their website.
Martin opened one more card, Ovation twelve-string in his lap like a boulder.
The card had no money, but was written in pink ink in a beautiful flowing cursive.
Jesus was mentioned three times.
Martin looked up at the one dimensional Krall, visualizing the living one, the one he had told, on camera “any song a terminally ill person requests, I’ll learn it and I’ll play it for them, sir.”
He looked away from the glossy shot of the Channel Six man, and at the sheet music propped on his music stand. He strummed the chords. Faster than he was used to.
Fast like his pulse when the pretty girl at the Chicken Shack had tugged on his arm and begged him to visit her brother.
He didn’t have cards from Guam then. Just requests from Monroe, Michigan, and Tipp City, Ohio and places that watched Kurt Krall on TV.
This request was a block away from Chicken Shack.
The pretty girl…was she his girlfriend now? It seemed for a minute that the train was pulling into that station, but now he wasn’t so sure…Jeanette McMurtry tugged him the entire way down the block.
Strange thing was that he recognized the hospice nurse first, the nice Russian lady had been at another bedside where he had played some Dylan and some Stones and then the gentleman, a Vietnam Vet had allowed him to play Amazing Grace. Bob. Bob the Vietnam Vet, he had remembered when the nurse reintroduced herself.
Jeannette had seen the story about Songs of Peace and Comfort, of course she had, but her request was special, she said.
She wanted to request the songs: hymns, gospel, for her brother, bone cancer, third guy from his lawn treatment company to get it.
Her brother’s name was Joseph, she said, like Mary’s Husband, she said, and Martin was still praying for forgiveness for looking at her lips and forgetting what came out of them next and just wanting to kiss them, right then and there.
Martin strummed the chords. He knew them now. A challenge, but he knew them. The words, those would be tougher. He’d have them written down, of course, to read while he sang, but…
Jeannette said her brother liked to be called Black, so he might get mad if Martin said Joseph.
Martin heard that part.
The part he missed while he was thinking of kissing those beautiful lips had been the important part.
He met Maria, the nurse, again at the McMurtry’s neat colonial, and Jeanette had introduced him to her brother.
Martin decided on “friend” instead of “Joseph” or “Black.”
“You’re the songs for dying people guy, huh?”Jeanette’s brother had said. “How the fuck did she find you?”
His voice was stronger than his gaunt face would have indicated.
What Martin thought might be bruising on his lower lip was a tattoo.
Jeanette explained the chance encounter in the line to pick up chicken.
“I used to trash pick bones from that place, “Jeanette’s brother said, smiling like he was recalling a canoe trip.
And then Jeanette’s brother asked if Martin would play him some Morbid Angel.
Martin, more than half his mind on Jeanette’s hazel eyes and sultry lips, said “I’ll play any four songs you’d like to hear, friend.”
Jeanette’s pretty lips had barked at her brother quicker and more fiercely than Martin had heard anyone speak to their ill loved one.
“You’re gonna let Martin save that tarnished soul of yours, Joseph!”
Martin prayed on it, lost sleep over it, was probably going to lose Jeanette over it, but he had said it out loud on television, the true altar of the American people, and at the man’s bedside.
Any songs you’d like to hear.
He flipped the page of music.
He would keep his word, no matter how badly the songs disgusted him.
He called Jeanette to tell her his decision.
He knew Jesus would forgive him.
He prayed Jeanette would.
She didn’t answer. Martin hung up without leaving a message and found himself praying that Black had already died in peace.
***
Photo Courtesy of Getty Images
Life and death are truly complicated. Even for those who believe death isn’t the end. I loved this line , “ His voice was stronger than his gaunt face would have indicated.”