Marble and Echoes

Melody and Percussion

Photo by Johannes Krupinski on Unsplash

The statue wasn’t much, a monolith with a slight curve, a twist. 

The hunk of marble was erected in honor of some group, Logan Binareau didn’t know who then-when his mother would take his wrist fiercely and drag him away from the man who sung to the sky-and he didn’t know now.

The man sang something.

In school the teachers would sing and write down the words they sang, until all the kids could sing along from memory.

This man was there so often Logan thought they must pay him to be there, and maybe so that mothers would grab their children cruelly by the arms and drag them away, so the statue wouldn’t be touched.

Logan heard the words but couldn’t make them out, stopped trying to get close to the man so his mother wouldn’t pull.

He was downtown now, without his mother. 

The singing man had been old to him, and Logan assumed him long gone, maybe dead.

He saw the top of the monolith first, and got closer, through traffic both metal and human, and there, there was the singing man, howling to the sky.

Logan started to run, then stopped, approached slowly, respectfully. 

The statue was nothing and the man was everything, his dreadlocks graying, his cheeks sagging.

Would he have a new song for Logan to learn?

Logan wanted the words sung, wanted his adult brain to understand.

He thought it was the same song of his childhood.

Did it matter?

He just wanted to learn the words, and live a life where no one grabbed his wrist.

The man sang.

Logan felt it.

The man’s dreads covered the plaque that told the story of the statue.

That was not the story he wanted.

He wanted the words.

He got close enough that the man looked at him, one eye gone so cloudy it couldn’t possibly see.

Logan bobbed his head, hoped the singer knew that he felt the singer’s groove.

He needed to know those words.

No matter what they were.

He needed to know what made his mother so terribly afraid that she would prefer to hurt her own son than have that son sing along to this man’s song.

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