"Then Tears"....Draft Beginning

A short descriptive paragraph many years ago became a short story, but it just kept growing.  Now it’s my first attempt at a novel.  Lots still to do.  This may take a very long time.  Here’s some of the beginning of the current draft.  I’m very interested in what you think.

Then Tears

Jake’s butterflies seemed to be at war in his stomach.  He was more nervous than he had been in a long time, but the battered old Washburn six-string felt comfortable in his lap after so many years of bars and coffee houses all over the country.  This time was different, though.  The microphone didn’t smell like beer and cigarettes, and he couldn’t see past the footlights.  Instead of drink glasses clinking over the clamor of several dozen conversations or the grinding whir of a blender crushing ice, only an occasional cough or nearby whisper rose to him out of the silence of the hall.  It had been pandemonium only a few moments earlier, a cacophony of applause and whistles and cheers when his name was announced, but now he was alone on stage, a solitary player before three thousand hushed listeners, eagerly anticipating the first note.  He drew a slow, deep breath . . . and magic happened.

Lines storm across the page

that grows too heavy to hold

stealing away from trembling hands

two lives shatter and grow cold

Then tears.

The music came softly at first, like a warm fog that settled over the stage and then spilled out into the hall, engulfing the crowd row-by-row and creeping up the aisles toward the doors and then rolling back to him.  The notes from his guitar, clear and bright, supported his rich baritone.  The crowd listened closely to his words—some people mouthing them or even singing along—but he was unaware.  His music—his words—as always was carrying him away from the stage and the hall, and he sang his life and his understanding of the world….

*  *  *  *  *

 “Get a job or get out of this house!”

“Fine, Dad.  I’m tired of hiding from you and feeling like a beggar.  I’m gone.  I’d rather be homeless.”  The door slammed behind him as Jake left home…again.  He had no idea where life would take him this time.

They’d been through this before.

*  *  *  *  *

“Jake,” his father yelled from the top of the basement stairs when Jake paused in his practice.  “You have got to turn that down!  I just got home from work, and I need some quiet, please!”

“I have to practice, Dad.  Bud’s band has a gig at The Barn next Saturday night and I have a couple of new tunes to learn before we practice again.”

“Not now!  It’s 10:00 o’clock and the neighbors are going to complain!  That crap doesn’t even sound like music!”

“Andrew!  Stop yelling at him, please!” Gail implored, but her husband was in no mood to be mollified.

“This is my house, and when I come home from work I want quiet, not that noise!  Why are you taking his side?

“Turn it down!”

Andrew stomped down the hallway.  Jake could hear their bedroom door slam and the barely muffled sounds of his parents, his father still complaining, and his mother still trying to mollify him.  Again.  It seemed to Jake as though this happened almost every night, either about his music, his grades, his indifference to his father’s obsession with sports, or something Jake had done wrong at the store.  He’d had enough.

After he could hear only the television in his parents’ bedroom, Jake went up to his own room and threw some clothes in a backpack, grabbed his guitar and gear bag, and slipped out the back door.  He walked to the neighborhood park at the end of the street before taking out the cell phone he’d received from his parents at Christmas that year.  He knew just who to call and where to go.

“Chris?  It’s Jake.  I need a ride.  I’m at the park.  Can I crash at your place tonight?”

About 15 minutes later Chris pulled up in his old pickup.  Jake heard him coming for a couple of blocks and just smiled when Chris told him he’d have to crawl through from the driver’s side because the passenger’s door was stuck…as always.

“So what the fuck happened this time?” Chris asked as Jake buckled himself in.

“Same shit as always. Too much ‘noise’ when Dad came home from work, but that’s only an excuse.  I’m sure he was pissed about my grades and everything else.  He started yelling at me as soon as he came in the door.  Then he and Mom got into it when she tried to get him to chill.”

“Exactly why I left last year, Dude.”

“Well, at least you didn’t split until after graduation.  I still have ia month, and four days until I'm eighteen;  I’m going to have to go into Witness Protection to stay away the next month.”

Chris chuckled and backhanded Jake’s shoulder.  “You know you can stay with me as long as you can, but it’s one of the first places they’re going to come lookin’.”

“Yeah.  They won’t know I’ve split until mid-morning tomorrow.  Dad’ll be up and out before sun-up, as usual, and Mom won’t be far behind.  They’ll assume I’ve gone to school until they get a call from Laughlin that I didn’t show.”

“OK, so where are you going tomorrow that they won’t find you?”

“I think I’ll head up to the northside.  There are so many new venues there that I should be able to get some playing time and make some money, and I can surely find somewhere to crash for a couple of nights.  I’ve got my fake ID and a little cash.  I haven’t played up there yet, and you can bet no one knows the gigs we’ve played around this part of town.”

“Sounds like a plan.  Better turn off your phone, though.  They’ll not only start callin’, but they’ll use it to track you, too.  Pre-paids are pretty cheap, and you can get one at the Mart on the corner by my place.”

“Man, you’ve been watching too much CSI!” Jake groaned.  But thanks for havin’ my back.  I owe you.”

“No problem.  You’re always welcome.  It ain’t much, but it’s mine.  I don’t go in to work tomorrow until ten, so I can give you a lift, too.”

“Solid.”

*  *  *  *  *

Jake told the bar manager that he was eighteen.  The picture on his fake ID was close enough, and Al hadn’t looked too closely.  He was more interested in hearing what Jake’s voice was like and whether or not he could actually play the guitar he was toting.  One song from the stage was all it took.  The kid had a good, strong baritone that belied his youth, and he could really bend the strings on his obviously second-hand Gibson six-string.  He sounded more like sixty.  That night Jake opened for a touring band and played for tips.  His 45 minutes went by quickly and with lots of applause from a usually disinterested Friday night crowd gathering for the headliner.  They paid attention even though he was playing more original music than covers.  His on-the-spot hard luck story (typical for the young troubadours who passed through town looking for work) softened the manager enough to let him crash on a sofa in the office that night, and after Jake helped clean up the next morning, Al bought his breakfast.

Saturday night started like the night before.  Jake played another well-received set and was talking with John, running sound, when a sheriff’s deputy came into the bar.  He scanned the crowd, looking now and then at a piece of paper in his hand.  Eventually he spotted Jake in the sound booth.  During the few moments of relative quiet between songs, he approached Jake, called him by name, and when Jake looked up, informed him that he had to come along with him.  Al stopped them to ask what was wrong.  Upon learning the truth of Jake’s age, Al simply turned back to the bar.

The cop let him grab his guitar and backpack—while watching every move he made.  Then Jake was loaded into the deputy’s squad car and driven home.

 “Jake, my God!  I was so worried!  And then seeing you brought home by the police!  I can’t do this, Jake!”  Gail was beside herself.  The worry and frustration of dealing with her son and her husband was obviously taking its toll.  Jake felt miserable for putting her through it all, but he didn’t know what he could do.  He tried, but nothing seemed to work.  At least Andrew was already at work.  He didn’t have to deal with his father until that night.

This time, at least, Andrew simply ignored him.  That became their solution.  Jake figured his mother had finally convinced Andrew to just leave Jake alone.  The house was always tense when they were both present, but that wasn’t very often now.  If he could just last another month.

Principal Laughlin read him the riot act before school the next morning.  Jake thought for sure he’d been waiting for him.  He’d barely made it through the front doors before Laughlin had grabbed his arm and ushered him into the office.

            “Jake, you’re skating on very thin ice around here.  You’re barely making it through Government.  I’m doing all I can to keep Mr. Davis from just washing his hands of you.  Your Creative Writing grades have always been good—as long as you’re here to hand in the work—so Ms Anderson is in your corner and willing to give you a break.  You owe her almost as much as you do Mr. Griffin.  Obviously he’s overjoyed you’re still here.  He counts on you to get the Jazz Band through the spring contests.  Come on, son.  You’ve got to help us help you out of here.  We all want you to graduate.”

            “I’ll try.  I don’t have any choice since I’m not eighteen.”

            “That’s a fact.  The law won’t let you by any more than your parents will.”

After he’d actually managed to graduate, he got a job at Dobby’s, the locally-owned music store at the nearby strip mall.  Minimum wage, 25 hours a week, usually weekends and evenings, selling CDs and stocking the racks.  The pay was awful, and the schedule was killing him.  He needed evenings and weekends to gig, and as low man he was expected to fill in for the regular employees, all local musicians and teachers.  Missing work simply made his father angrier every time.  Andrew couldn’t get past the idea of the steady check, no matter how small, being better than tips and an occasional percentage of the door.  Another fight over “growing up” and out Jake went.  It was always the same.