Lost and Won

“Play for free, or we break that thing,” the sergeant said, adding a casual glance to Jack’s flute to clarify what “thing” would be broken. Jack was sure these men would break a few other things, just for posterity, should he decide to not play.

The threat was sealed as two men stood up, positioned so as to easily snare the musician should he attempt to flee. Jack made no move to do so, only looking down into his hands to see what lay there: an ancient bamboo xiao. The instrument stretched from Jack’s shoulder clear to his thigh, looking as if it were an ancient rifle barrel liberated from stock and shell.

With a weak sigh, Jack nodded and placed the flute to his lips. His eyes locked with the sergeant’s just as he took a breath to play.

“Wait!” the man held out a silencing palm. Jack complied and lowered the xiao. The sergeant continued, “I need to get your audience, little man.” He turned to a subordinate. “Get word to the off-going guards. The entertainment is here.”

Jack was suddenly held -- not rough, but firm -- by his arms. His new escorts were the men previously standing behind him. They tugged backward, so he turned and walked.

Two things came to mind as he was led; protecting the xiao, and protecting the lump of bread in his pocket. This side of the battlefield seemed to be the better off, as the soldiers not dying in the infirmary wore the hue and bounce of flesh that only came from adequate nutrition. There was also the air of victory, hung plainly over the heads of all those he encountered.

That was good for business. Winning men are generous men.

As for Jack’s “winning”, he had only one victory to attain, minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day. Stay fed, stay clothed, and stay alive.

His music was all he had against the coming night of death. Jack has stepped through the fires only to find this victorious army. For that alone, the risk was secured.

The men led him to a small stage built of an external house wall. The blue paint was shed and flecked, like a flayed animal that twitched with destiny, somewhere between alive and dead. Set on cinder blocks, the small platform was surprisingly level. Jack was shoved hard towards it, and he stumbled to a knee, thrusting the xiao up over his head to protect it.

“Do you want my craft or not!” Jack screamed, not turning to the men who pushed him but rather casting out his question to the camp itself.

A few laughs, then a man said “Get up there and play when we tell you to play. I’ll shoot you if you don’t.” A metallic clang of gun-cocking was used, comically, to bolster his statement.

Jack, being of a hungry mind and angered by the day, turned and bowed. He said “This flute is worth more money than you can ever imagine, little imp. You should shoot me and take it...'twould feed your whelps and woman for many lifetimes over.” Jack took the stage and struck his boot down once, with a tympanic thud on the wood.

The sergeant arrived just as the soldier took a single murderous step towards Jack.

“Knock it off,” said the sergeant.

“Yes, Sir,” the soldier said, standing at the attention.

Jack was aware of forms oozing in from the fringes of the clearing he was in, bordered by trees or tents, now encroached by tired faces and violent men. The little waves crashed in on the stage, one by one the men taking a seat on the bare mud or standing behind.

A few faces dared to hope they might find a ray of light in this place, those expressions beams of their own...the kind Jack could not hide from. His hunger abated as the audience was almost complete.

The sergeant gave him a signal to play, his hand the kind dismissive roll upward that one would give to a child to continue whatever rambling they had been temporarily stopped from giving.

An audience. Two words to fill Jack’s belly, as he realized this gathering had exceeded a hundred people. He’d not played for such a number in...in...well, he didn’t know. Grey and defeated for the day, these souls were glad to be alive.

The spirit of things not seen churned around them. Jack caught the essence of this spirit, and let it fill his mind, his fingers, and his lungs. The tune was decided, the xiao lifting to his lips with the barrel pointed to the crowd. He began to play.

Light, the notes conjured from the air passed, through lips, through the wood...and the clearing finally filled with his art, his weapon.

The men suddenly became still. Conversations were arrested, and even light murmurs were stolen from their battered hearts, left only to sit in the dank cold of a late October day.

The song was a snake, a pale serpent conjured from the souls of the watchers, from the tired fingers of tired men, as if Jack’s own digits channeled the despair and fight fixed on each captured face.

Even the sergeant had taken off his hat in some strange form of reverence, a surrender to forces that made the daily gunfire and shell seem like small stones falling in a river, swallowed and made insignificant.

Jack’s melody began with a slow incursion into the feeling of weariness, the progression dropping low as his breath almost faltered...dropping to a hiss that caught overtones and other musical oddities, sounds that seemed within the reach of a failing novitiate, but finally made true by a master.

Jack was the master.

As if a spell made of Autumn gusts and the low light of early morning, the xiao cast magic over the men. Jack’s eyes were closed, yet he could see all who listened. Their faces bled of tension, for once in this war they waged, renewing the mind by way of the body. He could sense them all...releasing...flowing into the song. Jack slid from the bank of his own mind into the river of the xiao, not a boatman, but a fellow swimmer calling the rest downriver.

Jack opened his eyes. The men laid out before him like leaves on the forest floor, but there was slight movement off to his right. Eyes strayed to find see the sergeant pushing his way back through the ranks, stepping lightly over entranced soldiers an into a nearby tent.

The threat of that action called a kind of sobriety into Jack’s song. It shifted, quickened. He thought it was unsavory for the sergeant to watch his men coddled so by soothing tunes, so Jack puffed a few times. The flute pulled on other emotions. Tiny rods built within now popped as Jack blew harder, the air flushing down the barrel with an addition of tin and timbre. Jack was able to use the flute percussively that way, and the song transformed into a march. 

Eyes opened. Some men stood once more, the reality of war coming back suddenly. But even in this awakening, Jack saw smiles forming as the men looked toward the tent that had swallowed the sergeant.

The man emerged, holding a short stool in one hand and a banjo in the other. To low rumbling cheers, the man stepped up to the stage.

He took no bow or gave any look to either the crowd or to Jack. The man simply set the stool down, sat, and lay the banjo across his knee.

Jack kept playing. The sergeant seamlessly joined in. With precision, he plucked the strings and a new voice was heard. The staccato was crisp, yet grew and faded as if the sun going around the earth, days passing like seconds. Time was his, and Jack held back both joy and contempt to simply play on.

Their minds joined, and no sheet of music could ever capture that which passed from the stage to the air. 

Though the two played as one now, Jack was most assuredly the leader. He piped a faster rhythm, with the sergeant following with faster fingers. The tune grew from the feel of a sleepy morning to the purpose of a working day. Martial in their instincts, each man hammered their instrument.

The song finally beckoned to the soldiers to put their hands together, and they did so. Now the voices of all hundred plus men were heard with thunderous claps.

Jack was fed.

As if through the haze the song finally ended. The men did not cheer or whoop. Their silence spoke more. They knew this sergeant well. The man got up as unceremoniously as he’d sat and walked off to the same tent.

The men began to disperse quickly, the performance being a rare sacrifice of military needs offered by their superiors.

Jack was left alone. The sounds of an active war camp resumed, and the sergeant returned again. His face was still severe, eyebrows in a permanent scowl. But he extended his hand to Jack.

Jack took the handshake, felt the grip of a musician, and not one of a soldier.

“Now you know why I don’t assume someone to be what they say they are until I hear them play,” the sergeant said. His face softened for the slightest slice of time, hardening again, but Jack saw it.

With a nod, Jack said, “I do.”

The sergeant nodded to himself, looking back to the rest of the camp, surveying it all.

“Can you peel potatoes?” He said.

Jack clutched the xiao closer. “I can.”

The sergeant spun around to face him. “You’ll work in the mess, sleep in the mess tent. I’ve already sent a man ahead to gather a blanket or two. You’ll sleep on any patch of ground you can find that’s not taken by the cooks. Understood?”

“Yes,” Jack said, exhaling hard.

The man paused as if waiting for some additional military honorific, but Jack held his ground, his face saying I’m no soldier.

This drew a chuckle, as the sergeant said “I lost myself, you know. Lost that old war...so now I have to fight this one.” He gestured to the distant battlefield.

The stage that held Jack finally felt right, it’s support justified not by being empty, but by being filled.

“I have scars as deep as any man, good Sir. I know you know this, better than most,” Jack said.

A ghost passed over the sergeant’s face, and he looked into oblivion for a moment. A single word hissed from his mouth: “Yes…”

The two men stood, as Jack knew he both loved and hated the sergeant. He could feel the same from the other man. At that moment, they held a balance. The promise of one world made only by casting out another: art without purpose, and purpose without art.

The sergeant offered, and took, another handshake from Jack.

“Two weeks. You play when I tell you to. Then you go,” the sergeant said.

The clasped hands pumped again, the agreement sealed.

“Then I go,” Jack said. 

The sergeant’s face held compassion the likes of which Jack had never seen, beaming over him like the countenance of God himself.

“And I stay,” the man said. The mask of steel returned.

“And you stay,” Jack echoed.

With respect, Jack waited as the sergeant left. He took one last look over his empty audience...knew it would be filled again tomorrow...then walked off to settle into a two-week home.