One Broken Guitar

The sun rays were beaming down from the sky creating a glowing effect on the border of each person’s body, on this hot summer day the popsicles and kiddie pool seemed to make everything much cooler. In the middle of the backyard there was a brown hair child rolling around in the fluorescent green blades of grass with the energy of a newborn puppy. A couple of feet away stood a tall woman who was repeatedly shouting the name of the child, not in a commanding way but in a playful way. Everything seemed so perfect, it was almost as if the two were permanent residents of Elysium. Suddenly, the image became blurry, you could no longer make out the young boy and the mother was becoming out of focus, it looked like a blotch of colors on a canvas then all faded out into blackness. Beep Beep Beep, Susan opened her eyes to the alarm clock reading 4:30 and knew it was time to get ready for work. “Another dream about him” muttered Susan as she groggily shuffled towards the bathroom to prepare herself for a brand-new day. Being fully dressed in her waiters uniform, Susan walked down the hallway where the eyes and smiles from the photographs along the wall served as a reminder of the joy that used to reside in this dark cave of a house. The pictures were of the same boy from the dream, a healthy looking, brown haired kid with pearls for teeth. As you continue walking left, the child in the photographs grows older an older ever changing his younger self. Underneath his photos was a name that read “Danny,” along with the date the when picture was taken. The same consistent smile seemed to appear in many years of Danny’s life, along with pictures of a more youthful, jovial Susan sprinkled here and there. It was only Danny and Susan in the pictures, there was no hint of a father figure or any other siblings. Danny and Susan were all they needed to be a happy family, and it seemed like they were happy for many years as the pictures describe. The pictures with Danny in his early years show a kid who carried a guitar larger than himself at the time. As years went by it looked as if he slowly grew into the guitar and became remarkably successful at playing the instrument. There was Danny playing the guitar in a gym at a talent show, another one with Danny holding a trophy, and one last picture where he is teaching other kids how to play the guitar. It seemed as if his whole young life revolved around playing guitar, then the pictures slowly showed that large smile start turning upside down. It was not till about the age of 18 that the young Danny that we saw in the pictures had been completely lost. The last picture of Danny was his graduation photo, after completion of high school there was no more recorded photos of Danny, Susan sighed as she looked upon the wall then headed for work. Susan worked at the towns local diner where it was comprised mostly of regulars and occasionally with people passing through the town on there way to larger cities. In this small town everyone knows everyone’s story, all they must do is open up the pages and read through the person. In this way personal connections are easy, sometimes too easy and rivalries can be forged at any minute. Susan was a proficient worker with many years under her belt in the waiting industry and treated customers older than her as if they were children of her own. Susan was the type of employee who did not only cater your food but catered to your needs simultaneously, treating every customer with the respect he or she deserves, makes you wonder what caused the unnatural disappearance of her son Danny. The whole town knew Danny ran away, they just don’t know as to why or how it could happen. No matter where Susan went people treated her with a sense of sensibility as if she were made of glass and easily breakable. It was the opposite; however, Susan was the only person she had in her life amidst her boyfriend leaving her at 19 with a son who would go missing as well, she is tougher than nails and hammered constantly in life. The diner job for Susan was more than a job, it was a family where she could tend to the customers needs being the selfless person she naturally is. Walking into work today Susan could feel the atmosphere in the diner was a little more compressed than usual, and it wasn’t because it was a busy Monday morning. All day as Susan took meal orders and refilled coffee cups, like a stay at home mom, she recognized the many eyes that focused on her. Patricia was a middle-aged woman who worked at the same diner and acted like a big sister to Susan over the years. Patricia confronted Susan on her lunch break about the news. “Have you heard” said Patricia talking to Susan, “No, what do you mean” replied Susan, “Your Danny is a famous guitar player and is going to hold a concert not far from here, can you believe that” Susan sunk into the chair she was sitting in and the food she was digesting became unsettling. “Are you sure” said Susan as she sat in utter disbelief, “The local news station is announcing the information that Danny Johnson, a former resident of the city is going to be performing in the metropolis city nearby.” Susan could not believe it, the whole day she could not think of anything else, as she sloppily filled coffee cups soaking the customers in the liquid caffeinated beverage. There were posters and signs that had the name Danny Johnson written on it with the location and time he was performing. It was only an hour drive to get to the big city of Dredge that lied on the outskirts of the small rural city of Campbell where Susan resided. Dredge was the more innovative, state-of-the-art, growing metropolis with a bright future and Campbell was the small, rural, comfy city which housed many older folks living out the last years of their life or lower income families. Campbell never produced successful individuals, it only produced members of society who would fall to the system and never do anything with their life. Now the people know one man emerged from the darkness, one man rose to fulfill his destiny and become something more, and this man’s name is Danny Johnson. The name echoed around the town as if he were the savior of Campbell, there was no picture, only a name in large font plastered on every window and telephone pole. Susan went home that day and it seemed the drive home was longer than usual. Once inside her house she balled all night long, staring at the photos etched in time, remembering where it all went wrong. For the first time in over a decade she dared force her way into Danny’s room, a room she felt responsible for its emptiness. The flashbacks of memories hit her all at once in a wave she could not outswim. There was Danny in his late teens strumming his guitar as usual, days upon days she would tell Danny to give up the pointless dream and get a job like most of the boys his age. In defiance of being told what to do, Danny would play his guitar louder as the days leading up to graduation approached. He strummed his guitar with all the passion each bone in his body possessed to let his mother know this is what he wanted to do with his life. Eventually this underlying pull and tug of emotion was going to give out, Susan figured if Danny was not going to grow up on his own then she was going to force him to grow up, she took his guitar and slammed it on the ground in front of him, his favored guitar thrown around as if it had no value. Over and over it slammed against the ground and against the walls until each string was detached and the neck of the guitar had been snapped, the guitar was not the only thing that was murdered that day, for a boys spirit laid lifeless as well. Danny stood quiet almost as if his voice had been stripped away, he stood motionless staring at his guitar in pieces at his feet. Danny bent down and held his broken guitar with his head bowed feeling utterly defeated. He knew his mother was not the cause of it, she could not help that she needed an extra source of income and he was not willing to partake in that financial crisis. Susan knew the damage she caused; she knew she lost the little kid that held that guitar as if it were part of him. A common struggle fed this catastrophe, a struggle in which the harshness of reality outweighed the value of a child’s dream. That day Danny knew he could no longer stay, he could no longer fall victim to the system, so he decided to go anywhere other than home. That night he left and was never seen again, Susan after reflecting on this memory only made her sob harder. Susan while sitting in Danny’s empty room that had been abandoned for years felt a presence lurking, she forgot the dead guitar she destroyed was in Danny’s closet. As she slowly creaked the closet door open it was pitch back, and there she saw it, the guitar she broke years ago lay in the closet like a corpse being hidden from the world. Susan pulled the guitar out, all pieces included, from that horrid closet and spent the rest of the night thinking about all the old times while staring and that broken guitar, an instrument that was never going to be able to play all those beautiful songs like it once could do. Susan reached into her purse to look at the handout with where Danny was going to play his concert. It read Dredge Concert Hall June 21^st, 8:00 p.m. Tomorrow was the day Danny was going to play, Susan did not know how to feel, she knew that tomorrow she had the chance to possibly see her son for the first time in years. The next morning Susan did not even clock into work, she spent the whole day deciding whether to go to the concert, the idea made her sick to her stomach. After hours of ruminating Susan decided that no longer would she lose her son, she got up taller than ever and headed out the house door, radiating light across a house that had been dark for too long. The hour drive to Dredge felt like 5 minutes to Susan, outside the window was a blur as if she were exceeding the speed of light. Susan purchased her ticket at the entrance of the concert hall and took her seat as she waited impatiently to see her young boy who had now grown into a man. The thousands of fans who are packed into this concert hall are all waiting just as impatiently as Susan to see the musician perform for the night. All these people are here for the same reason, to be inspired and impressed by such a talented individual who is different from the many. Suddenly, the lights in the building darken, everybody becomes silent and a loud voice on the speaker begins to protrude in the air hyping the crowd up. “Ladies and gentlemen get ready because arriving today, to play guitar for you on stage, is none other than superstar Danny Johnson, make some noise because here he comes!”