An Interlude on the Way Home
by R. D. Ronstad
The end or the beginning? Either way, it's break time for the busman, who gazes past ghosted furrows, at the back bench seat, at Yan and me.
Yan's clarinet case, black and blooming with brightly colored stickers — teams, promos, squibs, anything — stands open, as Yan pieces his clarinet together, preparing to play. At the first strains of “Stranger on the Shore,” I see the notes flow out of the clarinet's bell, dance with dust in the sun-streaked aisle, float in a line out an open window to our right, curve left and trail away from us, high above the sidewalk.
At the corner, a few doors down, a thin man, in profile, wearing a gray jacket and black trousers, examines a movie poster hung on the outer wall of the Oak Street Theater. It depictis in lurid colors a soldier in uniform embracing a woman in a white slip. When the line of notes reaches the man's right shoulder, they travel along it, then over and across his head and down along his other shoulder, like a scrolling bell curve.
Departing the man's far side, the notes turn left in succession and glide across the street, where a young boy straddles his bike, waiting for the light to change. The lead notes fix themselves to the spokes of the bike's wheels, one on each spoke. The light goes green and the boy begins to pedal. The remaining notes trail like a streamer. A second melody arises, creating a round.
Boy and bike vanish behind the corner of the theater. Soon the second melody stops and the lead notes reappear, traveling above and parallel to the following ones, which also disappear behind the theater then reappear, in line once more with the others.
The notes cross the street again, where a man pushing a child in a stroller exits a bake shop. The child raises both hands in the air. The line of notes split and circle the child's hands, still streaming. When she lowers her hands, her fingers catch the line in front of her and stretch it down like a rubber band and, like a rubber band, the notes soon snap back, once again linear but throbbing lightly, a hint of vibrato. The child looks up, giggling. Yan stops playing, but the song continues.
The notes head back in our direction, down the sidewalk to our left. Along the way a small white terrier tethered to a railing leaps up repeatedly, futilely trying to snatch them in its mouth, the dog always landing in the opposite direction from which it starts.
An “L” train rumbles toward the station on the elevated tracks bisecting the avenue we're facing. The lead notes quickly curl upward and gravitate toward the station, the rest following, a train of a different stripe. They reach the station platform as the “L” train squeals to a stop, then they enter the front car's open door, which closes only when the final notes of “Stranger on the Shore” have disappeared inside. The train sighs and sparks, heads southward, underground.
Yan breaks his clarinet apart, returns the pieces to their case, closes it, snaps it shut.
The busman turns his key.
Copyright © 2022 by R. D. Ronstad
