Julian Kalli's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Thursday came gray and cold. Julian reached the town square an hour early and took his post beside the wooden sign the group had nailed to a pole the week before. The paint still smelled fresh. MUSIC LOVERS, in red and blue. He set his guitar against the post and pulled a small thing from his jacket pocket. It was a single ivory piano key Venie had pried loose from her grandmother's locked piano and pressed into his palm the night they sent the signal. He turned it in his fingers and watched the street. Eight o'clock came. Two boys arrived with a scrap-metal drum between them. A girl came after with a bent length of pipe she could blow like a horn. Three more drifted in from the alley behind the square. Six recruits. No Venie. Julian gripped the key until the edge bit his thumb. He had told himself he would start without her. Now, standing under the sign with six strangers watching him, he could not make his mouth move. Then he heard running. Venie cut across the square in socks, no shoes, hair loose. "She fell asleep," she said. "I climbed the porch rail." She looked at the recruits and then at the sign. "You waited." Julian held up the key. She almost smiled. "Play it loud," she said. "They already know we're here." They marched to the town hall steps and set up in the open. Julian struck the first chord of the song he had been playing the day the ban took effect. Venie sang. The drummers hit the scrap pot. The horn player blew flat, then sharp, then on. People came out of shops. People stopped their bikes. A drone slid down from the rooftops, lights blinking, recording everything. Julian kept playing. Two officers in pressed blue uniforms walked toward them with hands on their belts. Julian did not stop. The crowd closed around the steps and the officers slowed. One of them, a young man with a clean cap, listened for a long moment before he reached for his radio. He did not key it. They played the next night, and the night after that. Each night the crowd grew. The drones kept filming and the officers kept not arresting. On the fourth night a woman from the mayor's office came down the steps with a folded paper and asked Julian to come inside. He went with Venie. The mayor sat behind a wide desk and would not look at them at first. He said the recordings had been played in every house in the city. He said his own daughter had asked him what the song was called. He signed the paper while they watched. The ban was lifted at sunrise. Julian walked home with the key still in his pocket. His mother was at the table with the radio on, low, playing a station that had been silent for a week. She looked up. He waited for the argument. She said, "Was that you, on the steps?" He said it was. She was quiet for a long time. Then she said the song was pretty. His father came in and heard the end of it and did not turn the radio off. It was not forgiveness and it was not agreement. It was a kitchen with music in it, which a week ago it had not been. Later Julian met Venie at the abandoned stage where they first found each other. She wore shoes again. He gave her back the ivory key. She set it on the lip of the stage and they sat with their legs over the edge and listened to the city. Somewhere a window was open and someone was practicing scales, badly, without fear. Julian unslung his guitar and played his song through from the first note to the last. This time he finished it.