Forever Young

Aside from the priest and the funeral director, both of whom the old man had gotten to know quite well over the past few years, he was the only one left at the cemetery. The old man had been standing beneath a fir tree with limbs still dead from the winter for the duration of the service. He had yet to drop a handful of soil to bury his friend.

He approached the gravesite slowly, which was just about the only speed the old man could travel while on foot these days. The funeral director and the priest, both of whom were talking by the hearse, caught notice. Not too young himself, the priest nudged the director to go and help the old man, but the old man waved him off and the director nodded, respecting the wish.

He was not a crying man, so he did not cry. He was not much of a talking man, so he did not talk. Leaning on his cane, he knelt and grabbed a handful of dirt, and with it hovering above the coffin, he looked at his friend’s gravestone. Inscribed below the name were lyrics from his friend’s favorite song, “Forever Young” from Bob Dylan: “May your song always be sung, and may you stay, forever young.”

The old man did not much care for many Bob Dylan songs, but he did always agree with his friend on that song.

His mind was sent back to years before, years before his friend had died. Before the drummer died. Before the music died.

He was back on their old stage, the only one that he and his friends had played. It was the second Saturday of the month; it always was. The old man, younger in his memory, was standing on stage right, holding his butterscotch telecaster and picking the chords to the song from the tombstone. That was the song they ended every set for the twenty-seven years that these now departed friends had played together.

The man who he was about to bury was singing and playing his own guitar, a beautiful, handmade acoustic piece with a white-pearl binding and a red-pearl pick guard adhered to the spruce top. The sound was as full and majestic as could be made by any other instrument, even played by an amateur player.

The old man recalled the look of satisfaction, of closure, that his friend with the guitar flashed at him when the song ended.

That had been the last chord either of the old men would play together.

The old man was glad that that memory was the one that came to mind. Not the time he played the song at his bedside after the first of two strokes. Not the time the song played at the drummer’s funeral reception. Not the time he tried to play it again after the second stroke, though the old man could not finish it that time. With a look of acceptance on his face, the old man dropped the dirt and buried his last true friend.

When the old man drove, it was with the radio off. He could not remember the last song he had gone out of his way to listen to, the last record he had pulled from his and his wife’s exceptionally large collection; it had to have been when she was still alive. The bar where he used to play passed by him for the last time. He had not been in there since the drummer died.

When he reached home, he was prepared to load up the boxes he had packed before and get right back into the truck. Perhaps, at his old age, he was not thinking clearly, but he was going to drive west. The old man slowly got out of his Chevy pickup and approached his porch at his speed. At the top step, he stopped. Leaning beside his screen door was a guitar case, one he knew. There was nothing to indicate where it came from, no note on the case, no letter, or card. He stared at it for a long moment as a chill went down his spine, and his blood ran cold, as though he had seen a ghost. He broke free of the trance and went back inside.

For the next half of an hour, the old man glanced at the case as he went in and out of his house, loading one box at a time, though he was trying not to make eye contact with the instrument. It haunted him as he paced back and forth; he could feel it staring at him, almost singing to him. After placing an envelope with the house key in a vase on the porch, he took another long glance at the guitar case, picked it up, and placed it in the passenger seat. As he drove away from his record collection, his own guitars, his books, his furniture, and all his possessions not covered by a tarp in the back of his truck, he turned on the radio again. It was just static, and the old man moved his hand to the knob, but he shut it off before he reached a stop sign.

The old man drove with a destination in mind, though nowhere to stay yet: a small port town that he used to visit when he was a kid. It was gray and rainy and beautiful. He always remembered the smell of the harbor, the fish and salt. It had been close to seven decades since he had smelled it, but he recalled it often.

During his drive, which he would complete the next afternoon, the old man stopped at a hotel to sleep for the night. He paid in cash, since he had closed his account at the local bank that served him for half of his life and never bothered to get a credit card. He had done the same when he bought a burger from the diner down the block. The room was small but clean. The receptionist was nice and complimented the guitar, which was the only thing he brought in aside from a briefcase of toiletries and a change of clothes.

The old man laid on the bed, unable to sleep, staring blankly at the off-white popcorn ceiling above him. It reminded him of home, or the place that used to be home. He felt it again. He felt the guitar case staring. For a moment, his impulse was to throw it out the window. Then it was to leave it in the room when he checked out the next morning. Instead, he pushed himself off the bed and walked to the case. He laid it on the bed and undid the latches. He opened it with apprehension, as though the strings were going to snap, or someone would reach out and pull him in. Inside the case, he found what he knew was there already, and one thing he did not. The thing he knew was the guitar. His friend’s guitar. The one with the pearl trim. The thing he did not know was a sticky note.

“Don’t let it get sick—Play It.”

The old man arrived in the port town shortly after noon. He rolled down the window to smell the air he remembered as he drove through down the main drag. He felt the cool spring air against his grey hair along with the dissimilar warm sun on his wrinkled arm. The town had changed little since he had been there last. It felt both new and familiar to him at the same time. The kite shop was still there, as was the Irish pub on the corner with the portrait of Jack Kennedy in the window that had went up when he was still alive. The fake pirate ship, though repainted, was still docked in the harbor. The smell of fish and salt was still in the air. The restaurant he remembered for its clam chowder was now gone and replaced with a new name and new decor, and one of the seafood markets was now a cafe.

The hotel that he recalled staying at was still open, though it had been remodeled, likely numerous times. They were full at the moment, but they reserved him a room for the evening, one with a balcony overlooking the beach.

With time to kill, he went back downtown. At his speed, he wandered through the place, acutely remembering each stone that was changed, and each that was the same. For a long time, longer than he consciously noticed, he sat on a bench below a lookout tower, watching the seagulls and listening to the waves. The waves reminded him of his wife singing, and for the first time, he liked that reminder.

He paid the fee, which had gone up considerably since he was last there, and went to the top of the old lighthouse. Again, he sat up there, watching the seagulls float above and listening to the waves sing as they collided gently with the sand, maybe leaving behind sand dollars and seashells, he thought.

The old man drove onto the beach and walked barefoot in the sand. He could feel the waves and dunes washing him as he picked up and tossed the sand-smoothed rocks back into the sea. He felt refreshed as the air went down easier than it had in some time.

As evening approached, he went to the restaurant that used to have the clam chowder he remembered. They had clam chowder, though it did not taste like it used to. The restaurant was more modern than in his memory of it. They’d replaced the gawdy framed pirate paintings with more subtle paintings of the sea. He ate the chowder with a tuna melt sandwich. His friend used to say to “Enjoy every sandwich,” a saying he stole from a musician that lived too hard and died too young. His friend used to joke that he lived too easy and would die too old, but the old man did not find that last part to be true. For his friend, the friend whose dirt still lived in the old man’s fingernails until he washed it away in the ocean water, he enjoyed the sandwich very much.

A Stan Rogers song, fitting for the town, played while employees set up a microphone and stand. The old man asked the bartender about it, who told him that it was open-mic-night. Perhaps jokingly, the bartender told the old man he should play, to which the old man said he was not much of a singer.

The old man’s first thought was to leave. He hadn’t seen live music since he stopped playing it, but he stayed anyway. A young girl with a voice that reminded him of June Carter Cash played a beautiful original on her keyboard. A young man with a voice that also reminded him of June Carter, but not in as nice of a way, played a serviceable cover of a song that the old man was too old to recognize. After a few more, the old man stepped outside and got into his truck. He was ready to leave but felt it once more. The guitar was staring at him again. He could hear his friend’s voice reciting the note in his head.

The next thing the old man knew, he was sitting on the stool, which the young girl had helped adjust to his height. In his raspy, aged voice, he introduced himself and apologized for being out of practice. After a deep breath, he played his friend’s guitar and sang.

The old man played the song from his friend’s gravestone. He had not even thought of it; the music poured out of him. It was his first time singing the song which his friend had always sung.

At the end, the old man felt as though he could hear his friend and many others he had known singing with him. A tear rolled down his face as the crowd cheered, and the old man felt he had found a joy that he thought had been long lost.