A Man With No Legs and Two Guitars

I sat next to a man with no legs and two guitars.  It was the only seat left on the bus and I didn't feel like standing for the ten minute ride to my stop.  I don't know why, but it surprised me that he didn't smell.  There was a boy in my high school biology class called Carlos with no legs and a shiny electric wheelchair.  He smelled awful.

This man was sitting with his head against the window and the two wooden guitars were resting in his disfigured lap.  I saw no wheelchair on the bus.

"You're welcome," he said to the window.  I watched his hands cradle the wooden guitars.  I'm not sure what kind of wood it was, but it was a dark-colored wood that reminded me of the fence behind the house I grew up in - dark, thick slats squeezed together just perfect for me to throw my tennis ball against all day long.  I struck out Willie Mays many times against that fence.  I threw faster than Nolan Ryan.  If they hit it, I was ready in the field to catch the ball and fling it to first base.  Sometimes the play was at the plate and I always made a perfect throw to the catcher.  I learned to be by myself against that wooden fence.

The crowded bus moved through the slow-motion city.

"You're welcome," he said again to the window, his breath close enough to wet the glass.  His pants were cut off and pinned closed where each knee should have been.  He had a one-week beard and a naturally bald head.

"You hear me?" he said, and I looked over to him looking at me.

"Pardon me?" I said.

"Wondering if you heard me," he said.  "I said you're welcome."

"Thank you," I said.  I had no idea what he was talking about.  My stop was approaching. I stood up and balanced myself against the seat in front of me.

"You'll want to hear me sing," he said as the bus stopped and I moved toward the front. "You'll come back and hear me sing, won't you?"

I glanced back at him as I stepped off the bus, but he wasn't looking at me.  His face was to the window again.

The bus moved on and I walked against the slow-motion air to my apartment just up the hill.  Twenty years ago my little brother taught me to play a song on his guitar.  I don't remember what it was, but I do remember it was only a couple chords even though I'm not even sure what a chord is.  Once, I snuck into his room and took his guitar and put it on my lap.  I stared at it long enough to imagine every beautiful sound I thought it could possibly make.  I haven't touched a guitar since.

As I walked up the steps to my door, I wondered if I'd see the man with no legs and two guitars again.  And I wondered if he would be singing.  Then I think about my old tennis ball bouncing against the dark-wooded fence, and each time it hits it strums a single strum from my brother's guitar.