The Turn in the Road

by Reilly Fitzgerald

Spring was ending and the full glory of the sun, eager to express its summer strength, spread across the hills. Ahead, the dirt road took a sudden turn to the right. Billy considered not taking the turn. He wanted to continue straight through the yellow grass, not yet overtaken by the fresh green shoots springing up from below, and move over the hills, to continue experiencing adventures in places he’d never been. But he wouldn’t, for Billy knew that the twist in the road was a turn he had to take.

Billy’s only personal belongings were the clothes he wore, including the wide-brimmed hat an audience-member had given him (he’d said it suited Billy’s character) and his battered instrument case. As he moved forward, his shoes, dusty from the dry gravel from the country road, more a path than anything, seemed to slow. This was the road he’d walked daily for years, the road that led to and from the school bus. He remembered returning from his last day of school, when he swore he’d only take one more trip on that road. Things had changed since that day. It was as if the voices of his parents kept calling him back, to face what he’d done and accept any consequences that would come with it.

Sammy would sit with him on the bus. She was a couple of years younger than him, but she had a maturity that made her able to understand him. She’d comfort him on the long bus rides. She knew why he never seemed to get along with anyone, boys his age and older, teachers, his parents.

There was the time he broke his arm. That had been one of the worst times.

“Let me sign your cast,” she stated more than asked. “I guess you’ll have to put off playing the fiddle for a while. When will they take it off?”

“Six weeks,” he simply stated. He never used more words than were necessary.

She taught him how to play the fiddle on those bus rides. Her parents paid for her Sunday afternoon violin lessons from the school’s music teacher, and on the long bus rides to and from school she’d teach Billy what she’d learned. They’d sit at the front of the bus, away from the more gregarious kids who preferred the bouncy back. Ruby, the bus driver, tolerated the shrill screeches and squawks that came from the old instrument that first year, when Billy was repeating grade ten and Sam was in grade nine, but Billy was a fast learner, and soon he passed the talent level of his tutor. By the end of that school year Ruby was making requests and Billy would show Sam tricks he’d figured out in his mind the night before.

He’d spend his nights, usually locked in the cellar because of something he’d done to piss off his father, imagining playing the fiddle. There in the dark, he’d move his arms and fingers, head tilted to the side, ignoring the aches and pains in his ribs and other places, pretending to make music on his imaginary fiddle. He could hear the music he created so clearly, and on the next day he’d make his imaginary music come alive as he played Sam’s fiddle. Ruby tapped her foot and Sam clapped rhythm, but the other kids would jeer and criticize Billy’s musical style; it wasn’t the popular music that thrummed through their headphones. Also, the musical difference between Sam and Billy grew as time passed, for even though it was the same instrument, Billy played the fiddle, while Sam played the violin. It was that difference that kept them apart in the world outside their bus rides. Billy would never fit in Sam’s world, and it was that reality that made Billy secure in what he’d done on that last day, before he made his last trip down that road ... away from home.

Billy looked at the case he held. Sam had given it, and the instrument it held, to him when her parents, seeing that she was becoming serious about playing, bought her a new violin for her fifteenth birthday. Billy could never let his parents know that he had the fiddle. He could never show it or play it at home, for if he revealed his love of anything, it would be taken from him. Like Bo.

“Here Bo! Come on boy!” he’d whispered.

Earlier that summer, the summer he turned thirteen, he’d heard a whining sound as he walked along the riverside. There on the opposite shore was the source of the noise, a slightly moving burlap bag. Inside were the lifeless bodies of four newborn puppies, like wet, fur-covered beanbags, and one slightly warmer pup that managed to beat the odds. Billy called him Bo and kept him in the small play fort he’d built in the woods at the back of the garden. He would spend hours in the fort, hidden away from his father and mother, feeding the pup canned milk with an eye dropper, and then milk-soaked bread crusts, until eventually it gained strength and began to walk around on its own. He was so proud of that pup. It was supposed to be dead, because someone didn’t want it, but he had saved it; he had given it life. He couldn’t wait until school started, so that he could share his secret with Jimmy, his only real friend at that time. Jimmy lived two towns away and Billy only got to see him at school.

“Here Bo,” he carefully whispered.

He’d just come back from the first day of school, where he’d learned that Jimmy’s family had moved away during the summer.

There was no answer. There was no dog. He never mentioned it to his parents, but he knew what had happened. They were cruel enough to less-than-subtly let him know.

“What’s the matter Billy?” mocked his mother, when he came in the house. “You looks like a lost puppy,” she said with a giggle.

“I thinks I hit something with the truck today, boy,” his father slurred as he sat in front of the television, that evening. “It were jus’ pas’ the turn. It weren’t much though, ‘cause all I saw on the road was a spot o’ blood ‘n fur no bigger ‘n me fist.” He held up his fist to Billy. “Come here I’ll show ya, boy.”

Billy walked over slowly, knowing what would happen if he didn’t, knowing it would be much worse if he didn’t comply to his father’s request. He pictured the little pup, and he knew there was no way for that dog to get out of the fort on its own. Don’t cry! Don’t cry! he thought as he stood in front of his father.

“It were this big,” the surly man said, and he drove his fist into the side of Billy’s head, knocking the boy to the floor. “But you know what darlin’,” he yelled to his wife in the kitchen, “I never heard no more of them strange noises from the back o’ the garden after that.”

Billy got up and went to his room, where he held back his tears until his parents fell asleep in a booze-enhanced stupor. Then he sobbed silently and let his tears flow. After that day, he hadn’t let himself get attached to anyone or anything else, until Sammy sat in the seat with him one day over three years later.

Billy turned the corner and could see the house at the end of the road. He walked steadily, listening for the sounds of his parents puttering around the house. He lifted up his case as he reached the steps to the large porch veranda. He had spent the last seventeen years playing for audiences around the country. He’d played small bars, some Irish, some French-Acadian, but most country, hillbilly-bluegrass joints, where he’d sell his cassette tapes from a cardboard box, and then move on. He wrote some original songs, including “Sweet Samantha” and “My Dog Bo.” He grew a beard, let his hair grow long and wore it in a ponytail. He changed his name, and at times spoke with one of various accents. He played his music for tens of thousands of people around the country. Now, he would play for his parents.

He did not knock on the door or announce his arrival in any way. Billy simply sat on the porch swing and opened his case. He removed a piece of plaster with a young girl’s signature on it and laid it down with care. He then took out his seasoned fiddle and bow and began to play. He could hear his parents’ voices praising the music, his music.

“Is that our Billy playing that beautiful music?” asked his mother.

“He can certainly play a mean tune!” exclaimed his father.

The voices were as real as the sounds of his imaginary fiddle in the cellar all those years ago.

It had come full circle now. A couple of nights ago he was playing a gig when he noticed a woman in the audience. She was familiar and when he played the song he’d written for her she reacted with a look of recognition. She saw the fiddle, its case, and the performer with sudden clarity. He reacted with a tear that ran down his face. He spoke only a few words with her after the show. He simply let her know that he was going to go home, and that she should let them know. He knew that it was time to go home. People had been looking for him long enough.

Billy sat on the porch that hadn’t been used since all the ruckus that occurred a few days after that last day he walked away down the road, and he continued to play his fiddle. As he played, his music moved out along the road and danced over the fresh hills, and Billy used his talent to integrate the sounds of the approaching sirens into his song.