I remember him. I was there at the last show he did before the war, I was. I think it was the last show ever with electric lights and sound. Really. They used to have these huge stages all painted black and with lights, lights, oh man, lights everywhere with all colors and they would change colors, and they moved in time to the music. Really! Those lights hung over that stage on big metal trusses, and they were hooked up to these computer machines that could almost think and that made the lights move around and change colors.

There were guitars and pianos and sounds nobody ever heard before or since! The lights would twirl and flash and the music was so loud you can't even imagine it. Louder than thunder! Sometimes it felt like a big, invisible fist had grabbed my spine and was shaking me from inside my chest.

He did the best show of anybody! Everybody  loved him! Some people thought he was the Savior of Rock and Roll, he was such a wonder to see! And I was right there in the front row at the last show before the war.

There's no way to explain how he could make you feel with his music. It was like you could do anything. Like you could throw off the world and fly, free to be anything you wanted. Like you had power nobody could take from you. Like real freedom.

You should have seen him, the way he danced and spun and flung himself around the stage like a maniac. And a big, white grin filled his face like a little kid's. And he sang songs that touched us all smack in our hearts. There were, maybe, twenty thousand of us in the audience that night. Can you imagine? Twenty thousand! That's probably more people than you've ever seen in your whole life, I bet! And he made every one of us laugh and cry and shout his name for pure joy.

He stood over me on that stage, and I smiled up at him, glad to be alive and there with him that night. Then, just to see if I could, I reached out to touch his worn, black boot. When I looked up he was grinning down at me, his head rimmed in a halo of colored lights and his eyes twinkling with humor. It filled me with a happiness I'd never felt before.

Then he danced away across the stage like a spinning top and left me with a pounding heart and the feeling that I could rule the world if I but wished for it.

But, that was before. Back when you could do that stuff, and there was a world worth ruling.

You know, that war lasted an awful long time. I can't even remember who we were fighting. I don't think anyone really knew. The first things to go were the TV and radio. They cranked out a bunch of propaganda that said one thing one day and another the next, then one day they all just disappeared. The newspapers, everything. And the people who worked there started disappearing. Suddenly nobody knew anything--even lies. At least, nobody was admitting knowing anything.

At first nobody cared about the papers, or even TV. By then the whole city was bombed out and getting worse. Anyone who even stuck his head out of his hole was sure to lose it.

Then the squads came. No more artillery, but soldiers came with lists. They said they were on our side--that we'd won the war. Nobody cared who won any more. All we cared about was making it not happen again. So it was a relief that the squads had come to stop people from trying to start another one. They had come to get anyone who might cause trouble.

But soon it got real hard to tell if you were going to be next on their list. Culture control. They went after anyone they thought would contaminate the culture. Their culture. It got so you couldn't tell what might offend them, and since everyone who was on a list was...

The first time I saw a squad I thought I was dead. They wore black and traveled at night then, not like today with the blue uniforms and brass buttons and shiny cars. Back then they patrolled the ruins in packs with guns and a list. I didn't know who they were looking for, and my heart did a flip flop and I froze.

Behind me was a crumbling cinderblock wall, and I crouched down next to it. One thing I learned real quick was to not ever stand with the sky behind me, even at night. In the shadow of the bricks I watched those guys with their big, black guns pick through some foundations across the street like dogs sniffing for garbage. When they were headed away from me I slithered over the broken wall and crawled under a busted kitchen table. I waited a while, and hoped they had gone away.

I heard screams when they found the guy they were looking for. I didn't dare look; they were still too close, I could hear. But I knew they had him and I knew he was dead. He knew it, too. Didn't even try to argue or speak, he just screamed on and on until the gunfire popped and it was quiet again. Death quiet, everywhere.

I was shaking and sweating in the cold, and I stayed there all night. I didn't know if I might be on a list, so I hid.

It was like that for a long time. Back then they came with no warning. Now they arrest you first, but back then they just came and you were history. The writers were all meat and the books were gone. And music. Nobody knows how to play any more, or they're not admitting it. Nobody wants to learn any more because it's too dangerous. It all stopped.

Except once, I saw him again.

It was years after that last concert. I almost didn't recognize him. He had a broken nose and one eye missing. But he carried a guitar, and that made me notice him. Nobody else was brave, or stupid, enough to carry a guitar, and there he was just as bold as anything with that beat-up black acoustic that said Fender in flaky gold at the top He looked tired. Some people stared at him as he walked past, his feet in those old boots kind of scuffing along the broken blacktop of the street, but I don't think they recognized him. Or if they did they didn't give themselves away. But he was kind of old-looking. His hair was thin and gray shot with black, and tied in a ponytail that hung down his back. He'd lost a lot of weight in the war and I could see his ribs under his open shirt that had been black but was faded to gray. His face was all hollowed cheeks, jutting cheekbones and sunken eyes. Sad. His good eye looked out at the world but didn't seem to accept what it saw. The man behind it was hard.

Then he came to a pile of cinderblocks fallen from a bombed-out house. He shoved one with his foot, and with a hollow grinding-cement noise it lined up with the rest of the pile. There he sat, and set his guitar on his knee. Using an old-government quarter-dollar for a pick, he began to play.

The street stopped dead. I looked around for the squads, but saw none so I stepped closer to listen. Lots of people did. They stopped talking so they could hear. One lady with kids gathered them together in case there was trouble, but she stayed in earshot to listen.

It was him; we all knew it then. Everyone remembered. He'd survived the war, and more than that was still playing when everybody alive who knew how was afraid to. I moved closer. He was singing a new song, about the war. I went to sit near him, and saw initials tattooed on the inside of his left arm. Just about everyone had initials of dead relatives on their arms, but he had seven of them. He must have lost his whole family.

He stared at the ground. While people gathered he picked his well-tuned but well-worn instrument and sang at the ground in a low, sad voice.

I whispered, "What if they come?"

His eye flicked to the horizon, then to the ground again. He adjusted his seat as if readying himself. To be shot? Probably.

When the song was done, he accepted the smattering of applause with a nod and slipped an offered apple into his shirt where it bulged over his pants like a squirrel's cheek.

Then I said, "Play an old song. From before."

He glanced over the dead horizon again, then looked at me. In that one eye I could see the years of running and hiding.

"Please play it." The risk was incredible, but I ached for the old music.

The limp, empty eyelid twitched. Then he began to pick an acoustic version of my favorite, and the old joy flowed into me. A smile crept across my face and the hunger and pain of the day left me.

I stared at his face as he played. His eye lost focus. The lines on his face softened, and I swear some of the gray left him. He sat a little straighter as he sang, and his voice lifted with the story of running away. Freedom. The healing power of human affection.

He looked at me and smiled. There was joy. Hope. A spark lit in his eyes, and his courage filled me. He played for a while, chatting and telling stories between songs, then he brought it all to a close, got up from his seat, and moved on. Probably to look for a place to curl up for the night and eat the roast chicken leg and three grapes that had joined the apple in his shirt. I watched him go with the same sadness I'd felt at the end of the other show so long ago.

He's probably dead by now. Or else he's in his seventies--fat chance of that, right? He probably never saw fifty, the way he was playing like that right out in the open as bald as anything. I don't know if he was brave or stupid or crazy, but I like to think he had courage. I like to think he left some of it behind that day, and I think of him whenever I'm scared.

Like now. So this next song I want to dedicate to him.

©1994 Julianne Lee