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Aaron Polson

Elliot stood at the back of his car, opened the trunk, and peered inside as he folded his arms and weighed his next action carefully.  A small cardboard box and a black guitar gig bag lay on top of stacks of old newspapers, fast food bags, and other random debris.  His left hand dropped to his side, and his index finger traced the edges of the Zippo lighter in the front pocket of his jeans. The early summer air hung cool about him, watching in blue silence.  Stars would soon appear, and dreaming became easy when you could see the stars.

He thought about the box and the guitar and turned his head slightly to look behind him across a small grassy stretch of park toward a concrete picnic table about twenty yards away.  His best friend, Ben, had called that table the Altar of the Rock Gods during their junior year when they would come to the park on a weekend night and smoke or drink,, depending on their luck and what was available.  Their buzzing synapses and wavering perceptions conjured dreams of teeming masses of groupies; they were sure to be famous one day, once they left Nebraska for New York, thrust into the boiling center of musical creation and crowned as unmatched giants of distorted melody.  That was before Ben met Hannah and dreams became more responsible.

Elliot rubbed his fingers together, feeling the smooth calloused tips from years of relentless fretting.  He decided to take the cardboard box out first, as it was wedged against the guitar in the trunk.  The guitar, his old Gibson SG, represented two long summers of shoveled horse shit and cut thistles.  The old man at the stables reluctantly paid him five dollars for each hour under the slow burning sun and the thick dusty gloom of the stagnant barn.  The job paid cash, easily taken under the table and saved in an old shoe box under Elliot’s bed.  At the pawn shop, the fat man with a greasy smile counted each small bill twice as Elliot twitched with the urge to feel the guitar, stroke the neck and weigh it in his hands.  She’s a real beauty, Uncle Eli had said when Elliot brought it home.

He looked into the now open cardboard box as it sat on top of the concrete table.  Reaching inside, he lifted a full plastic container of charcoal lighter fluid. He stared at the container, contemplating the plastic bottle in his hand and set it on the table. Two silver cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon remained in the box, but he didn’t need those yet, so he moved the box off the table and onto the ground.  Ben always preferred Pabst when they had a choice. 

They had wasted evenings jamming in his mom’s garage—a deal Elliot negotiated during his senior year.  He would stop smoking and drinking, and she would let them convert the garage into a studio for the band.  Ben played bass guitar, the soul of the music he called it, and Elliot always liked to argue that the lead guitar, the voice and personality, was more important.  Uncle Eli, their musical mentor, just laughed as the boys verbally sparred over each instrument’s relative value.  He was only nine years older than Elliot and a practiced guitarist—Elliot’s inspiration for learning to play. 

Elliot pulled the gig bag out of the trunk, heavy with the SG comfortably nestled inside.  He remembered the first time Uncle Eli handed him a guitar, teaching him to hold the instrument and how to place his hands.  Those lessons took place before his uncle’s National Guard unit left for Iraq.  All Eli wanted to do in the Guard was stack sandbags around his neighbors’ homes during years of flood and earn a few bucks for college.  Uncle Eli came home after four months without his left arm—amputated at the shoulder because an explosive smashed the Humvee in which he rode on patrol through some street in a nameless city on the other side of the planet.  Now, Eli mostly used his right arm for lifting his can of beer and signing his disability check.  Maybe I’ll start junior college in the fall, Eli had told Elliot.  Maybe.

Laying the guitar bag on the concrete slab in front of him, Elliot unzipped the case and gently lifted the Gibson one last time.  The instrument knew him, responding to his touch like a lover, purring in his hands.  He lay the guitar down on top of the flayed bag, both resting on the table.  A shiver shook Elliot that had nothing to do with the breeze; the guitar looked a little sad lying there in the fading twilight.

The last time Elliot sat on that picnic table he was alone, drinking most of a twelve pack without assistance, brooding bitterly over Ben’s decision to enlist.  He assured himself Ben’s decision was guided by his girlfriend Hannah.  He remembered the red, selfish anger that pushed at his chest when Ben told him that he signed up.  They’ll help with school, he’d said.  Hannah thinks it’s a good idea, he’d said. Elliot just wanted to beat and beat, flail his arms into the walls until they ran red.  He thought of his uncle, all the years scheming with Ben, and the investment in a planned musical payoff.    

Childish dreams, Ben said.

Elliot remembered that night, drinking alone at the park, and how he drove home, the road alive and serpentine, evading his car as he was fuzzy and drunk.  While he dangerously meandered the two miles of empty highway back to town, Ben and Hannah bled on the cold dark Nebraska asphalt, crushed by a tractor-trailer when Ben’s car coasted through an intersection.  The emergency crew pried Ben’s body from the rent metal so his mother could bury her son. 

The last words Elliot spoke to his friend became bitter, selfish ashes. 

Elliot doused the guitar with the entire bottle of lighter fluid, the pungent stench dissipating into the Nebraska night, and tossed the empty canister aside.  He pulled Ben’s old lighter from his jeans pocket and snapped it open.  With a quick flick of his thumb a small flame lurched toward the dark summer sky, and he dropped the lighter on the guitar, watched it explode as a magnificent pyre fit for a rock god. 

He sat on the grass and watched the flames spit dark chemical smoke into the air, pouring out one can for Ben and the other for himself.