Washboard's Stage

Washboard's Stage

       by Doogleglasses Puggy

              early in the morning

                        just about the break of day

                        early in the morning

                        just about the break of day

                        i couldn't find my baby

                        so i knelt right down to pray

Washboard Hank plays a kitchen sink as a tuba at his gigs. It is stainless steel with abs pipe and elbows for handholds and mouthpiece. The kids love him. He hits a steel plate on his hardhat, he rubs along a washboard tied to his waist, and he strums a guitar belted firmly to his chest. He toots a miniature horn, blows on a kazoo, stomps his feet in time, farts his armpit, leaps into the air, falls to the floor pretending to be dead, rings a bicycle bell attached to his head with a headband, and sings pretty, girlish melodies about two-titted cows, listened to by children but meant for adults who cover their offsprings' ears and blush and laugh.

       At the Trout Forest festival last year while Washboard was playing, I noticed a suspicious-looking young man by the second stage fifty yards from where I sat under a canopy out of the heat. Why did he seem suspicious from such a distance? Especially since I am shortsighted and given to looking for diversions when I have been forced to attend to an entertainment for more than half an hour. It was the fact that I saw him walk out of the bushes to the north of the tent and sit down, but continually checking over his shoulder the bushes from which he had emerged as if he were expecting someone. Then I saw, because he had aroused my suspicions by now, that he got up and walked towards a concession stand that sold festival hats and carved walking sticks, the last stall in the bazaar. But he was not going there to buy anything. I noticed this immediately since he handled items but then slipped around the side of the tent and was gone.

       I got up and walked to where he had stood by the hat stall. He was not behind the tent or near the woods fifty yards away. I pretended to be searching for shade and walked along the edge of the trees till I came to a narrow path leading into the foliage. I sat down, feigning boredom, and listened intently. No sounds could I detect coming from the woods. At least not at first. But, then I heard a muffled call, as if from a person bound and gagged. I decided to investigate. I took a few stealthy steps down the maw of the path and soon found myself out of sight of the crowd. The music wafted out from Washboard's stage. A bell rang, a horn tooted and a guitar strummed, but from a distance and, as it were, adding to the loneliness pressing me about my chest.

              I stood for a while, my former ennui and suspicion turned to a sense of duty. My body acts as a reliable refractor of emotions. When I have no mental sense of where things are at it lets me know of the real state of what's about me. It tells me now of power struggle between that sleeping daughter and that quiet mother in the kitchen, now of hate in the breast of that man at the mic in the political gathering, now of sentimentality gone extreme in the otherwise rational manner of a female student clearly out of the sexual mainstream, now of quiet love in the demeanor of a mother with incipient dementia, not listened to but strong in her heart's knowledge of what she has made and done, now of boredom in my interlocutor who would rather be talking to that bikinied girl by the water fountain, now of stern opinion in the quiet, grey-haired woman who has me wedged into a corner of the bus aisle, now of rapture in that distant suppliant kneeling, and now of ennui in the stage musician pounding his guitar strings but indifferent in his heart.

       I crept forward in starts and stops, sensing the smallest rustle of twig and branch, wishing to make no noise, longing to protect something. Then I heard it again, more clearly now, as if someone were struggling in bonds and calling for help!

(to be continued)