Bidding on Ukuleles
by Barry Pitch
Cukes and ukes. And dulcimers. Yep. Goddamned dulcimers. Anyways, as I was saying, Jill jumped on Jack and did for him what his name always inspired her to do and he resisted not in the least, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming of the little rise in crescendo that he achieved on his dulcimer when he picked it up after a grueling day at the car wash.
They were in a berry patch picking cukes when she, Jill, took it upon herself to approach Jack with a proposition of an altogether diverting sort and he, Jack, not loath to try new things, gave in at once, and at once she undid him till he was in a state of readiness for a ministration of the best kind, in a berry patch, in township such and such, in Canada, in North America, in the Western Hemisphere, in the wide, wide world, in the solar system, in the universe.
So, Jill pulled out Jack's dulcimer for him and played on it a lively tune, as tunes go when played on a lowly dulce, correctly and expertly fingering all the stops. Lively, yes indeed, for Jill was still young and able, fifteen and quick, unlike her mother who was already in her middle forties and showing signs of the perversions the old are privy to: languishing before a television set sometimes until one or two in the morning; eating barbarous quantities of either halva or tortilla chips, depending on which she held in her hand, Coke or Sprite; ironing and folding her husband's clothes and laying them out as neatly as for a military inspection of her house, though not a guest expected, and all this with great regularity as if grand something depended on it; and never, under any circumstances, stepping out of doors unless it was to chuck a bag of old cat litter on the front step for Jill to escort to the garbage container behind the garage.
This was their crisis: when Jill had played two or three simple ditties on that dulcimer of Jack's, a traveling musician, happening to wake up from a night spent under the influence of a jug of red biddy under an Alamour tree with such wide branches spreading that he had felt none of the rain that the night had brought, awoke from his deep dreams, and saw, near to him, peeking over the tall grasses as he was, wary of intruders, having himself watched Easy Rider in the days of yore, within the compass of his natural room, a movement of limbs and grass nearby that he neither mistook for danger, animal, nor angel but for what it was, two young people in the act of making music of great sweetness and lightness.
Jill was not nearly finished; she felt as if until this point she had only been fiddling with a few crescendos and decrescendoing distaffs. Her real forte, the strength she brought to any musical composition, remained so far untested in the present circumstances. When up jumped this gumbuck and helloed to the billy brook and down came the Wambaughs one two three. Partially clad, and susceptible of observation, Jill felt conspicuous as the hobo traveled quickly to their sides, and without so much as a howdy doody grabbed Jack's dulcimer from Jill, and making energetic forays on its person elicited wonderful notes of the highest sort from first the instrument and then Jack himself. Jill stood dumbfounded, staring at the dulcimer in the musician's hand. Never had she been able to bend it's bow so cleanly, nor produce arpeggios of such exquisite order and command. She sate her down and wept for her lost past. She appreciated her mother more now, in this moment of loss and confusion, than she had ever done before. Jack altogether forgot about Jill then and turned his attention from that moment onward to music and the travellers who played it best.
That is what he thought in those times. Later, after the death of Jill at a tender age and like Emily Dickinson, never attached, a rose without a thorn, Jack lost his youthful interest in music. One day he looked back and realized that he had not played his dulcimer in quite some time and as far as he was concerned he would sell it for a song to the highest bidder.
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