Harmonica

The father took a draw from his cigarette as he turned the page on his daughter’s score. She played Silent Night on her violin, pausing to skip the notes meant for her missing E string. It was late and the score was lit only by the fading sunlight coming through the open window of the trailer. Her father loudly tapped his foot while she played, a habit she learned to overpower to keep the correct tempo. He ashed the cigarette on the music stand and tossed it into a Mickey Mouse mug on the coffee table.
Towards the end of the song, a car pulled into the driveway. The father watched the sheet intently, and just after his daughter played the final note, he planted a kiss on her head.
Outside, he spoke to his wife as she unloaded groceries.
“Hey”
“How was work?”
“Oh God, I’m exhausted.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I think I might need a break. What do you think?”
She watched her husband’s fingers furiously tap on the hood of the car while he feigned curiosity about her response.
“Is she good for the recital?”
“Uh huh.”
She studied his eyes for a moment and then nodded. He quickly bolted inside to grab a backpack that had already been packed, and she sighed as he kissed her forehead and took the keys.

It was an uncharacteristically warm night for December in Virginia, so he cranked the windows down as he drove towards the airport. The father stuck to the right side of the highway, feeling that the other Richmond drivers wouldn’t notice him if he did.
For a man in his late twenties, he looked older due to how pale and bony he was. His clothes were worn and his shirt was gaining another hole from an ember he failed to notice fall from his cigarette. The wind roared across his face but he took little pleasure from it.
He took a straight, quiet road that went away from the airport and saw his friend on his bicycle in front of him. He was an older man, probably in his forties, and he swerved back and forth on his bike as he waved a cooler filled with beer in the breeze. When the father drove by they both laughed, and his friend kicked up his feet as his bike rolled across the cracks in the road.

Coming over the flat horizon were two hotels that accommodated travelers coming from the airport. One was of a reasonable quality, a member of a franchise. The beds were made accordingly, the grass was cut, and no light in the building flickered for very long. It was comfortable.
The father pulled into the other hotel. It was much smaller and the rooms were cheap. The parking lot had multiple ashtrays that were filled to the brim and smokers around them who stomped their cigarettes into the concrete.
The first set of sliding doors into the foyer were broken, and when the father jogged inside a robin was searching through the carpet for crumbs. It took no notice of him.
“Good evening, my friend! How are we today?” the father said at the counter, laying his head sideways to yell under the glass security barrier. On the glass was a sign indicating that full refunds could not be offered over thirty minutes after paying for the room. No exceptions.
“Very good, yes, very good. $85.”
“Of course.”
After paying the clerk picked up a pencil to mark the time but remembered that for him, he didn’t need to.

The father’s room was on the ground floor but he went to the elevator knowing, as the locals know, that the only working ice machine was on the third floor. When he walked inside a mother pulled her kids close and went stiff, a detail the father failed to notice as he scratched at his forearm. Just before the doors would close, his friend jammed his front bicycle tire inside.
His friend handed him the cooler so he could wipe the sweat off his brow with his shirt. He was still wearing his uniform from the convenience store, which was inside-out, and he instinctively held his bike close. A month ago he had punched a woman in the jaw for trying to steal it outside the hotel. After pulling his shirt down, he nodded at the woman and her children.
The mother nodded politely and looked at her watch to see when it would be thirty minutes past check-in.
While the daughter focused on her phone, the little boy furrowed his brow.
“Why did you bring your bicycle in here?” he asked.
“I love my bicycle.”
The boy lit up.
“Me too!”
They both smiled and gave each other a fist bump. The mother gave a labored smile, and the family exited onto the second floor.

At the vending machine there was a young woman leaning against it, looking inside. Her hair was thin and her legs were covered in bruises that flowered from the veins visible through her porcelain skin. She was looking down at a honey bun stuck at the bottom, her forehead leaving a sweaty smudge on the glass as she rocked back and forth.
The friend handed the father the cooler and walked up beside the girl. He realized it was the same woman he had punched the month before.
“I told the motherfucker behind the desk to fix this shit.”
“I know,” she said, “it’s fucked.”
The friend seized the sides of the vending machine and began to rock it back and forth as the father waited for the ice to dispense.
As he waited, he gazed out the window at a one of the roads leaving the hotel. It was under construction and had been for over a year. It used to be so bumpy he would take his daughter on drives through it to make her laugh, but now it was stuck being repaired so slowly that he almost forgot where it connected to. He felt that somebody should be embarrassed for this but didn’t know who that person would be.
“Look at my boy,” said his friend, “Lanky as hell. Grab that honey bun, bro.”
The father’s thin arm easily slipped into the machine, and once he was in they had all the food they needed for the night. Sensing their plans aligned, the past suddenly felt like nothing. The woman decided to join them.

The hotel room was small and had two queen beds. The friend sorted the snacks on the desk while the father rummaged through his bag. In the corner, the woman pulled a painting off the wall. A jack russel is seen looking away from the car it’s chasing to listen to a blues band on an old New Orleans street, but the woman flips the painting around.
Doodles and signatures from previous residents cover the back of the frame and a message is written across the bottom. “When I’m gone, I’ll still be here in the stains on the bed.”

The father supplied the crystal and after twenty minutes he was on the bed twitching his fingers across the sheets, speaking of things known and unknown. The woman sat with her head to the back of the air conditioner letting her hair fly across her face as she laughed wildly, and the friend was glued to the peephole at the door. He was breathing heavily.
“Why’s he got that thing on the counter?”
“What?” said the father.
“The glass, man. The fucking barrier between us.”
“At the front desk?”
“Yeah… What’s he hiding back there?”
The friend let his body slump against the door, running his hands slowly across the wood, looking for cracks.
“So much. So much is hidden from us, man.”
“Have another beer,” said the father.
“Hey,” said the woman, “look at this shit.”
She was slowly turning the handle to open the window.

Outside was the parking lot to the other hotel, and in the distance was a black SUV with four men waiting next to it. They were dressed in flowing Hawaiian shirts and khakis, and they were staring at the top of the nice hotel. The father and his friend crowded the woman at the window, watching them closely. One of the men checked his watch, nodded, and three started walking towards the entrance.
One remained. He leaned against the hood of the car while looking at his phone, and a black briefcase sat behind his feet. Opportunity knocked. By the time the men had entered the hotel, the father was already holding the screen that had been pulled from the window.
The woman crouched into the tall grass and quietly approached the SUV. Her bare feet made no sound on the concrete and she picked up the briefcase with no issue. She bolted back to the window without a sound—only popping in the air for a moment after she stepped on a thistle. She passed the briefcase inside and as soon as she hit the floor, the curtains were ripped shut.

The lock on the briefcase was firm but could not withstand the industriousness of methamphetamine. After another hit of the crystal, it broke open. Once the father looked inside, he fell to his knees.

The woman’s feet pounded across the floor like a jackhammer as she danced and screamed and the father’s friend jumped across the beds, letting the money fly out of the briefcase with each bound.

The father watched between his fingers as the money wafted across the room. There was no need for math, no division. Between the three was the shared joy that they didn’t need to count it. Each one of them, no matter how it was split, had enough.

“My baby… my baby’s gonna get a new violin.” the father said between sobs.

“We can buy this hotel,” the friend yelled, “It can be a place where people fucking… go! People can stay here, with us! Bro…”

He ran into the bathroom. The sound of little bits of metal clanged against the tile, and the man reemerged with a wide, toothy smile. His hand in a fist at his neck, holding the shower curtain around his back like a cape. The shower rod, a king’s staff.

The woman fell to the floor laughing. She rolled over to the bicycle flipped next to the wall where she started to pick the spokes like a harp. Flaccid twangs rungs across the room as the kind spread his legs between the two beds, towering over the father who was catching his breath between his sobs. They both began to laugh.

“You’re too rich to cry, bitch,” the king bellowed, “Sit up!”

The father slid his knees across the cash, beaming a smile at the ground. The king raised his chin with the end of his staff.

“You calling me tonight… you, you bringing all of us here,” the king said gesturing at the woman, “It’s our world now.”

The woman gripped her t-shirt over her heart, steadying her breath, now trying to find a word better suited for her than sober. She closed her eyes. The polyester in her hands became a smooth leather. Reigns, back in her hands. She saw the dirt under her nails, and she smiled.

Outside the window, across the wild grass, flashes of light came through the curtains on the top floor of the other hotel. An alarm blared through the revolving door as people poured out of the building, most in their pajamas. A brief, senseless community formed over the concrete as guests waited for guidance. The mother from the elevator loaded her children into a car as the police arrived, and a man in a partially undone suit ground his jaw back and forth and picked a scab under his watch.

Windows from the smaller hotel blinked as residents peeked out of their curtains. After realizing that the police weren’t concerned with them, a rare moment of reprieve washed over the rooms. The father and his friends, however, noticed nothing. They were huddled in the bathroom.

The crystal was gone. The toilet flush was a triumph, and he father watched the water as it slipped down the drain. He breathed deeply, letting his tired lungs fill as the bowl found new water.

“Big man, you’re a whole new daddy,” the king said.

“I hope so,” he said.

He took a moment to himself as his friends went back to sorting the money. In the silence of his visions, he became almost invisible.
A dog barking from their townhouse. His wife opening the door. His daughter with her friends, back from exploring the museum down the road. They improvise on their instruments to make incoherent, perfect noise. The way kids do.

The guttural ache from his failure began to fade. Pain was becoming nostalgic now, and the father began to feel that he had time to sacrifice for his daughter like other dads did. In some way that was secret to him, everything had been for something. He had a chance at what other people had. The crystal was still in his system, but he finally had a sleepless night that was just for her.

The king and the woman sorted money into three piles. The hundreds made a soft rhythm with the beat of their hearts as lights flashed across the window.

The woman sighed and smiled as they reached the end. “Shit, mine’s a hundred short.”

The king looked furious despite the indifference from the woman. He tapped her shoulder and pointed to his bike.

“It’s the only way” he said with a smile.

She gasped and embraced him. The father burst into laughter, a short moment of serenity before they heard a knock at the door. They froze. The only movement was the flame of the father’s lighter against his cigarette.

At the first slam the father doubled back to the bathroom as the king bolted towards the window, only to meet a man staring at him through the glass. The father’s thin arms shoved their pipes into the light fixture in the ceiling.
The lock on the door shattered as the men wearing Hawaiian shirts from the other hotel’s parking lot ran inside. Splayed across the money, the woman put her hands up while looking down the barrel of the officer’s gun. The room was frozen.

Filth from the disturbed carpet drifted through the air as three of the officers held everyone down. It was completely silent. No Miranda rights were spoken as one of the men, broad shouldered white man with a square jaw and a buzz cut, surveyed the room. He walked over to the father who was being pinned on the floor in the doorway of the bathroom, and when he leaned over to look at him, little pieces of metal dropped onto the carpet from his shirt. They were bullets from his vest. The man gently pulled the cigarette from the father’s mouth and placed it his own.

The man walked across the room, looking first at the broken suitcase, then the beer on the dresser, and then at the mess in the bathroom. The officers looked up from their detainees but also found nothing incriminating, other than the piles of money.

“We didn’t steal it. The money.” the woman said. The father stifled a chuckle. The man chuckled too. He grabbed a hundred off one of the piles and held it up to a light. The bill looked flat, green like turf. He smiled at the woman.

“What money?”

Each of the three officers felt the muscles beneath them go limp. Still, one of the officers held up handcuffs, but the man shrugged and let out a deep, labored breath, followed by a cough that made him keel over his broken ribs he got from the set-up across the parking lot. He waved his hand towards the door.

“I’m tired” he said.

The officers watched the three closely as they left. Nobody on the floor moved. For an endless section of the morning, each of them laid quietly on the ground as the TV continued to play Shark Tank on mute.

Eventually, the woman rose only to kick her pile with her foot and lay on the bed.

The sun was rising and they had no reason to stay. Each one of them packed up their things and headed down towards the lobby where the king set up a payment plan for the shower curtain. The father walked out to his car and leaned against the side of it, exhausted and defeated. He bounced his forehead against the car with no rhythm, holding back tears.

The woman came out the door and sat down to lean against a cigarette holder, followed shortly by the king with his bike. He walked up to her with a puzzled look on his face.

“Where’s my ride?”

She looked confused, taking a draw from her cigarette.

“What are you talking about?”

“Damn,” he said, “I’m gonna need to catch a ride with my boy, seeing that I’m stranded.”

He softly let the bike down onto her shoulders. She smiled up at him, grabbed the handles, and then bolted off towards the road, dropping her cigarette onto the concrete. The king clapped and jumped up and down with joy. The father watched as the woman ripped into the road closed for construction, disappearing into the sunrise.

“Ay, you ain’t wave?” the king yelled. “You act like it ain’t almost Christmas.”

The father gave a small wave as they got into the car.

The highways were quiet. The king leaned his head out the window to take in the cool air while the father’s knuckles pulsed between red and white on the wheel. After pulling his head back into the car and hearing the silence, the king spoke.

“You know, I almost forgot something.”

“What?”

The king undid a button on his cargo pants and pulled out a small white drawstring bag.

“Got it at the pawn shop a while ago.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a harmonica, for your baby. I figure she likes music and all.”

“Yeah, yeah she does. Thank you, man.”

“That’s not all. You know what I got you?”

“What?”

He laughed.

“I figure you get to wrap it up and tell her it’s from you.”

It was only after the father dropped his friend off that he began to cry. He drove slowly, trying to navigate safely through his sobs, keeping what he had of himself together for what felt like the first time. He wanted nothing more than to see his trailer.

His body retched like he was in the depths of a divine sickness, cleansed with each passing mile, but even as he shook he held the harmonica tenderly in his hand. Through his tears, the light of the sunrise whipped across the sky like he was conducting an orchestra of fire.

His wife had left the door unlocked. When he walked inside he went straight to their room where the bed was empty. He placed the harmonica in a gift bag and left it under the tree.

It was seven and his daughter’s alarm was set for eight. He took a blanket from his room and at her door, he spent the last of his strength opening it as quietly as possible. At the foot of her bed, he curled up in his blanket and faded away for the last hour of the night, dreaming he was a dog chasing a car down an endless New Orleans street.

First Draft – 8/10/2025