The next day Marsh is excited and bursting with something. As soon as I arrive at the treehouse she makes me sit down where I usually sit to play my guitar. I notice the small things are all together in a crowd, as if waiting to watch me.
‘I have a present for you,’ she says.
‘Is it chocolate with a touch of salt?’ I say, hoping she hasn’t stolen it.
‘No. Better than that. Close your eyes,’ she orders.
I close my eyes. It’s always good to obey when there is a present coming your way. I hear her jump down to the ground and then climb back up again. Whatever it is, it must have been hidden on the other side of the tree trunk. Something large lands across my knees.
‘Open,’ she says.
It’s a guitar case.
Marsh is grinning from ear to ear. ‘Go on, look!’ She’s too excited to wait. She squats down, opens the clasps and throws open the lid. Inside is an old guitar, the colour of pale honey. It has steel strings. I can tell it’s a very fine guitar just by looking at it.
‘Play it. It’s beautiful. You’ll see,’ Marsh says. She is already taking it out of the case.
‘Hang on, Marsh. It’s beautiful, but—’
‘But what?’ She is holding the guitar. It has the worn-gold lustre of antique furniture. And she seems to be shining too. But it just doesn’t feel right. I know this is going to hurt, but I have to say it. ‘Marsh, where did it come from?’
Her eyes flare. She raises her chin and pulls the guitar towards her.
‘It’s a present for you,’ she says slowly, as if pressing the fact of it in.
I rub my face. There is no way around it. I have to ask again. ‘Did you steal it, Marsh?’
She stares at me, with that same stare she gave me the first time I saw her—as if I am worthless.
She almost throws the guitar back in the case and then, without a word, she climbs out of the tree and runs down the hill.
I climb down after her, but then I remember the guitar. You can’t leave a guitar like that in a treehouse. I climb back up. I close the locks on the case as quickly as I can, but by the time I climb back down again with the guitar, Marsh is out of sight.
I head towards her house. I have to sort this out.
If Marsh isn’t there, I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t want to be walking around with stolen goods. I don’t want Marsh to be hating me again. And I’m annoyed that she just ran off.
I walk fast. Everything feels urgent, as if the land that Marsh and I stood on together has just opened up like a gash and I don’t know how to close it up.
I arrive at the house and I knock on the door with all that urgency. A let-me-in-even-if-you-don’t-want-to knock. An I’m-coming-in-the-back-way-if-you-don’t-open-the-front-way sort of a knock. Just as I prepare to head ’round the back, the door opens.
It’s Marsh’s dad. He is wearing a green shirt. He takes a moment to place me.
‘I’m Joey, Marsh’s friend. We met the other day,’ I say.
He shakes my hand warmly. ‘Ah, Joey. Yes. Come in.’
I go inside. We stand in the hall. He smiles. I smile. He nods slowly. I am not sure what this means.
‘Is Marsh here?’ I say. ‘I mean Ruzica.’
He is shaking his head. ‘Come and sit down, Joey.’
I don’t want to sit down. I want to find Marsh, but I sit opposite him and put the guitar down. He nods at it and grins. Then he reaches over and picks up the case, undoing it. ‘Do you like it? It’s a very fine guitar. An Alvarez. Handmade.’
He begins to play it, bending his head to listen. ‘It’s yours. Ruzica gave it to you, no?’ He doesn’t strum it; he plucks the strings, and the notes tumble out like running water. He doesn’t even look at what he is doing. But then he stops playing and puts it down.
‘I don’t play anymore. It’s going to waste here. You must play it. It is made to sing.’
Now I feel terrible that I suspected Marsh. No wonder she was mad at me.
‘But it’s yours,’ I say.
I still can’t take it, even if it isn’t stolen. It doesn’t feel right. I think of him playing it on the Serbian hills amid the goats and under the sky and it feels as if it should always belong to him.
He looks at me, waiting for more.
I struggle to explain. ‘I can’t play it properly. Not like you can. If anyone is going to make it sing, you are.’
Sing your secret into it, I feel like saying. Sing your sadness in.
He whispers to me, ‘You have time to learn. You are young. You have a whole life, all ahead of you. It is your job now to make the songs of your life. My songs have grown old with me, old and sad and stale as bread. They are just memories now.’
I am silent. I want to say songs never have to get stale. I want to say, there are always new songs to sing. But what do I know?
But I have an idea.
‘Give the guitar to Ruzica,’ I say. ‘Keep it in the family. She can learn it better than I can.’
He laughs. ‘Ruzica has her instrument. Her voice. Her mama gave her that. She wants you to have the guitar. She told me you are making songs together.’
‘Yeah, we are,’ I say, and I notice how this makes my insides smile.
‘That makes me happy,’ he says, and he slides the guitar across the table towards me. He doesn’t seem to believe that I can’t play it.
‘I really can’t. I never play in front of people,’ I say, and suddenly I’m sure the Battle of the Bands is the worst idea ever.
He frowns. ‘Don’t be so small.’ He calls out, ‘Ruzica.’
Marsh is home after all. So she must know I am here. She is hiding from me. Her father calls again. ‘Ruzica.’
There is no sound. He grins at me complicitly and picks up the guitar. He begins to play it. Then he sings the lullaby, the one that Marsh sang to me in the treehouse. He is smiling as he sings. He knows something.
Marsh appears. She glances at me for a second, and then runs at him in a Marsh ball of fury.
‘Why are you playing that?’ she accuses. She stands in front of him as if she is trying to stop the song escaping from the space between them.
‘Because Joey needs to learn. You give him a guitar, but he says he can’t play it. You can’t give fine shoes to a man who can’t walk. So I need to show him. And you can help. Sing me your songs and I will show Joey how to play them, okay my maco?’
Marsh looks at him in astonishment. Her arms fall to her sides.
‘Papa? But you never play Mama’s songs.’
He looks down. His face is serious now. But he nods.
‘No, but that has not helped me forget and now I think it’s time to have the courage to remember. They are your songs too, Ruzica. It’s your job to take them out of the past and give them new life.’
I wonder if I should leave. I stand up.
Marsh looks at me and then she nods slowly. ‘Let’s do it,’ she says.
Is she talking to me or to her dad? Or is she talking herself into it?
She looks at her dad. He is looking at her. His eyes are so full of feeling I can’t tell if it’s happiness or sadness, or both at once. And then I hear Marsh’s voice singing out and, beneath it, the song of that old guitar, the life of those old songs. And even if I’m scared, I know Marsh and I are going to take that song and perform it at the Battle of the Bands. And we’ll make it new again.
When I show up for a rehearsal, Marsh’s dad is doused in aftershave and has dressed for the occasion in a striped shirt and camel corduroys. He salutes me. With his usual abruptness, he thrusts the guitar towards me and takes mine. ‘You have to get used to your new guitar,’ he says as he leaves the room to get us all an apple juice.
I am about to object, but Marsh gives me a stern look so I shut up. She nods at the guitar, which I’m holding as if it is a star just dropped out of the sky. ‘It is his pleasure to give it to you and now it should be your pleasure to receive it,’ she says.
‘It’s
not that I’m not grateful, it’s just I’m a beginner and this guitar is for someone who can really play.’
Marsh shrugs this off. So we leave it at that and head into the kitchen. There are three glasses of apple juice on the table and Marsh’s dad is checking the tuning on my guitar. He beams at us. ‘Come and let’s start. You play me what you have so far. How long have we got?’
‘Well, one week till the Battle of the Bands, and about an hour and a half before I have to be home,’ I say.
‘We can practise every day after school?’ he asks.
I look at Marsh to see if she agrees. But she is looking at me as if it’s my call.
‘I guess so,’ I say.
Marsh’s dad gives us all he can. He adds melodic riffs to the songs, he adds notes to the chords, he tries to teach me harmonies, he laughs, he sings, he claps, he comes alive. Either he is breathing life back into that old guitar or that old guitar is singing the life back into him. We don’t stop playing until it’s time for me to leave.
I stroll home with my head full of notes and melodies. I go by the creek and I hum to myself the whole way along it.
The next day, I go straight from school to Marsh’s house. I notice there is a small vase of pink geraniums on the table. The kitchen seems brighter, too.
‘I cleaned the windows,’ Marsh says, without further explanation.
A few days later a plate of almond biscuits is sitting on the table, which is now covered in a yellow floral tablecloth. I grin as I tune up. There is some sort of happiness in the kitchen that wasn’t there before and I know it’s got something to do with the music that is filling it. It’s like being inside a cocoon made of gold—me and Marsh and Marsh’s dad and the music. And Marsh is light like the air. She grins, laughs for no reason, and her dad hums as he goes to the fridge for the apple juice.
I don’t know when it happened, but I dropped all my shyness in front of Marsh’s dad. He makes no judgment, good or bad, on anything. He simply says, ‘Try it like this,’ or ‘You could add this here,’ or ‘If you practise this scale it will be easier to play that break there.’ When Marsh sings, he looks at her with the slightest of smiles, and his whole face changes, as if he is warming up from the inside out.
At the end of our last rehearsal, we put down our guitars. We are all exhausted, but elated too. Marsh slumps on the table. Her dad nods at me and says, ‘Now Joey, no more playing small. You have done well. You will make a fine musician one day. I am proud.’
It’s high praise and, for once, I can believe it. My whole being loosens to let it in, and it’s as if something about the way I know myself changes. I know I should thank him, but if I try to do that my voice might sound emotional, so I just nod too, and we leave it at that. I can see Marsh is grinning at me and I’m not sure if she is amused by my little secret pride or happy for it. Either way, I feel embarrassed. She leans across the table and presses my nose with her finger.
‘I’m happy,’ she says, laughing.
I laugh too. After all, it’s the first time Marsh has ever touched me. And I liked it.
The next day is the big day. I’m nervous and excited, and I can’t tell which is which, since both feelings buzz inside me. I meet Marsh outside the theatre, which was once grand but now is quite dilapidated. Its shabby grandeur is just right, especially since Marsh is wearing her white dress—her mum’s white dress—and she suits the care-worn majesty of the place perfectly.
‘You look great,’ I say. She does. If she was my girlfriend I would be proud to be with her. I’m proud anyway. I’m beaming.
She blushes. It gives me hope. ‘Are you nervous?’ she asks.
‘Sure am.’
‘Come on.’ She grabs my hand and we go in. If anyone saw us, and I hope they did, they would think we were going out. Now it’s my turn to blush. Even if we are terrible on stage, at least we held hands on the way there.
There’s a vaulted ceiling above us and the murmur of a crowd before us. Here we are, waiting where other performers have waited to walk onto that stage. It’s just moments before we will be on stage.
My insides are jumping around so much I feel almost fizzy. Me with the beautiful old guitar, Marsh with her angel voice. Me with my ordinariness, Marsh with her strangeness. Me in my plain blue jeans, Marsh in her weird white dress.
Me and Marsh. Marsh and me.
We are Dark Horse.
I look at her. She looks at me. We are smiling. We don’t even have to speak. Marsh is perfect exactly as she is. A great original. She presses something into my hand. And then she lets go. I don’t have to look at it to know what it is. I can feel it—Mumija.
Marsh whispers, ‘For good luck. Let’s go.’
I push the acorn in my pocket as we are walking onto the stage.
Marsh walks straight up to the microphone. She takes it in her hand. She turns back to look at me and waits. She is unruffled, composed. She is Marsh, Queen of herself, of this moment. I nod. She nods back at me. We are ready.
Before us is a sea of faces. Out there is everyone that matters in my tiny world: Mum, Dad and Opal, Marsh’s dad, Digby and Max, Pim Wilder and the guys. But all I can see is a crowd. It’s like one big beast, shifting, anticipating, buzzing. I feel it fall quiet as I strum the first chord and Marsh’s voice lifts over it.
We play my song first. It sounds like a real song. And I’m playing that guitar as if it’s part of me. I listen to the steady, pounding guitar, the sizzling chords, and Marsh’s voice. I can hardly believe that it’s my song. It’s part of me, and it sounds great. It sounds big. It sounds real. I grin to myself.
I look out at the crowd. I glance down at the first row. There’s one person there, standing out. You can’t miss him. It’s Marsh’s dad. He’s so much larger than the kids around him, and he is wearing a red shirt and a red rose in his jacket pocket. He looks almost historical, like a figure from another time, and he wears all this as if he doesn’t even notice it himself.
And now we play the Serbian lullaby. Marsh’s voice is plaintive and strong. She is singing her Serbian song with the wild roar of her heart. It sounds different from any other song that has been played tonight. It stands out. I can hear the Plains of Khazar; I can hear Mumija’s lonely song on the mountain and the lament of the sad lost king who stumbles around the plains, and the quick, quiet footsteps of Badjaneck, the young girl skipping up a mountain with her arms full of bread. Maybe what I hear is the sound of all that Marsh has lost, but I also hear what she has found.
I can see Marsh’s dad standing there, swaying, proud, oblivious to everything but the music. His eyes are full of tears. He is shining like a rose in the dark, with everything that hurts and everything that loves.
When the song finishes, he takes the rose from his jacket and holds it out to Marsh. She bends down and takes it and the crowd applauds.
I would like to say, we won the Battle of the Bands, but we didn’t. We came second.
Second!
To tell you the truth, I don’t care. Second or third or nothing. I don’t even care about the scores. I think Marsh and I even forgot there was a competition. All that mattered was that we played our songs and people heard them.
‘Ruzica!’ her dad says afterwards, pointing to the rose he had given her. ‘Ruzica, means rose.’
But to me, Marsh is like a swan. She is radiant and calm in her white dress as if all this had been meant to happen and she is just gliding on a lake, while the water ripples around her.
Mum and Dad and Opal are all excited. Opal wants to hold my hand so she can be part of the glory. I let her just for a bit. Mum gives me a big hug. She gives Marsh one too and invites her over for dinner, of course.
She invites Marsh’s dad, too. And he says yes. He throws his hands in the air and says, ‘I will bring you some sljivovica.’ Dad shakes his hand and agrees, even though he probably has no idea what sljivovica is.
After that, we part ways, but as I’m walking away, I shove my hand in my pocket and fi
nd the acorn there. I pull it out and call to Marsh. ‘Hey, wait.’
I break away from my family and run to her and hand her the acorn. She curls her hand around it and grins. And then, without hesitating, she puts her hands on my cheeks and kisses me, just quickly on the lips.
Then she turns away before I can even register it. She is running to catch up with her dad.
It wasn’t a romantic kiss. But it was still a kiss, and I am still swirling with happiness and stumbling home, head in the sky—the stars above the creek are shining just for me.
Dad brings me back down with one of those conversations that seem to happen in the dark by the creek after something big. ‘So Joey, I can’t tell you how proud I was to see you up there. I had no idea you could do that. But I knew you would do something—I didn’t know what it would be,’ he says.
‘What do you mean you knew I would do something?’ I say.
‘Well, I knew you would find your thing. Find what you love. Find something that’s meaningful. To write a song and perform it like that, well, that gives a lot to everyone.’
I don’t dare look at my dad, as I was already feeling emotional and now this. Dad had faith in me all along. I keep staring down at my two shoes walking me home. Disbelieving and believing.
‘I thought you wanted me to play footy,’ I say.
Dad seems surprised. ‘Really? Footy players always end up getting injured.’
I let it sink in for a moment. Like a sunset. But something is still gnawing at me.
‘Dad?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You know, Marsh doesn’t go to school. She hangs out in a treehouse all day in a world in her head and she talks to her mum, who died.’
Dad is silent for a while. ‘She’s grieving,’ he says.
‘Marsh steals food.’ I just blurt it out.
Dad frowns. He rubs his chin. ‘You know, sometimes things happen that are unbearable. Like someone you love dying. That sort of sadness is too much to carry and so it carries you instead. I think Marsh and her dad need some help to bear this sadness, and there are places you can go to get that sort of help. But first of all, they need some friends, and that’s one reason why what you two did today was so great. It brought us all together. We can make it a team effort.’
Marsh and Me Page 9
