Electric Blue Guitar

1965

Traverse City, Michigan, USA

Home to fields that stretch forever

Lakes untouched by even the harshest weather

April

Snow still flutters and falls

Beyond the walls of the crowded gym

Beyond the tacky trimming and creaking curtains and hoards of hopeless dancers

Beyond the “Prom on the Red Carpet!” banner

April.

Prom in freaking April

Graduation two weeks later

Cause the sooner they shove a diploma in our arms,

The sooner a gun can take its place

So I can look a recruiter in the face

And

Sign my life away

Charlie slides his hand down Clarine’s frock of polka dots and glitter

James clutches the hand of a pretty nurse, tries to wince away the pains

Michael cocks his chin back and pours cheap rum into the punch pitcher

David rubs ointment across his napalm wounds– it was al an accident, his superior explains

The difference between them and us?

Twelve months.

Tuxedos

Fatigues

Eyeshadow

Gun powder

Lake life sunburn

Flames

Today

Tomorr–

“Eddie?” I heard through the sounds of clinking glasses and clattering heels. “Writing something?”

I stared up at Jessie’s face, all dance-induced sweat and slicked-back curls fighting against the hairspray.

“Yeah,” I replied as my eyes traced the cheap scarlet carpet beneath my table. “Not that it’s particularly good.” I sighed and threw Jessie the poem I had scratched onto a crumpled pink napkin. “Here, take it.”

Jessie slipped the napkin into his suit’s pocket.

“Okay, tortured artist, get up. These are three hours of scratchy tuxes and plastic decor that you’re never gonna get back.”

Jessie smirked and proceeded to yank me up from my chair.

“Don’t forget the photo booth,” I added.

“Ah Eddie, I’ve got enough crappy photos of you to last a lifetime.”

“Jessie!” a girl in a froofy mustard dress called from across the dance floor. “What happened to my dance?”

Jenna Harcourt. Living proof that sometimes bra size can’t make up for personality. To this day I still imagine her voice blaring in my head like an old alarm clock. You can’t change the sound, and hell knows you can’t turn it off.

Jessie shot me a worried look, his pistachio eyes widening like those of my little sis’s Singin’ Chatty doll. SOS.

“We’re going to the photo booth!” I intervened. “See ya in a bit, Jenna.”

A bit, not tonight, never– same thing, really.

“Photo booth, Eddie? Really? That line’s like three miles long.” Jessie whispered in my ear.

“The word you’re looking for is ‘thanks’”.

So, we lost twenty minutes of our prom to the cursed photo booth, half of which were due to an impromptu makeout sesh between a couple of scraggly freshmen. The girl, whose dress I bet still has lipstick and punch stains on it to this day, blew Jessie a kiss on the way out. I rolled

my eyes, Jessie laughed, the machine spewed out a ridiculous photo, and Jenna loitered around the booth, awaiting her dance like a starved chipmunk.

I kept that colorless photo.

Jessie’s suit that looks black but was really bright yellow. Jessie’s smile that looks white but was more like a baby blue from all that damned candy. And Jessie’s arm, draped casually around my shoulder as if it were meant to stay there forever. A snapshot of one of the best nights of my life (even if it was spent in a gym that was practically falling apart).

The same photo that I tucked into my suit pocket as I walked toward my diploma. Handshake.

Smile!

Click, click, next…

1953

“Hey, wait up!” I shouted through shivers. My teeth clattered with the appropriate amount of fervor for a Michigan kid who thought he could go biking in October without a jacket. Big mistake.

“Pedal faster!” Jessie yelled as he turned his head backwards and promptly crashed into an evergreen. Unfortunately for me, pedaling faster wasn’t exactly an option since I was riding on a bike several feet too tall. When I finally caught up with him, Jessie had already wiped off his bleeding forehead and plopped himself back onto that rackety orange bike. And so we rode.

For hours and hours and hours.

Across plains and through herds of buffalo and within the forests splashed in autumn hues.

And then came that moment, you know? When you’re riding downhill and realize that your bike ain’t gonna stop– doesn’t matter how hard you hit the brakes. Being with Jessie felt like that… all the time. No moment ever wasted, no dumb idea left unattempted. “Woohoo!”

That day, we rode straight into Duck Lake.

Guess that’s what happens when you soar down a hill, eyes shut tight enough to block out every blade of icy wind ready to cut you.

“Oh my go–”

“Hey!” little me interjected. “Don’t use the lord’s name in vain.”

Jessie laughed. I shivered, two inhales away from crying. Instead, I sucked it all in like a true Christian American boy, raised by a dad who still woke up some mornings as a soldier and a mom afraid of her own intelligence.

I produced a sack of once-dried (and now soggy) cherries from the pocket of my ripped jeans. We savored each nibble of sour sweetness beneath the finicky sun; ah, it never could decide whether it wanted to dazzle or disappear.

“This’ll be our spot.” Jessie grinned. A big, wide, wonderful grin. “Just ours. Forever and ever.”

Forever. Leave it up to kids to repeat that word like the chorus of a rock song. Afterward, it took us smack about an hour just to unravel the maze of forest paths we’d created with our wheels. And once we finally made it onto the highway, there it was. Jessie’s guitar.

Eh, it technically wasn’t his yet, but woah… Even in its precarious position on the asphalt road, I could practically see Jessie’s fingerprints on it. His calloused hands caressing the strings, his pistachio eyes taking in every inch: black and electric blue, primly polished, glory.

“It’s perfect.” Jessie gulped in the fresh air, watching his breath materialize in front of him on the long exhale.

“Yeah…” I gazed at the guitar once more with droopy eyes before re-mounting my bike. Look, I wasn’t about to steal some guitar off the road, no matter how pretty. “Well, finders, keepers!” Jessie snatched up the guitar and wiped the crimson leaves from its surface.

It was the first of many moments in my life when I’d want to look him straight in the eyes and say I love you.

1965

The letter arrived in the mail on a sunny, sticky May morning. It arrived with an “I’m so proud of you, son.” from my father and an “Oh my baby…” from my mom. My dad then limped toward the family wall of military accomplishments and placed my draft letter right at the front. And in my gut–

I felt–

Nothing.

Fear, I guess, but…

It was a letter I’d awaited diligently my entire lifetime. An honor, a duty, a part of the Mcnamara life since the first time people across the world started shooting at each other. We’re Americans; we go and we fix things.

But, there were rumors. Explosives and tunnels, men sprinting at the speed of lightning, jungles denser than a nucleus, an unwinnable war–

No.

The only thing that mattered now was whether or not Jessie had received the same damn piece of paper this morning. So, I sprinted past the front door and onto our cookie cutter lawn, where I plopped onto that same old bike. Now it fit me. I pedaled past the vast fields, the buffalo herds, the viridescent forest, the hill… What if he’s not there? What if he didn’t get it?

“Hey.”

Duck Lake. Black curls. An electric blue guitar strapped across broad shoulders. Jessie. I let out all the breaths I’d been clutching close to my chest.

“Hey,” he replied.

Jessie lifted the crumpled slip of paper from his pocket.

“So, you too.”

“Yeah.” Jessie slipped off his boots and dipped his feet in the water. He winced in pain as his toes broke through the glassy surface. I wonder now if that’s the last moment he ever spent without thinking of ‘Nam. Those few seconds on that chilly May day when the only thought circulating his body was: damn, that’s freezing.

I sat down beside him, trying and failing to find the right words. As if they existed. “I…”

“You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time.” The Presley melody fell out of his lips like always: raspy and sweet, like honey and chai. Singing was his way of tapping out from the world when it wasn’t sensical enough to be in. Some days, the notes would escape his mouth without him ever noticing they did.

“Jessie?”

His eyes met mine with a flutter of ebony lashes.

“I wrote a song today. When I got the letter. I— I don’t know if it’s any good.” Jessie Turner, unsure? The all-star quarterback with a perfect senior season, the number one pick on every girl’s list since kindergarten… god, the song better be a hell of a trainwreck. “You’re right; it’s probably crap,” I joke. Jessie’s cheeks turn a flaming red. “Oh shit. You’re serious. Ah sorry man, I didn’t realize; you just– never woulda pegged you as much of a writer, that’s all.”

“Can’t blame you. Ms. Kelsy sure thought my English papers left much to be desired.” Jessie said it with a chuckle, but I knew the memory hurt. School had always been my thing, which I thought was fair ‘cause Jessie’s thing was, well… life.

“Ms. Kelsy was just pissy ‘cause you never took her out for a coffee.”

Jessie chuckled. Flashed me that poster card smile.

And then we were left with only the woodpecker’s rhythm and the rustle of leaves in the spring breeze.

“I’m scared,” Jessie blurted out. Two big scary words.

“Me too.”

I looked up at Jessie. And then we sulked in the silence of all that we didn’t dare say aloud. For seconds. Minutes. Hours. Don’t remember. Doesn’t matter.

“What if we… don’t?” Jessie’s words came out in a crackly whisper, as if the air itself was shunning their existence.

I let out a hearty laugh. What else was I supposed to do?

“Ah man, you’re funny! Not sure my dad would chuckle at that one though.” “Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled. “Bad joke.”

“I wonder if my old man was scared. Both of ours.”

Jessie parted his lips and began to hum a stringy tune, playing the chords along with his electric blue guitar.

Old. Rock. Sad. Fire.

“Sing me what you wrote,” I murmured halfway through the first chorus. Jessie leaned his head against my shoulder and continued playing.

“Some other time.” Earth. Grit. Rasp. Sugar. “I think they were fucking petrified.” 1953

Grade: 🫥

MY PARANTS

EddIE MCNAMARA – 4tH CLAS

MS. C YU SAID USE THE GUYDED PAPAR

SAyD PRACTICE UR CAPITALS, EDDIE

And ur lowerkase

BUT I LIKE CAPITALS

YU SAID RITE ABUT MI PARANTS

MOOM & DADY

O K

MOOMY

LIKS TV NOW

WICH WAZ GRATE

BUT SHE WACHES 2 LAYT NOW

PAST BED TYME

MOOM WACHES CUPLES KIS

MOOMY LIVZ IN BLAK AND WITE

DADY

TUK A TRIPP

AND HE KAME BAK WEERD

DADY NO SLEEP

DADY WAKEZ UP AND SCREEMS

BUT MOOM IS STIL AT DA TV

SO DADY SCREEMS ALOWN

All my life, I’d heard about men returning from war changed. I’d watched my mom hover over the radio during the war while she stress-baked her fifth cherry pie of the evening: prisoners and camps and casualties and– five-year-old me wasn’t the best listener. Most days I’d just tune out everything that stretched farther than Duck Lake. Easier. Simpler that way.

Dad did come back, limping towards my mom as he scattered down the stairway of a big old jet. Mom sobbed; I barely recognized him.

And then there was the “after”. The reporters came to choke us with American flags. The neighbors brought dozens of cherry pies (as if we needed any more). Dad decided he was too good for PT, so his limp cemented itself as a thorn in his identity of “thick-headed”. Mom bought a TV and turned it on for the first time; Mom never got up from the couch again. Sometimes, screams woke me up in the middle of the night, Dad or television, who knows? Sometimes, Mom

woke up with a black eye and Dad with knuckles wrapped in cloth. Sometimes, sometimes, sometimes… became most times.

But they said be grateful. Be grateful, Eddie.

You’re so lucky.

You have a beautiful family.

Some weren’t so lucky.

And I knew what they meant. I recognized the whispers from park benches and grocery stores. Those poor Turners. They told me I was so lucky, because the McNamara house walls are soundproof. Death is loud.

1959

July 5, 1959, 7th grade – 2:04 am

Journal Entry #32

Color

And laughter

And chatter

Men with foaming beers in their hands, every day growing fatter

Color

A million specks of exploding lights rippling through the air

A million wide-eyed stares

Smoked pork and grilled burgers plopped onto coldish buns

It’s why we don’t let the dads cook…

Ah but the moms let them have it, just this once.

Color

Dad nibbles at his way-too-peppery burger with saltburn eyes

With each corner-mouth smile, he lies

Oh but those ice eyes…

Ice eyes incapable of a single little white lie

Color

Reflected in my father’s eyes

Wincing and pinching and flinching

Hidden by that mucky baseball cap

Pain— tucked away and wrapped

Trapped in his pupils, lodged in his jaw

Color

In his laugh, in his smile, in the stacks of action novels he bought me for Christmas

Color

In his midnight paintings of begonias and blood and Mom

Color

In his fear, in his love

Color

In his pride

Pride as vibrant as those damn fireworks on the Fourth of July

Because God… each explosion drilled into the vault beyond his grin, his lie

Threatened to unleash nearly a decade of protected pain

But he still shows up each year to grill crappy burgers and watch flying colors explode like gunshots To wrap an arm around my shoulder and peel off enough layers of skin to say: I’m proud of you To glance at me with those quivering eyes and show me that he still knows what it was all for

– Eddie

1965

“Were you scared?” I asked my dad the night before I was set to depart for ‘Nam. “Doesn’t matter,” is all he replied.

“Everything matters.” My own guts surprised me. “That’s what Jessie says.” “That boy is nothing but trouble.”

Dad practically spat out the words, letting a few bits of eggplant casserole fly out with them.

“How are you feeling?” Mom asked, her ginger curls bopping over her shoulders with ease.

“Fine.” Quiet. A kettle whistled. The oven chirped.

“Ooh, cherry pie!” Mom leapt up from her seat and donned her sunflower-patterned oven mitts; I wonder now if to her they were gloves or handcuffs or some kind of mix. “I see them on the TV.” I blurted out. “Mom, I know you try to change the channel but the videos are everywhere. College kids burning their draft cards.”

Dad choked on his eggplant casserole. Mom burned herself against the pie mold. “Well, kiddo, you’re not headed for college, so no need to worry about that!” My dad waved it off with a chuckle, a well-rehearsed McNamara tool for avoiding conversations. “Why not?” My rebuttal.

“Honey, calm down,” Mom said as she ran her burnt wrist under the kitchen sink. “People talk. I’m not deaf. Rumors.” The words came out faster than anyone knew how to stop them.

“You’re going to let idiots on the TV and schoolboy rumors defer you from fighting for your country?”

“Vietnam isn’t America! Why does it have to be our problem?”

“Communism is everyone’s problem!”

“Rich man’s war, poor man’s fight.” I seethed. Straight into those calculating ice eyes. “Sure it’s easy for them to spew out drafts when it’s not their boys dying on the front lines. When I think about it, I just– I want a future.”

I thought of Jessie: black curls, pistachio eyes, firecracker smile.

Something inside me broke.

My legs catapulted me up from my chair and all the way to Dad’s “wall of accomplishments”. I snatched my draft letter from the front and watched my hands quiver and buckle under its weight.

“I–” I forced away the tears. Not here. Not now. Not in this world or this place or this life. “I don’t want my dreams to die buried with me in an unmarked grave. I can’t– I… why do they decide who gets a shot at a legacy?”

With one watery glance, my dad pulled me tight into a hug, taking Mom in with him. It was the first of two times he’d ever give me a hug; the second was the day he died. “I was petrified,” he finally whispered with his chin resting atop my hair. Then, Dad pulled away and looked me dead in the eyes. “What better legacy than dying for your country?” A breath. “You burn that letter, don’t bother coming back.”

Ring-ring! The telephone cried from across the dining room.

Mom picked up quickly, her face contorting into odd shapes as she listened to each word. “It’s Jessie,” she told me. “He needs you to meet him at Duck Lake. Now.” I shoved the draft letter into the pocket of my jeans, rushed out the door, and popped

onto my bike, wondering if the searing burn of my dad’s icy eyes on my back would ever fade away. It never did.

When I arrived at Duck Lake, Jessie waited with a lighter in one hand and his letter in the other.

“What the…?” I mumbled. The evening chill stole my words.

“I can’t do it.” His hands trembled, a shudder that took his entire body through waves of current. “It’s– I–”

“Jessie.”

“Eddie.”

I put my hand on his shoulder, steadying his wavering breaths. In. Out. His eyes locked into mine, swirling with shades of anger and confusion and betrayal and so much pain. “I lo–” I bit the phrase off before it could come out of my mouth.

“My mom wouldn’t survive it. If I…” He clicked on the lighter. “There’s a way out, you know.”

“A way that leads to jail. To the wrong side of history.”

A woodpecker slammed its beak into a nearby oak trunk.

All I heard was:

BANG.

“The whole damn war is gonna end up on the wrong side of history!”

“What about our pare–”

“What about our lives?” Jessie screamed. At the lake that bore witness to all our childhood dreams. At the wind that carried them away. At the world.

Sweat dripped down his forehead, to the tip of his nose, falling to the curve of his lip and shooting down the edge of his chin. I lo–

“Our lives, Jessie? They’ll end up on a wall, a history page… Or maybe, right back here to live a beautiful, wonderful, fucking incredible eighty years! Heroes, man, h–” “Just like our dads?”

Shit.

“That’s not fair.”

He grabbed my shoulders and shoved me into the nearest oak tree. Tears slipped down his cheeks, and he… made no effort to stop them.

“Ooh, an abuser or a corpse, pick your future!”

“What’s gotten into you?” I yelled back.

“I lo–” Jessie thrust his hands into my waves and kissed me. Hard. Fast. Terrified. Like stars exploding in outer space or boys charging forth on the front lines or college kids burning draft cards on national television. And then, he pulled away, held my face in his hands like I was glass, and said: “Look at me.” Those eyes. Those curls. That smile. That voice. That mind. “What am I worth, Eddie? A plaque, a medal, a monument? A ‘name of note’ on a history page?” He gazed down at me, viridescent eyes glistening with hope and fear. Begging. The first time in my life I’d ever seen Jessie Turner beg.

Then he brought the lighter in front of my eyes, each burst of flame flickering and falling and rebirthing in the May breeze.

“Come with me,” he whispered.

“I lo–”

Electric blue guitar on the highway.

Bikes in the autumn woods.

Tracks in the snow.

Two little boys shivering in the lake.

A father holding his son close to his chest.

A corpse. A bloody cheek. A black eye.

Wrapped knuckles. A voice hoarse in the morning.

Prom in a gym built a billion years ago.

I reached into my jean pocket and reached for that letter, reached for Jessie, reached for my future, reached and–

You burn that letter, don’t bother coming back.

I’m so proud of you, son.

“I can’t,” I whispered. And even the moon broke.

1975

I heard nothing of Jessie until that same breezy May day ten years later. Ten days after American troops left Vietnam. I was driving my tiny, baby blue car as my wife, Ella, held baby Carla in her arms. Ella glanced up at the sky dotted with clouds and sun and blue, her blonde curls drooping over sun kissed shoulders. Curls that a husband should caress like silk, but I… maybe in another life.

But despite it all–

Those jungle vines enveloping me like a coffin

Jessie’s photo kept in a locket tied to my dog tags and wrapped around my neck My midnight screams a reflection of my father’s cries from a lifetime ago

A wife who I’ll forever know deserves better…

It was still a beautiful life.

That’s what I thought of as I chatted mindlessly about the moody Michigan weather, fighting against the rackety road on the way to my mom and dad’s house. Each turn and hole in the asphalt ingrained in my heart, each foot of a road I’d once thought I might never pass again. At eighteen, the world had told me: choose who the hell you are. Didn’t know then, don’t know now. But I chose to be someone who could drive this road leading to gray hair and a fireplace and freshly baked cherry pie.

I still winced at stop signs sharp as knives, fourth of July fireworks ringing in my ears like gunshots. I still poured questions into leather-bound journals, questions that not even God can answer: what was it all for? I still blasted Presley at full volume in the shower when I knew Ella was out with her girls— blasted Presley and tried to scrub away the blood.

I still dreamed of Jessie’s voice and that electric blue guitar and a world as young and beautiful as we were.

“All you can get is rock and roll these days.” Ella sighed as she fiddled with the stereo channels from the passenger seat.

Come on, baby, light my fi–

Switch.

And she was blinded by the light

Cut loose like a deuce another runner in the–

Switch.

She’s a killer queen

Gunpowder, gelati–

Switch.

Carla let out a wail. A wail that should break any father’s heart, but I… I used to fall asleep to sobs just like hers.

April

Snow still flutters and falls–

Ella’s hand reached for the stereo.

“Wait,” I interjected, “keep this one… please.”

“Of course, darling.”

Beyond the walls of the crowded gym

I see you.

Beyond the hoards of hopeless dancers

The “Prom on the Red Carpet!” banner

April

Prom in freaking April

Graduation two weeks later

Cause the sooner they shove a diploma in our arms,

The sooner a gun can take its place

So I can look a recruiter in the face

And sign my life away

But today

It doesn’t matter cause I love you

Yeah today

It doesn’t have to be true.

Just say that you love me.

Say that you do.

Take that letter and watch it burn.

It’s our tomorrow, it’s our turn.

Throw it in the lake

And kiss me in the moonlight

Hold me as I break

Into a million pieces of red, white, and blue.

Today.

With you.

Rock. Sad. Fire.

Grit. Rasp. Sugar.

My heart dropped and I slammed the brakes on the car.

“Eddie, what are you doing?” Ella yelled.

“Who’s this by?”

“Uhh… gimme a sec. Jessie? Jessie Turner? Never heard of him before.”

That evening, after I kissed Ella goodnight, I rode my old bike down to Duck Lake and watched stars explode with far less energy than the glimmer in Jessie’s pistachio eyes. I ripped off my dog tags and locket, and then I cried. Cried for that man in the baby blue car, for that soldier in the jungle, and for that kid by the lake.

I squeezed the chain in my palm.

I lo–

I love you.

And tossed it in the lake.

Emilia Ramos Samper is among the youngest people to ever publish a book, having released her five-star fantasy novels Crown of Scales and Wonder and Thieves of Time Forgotten at ages ten and thirteen respectively. Her short stories have been featured in anthologies such as the Interlochen Center for the Arts Red Wheelbarrow, the LaPlume Young Writers Contest, and the Gathering the Magic anthology (foreword by Eragon author Christopher Paolini). She loves all things musical theater!

Electric Blue Guitar

Share this:

Leave a comment Cancel reply