Cut Off

by Jamie Bastedo

  I concentrated harder on his fingers, forgetting that mine were moving. That they even existed. And then something strange happened, like a bolt of lightning opened my chest. What we were playing was so beautiful. But I couldn’t tell where the music was coming from, his guitar or mine.

  My heart started jumping. I got this freaky urge to scream.

  “Just keep playing,” Magno said softly.

  I refocused on his fingers, so graceful, so natural, like they were made for only one purpose: to glide up and down the fretboard of a guitar. My heart settled down. I breathed into the music until … it just felt good. I stopped worrying about how it sounded, about what Magno thought, or even what Dad might think. The music came alive under my fingers and I just let it go.

  And with it, a few tears. Happy tears.

  “That’s it. Let it come, Indio. Find the music. Follow it to The Source.”

  The last D-minor chord ricocheted off the dome above us. We looked up at each other, smiling.

  Then we both turned to the window.

  Somebody was shouting outside the gate. No … it was several voices, chanting something.

  I stood up and took a step toward the window. Someone screamed and a fist-sized rock came crashing through the glass. I watched it spin in slow motion, straight for my guitar. I wrapped both arms around it—too late! The rock bounced off my guitar with an awful twang. I flinched like it had struck me in the face.

  Loba jumped up, sniffed the rock, and snarled.

  “What the hell?” Magno cried.

  I looked down at an ugly dent in the flowered rosette surrounding the sound hole. “My guitar!”

  Magno took the guitar out of my shaking hands and pulled me away from the window. “Don’t worry. I know someone who can fix your—”

  A shower of stones clanged against the metal gate. “My car!” He set my instrument in its case, like a doctor settling a wounded patient. “Keep back,” he said, slapping on his ball cap. “Bullets could be next.” Then he ran out to check on his precious Corvette, the only one in Xela.

  Another volley of stones against the gate. The chanting rose.

  “¡Sí a la vida! ¡No minería! ¡Sí a la vida! ¡No minería!” Yes to life! No to mining!

  I grabbed my binoculars and placed myself in the only corner of the practice room where I could glimpse the outside world. Between the razor-wire at the end of the wall and the bullet-proof windows of the guardhouse was a V-shaped gap I could peek through to watch normal people doing normal things on the street and in the park across from us.

  What I saw was not normal.

  A bunch of village women dressed in traditional Mayan clothing marched in a circle in front of our gate. Men stood in a ring around them, arms locked together. Some people waved signs.

  ¡La mina no pasa! No to the mine!

  ¡Te duele la mina oro! The gold mine hurts you!

  Dejar de robar! Stop stealing!

  Everyone was shouting. Little kids ran around the mob, throwing rocks at our house.

  Dad came running out of the house with his cell phone glued to his ear, yelling orders at Juan Carlos, his bodyguard. Juan Carlos nodded, whipped out his handgun, and fired three shots into the sky.

  More stones. Angrier chanting.

  I heard police sirens, a squeal of tires, and seconds later, loud bangs. Two smoky things rocketed into the mob. Everyone scattered with their hands over their faces.

  Tear gas!

  White smoke leaked through my smashed window. My eyes started stinging like crazy. Loba whimpered behind me, madly rubbing her eyes with both paws. Through the tears and smoke, I recognized someone wearing an orange and black headband. The Mayan girl at the Christmas concert. The one who seemed so blown away by my music.

  Today her face was creased with rage.

  Would you still clap and cheer for me if you knew I was caged in here? If you knew I was the mine owner’s son?

  XBS

  Soon after I turned fourteen, I got to go to a real school. This was hardly your typical Guatemalan school. I mean like the one Mom talks about from her own past, with crumbling classrooms packed like sardine cans.

  Instead, my parents sent me to a ritzy school for ritzy kids. The Xela British School or XBS. My social studies teacher told me that some British ambassador started it years ago, felt sorry for the poor Guatemalan rich kids. Thought they should all speak the Queen’s English.

  At first, Dad totally opposed the high school idea. “How are we supposed to make a Segovia out of the boy if he’s out playing soccer or goofing off at school dances?” he asked Mom

  Sounded good to me.

  “How can we make sure Indio’s safe out there?”

  Truth is, I think he saw me as juicy bait for narco-kidnappers who would’ve happily traded me for his fortune.

  Mom, on the other hand, saw school as good medicine for what she called my melancolía, depression.

  So, after a few rounds of shouting and table banging—of course, I was upstairs sweating over my guitar through all this—my parents reached a compromise. I could go to school two days a week, Mondays and Fridays. The rest of the week, it was two hours a day of home-schooling from my tutor, Luiz, followed by five hours of practice. On Saturday, Dad bumped it up to six hours—even higher than Segovia’s daily max of five—followed on Sunday by a three-hour lesson with Magno.

  If Dad was doing his stealth-listening thing at the door and I slacked off or took too many breaks, he would barge in with a wooden mining stake in hand and plunk down in Magno’s chair. He’d sit there, watching my every move, as if he had something to teach me.

  As if.

  I had outstripped my father’s guitar chops years ago and he knew it.

  Hated it.

  Sometimes, especially if he’d been drinking and I flubbed a couple notes, he’d whack me across the shins with his mining stake. If I lost the beat for a second or played a tempo Dad didn’t like, he would stomp down on my tapping toe, once so hard it turned purple.

  My father’s dream of guitar glory had become my nightmare.

  Before high school, I lived like a monk. A forgotten, beaten monk cut off from the world.

  Now I had an escape hatch, at least a temporary one.

  Even though it was only a twenty-minute walk from our house, Mom insisted that Juan Carlos drive me to and from school.

  That rock through my window had changed Juan Carlos. The mine protests had been snuffed out by regular police patrols of our neighborhood and bigger guns for Dad’s guards. But things were heating up in the villages near the mine, and it was making front-page news. All this made Juan Carlos extra twitchy.

  Juan Carlos had been in my life forever. He was almost like a tío, an uncle. Mom told me that when they brought me home from the maternity ward, Juan Carlos arranged a police escort for me, sirens and all. It was like all those years he’d worked for my father were a waiting game for Something Big. And, after so many boring days raking Dad’s tennis court, skimming leaves from the swimming pool, lifting weights in the garage, or picking Loba’s crap off the lawn, he couldn’t wait for it.

  Juan Carlos had started wearing his Beretta handgun on his belt instead of hidden under his jacket in a holster. He told me that he’d shaved his head, ponytail and all, to get a cleaner shot if he needed to. “Right in the forehead,” he said. He insisted we rehearse the protocolo—the battle plan—in case somebody started tailing us or tried to rip me out of the car. He’d suddenly whip out his handgun and shove me under the dashboard so I didn’t get caught in the crossfire. Or he’d look in the rearview mirror, go all bug-eyed, and floor it like some narco scumbag was chasing us.

  All this while driving me to school.

  My biggest surprise when I first arrived at the school was that half the students came from somewhere else. I mean like, U.S.A., England, China. Even some real live Canadians, the only ones I’d ever seen besides my dad and his mining buddies.

  Juan Carlos called them “exp
at brats.” The kids of expatriates, foreigners who worked in Guatemala for a few years, made a pile of money, then took off. The rest were rich Guatemalan kids.

  The trouble was, I didn’t know where I fit in, with the expat brats or the rico Guatemaltecos. So I mostly kept my head down as I roamed the grassy campus from class to class. I blended in as best as I could in my blue tweed blazer and red tie.

  Things were pretty crappy the first few weeks. Sports were huge at the Xela British School, but the only activities I’d ever done that faintly resembled sports were backflips into our swimming pool and kicking a soccer ball around the lawn with Sofi, Loba, and the guards.

  They even played hockey at XBS, on one of Guatemala’s few indoor ice rinks. Of course, everyone expected that I knew all there was to know about Canada’s national sport. Nobody got that I was actually born here. The only ice I’d ever seen was in my father’s Scotch glass.

  What I really wanted to play was soccer. Fútbol. But the first time I tried out, I tripped over our own goalie and popped a ligament in my plucking thumb. This made practicing almost impossible and forced Dad to cancel all my gigs until it healed.

  Did I ever pay for that in bruised shins!

  Dad threatened to yank me out of school until I promised, “Okay, no more soccer!”

  Academics did not go well either. Everyone else was light-years ahead of me, thanks to Luiz’s freewheeling approach to home-schooling, and the fact that I had little space in my brain or my schedule for anything but guitar.

  Things turned around when, instead of going to soccer practice, they let me loose in the computer lab.

  I’ll never forget that day.

  I was alone in the lab with an hour to kill before Juan Carlos came for me. For the first time in my life, I was free to sit down at a keyboard and screen and do something that millions of kids my age did every day, as easy as breathing.

  Go online.

  I could taste the forbidden fruit my father had locked away from me for so many years, “in the best interest of practicing,” of course. The joke was, as I waited for my computer to boot up, I noticed a familiar pick and shovel logo on its side from one of the school’s sponsors, CanaMine, the Canadian mining company whose president was none other than Edgar McCracken.

  My computer whirred to life. I clamped on headphones and brightened the screen to max. The Internet opened up and drew me in like a powerful magnet. I was free-falling through a wormhole into a whole new world.

  The cyber world.

  The forbidden fruit tasted good. Very good.

  I discovered hilarious videos, pictures, and games. Cool sites featuring movie trailers, science news, and live sports. Online shopping, teen chat groups, and blogs.

  And the music! All the classic bands Magno had turned me on to over the years. My headphones shook to the songs of Pink Floyd, Nirvana, and Metallica. Coldplay, U2, and the Beatles. For the first time, I could watch bands playing riffs that Magno snuck into our lessons when we knew Dad wasn’t listening at the door or was out at the mine. I dipped into a few classical guitar videos, but most of them were so amateur to me, it was painful to watch and I quickly moved on.

  I surfed tourist videos of exotic lands. Africa, India, Australia. I visited Canada, as familiar to me as Pluto.

  My head swam. My heart pounded. I lost myself in a flood of dazzling information, flashing images, and pulsing sounds.

  Until somebody poked my shoulder and I almost jumped out of my chair.

  “Excuse me, chico, but it ees time.”

  I turned to see Jorge, the school janitor.

  “Everybody home esept you and me.”

  “What?” I said, slowly returning to the world of 3D people and things. “Oh, right.” English was a struggle for Jorge but it was the law at XBS. For both students and staff, the penalty for speaking Spanish was no ice cream privileges for a week.

  “Your ride ees here.”

  “Gracias, Jorge.” I scooped up my backpack and ran for the door.

  “Eh, wait! You ees the bumblebee boy, no?”

  “The what?”

  “Abejorro, bumblebee. I watch the movie of you playing at Christmas concert. That was, how you say, awwww-some!”

  “Oh. That.”

  “You must play school concert. Band Night. Lots of fun games, good food, prizes, y mucha música viva.”

  I’d seen the posters but ignored them. Playing guitar was the last thing I wanted to do at school. Hadn’t I fought to come here to escape from all that? What would a music geek like me have to offer a bunch of super-achieving jocks and bookworms? Who could care less about my kind of music, anyway, let alone understand it?

  “But I’m not in a band, Jorge.”

  He laughed, showing a serious lack of teeth. “You can be a one-man band.” He opened his hands to the ceiling. “¡Por favor, Indio! Please.”

  There was something in Jorge’s begging face that softened me up. So far I’d been most comfortable with the guards, cleaners, and kitchen staff at school. In my father’s walled world, I’d never learned to make friends my age. Maybe I’d do better if I made a splash at the school concert.

  Then this thought. Maybe I could start my own blog about my music and stuff and see where it took me. See if anyone out there might find me interesting.

  “I’ll think about it, Jorge. Buenas noches.”

  My pack pounded against my back as I sprinted across campus, almost tripping into the swimming pool. I was propelled by a delicious new lightness, like a bird set free from its cage. In those stolen moments, running wild on the computer, I’d discovered another reality that promised everything that was missing in my life.

  Connection, freedom, and friends.

  First Blog

  Looking for fame in all the wrong places:

  Musings of a caged guitarist

  FINDING YOUR HAT

  Hey guys. Have you heard the rumor that we’re all plunked on this planet for a reason? I mean all 7,391,825,982 of us (last time I checked the human population clock, anyway. Here’s the link).

  Have you figured out your reason yet? Lucky you.

  Still working on it? Don’t worry. All is not lost.

  “Wait! Who’s at the keyboard?” you ask. Good question, since this is my very first blog. I’m basically a 14-year-old guy living in Guatemala. Living here, yes. Born here, in fact. But notice I didn’t say, “I’m Guatemalan.” That’s something I’m still working on. More later.

  It’s one thing to spend your whole life figuring out what hat to wear. It’s another thing when life hands you the whole outfit and says, “Here, put this on. This is who you are.”

  Don’t ask me how it happens—fate, space aliens, or a fanatic parent—but it happens. (Trust me, I know. It happened to me.) Maybe you’re handed a soccer uniform. Or salsa shoes. Or a white lab coat. You put it on and away you go down a sunny path. You know what to do with your life.

  On the flip side, maybe you’re fumbling around in a dark maze, bumping into brick walls. Your life is full of detours and dead ends. You’re still looking for that special path only you can walk.

  Well, in my case, life handed me a guitar. When I was just four years old, my father shoved a three-quarter-size classical guitar into my little hands. Lessons started soon after. You know, nylon strings, playing Bach and Beethoven, with one leg up on a funny little footstool. That’s me.

  Ever met a child prodigy? Well, now you have. Me. Or so my father keeps telling me.

  Maybe you’ve heard of me: Guatemala’s Wonder Boy. The Bumblebee Boy. World’s fastest classical guitar player. “And just a kid!” shout the newspapers. ¿Muy glamoroso, no? Very glamorous, right?

  FAME: NOT ALL IT'S CRACKED UP TO BE

  But I’ll tell you a secret: that little guitar, and a bunch more since, burned up most of my childhood. Some days, stuck in my practice room, just me and my dog, listening to kids in the park or laughing in the street, I wish I was out there bumping into brick walls, still look
ing for my special path. Days when I’d happily trade the spotlit stage for a dark maze, looking, looking, while maybe having a life on the side.

  Except at last Saturday’s Band Night at XBS. “What’s that?” you ask. The name of my band, of course: X-rays Beat Sunshine. Haven’t heard of it? Where ya been? Actually … no. I lie. It’s the name of my school. XBS. The Xela British School. At first I was dead against going to Band Night, let alone playing. Why bother with a Mickey Mouse talent show when I can perform for a thousand people in fancy theaters across Latin America? When I’ve got a recording gig lined up in Hollywood, California?

  But a secret fan twisted my arm and I went for it (¡Gracias, Jorge!).

  And am I glad I did! It was like my first real picnic, like some big happy family out on the grass with tents and a stage. Okay, so the sound system crackled and spit. The flashing stage lamps were too fast and freaky. The tent leaked when it rained. But I didn’t care. There was no tight-ass stage manager poking my ribs to get me the hell on and off stage. No stuffed shirts or fashion queens in the audience. No reporters shoving microphones in my face like I was some walking, talking freak show.

  Just live music, laughter, and light.

  TWO LESSONS

  I learned two things at Band Night. First, no matter what life hands us, a sunny path or a dark maze, we can get lost and lonely either way. That was me for sure—before Band Night, I mean. Second thing I learned: the highest walls are inside us. Fear’s a biggie. Judgment, too. In my case I have to add snobbery. I’m a child prodigy, remember. After playing for you at Band Night, mixed in with your cheers and applause, I could almost hear the sound of those inner walls crashing down.

  O TURNING BACK

  To my new friends at XBS, I felt your love that night and I’m firing hug bombs back at ya. I can’t return to my empty practice room without taking you with me. Thank you, thank you!