Just Wanted to Learn

by William Swafford

We had a few beers and listened to music. I played a few songs on the guitar. She kept talking about smoking weed, but I didn’t have any.

  She was pretty and nice, but I wasn’t feeling it. I had just gone home with a good buzz. I started thinking that I should have just stayed at home.

  There have been other girls who have come over and I had played for. I always get a kick out of them thinking that the songs I wrote are for them. They might have only acted that way because they were usually drunk.

  I always had a hard time talking to women. The guitar had become an easy way to break the ice with women. That was all my music was being used for.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  I had played across the alley with a neighbor. At first I didn’t talk to the guy or his wife. Then I had seen him with a guitar one day and asked him about it.

  His name was Mark. He had medium length hair and beard. He would hardly wear a shirt. He loved to drink. He would even smoke weed behind his wife’s back.

  Mark played music with his brothers. He even knew my dad. I had never heard the guy play his guitar sober.

  He would have a fire and sit outside playing guitar. We had some good times.

  He always wanted me to come over and play. Then they moved to a better place. They still ask me to go out and play. I always respectfully say no.

  I got to a point to where I needed more out of music. I just couldn’t focus on playing in bars and drinking all night. Playing around fires and things are great times, but I figured there had to be more than what I was doing.

  Alcoholics are not bad people. There are good people with a problem just like my dad.

  The thing that keeps me motivated in music is what to learn more. I had never seen myself as a great guitar player. I need to play with people who have something that I can learn.

  I don’t want to be the only one playing that is taking it seriously.

  I had talked to Jimmy a couple times at the bar. His band was doing well. They had gotten a new drummer. I did try to talk some music with him.

  Jimmy always wanted to talk about putting me on lead guitar. I could do some lead, but had never done it with a band. My idea was to add to his show.

  He would keep doing his country, but I would come in with rock. It would add to the shows that he was doing at the bars. That way he wouldn’t just please the country fans, but also all the rockers.

  He would always say that he would call. I have never played with him except for the one night I had gone with my dad.

  I admit that I was jealous of how good he was doing. To know that my dad had helped him get where he was and that he got more than I did.

  I had seen Barry around town a few times. He was also friends with Chris. I had helped them both out on a roofing job.

  Barry had put together Music on Main Street. He had been doing it for several years.

  He brings in a few bands and then his band plays last. Jimmy’s band had played there once.

  There was talk about me working on a few songs with Barry’s band. It was all just talk. Phone numbers were never exchanged.

  Barry will wave when he passes. I do admit that I was jealous of what he had done with his music.

  I had stopped talking to my dad. I had nothing to say to him. I wouldn’t take his calls.

  This wasn’t something that I planned on happening. I didn’t point thought into it. It wasn’t something that I felt like I should do.

  People would always tell me that I should talk to him. I would say that I didn’t want to say hi or f-you to him, so there wasn’t a point to.

  There are not too many people who know what kind of person my dad was in the past. They don’t know how he hurt my family or how it affected everyone.

  I knew that he was the same person down there. He would call me drunk. It was hard to tell if he would even remember anything he said and things.

  I didn’t feel upset with him, but the anger and resentment had always been there. The music connection wasn’t there anymore with him so the anger and resentment was able to come back up.

  I had relied so much on my dad to go out and play, that I didn’t know how to do it for myself. I had lost all music connections.

  I wanted to blame him, but I also knew that I was to blame also.

  Alex had started stopping by. He was my uncle’s cousin. My mom and uncle had different dads.

  I had seen him around my grandma’s house when I was younger. He is several years older than me. I hadn’t seen him for years till we met again through a mutual friend.

  He is a little shorter than me with blondish brown hair barely long enough for a ponytail. He has a beard and a few extra pounds.

  Alex drinks a lot and gets rude. I drink sometimes, but I can’t spend too much time drinking with him. If we end up talking about the past or something, we end up in an argument.

  He always tries to get me to play guitar. I never knew how to feel about it. Sometimes he could be hard to play music around.

  Most of the time I would play guitar, but only with CD’s. When he would sing over the songs making up his own words, I would stop playing and put up my guitar. I have never liked it when people do that.

  I listen to songs to listen to how they were meant to be. I don’t listen to songs to have someone singing over the music putting in their own words thinking that it’s funny.

  He stopped coming over so often. I wasn’t always the friendly host. I never minded when he comes over. It was all the drinking that I really had enough with.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  At thirty-four-years old I was working as a temporary at a factory close to home. I started staying home alone with the dogs. My daughter would come over on the weekends.

  I do whatever I can not to think about things that stress me out. There are times I do things that keep me from doing what I should be doing just to get through a day.

  There are times when it just seems like nothing good happens. November is a month that has its bad days. It is also a month with a great day. The day my daughter was born.

  A bad day came four days after my daughter’s birthday. It was a day when music had changed again in my life.

  I was spending the Saturday with Grace. My mom had called. She had said that my dad had died. She couldn’t tell my brother because he was in jail.

  I didn’t know what to think or how to feel. I walked with my daughter to my uncle’s house.

  At first he looked at me as if he was wondering why I was there. He didn’t say too much about it. I didn’t see any emotion over his brother dying.

  We walked back home and couldn’t get in. I had forgotten my keys. I put Grace through a window and she unlocked the door.

  I searched the house and couldn’t find them. I decided to go back and walk the same way that we did.

  I wanted to freak out, but I couldn’t because of my daughter. Then I got another call.

  It was my mom again. My aunt was already trying to get my dad’s remains from Mississippi. She had wanted me to give permission to have him cremated. He wasn’t married so the responsibility fell on my brother and me. My brother was in jail.

  My thought was that my dad would probably go to hell if people had their way. Now, they want my permission to light the match. I had lost my cool on the phone with my mom. She had hung up on me.

  It hadn’t even been an hour since I found out and then they wanted to put that on me. I was still walking trying to find my keys and trying not to freak out in front of my daughter.

  My daughter had gone home later that day. I spent the rest of the weekend alone and not knowing how to feel. There were no calls from family or any visits from friends.

  November had gone by slowly. The holidays had slowed down the process of getting my dad’s remains back up to Ohio. It took a month to get his ashes from Mississippi.

  Lee had gotten out of jail, but wasn’t any help. They had let h
im out to be with his family, but he didn’t stop by. He was out doing meth and heroin.

  I tried to call my half sister who I hadn’t talked to since my sister had died, which was over nineteen-years. She answered the phone and I told her what had happened. She wouldn’t answer my calls or my aunt’s calls either.

  My feelings were all over the place. I didn’t want to deal with anything. I didn’t even feel like listening to music, but I had to arrange a service for my dad.

  I had to think about things and arrange things before I went to work. My aunt would call when I was getting ready to go and I would have to rush off the phone to head out the door.

  It was hard going into work and trying to get through the evening. My job was boring enough. Then I had too much time to think about things I shouldn’t have been while working. I am thankful that people were respectful to show some understanding.

  My dad’s gravesite service arrangements and things stayed on my mind. Then I had to think about my job coming to an end. My temporary contract was coming to an end. Then I would have to go on unemployment which doesn’t pay the bills.

  I called Steven and talked to him. I didn’t want to talk to him. I had heard a lot of bad things about him. He had gotten on the meth. He was starting to go down a really bad path.

  He lied and said he was still playing with Jimmy. He did give me Jimmy’s number.

  I had sent a message to Bill, but never heard back from him. It had been years since I had talked to him.

  I could never find Ben’s number. Who is to say that he would care anyways?

  I did talk to Jimmy. I wanted him to sing while I played guitar. He said that he would. I said we would do Amazing Grace. We even talked about the band thing again.

  My temporary job had come to an end of a Friday. My dad’s gravesite service was the next day.

  I had expected a decent crowd. I wasn’t prepared for how it had gone. He was to be buried beside my grandma. It was three spots down from my sister.

  I took my daughter and my niece with me. We showed up after my aunt.

  A few family members showed up. My brother showed up with some people I didn’t agree with. My dad’s girlfriend had driven up from Mississippi with her kids. Only two of my dad’s showed up.

  One of them was a guy that had played with my dad years ago. I had never heard the guy play before. Then there was Mike a friend of my dad’s for years. I later found out that they both were members of my dad’s first band when they were all teenagers.

  My dad’s family was in a hurry to get it done. Jimmy didn’t show up, so I had to try to sing on my own. I sounded awful. I thought it would be only right for a song to be played.

  My dad’s girlfriend was supposed to give me his last guitar, but she didn’t bring it up from Mississippi. She told me that she would mail it, but she never did.

  All I got was a guitar pick and a dog statue. It was two white dogs. One dog is playing guitar and the other a saxophone.

  My cousin gave me a photo album of the family. It had a picture of dad as a baby. He was holding a guitar with a big smile on his face.

  I tried to stay till most of the people were gone. It didn’t take people long to leave. They spent more time talking to each other than my daughter, niece, and I. I watched as my dad’s ashes were put into a five gallon bucket and then into the ground.

  There was no family dinner or anything. I got into my car with my daughter and my niece then left. Thing’s didn’t get any better on the way to my mom’s house.

  She was upset about her dad. She thought that he was messed up on drugs. He didn’t stay and talk to her.

  I had so many problems of my own that I didn’t know what to say to her. I felt bad for her.

  I was upset that all the people he played music with didn’t show up. He had helped them all when they were first starting out. They achieved more than he did even though they weren’t better than him. They couldn’t even stop and show their respects.

  I had gone home with my daughter. We just spent the day to ourselves.

  Everyone had just seen the bad in my dad. I admit I did too. That was all that was seen in the end.

  We had always looked up to our dad as being some kind of tough guy and some one that we had to fear. In the end there was nothing but a broken man.

  He was just like everyone else. He had issues that he couldn’t and didn’t want to deal with.

  Even though I had refused a lot of phone calls from my dad, I always thought that we would play one more time. That father and son jam sessions will never happen again.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  I stopped playing all together. My guitar case didn’t open at all. I couldn’t find a reason to play.

  Dust actually started building up on the guitar cases. Then the Les Paul case got opened. It should have been opened to be played, but it wasn’t.

  I had taken it to the pawnshop. We had lost a puppy and I was going to get another one. I pawned my Les Paul for the money.

  We had a white shepherd puppy. The pup had died on one Saturday afternoon as I was coming home from work. It had broken my daughter’s heart.

  It had affected me too. I couldn’t even admit to myself that I was still dealing with my dad’s death. I thought it would make us both feel better.

  I picked up my daughter up after school and took her up north. I didn’t tell her where we were going at first. I just told her that her mom had wanted me to pick her up.

  I let her pick out a German shepherd puppy. I just wanted it to be a male pup. It was our Easter present to make us both feel better. We both named him Shadow.

  I couldn’t believe what I had done, but I didn’t feel bad about it. I didn’t think about how I would feel if I didn’t get it back. I also didn’t think about how hard it would be to get back.

  I did talk to my aunt once after my dad’s funeral. My aunt had a headstone put up for my dad. She had a guitar engraved on it.

  I felt bad because I couldn’t help pay for the headstone. I just didn’t have the money. She said that she had gotten a deal on the stone.

  I was out walking with my daughter one afternoon. I stopped driving my car like I used to. Money always seemed to go to other places. The Camaro is getting old and taking more gas.

  It gets to a point that some people think that I don’t even have a car or license. I have both I just don’t have money to spare. Actually don’t mind walking as long as the weather is nice.

  It was a decent afternoon for a walk, anyways. It was a little chilly and the sun was out. We had defiantly walked in worse weather.

  We had crossed the main street and started down a side street. There was a man on a scooter, the kind people who had a hard time walking use. He was heading our way. I didn’t think too much of it till the guy had got close.

  It was Doug, my dad’s old friend. We just said hey to each other as we passed. He looked surprised to see me.

  I couldn’t believe that he was riding around in the scooter. It may seem that his drumming days are over. It was also a sign that we were all getting older.

  He knows that I personally don’t care for him. I had never kept it a secret. He turned on my dad before my dad left for Mississippi. The situation had something to do with my dad’s landlord.

  I had thought about going back and talking to him. There wasn’t anything that I wanted to say to him. There are a lot of things that are better left in the past.

  I still have the pieces to the white Spirit guitar that I had bought off him. The pieces have moved around with me since I was twenty-years old. I have no idea why I still hold on to it.

  The body of the guitar has been partly sanded. I was going to try and paint it, but had lost all interest in it. I never came up with the extra money for the parts that it needed.

  Seeing Doug did bring up a lot of memories that I hadn’t thought about in years. Was he put in my p
ath that day for that reason? Was there someone out there wanting me to remember the past?

  Chapter Forty-Five

  All that’s left are the memories of the music that was played in the past. I still have my twelve string bought after I had gotten out of jail, Jennifer’s guitar, the electric that I built, and Brian’s (aka Mad Bomber) guitar, but it’s not red anymore. I still play through the amp that my mom bought me when I was seventeen.

  I still have the guitar picks that my dad had made up for North Cherokee and the picks that I did because I wanted to be an individual.

  My mom had bought me some guitar picks from the Hard Rock Café in San Francisco. I wanted to try them out. I didn’t really have a guitar to play.

  My twelve string guitar has two busted strings. The red guitar Brian gave me is in pieces. Jennifer’s guitar is hanging on the wall and my Les Paul is in pawn show. I tried to take out the guitar that I had put together.

  It had a bust string but I knew that I could fix it. There was still a problem with the tension and adjustments.

  I wasn’t going to do much, but I took the guitar apart. I took the neck and pick guard off. Then took the bridge off and tried to fix the problem. Then I put everything back together.

  Things were fine till I broke a different string. This one couldn’t be fixed. Then I found out that I didn’t fix the right thing and found the real problem. I also found out that there is something wrong with the plug in for the chord.

  I was down to basically no guitar to play. I did have one more option. I called my mom to see about getting the Gibson Maestro back from my niece.

  I got the guitar back and it had a busted string on it too. It was the same string that I had to fix on the guitar that I had put together. I put the string on and was surprised to see that the neck was shorter. The break in the string wasn’t even a problem for the Maestro.

  I have been trying to play around on it. I just don’t know what to do with it.

  I am a third generation guitar player. I hope daughter, niece, or nephew will learn a little bit that way they will be the fourth generation.

  I had stopped wanting to learn how to play guitar. There were no more reasons for me to learn anything more with the guitar even though I still need to get better.