Bad Whiskey

0. the worst kind

"it's the wondering what could've been that keeps me up at night, [...] that's the worst kind"

Robin was six years old and sitting on the hard gravel of a stranger's driveway the first time she ever held a guitar.

The instrument was much too big for her tiny frame and the bottom string was snapped and curled in on itself, but it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She had taken Eli by the hand and gone running across the street to the table it was leaning against at the garage sale the moment she saw it.

She had seen guitars many times in her life. Eli owned a music shop and sometimes when Mama worked late he would take her there and she would sit on the counter and admire the shiny instruments hung on the wall. Though she knew they were for playing, she never dared to ask to hold one. In a way, they reminded her a little of works of art, framed and put on display, meant to be seen and admired but not touched.

But there on that table sat that second-hand acoustic guitar, just sitting there with a $6 sticker plastered just below the pick guard and so accessible for a child like herself.

And there she had plunked down on the hot gravel of the driveway and held out her arms and cradled the guitar in her arms. It was so badly out of tune that the sound it made when she strummed was barely recognizable as a note at all but in her memory it would remain the most beautiful sound she'd ever heard.

The woman running the garage sale – red hair, freckled face, tired eyes – had wandered over at the sound, and watched Robin for a moment with a sad sort of smile. "I know it's a little rough, but if you want it, it'll only be three dollars." She spoke directly to Robin.

Robin's cheeks flushed redder than they already were. She handed Eli back the guitar and scrambled to her feet, as though she had been caught doing something she shouldn't have. If the woman knew she didn't play, that she really had no business holding the instrument, would she take it from her hands and sell it to someone else? Robin's heart raced with a mixture of panic and excitement.

Eli placed a hand on her small shoulder and with the other, placed the guitar back to its home on the table. "Appreciate the offer, Ma'am, but we'll have to pass on it today."

"Not even for $2?"

"It's a little too big for her. Better off finding her something more her size." He glanced down at Robin. "Right, kiddo?"

But, in the few moments she had held the guitar in her hands, Robin had fallen in love. She knew if she asked, Eli would give her any instrument she asked for and then some – he was good that way, the best man Mama had ever brought home – but there was a part of her that worried he'd promise her and then he'd forget and then he'd be gone just like every fellow Mama welcomed in.

She worried a lot. Eli told her she worried too much for a six year old, but Mama was honest. She said there was a lot to worry about in the world, and the sooner you learned that, the better off you were. Robin had learned real fast. She thought Eli could have learned that lesson too, but instead he seemed he would rather convince Robin and her mama that they were both wrong and the world was good. Everything came around in the end.

With one look at that all too familiar wide-eyed, concerned expression, Eli handed the woman the two dollars and carried the guitar all the way home for Robin. She skipped at his side, feet feeling lighter than ever before.

The next day he showed up at her apartment with breakfast for her and Mama and a shiny new guitar that fit perfectly in her tiny lap and a plastic bag full of songs and lessons.

She was only halfway through the first of the books when Eli and Mama started fighting.

Robin did not understand much of what they were fighting about. GROWN-UP STUFF was what Eli called it. She understood a lot of GROWN-UP STUFF like money and kissing and that stinky, icky juice that Mama liked to drink – but she didn't understand this. She didn't understand why Mama wanted to throw Eli away like he was one of the bad men that she usually brought home. She didn't understand why Eli said he had to go, or why he started wearing a gold band around his one finger like the married men that lived in the same building.

And then one morning he was gone. All Robin had left of him were the two guitars – one shiny and new, one broken. A week later, Mama brought home a new fellow and he would come home late at night and yell and scream and all she could do was hide in her room and drown him out with the strumming of her guitar.