GREETINGS FROM SANDS POINT, NEW YORK!
He’s under firework duress, John Phillip Sousa, down in his basement building a miniature American schoolhouse out of repurposed pieces of musical instruments. I am the glue. He’s making it to be sold at auction to support music education in public schools. John Phillip Sousa had written a march, but there weren’t any marching bands left to play it. Still, they tapped JPS for the job of fundraising. He had wanted to spend the weekend without organized music, skeet shooting. So far, piano wire windows maul the air. Still-wet saxophone reeds constitute the frame. The silver mouthpiece of a flute sends invisible smoke to the South. Out on the school grounds, the spiraling valves of a helicon constitute a playground under which many after-school yokels with lighters will come to feel big again. It is almost ready for habitation. WHAT ARE WE MISSING HERE? he asks me, filling a tiny ceramic birdbath with the played spit of a trumpet. B flat just does something to human spit that can be seen, and felt. YOU COULD PUT A ‘FOR SALE’ SIGN OUT FRONT, I say. I smell sweet, like a too-ripe pear. He applies me liberally to a peg from the neck of a Spanish guitar, pressed gently onto the cello wood front door for a handle. The desks inside are made out of cereal boxes and hold no books, but some kids are camped out beneath them, practicing their active shooter scenarios. The whole schoolhouse already has that abandoned music store look of foreclosure, and it’s just been built. I am doing my best. I KNOW WHAT TO CALL THIS, he fairly sings at max volume. D MINOR. YOU SURE THAT WOULD EVEN FIT IN THERE? I say. I have wanted desperately from the start to call it “American Schoolhouse.” SURE IT WILL. THE WINDOWS DON’T HAVE GLASS IN THEM, he says, marching his fingers into a point. He weaves a roof with the tired horsehair of an amateur violin bow. The stretched-thin mane doesn’t look like it would hold out one sour note. He works out the street address to the percussive tones of AM radio: dully, the house resides on Washington Street. He likes the federalist-leaning stations best because their exasperation is nearly musical. There is melody often in the ranting of out-of-time men. Through the intermittent static, we learn that someone, somewhere, is scared of a lightning storm fencing them in their home without toilet paper. They ask the host sincerely, BUT REALLY, WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO? An answer will be provided, after a quick word from the sponsors. I HOPE THIS GETS THE MESSAGE THROUGH, JPS says, adjusting his glasses to make sure his aim is sure. He tosses a stave paper origami bird into the school yard. He’s written EAGLE across the folded wings in a conductor’s cursive, and the gnarled paper thing is missing its head.
GREETINGS FROM McLEMORESVILLE, TENNESSEE!
I walked in this morning to Mark Twain shaving his moustache. He was using disposable razors and there were already a few casualties piled on the edge of the sink. They had thick, white moustaches themselves. I said, MARK, WHAT ARE YOU DOING THAT FOR? He said, THE SHOW IS OVER, SON. I’VE TAKEN ANOTHER PART. I had stopped for portage on my way south, and he was drinking from a coffee mug between words and shaving cream was sliding into the lip of the mug. Turns out that was the way that Mark Twain took his coffee: with a few globs of shaving cream. He was holding up a pair of overalls with his body, and he was bare-chested between the straps. His armpits were like snow cones that hadn’t ever thought about melting. They appeared to be that white kind of Mystery-flavored. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO TODAY? I asked. I was still standing by the bathroom door and feeling that sadness of not being alone in the bathroom. I had been driving for months over the Ohio River. PROBABLY GET MY UPPER LIP SUNBURNT. DO A LITTLE JUGGING. TOIL ON THAT DAMN PAIGE, he said, working a razor through the side I couldn’t see. It all was looking more raw by the second, and so I took off for the door. His front door had a ship’s wheel for a door handle, and so I turned the house East. I walked for minutes down steps that I couldn’t remember climbing. Out next to the highway, I slipped this note in his mailbox. Everything in here was sent to a guy named Hal Holbrook. The whole mailbox is swimming with the sardines of envelopes that request response. It’s damp and shaped like a large-mouthed bass. The mailman couldn’t have pushed another one in here. Here he comes now.
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Avery Gregurich is a writer living and working in Marengo, Iowa. He was raised next to the Mississippi River, and has never strayed too far from it.