“I’m just answering the man’s question, sweetheart,” I replied. Leaning forward in my chair, I then began the story of the day that changed my life….

BRAYDEN

THE PAST

With my guitar resting on my lap, I closed my eyes and began strumming the familiar chords. The peace I often searched for through the music hummed throughout my fingers and then spread throughout my body. I focused only on the music while the rest of the world faded into the background—the heave and sigh of the porch swing, the shrieks of happy children, and the soft snores of my grandfather who slept in a rocking chair across from me. In moments like these, I was one with my instrument. It became an extension of myself—the best and purest parts.

“Speaking words of wisdom, let it be,” I sang softly. Although I had been a Beatles fan all my life, the song had come to mean more to me in the last six months. Learning to let things be was the very reason I’d taken up the guitar in the first place. And like Paul, I’d had my own hour of darkness to which music pulled me out of and sent me to the light.

My foot tapped out the rhythm on the worn floorboards of my grandparents’ front porch. Even from my place outside, I could hear the faint laughter and chatter of my father and his siblings. The noise barely lessened even when I worked the strings of my guitar harder. My cousins, ranging in age from three to eighteen, roamed about the large two-story, plantation-style house as well as the massive front yard.

Sunday dinners held a place of reverence in my family. I suppose they did in every old-school Southern family. I couldn’t remember a time in my life when we hadn’t spent every Sunday around the antique table that overflowed with home-cooked food.

My fingers hit a wrong note, and I grimaced as I remembered the one time I was absent. It had been six months ago. While a colorful array of red, orange, and yellow leaves coated the ground, I remained a prisoner in a white-walled room. Even if I had been able to leave, I doubt I would have noticed the colors. My world had faded to black the moment a doctor in a white coat had held up an X-ray and started rattling off my prognosis.

“Intense trauma to the cerebellum.”

“Irreparable damage to the C1 and C2 vertebrae due to the cervical fracture.”

“Inconceivable to play contact sports of any kind. Ever. Again.”

And while the physical pain was bad, the emotional agony that clawed its way through me had me ringing the nurse for more medicine. I’d toddled out onto the Pee Wee football field at barely three. As a freshman, I was starting on the varsity team. The next two years, I racked up more titles and broke even more records. On that crisp, October evening, I had scouts from both Georgia Tech and Auburn watching me play.  Unfortunately, they had a front row seat to the demise of my football career.

I’d spent a week in the hospital, and then three months doing physical therapy to repair some of the nerve damage I’d experienced. It was in the middle of therapy that a guitar was put in front of me. Before that day, I’d never even considered playing an instrument. But the therapist thought it might be good for me. While she’d explained that it would help rewire the parts of my brain that had become scrambled, I think she really suggested it because she thought I needed an outlet. The anger, the frustration, and the grief about what had happened to me were at a boiling point. I’d started lashing out at those around me—those who just loved me and wanted to see me get better.

But what neither one of us could have imagined was how easily learning the guitar would be for me. It was like a switch had been flipped in my brain. What had once looked like a bunch of jibberish on a sheet of music suddenly made total sense to me. The neurologist gave some name for it—acquired savant syndrome. While savants were usually geniuses, I was nowhere near being a Paul McCartney or Jimmy Hendrix. And even though reading and playing music came a lot easier to me, it didn’t hurt that all the time I’d once spent practicing football or watching it on television was now focused elsewhere. Any spare time I had, I was sure to have my guitar on my lap, just like today.

“Hey dickweed! Get your pansy ass out here and play,” my cousin, Mitch, called from the front yard. I didn’t even have to glance up to know that he was tossing a football up and down in his hands. Growing up, we both lived and died for football. But Mitch was the only Vanderburg still playing.

“Go fuck yourself,” I shouted.

“Language, Brayden,” my grandfather chided. I guess Nick and my yelling had woken him up.

“Sorry, Papa.”

Mitch came to the edge of the porch. Gazing up at me, said, “Come on, man. You can at least throw it back to me.”

“Leave him be, Mitchell,” Papa said, as he shuffled across the floor and then into the house.

Ignoring Papa, Mitch bounded up the stairs. “Dude, you’re wasting a perfectly good day sitting up here on your ass, screwing with that guitar.”

“Once again, go fuck yourself,” I growled. Trying to tune him out, I started playing Let It Be again.

“Hmm, hello, hottie.”

My fingers screeched to a stop on the guitar strings as I jerked my head up. Mitch’s hungry gaze was trained off the porch and far down the hillside where a grove of apple trees stood. Rising up from the swing, I peered farther into the distance. With her arm raised to one of the branches, a tall blonde was picking apples, her long hair cascaded over her shoulders. Even from where I was, I could tell she was beautiful, and it wasn’t just the way her sundress molded to her body.

Mitch flashed me a wicked grin. “Let’s go have some fun.”

I groaned. “Can’t you for once not let your dick make every decision for you?”

“And what would be the fun in that?” As he started down the porch, he glanced at me over his shoulder. “That kind of attitude is exactly why you’re still a virgin.”

“Douchebag,” I muttered, as I put my guitar back in its case. I then followed reluctantly behind him. Since we were kids, he had been the Pied Piper, leading me from one adventure to the other. Most of the time, he got us both in trouble. He was the closest thing to a brother I had, and although he was an overbearing, egotistical jackass most of the time, I still loved the hell out of him.

We trailed down the grassy hillside. Silently, I hoped the blonde would leave before we could get to her. Mitch had a way of being a sexist pig around girls. He was a legendary ladies man at school—the love em’ and leave em’, manwhore type. Although I probably didn’t stand a chance with her, I sure as hell didn’t want Mitch tainting her.