The Piano

Paul Wilson

     SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP WIRE)—Johnny Samson, the dean of the 88, whose passionate and sometimes frantic playing was immortalized in his hundreds of concert performances, died of heart failure Sunday.

     Samson constantly pushed the piano to new heights of sound but would only play his personal piano.  Some said his preference went beyond superstition, to the point of mania. He had it shipped no matter where he was performing. “I think the piano is insured for more than he is,” his manager once said.  Samson himself was more to the point. “If anything ever happens to that piano, I’ll never play again.” He showed this resolve at a show in Orton in 1972 where he was arrested. His piano—which he nicknamed Old Scratch—arrived an hour later than himself, and by then Samson had assaulted two movers and the nightclub manager.

     In 1978, the first time one of his original songs was played on a California radio station, a Supreme Court ruling upheld the government's authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language.  The song was the now infamous “Do It” which was sampled by a reggae rap group last year.

     He produced forty-three albums, twelve network specials, two books, as well as three TV shows, and appeared in several movies. Samson once hosted "Saturday Night Live."

     He won eight Grammy Awards, including best classical, best jazz, best new album and was nominated for two Emmy Awards. He collaborated with dozens of musicians. On Tuesday, it was announced that Samson was being given the Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s Grammy Awards.

     Samson was born March 15, 1937. He grew up in a rural South Carolina valley community near the Georgia border, raised by a single mother. After dropping out of tenth grade, he joined the Navy in 1954, where he received a court-martial and numerous disciplinary punishments.

     While in the Navy he started working as an off-base disc jockey at a radio station in Shreveport, La., and after receiving a general discharge in 1957, took an announcing job at WADW in Augusta, Georgia.

     From there he went on to the night shift as a deejay at a radio station in Forth Worth, Texas. Samson worked a variety of temporary jobs including an MC at a strip club, a shoe salesman, and a retail manager. He also sold bibles door to door. But that job was after his success, just last year. 

     I opened the door one Saturday afternoon and here was this famous musician trying to sell me a bible!”  A North Carolina housewife reported. “I was so excited I bought two!”

     Samson is survived by wife Joanna, daughter Parri Samson-McCall, brother George Patrick, and sister-in-law Kelly Jenkins.

* * * 

     Joanna turned away from the computer. The AP story was concise and just warm enough. It was also the first of many remembrances to come. She didn’t have much time now that Johnny’s public knew he was gone.

     She looked into the den where Old Scratch sat waiting. She stared at the ceiling. Johnny was in their bed upstairs, exactly above the gleaming black mouth.

     She’d contacted the proper authorities that morning. Everyone had expressed their sorrow. The tears started before the coffee. A clock was in motion now. People were waiting. His public would want details.  They would demand to grieve with her.  

     “Why the hell did you call anyone but the family?” Parri had asked over the phone. She was at the airport, on her way. Joanna heard no tears, only anger in her daughter’s voice. “Why did you run to the press first thing?”

     “Because it’s what he wanted.”

     But that wasn’t entirely true. Informing the world of his death wasn’t the first thing Johnny had wanted. It was what the thing that owned Johnny wanted. Contacting the media was part of a contract established long before she became Mrs. Samson. The contract bound her as well. And she intended to deliver.  

     However, world clock, world press, or even decency be damned, before she let the world in, before she started taking the calls from the networks and the magazines—and most certainly before she performed Johnny’s grisly last wish (and it was his wish despite the contract, despite the hungry thing that had controlled him)—she would keep her savior Johnny Samson to herself.  

* * *

     Joanna was a fresh-faced farm girl who enjoyed her first beer exactly one hour before seeing Johnny for the first time.  

     “Are you having fun, Boo?” asked her sister April.

     Joanna nodded absently. The club fascinated her: the smell of smoke, the noise, the people. It was more alive than home. The farm was: up at dawn, work all day, get dirty, wash up and eat, fall into bed exhausted, and repeat. This place was happening! And it all centered on the piano, the brightest thing in the room, even brighter than the spotlights.

     “Bet you never seen anything like that, huh?” her friend Cordillia asked.

     “You sure you’re okay, Boo? We can go if you’re not.”

     “Stop worrying. I’m not gonna break, Sis.” Knowing April was fretting, Joanna felt guilty that she had to be watched. 

     “She’s special. Take care of your sister,” their mother had instructed.

     Joanna knew she was special to her parents, her sister, her friend (and Jesus, according to her church), but she was also the special kind of special.

     “You’re just a little slower, honey, that’s all. You have to take more time to think,” her mother told her.

     Her father meant well but was more direct. “You got mud in your mind, girl, you gotta push through.”

     April always looked weepy. “That’s why God made you so beautiful. He gave back in your sweet face what He took away in brains.”

     Cordillia was blunt: “That’s why you got those big titties, girl. Hell, getting your brains whirled was almost worth it! Men like titties, not talking.”

     For herself, Joanna just felt sad. Things were just out of her reach. Some days she longed to be like her sister, sophisticated and mature; she longed to be sexy like Cordillia, confident and brave. Then there were days she didn’t consider herself handicapped at all. She could sit in a field of flowers for hours and rub the petals, something so-called normal people couldn’t stop to do. She would feel the silken fur of the kittens over and over, listening to their motorboat purr until it put her to sleep…but it was a trade-off. It was finding joy where she could and not thinking about the mud in her mind.

     “I wish I was better,” went her bedtime prayer. “Thank You for life, but I wish You’d make me better.”

     And underneath this, beating like a strong heart, was her desire to leave the farm, to get away from its grey walls and overalls and bland vegetables. She knew an unexplored world was out there, just out of her reach. Tonight she was free and seeing that world—and, when Johnny Samson took the stage, she found its king.

     “Oh my.”

     Cordillia patted her shoulder. “He’s a piece, ain’t he, baby?” 

     Johnny strolled out with shoulders squared. Tall, pale, handsome, Joanna memorized him. People applauded and cheered. After the initial shockwave of his beauty roared past her, as her heart ceased its fluttering and took on the more controlled beating of her nineteen years, Joanna saw that he was a sad man, a scared man.

     Something has caught him. She thought of the time she found their barn-cat with a mouse in its mouth. The piano player was like that mouse. Joanna’s heart ached for him.  

     But what’s the cat if he’s the mouse?

     “Boo?”

     “I’m fine, Sissy.”

     But she wasn’t. Her heart broke for Johnny Samson.

     He sat at the piano and began. Its shining black hide gleamed like the beetles she found in the woods, the ones that lived on shit.  

     He’s trapped, but… She knew what was happening to her because it had happened before.

     He’s trapped, but the music is so good.

     Joanna sometimes touched herself in the shower and knew those tingles well. She could have been scared, almost decided to be—this was a private pleasure after all—but then she decided not to be afraid.  The naughty tingle might be coming from the piano but she trusted the man doing the playing. 

     Johnny has it under control.

     And that made it alright. A man was supposed to make a woman feel this way. Hadn’t she fantasized about it enough? It was right. But another part of her knew it was wrong, just as she knew it was the piano and not the man making her tremble. Johnny had nothing under control.

     Joanna’s muscles fluttered and she no longer cared what was making her feel this way. It felt too good.  And more than the electric fire racing across her skin, it was the clarity in her brain, the way everything seemed open and possible and easy. She felt whole. She felt fixed.

     Oh…God…ohGodohGodGodGod!!!

     She didn’t care that it was bad, that it was out in the open. It was her first unassisted orgasm and her eyes rolled behind her squinted lids. 

     “Jo, are you sure you’re okay? You’re awfully red.”

     Since their home was small, Joanna had learned how to keep her orgasms quiet. She concentrated with all her might, bit her lip, and shoved her hands between her knees, using the table for cover.

     “I’m fine, Sissy,” she slipped the words between her teeth.

     Joanna watched Johnny. Cordillia watched Joanna.

     “I think you have a crush. You wanna meet him?”

     “Cordy, no!” April exclaimed.

     “Why not? Maybe we can get your sis laid!” Cordillia laughed and Joanna came. As she did her best to hide her trembles, Joanna thought: Maybe I can save him.

* * *

     They waited until the end of the night when the owners were tired and the bar was closing. Johnny had been offstage fifteen minutes when Cordillia took both blondes by the hand.

     “Come on.” She snuck them down a dim, skinny hallway to a closet-sized room.  

     “I don’t know about this,” April said.  

     “He was totally looking at Joanna all night. I know you saw it, too. He wants her to come. Right, babe?”

     “Right,” Joanna said.

     “Are you sure?’

     “Of course! These musician cats expect this kind of thing!”

     Cordillia knocked and then barged in. Johnny was at his dressing table, tie undone and laid across his shoulders. He smiled at them all, but he eyed Joanna.

     “I was hoping you’d come back,” he said.

* * *

     He got up and offered Joanna his chair. Cordillia did most of the talking. Joanna kept her head down so her hair hung in a curtain. She hid that way, sneaking glances at him when she thought Johnny wasn’t looking.

     But he sees you. He’s hunting you, but it’s a good kind of hunting, not like the cat with the mouse in its mouth. He could be crazy. He could be a bad man.

     I don’t care. I want those good feelings again. I want to be whole again.

     “Would you like to go for some breakfast? I know a place around the corner. I could take you home after…that is…if it’s okay with these two lovely ladies.” 

     “Do you want to go, Boo?”

     Joanna could only nod her head. But she nodded vigorously.

     “Well…”

     Cordillia pulled April up. “We’ll leave you two to it. It’s not everyday a girl has her first date.”  

     Johnny showed them out the club’s back door. When he closed it, he turned and leaned against it, looking at Joanna. He reached out and stroked her hair. Out in the main room she heard his piano tinkle.  He closed his eyes. A tear slid down his cheek. Without thought, Joanna reached out and caught it.

     “Why are you crying?”

     “Because you’re so beautiful.”

     And then, because she didn’t know about being coy or mean or any of the confused ideas of being a woman, Joanna simply did what she wanted. She kissed Johnny. She did it without grace and he kissed back. She promptly stuck her tongue in his mouth. Joanna sometimes hid and watched her parents kiss and she felt grown enough to be emulating them. She wondered if she and Johnny would “go all the way” in Cordillia speak. Johnny pulled back and kissed her cheeks.

     “Thank you,” he said. She didn’t understand, and he saw it in her eyes. “For being real. Thank you.”

     She heard the piano tinkle again and glanced that way, then drew close and liked the way her breasts felt pressed against him. She couldn’t keep her fingers out of his hair.

     “Is somebody out there?”

     “Let’s go see.”

     Joanna didn’t want to go. She wanted to kiss more. But he went, so she followed. Already she was helpless not to.

     There was no one in the main room, just the piano standing with its top open. She reached out but looked back, asking for silent permission. He swallowed.

     “Yes. See if you can appease it.”

     She feared the piano when she watched from the audience, but up close she wanted to touch it. The piano was like the beer. It made her feel good. It made her feel free.

     She stroked one of the white keys and was delighted to hear music. She picked out a tuneless melody.  She had never touched a piano, much less played one, and yet she clearly saw the keys to touch in order to make song.  

     “It likes you.”

     Joanna was too distracted to hear the relief in his voice. She watched the hammers move, and traced a finger over one of the heads.  

     Take your hand out before it bites you!

     But Cordillia had done her nails and Joanna wanted to stroke one of those silver strings. It made a ghostly zing. She closed her eyes and stumbled back.

     “They can be very sharp,” he said from a million miles away.

     “Ye-es…” Her head cleared as they retreated from the piano. Johnny pulled her clear and held her until she stopped trembling.

     “Ohhh, that’s nice.” Joanna wasn’t sure if she meant his arms, his rescue, or her rising passion. She chose lips and kissed him in her greedy way.

     “No one is here,” Johnny whispered low in her ear.

     “Then what made the sounds?”

     “The piano.”

     She laughed, thinking he was being silly. His tongue darted and she arched her back, begging him to touch her. Their rising heat stole her breath. She felt his lips against her throat, her ear, the tops of her breasts and they made the same word.

     “Please.”

      Joanna gave herself with no hesitation.

     The keys plinked again. Joanna assumed her fingers brushed the keys while Johnny sucked her nipple.  She was in a delirious heaven. Of course she heard music. The keys moved under her fingers.  

     A slow friction-build began in her middle. She found that delicious clarity again. The music sped up.  Johnny’s hand slipped under her dress and past her panties. One hand held her, caressing her lower back.  One hand worked her to orgasm. The piano played on. Her body caught fire and her thoughts were lit clear in their glow. The piano top closed slowly, quietly, so not to disturb them. That was fine with her.

     She was lost in the sudden joy of Johnny’s voice. “Thank you, thank you.” 

     They made love on the piano, under the stage lights and she had never been so happy. He filled her, opening her mind, better than all the orgasms.

* * *

     Afterwards, he helped her off the piano. His movements weren’t rude, but quick as if he were trying to keep her from lying in something nasty. She thought of a picnic with April when their dog rolled in a pile of horseshit.

     “Can I still take you to breakfast? That wasn’t just a line. I’d like to talk and get to know you. You’re different.”

     She blushed and hung her head. He put his fingers under her chin and lifted. “Don’t. You’re too beautiful. Different isn’t bad.”

     “I’m dumb,” she said near tears, feeling her mind slow again.

     Johnny put his arm around her, and Joanna finished falling in love. “No, honey, you’re not.”

     She looked at him, feeling another mental gear slip and that made her cry harder. Embarrassment set in and she broke with the returning fear. She thought of the barn cat and trembled against him.

     “Do you want to eat with me?”

     She couldn’t speak but nodded vigorously. She wanted to eat with him, wanted to be with him.  She looked again at the piano. The mouth was closed but it wouldn’t stay that way.

     It made me smarter, she thought. She wanted to be near it again, wanted to think straight again, wanted Johnny inside her again. But it scared her.

     How can I want it and not want it at the same time? That’s crazy.

     They ate at a diner two blocks down. They talked. She learned he traveled a lot. Johnny learned about love at first sight. Afterwards he slowly drove her home.

     He stopped at the head of her drive where red clay took over. The glow of the porch light was a bright speck. Joanna desperately wanted to make love again but Johnny only kissed her.

     When he spoke, his words were hoarse. “I’ll be leaving in the morning. My piano will be shipped upstate to my next gig. I’m going to drive.” He looked older by moonlight and her heart went out to him.

     “I’ll leave early, but I’ll be here, at the head of this drive, at 7:30. If you’re here, I’ll take you with me.  Don’t answer me now, but know I’ll be here.”

     She tried to swallow and couldn’t. But with his hand on her leg she could think again, and understood what was being asked of her. Guess all I needed was to get laid.

     She giggled unsteadily with tears in her eyes.

     “You’re not laughing at a guy asking you to run away with him are you?”

     “No...no...but my family. There’s them. But, tonight was…” She was scared to say what she felt and he made it better.

     “I love you, Joanna…already.”

     She kissed him and finally stepped out of the car, then turned back.

     “Please be here. I can’t say it more simply than that.”

     He drove away much quicker than he had driven her home.

     Her sister was waiting and Joanna was glad. She collapsed on the old porch swing and wept.  

     “What did he do to you?”

     “Don’t blame him—”

     Blame the piano. The thought streaked out of her mind before she knew it was coming. It scared her because her mind was usually a quiet place. It scared her because it felt true.

     “It...he…was wonderful. I just don’t know what to do.”

     It was tearing her apart, and Joanna thought maybe that was good. If there were two of her then she could go, and stay, and love everybody.

* * *

     Joanna closed her eyes and drifted in mingled agony and rapture. Her hands stole to the shadow between her legs and rubbed until she sensed dawn coming. She found no relief. She couldn’t reproduce last night either in sex or in thinking. She could only writhe in her narrow bed and moan. When the cock crowed, she screamed at herself to do something. In rushed, jerky movements, Joanna packed a bag, but it was a mess of hastily tossed items. She showered and dressed, but neglected to put on underwear. She washed her hair but didn’t comb it. She stood looking out the window at the road. Her sister joined her.  

     “What are you going to do?”

     Joanna could only shake her head.

     She waited. She swiveled between the clock and the window. With two minutes to go red dust boiled on the horizon. The sight of Johnny’s car wrenched a sob from her. She had kissed in that car. He waited, smoke puffing from the exhaust. Even the birds fell silent. Joanna didn’t blink. She didn’t move. She just squeezed the handle of her bag convulsively, and eventually Johnny drove away. Joanna fell on her sister and the crying began.

* * *

     Joanna cried for a year. She wouldn’t go out again with Cordillia or her sister. Her parents were concerned, then stern, and then resigned. She mourned. Life grew stale and time passed in the same slow trickle it always had, only now the simple pleasures she once enjoyed were gone.

     Two weeks shy of a year later, Cordillia ran to the house and found the two sisters shoveling hay. She blurted out the news. “He’s coming back.”

     Joanna dropped her pitchfork. Her wet eyes were all the prodding her friend needed.

     “I’m sure. He sent you an invitation.” She handed it over. Joanna took it with reverence.

     “Your mailman gave me the mail. I was coming to tell you I saw a poster in town for Johnny playing the civic center, but this is better. This is personal.”

     “Do you need me to read it to you?” April asked. Joanna shook her head. She was holding something from him. She could read for herself.

     “Will you take me,” she asked.  

     “Of course, Boo.”

     That weekend they went and watched him play, and in the end she was not able to get close. Cordillia tried to get them backstage with her usual skirt-flipping tricks, but Johnny was too big of a celebrity now and they couldn’t just walk in. Joanna felt panic until a slab of man unfolded himself from the security force.

     “There you are,” he sounded relieved. “If I hadn’t found you, little lady, I’d ’ve been hunting for a new job tomorrow.”

     “Johnny sent you?”

     “He told every security officer to be on the lookout for a honey blonde heartbreaker. And here you are,” the muscled man said. He even smiled.

     “I can see why he was waiting. Maybe he’ll quit moping around now. I know I would.” He opened Johnny’s dressing room door for her. Johnny wasn’t hiding or talking to someone else like a big star might.  He was sitting as he had sat before, tie over his shoulder, watching the door, waiting on her. When he saw her, his face broke into a sunny, goofy grin.

     “I hoped you’d come.”

     She ran and threw her arms around him, bending down to cover his chair. “I should have gone with you.”

     “Do you still want to?”

     “Yes, yes, yes!”

     “Then come.”

* * *

     April promised to take care of the family, and Joanna was married to Johnny four days later at a Vegas wedding chapel. The city was full of light and hustle and, at first, she was afraid. There was so much noise and so many people, but Johnny never left her side.

     She walked around those first days in numb terror. It wasn’t the city, or leaving the farm. She was afraid of being a ‘bad wife.’

     During these fears her thinking slipped backwards and she could only tremble and moan. When he took her to dinner she was terrified of the menu and let him order for her. Then she was terrified of the wine list and let him order that. Then, when she hated the taste of wine and knew she was going to puke she nearly knocked down a woman getting to the bathroom and hid there because she was afraid of the stuffy old bitch’s eyes. Johnny found her and they giggled when another stuffy old bitch asked what he was doing in the wrong lavatory.

     But still, she was afraid. She was afraid she would embarrass him or not know how to pack his lunch for the recording studio or how to dress for parties, or that a sneaky photographer would catch her picking her nose or scratching her butt or yawning while Johnny was talking. Most of all, she was afraid she wouldn’t know what to do to keep him happy in bed, that he would grow tired of her lying there and go find some other girl who knew more tricks. She began to develop a hate for the young pretty fans who followed them. They all smiled and waved, and Joanna just bet they knew how to do things like screw on top or talk dirty.

     “This is your new home,” he said, showing her his (“our,” Joanna corrected herself) movie-style mansion. It was bigger than anything she had ever seen.

     He introduced her to the cook and the maids and showed her every room. When they came to the last, he paused.

     “Do you know the story of Blue Beard’s wife?”

     She nodded. Cordillia had told it to her and April last Halloween.

     “I want to show you everything. The reason the wife died in that story was her curiosity and I want to take care of yours now. This room is special, sort of my office. I want you to know what’s in here but there’s no reason for you to go in after this.”

     With that strange prologue, Johnny opened the door to a beautiful room with white marble floors and golden curtains. Sunlight streamed through a far window. In the middle sat his piano. The sun did not touch it.

     “You remember Old Scratch.” He ran his hand over it but his face grew pale.

     “I’ll take care of this room. It’s my responsibility. Once in awhile one of the maids may come in and… clean it. But you never have to. Sometimes people you don’t recognize may come in, but don’t worry about that. It’s all for the instrument’s maintenance.” He swallowed and faced her, finding strength there. “You should never have to come in here again.”

     She nodded.

     “Promise me you’ll never come in here without me.” He took her by the shoulders, rougher than he ever had before. “Promise.”

     And she responded as she had at their wedding, the gravity of her agreement just as serious: “I do.”

     But it can make you smart again. How can it make you smart if you never come to see it?

     Johnny can make me smarter, too.

     Not like the piano can.

     Once the door was locked behind them, Johnny looked better.  

     What’s in there can make you a better wife. The thought came from outside her. Who said that? She was answered not in words, but in pictures. When they pulled apart, she spoke slyly, with a raised eyebrow.

     “Take me upstairs?”

     “Why?”

     She smiled. “I have a few ideas.”

* * *

     It was a week later when she discovered the extent of what was happening.

     Johnny had gone to the recording studio, sneaking out and letting her sleep. Joanna was eating cereal and walking the halls of her new home. She was admiring a painting and then heard a plink. She had come down to the piano’s side of the house without realizing it. The door was open just a little…just enough.  Inside, something shuffled.

     DON’T GO IN THERE.

     She pushed the door open with her free hand. What she saw simultaneously locked her vocal cords and made her finally drop her cereal. The bowl shattered. Milk and puffed rice flew in a flood.

     “Ohhhh…”

     A woman’s legs were sticking out of the piano’s top. Joanna recognized the shoes because she had complimented the maid on them that morning. Dora had said it was her first new pair of shoes in over a year, and here they were kicking out of the piano’s mouth. Blood had sprayed. Dots of it decorated the keys. Chewed chunks of skin sat in the puddle like rocks in a pond. As Joanna watched, one of the maid’s shoes fell, making a red splash. Joanna ran screaming.

* * *

     Johnny found her two hours later, huddled in the corner of their bedroom. She was crying and pulling at her hair.

     “You went in. Oh, God, you went in while it was feeding.”

     Joanna gripped him with panicked frenzy. He stroked her hair.

     “I didn’t mean to go in. I looked up and I was there. I was in a trance.”

     “I know the feeling…every time I play.”

     “What is it?”

     Johnny shook his head. “I just know it’s alive, and needs blood.”

     Huddled in the corner together, he told her how he’d found it. Below they heard the occasional plink as the piano chewed.

* * *

     When he was ten, Johnny and some friends spent a late summer afternoon working up the courage to go into the local haunted house. Trembling in the backyard, they studied a glass addition covered in filth and vines and foot-high dead grass.

      “What is it? Some kind of garage?” Chris asked.

     “It’s a greenhouse,” Larry responded. “You’re s’posed to grow plants in them.” He developed a mischievous smile. “That’s how you grow man-eating plants.”

     Chris looked around wide-eyed and totally believing.

     “True,” Larry said. “I’m not going in there.”

     “Well, me neither!”

     “Guess that leaves you, old buddy.”

     Johnny gaped at how easily he had been duped. Larry shrugged.

     “Ahhh shit,” was all Johnny could say.

* * *

     Johnny approached the house through heavy grass that swished and sighed against his legs. He didn’t like it. It was too much like alien fingers trying to pull him down. Chiggers sang. Grasshoppers jumped.  Halfway to the house he saw ants frantically eating the eyes from a dead bird. He hurried past, catching a whiff of rot. 

     There was no litter, no garbage. On a long-dead bush he found a pair of panties held in the skeletal fingers of a drooping branch. They were stiff with some stain. Johnny couldn’t tell against the black satin but he thought it might have been blood.

     He reached the greenhouse (the greyhouse, his mind amended) faster than he wanted. Suddenly, it was just there. The door was open for him. A chewed clump of witch grass held the door open like an invitation.  Why? Did the grass open it for a refreshing breeze for its plant brothers—or to allow little boys inside as a snack?  

     You’re not really going in there, are you?

     Inside, sunlight was reduced to a weird green-grey. With each step Johnny felt small crunches. It wasn’t leaves or twigs, but birds. Hundreds of them carpeted the floor. It was easy to imagine them flying around, trying to find the way out. It was easy to imagine the grass moving and letting the door close to trap them. Johnny saw quite a few of the panes were cracked and dotted with blood.

     Stepping as carefully as he could, Johnny crossed to the open back door and entered the house. The kitchen, the dining room, the hall held no blood, no weird things, just dust and mildew and the feeling of being watched. In the main room he found the piano.

* * *

     “I don’t know how long I was in there,” Johnny told Joanna. They had climbed into bed. 

     “I sat down on the dusty bench and began. The piano whispered how to do it. I don’t know how long I banged those keys but it was dark when I came back to myself. My friends had run home. How fucking creepy it must have been to be in that field, looking at a haunted house and suddenly hearing music. It was badly out of tune. I can’t imagine how it sounded. I was hoarse for days…from screaming as I played.

     Half the neighborhood was searching. My dad wailed the tar out of me for scaring them and told me he’d do it twice as bad if I ever went back. I said I wouldn’t, but there was no question I would. The piano promised it could make me great. When I returned it sounded better…more in tune. I wonder how long it sat before someone came along to give it purpose again.”

     “I was afraid I’d be a nobody, stuck like my father pulling freight from trucks when he wasn’t slinging a shovel. The piano saw my fear. I’d never thought of being a musician. I always thought I’d end up a truck driver or in the army or something. It only required one thing in return.”

     “You’ve been feeding it all this time?”

     He nodded.

     “Were you ever gonna feed me to it?”

     “No. It told me I could spare you. It said you’d be safe if I wanted you, and I did.” He swallowed. “It likes you.”

     She looked horrified.

     “That’s why it called you today. It wanted to show you what it was.”

     “It made me smarter,” she said slowly. 

     Joanna thought of their first time on the piano. She thought of the beautiful music it played. She thought of the things it whispered for her to do to Johnny to make him happy, to keep him satisfied and make him hers forever. But most of all she thought of how sweet it was to think clearly.

     “It made me whole. I can’t hate it for that.”

     “But it isn’t free. It’ll want payment.”

     Slowly Joanna nodded. She looked at her new bedroom, her new husband, and inside where there was no more mud.  

     And I’ll pay…

* * *

     The time had come. She had been reminiscing long enough. She had work to do. She looked at the piano, no longer in its white room but here. No one had moved it; the piano had simply appeared in the den.  It had been here awaiting her this morning.

     Joanna went upstairs and gently removed Johnny from bed. He came easily enough. She laid him carefully on the floor and dragged him out of the room. She carried him by the armpits and his head rolled back. He looked at her. She looked at him, wanting to remember those blazing blue eyes.

     She reached the stairs, stepped down two at a time, and pulled him foreword. Little by little, she got him down. At the bottom, she had to rest. Her back had a dull ache. When she was ready, she pulled Johnny to the piano. Joanna opened the mouth and felt the cold that always came from the instrument. Inside, its strings gleamed. She heard it whispering.

     She had traded blood and lives for her brains and her husband and, of course, her daughter. Oh, it was easy to forget that one since she was an old woman now. Parri was married with one of her own on the way, but she hadn’t been able to get pregnant in those early years and the piano had known. It had picked the thought from her misery and asked her if she would agree to a deal. Just keep feeding and it would help.  Then came the tax problems, and again, Feed me and I’ll help. The same deal had cured cancer in her breast. The promises went on and on, a list of favors, and now here she was at the end of her life and tally.

     She picked up Johnny, feeling muscles in her back give a warning twinge. She propped him against the side. She didn’t hesitate or wait because he would fall and she would lose her nerve. She bent her husband over at the waist and picked up his legs, folding them inside the mouth. She closed the lid quickly.  She didn’t want to know what went on inside.

     The first tinkle was quick. The lid lowered slowly as he settled inside. The notes came faster. Joanna watched Old Scratch eat the husband who was her payment too. The piano had made Johnny and Johnny had made her. She put her head against the thing and welcomed the cold. She cried. Eventually it was over.  The clock in the den chimed the hour.

     Would you like to play?

      Joanna nodded. The voice sounded like her husband, but she knew better. “Teach me, Johnny.”

     There is a price, you know.

     “I know. I know it’s bad, so bad for me. I know you’ve been poisoning me the whole time you’ve helped me think straight, but it doesn’t matter. I’d rather be this way than dumb. I’d rather have my life with him than have stayed on the farm. Sure there’s a price, but the good feelings of Johnny are worth it.”

     Rest your hands on the keys.

     She did. And she played. The clock moved and the phone rang unheard and she cried. The piano soothed her as best it could.

     “I’m tired,” she said after awhile. “I don’t want to go on…not without him.”

     The lid opened itself. Joanna regarded it. She nodded. Yes, this seemed best. It was just. She deserved it. She hoisted herself inside and folded herself against the strings. They were warm against her legs. She didn’t care. Despite all her life’s joys, the evil of what she and Johnny had done was heavy on her heart. With her death, it would end. No one would know and the house was locked. Her last life’s question formed but she didn’t ask it out loud. She didn’t have to.

     Don’t worry about me. I won’t—as you think—starve. There are always those who are willing to trade a little of themselves for a few favors, to trade off some of themselves to feel good. Your daughter is coming. She has a house key.

     Joanna’s eyes opened wide. “No! Not her!” She tried to rise up and escape but the wires had her.  They burned through flesh and bones, and she smelled herself cooking. The top was heavy, a coffin lid.

     It’s a decision we all make. I’ll offer her what she wants. She wants the boy in her womb to be a girl.  She wants to know if her husband is cheating. She wants a house in Beverly Hills. Those are easy baubles for me. All she has to do is say ‘no’ to keep her soul clean. But people rarely do.

     With her dying breath Joanna screamed for her daughter. She managed to turn over in the piano’s mouth and saw what waited below. Johnny was there, arms open, eyes ablaze, agony on his face.

     What do I have to show for my life except my husband’s dead, fiery embrace?

     She went to Johnny. It was all she had left. Around her, the piano played her exit.

The End

Paul Wilson, wilsonp@atc.edu or op3@msn.com  wrote “The Piano.” He was born in Aiken, South Carolina, an only child. He grew up in the South, moving between the CSRA, Rock Hill, Summerville, and even short stints in Gastonia. He has currently settled in Trenton, South Carolina with his lovely wife, Melissa, and is working on his next novel.