My Cardboard Balcony

Free Music on the Ground Floor by Belinda Roddie He bought four harmonicas, cedar-odor cases for each, and gave them to his kids so they could trill a buzz as thick and sweet as the whiskey poured into their landlord's glass on a sticky June-uary evening. His wife guzzled lemon water to stave off the headache bubbling like carbonation, as the growl of slotted metal overpowered the wheezing springs in the apartment's one couch, its cushioned eyes sagging more and more with tired age. Some day, he'd pull the banjo out and accompany his children in a tune that was carved into a stump by his father when his last hope for livelihood was saved by the warbling guttural courage of his kin, as they provided free music on the ground floor of the dust town's oldest hotel, with bass and tin and brass frets on a mandolin, the coffee cold but the cotton smiles bright, as sweat made the strings rust faster but the voices rise higher to the breath of southern ...

The emergency meeting had, of course, been unplanned, so the constant whining of the counselor was more than uncalled for. He only shut up about his ruined schedule for a fancy dinner and board game night when the High Chieftain raised a stave up in a gesture of "Can it now, or I'm swatting you under the nose with it." "Now," the chieftain said as the counselor snapped his trap shut, "we are here for a very serious reason."