Secret Symphony
Inspired by the work of Jarbas Agnelli and Paulo Pinto
The blackbirds were spread across the telephone lines like a meandering melody scrawled on a musical staff. With their every shake and hop I could almost hear a trill in the wind, an improvisation.
Mom was working up the guts to pass the ancient farm truck in front of us, but this stretch of Route 4 was exceptionally hilly and the station wagon didn’t exactly have a V8 under the hood, either. So we stayed behind it, suffering its wake of black exhaust and old pigstink. Baby Gene was in his car seat beside me in back, his tiny eyes fixed on his new K-Mart shoes.
The farm truck braked hard. Mom yelped and threw the wheel to the right. The wagon responded slowly, pointing its grill towards the bordering telephone poles then down into the roadside ditch. The blackbirds scattered at this and the wind suddenly died. I grabbed the headrest of the seat in front of me with one hand and pushed Gene back into his car seat with the other.
“Nope, nope, nope,” Mom repeated frantically. She spun the wheel back towards the road, almost overcorrecting. The front end lazed out of the grass in a wide, muddy arc. The rear tires spun in place for a moment and then we were back on the blacktop.
Baby Gene only had eyes for his blue sneakers; I was still pressing his right shoulder in the car seat. Mom surveyed both of us briefly, obviously anxious about taking her eyes off the road. “You guys okay?” I nodded and Gene just giggled. Mom returned my nod with a weak smile.
Now that the commotion was over the blackbirds began to redistribute themselves along the telephone wires. The wind kicked up as well, spraying our car with stray strands of hay from the farm truck.
“This guy has to turn off sometime,” Mom predicted.
I wasn’t paying attention. The wind was back, making its music, and I was rolling my window up and down in concert with it. If I wanted to emulate woodwinds I would crack the window just barely, and their thin, reedy notes would course through the car. When the time came for something more robust, I widened the crack into a gaping hole and the sound of cellos and tubas rumbled through the backseat.
The birds were part of this, too. It really seemed that the wind changed its phrasing every time they reorganized themselves along the lines. I was bursting to share this with somebody, but Gene was too young and too obsessed with his new Keds and Mom was a nervous wreck from driving behind the idiot in the truck.
A green sign on the side of the road grew as it approached:
NEWTON TOWNSHIP: 5 MILES
“Almost home, guys,” Mom called back, more for herself than for us. Her relief was palpable. This drive down Route 4 was always the bane of Hopesville shopping days. There wasn’t a week that passed where she wouldn’t march into the living room brandishing the day’s paper and recount the tale of some accident somewhere along it.
I was about to return to the business of conducting my invisible orchestra when I heard Mom groan, “And what in the hell is this?” I turned to look.
The old farm truck’s circular braking lights were lit and it was crawling to a dead stop right on the road. Another old Chevy was coming into sight in the opposite lane, and it was slowing as well. When their paths converged the vehicles halted. Both drivers’ side doors swung open and a man emerged from each. One was tall and the other short, but both were in their graying middle age and almost twins in their denim and chambray. They shook hands and began a jovial, animated conversation.
“This is unbelievable!” Mom spat.
Now, Mom had lived her entire life in Newton, a town just shy of a thousand souls, so as far as she was concerned car horns didn’t exist. It also went without saying that gainfully employed men with more salt than pepper in their hair were de facto figures of authority.
These lifelong lessons were now battling with her blood-deep maternal instincts, though, not to mention her perfect hatred of this road. Mom worked up her courage, rolled down her window, and shouted: “Hey guys, can’t this wait? You’re in the middle of the road and I’ve got kids here!”
The two men turned to her and produced identical patronizing smiles while the tallest one, the driver of the truck right in front of us, lifted a single finger towards her and spoke. “…more minute, missy,” was all I could hear from my seat in back.
Mom turned to look at me with reddening eyes. She was terrified, so I became terrified. Baby Gene began to laugh again while Mom and I stared at each other, and for some reason that made me even more scared.
The wind suddenly buffeted the car from the right. The telephone lines were flooded with blackbirds now, an impossible number of them, and to me they seemed the musical notation of some monstrous chord. I felt their expectant eyes on me.
Without thinking, I raised my hands in imitation of the conductors and maestros I had seen on PBS fundraisers. I pointed my imaginary baton at the dark flock on the lines and brought it down in a harsh swipe. They launched, all of them, and the wind became a hurricane gale, an anthemic chorus, throwing the two men onto the roof of the Chevy. The flock swarmed over them as they both dashed into their vehicles and put them in gear. The Chevy fled first and Mom overtook the farm truck in front of us as soon as the road unclogged.
We watched the rickety old truck fall behind us. Mom honked our wagon’s horn in a victorious fanfare. Her laughter, mixed with Baby Gene’s and mine, was a separate, warmer chord.
