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Teen Writing Contest 2001 Short Story Winner 1st Place Trumpeting Harris by Evelyn Duffy, Age 16, Vineland The city breathed the cold air of the night with the rise and fall of the sirens echoing down the narrow streets. Jonathan Harris lay atop his bed, counting the swirls of dirt on the ceiling. It was depressing, that in the whole of the city he'd lived in over half his life, Harris had never been to a single place that was truly clean. Even here, in his own apartment, the grime had fought its way through the windows and under the door, and covered everything with its filmy coating. All the dwellings and businesses in the city were like this, hidden beneath a thin but noticeable level of filth. Somehow it got into the people, too. Everybody rushed and screamed, never stopping, never thinking, just working to survive in the city. The subways sailed to and fro with their human cargo. Cars made the streets a minefield pedestrians had to brave daily. Harris didn't talk to people much, but he argued that people these days didn't have much to say that was worth hearing. He knew it was a lie. He knew, somewhere in some deep part of his mind he didn't visit anymore but really never stopped listening to, that he simply didn't belong. Somehow, he knew the true reason he never went out to parties or the big name, big event shows, but preferred instead the greenery of the parks and the cool, dark, anonymous escape of the movie theaters, was that he just wasn’t cut out be a city man. He'd grown up in a midsize town, closer to the farm fields than the skyscrapers, and had only come to the city to try to make his name in business. He hadn't truly realized, when he left home, exactly what he'd be leaving behind. Now, trying in vain to get a full night's sleep, he thought about the sweet smell of the grass right after it'd been mowed, and the expectant faces of the children on street corners, waiting for the school bus. Harris sighed deeply, and sat up in the dark. He hadn't been sleeping much lately, and it got harder and harder to lie still--and he could only watch the moonlight on the floor and the dirt on the ceiling for so long. He walked out into the kitchenette, and without switching on the lights, poured himself the cold remains of his morning coffee. He sat, down and, resting his elbows on the table, put his head in his hands. He was exhausted, lonely and lost in this great, soulless, unyielding metropolis. He'd never been so unhappy and ill at ease in his life, and he realized, as he sat slumped in his seat, that he couldn't remember the last time he'd really been happy. In despair, he let his forehead slide to the table, feeling he'd been beaten and broken; he was completely overwhelmed. Some time later, and slowly, as if he were underwater, Harris began to hear a few soft notes of music. He glanced up, hardly caring, but still a bit puzzled, toward the radio. It wasn't even plugged in. Slightly alarmed, he stood up and went over to it, holding the cord in one hand and the cheap radio he'd opted to buy, instead of a television, in the other. Both were cold and still; he'd unplugged the radio hours before. Harris shook his head, trying to stop the sound. He wondered if this was what happened if you didn't get enough sleep for too long; he wondered, dreamily, if he was going insane. Instead of stopping, however, the music became clearer and louder, and Harris found himself concentrating on it. It sounded to his untrained ear like a horn playing, perhaps a trumpet. It was simple and clean, the same sweet melody rising and falling over and over. It was beautiful. It awoke something old and forgotten within him. Suddenly he could feel the rough, brown field dirt from his youth, and remember the whispered words he'd shared with one or two neighborhood girls on the old cedar swing behind his childhood home. He felt again the relief he used to feel, walking home on dark nights and seeing the golden glow from an upstairs window, waiting for his return. Almost without realizing it, Harris let himself out of his apartment. As he descended the three flights of stairs to the street, the melody grew slowly but steadily more distinctive, and Harris wondered why he felt like he'd heard its music before. That night he wandered aimlessly around the city, following the music as if he were in a trance. He started out walking quickly, with confidence in his strong strides that he'd find the music and its maker; there was something about the song that made him ache to discover its source, and the reason it was playing. To Harris, the music sounded heavenly, and he wondered why he alone seemed to hear it. As the sun began to rise, Harris stumbled back to his apartment building, hardly able to hear the trumpet over the buzzing in his sleep-starved head. Once upstairs, he pulled off his shoes and crept, covered in grime and still fully dressed, into his bed. He woke hours later, long after his workday would have ended had he been there. He showered, changed his clothes, and made himself some coffee. It felt good to have the grime of the city wash away from his skin and circle down into the drain, and the strong bitter taste of the coffee revived him. Harris sat at his kitchen table in the early evening hours, burning his tongue on his coffee and thinking. The trumpet song had been the first thing he'd heard in a very long time that held any trace of love, and emotion, and beauty; all the things he longed to find in the hostile streets of the city. It was simple and pure, and though it was insane to follow it, he'd trusted the melody and let it lead him through the lights and streets, then back safely and in one piece to his home. Even though the music was now only a memory, Harris believed in it. He thought it would come again with the night, and somehow he knew that wherever it led him, and however long it took the song to get him there, it would be a place where he could finally belong and be happy. Weeks passed. Harris slept through the days and spent the wet and miserable nights wandering through rain-slicked alleyways, following a golden tune no one else could hear. After a few days of neglecting to answer the phone, the calls stopped, and the notice of his job termination lay unopened in the mail. Harris began to realize the music was stronger in some parts of the city than it was in others, and he came to frequent those parts the most. As the days and nights wore on, the question of where the music came from became a problem of the utmost importance in his mind. After a while, he stopped going back to the apartment, and found dry and friendly doorways to sleep in instead. Two months after the night he'd first heard the flowing trumpet notes, he lay in the street under newspapers and a few plastic bags. The shoes he wore were full of holes, the soles sticking to the bottom of his feet. He wore a coat that had another man's name on the tag and was several sizes too small. The shirt underneath was wearing thin. He didn't care. This city would probably kill him, but then again, he'd always known that. The gleaming skyscrapers towered above him, and the walls of the tenements held him in. Despite all that, Harris realized he was happy, for the first time in years. The music played for him all the time now, coloring everything he saw with a soft, golden beauty. His mind seemed to be slowly collapsing until all he knew was the pleasure of the melody. One night the music beckoned to him from farther away, and he wandered out of the lower levels of the city. His simple mind was dazzled by the lights of the casinos and the theaters, a world of duplicity that infiltrated even his dream-like fog. His perception of the sounds and smells came in waves. Hearing snatches of conversation and the confused sounds of traffic rushing by, he stumbled along the sidewalk. He traveled against the flow of tuxedoed men and women in trailing evening dresses. Their perfumes and the bright, shifting colors of fabric entered his mind, and the simple, clear trumpet music he could always hear began to falter in the midst of the sophisticated confusion. This was the chaos of the city he'd always thought he could escape; this was the mask those who could afford to use put over the dirt and grime that covered them, as it did everyone else. Somehow he knew if he didn't leave this crowd quickly, he would lose the music. Alarmed, he felt himself get caught up and turned around by the chattering flood, and falling, his eyes caught glimpses of first cloth, then arms, then elegant shoes as they clapped by on the cement. As the black asphalt of the road ran up at him, the melody he loved flowed back into his soul, louder than the confusion of the street and the screaming of the women on the sidewalk. It was clearer and finer than he'd ever heard before, and so loud he couldn't hear the crunching of his own bones on the pavement, or the horn blaring on the car that came bearing down on him. His eyes and mind went black. * * * "I just can't understand it," The confused face of Martin Collazo, MD, glanced around at the other doctors near him in the sunny sanatorium lounge. "He's not suffering from the accident anymore, he's not delusional…why bring him here?" "Have the tests come back yet?" asked one of the younger staff. "No," Collazo admitted. "But have a conversation with the man, Dave. He's incredibly lucid, he knows exactly where and who he is, and he's," the doctor stopped and shrugged. "He's happy. He sits by the window and watches the leaves fall, and it makes him happy." Doctor Ferrell smiled at him. "I know what you mean. He sits there all day long, all by himself, but as long as he can see outside he never seems to mind being here. Still," she hesitated, "He told me the other day how beautiful he thought the music is here, but you know we never have music playing in the patients' rooms. I don't think he ought to be considered for release for quite some time." David Angtell broke back into the conversation. "It's a moot point anyway," he said. "The family called yesterday, and they want him kept here. They've got the cash to make sure of it, too, so I suggest we don't argue too much." He picked up his papers and strode out of the room. Ferrell put her hand out to rest on Collazo's arm. "Don't listen to him, Martin. It's not just the money, I promise. He really isn't a healthy man. He needs time to…make things real again." She started out of the room. "I'll see you later for coffee," she said, and closed the door behind her. "But he's happy…" the doctor echoed, and sighed. Four doors down from the lounge, Harris sat in a rocking chair, facing the narrow window in his room. There were hills rolling off into the distance, and he could see the hint of a small, shining lake through the trees. He heard the trumpeting rise and fall with the wind drifting away through the trees, and he smiled, as he set his heart free to follow it at last.
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