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because no one, they say, dies that way on his own. That is true.
It was almost like if we stopped playing, the Beard was gonna kill this girl. He’s screaming, waving that knife, she’s choking, and nobody was doing nothing, because this guy was big.
“Hey!” Frankie yells again, and he’s playing like lightning, still getting every note clear and true. And damn if the guy doesn’t turn and point the knife at him now like he’s taking the challenge.
Here is the rest of my child’s story.
But the country was struggling with its crippling war, money was scarce, and alone with a baby, she could hardly work. Month after month, she barely kept them going.
“Listen please, señora,” he said proudly. The artist on that disc was a Spanish guitar player named Andrés Segovia. What he played that morning held the baby Frankie mesmerized. His head tilted. His little hands clenched. And when the song finished, he finally cried. Loudly.
As winter approached, she caught a fever and suffered fits of delirium. She would walk the streets with a red towel around her neck, leaving Francisco to cry alone in the flat. Sometimes she mumbled words she thought were being spoken to her.
She flung the baby into the water. And she ran.
But I’m eighty-two now, and Frankie’s dead, so the hell with it, he deserves the credit.
One must indeed test the strings in this life, bounce the bow, wet the mouthpiece, prepare for the deeper music
The dog bit down on the blanket and scrambled backward, until both of them were safe on the bank.
“Do not cry over losing blood. Not for something you love.”
He wondered if he should tell El Maestro that he was only six years old.
My right hand to God. And he walks up to the porch and he leaves the cash box there, just inside the door. Doesn’t even knock. Then he gets back in and says, “We can go.”
He’d orchestrated the entire fiasco—the elephants, everything—just so we’d get paid. Then he gave it all away.
So a legend was constructed. It is how you humans remold your history. Baffa told Frankie that his mother was a saintly woman, Baffa’s one and only love, who died tragically on a trip they took shortly after Frankie was born. This, Baffa figured, would explain why they never visited her grave at the cemetery in Villareal.
He had his story. Years later, inspired by this tale, he would write his first guitar composition, which he called “Lágrimas por Mi Madre.” “Tears for My Mother.”
Frankie knew she was right. Still, he loosened another string, then another and another.
There are moments on earth when the Lord smiles at the unexpected sweetness of His creation. This was one of those moments.
Major to minor.
I do find it strange, him being buried in Spain, because I remember him saying something very harsh about this country once.
“I’m never going back there again,” he said.
People clapped and the owner smiled and the soldiers were appreciative.
some things you endure for a reason.
What is important is, that afternoon, in an empty yard behind a redbrick jail, a final conversation took place between the unmarried man who found a baby in a river and the blind guitarist who taught him his destiny.
“Is this too fine a guitar for a boy so young?” “No. It must be with him the rest of his life.” “Why?” “Because I cannot be.”
Man searches for courage in drink, but it is not courage that he finds, it is fear that he loses. A drunken man may step off a cliff. That does not make him brave, just forgetful.
Francisco— It is time for you to leave. It is too dangerous here. This is your papa’s wish. He loves you and will find you one day. I am sorry that I cannot continue to teach you. But you can teach yourself now. Find your aunt in America. When you need money, play your guitar. If you miss me, as I will miss you, close your eyes and play the strings that I gave you. I will be in your music always. —Maestro
A Broken heart will eventually find the way to truth .
……FIJS03……
Of course, had El Maestro been able to see, our story would be different, for long before handing over the boy in the moonlight, he would have recognized something in Frankie’s dark grape hair and deep blue eyes and the curl of his lips. He would have seen in the boy’s face the unmistakable reflection of his wife, Carmencita. He would have somehow realized she was Frankie’s mother, and the burned corpse left behind in the church was only half the murder he had thought.
He would have realized, when Baffa confessed to not being the child’s father, that he, El Maestro, was. That for years he had been teaching the very child he had been mourning.
What?????
“You’re welcome,” Alberto said. “Good-bye.” He pushed the blind man over the ledge, dropping him twenty feet into the water, where his tears and the sea became one.
Ohhhhhhhh! What a shame .
lifting above the crowd like he was flying, then falling like some circus act—well,
A writer once asked Frankie what his bravest performance was—ever—and he said the time he played alone in the bottom of a boat.
Coming To America
But a room is not a house, And a house is not a home When the two of us are far apart And one of us has a broken heart.
saw Frankie crying. “You all right?” I said. “Yeah,” he said.
But you could see it got to him. He didn’t even wipe away the tears. I didn’t learn until much later that he was an orphan. No mother. No father. “A House Is Not a Home.” No wonde...
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You know that they came from Carmencita, Frankie’s beautiful, dark-haired mother.
“I am sorry,” Carmencita said. “Your husband, will he teach your child to play?” “It is all he speaks about.” “Then you must have these.” He reached into the box and removed a set of strings, coiled together by a yellow band. They seemed brand new, almost shiny. “I could not,” she protested. “For your kindness.” “It is not nec—”
Frankie believed this blonde was Aurora York, the girl in the tree. The man with the knife had confessed that he’d just met her and said that she was visiting from Tennessee. Which is why Frankie stowed away in a car headed south.
Do you think me meddlesome? Why? I have told you I love my disciples.
“Now you listen,” he said, raising to within inches of the doctor. “I just came from the Grand Ole Opry. So did he. This is an important man.”
As he went to board, the bus driver said, “No dogs allowed unless you’re blind.” Thinking fast, Frankie put his hands out in front of him and said, “Why do you think I’m wearing these glasses?” He and the creature were allowed to get on. The bus pulled away. An older woman sitting across from him tapped him on the arm and stuffed a ten-dollar bill into his hands. “May God help you with your affliction,” she said. Frankie thanked the woman. He heard the dog whimper. He wondered why God was always mentioned in the most unusual moments of his life.
😊 “In life you have to do what you have to if you wants to survived.”
———FIJS03——-
The dog was there to pull Frankie from the river.
