Peter McFeely

He couldn’t remember what age he was, but he could remember the happiness. Up until that point, and after, he did have a happy childhood. His parents were caring, they had a comfortable life and there was nothing he ever missed not having. But this was a different kind of happiness. While he couldn’t have described it at the time, it was a feeling through the family, and through the town, of achieving something special. Of reward for generations of hard work. Of pride. The backslaps which greeted Uncle Jimmy were firm and the embraces warm. Laughter filled every room in which he stepped. Then Uncle Jimmy was gone. He didn’t see him for a long time, but he heard him. Often. And so did the town. Laughter and smiles still filled the room when Uncle Jimmy’s voice filtered through.

Neither could he put his finger on when the smiles stopped. It wasn’t abrupt, just that the pauses between laughter became longer until one day the next never came. He didn’t hear Uncle Jimmy’s voice any more. Not until he opened the door and actually walked in. Initially, Dad seemed relieved, then angry. “Why?” was the question he heard most often for many months. “Go back” was the suggestion, or instruction, that inevitably followed. But Uncle Jimmy stayed and so did the voice. He could see Jimmy, not just hear him. He could watch him picking his fingers over the guitar. It might have been selfish, but he remembered that was when he was happiest.

Marcus did remember what age he was when he started to understand where Uncle Jimmy had been and what he had done. He was 11 and it was September. The summer sun never lasted long enough and already there were signs of autumn passing it’s fingers through the leaves of the trees, vibrant greens beginning to burn at the edges. Marcus was in a new school with new teachers. One was more excited about the prospect of imparting wisdom than the others. The music teacher had paused when calling the roll and repeated his surname. “A relation of Jimmy’s?” he had ventured. The hope was audible in his voice and, to be honest, Marcus thought slightly unbecoming of a grown man, a teacher no less. “Yes,” he had answered. Mr. Allen’s stretched lips reminded Marcus of the smiles from when he was younger. “I hope talent runs in the family!”

Marcus crashed his hand through the strings. His eyes bounced around the bar following the reverberations. He saw his uncle and caught the faintest of smiles. Marcus had seen him come in, sliding through the crowd to a tall table at the back. Jimmy was there every time they played, sometimes for hours, sometimes for just a few songs. His presence, no matter how brief, was the affirmation Marcus sought. As usual, Jimmy sat alone, dark hair creeping over his eyes, a rockstar’s veil. Occasionally, the leather jacket taught over his bony frame met with a backslap, though few were as firm as when Marcus was a child. Jimmy smiled and shook hands or high-fived everyone who greeted him. Every now and again, Marcus saw someone approach almost coyly, occasionally even asking for a photograph. Through it all, Marcus could always see amidst the bodies, Jimmy’s foot under the table, tapping against the rail in time with the music.

When he got home from school, Marcus dug through his father’s aging CD collection, spraying the study with dust. Jimmy’s was there. He played it on a laptop and remembered the laughter. He hadn’t heard the song in a long time but now he heard it differently. Heard the chord progression. Felt the bass that sat just beneath the surface of the song and crept to the fore, threatening to take over the room, before ebbing back behind Jimmy’s howling voice. Marcus didn’t get past the first track of the CD for over 20 minutes. He played it over and over. He looked online and found videos from Jimmy performing on stage and on talk shows. Marcus heard the same song again and again, but with the tiniest twists and nuances layered in each performance to make it unique every time. When he heard the front door clatter closed behind his father, he raced downstairs. “You never told me Uncle Jimmy was famous?!” “You never asked” came the response as his father continued down the hall and into the kitchen. “I never asked? Why would I ask? How would I know my uncle is famous?!” Marcus’s father put his bag down and looked at him quizzically. “Don’t you remember hearing him on the radio? It was all we listened to when you were younger – you were dancing to Jimmy’s songs before you could walk!” Marcus did remember but it had just never meant anything other than the fact he heard his Uncle’s voice in a room even when he wasn’t there.

Marcus learnt music from Jimmy. Mr. Allen was a valiant trier, but in truth he just encouraged Marcus to express what Jimmy taught. Within days of the conversation with his father, Marcus was begging Jimmy for guitar lessons. One year earlier, it was hard to get Marcus away from a football, but now his sports kit lay discarded. “After school, three days a week,” Jimmy had decreed. And so it was for years. Chords, finger picking, songwriting; Marcus evolved not just as a guitarist but as a musician under Jimmy’s tutelage. It wasn’t just what Jimmy taught him directly, for Marcus also studied videos of his uncle online – the stage presence and cajoling of the audience, the ability to build tension and create atmosphere. Marcus read about Jimmy, about the brooding silences and the off-camera shunning of media, groupies and hangers-on. He developed what he liked to think of as an aura, something of a nonchalance that stood him apart from his schoolmates. He was a rockstar in the making.

Marcus also read about the end of Jimmy’s career. Of how his love for Sarah brought him back to his hometown. How he chose her over music. Initially, Marcus was resentful of his aunt. He blamed her for the fact that only one record existed of, in the words of a respected critic, Jimmy’s “unquestionable talent, which evokes an emotion from the very pit of the stomach, a fire which bursts up through the belly ripping oxygen from the lungs and out through the mouth in a primordial roar of fuck yeah”. However, in time resentment turned to gratitude – without Aunt Sarah, he wouldn’t have spent all this time with Jimmy. There would have been more albums and Jimmy’s voice would have filled rooms and people would have laughed but Marcus didn’t just want the voice – he wanted the faint smile and the tapping foot that he could see from the stage. For that he thanked his aunt.

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