Sweeter Life Read Free Page B

corners but nowhere near as far as the eye could see.
    Because it was too early yet to head over to the school, Cyrus turned east onto Talbot Street. He walked past the china shop and hardware store. In front of the Vogue Theatre he stopped to watch Po Mosely.
    Po had been a fixture of Wilbury for as long as Cyrus could remember.Most adults crossed the street rather than pass him on the sidewalk; most kids spent at least some part of their childhood tormenting him. Not that Po was the kind to get angry or chase. He was a retard, that’s all, more funny-looking than ugly. He wore hand-me-down grey suits and battered brogues. Could be the shoes were hand-me-down as well because he had a hotfoot kind of walk, all scrambled and unsteady. He sure did a lot of walking, though. You never saw him when he wasn’t cruising the streets in that hoppy hurried gait of his. And if he ever saw a piece of paper on the sidewalk or grass—a gum wrapper, newspaper, bus ticket, anything—he would stoop down without missing a step and try to toss the offending piece of litter onto the road, often having to circle back two or three times before it was properly disposed of in the gutter. That’s what he was doing now, making sure the sidewalk in front of the Vogue was free of ticket stubs.
    Cyrus liked Po, or rather he liked the idea of Po, that at least one thing in Wilbury was different and off-kilter. When Cyrus imagined New York or Chicago, he pictured a crazy carnival of sight and sound and character—the kind of place where a guy like Po would fit right in, the kind of place that Cyrus couldn’t wait to explore.
    After a minute or so, Cyrus moved farther along the street to Star Radio, a fusty repair shop for all things electrical—radios, TVs, vacuum cleaners. There in the window, on sale by consignment, was a Les Paul Standard. Cyrus knew it had to be a 1953 or 1954 model because the pickups were black plastic rectangles instead of the later and more common humbucking pickups, which were chrome-plated. It had a Tune-O-Matic bridge and a gold top. Between the pickups someone had stuck a small decal for STP oil treatment. The guitar rested on a rickety metal stand.
    Cyrus had been eyeing the Les Paul for nearly a week. He couldn’t figure out what it was doing in Wilbury, in Star Radio of all places. Everyone played a Les Paul—Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck—the Stradivarius of rock-and-roll guitars. Its appearance in town had started him really thinking about what he wanted in life. And the answer, more and more, seemed tangled up with that golden instrument.
    While Cyrus stood there, Geordie Jackson came out and smiled at him. Geordie was a great big slab of a man. He coached the local hockey team,the Wilbury Wings. He kept his red hair trimmed in an armed forces buzz cut, the kind of bristly thing you could scrape your boots on.
    “Can’t help noticin’ you got yer eye on that there guitar,” Geordie said. “Come and see how she feels. Belongs to the wife’s kid brother. Up and joined the navy a while back. Don’t think he ever played it much.”
    Cyrus lifted the instrument from its stand and cradled it in his arms, surprised at the weight of it, as if it were made of pure gold. When he crouched on the floor and started tuning, he noticed a small crack in the head between the first and second tuning pegs of the treble strings. “Look,” he said, not critically but softly, like a doctor exploring a wound.
    Geordie leaned over and made a farting sound with his lips, a little blooper. “That there’s just a little nick, Cy, what we call a surface crack. Happens all the time and such. But you know, between you and me, that’s gotta knock the price down some. Reece, that’s the wife’s brother, he was say-in’ how he wanted $170, as high as maybe $200 for the thing, but that seems a bit steep to me. And beings as it’s you and a good kid and all, and how I knew your old man real well, I’d say $150 would