Horn Player

All he needed he carried on his back and in his horn case but she came to him on the wind.

He owed nothing to nobody. When his father died his inheritance was every road he could walk, the Lord of All and Servant To No One. All he needed he carried on his back and in his horn case. If you loaded yourself down with things then you became beholden to them, beholden to the person who gave them and he was beholden to no one. If he needed a few bucks to eat or buy essentials then he pulled out the horn on a street corner, or a bar, or any handy free venue and played a few of the old tunes, a few of his own, and stopped when he got what he needed. Sometimes he didn’t get much but then again he didn’t need much. He did fine walking the road, loved walking the road. Sometimes he allowed the occasional driver to pick him up and drive him up the road a piece, it was good to hear another voice sometimes. Sometimes another voice turned into a voice his horn could hear and the horn would tell a story he’d never heard before. He loved walking the road, most days. However, when the hawk whipped down from the north and twisted down toward him like an icy locomotive he longed for her. He stayed away from the bottle because the memory of her was at the bottom.

She loved him with all her heart, a simple love that transcended his faults and flaws. She loved him for what he was and in spite of what he was not. He remembered the taste of her sweet kisses and the warmth of her body next to his on those nights when the hawk whipped down from the north. She was complex in her simplicity, love for the sake of love and it scared him. Now the hawk carried her sweet song to him, wrapped around him and he knew the next time he put his lips to the horn he would taste her kisses again.