Free Public Domain Short Stories — Michael Catalano

Minstrel of the Dawn

The police prowl car circled the vista cliff with red and yellow flashing lights but no siren. It was not quite sunup but close. A man with a painful limp in his eighties paid the law no mind. He held a battered, blue beret over his heart, exposing his bald head. He sang a cappella without a Walkman or a YouTube song. His gravelly tones were in Hebrew, in a minor key that never became major.

Two burly men in blue approached the singer carefully. They did not draw their guns or night sticks. "You're breaking curfew again, Mr. Rubin. You can't be here for your own safety. You have to move on."

The old man didn't answer right away. Instead, he slowly finished his song. Then he turned with sad, haunted eyes to the officers and spoke in a thick accent. "My own safety? Move on? Muggers and thieves do not frighten me. I am the only one still alive, sir. All the rest were gassed in the camps. I honor them with my voice every morning."

The two police officers looked at each other in confusion. One of them spoke. "Mr. Rubin, if anything happens to you, it will look bad for us. There's been a lot of crime reported lately in this neighborhood."

Mr. Rubin didn't answer right away. Instead, he pointed to his throat. "I carry in here the souls less fortunate. I honor them with my song. If you or the muggers wish to join me, you are welcome to do so." He took a deep breath. "When the Allies rescued me from Dachau I promised to sing every morning before the sun rose. I have kept my word. I will continue to keep my word." He turned away and resumed his song just as the first sliver of light emerged from its slumber.

The officers were taken aback. However, they did not feel slighted. Instead, they removed their head wear and stood in reverence as if Mr. Rubin sang the Star Spangled Banner at Candlestick Park. When he finished his face was the first thing the sun kissed. He placed the battered, blue beret back on his head, nodded politely to the police, and hobbled away without a cane.

I was a hundred feet away when this happened. From then on, the police adjusted their schedule to be present when Mr. Rubin broke into song. They knew no Hebrew nor did I but somehow that didn't matter. They never arrested him. When Mr. Rubin died six months later, his children and his children's children's children cried at the temple cemetery. Yet somehow, it lacked the courage and yes — the spirit of one Judah Ben Rubin. They mourned his passing. I mourned his life. To me, he was forever.

The Oddballs

She was black-braided and beautiful like so many other teenage girls in her native village. But that's where the similarities ended. She disdained the drums and dances and chants for a fiddle. It was not one a professional musician would ever use. She bought it at a second-hand store much to the shopkeeper's amusement. Then she changed much like a butterfly did to a moth.

No one in her village could figure her out. She was like a live pigeon squirming in their hands. Her music wasn't country and western or bluegrass or anything anyone heard before. If it were poetry it was the freest of free verse. She reminded the ancients of the mustang that once roamed the region — wild, tangled, and untamed before horseshoes and a saddle sidelined him.

She endured the ridicule at grade school then later at the higher classes. Despite her looks and her mother's desire that she marry "a rich boy," no one was drawn to her. It was as if her music and her "odd" ways were too much to overcome. Then she met — him!

Her boyfriend wore glasses, loved reading, and avoided violence whenever he could. "I guess these oddballs even each other out," one high-school girl scoffed. The boyfriend was tall and thin, spoke little, and reacted even less — until he met her. He smiled at the gossip but chose not to indulge. "I have better things to do," he said to no one.

So where does this story go? The musician and her boyfriend would hike high into the hills and just sit. The girl was much like a hewer of wood the way her violin bow and her black braids swung with its rhythms. She didn't worry about chords or codas, and wouldn't know adagio from spaghetti. She chose not to corral her inner child but instead carved a melody that few might hear and none would applaud.

And the boyfriend? He would read and smile and stare and read and smile and stare some more. He would say, "It's beautiful — and so are you," in their tribal tongue. For the 16-year old girl, tired of meeting everyone else's dreams and demands, his praise was more than enough.

Moaning Caves

It's been said that a child speaks a drunken man's thoughts. I scoffed at that until I reached Moaning Caves, a sight-seeing haunt deep in the Northern California mountains. Like the other ten or twenty tourists, I paid the entrance fee, prepared to be, well — entertained.

The guide, a young man stuck between his teens and tweens, didn't disappoint. He rumbled in a thunder voice about the power of pitch blackness where slivers of streetlights and stars could not penetrate. We descended several hundred feet on a platform viewing a panorama of stalagmites and other natural rock formations, protected it seemed, from a wind tunnel that yes — seemed to moan. Then the lights went out!

The groans were entertainment enough. Adults were hep. Yes, we got our ten dollars' worth, thank you very, very much. The guide was astute enough to let the oohs and aahs permeate the rocky interior as if we were journeying to the center of the Earth. The pitch blackness was enough to unnerve Beetlejuice himself. Then the real fun began!

A child, no more than seven, started to muse aloud. "What if we wake up dead down here? What if we're stuck forever and ever and never get out? What if giant spiders come and eat us up? What if we fall down, down, down and we can never, ever, ever get up?"

I heard a harsh voice whisper. "Will someone shut that kid up?" Another one echoed. "If that child was 40-year-old, he'd be committed." A third one shrilled. "Forget 40 — try 20."

The tour guide was savvy enough to let the child's what-if musings continue. After all, the guide held the power of light over darkness. When the power returned to that subterranean setting, much to the relief of the adults and to my amusement, I keep my gaze on Jimmy — or was it Johnny? He retained that wide-eyed innocence befitting a child of his age. But I also stole looks at the giants — adults unwilling to confront their darkest caverns. For a moment I thought the child was the preacher man and we were, unwitting or unwilling, his pet spiders.

The Sunset Chaser

Even among her own kind, the Native American maiden was viewed like the loose screw on a doorknob in her home village. Weather permitting and gale-force winds excluded, she climbed the nearest and steepest mountain every late Saturday afternoon without fail. She toted a fire-engine red hang glider with golden chiffon trim high over her head, careful not to fall on her journey to the summit.

The tribal police tried to dissuade her, saying it was too dangerous and, if she fell, well — let's just say she had method to her so-called madness. She was young, courted by every virile male within spitting distance of the reservation. But there was that lure for adventure she cultivated much like the sweet corn husks her nana harvested.

When she reached the acme, she strapped on the harness, checking and double-checking it for weaknesses. Her instructors outside the flying school were sticklers for safety, something she never took for granted. Satisfied that everything was in working order, she launched herself down towards the disapproving town far below her feet. She tracked the setting sun, almost by clockwork, as it made its descent. She ignored the oohs and aahs of onlookers, cataloging instead the cumulus of colors.

I can imagine the eagle and the hawk scouring the scarlet skies for carrion. But I cannot say what mesmerized me more, her red-red camouflage into the twilight or those seared skies. She suckled sunset the way a farmer fondled his bellowing cows for milk, down to the last lavender drops. It was as if the sun itself rewarded her descent down, down, down till the moon and its darkened shine forced her to abdicate into cornfields and with it her grasp of the sun.

Come Monday she returned to the need of making a living, to the grind of bills and sifting which boyfriend she should date — if she should date any of them at all. She wanted to see that same spark she carried throughout the week, till she could, at last, escape society's handcuffs and chase her beloved sunset down to the unforgiving ground below.