Memoirs of old writing days

No Promises in the Wind Epilouge

Hey! So this short story was written last year, when I was in 8th grade. The epilogue is about the book No Promises in the Wind, and yes, it was a school assignment also. Pretty much all of these were for school. I think that I got better at this. Do you? 💨 🎹 🪕
5 years later
I finished the ending of my song with a flourish, the fingers of the keys moving, them dancing, gliding, instinctively pressing the keys in a glorious melody at the grand piano in the restaurant that Miss Crowne had recommended to me. Joey, 15 years old, finished the note and strummed the final chords on the banjo.

The audience burst into applause and Joey grinned a brilliant white smile, his blonde hair falling into his eyes behind the brown cap he wore. He clutched the banjo, the one that held all the sentimental value, the one that was Howie's. It was worn down, brown and beat up, and the strings were frayed thin.

I stood up and took off my hat, bowing to the people in front of me. Joey mimicked my movements, and I could tell that he was drinking in the applause and the praise like a starving man who was offered a glass of wine.

My eyes landed on Dad and Mom and Kitty, all of them looking at Joey and I with shining eyes. My dad looked the proudest and could feel the pride swell up in my chest. I opened my arms and my deepened, booming voice silenced the lingering conversations and praise. "Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for the applause. I promise you, come back next week, spend you dimes, and there will be a fest you will never forget!"

Most of the men at the bar were drunk and flushed, so they raised their jars of beer and shouted out laughter and promises.

Joey and I hopped off the wooden stage and made out way to our family, harsh pats on the back and drunken cries vaulting towards us. I reached Papa and he pulled me into a hug, slapping my back. "Good job boy, good job! You gonna make us rich with that music!"

He let out a mighty laugh and my lips curled upward in pleasure. Things were looking better for us now that Joey and I came back to the dreariness of Chicago. When we came back from Lonnie's, Dad was dirt poor and literally a skeleton of himself, shallow and sunken. Now, he was back to himself, big and husky so that I almost rivaled him. The best part was, he didn't lash out at us, any of us. Not even me.

Mom unburied herself from Joey's shoulder and walked over to me, reaching up to her toes to kiss my cheek. She was the shortest one in the family, with Kitty and even Joey inches past her. 

"Good job, Josh," she said, proudly. I smiled at my fragile mother and kissed her cheek back.

Dad handed me a glass of whisky and and raised his own in the air. "To our sons," he toasted. I raised my glass to the air than brought it down to my lips, drinking solemnly and block out my mother protesting and taking the beer from Joey when my father offered it to him. To Howie.

A couple hours later and I waited until my dad was drunk and tipsy when I asked him the question I've been dying to ask him until I was of that age. "Father," I asked.

"Yes son?" he slurred. He leaned against the counter and my mom, and ordered another beer. The drink arrived almost immediately and as my father reached for it, I snached it away from him and slid it to my mother. She caught it and blinked in surprise, shocked.

I offered her a small sure smile that she returned and drained it down. "What the - Mary! What do you think you're -" Stefan tried to grab the glass from his wife's hands but I grabbed his wrists before he could do anything to my mother.

I nodded to her and she stood up from the stool and walked to Kitty, who was talking to the owner of the store, her fiance. Joey was talking nearby to a woman nearly 10 years older than him that was winking flirtatiously at the boy.