The Bottle Man
by Morris J. Marshall
Part 1 appears
in this issue.
conclusion
The next morning at school, Chris and Davey approached me while I was removing my books from my locker. They lingered beside me, plugging their noses.
“Do you smell anything?” Chris asked.
“The Bottle Man,” Davey replied. “Pee-you, what a stink. Now Eddie’s starting to smell like him, too.”
“What are you talking about?” I said, straightening up.
Chris stared at me, revulsion spread across his face. “We saw you with him in the Creek last night: two buddies. He’s disgusting.”
“No he isn’t. He’s teaching me violin. With his help, I might actually pass my first playing test ever.”
“It’s him or us,” Davey said. “I can’t be seen with someone who hangs out with homeless people. Come on, Chris. Let’s go.” They walked down the hall together. Davey bumped me as he walked by, knocking my books out of my hand.
As I picked up the books, people stared. I’d known Chris and Davey since grade four and this was the first time we’d had a real disagreement. I’d taken the dumb violin class to be with them. If I failed it, I’d have to take another instrument.
The thought of going through middle school alone was frightening. Maybe my friends would change their minds if only they talked to Sal and saw that he really wasn’t that much different from anyone else. If he could help me with violin, why couldn’t he help them, too? If only I could convince Davey and Chris to come meet Sal. Then they’d know the rumors about the Bottle Man weren’t true.
I photocopied the sheet music for “Soldier’s Joy” at the corner store after school, shoved it in my backpack and showed up at the Creek at five that evening. Sal had spread an old brown carpet on the ground outside his tent and had started a fire. He was eating a hamburger when I arrived.
I opened up my backpack, took out a piece of chocolate cake I’d purchased at nearby Rowntree’s Bakery and gave it to him.
“Thank you,” he said. “Haven’t had that for a long time.”
I sat down next to him. “Can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“Is it true you’re collecting all those bottles to save up for a new condo?”
Sal paused for several seconds and then laughed. “Who said this?”
“My friends, Davey and Chris.”
“Ah, friends. You believe everything they say?”
I opened up my case and took out my violin. “No, but they told me there’s a rumor going around that you stashed your life savings in the ground somewhere in the Creek.”
“I wish,” Sal said. “You think I need bottles if I have money like that?”
“I guess not.”
“The money from bottles for food. That’s all. Anything else you need know about me?”
I looked at his right forearm. A series of blue numbers had been tattooed into it. “What are those?” I asked, pointing.
Sal looked at his arm and sighed. “From long ago. I tell you... someday.”
“Sorry about the dumb questions. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Not dumb. Good to get things out in open. Friends do that. But some things hard to talk about. Now to the lesson.”
I picked up my violin, careful to hold the bow properly and the neck loosely.
“Better,” Sal said. “Good first step.” He reached for the sheet music for “Soldier’s Joy.” “You play first. I listen.” He closed his eyes.
I drew the bow across the strings and played a few bars. The tune emerged, with most of the notes correct, amid a few squeaks. When I’d finished, Sal opened his eyes.
“How was it?” I asked.
“You took bow off strings.”
“How do you know? Your eyes were closed.”
Sal shook his head. “Not necessary to see. Sounds disjointed. You have to keep bow on strings for entire tune. Then it sounds good, flows.”
I tried the piece again, slowing down the pace slightly and consciously keeping the bow on the strings as I played.
“Better,” Sal said. “One more thing: use fourth finger on D and A strings instead of playing open strings. Sounds better.”
After forty minutes of practice, I put the violin back in its case and sat on the ground with Sal.
“You see difference?” he said. “Just a few changes needed.”
“Do you still play?” I asked.
“Used to, long time ago.”
I passed Sal my violin and bow. “I’d love to hear you play something.”
“Okay, but out of practice. Plug your ears.”
He closed his eyes and launched into the richest, most beautiful classical piece I’d ever heard. I recognized it but couldn’t recall its origin. Sal’s fingers magically danced up and down the neck of the violin, vibrating on just the right notes. He knew the entire piece by memory. When he was finished, he opened his eyes and bowed comically several times like Fräulein Schweiger in The Sound of Music.
I clapped. “That was amazing! Where’d you learn to play like that?”
“You’re very kind. Maybe one time I good. Not now. Now just homeless man.”
“Homeless men can’t play like that.”
Sal smiled at me and patted me on the shoulder. “Eddie, come sit with me. I have something for you.” He took a manila envelope out of one of his pockets and passed it to me.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“If anything happens to me, want you to open it.”
“What could happen to you? Are you sick or something?”
“Please listen,” Sal said. “Don’t open envelope until I leave here. I go somewhere else or die. Very important you do that.”
“Okay, sure, I’ll open it if anything ever happens to you. But what could happen? Have you ever thought of living in a homeless shelter?”
“No privacy there. People steal your things. Remember, Eddie, if anything happens to me and I have to leave here—”
“I’ll open the envelope. Got it.” I put it in my backpack with the intent of keeping my promise, but hoped that I wouldn’t have to fulfil it for a long time. Sal was the only real friend I had.
“Enough learning for today. You come back tomorrow at five,” he said. “One more practice, you ready for playing test. Actually, you ready right now.”
“I don’t feel like I am,” I said.
“You are. You get ‘A’.”
* * *
The next day was a Friday; Friday September 25th. I’ll never forget it. It was grey and drizzling just before five, when I was to meet Sal. I hoped that he was sitting dry in his tent. The grass and trees in the Creek would be soaked. I decided to take the long way home along Weston Road and I almost did. Something stopped me. Not an audible voice from God, but an obsessive thought. Why don’t you go and see what’s happening down at the Creek?
As I approached the Beer Store, I noticed the flashing lights: a fire truck and two police cars. They were accompanied by an ambulance that was sitting on the side of the street, its lights turned off. Yellow police tape was spread across the entrance of the Creek.
Clutching my violin, I sprinted along the street toward one of the police cars, in which an officer sat talking on his car phone.
“What happened?” I asked through the open driver’s-side window.
The policeman put down his phone. “Who are you, kid?”
“My friend lives in there. I’ve got to see him. He’s teaching me violin.”
“You mean the homeless guy with the long dark hair?”
I nodded. "His name is Sal."
The policeman opened the door and got out of his car. “I... I don’t know what to say, kid. I’m sorry, but he’s been—”
“What? What happened?”
“He’s dead.”
“I think I know who did it,” I said. “There were some thugs who attacked me a few days ago here. Sal fought them off, but they must have come back.”
The policeman wrote down the information. “Thanks, son. Is there anything else?”
I shook my head. Fighting back tears, I turned and ran back toward Weston Road. It didn’t make sense. Just the day before, Sal and I had been laughing together.
When I got home, I ran upstairs to my bedroom, shut the door and flopped down on my bed. I buried my face in my pillow.
The news spread quickly around the neighborhood. The “Bottle Man,” an old homeless guy, was dead. The police believed that the killer had been acting on the rumors that the “Bottle Man” had a large stash of money buried somewhere near his tent. The two rockers who attacked me were in jail at the time, erasing their only suspects.
Nobody cared about the person I’d known as “Sal.” Thanks to him, I passed the playing test with a “B,” the highest mark I’d ever received in music.
* * *
A month later, I removed a pair of shorts from my drawer to put into winter storage. The envelope Sal had given me fell on the floor. I reached down, picked it up and sat down on my bed. I tore it open and began reading:
Eddie, hope you passed playing test. You improve a lot. There’s something I want for you. Go down to Creek. Find it and enjoy. Best, Sal.
The directions told me to approach an old oak tree just south of where Sal’s tent had been. Then cross the creek and walk about ten feet up the embankment. I’d find two medium-sized boulders sitting about six feet apart with leaves scattered on the ground in between.
I found my dad’s shovel in the garage and carried it down to the Creek. A cold October wind whipped through my hair and ruffled my jacket as I stared at Sal’s map. It was strange being there without him and his tent. I almost expected him to come up behind me, touch me on the shoulder and say, “You here for your lesson?”
Crossing the creek, I winced as cold water soaked my running shoes and sent shivers through my feet and up my legs. When I reached the boulders, I removed the leaves from in between until dirt was exposed. I inserted the shovel in the ground, gathered up earth and tossed it aside. I repeated the process, stopping several times to catch my breath.
Twenty minutes later, there was a “click” as the shovel hit something hard and made of metal. I cleared the area around the object, which turned out to be a steel case. I lifted it out of the ground. A combination lock of four numbers stared up at me. Sal had included the combo in the letter. I lined up the numbers and opened the lock on the first try.
A thick blue felt-like substance coated the inside of the case, protecting a violin, bow and several photos. I picked up a photo of a handsome young man holding a violin resembling the one in the case, smiling confidently at the camera. Sal Jasinski, the caption read, first violin, Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra (1938).
Another picture, dated 1936, of Sal in a tuxedo next to a beautiful woman with curly brown hair in a white wedding dress. Someone had scribbled “Zelda, died 1944 (Auschwitz)” beneath the woman’s photo.
I lifted the violin from its case and carefully rosined up the bow. Drawing the bow across the strings, I played “Soldier’s Joy” more richly and magnificently than I ever had before. I imagined Sal staring down at me and smiling.
* * *
I wish I could say that I practiced playing that violin for years and became a word renowned symphony player. As much as that would make a fitting ending, it didn’t happen. I took Sal’s violin into an appraiser. It turned out to be a 1632 Giovanni Maginni, valued at approximately $50,000. Sal could have put a down payment on a condo if he’d sold it, but, of course, he never would have.
Davey and Chris went to different high schools from me after grade eight. I’d see them periodically, but I never hung out with them again. I ran into Davey a few years ago downtown. He was begging for money on the street and looked twenty years older than me. I gave him some money and we had coffee together. Last he heard, Chris was practicing law out west.
The “Bottle Man” lives on only in my memory. His murder case is still open. I keep hoping that with the development of DNA testing and other technologies, it will someday be solved. Once a year, on the anniversary of his death, I go to his grave in Mount Pleasant Cemetery with the violin and play some tunes.
I still have dreams about Sal. In one, I’m relaxing after a hard day at the office. I go to my walk-in closet and pull down his violin case from the top shelf. I take out the instrument, tune it up and rosin the bow. Then I draw the bow across the strings.
As I play, focusing intently on the fingering, Sal appears, floating outside the dark window of my eleventh floor condo, his long dark hair swept over his forehead and his left eye. He’s wagging his index finger at me. “Don’t take bow off strings while playing. It’ll make playing disjointed and uneven. For each tune, bow must always be touching the strings.”
I listen to him and my playing instantly smooths out, at which point he disappears.
In the years since Sal taught me, I began playing violin at church. Once a month, I play the special music. As a result of Sal’s death, there have been times in my own life when I took the bow off my strings: when I dropped out of university, divorced my wife, and ended up in hospital twice with chronic depression.
My psychiatrist suggests I focus on the good times I had with Sal, regardless of how brief they were. He says the dreams will slowly disappear. With God’s grace and a tight support group of friends and family, Sal’s murder continues to fade into my past. With my bow pressed firmly against the strings, my future keeps getting sweeter.
Copyright © 2018 by Morris J. Marshall
