Chapter 8: The Window Is Open

The bailiff set two guitars on two tables, ten feet apart.

Mine was an old acoustic with a scratch under the sound hole.

Dax's was a bright new one with his initials inlaid in pearl.

"Your ten minutes begin when I say," the judge said. "Write it down, play it, and sing it for the court."

She looked at the clock.

"Begin."

Dax sat down and tucked the guitar against his stomach.

He played a chord and stopped.

Played another and tapped his foot.

I did not look at him again.

I closed my eyes and found the key of Paper Sparrow in my left hand, the hand I write with.

My father used to say a bridge is a window you open for ten seconds so the song can breathe.

I had not thought about him since the funeral.

I thought about him now.

I thought about the kitchen light on his hands when he fixed the radio, and the way he whistled while he did it.

I thought about what it had cost me to write the third verse the night we buried him.

The first line came on its own.

I wrote it on the back of my own hand with the pen the bailiff had given me, since there was no paper left.

The second line came after.

The third came with a melody already in it.

I opened my eyes.

Dax had stopped playing.

He was staring at his guitar neck with his mouth pressed flat.

"Mr. Kingsley?" the judge said.

"I need a minute."

"You have eight."

"I write at night," he said. "I need..."

"Mr. Kingsley, you told this court you wrote Paper Sparrow in forty minutes in a hotel room."

"This is a different environment."

"I'm aware," said the judge.

A man in the third row laughed and turned it into a cough.

Dax strummed a chord, then another.

He began to hum, and it was the first line of the existing chorus, note for note.

"That's the record, Mr. Kingsley," the judge said. "I asked for a new bridge."

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