July

Two

            “Him, lifting the drums,” Ivan reported.

            Paul squinted. John was talking with a boy with thick red hair, possibly about the drums. John had thick eyebrows, a decisive nose, and almond eyes that had a certain intensity to them.

            Ivan, unprompted, was already telling Paul about the Quarrymen. “John’s the leader, and he sings and plays guitar. Eric is also on guitar, Colin is on drums; that’s Rod and Len over there, then there’s Pete.”

            People were starting to gather towards the stage, as the Quarrymen were mostly set up. Paul looked around him, noticing the audience. Most of them were children, younger than Paul. They looked up at the Quarrymen, doe-eyed and gap-toothed, waiting for them to start.

            John looked around at the stage, and nodded. He took a deep breath and the drums started to go, the guitars were strumming, and he started to sing.

“Well love, love me darling, come and go with me. Close your eyes now, you don’t need to see. Follow me darling, and come go with me. I’ve been waiting for a century. Hurry up darling; you are killing me. All this stalling, now come go with me.”

“Those aren’t the right lyrics,” Paul whispered to Ivan, half horrified and half in awe.

“Brilliant,” Ivan muttered.

Paul stared in strange fascination. He observed each of the Quarrymen in turn; but he found that the drums were unsteady, the guitars out of tune, the washboard too loud at certain times, and the tea chest bass didn’t follow anyone else. The only one of them that struck him was John, whether that was because of how Ivan had presented him or because of true talent Paul didn’t know. He watched John’s mouth as it formed the words, the wrong words, but ones he was making up and that matched the tune nevertheless. Paul understood Ivan’s comment of “brilliant.” John wasn’t stumbling through a single lyric while improvising.

That was what really pushed him to go into the church to meet John. The Rose Queen was being crowned outside and he wasn’t even looking, not even to see how fit the bird was. His guitar suddenly seemed to weigh a ton on his back, and his sweaty palms didn’t seem capable of doing anything, much less playing an instrument.

There they were. They looked like the most normal people, the least imposing, compared to how they’d been a few minutes ago from their perch on the stage. Ivan stepped forward and for a brief, delirious moment Paul thought that now would be the perfect time to run away.

“…he plays too.”

Then everyone turned to Paul and seemed to be staring either dead into his eyes or at the guitar case slung over his shoulder, like it was some kind of forbidden object. Paul smiled with all the confidence he could pretend.

John had stepped forward and was squinting at Paul. Paul felt uncomfortably scrutinized, and wondering why the hell John was staring like that so much and was there something on his face or had he done something wrong—oh. John pulled out a pair of glasses and perched them on his nose, blinking once.