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Here is another short short from my archives.

Take this hammer-

Huh!

Give it to the captain

Huh!

Tell him I’m gone-

Huh!

Tell him I’m gone-

Huh!

            At first the words were just sounds to Lilah’s ears, but by the time they had meaning, the song’s rhythm was locked in her cells, in her heartbeat.

            Right outside the frosted window of Lilah’s bedroom, Papa chopped the wood.  Each “huh!” was the jolt of the axe tearing through log after log.  Lilah, in her crib cage, felt the bed shake and shiver.

            When nap time was over, Mama came to lift Lilah out of the bars, up into a warm hug smelling of apples and spearmint gum.  Mama with her big white smile and her rough red hands.

            “Take this hammer–huh!  Give it to the captain–huh!” Lilah sang along when she was rolling scraps of bread dough into snakes.  She was a big girl now, too big for naps.  She knew to stay away from the black stove that swallowed those chunks of wood.  She had a wrinkled scar on her hand to remind her.

            One day even later, Lilah came home from school.  Mama met her with a bright light in her eyes. A surprise.  A phonograph.

            Papa put the black vinyl record on the turntable and set the needle arm at the edge.  There was a whisper and a scratching noise, and then a guitar and a man singing about the Rock Island Line, it is a mighty good road.  Papa grabbed Mama and they did a cramped Lindy Hop around the kitchen.  Lilah clapped her hands.

            The song faded into the scratchy whisper and then a strange man’s voice began singing,

Take this hammer-

Huh!

Give it to the captain

Huh!

            Lilah put her hands up to stop the sound, to stop that man.

            “That’s Papa’s song!  That’s my papa’s song!”

            She pushed the metal arm.  It made a terrible shriek and line appeared across the flat black circle.

            Mama and Papa stared at her, still as statues, while the metal arm, caught in the center, went click, click, click.