Interlude: Bremen

Recommended Listening

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Jake Colton didn’t hear the chime from his phone–it got loud during sessions, plus his hearing wasn’t the best after twenty years of getting hit in the head. But he did feel the buzz in his pocket and, against his better judgment and also the things he constantly yelled at his easily-distracted students, brought it out to look at the screen.

“No phones in class!” yelled Riley Sevareid, an Intermediate student who he wasn’t expecting to return for the Expert classes. Good talker, but she needs to learn to pick her spots better.

“Eyes on your own work,” he muttered. He saw a text and a Jabber notification, both from his eldest son. He checked Jabber first.

@NCColton: @JMColton Hope you like the picture I just sent you

@kmori and I took a day trip into Germany for this

His interest piqued, the old man switched over to his text messages and opened the latest from his son. Jake saw the picture, and his heart nearly jumped out of his chest.

There was Nathan, a big smile on his face. He stood in front of a statue that would probably look very strange to a cultural outsider: four animals, in bronze. A donkey stood on the pedestal, with a dog on its back. A cat stood on top of the dog, and resting at the very top was a rooster.

Jake made a beeline for the solitude of his office. He didn’t even bother calling for another trainer to take over; he didn’t dare say a word until he knew he’d be alone.

He hastily typed a response to Nate, knowing full well he'd be useless in a few seconds.

@JMColton: yeah

I like that a lot.

Thank you both @NCColton @kmori

And then a wave crashed over him, knocking him flat as he felt...everything.

Sometimes you feel something so big that it can’t be contained, and your heart fills to bursting with the most brilliant, beautiful, joyous agony. Sometimes it happens when you’re in your early thirties and you don’t know how to deal with your emotions because Men Aren’t Supposed To Have Those, and you have a full-on breakdown in the middle of a gift shop in a foreign country while your friends stare at you in abject confusion.

Sometimes it happens twenty years later, when you should be able to handle it because you’re a lot more emotionally mature and you’ve even been in therapy for a while, and because you’ve felt this before…but it’s a thousand times bigger than you remember and suddenly you’re crying your eyes out in an office while a hundred feet away a bunch of kids are learning how to beat the tar out of each other.

All for a statue of some animals. But not any statue, and not any animals.

These were the Musicians.

The heroes of the story Jake read to his kids every time he was home. The Colton kids got all kinds of stories at bedtime, on the insistence of their mother. Mallory read everything from Where the Wild Things Are to Charlotte’s Web, Goodnight Moon to The Fantastic Mister Fox, The Monster at the End of This Book to The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.

But she never read The Bremen Town Musicians. And he never read anything else.

It was Dad’s Story.

Tears streamed down his face and onto his desk, threatening to soak the spreadsheets and scouting reports that covered his desk. He covered his mouth with one hand, hoping that it was enough to muffle any sobs.

He thought of the postcard that he knew was in a desk drawer, somewhere underneath the old scouting reports and seventeen boxes of paper clips, each with one missing because he kept forgetting where he put the last fresh box. The picture on the postcard was of that same statue, which Jake had seen in a gift shop in Berlin. That was the closest he had ever come.

The tour wasn’t going through Bremen, and there hadn’t been time for a detour. Well, there was, but Darryl Clark partied too hard the night before and had been impossible to wake up before noon. (Jake has never fully forgiven him for this.) They arrived in Hanover an hour before bell time, and only had a few minutes to grab dinner at the train station before taking a cab to the venue.

While they waited for their food, Jake wandered over to a nearby gift shop and looked through the postcards. Once the image presented itself, he stared at it in wild-eyed wonder. He knew without being told, without even knowing there was a statue at all, what it was and what it represented.

Jake loved it so much that it burned.

HIs eyes were already welling as he purchased the entire stock–only about a dozen cards or so. He showed them to the others and tried to explain, but words failed him and he ended up blubbering about his kids and telling his friends that he loved them in a way that’s only acceptable if you’re drunk.

Once Jake had regained his senses, they headed for the ZAG-Arena, got yelled at by the promoter, and fought some strangers for the amusement of other, different strangers.

Then they got drunk.

It was, by far, Jake Colton’s favorite night of the tour.

Most of the cards would get filled out and sent to loved ones. His wife, each of his kids–including Jenny, still in production–his sister and her son. A few people he knew from the business who’d had an impact. His old friend Tommy’s parents.

Tommy would have understood.

But the one that remained…that was for him.

Now he had another. This one was even better, with his oldest son standing next to the statue. Jake offered a piece of his heart to his children every time he read the story, and now he saw that love reflected back at him…and it was more than he could bear.

He saved the picture to his phone–thankfully his daughter had given him enough technology lessons–as his mind reeled with ideas on what to do with it. He’d have to get prints, of course. This would take the favored position on the family wall–even above Nate's high school graduation, senior prom, or the year he dressed as a tiger for Halloween. And of course he’d have to share it far and wide.

But one person had to see it first. Nobody else would really understand. Not his friends. Not his kids, including the one who sent him the picture. Not even his wife of almost thirty years.

His sister was the only other person in the world who knew what that statue, or that story, truly meant.

After a few false starts, he attached the picture to a text message and sent it to Lila Colton.

Nate just sent me this

Jake could barely see the screen as he fumbled his way through the rest of his message.

I can’t believe this look at my boy, Lila he made it