"It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful." - Benjamin Britten
Crescendo
I'd known him for eight months before he let me hear his music.
I think even at the time I recognized the significance of that moment, what it meant for him to open up that part of his soul and spill it out for me, a corner hidden within him. I'd learn later I was the first person to ever hear it.
It wasn't just music to Hutch. I'd watch him after a hard case, after a homicide, someone we couldn't save, arriving moments too late, reach out and take his guitar and play. He'd pour his heart into it, every fiber of his being, binding everything he felt into the music. I could feel the day melt off him, sink into the music like a weight slipping from his neck into the sea.
I don't know when it stopped, only that I heard the music less as time passed, chords fading into silence, hummed notes replaced by empty stares.
I wish he'd cried when he found his broken guitar. I knew he wanted to, and I could have so easily reached out as we used to, held him and let him cry out all his tears. If only he'd crumbled that stone wall between us, let me inside again. But he only stood there for what seemed like an eternity, holding the splintered pieces against him like a child. I watched him walk over and throw them into the trash, fingers slip from the wood, release it. And it hurt, a giant fist slamming into my stomach. When he looked up his eyes were vacant...and dry.
He didn't get a new guitar after that. I pestered him about it a few times, dropped hints and even dragged him into a music shop once. After a while I stopped mentioning it.
There were times when I'd turn on the radio and I'd see something flicker in his eyes, a shallow whisper of the light I remember there. But it would vanish before I even spoke.
Its the morning we're playing ping-pong that I notice his fingers tapping against the paddle, a rhythm of the sound. I comment and regret it the instant his fingers still.
Its a month after the shooting and he comes into my hospital room with a new, shiny guitar in his hand and a paper in the other. He stands next to my bed, clears his throat like a child making a presentation in school. "I wrote a song." His voice is quiet, soft the way I remember when he talked about music. He's only played three notes when I realize why the rhythm sounds so familiar..it's the beat of our ping-pong game, a steady heartbeat beneath the notes. I listen in silence, watch as he plays, soul binding to the music, heart bleeding through the tune.
And if tears spring to my eyes while he plays...well, it's just the pain medication and nothing else.