Horses in Disguise

In a quiet back corner of a smoke filled tavern, he sits and listens to the music, eyes closed and head leaning against the wall, one foot tapping and fingers keeping time. Some lyrics make him smile to himself.

He used to be a musician, a talented and well known bluesman, admired, imitated, followed. He made a name for himself and earned a good living on the road before settling down in a small Texas town to marry and raise a family. His music is still sung there although it's been years since he's stood on a stage - a traveling piano man makes a poor husband, his wife said - so he gave up the spotlight. Not an easy choice, people say when they talk about him, a waste of a God given gift in favor of becoming ordinary. Now he only plays for Sunday services and late at night when no one can hear. His hands are still quick and agile on the keyboard, chords and lyrics still circle around in his mind, but he made a promise to his family and he keeps it. Life is give and take, a little of this and some of that, and a hope that it all comes out right in the end. He finishes his beer and leaves by the back door.

Life will have its own way and there are times when even the most generous and righteous decisions turn against us. No one could have imagined a fatal car wreck on a lonely stretch of Texas highway, a collision that took the lives of his wife and only daughter, leaving him the care and raising of four young and broken hearted boys. He had become a music teacher - theory and composition - and gave lessons on weekends, spent evenings tuning and repairing pianos and teaching his own children to play. His loss made him think about returning to the road and burying himself in the blues but his sons needed him more and in his heart he knew that he wasn't released from his promise - if anything, he was more tightly bound to honor it. He spent twenty years bringing up his boys as their mother would have wanted and never gave the first thought to remarrying or moving on. He wasn't the kind of a man to make a promise lightly, not the kind of man who takes advantage of fate to break free.

He lives still in a small Texas town, teaching and passing on what he knows and loves best but staying on the sidelines, listening but not taking the stage, watching the new bluesmen take their time in the limelight. If he has regrets, he keeps them to himself - he's lived long enough to know that wishing for what might have been is living in the past.

Mistakes are horses in disguise,
ain't no need to ride'em over,
'cause we couldn't ride'em different if we tried.
Guy Clark