Suzie’s House 289 : Bitter Harvest

“I’m telling you, it’s too soon.” Gene glared at Tracy.

She pursed her lips and glared right back which just meant they might end up standing around and arguing all night because Tracy could be pretty stubborn sometimes. He glanced around Mrs. H.’s living room at all the other band members, looking for some backup and not getting it.

“I don’t think so,” Bruce said.

“Of course you wouldn’t. You co-authored this song.” Gene resisted the urge to pull his hair out. Funny, he always thought that was just a saying, but Tracy made him feel like actually doing it. Like Kate and her rumors weren’t bad enough.

“But it’s good,” Kate said.

Justin nodded. “We don’t want to be a cover band anyway.”

Emma sat on the couch, tearing a paper bag she’d brought with her. She looked at Kate, then Justin with her lower lip pulled in like she might either cry or barf. No help there, even if she agreed with him.

“I’m not saying we shouldn’t learn this song later, just not now.”

“Why not now?” Bruce glared at him like he was being totally unreasonable.

“Because our problem isn’t that we aren’t any good, it’s that we don’t sound right. We need to play something we all know so we know how to fit all together.” Gene knew he wasn’t making a lot of sense, but he couldn’t figure any better way to explain it.

“What? So we’ll be the perfect cover band?” Bruce sneered. “Didn’t we all agree we wanted our own sound?”

Gene stifled a groan, feeling totally out numbered. “All right. Fine. Have it your way.” He yanked the neck of his guitar up into position. “Like this, right?” He strummed a few cords.

Kate held her drum sticks up and tapped out the time, and they all started in on it. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It shouldn’t be so rough. Kate was too fast, and Bruce shouldn’t overwhelm them all with so many notes and he couldn’t even hear Tracy. He gave up and stopped playing, and pretty quick so did everyone else.

“What is this? A song or a battle,” he grumbled.

“Well, it’s called Bitter Harvest,” Tracy said. “It isn’t supposed to be sweet.”

“N-n-n-no,” Emma said. “H-he’s right. Bitter Harvest, it should be, um, more fluid. Right? M-m-maybe not sweet, but, um… more together?”

“Together? How much more together could we be?” Kate wrinkled her brow, seriously confused.

“That’s why I wanted us to practice a song we all knew already,” Gene said, finally seeing it clearly. “Like it’s a gold standard we have to meet. Instead of forcing the song to suit us each, each of us make ourselves work with the song. If we can do that, it’ll be easier to figure out what we need to do to make our real music sound good.”

“Oh,” Tracy said. “That makes sense, but what song should we play?”

That started up another round of argument. Seemed like today was all about arguing – first about the band name, and then about the song which wasn’t all the way written yet anyway. If it was always going to be like this, Gene didn’t have much hope for the band.

“Well, for now let’s just try Bitter Harvest again,” Tracy said.

So they did, and it was almost like before. Except when Emma started singing it got a little better.

Emma’s voice came in high and sweet, singing about trying to make music in the snow and reaping the fruits of your bad choices. Really, if they could just get it together, it would be a pretty good song. At least they got to the end of it before they all stopped playing.

Mrs. H. stepped into the room. She had her hand on her head like it hurt and a frown on her face. She opened her mouth like she was going to say something, but Tracy interrupted.

“We’re done for today. Please don’t kick us out. Please.”

Mrs. H. just shook her head and went away.

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