Songs of Memory: A Jukebox Story Read online

  So as I finished getting the bar opened, everyone sort of showed up at once, laughing with Jenny. All of them knew what this was all about, and they were all determined to help if they could.

  So with Jenny sitting between Dave and Richard at the bar, I stood against the back of the bar and had no idea where to start. I just sort of stood there as everyone looked at me. I hadn’t bothered to turn on the stereo yet, so the weight of the silence made starting even harder.

  “Tell her about the glasses first,” Dave said, pointing at the case over the bar.

  I looked into the eyes of the woman I loved and then said simply. “You are not going to believe most of what I’m about to say, but for now just trust me. Okay?”

  She frowned, clearly suddenly worried.

  “Trust him,” Dave said. “He’s not totally nuts, only slightly.”

  Everyone laughed and I took the key for the cabinet out of the register drawer and went to get the four glasses.

  I took three down and left the other in the case.

  Then I walked the fine drinking glasses down the bar, putting the one etched with the name Dave in front of Dave, another in front of Carl, and another in front of Fred.

  “I made these glasses for these men ten years ago this last Christmas. I served them drinks in these glasses, and none of them remembers that night. Except Dave, who came back after I closed the bar. Long story, but what this is all about.”

  “If you are trying to explain something,” Jenny said, “remind me to never let you in a class room.”

  “Now that’s a deal, Professor,” I said.

  I pointed at the old jukebox, dark and sitting in the corner. “You understand the power of music. Music can take a person back to a memory, to an emotion, to an experience.”

  Jenny nodded. “There have been many studies on the power of songs to trigger memories to try to help some patients with different forms of brain injury and diseases.”

  Everyone was deadly silent, which wasn’t a normal state for the Garden Lounge, so I just blurted it out. “That jukebox actually takes a person physically to a memory associated with a song.”

  Jenny looked at me frowning. Then she smiled. “Okay, what’s the joke?”

  “Toss me a quarter, Stout,” Dave said, climbing off his stool. “She’s not going to believe you; no one does, until they see it. I’ll go visit Sandy being born again.”

  I tossed him a quarter and moved around the end of the bar and plugged in the jukebox.

  “Give us a minute to get earplugs in,” I said.

  I quickly dug out the earplugs and handed each person a pair. When I handed the pair to Jenny, I smiled. “You said you trusted me. Just hold on for one more moment and you’ll understand what I’m talking about.”

  She was really frowning now, but she did as everyone did and put in the earplugs.

  “Ready,” Dave asked, smiling.

  I nodded, and he dropped the quarter into the machine and after a moment hit the number to the song that would take him back to the moment when Sandy was born.

  I looked into the eyes of the woman I loved. “Cover your ears,” I shouted so she would hear. “And think of this moment right here and right now. Think of this bar. Okay?”

  She nodded, and then the music started and Dave was gone and we were all still here.

  “How?” Jenny said, but I could barely hear her through my ear-plugs.

  I just held up my finger for her to wait and pointed toward the jukebox. Then I put my hand on hers, holding her solidly in the Garden Lounge.

  The two minutes of the song stretched into an eternity.

  Then, faintly, I could hear the song ending and Dave shimmered back into being, smiling.

  We all pulled out our earplugs and Dave rejoined us at the bar. “You know,” he said to his daughter, Sandy, “you sure were a damn pretty baby.”

  “You all right?” Sandy asked, just before I did.

  Seeing his wife again had to hurt some. She had died a couple years back from cancer and we all missed her.

  “I’m fine,” he said, taking a drink.

  “So what the hell just happened here?” Jenny said. “What kind of magic trick was that?”

  “No trick I’m afraid,” I said, pointing at the jukebox. “That thing really takes people back to their memories. You end up inside the body of the person you were, only with old memories. When the song ends, you come back – unless you have changed something.”

  Dave held up his glass. “One Christmas, ten years ago, Stout gave four of his best friends a very special Christmas gift. He let us go back and change something in our pasts we wanted to change. I went back and saved my wife from being killed in a car wreck; as a result, Sandy, here, and her sister were born.”

  “That’s why we only turn that thing on for Christmas Eve,” I said. “And why we’re very careful. It’s very dangerous and can change a person’s life.”

  I stared at Jenny for a moment, then said, “You still don’t believe us, do you?”

  She looked me square in the eye and I could tell she was angry. A deep-down angry.

  I wanted to throw up. This couldn’t be happening.

  “You have to admit this is hard to swallow,” Jenny said. “And I don’t see why you would play this sort of trick on me, Stout.”

  The silence in the bar could be cut with a knife, I swear. I could hardly breathe. Was I going to lose the only woman I had ever loved for the second time because of the jukebox?

  “No trick,” I said, softly. “That really is a time machine.”

  Again the silence became thick and smothering. I had to do something and do it quickly.

  “Do you remember the song that was playing right after you told me about your job while we sat in the student union in Eugene?”

  She nodded. “Longest song ever,” she said. “I was waiting for you to say something and you didn’t say anything.”

  “Do you remember the name of the song?”

  “It was a Mindbenders song about love. Why?”

  I took a quarter out of the cash register and went around the bar to her side. I took her hand to indicate she should get down off the barstool. “Let’s go for a ride.”

  She walked hesitantly to the jukebox. “Earplugs everyone,” I said.

  Then I turned to the woman I love. “You can’t change anything while we are there. Nothing. Our older selves will be in control of our younger bodies, and our younger selves won’t remember our little visit. But change nothing, all right? Please. A lot of lives depend on it, including your wonderful children and grandchildren.”

  She glanced around at the people at the bar, then nodded, suddenly very afraid.

  I dropped the quarter into the jukebox and once again punched A-1.

  A moment later I was sitting again across from the young Jenny.

  Only this time Jenny’s eyes didn’t stay focused on the table in front of her as they had done the first time. They looked up at me, panicked.

  The older Judy was in there this time.

  Then she looked around, listening to the song over the sound system of the old student union, smelling the greasy fries and smell from the two jocks sitting far too close to us.

  Finally she looked back at me. “Is this real?”

  I nodded. “Can you remember your life with Stephen? Your kids being born? Your grandkids?”

  She nodded, still looking around. “How is this possible?”

  “There’s some kind of very advanced equipment in the jukebox I’ve never had the courage to touch. Somehow it lets the power of a memory from a song take the person listening to the memory.”

  “And our young selves won’t remember this?”

  “Do you?”

  She thought for a second, then shook her head.

  “This was our turning point the first time, wasn’t it?” she asked

  “It was,” I said.

  “If you had said you wanted to marry me, I would have stayed.”

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nbsp; “But sometimes things work out the way they are supposed to,” I said. “We weren’t ready that first time around.”

  She nodded. “I would have been angry at you for making me stay.”

  “I know,” I said. “And I would have been angry for you making me leave.”

  “You’ve sat here before from the future, watching me, haven’t you?”

  I nodded. “A number of times. It’s how I discovered the power of the jukebox.”

  “And you never said anything? Never changed our future? Why not?”

  “I loved you too much,” I said. “And then, after a while, I knew if I changed my future, a number of people wouldn’t be alive right now. And that was before I knew about your wonderful family.”

  The song was slowly nearing its end.

  “You are a very special man,” she said, smiling.

  “Then will you stay with me this time? In the future, of course.”

  “I want to more than anything. In the future, of course.”

  I smiled. “Would you marry me the second time around?”

  She looked around at the old student union and laughed as the song finished and we appeared back in the Garden.

  She put her arms around me and said, “Yes, you stupid fool. Of course I’ll marry you.”

  Then she kissed me in a way I knew I would never forget, song or no song.

  And our friends in the Garden Lounge cheered.

  This time, it was my life the jukebox saved.

  ---

  Dean Wesley Smith is the international bestselling author of over ninety novels and hundreds of short stories. He has sold many other stories set in the world of the jukebox and has out the first Jukebox Stories collection called Five From the Jukebox. You can find out more about his work at deanwesleysmith.com

  Also, if you liked “The Songs of Memory” you might also like these other jukebox stories:

  Jukebox Gifts

  Black Betsy

  The Ghosts of the Garden Lounge

  A Golden

  He Could Have Coped With Dragons (Richard Cone’s story)