The Banjo They Said I Could Forgive
A certified letter arrived from my parents four days after the cabin. Formal letterhead, no “Love, Mom and Dad,” just their names. It said I’d been raised better than this, that Roy had made a mistake and Beau was just a child, that what I’d done was vindictive and cruel, and that if I didn’t drop the lawsuit, pay half of Roy’s loan, and apologize to Beau, I would not be welcome for Thanksgiving or Christmas. I filed it in a folder I’d already labeled Expected Outcomes and made coffee instead of writing back.
That same week a musician friend named Foster texted me a link. He’d posted a photo of my ruined banjo, taken back at the cabin, with a caption thanking me for teaching some entitled people a lesson. It picked up hundreds of likes within hours, comment after comment about never touching another musician’s instrument, about families that enable destruction earning the consequences that follow. A few small studios reached out unprompted with work. My reputation hadn’t taken a hit. If anything, it had grown.
A week after the cabin, Roy called, barely able to talk. He was sorry. Could I drop the lawsuit. They were staring down foreclosure in sixty days, and nobody’s parents would help. “You should have thought of that before you used a child to destroy my property,” I said. “I’ll get you a new banjo,” he said. “Can’t replace it,” I told him, in his own words back at him. “It’s irreplaceable.” Then I hung up.
That night Dana showed up at my apartment, mascara down her face, begging me to make this right. “I wanted an apology before the lawsuit,” I told her. “Not now, after the consequences reached your front door. That’s not remorse. That’s panic.” She left in tears, and I let her.
The settlement came together two weeks later. Roy dropped his suit, I dropped mine, he agreed to pay nine thousand two hundred dollars for the banjo across twelve installments, and he and Dana signed an affidavit admitting he had influenced what Beau did. Beau would write me one more letter, unscripted this time, and both families agreed to two years of no contact. No admission over the car. No criminal charges. I took the deal.
Ten days after that, a handwritten letter arrived in a child’s shaky print. It said he broke my banjo because Roy told him it was fake, that he didn’t know it was real until it broke, that his mom said they might have to move because of the car, that Roy blamed me and his mom blamed him, and that he didn’t know who was right. No “love” this time, just his name. I taped it to the wall of my studio, a reminder that Beau might still turn out fine.
Six weeks after the cabin, I walked into a vintage shop on the edge of town called Harmon Street and looked through the case of old flattops and resonators. The owner offered me a mid-seventies Vega he had in back, close to what I’d lost. I told him no, I wasn’t looking for the same thing. He handed me a 1970s Martin 000-18 instead, thirty-seven hundred dollars, a completely different voice, brighter and drier where the Vega had been warm. Not better or worse. Different. I bought it, and that night I started writing a new instrumental on it, one I ended up calling “Riverbed.”