The Sound That Remembered

By Peter Bowden


In Columbus, before the war and the breaking of things, a boy sat by the edge of a porch and listened to the wind. He was blind, but the world spoke to him differently. The river hummed its secrets in low tones; wagons creaked like slow metronomes. He would tap his fingers against the wood and find the rhythm of the day—mules braying, bells from the foundry, the faint sorrow of a train heading east.

They said he could play anything once he heard it. That he could make a piano sound like thunder on the plains or rain tapping on tin. The soldiers laughed when he first played The Battle of Manassas—until the guns began to echo through his hands. His music carried the smoke, the fear, the flags that trembled in heat. In that moment, they stopped laughing, and some wept. He was only a man then, but also something else—a mirror held up to the noise of the world.

Years passed, and the crowds moved on. He played in parlors, on stages, in cities that blurred together. Sometimes he smiled at nothing, hearing more than anyone could bear. When the day was done, he’d sit at the keys long after everyone had gone, finding again that soft Columbus wind. Somewhere in those notes, he touched home—the porch, the river, the sound that remembered him.


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