Idris and the Late Beat

Nobody ever means to be late for the biggest day of a friend’s year. Idris certainly did not. On Saturday afternoon he had only meant to kick a football around behind the church for ten minutes. The ten minutes turned into a match, the match turned into extra time, and extra time turned into a long argument about a penalty. When the church clock finally struck, Idris decided the clock must be wrong. Clocks are almost never wrong. That is their whole job.

By then Pilar was standing alone on the wooden stage on the village green, with her recorder in her hands and what felt like the entire valley looking up at her. The tune she and Idris had made together was supposed to start with her recorder and fall into place on his tin-bucket drum. Without the drum, the tune wobbled like a table with one short leg. Pilar played three lines. In the middle of the fourth, her breath ran out, the notes came apart, and the crowd clapped very kindly. Kind clapping, as anyone who has ever received it will tell you, is the worst kind.

That was five days ago. Since then the gate of the dairy at the bottom of the lane had stayed shut, and Pilar had stayed behind it. Idris carried his sorry around like a stone in his pocket, too heavy to forget and too smooth to get a grip on. From the top of a fence post, a rooster named Bongo watched him with one round, unimpressed eye.