About two months later, I summoned the courage to visit Sarah at Southwestern Insane Asylum. After her shocking state of jubilance, following the mauling of my mother, she left Belle de las Santos without a word but with Willy's guitar in hand. When she arrived at her own home later, I learned, she had tried to hang herself.
As for my mother, she didn't speak for a week after the incident. At that time, her anger caught up with her depression, and she wanted to throttle Sarah, but then I told her what Sarah had tried to do to herself with her own hands.
I brought the game of chess with me, along with an uncomfortable smile. We barely said a word during my one and only visit, but Sarah seemed content to quietly proclaim "checkmate" after each win I let her have.
Then, as I turned to leave, Sarah grabbed my arm.
"No physical contact allowed with visitors," the guard said, suddenly awaking from a deep sleep in his watch by the door.
Sarah paid no heed but instead tugged harder on my sleeve. "What did you do with the guitar?"
I'd almost forgotten about Willy's instrument, and in hindsight, I probably did so with relief after Sarah took it.
My shrug earned a wide-eyed response. "You have to get rid of it."
As the guard gently guided me to the exit, I couldn’t have known that would be the last I'd see of my friend, Sarah. That night, she found a way and means to accomplish what she couldn't at her home.
When I told her mother the grim news, I then felt awkward about asking for the whereabouts of the guitar, yet I just had to know.
Her numb response said she didn't care about that or much of anything else in life. "I sold it to a pawnshop."
That was why I got into the pawnshop business. I did it hoping I'd one day find Willy Custard's guitar so I could lay it to rest on Trevor's grave.
Sadly, I've been unsuccessful in my quest, although I have been able to gain inside knowledge on just about every other kind of antiquity, treasure, or everyday knickknack in the state of Texas and beyond.
I pray if anyone has come across the Martin 0-28, he or she will know how to play a song that will satisfy it. Willy told me, in thinking I was his son, "only your soul can play it," so I'm sure that song must be the blues.
My mother, being the wealthy woman of high society that she was, couldn't play it. And Sarah, while she did feel the blues inside due to her unspoken love for me, couldn't find the strength of honesty.
As Willy sang, "A man's gonna blow, just like a man's gotta know."
"The Galveston Flood" is the first in a series, THE LEGEND OF A BLUES GUITAR.
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