Baby Blue Backpack

Orange leaves drifted down around Gonga and swirled away, seemingly in time with the music of his accordion. It helped that Gonga was practicing keeping tempo with the wind. It was something he liked doing to clear his mind. With thoughts of wind racing through, nothing else could trouble him.

It was fall. And it was beautiful.

That’s all that Gonga cared about at the moment.

The sun brushed his black fur with sparkles and gently warmed through to his skin.

It felt so good to just sit in the sun and play his accordion. It was good to be nothing more than an advertiser for “The Textbook Game” once again. The anonymity of the mask suited him; as well as the predictability of the job.

Whenever things started going rough, he could always slip back into that role.

It was fantastic.

A girl with a baby-blue backpack paused on the opposite side of Speaker’s Circle and turned towards Gonga’s music. A dreamy smile flitted across her face and she drifted back to the edge of the circle. Slowly, she perched on the stone bench.

She was still there almost four hours later when Gonga finally reached down to lay his accordion in its case. He stretched, working the kinks out of his back and gazing off towards the sunset.

It had been a good day. He had kept track of the tips as they fluttered into his music case from passing students, and the tally was good. Almost $75.00 on top of his usual hourly rate. He smiled again. It was a wonderful day.

The girl in the blue backpack thought so too. Her library science classes that morning had been a little slow, but nothing too boring. Her projects were coming along nicely for being less than halfway through the semester, and she had just witnessed the best accordion concert in her life.

Now it was time to hurry up and meet her study buddy in the library and figure out where to go next on their research project. She frowned. The closing of the Missouri Historical Society would certainly put a damper on things. Who knew when the documents would get dried out? And worse yet, when would they be back in order so they could locate the items they needed?

Gonga watched her stroll past, wondering why she had sat listening all afternoon, wondering where she was headed now. If only he knew she was researching documents in the Historical Society. If only he knew…