Get rhythm shoeshine boy

With a groan of defeat, Johnny tossed his wayfarers across the table and pushed his face into his hands. His eyes ached and his temple pinched, but worst of all, inspiration evaded him.

The café he sat in was quiet. There was a half-drunk (and cold) cup of coffee at his elbow, a blank piece of paper in front of him, and a pile of screwed-up ‘attempts’ heaped near the condiment’s basket.

Distantly he could hear the clink and clatter of staff in the kitchens, but his attention was drawn out the window, to the street. Some movement caught his eye.

Moving quickly casting a furtive look behind him, the chair and box-laden boy was only ten or eleven. The lad then slowed his walk with a glance about the street, choosing his next spot carefully before setting the chair down and upending the box's contents onto the pavement. knobby-kneed, he sat on that box as he arranged the tools of his trade: there were a couple of small tins, a brush, and a much-used rag.

From the comfort of the cafe, Johnny appreciated that the lad was barely above the station of a beggar. A shoeshine, a street vendor, and most probably without a license. It was likely he’d be chased off from this new spot too, once the shopkeeper realised he was out there. But still, Johnny was impressed by the lad's industry.

He watched on as the boy sat on his box, drumming a beat onto it with fingers as he called out his services to passers-by. It was a marvel, Johnny thought, that the boy was so upbeat.

A punter finally stopped, passed the lad a coin and took a seat with his foot up onto the box for a shoeshine. Swiftly, the lad got to work, it was then that Johnny noticed that the lad was tapping his foot to some rhythm all the while.

Seizing up his pencil, inspired by his muse, he began to write a new song:

Get rhythm
shoe shine boy
a nickel per shoe
worth a million dollars for you
when you get the blues...

Johnny's own foot was also tapping.




Writers Cramp entry
WC:364
Prompts: (From a Johnny Cash song)
Get rhythm
shoe shine boy
a nickel per shoe
worth a million dollars for you
when you get the blues...