‘Handy Man,’ Summer 1977

What Music Speaks, part eight

Illustration by Louisa Bertman

The song poured lazy through the radio’s single speaker, filling the hot afternoon silence with its somnolent groove and crackle. James Taylor’s voice telling me to gather round, that he was my handy man, saturated the summer air hanging stagnant on the covered porch. You sat beside me on the wooden floorboards. I lay on one of those aluminum and vinyl woven trifold…