Work Song - Ivan Doig [103]
“I am not aware that I ever get carried—”
“Oh, don’t forget the hat, Mr. Morgan. I stirred the slips of paper around, so when they draw it’ll be perfectly fair. Just don’t drop it or spill it or—”
“Actually, Rab, I have handled a hat before, thank you very—”
“Another thing. Don’t let Quinlan hog the stage when he gets up to sing whatever his bunch has come up with. This is serious business, not some Irish wake, got that?”
“Jared, I promise I shall muzzle Quin if necessary. Now do you suppose the two of you could possibly give me a minute to get myself ready for this?”
Not that there was any proven way of doing that, given what awaited me out beyond the stage curtain. The buzzing auditorium was filled with men hardened by the copper in their blood, and beside them, doubtful wives brought along for protective coloration. A couple at a time, they had filtered past Hoop and Griff and other Welsh-speaking venerables out there in front of the library acting as doormen beneath the drooping banner that read, like a much magnified eye chart, EISTEDDFOD! Passersby and other curious types asking about it were answered with such a spate of baffling syllables that they went away as if fleeing from banshees. Thus, only the mine families whom Jared counted on to be the heart of the union during the strike made up this gathering. Unanimity stopped at that, however. The neighborhoods were mapped in this restless audience as they were on the Hill: the Finns in sturdy rows, the Irish in a looser, louder group centered on Quinlan, the Cornish in chapel-like conclave, the Serbs and Italians across an aisle from each other as though the Adriatic lapped between them. Perched on tables at the back of the hall, Griff and Hoop and the Welsh cronies were like a rebel tribe grinning madly at the edge of the plantation.
My mind raced, but in a circle. As thronged as the place was, I kept feeling the absence of Grace. When I had gingerly asked if she might be on hand to lend moral support to the three of us from the boardinghouse, she just looked at me as if I had taken leave of common sense. “Morrie, I very nearly broke out in hives when you went off with Sandison, and I can’t risk it again. Besides, somebody should be on the outside if the lot of you get locked up, or worse.” Wise woman. I took one last peek past the curtain and drew the deepest breath I could. It was time to face the music, in every sense of that saying.
Stepping out to the front of the stage with a music stand in one hand and the hat held upside down in the other, I cleared my throat and spoke into the general hubbub.
“Good evening. Welcome to an evening of magic.”
Naturally that brought hoots to pull a rabbit out of that hat. Down in the front row I saw Jared cover his face with his hand, while Rab mouthed something like The songs, get to the songs!
“Ah, but there are more kinds of magic than the furry sort that a stage conjuror plucks up by the ears,” I said, carefully setting the hat aside so as not to spill the slips of paper. “The more lasting sort is not really visible. And that is the variety we hope to produce tonight. Something that will sing on and on in us like a fondest memory.”
“It better be a doozy, mister,” a skeptic in the middle of the crowd yelled out, “to beat what the Wobs have got.”
“I take it you refer to that celestial pastry, ‘pie in the sky,’ ” I replied, more cordially than I felt. “You are quite right, that is indeed a clever musical couplet. Yet it is not on the same footing with the classic musical compositions your fellow miners are striving to emulate here.”
“Like what?” came back like a shot.
That snared me. A couple of hundred unconvinced faces were waiting for my response, which had better not be a stuttering one.
The lesson of the old tale-tellers whispered itself again: sometimes you must set sail on the wind of chance. I whipped off my suitcoat and tossed it over the music stand. Rabrab nudged Jared forcefully, recognizing the signs in me. I stepped to the lip of the stage, snapping my sleeve garters