Work Song - Ivan Doig [50]
“Bloody murder!” blurted a freckled scamp who seemed to relish the thought.
“Red-blooded,” a bossy girl overrode that, impatient at not having been first.
“The blood of our Lord,” said a cauliflower-ear tough who nonetheless must have been an altar boy.
“Bloodshot eyes!” rang out from one end of the increasingly enthusiastic audience, and from the other, “Blood poisoning!”
Amid the hubbub came a muted utterance from the back row. Everyone looked around. I encouraged: “A little louder, please?”
Russian Famine wriggled in his seat, scratched behind his ear, gazed over our heads as though that would make us go away, and finally muttered:
“No getting blood out of a turnip.”
“A well-known saying, thank you very much,” I honored that. Before I could get another word out, a hand was up and waving strenuously. Its owner was the impish enthusiast for bloody murder. “I perceive you have a question.”
“Sure do. Back there a ways when you had us taking our pulse, how come we couldn’t do it on our veins just as good as on those archeries? ”
“Clean out your ears, dummy,” the girl next to him jumped on that. “It’s not archeries. That’s bows and arrows. It’s arthries, like arthritis. Isn’t that right, Mr. Teacher?”
“You are both nearly correct.” But not near enough. While explaining that the returning blood in veins was too dispersed to register a pulse, I despaired of ever making my words stick in minds as flighty as these. Then an idea hatched.
“Miss Rellis?” Rabrab was startled to hear me call her that for the first time since she was the age of these students. “Do your young scholars ever sing?”
“They most certainly do. Why?”
“Can they sing this one?” I whistled a snatch of it.
Confidently, Rab swept to the front to lead the command performance. “Class, serenade Mr. Morgan such as he has never heard.”
Whether it was the song’s mischievous endorsement of betting on bobtail nags or the familiar sassy tune or simply the chance to bawl at the top of their adolescent voices, the sixth-graders attacked the old favorite with gusto, making the auditorium ring with the final galloping chorus:
Camptown ladies sing this song, doo dah, doo dah! Camptown racetrack’s five miles long, oh the doo dah day!
“Unforgettable,” I said with a congratulatory bow to the class when the last high-pitched note had pierced the rafters. “And would you believe, the exact things we have been talking about go nicely with that same tune. Hum it for me and I’ll show you.” With the room practically vibrating to Stephen Foster’s jingle-jangle rhythm that practically anything can be fitted to, I improvised:
Arteries and veins and pulse, heartbeat, heartbeat! They all deliver life to us, that’s the job of blood!
“Ready to try it?” I challenged. They couldn’t be held back. Rab looked radiant as the young voices romped through my version a number of times.
“One last thing.” I rolled my sleeves down at the conclusion of the songfest. “At next week’s story hour, I am sure Miss Runyon will be happy to show you the knack of the tourniquet.”
“I HOPE YOU DIDN’T do too much damage to the minds of the youngsters.”
Sandison was back to prowling the mezzanine when I came upstairs. “Just imagine”—he swept a hand over the scene of the miners tucked in every conceivable sitting place in the Reading Room below—“if we had this kind of patronage on a usual day. The trustees would think we’re geniuses.” He looked resentfully at the Roman-numeraled clock high on the wall. “And at one minute past noon, ninety out of a hundred of our involuntary scholars will hightail it out of here to the nearest speakeasy. The poor fools.”
“That’s an altogether gloomy view of humanity, isn’t it, Sandy?” I protested. “Surely a good many of the men apply their minds while they’re in here like this.”
“Hah.” He rested his bulk against