The Ballad of James McKenna

Day Eleven: Creative Process Through Music

Day Eleven
         Creative Process Through Music
Word Count: 677

Nobody's Hero by Dropkick Murphys
But he's nobody's hero
Saves a drowning child
Cures a wasting disease
Hero, lands the crippled airplane
Solves great mysteries

Hero, not the handsome actor
Who plays a hero's role
Hero, not the glamor girl
Who'd love to sell her soul
If anybody's buying
Nobody's hero.

It had shocked Jimmy to his very core to hear Jacob, whom he'd regarded as something of a friend, disparage his work. That Jacob was just as much anti-Negro rights as the average white American was not so very surprising it and of itself, but to hear his prejudice extend to those who aided them (especially when just doing their job) had shaken Jimmy badly. His parents, though they'd never seen a Negro til they set forth from the Emerald Isle (each with their own families, each escaping their blighted land and their bloated stomachs), had taught Jimmy that all life was sacred. And while the other immigrants had turned as mightily against the dark-skinned race as any deep south master (a people below even they in the scornful eye of 'true Americans'), the McKennas had seen them as brother, as kin, sharing their time and their breath together upon this earth.

For this reason, though they had not been rich, and could not afford to feed their visitors much, the McKenna family had joined the so-called Underground Railroad. Their home became a station, a place of refuge along a perilous route to the north and freedom. And Jimmy, young though he was, had learned that compassion was something to be freely given, and to anyone who needed it.

He'd never realized, growing up, just how different that made them. And, worse, how loathsome some of their neighbors would have found them if their involvement in the railroad. It was only when he joined the army and traveled into the South that he'd been forced to come to terms with the fact that, as an abolitionist and, more, as a true believer in equal rights for all. Their Negro brethren fought just as hard and just as long, but could barely get shoes to cover their feet and socks to pad the shoes. They were paid less, fed less often, and respected less than anyone else. Even the Irish, widely regarded as a scourge at any other time, were treated with respect and as heroes among men. They'd taken heavy losses and shouldered on.

Heroes they were, of course. Nothing done to the Negro regiments had any bearing on their willingness to sacrifice life and limb for home. But Jimmy had always felt that his parents, the quiet heroes, the unsung heroes, were quite possibly the greatest heroes of all.

He sat outside the hotel, bow pulling across the strings of his violin with fervent ease. It was a sad song, this one, one of loss and memory. Jimmy had no words for it, but they were what his soul felt when he thought of his father. Owain had been a great hero, and nobody's at the same time. Born a Scot, he'd turned first to Ireland and then, when the potatoes died and the famine spread, to America. He came with his brothers, to this so-called Land of Opportunity. And here he'd met a woman, a young Irishwoman also seeking a new life and a new home, and together they'd formed a family full of love and life and curiosity. When the war broke out, he'd even given his life for the hope that, one day, America would be what it stood for.

Owain McKenna was nobody's hero. Except for Jimmy's, who played songs and made songs, out of string and gear, to honor him. To remember him. And when he took this job, accepted this case and flew out to New York to solve it, he did it with his father in his heart and in his mind.

Because Jimmy was coming to realize that, like his father, he was nobody's hero. Except maybe the victims', and they were not alive to see it. But Jimmy played on, because nobody's hero was good enough for him, as long as the memory of Owain smiled and the part of Jimmy deep inside, the part of him that longed to live up to his parents' heroism, glowed with the satisfaction of a job well--very well--done.