Instrumental Passage

Instrumental Passage (working title)

marked wane/2004


One

Colin eased open the age-blackened cedar box. The hand-built brass hinges made a creaking, chirping complaint…loudly enough that Anna must have heard from the next room as she soon popped her head around the door jam to offer Colin her raised-eyebrows look.

“I dunno Honey, it was under Dad’s bed. From the dust it looks like it hasn’t been touched since they moved in…which was…fifty-six or something like that?”

“It was fifty-five”, she answered, “ because that was the year James was born and they’d moved so he could have his own bedroom; Your Mom told me.”

Despite their having been married only five years, as women often seem to do
Anna already knew more about Colin’s family than he did: birthdays; anniversaries; second cousins; even long-healed family dalliances of which Colin was never made aware…

Before she’d finished speaking Colin was already kneeling and gingerly lifting out file-folders and loose papers, making separate little piles of those seeming to be related. On top fortunately was the deed to the house and land, the main object of their visit. The family meeting (where the deed would be the subject of some worry and debate) and his Dad’s wake had been arranged for next Sunday in his sister Cheryl’s deluxe entertainer’s house on the lake - provided by her husband Cam’s high-end car dealership which hawked luxury cars to upper-crust baby boomers…and the odd shadier looking sort Colin termed his “Budding Buyers”: profiteers in the Okanagan’s healthy pot industry who couldn’t help advertising their success and lack of restraint. His other sister, Terry, was living somewhere in Europe, Aberdeen Scotland at this moment, he believed, and would be “unable to attend”. She’d been unable to attend any family function as long as Colin could remember. Her etymological research work suited her affectations of anti-social behaviour perfectly.

Colin passed the deeds up to Anna, then bent and continued to sort through yellowing and brittle newspaper clippings. He stopped to read a folded column, noting on side ‘A’ a two dollar belt-contraption cure for ‘fistula and piles?’ and three ready-made shirts for five dollars at Lavers!, and, lo and behold! on side “B”, his Mother’s Grade Ten elocution speech, awarded second prize and published in the (flipping the folded top up)…May 08/46 “Comox Telegraph”! He read it through with a tight-chest feeling, then turned handing it up to Anna:

“I guess Pearson or whoever was PM back then didn’t get the “Telegraph” –
since Mom clearly had this world hunger thing solved so long ago”.

Beneath all the loose scraps and exactly lining the box bottom was a zippered portfolio, dark brown leather with hand-tooled filigree on apposed corners. The family name MacPherson slanted down and across the front in carved relief, stylishly linking the two filigree in a large curlicued old-style font. With some trouble as it fit so snugly he fished it out and held it up, brows raised. She shrugged one shoulder and shook her head…

“Looks really old, Colin.”

“Ya. I almost didn’t see it there. The way it fit so exactly I thought it was the bottom.”

The tarnished zipper offered a lot of resistance at the first tug so Anna ran down to the kitchen for some WD-40. With a few drops and a little grunt-work Colin managed to zip it open. A curious air wafted out as he shipped it sideways and caught a small stack of stiff and crispy papers that he fanned out…musical scores? A quick count found a dozen, all in a standard musical notation but each seemed to be by a different hand. From the hand-wrought cut, turn and trill symbols Colin recognized they were pipe or fiddle tunes, and a hand similar enough to each notation had assigned each of the twelve a different Gaelic-sounding name. Only two carried dates: one by an Angus Chisolm, 1785 and one a Donald Stewart, 1806 - but it was enough for Colin!

“Geez honey, these must be worth something! Original fiddle tunes from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries?”

Anna reached for the heavy sheets, wondering aloud…“Why would your Dad have those? He didn’t play the fiddle…did he?”

Secretly smiling to know something about his family that Anna didn’t…

“Remember at the last family reunion when cousin Dave gave me great grandpa John MacPherson’s neat old cane? Well later (after we’d all stopped trying not to blubber, of course) Dad’s brother Hugh talked about great grandpa’s very old and supposedly excellent fiddle - it should have been among the McPherson family treasures we all passed around that day. Anyway, Great Grandpa McPherson was apparently the top fiddler in the Comox valley in those early years and he loved to play for dances, community festivals... But his last night out to play – as quite an older man - someone stole his fiddle from the case and left another, cheap instrument inside. Grandpa was heartbroken when they got him home and he discovered the theft the next day – he’d played every day without fail apparently. Uncle Hugh said he just sort of pined away after that, and was gone in about six months: really a tragic story. Especially since it would probably be me who might have had the fiddle by now, but for some lowbrow thief…just kidding. I know Great Grandpa left fiddles for each grandchild. Uncle Hugh plays some…did that day, remember? My Dad never did…not that I know of I don’t think…and he got rid of the two little fiddles that ended up with us. Mom said he couldn’t stand the noise when we three came along and scratched annoyingly on them, and those were his more brash and precipitous days…if you recall.”

They were exchanging glances when Anna heard the phone ring and, shoving the scores at Colin, she dashed down the stairs to answer, curious who’d be calling so soon after Dad MacPherson’s passing. Colin frowned and gingerly rested the scores on the opened box lid, then thought to turn the folio upside down to see if anything might be stuck inside. Nothing fell out, but as the heavy stiff leather allowed only a small opening he squeezed a little on the ends like an accordian, and turning himself and the case until the dusty amber light from the window was just right, peered inside. There were no more papers to see, but in the sheen from the low-angle sunlight handwriting directly on the inside leather was visible, a flowing elegant hand - that must have been written before the folio was assembled as there was clearly no room to effect such stylish writing inside. It was Gaelic…of which he’d seen a little - in his grandmother’s cast-off Scottish heritage magazines she’d once sent him as a wee lad. With some squinting and careful light direction he was able to transfer the short paragraph onto a business card, growing more curious as to the message with each word copied.

Anna was thumping back up the stairs by this time and, after catching her breath, announced it was a real-estate agent wanting to list Arthur’s house.

“All the subtlety of vultures at a carrion pile, Colin”

“Well, I guess this will all have to be sorted out at Cheryl’s on Sunday so there’s no use sticking our heads in the sand.”

As he said this he felt tears threatening and had to turn away, knowing Anna didn’t need the sight of his tears - being an emotional person herself. To Colin’s silent and wilful control of everything but his glistening eyes in the worst of crises Anna had always felt her own blubber and gasp outbursts childish and unfair.

But having found the papers needed for their Sunday meeting Anna quickly gave the plants a drink while Colin checked the doors and windows; There had been break-ins in the neighbourhood lately. The once-lonely farmhouse set well back from the road among the now-tall poplar and old spruce was a dated and sore-thumb reminder to the nouveax-riche in their ostentatious California-coloured stucco monstrosities that real people who’d done the real work were being squeezed out of the valley. Anna and Colin had agreed early on and without much discussion that the house and small acreage should stay in MacPherson hands…and they hoped the others, who certainly had fewer money troubles than Anna and Colin, would feel the same.

In a last gesture on their way out Colin kicked viciously, severing the phone cord where it twisted out of the wall. Anna just turned away and fumbled with her keys.

“No more emergencies now, eh, Dad?”

Arthur had always used the phone as little as possible, only for the obligatory Sunday-evening family phone calls and emergencies, really; and his Mom was no lover of the pushy sale agents or phone card salesman who’d harassed her last, difficult days. Colin sighed privately as they collected their few treasures, locked the house and left.


Two

The Sunday meeting at Cheryl’s had gone well, with only a few minor squabbles over the necessary arrangements. The tearful then celebratory wake to follow had healed a few old wounds and opened new family avenues; reunion plans were in the works, etc….

So Colin managed to get himself to the office Monday, but seeing the photocopier he immediately remembered the fiddle scores lying on his night-stand; he’d intended to bring them for copying this morning. He’d called around a bit last night, searching out old friends with the right academic connections…and got consistent advice: make and transact all investigations with photographic copies only; preserve the originals at all cost, and remember, high-intensity photocopier light can damage sensitive parchments!

“Darn”, he thought, “I’ll have to wait ‘till tomorrow and, today being Monday, I don’t have a class ‘till…” He grabbed and dialled the phone, dropped into his oxford brown leather armchair and spun to face his family’s portrait as the ringing began. His daughter answered, Anna-Mae, all of fifteen going on …”Macpherson’s hum-drum glum club. State your message”

“Honey, you shouldn’t answer the phone like that!”

“Oh! Dad, I though you were Carla calling back! She’d just hung up with me to call Marcie and was going to call right back…so sorry!”

“Oh, answer the phone however you want, Sweety. I was just kidding…” Colin was sensitive to Anna-Mae’s moods and being the cause of clouds in her sunny voice he avoided if possible. “Honey, could you do me a favour? I left some papers in a folder on my nightstand. Could you snap a digi-photo of each of them and email them to me, all twelve, and the handwritten note too…to my regular work address? That’s a good girl. Give me a call when you’ve got them sent. What a lucky Dad I am to have such a brilliant daugh…Oh…ok! I’ll get off the phone. But you tell those friends of yours that you are all of fifteen and not…Anna-Mae?…rotten kids.J”

The faxed scores arrived just before lunch; Obviously she’d finished her social calender planning before sending them, but she was a good, concientious girl, and they had arrived just the same. Colin got more copies made during lunch, high detail full colour, thanks to the new laser unit the plotting crew had required for some high-detail D.O.D. work. Back in his office, he scanned the copies as large JPEGS and wrote the files to a CD on his office computer. Armed with the CD in his coat pocket, the copies and the faxed originals in folio, he dropped by the front desk to move his “In” button to “Out”.




Three

Chase McFarlane headed the Languages Department, spoke Scots Gaelic fluently…and played a Black’s penny-whistle just well enough to lend his position some of the lazily achieved erudition he craved. Colin found him brougeing it up for a few students at the exam postings corkboard and “you-me” hand-signalled McFarlane to a parley - when he’d stopped rocking and laughing long enough to see anything though his sparkling watery eyes. McFarlane fixed Colin with a surprised but pleasant smile as they walked in silence into a nearby and vacant Languages Dept. office. “McPherson…You appear from all visible indices to be on a mission. What can I do you for?” This new tone was a veer from his bombast in the hallway and anyone but Colin would have been surprised.

“Chase, I can use your expertise again with a translation issue, however, this time it is hush, hush, hush! Even, and this indicates it’s extreme sensitivity, to the extent that the translation must be decoded from a scrambled form, such that the translator or translators will not perceive the message in any significant part…and accuracy is, of course, of critical importance”

“Good Lord, Colin, what can it be?” Of course I can do this, unless it is something very obscure…I might be bold enough to say…but I don’t see how I can translate and not know the message. But…You have an idea I am guessing…?”

“More than an idea, Chase. We developed it years ago during an anti-terrorism project. The message words will be presented to you in randomized order and during which time they remain visible you translate each word to the best of your abilities. Additional words, these superfluous to the true message, are added into the message stream to foil any natural attempt to reconstruct the message from the words presented. We then simply remove the dummy words, rearrange the remaining message words, and read our translation. Tests have demonstrated almost total message opacity to the translator with such a protocol. Ready?”

He thrust his paper copy of the Gaelic script from inside the portfolio at McFarlane with a secretive air, hiding his escaping grin by turning his face away and looking about the office suspiciously.

McFarlane read quickly and turned to Colin with his smile of rising recognition. “Having me on again, eh McPherson? It fact…wherever in the devil you got this…in my best 16th century High Scots Gaelic interpretation it says…

‘Twelve to master, cut to turn
lilt of life - rosin burn’

Yes, yes, quite poetic really…but it does not appear to be connected in any way with contemporary terrorism, Colin McPherson. Now leave me to my exceptionally important work and return to your grotto of iniquity from whence you came.”

McFarlane cracked his broadest grin and slapped Colin of the shoulder three times for effect before striding from the office back to the corkboard and his admiring throng - who immediately crowded around him again peppering questions as if he’d never left.


Four

Young Stewart was nominally thirteen. “Stewart McPherson”…he dreaded having to say his so obviously Scots name aloud each first day of school - this time to his ultra-sophisticated eighth grade class. Pipers with embarrassing flying kilts always marched though his imagination as sat there, waiting his number seventeen of twenty-three roll-call turn, nervously practicing his name in his head over each of the other’s turns, waiting for his own voice to echo back from the grey cinder-block walls of quite-new Maple Secondary. Being branded forever with such a moniker…more suitable to some Prince of Gladiators - or a dark-ages tartan-swaddled dung-covered sheep thief - for a boy born post-n.e. (Nintendo era) it just wasn’t a valid choice! He’d show them! When he did finally reach the age of majority, he’d become…Rip Calder?… Chance Deadman?…well…something way-cool anyway, and just whatever he felt like!

Stewart arrived home for lunch from his first half-day of school to find that Anna-Mae (now in Senior High which began tomorrow) had left the scanner running. Being generally curious as to what big sister Anna-Mae was doing - though he was careful never to let her see anything but his distain for her activities – he pressed the <Recall> button and tabbed through each of the twelve fiddle scores with crunching eyebrows and pursing lips. Stewart happened to play the violin – precociously - and immediately recognized the scores for what they were: Fiddle Tunes! Scourge of his most esteemed of instruments…the beloved classical violin! Damned scraping tone-deaf brain-damaged abusers of his beloved violin! He knew immediately it had to be some sick plot of his father’s, always so proud of their Scottish heritage and trying to ram folk culture down their throats… probably wants me to play these tunes at some tacky wacky Caleigh or whatever they call those folky goof-gatherings he likes. Well, not a chance Dad! I told you I’ll play the violin and that’s all!

Stewart liked his Bach, enjoyed Mozart, Rachmaninoff, dug a little AC/DC and Red Hot Chilli Peppers even, but folk music…it left him cold. He could magnanimously admit that some folk practitioners even developed quite passable playing technique…in the key of A. Or perhaps D… one tune in each key and you’re off to the races!…buffoons… couldn’t remember the overture to a decent piece of music, let alone a thirty minute violin concerto…let me see that first tune there…I bet it’s pretty basic…‘Meadeth Rant’… hmmm…in the key of ‘C’…hmmm…1789…whoa!…written during the Middle Classical period!…hmmm…Stewart could site-hear music in his head and had the gist of the tune at first glance. Kinda quirky the way the pattern repeats from the bass up by threes yet there are four beats…he’d gone for his fiddle and worked the tune up quite well by the time Anna-Mae’s bus got her home. She caught Stewart sawing out pungent rosin in the tricky “B” part when she walked in - and paused with the door half open to hear him finish. His tagged ‘shave and haircut’ was his favourite and fanciest, she knew, having sat thru him practicing it for days with low curses and growls until a final “I got it! Yaaaa!”…outburst when he had it down at last. Anna suffered uncontrollable goose bumps when he played the violin well and today he had the thing alive with woody resonance and perfect intonation. But fiddle tunes?

“Stewart? Have you been possessed by some sadistic Gaelic Ghost?”

He spun with a sheepish look…“Awwwww, crap Anna-Mae! Why don’t you knock? I just found these on the scanner and…well…this one looked kinda interesting so I thought I’d just see what it sounded like and…Don’t tell Dad, OK? I’d never have any peace again.”

Anna-Mae just smiled her “you never know” Mona Lisa smile. Stewart felt sick.

Five

Colin arrived home after a late-afternoon lecture and his one tutorial with McFarlane’s translation, the assorted paper music copies and his just-burned CD burning a hole in his pocket. With a quick peck for Anna on heading through the kitchen he made straight for the office/den computer and the T-3 Web access his university tenure provided.

‘Twelve to master, cut to turn
lilt of life - rosin burn’

Now that he knew how the passage read he had a strong feeling the whole thing might be historically important. The early dates and strange Gaelic names for twelve apparently unrelated and unpublished tunes (so said the Aberdeen Fiddle Tune Registry thru early unofficial channels) …the cryptic passage…it was all just too curious not to mean something. And the fact that his father had kept them hidden all these years? Well, maybe Dad had just forgotten them, or didn’t even know the portfolio was in there. It was a tight and careful fit and only someone looking closely might see (thank Colin’s interest in antiques that he scrutinized the box with as much interest as he had the contents). Dad certainly hadn’t played any fiddle - to his knowledge - and might not have had much interest if he did see the scores at a glance. And the fancy handwriting passage had been barely visible with even more careful attention…all in all, Colin decided it was likely that his father had known of neither the leather folder nor it contents…though he had clearly put things into the main box often enough over the years.

‘So where had the box itself come from?’…He himself had never seen it before last Friday, and no one at Cheryl’s seemed to have any memory of it when it was displayed with the contents – minus the leather folio - at Dad’s Sunday wake.

Anna-Mae knocked at the door… “Dad, did you get the images I sent today ok?”

“Sure Honey, come on in.”

Both kids had great manners about closed doors and privacy…being bright and well-enough trained to set the exact example they would wish said parents to follow with their own private-property bedrooms…“What goes on behind closed doors can be innocent - but embarrassing enough to deserve the courtesy of a knock”…either he or Anna had instructively replied to being surprised in the middle of a swimsuit change by little Stewie’s new mastery of door knobs.

“I was just looking into this translation of the Gaelic passage you faxed…the note-pad scribbling?…but I haven’t really got anywhere yet. Ya wanna hear it?”

“Sure, Dad.”

Colin repeated the lines twice for Anna-Mae who cocked an eyebrow as her mother would and tilted her head to listen carefully.

“Pretty clear to me, Dad. ‘Twelve to master’…you have to learn all twelve tunes…or learning
all twelve makes one a master. ‘Cut to turn’…hmmm…maybe it’s just about the fiddle ornaments…but I bet it’s something about harvest time!…‘cut’ could be harvest, ‘turn’ could be at planting…ok? … “Lilt of life?”…I know! “Cut to turn” means the length of your life, “lilt of life” means your happiness! “Rosin burn”…well, ‘bois sec’ and all that, Dad, rosin burns when the fiddler plays hard, so hard the fiddle will burst into flames, they say! Uh huh…

But I think that will do nicely… Poetic Translation? ‘Learning all twelve fiddle tunes in your lifetime and playing them really hard a lot will make you happy…or maybe…strong? …or live a long time? …lilt used in a musical sense can also mean lift, which might’…well, anyway, that’s it!”

Colin stared, his eyes gimballing on Anna-Mae’s as his head oscillated away his involuntary disbelief. He finally blurted it out…“Honey, that was amazing! I know you got it just right! Amazing girl! …Wow! …wow.”

Colin sat beaming up at Anna-Mae from the edge of his chair, still shaking his head, but smiling now as father’s pride warmed him through…until she laughed and ruffled his hair, just as Anna would, and broke the spell. She skipped lightly to the door, her long pony swinging with centrifugal force against the maple casing as she rounded it, leaving one long golden hair hanging on a proud nail with a twang and “ouch” as she disappeared, her broken laughter starting up again then soaking away into the house as she went.


Six

Stewart lay awake on his bed, the hot night keeping the covers off and kicked into a ball as far down the bed as his feet could push them. That tune!…can’t get it out of my head…da-da-da dit-dit, daa da dit-dit-dit, daa da dit-dit-dit da-da daaaa…damn things… so simple…but unique… burn holes in your head like phophors on a tv tube…can’t help causing some kind of damage to the old noodle that way - playing the same damn thing over and over again! No wonder those ‘auld Scots’ were wild and disagreeable when crossed. Playing music like that all the time. Turn you wild…” if’n you werrrren’t to begin with”…so catchy though!…like a radio jingle… da-da-da dit-dit, daa da dit-dit-dit, daa da dit-dit-dit… zzzzzzzzz.

Seven

At 7:15 A.M. Colin was waiting impatiently for Stewart at the bathroom door - which finally burst open at 7:35 to eject a fog-bound Stewart who shagged quickly past, head down and dripping, before an exasperated Colin could stop him. Stewart’s bedroom door slammed shut just as Colin gained the bedrooms’ hallway, clipping off Stewart’s shout of…“out in a minute, Da…(bang!) Colin retreated to the kitchen, sure that Stewart’s routine ‘next’ would find him there. He had his own nuked instant-coffee water and cereal bowl filled when Stewart banged through the hallway into the kitchen, looking back over his shoulder with his fiddle under one arm; turning to see Colin at the table his face fell and he looked around the kitchen as if for moral support or an escape hatch. “Goinn’ some where in a hurrrrry, Son?” …Colin asked in his best Gaelic accent - always thinking Stewart liked hearing it, always being wrong.

“Awww, Dad…I have practise at Jenny’s before school, the chamber group?…and it’s a really long walk. I really have to go…now.”

“Just a minute, Stewart. I can give you a ride. You might find this very interesting. Last night we…or more properly Anna-Mae!…solved the riddle of the passage (as he’d started calling it at the family meeting he’d arranged to inform all of the historical family find)…

“Wait, Dad. You know I don’t really like folk music, and if this is about those fiddle tunes…I gotta go or I’ll be late. And I don’t want you to drive me; it’s wasteful when I can walk. So see ya later…”

“But your sister said…” Stewart was out the door and down the steps at a speed Colin could never hope to match and he would have felt foolish trying. “Can’t get through to that boy”…Colin muttered as he turned back to the kitchen.



Eight

Stewart ran the whole thirteen blocks to the family home of fellow violinist Jennifer Scanlon - a three-story brick fronted West-End beauty…the home, not Jenny, who was a perfect two-story and quite soft-fronted West-End beauty, or so Stewart had lately come to appreciate. The other two, viola and cello, had arrived, and the singular sound of several independent tunings spilled out from the stoned-floored great room where they regularly practiced. The Scanlon’s empty wind-rippled pool was visible as Stewart passed along the green glass partitioned breezeway, beside which an elderly gardener puttered on hands and knees among brilliant petunias, his wispy hair blowing repeatedly into his eyes as Stewart watched and passed.

“Stewie!” Jennifer jumped up at his entrance and pulled a chair forward for him, beaming. “Come on, Man! We have only two weeks before the recital and you were slow into the triplet runs at measure seventy-two last week.”

Frowning…“Ya, I know... Hey, I did practise isolation triplets a little!…sort of (thinking ashamedly of the triplet runs he’d ground out and mastered in that Meadeth Rant fiddle tune)… let’s give it a try.”

-------------------------later-----------------------

“Stewart, that was perfect! You must have been practicing! You know, your instrument seemed a little louder that normal…but it sounded good, all right! We’re going to kill at the provincials if you play like that!”

Calder, cello, and Walter Coin on the viola had left as they had arrived, together, as soon as the regular hour and a half practice was up. Both had quietly and begrudgingly agreed that Stewart’s playing and tone improvements were certainly noticeable; Jenny had screeched her pleasure then demanded their opinion as soon as Stewart’s long down-bow ended the number.

Jenny and Stewart stowed their instruments, then while she stuffed her backpack with her staff-prepared lunch and checked her school books Stewart loitered in the breezeway, watching the gardener now methodically removing bird leavings from the marble statuary with a large squirt bottle and stiff-bristled brush. “Bye, Sancho …off to school!” Jenny waved as they headed past and onto the sidewalk, Sancho offering a weary wave without lifting his head from the engrossing task at hand.

Nine

Arthur loosened the frog and stowed his bow, smiling a little as always to see the narrow-grained red spruce top disappear into the green velvet lined coffin-case. He loved his instrument, an unbranded slightly-large Strad style he’d received as a small boy from his grandfather when Grandpa John lost his left arm below the wrist to a wild belt on their haypress; his fiddling career was at an end. Arthur felt an almost physical sensation each time he swung it to his shoulder and plucked the strings for tune; the resonance was very powerful and when played full tilt Arthur could sense the music right into his chest and gut. If need be he could play over any two other fiddles in the Valley and always come out on top, and his tone on that fiddle had that special something that cut through even on slow Aires softly played. And that Grandpa John had played it for so many years added a large measure to Arthur’s reverence for the fiddle, clearly old even when John had been a young man. Where John had acquired the violin, neither Arthur nor anyone else in the family seemed to know, but family rumour had that it was payment for a personal debt; John always seemed to be helping neighbours with something and payment in hard goods was a common thing in those hard-scrabble times. A neighbour who couldn’t make something work could always call on John and never having seen ‘one’ before he’d get it running right in no time - if it could be done with materials to hand. And an old fiddle might be just the thing a hard-up neighbour “couldn’t never get to work no-how anyways”, passing it onto John who might figure out most anything given the time and patience. And, according to Arthur’s vivid memories of him, old John had definitely figured it out just fine, getting the auld Scots/Irish piper’s drive into his bow work that made Saturday night dancers leap and twirl on their candle-lit back porch ‘till the house shook.

Arthur carefully slipped the scores back into the portfolio in their correct order: C;G;D;A;E;B;F;Bb;Eb;Ab;Db;Gb

“Always in the correct order, Boy”…John bent to whisper down at Arthur’s ear as he’d handed the fiddle and music over to Arthur that day, tears coming to them both as he straightened then mussed Arthur’s hair with his remaining work-roughened hand. “Order is the thing! You get at it and stick at it boy and you’ll make something of yourself.”

He’d stuck with it. At eighteen Arthur had been playing for twelve years and had six tunes mastered: up to Ardrishaig, the wickedly tricky “B” reel that took him a full hour of warm-up to handle with aplomb in front of anyone. He had admittedly hacked at the later tunes once or twice early on, but they were so difficult that he’d made little use of them. And thinking of Grandpa John’s seriously-toned plea he felt strangely dizzy and nauseous afterward. Turning the sheets back into their correct order he began to play through correctly: C;G;D;E…and felt hugely better already. By the time he’d finished the ‘E’ tune, his limit at that time, his smile was broad, his back straight, his stomach calm - ravenously hungry in fact, so he stowed the fiddle and music under his bed as always and headed down for a huge roast elk supper with cob corn and fresh-brown bread. His father had a friendly routine bark… “Don’t bolt your food so, Boy!” …but mother had smiled to see her once picky little eater (“almost a runt”…old John had once said in a moment of blunt honesty) becoming a healthy, very healthy and robust it seemed, boy of nine.

At eighteen Arthur’s fiddling still seemed to make him outrageously hungry - and tonight he’d be eating late. Playing for the Native Son’s Hall dance the “all you can eat” payment came with the midnight buffet and he’d be playing for at least an hour or two after that; but endless good food suited Arthur fine. A few cash money tips did come from dancers who slyly pigeon-holed Arthur for that special tune for their sweetheart, “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” being a favourite, but as a rule Arthur wouldn’t accept money for playing at dances. As he said more than once to those who yelled requests against his taste…“Now I’m a volunteer here. If I’d let you pay me then I’d have to be playing what you want, and that’s not what I’d want. Now sit down and listen.” A few of the larger men in the audience were fiddlin’ lovers and anyone who might think to continue complaining to Arthur could find themselves doing it outside in a hurry; complaining about that would be a good excuse for a brisk thumping - not that Arthur needed any protecting. But rather than bruising his hands and spoiling his good mood he would defer to those enjoyed such and had no more subtle use for their hands planned - which their wives might confirm.

The dance began soon as the heat had slipped with the sun behind the Comox Range and the dense spruce shadows cast on the hall’s heavy timbers gave way to the oil-lit pools of glowing amber at the door. Although he was usually around to play a little spoons or even banjo accompaniment on a few of the tunes, tonight Colm Tenery was off to the mainland for supplies and Arthur alone played a forty-five minute set of mixed tunes, keeping them danceable and lively. When enough thirst had been raised Arthur called for a break and headed back into the kitchen to see if he could scare a little something early out of the women at work in there, squeezing past a few loiterers crowding the kitchen door.

“Watch yourself, boy!” A fellow Arthur couldn’t place turned his shoulder as Arthur passed and took a step back - to bump him intentionally it seemed. Three others - rough types from camps up on the Oyster, Arthur guessed, having seen them hanging around the back door to the ‘Waverly’ - turned their backs to close off the kitchen doorway and before Arthur could speak the four had him pinned by the arms while the ‘bump man’ stepped in with a hard shot to the belly, doubling Arthur over. Out on the dance floor a stick-vaulting contest was starting up and the brief tousle the toughs made hustling Arthur out the side door into the darkness went unheard. Outside, someone tripped him up and he sprawled into the ditch and the Devils Club, cursing as thorns raked his bare arms and face into a bloody mess; someone on the bank above growled “welcome to the club, boy”.

“Now listen, Boy” …the kitchen voice. “I don’t take to such fiddle playin’ and neither do me mates.” A hand reached down to grab Arthur’s collar and roughly drag his head up closer to the speaker’s who bent with a grating whisper…”I know what you’re up to and it’d better stop right here. If’n I find you been playing them tunes again it’ll go real bad for you - real soon.” After a few boots to the ribs and kidneys Arthur was left to sag half-conscious back into the ditch and it was ten minutes before he could gather himself to stagger back inside, the kitchen ladies covering their mouths in horror to see his torn face and bloody shirt.

But as Arthur couldn’t name his attackers and they seemed to have disappeared the angry milling crowd bent on revenge for the early end to their dance soon drifted off. Arthur collected himself and his fiddle, grabbed a handful of scones to stuff his pockets for the long and painful walk, and set off. By ten-fifteen he was home. By ten-thirty he was halfway through “B”- Ardrishaig, his bruising and scrapes forgotten. He slipped down to ravage the pantry before hitting the hay.

As a matter of course he briefly checked his right elbow where he recalled the worst thorn scrapes from the night before - and was satisfied that he’d done enough before bed last night that only a quick cosmetic fix was needed now. He wasn’t even into the B part of “G”- Guillygweed
when, first opening his eyes since beginning the cycle, he could see no further evidence of injury on his bowing elbow flashing up and down. He finished the tune…“finish what you start, Boy!”…but double-timed it...which was cricket if still played perfectly, old John had admitted when young Arthur had quizzed him for rules and hints and guidance early on. “Oh, Ya, Sure…But she’s got to be all there and right, Boy, or you’re wasting your time!” His greatest refrain: “All there and all right, Boy!”

Old John had lived to see Arthur get as far as “D” but was a withered wisp of his former glory at the end, though still whistling away with parched cracked lips at the whole cycle from his bed. Without a fiddle the effort really was a net loss that soon left him breathless and exhausted, but they grinned at each other each time he finished off…and both he and Arthur felt it would be an effort worthy of their last breaths.

That day they all heard the faltering whistle from the hall bedroom stop in the midst of a trill all three froze as they were and glanced to each other, Arthur and Mom standing there poised at the sink to listen, eyes raised and hopeful while Dad rushed in to check. He returned with a slow sad smile and glittering eyes, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Arthur. Dad…He’s gone.” Old John and the boy had been very close, and in his way Arthur’s father was soon seconding his own grief to the boy’s, as fathers often seem to need to do, holding Arthur and saying the kinds of things he would have had himself hear, at one time - given his druthers. No one else was there to do the saying now.

Ten

Thinking ahead, worried that Anna-Mae would be planning a devastating coup-counting deployment of her sneakily achieved (he felt) witness to his fiddling, Stewart had transferred all twelve tunes that he had found were still on the scanner to his PDA, hijacking the scanner’s tele-jack and hitting <resend> to capture the images. He had no immediate plan for a possible defensive use but was counting on the heat of desperation to hatch a plan quick: such an approach had worked for Stewart before this, and, as having the roots of his problem in hand made immediate sense in his present reactive mode, he grabbed at the chance to posses them while nothing better presented.
Nothing better presented over the next few days and he began to worry. “Wait, though”, he thought: “It’s been days and Anna-Mae has clearly not told Father that ‘little Stewies been fiddling’” (he could hear her mocking tones) - witness no gleeful Gaelic outbursts from Dad at the dinner table - so she was likely planning one of her crushing long-range deployments of intelligence: where his own indiscretions, usually recently forgotten (she knew just how long to wait), could be brought to bear to belittle or hamstring Stewart in a sensitive moment with their his parents or his friends. The last such time involved a working lighter he’d found at age ten, a fancy silver-plated self-striker he’d spotted while rooting in the overgrown bush-dump on the hill, old pitted chrome car parts and gothic-looking rusty appliances mixed with newly tumbled junk of varyingly recent vintages…
(Give the low-brows of the world a hidden hillside to which they can drive their bad decisions and a rogue dump is surely born; and like all animals having the urge to punt, louts of all eras seem to have the urge to tumble their crap down hills while they “Yee Haw! Did ya see that tv bounce offa the washer?” …such dumps seem to live on and on. But I digress.)
…Weeks later he had been managing Mom and Dad carefully all one Thursday afternoon (which Anna-Mae had noticed) in preparation to asking for permission to stay at his friend Josh’s family cabin for the weekend. When he felt the time was right and was finally able to broach the subject he delivered the formal request quickly but with studied nonchalance, then began tagging on every conceivable assurance of both boy’s most careful consideration for safety during the whole weekend: lifejackets, buddy system, hats, suntan lotion, no fires…
“Oh, does that mean he can’t take his fancy silver lighter with him, then?” …Anna-Mae dropped her stealth payload with perfect timing using her best “I am only concerned with accuracy and in preventing confusion here” syrupy rising tones. Stewart was so surprised by her mere knowledge of his carefully hidden lighter (he’d thought) that he betrayed good tactics and spun on her..”None of your damn business, Anna-Mae!” ”Stewart!” His father’s tone made it immediately clear to Stewart that he would not be wake-boarding, roasting weenies…lighting little fires on the beach by day and on little milk carton flotillas to set adrift by night…rats, or hanging with Josh in any manner this weekend. He pulled out and handed the lighter over before another word could be issued, continuing on with head hanging into his bedroom and closing the door – gently. He knew a defeat when he’d suffered one - all the worse for his planning to be guilty as charged re: the fires. He vowed that she would pay, for this very personal and ugly character-murder in the first degree she would eventually pay dearly. Oh yes.

Of course to the curious and perfectionist reading musician a chart is a chart is a challenge is a must and Stewart was soon laying on his bed squinting into his little PDA display, trying out the next tune in his head, “G”- Guillygweed - his bedroom door locked.

He had access to the practise rooms at the community music school during all hours it was open – 1/2h blocks, first come first served – and as the new insulation spec’d for the practise rooms isolated each player from their neighbour’s musical indiscretions he also soon began to work a little with Guillygweed before and after his regular art music practise - in anonymity of course.

Still searching for a way to steal Anna-Mae’s thunder, working away on Guillygweed, it hit him. He knew she would eventually reveal to their father what she’d seen and heard, waiting for the best moment where and when the damage to Stewart would be at a maximum...
He’d would simply have to trump her play - master all the tunes before then! He could then casually admit to his fiddling experiment, show Dad a few of the tunes while dismissing them as simplistic and easily handled, force an admission from Dad that he’d “given folk fiddling (ach-pittooie!) a fair chance and he should now be “left alone to pursue more challenging and significant musics”: turn her little lame skirmish into a wholesale irrevocable victory that would keep Dad (as “Celtic Man”) off his back forever!

Feeling much better, out of curiosity he tabbed through to the last tune, a Gb Slow Aire: “Abermoyle Burne”. Strange key for a fiddle tune, he thought, but Stewart’s years of classical training gave him an advantage over the vast majority of folk players and he felt little apprehension attacking anything in any key. He drew up for a long down-bow - making room for the numerous trills and turns that (he’d read ahead) were coming in the first measure - and struck into the tune.

But the bow seemed to skip the strings sans friction, no sound issued - at first. He began a confused and silent upbow then peered down at the white hair/string interface for some visible reason…and heard his bow shoulder dislocate in a sickeningly twangy rotator-cuff explosion! Severe pain leapt into his forehead and jaw and back into his shoulder! The violin and bow clattered resonantly to the floor and Stewart followed, insensible - to lay an unmoving and awkward pile behind the door…until unceremoniously budged aside by the next student wanting in: “No one is going to stand in the way of what I deserve” …and…“blocking the door won’t help you! …“I know you’re in there, Stewart!”…This next one is going to hurt!”

He was out until two the next afternoon, sedated thru iv, the four nicely aligned lumps on his head a strange forensic embarrassment to the heavy girl who could’ve moved a piano with a door if need be and she had, to be fair, “just wanted her fair share”.

Eleven

“Dad…I need my fiddle now…” Colin’s eyes flew open and he swung his chair so abruptly back to Stewart’s bedside that the plastic feet shrieked against new wax hurting his teeth. Stewart was still cringing from the noise as Colin arrived but he opened his own eyes and smiled as his vision cleared and he recognized his father’s face. He started to croak something more and to sit up but Colin hushed him back with fingertips to lips and a warm tearful smile. “Oh Honey, just rest and take your time. You’ve had a bit of an accident and you need to relax and take it easy. Everything is going to be ok…your fiddle is fine, no damage at all!

“It’s ok, Dad. I remember.” He did remember, clear as video…up until he’d hit the floor, though well before the rude knocking about by the door. Closing his eyes now triggered an instant replay causing his shoulder to ache anew. But he still felt that urge to play…not a “get back on that horse” urge but an…hmmm…is urge the right word? It felt like a spoonful of pleasant medicine about to meet his tongue and all would be well…if only he could play.
“Dad, get it for me? My fiddle, I mean”

“Your ‘fiddle’, Stewart? You must have hit your head worse than we’d thought!”

Colin’s weak-hearted joking did bring a laugh from Stewart then an “ouch” as his shoulder bounced a little, but surprising him by how little it actually did seem to hurt he moved it around in a tentative way with Colin looking on apprehensively.


“Stewart? Stewart...”

“…Dad?”

“Stewart, is that such a good idea after it’s been so badly dislocated…” He stopped with an internal “d’oh”, not wanting to have revealed to Stewart so soon or bluntly what the surgeon had said about the severity of the injury and expected time for a full recovery.

“Dislocated, Dad? It feels stiff…but if I can move it like this (demonstrating, to Colin’s horror)
I don’t think it was dislocated. My head sure hurts, though!” Stewart smiled up at Colin and he relaxed immediately, seeing in his son’s mocking eyes no residual pains. That his regular sense of humour was returning was a great sign. “I do need my fiddle to cure this head ache, though, seriously, Dad.” Colin knew that Stewart firmly believed playing the violin helped cure the small but annoying headaches he’d had as a child and Colin was further relieved…though why Stewart continued to call it a ‘fiddle’…Colin didn’t get the joke there.

“Son, give it a day or so, make sure everything is ok and get the doctor to have a look first, you should…

“Dad! I need it now, ok!” Stewart’s angry menacing tone peeled Colin’s eyes open and he leaned to look closely into his son’s for the source of such an outburst…he’d never imagined Stewart could ever sound so…ugly and cruel.

“Stewart, as sick as you have been you may not speak to me in that tone…ever again! What’s come over you, Son?”

Stewart’s look told Colin his son had no explanation; He was as surprised as Colin. “Dad, I am sorry! I dunno why I said it like that. But I do really feel the need to play, just a little, and I am sure it won’t damage anything. Look, it barely hurts at all!

“Stewart, if it really means so much to you I’ll call the doctor and we’ll see what he thinks. Just humour me a little, will you? I’d really thought he’d said it’d be quite a while before you felt up to playing…but maybe I misunderstood. He’ll sure be glad to see you feeling so much better already! I’ll be back with him in a few minutes if it’s at all possible, Son. ‘Craig Ellachie’, eh?”

Twelve

“Oh, Mr. McPherson, I hardly think Stewart will be able to play so soon. Sometimes children have trouble accepting their own physical limitations…despite healing more quickly than we older folks, everything will take time and, as I thought we’d discussed, Mr. McPherson, Stewart’s shoulder was severely dislocated and distal circulation was interrupted for some time before…discovery. It is to be expected that he will convalesce for some time, weeks to be sure, Mr. McPherson!”

His tone finally indicated some exasperation for in front of the x-ray illuminator he’d offered Colin his “you seem a reasonably intelligent fellow” explanation of Stewart’s condition and
Colin had nodded at all the right times as if he had well understood the severity.
And showed an apparently honest concern for his son’s somewhat suspiciously achieved injury, Orthopaedic specialist Wallace Pelton’s twenty-eight year career reading parent/guardian admitting statements marking a new first today: “violinist suffered shoulder dislocation while playing”.

“Well, Dr. Pelton, I do recall what you said and I did try to get Stewart to rest and relax but the way he was moving his arm around just now…to be honest I was almost starting to doubt your diagnosis myself. For my benefit and his, would you come and see him, for just a moment? At least he may be more convinced hearing from you exactly what has happened to him.”

“Certainly, Mr. McPherson. As soon as I’ve finished my regular rounds I’ll drop in to see you both; Not more than an hour?

“We’ll be waiting. Thank-you, doctor, for your patience with us.”


Thirteen