Lost Nation (16 page)

“And remuneration?”

“Nothing more than what men offer to the cap. Nothing from the house. Although if my playing should satisfy you I’d not refuse a dram or two.”

Blood held his eyes a long beat. Then said, “Do your best.”

So the little man removed to the center of the room and unleashed the monkey from its collar and the monkey hopped to the floor and stood waiting gazing up at its master. Phineas Vitalis brought the squeezebox out before him and opened it and then rose on his toes in his wooden clogs and stood a moment poised and while standing so fingered the valve buttons and then pumped the stretched bellows half-closed and a pair of rusted notes wheezed forth and hung in the silence of the room. And Vitalis closed his eyes and raised them to the ceiling and waited a long pause for the residuum of the warped notes to die off and then sank back onto his heels and brought the squeezebox together in a furious rush of ululation and a wild wailing music sprang forth into the room that was no music Blood had ever heard anywhere before but seemed transported whole from some place exotic beyond reckoning. And the monkey begin to spin and whirl about the floor as a creature possessed, holding his arms upthrust over his head so the ends of his unbuttoned vest flew out and slapped against his sides as he turned, his hard-horned
feet clapping a curious counterbeat to the music as they struck against the floor and the men in the room stood back a little tighter pressed to the walls, to make room, to leave distance as great as possible as if there were some danger in the phenomenon before them. And Blood watching remembered the man speaking of the places he’d traveled and thought I’ll be damned but he learned that music somewhere. Unless he made it up out of his head. And even as he was thinking this the squeezebox slid into a long dying-away moan and then rose again this time in a slow lulling dreamlike tempo that was aching with sadness so pure and profound that the men grew even more still as the strains entered throughout them, beyond their ears and brains to the core beyond logic or reason that runs in muscle and tissue and blood and the monkey swung slowly as if a top driven by a breeze, with his arms extended before him and his wrists lank so his hands flapped gently as if moved by that very same breeze, the monkey’s head tipped back toward the ceiling now and like his master he moved within the music with his eyes closed.

As Blood watched this he sensed as much as saw the men in the room begin to loosen, not moving, not swaying, certainly not dancing but some reassembling taking place as the melancholic music completed its work upon them and reduced them to essential men—the dirge played out was for each of them alone even as it sang of their brothers, of their others, of all mankind around them and all those come before and all following. And Blood knew this was not his imagining, not something he was electing to see in the subdued group of hard men but some actual event he was witnessing. Was even in his meager way participating in.

Vitalis let the song fade and die away in a long trilling descent in which the last notes emerged whole and separate and seemed to hang in the air palpable as the motes of light thrown overhead from the candle lantern. The silence then was dense, monstrous, the sound of men breathing. And as if he’d given them this moment and this moment only to consider what they’d just heard and what had occurred in their souls so they might never forget. Immediately Vitalis once more swept his arms wide and closed them in short punchy waves and the high-pitched squeal of a reel came forth and filled the room and the monkey began to jig, kicking his feet forward even as he trod backward with his slender hairy simian arms folded over his chest. And almost at once one of the habitant farmers, a
man known for his shy reserve as most of his countrymen were when out among the Americans, a man known only as Rouillard came forth into the opening, bowed either to the musician or the dancing monkey or both and began to dance as well, his heavy hobnailed boots clashing and ringing against the floorboards and then others came out also, first more of the French Canadians and then the Americans and the room filled with the thumping heaving riot of bodies.

Vitalis was running now, standing in place with sweat fleeing from his face as he snapped his head in time with the music and he went from reel to jig and back to reel again without stopping. Most times Blood could not even see him through the mass of bodies but the keening lament of the squeezebox came through as if the bodies were meant to only allow the music around them, as if the music was in fact swollen and diffused throughout the men and careened to the rafters and walls of the building and bounced back to join with itself, some great unwinding never-ending coil or spiral of sound. And Vitalis, small Vitalis, there in the center of the room, bringing this all out of the instrument that in the hands of another would do no more than croak and bray. At one point the crowd parted enough so Blood could see him. His head whipping with the rhythm of the reel, his eyes now bright and wide, his arms in fluid motion that seemed at once without effort and the greatest work in the world. The monkey had climbed up and sat perched on one swaying shoulder, the small hands locked tight in the man’s beard.

Men began to break away from the dancing, coming to the counter for rum, leaning and drinking deep. Some asked for water and Blood dippered it up from the bucket handily and without complaint. Clear splotches of sweat gathered on the men’s foreheads and chins and noses and beaded there and fell, lighting on the counter where they spread in dark ovals. The men would drink and slip away back into the throng and other men would take their place. And all through this the music continued without pause from one tune into another. As if Vitalis wanted to see how far these men might go, how far they might frenzy themselves, as if he even knew that none of them ever before and likely never again would know this peculiar condition where body and spirit joined flush together and mind was left aside.

At one point young John Burt came around the counter and leaned close to Sally where she sat on the hogshead and cried something to her and she shook her head No. He leaned and pleaded again and again she denied him and Blood was about to move down upon them when Burt reached up and grabbed her hands in his and tugged and she broke a smile, came down off the barrel and went around the counter with him out into the cacophony of the room and Blood understood and watched them go. Soon enough he saw her bobbing up and down, her hair flailing around her head, a sprite of a girl in the throng of men. Blood watched her, knowing she had never danced before, not like this, not in any way. For all that, it was a way Blood himself had never danced. And never would. But he leaned against the counter and sipped his first dram of the night and watched her.

Some time later he saw them pass together through the door into the house side that led to the door of her room. He drained his cup and made his way through the men still dancing and fed split logs onto the coals and squatted there for them to catch and adjusted them with the poker and watched the fire leap and grow. He stretched one of his hands down toward the base of coals and held it there until the heat was well through him. And held it there a moment more and then took it away. A rock wrapped frozen for ages set into a bed of coals will not warm but crack apart. He pushed himself up and went back to the counter and filled the waiting cups of men.

Suddenly, way too soon, Sally was standing close by him waiting until he was done. He turned to her and she said, “Get him out of there. Get him out of my room.”

Blood nodded. “Did he try to hurt you?”

She shook her head. “He wanted to call me some other name. And he wanted me to say things to him. There is some things I won’t do. Lay in for someone else is one. And my voice is my own, not to be ordered up by nobody. Least of all the sort of talk he wanted.”

Blood said, “Mind the counter.”

He went through the house to her room where a candle burned bedside. John Burt lay prone on the bed, his breeches off, his mouth open, turned sideways as he snorted to breathe. He was out. Blood leaned over the bed and slapped him awake. Burt came up ready to fight but Blood
held his shoulder with one hand and backhanded him several times across his face and the fight went from him. Blood threw the breeches from the bed and ordered him to dress. John Burt held the breeches before his naked crotch and, awkward, got them on. He bent for his boots and Blood brought his fist down on the back of the man where his neck joined his shoulders and Burt sprawled forth onto his boots. Blood waited. Burt came up slow, holding his boots, wary, stepping back from Blood.

Blood said, “Out.”

Burt said, “You got no reason to come after me. I didn’t hurt the girl.”

Blood shook his head. “Just go. And don’t be bothering that girl again.” He could hear the moaning of the squeezebox through the walls. That and the tromp of madmen.

Late, very late. The half-dozen men remaining stood before the counter with the monkey upon it. Blood had not seen it being passed but Vitalis’s odd cap sat upside down by the monkey with a large double-handful of coin within. Sally was back on her usual seat, sipping the tin cup with the single dram of rum allowed her nightly. Blood had produced a stale crust of bread at the request of the itinerant and broke it into pieces and the men would offer a crumb held high and the monkey would perform a simple agile trick and then hold up his paws as a supplicant toward the crumb and take it delicately from the great rough fingers that dwarfed the diminutive creased wrinkled hands of the monkey. He could somersault or standing back-flip or frontflip, walk on his hands or balance himself aloft on one downstretched arm. He did knee squats and then finally an imitation of a crippled man, standing upright, walking crooked along the counter with one leg dragging behind him.

Vitalis said, “That’s it boys. He’s done in.”

The men were very drunk. They howled and showered the monkey with the remaining crumbs. Which the monkey chased over the bar gobbling as if he’d not seen food in a long time. Blood poured out another dram of rum for Vitalis and the little man bowed in thanks. There had been no mention of food for him and Blood offered none. He was tired.

One of the men spoke up. “Hold on.” He leaned toward Vitalis. “Early on, you promised something else. Something, what was it?” His face trembled with visible effort of thought.

Some other man spoke up. “Peculiar. A peculiar habit was what he said.”

“Oh yes,” Vitalis said. “But it’s very late. The monkey is exhausted. As we all are.”

The men clustered close, loud now and vehement, wanting the rest of the show, not wanting the night to end, wanting something more to tell their fellows who’d already left. Vitalis listened, then looked at Blood. Blood shrugged.

Vitalis said, “Reach deep in your pockets boys. This one is not cheap but dear.” He looked at Blood again and said, “Perhaps the girl should go.”

Blood looked at Sally. She was flushed high and shook her head. He held her gaze and she shook her head again. He looked back at the performer and said, “There’s nothing that monkey can do she’s not seen already, one way or another.”

Vitalis counted the coins offered to him and then emptied all his takings into his rucksack and put the cap on his head. He turned back to the counter and spoke to the seated monkey. “Hugo,” he said. “Stand.”

The monkey did.

The man said, “Sow the air, Hugo. Sow the air.”

The monkey looked at him.

The man closed his hand so that his fingers and thumb made a circle. Then he pumped it up and down.

The monkey showed his teeth in a sharp baring. Then he clutched himself and masturbated, his teeth still spread, the air hissing from his lungs. The men stood back. Sally came off the hogshead and stepped down the counter for a better view. Blood turned and filled his cup once more and turned back.

The monkey spewed forth.

Blood led the old man out to the stable and showed him where he might make a bed on the hay. The night showing the etiolated pre-dawn light,
specters of trees, grass, fernbank, hillside, all glossed gray-silver with heavy dew. The old man had a single blanket in his rucksack and while Blood watched he wrapped himself in it so he was swaddled like an infant, tucked tight, only his framed face visible. He looked up at Blood. The monkey was burrowed against his side.

Blood said, “So where to next?”

Vitalis said, “As I said. Up into French Canada. The townships. Those Canadians know how to have a good time.”

“With precious little specie to spare.”

“I require little. And as you saw, I make money appear.”

Blood nodded. Then said, “Break fast with us in the morning. Then, I was you, I’d be on my way. Word will spread and there’s God-fearing righteous people here will be dismayed over accounts of this evening passed. I can promise it. They will vilify me but I’m used to it. You, I believe, would make an easier target.”

“It’s an odd thing,” Vitalis said. “I give them what they’re seeking and they do not recognize it’s themselves produced it. But save your concern. My feet are light and my need for sleep is slight, an advantage of my years. I’ll be long gone before the first of them is rousing. But thank you for the offer of food. Some other time, perhaps.”

Blood stood looking down at him. “Yes. Some other time.”

Midmorning Blood was up with a mug of tea, taking the sun in the doorway. The old man and the monkey gone like smoke. High-building flat-bottomed clouds worked over the lake. It was the time of year when the heat of day clashed with the sudden chill night air and fabulous storms of yellow and blue lightning in shafts not streaks would bolt the early night sky, the air would sharpen with ozone and rain would pour slantwise from the sky for half an hour, an hour. And the sky would clear after midnight but by dawn mist streamed from the lake and spread through the valleys before being broken by the sun to drift and gather again as clouds overhead. On mornings before and after such storms the air was of a rare quality, so each breath was more akin to drinking fresh cold water than everyday thoughtless breathing. Blood sat enjoying this even as he watched the three horsemen descend the road from the mill and knew they were coming to him. He sipped his tea and waited.