The Dulcimer Boy (5 page)

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, William awoke from a wonderful dream in which he was just outside the Carbuncles' picket fence, about to enter the gate. That night was much like the night before, with the crowd spilling over onto the street. The morning after, he awoke troubled, this time from a dream in which he was sitting contentedly on a little stage, playing the dulcimer without giving his brother a thought.

One afternoon in the kitchen, while the cook was preparing the evening's chowder, William managed to slip into the trash can and bury himself under the broken clam shells. The
half-hanged sailor, however, dug him out before the trash was taken to the street. Another day he slipped a stirring spoon under his shirt. Late that night, after writing his nightly letter, he inserted the spoon into a crack in the wall of his room and started to pry. The boards, however, creaked, and the half-hanged sailor came in and confiscated the spoon.

After a midnight show, when the crowd had risen for its ovation, William tucked the dulcimer under his arm and leaped off the stage. He tunneled his way through the forest of legs toward the door. But suddenly he was hoisted into the air. A pair of sailors had lifted him onto their shoulders. Everyone wanted to touch him. He began to be bounced from one set of shoulders to the next. He hugged the dulcimer, fearing for it with all his heart.

Suddenly he was safe in a pair of arms, the instrument unsplintered. He stared up into a
wind-weathered face, the face of the fisherman who sat almost every night at the corner table. The man walked back to the bar, smiling calmly at the people in his way, and set him on a bar stool.

“Will you please take me away from here?” William asked.

“Away, matey? When you sing so lovely every night?”

The innkeeper came around the bar and thanked the fisherman for coming to the rescue.

Summer arrived. The audiences came earlier and earlier until the street outside The Tumble Inn was regularly crowded by five o'clock. The innkeeper raised the cover charge and spruced up the establishment, for now he was catering not only to sailors but to people from all over the great city: bakers, bankers, musicians from the New England Conservatory of Music, even ladies and gentlemen from Park Row. Finally The Tumble Inn was written up in the newspapers.

One evening in early September, when the talk along the waterfront was of hurricanes brewing far out to sea, a particularly salty crew pushed its way into the inn and managed to take over one of the back tables for the nine o'clock show. Their talk was rowdy. Their ship had just docked after six months at sea, and they had spent the afternoon distributing their pay among the Pawn Street taverns. Even after the nine o'clock show started, they called out loudly for more rum and for certain young ladies in the crowd to come join them. Hardly any of these ladies obliged, however, and other customers glared.

“Shut up,” people muttered. “He's starting.”

But this did not silence them. One sailor, who kept ordering Irish whiskey, went so far as to pull a well-rouged lady onto his lap and begin describing her beauty over the music.

By the end of the hour, however, most of this drunken crew had grown subdued.

Most of this drunken crew had grown subdued

“The kid can play a lick,” one of them admitted.

A murmur of pleasure rose from the crowd as William started the familiar song with which he ended every hour.

A glass, hurled from somewhere, cut the song short, striking William a glancing blow on the temple. He slumped forward over his instrument.

The audience stared at the stage in stunned silence.

Then the tumult began. The people in front rushed to the boy's aid, tossing the melted ice from their drinks into his face to try to revive him. The rest of the crowd immediately turned ugly. Sailors brandished knives in the air, calling out for revenge. All was confusion.

The wind-weathered fisherman did not move until he saw William come around. Rising from his corner table, he then pushed his way back through the angry mob. At the table taken over by the salty crew he saw one sailor still seated, flushed and trembling, a rouged woman staring up at him in shock from the sawdust floor. The fisherman pulled this man out of his chair and walked him through the crowd as if he were a friend who had had one too many. The clamor in the inn was growing fiercer by the moment; everyone was turning and accusing
someone else. The fisherman, smiling calmly at the people in his way, walked the drunken sailor out the door and through the confused mass of people outside.

“Where you bunking, mate?” the fisherman asked.

The sailor pointed groggily up Pawn Street at one of the cheap hotels.

“Right you are,” the fisherman said.

He walked the man up to the doorway of an establishment called the Seaman's Sling, where sailors slung up their hammocks for fifteen cents a night. Then he took his arm out from under the man's shoulder, and the sailor collapsed drunkenly in the gutter.

“I wouldn't be setting foot in The Tumble Inn again, mate.”

The fisherman spoke the threat as if making a casual remark. He did not draw out the marlinspike he had in his belt.

“Why'd you go and do a thing like that anyway?” he asked.

“Why?” said the sailor, staring up with bloods hot eyes. “Because that was…my song. It was…my song.”

The fisherman looked down at the drunk curiously. Then he called for the hotel keeper, who emerged with a sigh and pulled his guest in by the wrists.

T
HE GLASS RAISED
a bump like a quail's egg on the side of William's head, but the innkeeper decided it was not serious enough to lose a night of business over. So William performed the next night as always, trudging upstairs after the last show with the half-hanged sailor at his heels. In the hammock that night the throbbing in his head woke him again and again, sometimes from the dream that he was playing the dulcimer on the little stage, sometimes from the dream that he was outside the Carbuncles' picket fence.

One night later that week, after the ten o'clock show, a withered old gentleman got up
from one of the round tables. A number of heads turned as he walked back to the bar, leaning on a silver-headed cane; several people murmured.

The innkeeper gave the counter a quick polish as the respectable old gentleman came up.

“Enjoy the show, sir?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Have I seen you somewhere before, sir?” the innkeeper asked uncertainly.

“I doubt it. I'm just in town on a visit. My granddaughter is starting at the university this week.”

“Ah.”

“I happened to read about the boy and thought I might come down and hear for myself. They couldn't do him justice in print.”

The innkeeper nodded complacently and smiled his new smile, which always seemed rather at cross-purposes with his droopy moustache.

“You'd like one for the road then?”

The old gentleman shook his head.

“The boy certainly fetches a crowd. Would it be impertinent for me to ask what you pay him?”

The innkeeper gave his moustache a tug.

“Well, now, to tell you the truth, I'm the one who went out on a limb and gave him his start, so he sort of owes me. As a matter of fact, I took him in when he hadn't a penny to his name.”

“You have a contract?”

“Oh, yes. It runs to May eleventh.”

“Next spring! That
is
a long run. And a pity, too….”

The old gentleman glanced around the inn and then pulled out his wallet.

“I have seven hundred and fifty dollars' traveling money,” he murmured, and then, to the innkeeper's astonishment, produced that sum on the counter. “Would you consider parting with the boy's contract?”

The innkeeper swallowed, staring at the large bills.

But then the cash register, which had been ringing so regularly those past months, caught his eye. And beyond that was a long row of liquor bottles, all neatly plugged with their cork stoppers.

He shook his head.

“A pity.” The old gentleman sighed, slipping the money back into his wallet.

The old gentleman hobbled out of the inn on his cane, accompanied by an attendant. The eleven o'clock show was starting as they made their way through the crowd outside. They walked up the dark street to the corner, where the attendant left the old gentleman and went in search of a vehicle.

While the old gentleman stood waiting by the curb, the cane was yanked out of his hand from behind. He found himself sitting in the oily street, staring up at a man with a twisted
smile and a horrible, grizzled neck.

The half-hanged sailor, having witnessed the attempted transaction in the bar from his post behind the door, had shadowed the old gentleman up the street. The gentleman now struggled to get up, but the half-hanged sailor easily prevented him from doing so by poking him in the chest with his own cane. He then poked the bulge in his victim's suit coat, where the wallet was.

“I see,” said the old gentleman. “However, I'm afraid I don't conduct business while sitting in the street.”

“What about while you're dead then?” asked the half-hanged sailor.

Smiling his twisted smile, he raised the cane in the air. But as he did, the cane was yanked out of his hand from behind.

It was not the attendant but a scruffy seaman. Pulling a knife, the half-hanged sailor spun and made a lunge at him.

There was a harsh howl of pain. The seaman had sidestepped and brought the cane down in a crushing blow on the back of the sailor's neck. The sailor, clutching his neck, stumbled off down the dark street, rasping in agony.

After helping the old gentleman to his feet and restoring him his cane the seaman gave a silent nod and turned to leave.

“My dear fellow!” the old gentleman cried. “Not so fast, I beg of you! You've saved my life.”

The seaman turned with a shrug and let the gentleman clasp his hand.

“Are you quite all right?” the old gentleman asked.

“It's not the first hole.” The seaman shrugged, fingering the rip the knife had made in his worn sailor's blouse.

“May I ask your name?”

“Drake.”

“Gildenstern.” The gentleman smiled.
“Well, sir, you must be the only sailor ashore who's not down listening to that lad. My luck.”

The seaman turned with a shrug and let the gentleman clasp his hand

Drake, who was the seaman the wind-weathered fisherman had warned never to set foot again in The Tumble Inn, turned and looked back down the street. In the silence of the dark, seedy quarter the two men listened for a moment to dulcimer music in the distance.

“That lad's going to make a name for himself. I did my best to get him for a Christmas concert, but to no purpose.” The old gentleman smiled again. “Would you do me the honor of joining me for a late supper, Mr. Drake? There's a place near my hotel serves an excellent New York cut.”

Drake looked from his scruffy navy-blue clothes to the old gentleman's suit, a gold watch chain looped across the vest.

“I'm busy,” he said. “Sorry.”

The old gentleman sighed. He then took a
card from his wallet and wrote something on it with a silver pen.

“Here's my card. I'll be very disappointed if I don't hear from you.”

Horses approached. The old gentleman clasped the seaman's hand once more and then stepped into the vehicle with his attendant. Drake walked back to the doorway of the Seaman's Sling, from which he had witnessed the assault. In the light of the doorway he glanced at the card. He stared at it a minute and then slipped it into a frayed pocket.

“Excellent New York cut,” he murmured with a faint smile, resuming his post in the doorway.