The Last Best Place (13 page)

“John,” says Nishi, “meet Jimmy Rankin.”

Someone hands me a hefty glass of Scotch. I sit listening to Nishi
talk about growing up in Salinas, Cal.—John Steinbeck country—during the Depression. He escaped the Japanese internment camps, but still had a rough time of it in the army. After World War Two he came here to teach art as part of an extension program for an American university. When the course ended he asked a neighbour if he knew of ten acres for sale. The neighbour had 115. Nishi paid $850 for the lot, which wasn’t much even in 1949.

“The first six years I came by myself,” he says in a quiet, clear voice. “I lived in a pup tent and I’d go off hiking over the mountains, all the way to Petit-de-Grat. I’d arrive and these people would come out to see me, you’d think I was the mayor. I guess they’d never seen anyone living out of a tent before. I’m seventy-nine now. Back when I first arrived I’d go out at night and all you’d hear would be the wind and maybe a horse and wagon on the road up in the back. It’s changed. But on a clear night here you still just step out under the stars and look up at the sky and you are just in awe.”

The others sit stiffly while Nishi and I talk. I feel I’m throwing their whole afternoon off-kilter. My out comes when he explains that Michio is a singer as well as a haiku poet and the former head of computer operations for the Chicago police department.

“Let’s hear a couple, Michio,” I say, happily taking the cue.

Having grown up near the Mexican border, he begins with a pair of
AI-ai-ai-ai
caballero songs. Then he morphs into one of those laid-back Dean Martin–style Italian crooners and even throws in a little opera. Rankin reappears with a guitar. Rain begins beating down on the windows and whitecaps mass on the ocean. I turn my
tape recorder on, sit back and listen to what I decide right then and there would heretofore be known as the Michio-Rankin Mabou Coal Mines Session.

The older man sets the pace with a stately “Bill Bailey,” which he ends by admonishing the title character to “get your toushie back home,” a low chuckle and a “yeahh.”

“We’ve got Mary Francis rolling over in her grave right now,” he laughs.

“Never been done better,” says Rankin as he noodles away on his instrument. “ ‘Saint James Infirmary,’ ” suggests Michio, deliberately drawing out the syllables and then adding, “Why don’t you do one, Jimmy?”

Rankin clears his throat and says, as if at a school recital, “Saint James.” There’s a false start as they search for the right key. Finally Rankin’s guitar opens with this little blues riff and Michio comes in, correctly, a bit behind the beat. The tempo is just right and the pair sway from side to side as if pulling the melody from the ozone. They play it straight until the last refrain when Michio, with Rankin right there alongside him, ad-libs: “Ahhhhhhh hold the flapjacks/ahhhhhh tofu too/ahhhh hold the soy sauce/whazamattaforu.”

When it is over he turns to me and explains in a mock-serious tone: “Whazammataforu. That’s kind of remembering our parents, how they used to murder the English language. They were immigrants and we remember them with love and humour,” he says.

A deep smoker’s laugh rumbles from Nishi.

“What’s another tune you got there, Michio?” says Rankin.

“I don’t know. You want to do that one ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’?”

“Ah, you know that one, what is it, ‘Cindy, Cindy’?”

Is that a C? They try it in D, then in E. Finally, together they start: “If I was an apple hanging on a tree” and run it right through to the final chorus: “Getalong home, Cindy, Cindy, getalong home/getalong home, Cindy, Cindy/I’ll marry you some day.”

They move into a rocking “Franky and Johnny,” Rankin punctuating the lyrics with “yeahs,” “uh-huhs,” “no, nos” and “yeah, yeah, yeahs.”

“Now we’re getting a little warmed up,” Michio declares at the end.

We’re still laughing about some of his ad-libs when Rankin quiets the room with a soulful “Go, Lassy, Go.”

“Okay, Michio, one more.”

“You want to do ‘East Virginia’?” They do, and when it’s over Michio says, “You know, it took me six months to get the right inflection on ‘daahhling.’ ”

“Jimmy, do ‘Malcolm Murray,’ ” says Nishi.

He clears his throat, says, “Okay, this one’s for Ken,” and starts: “Stood a lone man out on the highway/in the blackness on his own/through the wind, rain and fury unfolds the story of Malcolm Murray.” A simple song, about death, loss and memory. Darker than most of his writing, maybe more personal too. He delivers the closing lines with the ache of truth: “It’s been said out on the back-roads, there’s a shadow by the light of the moon/never fear, never worry, it’s just a memory of Malcolm Murray.”

We clap at the end. Rankin asks me if I play anything. I so wish I could have said “Sure” and then demonstrated my mastery of Tuvan throat singing. Instead I meekly reply, “No, and definitely not in front of you.” Then a cordless phone rings and the magic is gone. His wife, Mia Nishi, comes into the room. She seems perfectly nice. I persuade them to pose for a picture. The first one is stiff and joyless. Rankin pulls up his collar, mugs for the camera and says, “I’ll act like a Cape Bretoner.” I plead with them to loosen up. The three men smile. I hit the shutter.

The next night, on the front steps of the Normaway lodge David MacDonald, the proprietor, introduces me to J.P. Cormier, big as a bouncer, with longish red hair and wearing cowboy boots and an ornate mustard-coloured jacket adorned with all kinds of little doodads. Somehow I just knew he was coming off tour with Waylon Jennings, the country-western singer. “Who needs Nashville?” he says between deep drags on a cigarette. “We’ve got all the music we need right here.” To prove it he provides a quick mental tour of the various fiddling styles on the island—Chéticamp, Mi’kmaq, Acadian, Inverness, Sydney, Antigonish, Northern Highlands. “All different. All as distinctive as a signature. My style is said to be partway between Winston ‘Scotty’ Fitzgerald and Jerry Holland. I don’t know. That’s just what they say.”

This is music that came out of the Scottish Highlands at the turn of the eighteenth century like a wild, melancholy fog. Legends Dan Hughie MacEachern, Winston Fitzgerald, Donald Angus Beaton,
Angus Allan Gillis and Angus Chisholm kept the music alive, playing the fiddle at dances and ceilidhs, composing tunes and patiently passing the sum of their knowledge to their anointed successors. So also did musical vagabonds like Dan R. MacDonald, the composer of more than a thousand fiddle tunes who would just show up at people’s doors, trading his wit and genius for a few nights’ lodging. For a time the notes grew fainter and also went silent altogether. Now it fills the air. The barn at the Normaway is one of the sacred places. Here, when all things are right, music soars beyond ideas and emotions. Here, if you are so blessed, you may listen to unspoken messages that sound like an eagle climbing through the mountaintops, a whale diving to the bottom of the sea, a river meandering, a heart breaking.

Jackie Dunn, who is launching her first CD tonight, has the right bloodline. Sitting on stage in the Normaway’s barn, bowing with her right hand and stomping her right foot madly, she’s in good company; Hilda Chiasson, J.P. Cormier’s tiny wife, on keyboards, and Dave MacIsaac, an inventive fiddler, guitarist and master of countless other Celtic instruments, picking out the rhythm. “I don’t know where they’ll put me after I die. But if I can hear music like that I don’t care where it is,” master-of-ceremonies Archie Neil Chisholm, all of ninety years old, yells from his wheelchair. “Drive her, Jackie. As D. MacDonald would say, that was wicked good.”

What a showoffy bunch! A young, dark-haired woman steps onstage and does a dignified little step. Once she leaves, a hefty middle-aged lady jumps up and turns up the heat a notch or two. “That’s
Jackie’s mom,” a man standing beside me up by the rafters says. “She’s one of the best stepdance teachers around.” Then Spoon Boy takes over. Gerry Deveau of Belle Cote is no boy; he’s middle-aged, a steeple-jack I’m told. He also plays spoons. He plays them off his thigh, on his knee, elbow and back of his fist and off his noggin. I’m waiting for the hook to materialize from offstage. Then it dawns on me: I’m in the presence of greatness, of a sort. In the front row, five middle-aged women who have to be sisters sit there impassively, only their bouncing feet revealing their pleasure. A couple of old girls in the front get up and prance around. “Drive ’er, Gerry,” yells a young guy over and over again. One of the spoons goes flying into the audience. Deveaux breaks into this strange little jig and the crowd goes wild.

Throughout the concert I catch glimpses of David MacDonald bustling here and there. At intermission he stands still long enough to announce, in a fashion, the other upcoming dances in the area. “Who’s up at South West Margaree? The Gabriel? Who’s up at West Mabou? Judique? What about Inverness? Anybody know who’s at Glendale? Jeez, am I actually going to have to prepare for this?”

For the finale the stage is filled: Dunn, both MacIsaacs, Chiasson and a skinny kid I seem to recognize. Wait one minute, that’s the groundskeeper. He must be all of fifteen, can’t even grow sideburns. Can play, though. They run through jigs, reels, strathspeys—I have no idea which is which—effortlessly, without a break. From where I sit I see one of Archie Neil’s legs twitching as the bows fly. He’s clapping madly like everybody else at the finish. Everyone
piles outside. A few men stand in clusters in the parking lot sipping from mysterious bottles. I cool off with an Orange Crush and fall into conversation with a couple from some Ontario town. Warm now, with a full moon over the mountains, which seems to perfectly suit their reverie about the big-band dances they used to go to during the war years.

Back inside, Dunn and the others are already at it. The action on the dance floor baffles me: partners divide, come together, parade to the end of the room, then part again—men on one side, women on the other—holding hands and doing these little solos, back straight, head unwavering, feet moving faster than bejesus. Within the discipline of the form there is room for individuality: a shuffle of the shoulders, an elaborate little arm movement or dip of the hips, some flashy footwork—these are the hallmarks of style.

“Basically every little place around here has their own step,” explains Jim MacDonald, a thinner version of brother Dave, who works the pop stand. “There’s a Whycocomagh Set, a Mabou Set, a Judique Set, a Margaree Set. Every set has three figures—two jigs and a reel. During the jig you just stand there shuffling your feet. The reel is a lot more intricate. But it’s still easy: toe, heel, toe, hop, toe, toe,” he says, demonstrating. When I look as confused as ever he claps me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. A lot of people just walk through it.”

“Oh, I’m not worried,” I say. “You won’t see me out there. Not a chance in hell.”

A whippet-thin teenager materializes on the dance floor floating
with startling lightness and speed. Someone tells me he is Joel Chiasson from Chéticamp, maybe the best stepdancer on the island. Cries of “Atta boy, Jo-el” and “Yeeehaw!” carry over the music. When he finishes a cheer goes up, but he’s already at the pop stand asking Jim MacDonald, “Ya got any 7-Up?”

By the time I turn back, the dance floor roils with old-timers, high-stepping teenagers, middle-aged ladies in Minnie Pearl dresses. A few feet away I hear a lanky, white-haired senior who looks like he just walked off a golf course say this is the third dance he’s been to tonight and the third time he’s had to change his shirt. He’s right: sweat drips off everybody. I feel a hand on my arm and—oh my God!—Hilda Chiasson is asking would I like to join her in an Inverness Set.

Now, I love music, and am coordinated enough. But when the two elements come together on the dance floor, well, I just don’t know, somehow I’m instantly back in high school shuffling like Quasimodo around the gym, certain that everyone in the room is staring gape-mouthed. But before I can think of an excuse I’m out there.

It begins innocently enough. I manage to make it through the promenade part and the spin thing without maiming myself or any of the other dancers. Everyone smiles indulgently when it comes time to switch partners and I end up going in the wrong direction for two choruses before I can get turned back around. Then the reel, when the men and women step back to separate sides, hold hands and solo. This is where you’re supposed to break bad. Jim
MacDonald’s voice echoes through my head.
You just stand there shuffling your feet
. I try to do it, all right. But what in God’s name is happening? I’m picking up speed at an alarming rate, my feet weaving faster and faster, sliding back and forth like, I imagine, a Celtic James Brown. Sweat pours down my spine. I am prancing around on my toes with every muscle in my body tensed, and my calves start to ache.

It’s as if I am in some bizarre spirit world—let’s call it the Land Without Rhythm, the place occupied by Baptists, Reform Party members and just about every white male who never owned a motorcycle. Where “Shake Your Bootie” is always playing. Hilda, fanning herself with a piece of paper as she floats easily about six feet away, watches with growing alarm. When we come together again she lies badly about how well I’m doing. The tune finally ends and she says something about being warm. “See, nobody was looking at you,” she whispers as we head for the sidelines. Hilda, I got news for you!

I stumble towards the pop stand to replenish lost body fluids. The giddy feeling—or maybe it’s the sugar buzz from all that pop—is still there a few minutes later, behind the wheel in my car. The fog is so thick that the high beams don’t even cut through it. Otherwise not a light anywhere. I realize I am probably lost.

Stands a lone man, out on the highway
.

Be the current against us, what
matters it? Be it in our favour
,
we are carried hence, to what
place or for what purpose?

Joshua Slocum