Tinker and Blue (22 page)

36

“So I said to Capi, ‘Look, the only way we're going to be able to wire this place is by breaking in,' so I got him to drive us over there this afternoon and I came through a window out back, opened the door and let Capi do his thing. He has three mics hidden in here ... but here comes Peter? so let's change the subject.”

Blue was sitting with Karma, Kathy and Tinker at a table in Club Peace & Love waiting for the rest of the band to turn up. Peter? approached alone.

“So how's it hanging, Peter??” Blue asked, reaching for a subject that would move the conversation far from the plans hatched at the Human Rainbow Commune.

“Is that a serious enquiry, Blue?” Peter? asked, puckering his lips to blow Blue a teasing kiss, taking pleasure in watching Blue begin to squirm.

“Aw, it's just something guys say to each other. It doesn't mean anything, does it, Tinker? We say it to each other all the time, eh, Tink? Everybody does. I bet even the Pope says it.”

“Don't worry, Blue, I won't break up with Lee just because you're showing a little interest.” Before Blue could respond, Peter? made a sudden shift to the serious and sat down.

“We have to be careful, Blue,” he confided. “The papers are making a bit of news out of Blue Cacophony's refusal to record. Nothing big, just little mentions here and there, but these things have a way of growing. We may start feeling some capitalist pressure to jump through the money hoops just because there's a pile of it waiting on the other side. It's the big temptation, Blue, and it's coming. I can feel it. Most opportunities aren't! Did you know that Blue, that most opportunities aren't really opportunities at all? They're really just tests to see if you have the courage to turn them down and go on looking for the truth. That's what Blue Cacophony is doing, looking for the truth, and to get there we have to stay pure, Blue. I'm depending on you to keep the other guys from getting greedy about easy money.”

“You can depend on me to do the right thing, Peter?, you know that, old buddy. You got more principals than all the schools in the country....”

“You mean principles?”

“That's what I said.”

“A school has princip-a-l-s, a person has princi-p-l-e-s,” corrected Peter?.

“Whatever, but you got all these principles, eh, and I've got mine, which is just one, Peter?, and that principle is this, look after your buddies. So I'm going to take care nothing happens to you. You're the guy with the brains, and in the land of the stupid, the guy with the brains is the smart one, to quote the other fellow, so I think you'll find out about that truth business of yours with or without selling a million records.”

“I appreciate your faith in me, Blue, it is reassuring to know that a fellow intellect—”

“Don't take this wrong or anything, Peter?, but it isn't you I have faith in. It's God. You're free to ask all kinds of questions as long as you don't ask the ones that piss God off, but I'm a Catholic, so my questions are all behind me, eh.”

“I don't follow that train of thought,” Peter? said.

“I mean there's only so much thinking I can do before I run up against a wall in matters of faith. I mean I have faith, but sometimes I come across questions that threaten to pole vault me right out of the Church if I'm not careful. That's the thing about being Catholic, question the Church and you question God. You Protestants don't have to worry about that, but you're probably just kindling for the Big Fire anyway. But not us Catholics. We were born in the faith, as the other fellow says.”

“Do you believe this?” Peter? asked with an amazed shake of his head.

“Have to. I'm Catholic. But what I mean when I say I don't have faith in you, Peter?, is that I have faith in God, and it could be that God has different plans for me than you do, so if ... just ‘if' now ... I have to make a choice, I have to chose the one I have the most faith in, right? You can understand that, can't you?”

Peter? nodded agreement. “We both want the same thing, Blue, that's our karma.”

“Your karma, my Karma, maybe my old buddy, Farma. I'm going to write that down, but can I change the subject here, Peter?? It's about Barney,” Blue said, nudging the dog that slept at his feet. “Does he have to be in the band? Not that I have anything against him. Heck, next to Karma, I'm his best buddy. I just don't know about singing with him.”

Peter? gave heavy-browed consideration to Blue's question before answering. “I think he has to be in the band, Blue. After all, it was you who told the papers that he would be, and the dog is why half the people will be here tonight, all that publicity. From my perspective, I see the union up on stage of you and Barney, man and dog – nature's great companions – as the first step toward a time when the lamb shall lay down with the lion, the Great Peace. Though we are travellers along the same spiritual highway, Blue, I realize that we don't always see the same horizon, so it might be of significance for you to know that 51.042 per cent of all the acts that appear on
The Ed Sullivan Show
include a human and an animal. Of that figure, 62.943 per cent of the animals are dogs.”

“I didn't say I wouldn't sing with Barney, did I, Peter?? I was just wondering, you know. Where'd you learn so much about Ed Sullivan, anyway?”

“I did my own research one Sunday night when I had nothing better to do than watch that sad parade of talent prostituting itself on television. It was last Sunday night, in fact, and I kept those records because that kind of trivial data appeals to certain people.”

“I know what you mean,” Blue agreed. “For example, there's not a whole lot of people in the world who know that your arsehole has to vibrate ninety times a second before your farts can make a noise. I don't know what that means in the grand scheme of things, but you gotta admire anybody who can count that fast.”

—

“I got a weird gig Monday morning,” Nathan told Blue and Gerry as they packed up their gear and carted it out to the van, under Peter?'s supervision. “I was playing down at my corner, trying to pick up a few bucks on the side, and a woman came up and asked me to play for a funeral. She said her husband was in the army during the war, and died yesterday. He wanted a piper at his funeral, she said. I told her she probably wanted somebody from the American Legion for that gig, but she says, ‘No, the bastard kept me a prisoner of war for twenty-three years. A goddamned Communist hippie playing the pipes at his funeral will go a long way toward making the whole experience worth it.' Offered me a hundred bucks so I said I'll be there.”

“You mean you know where's there's a wake?” Blue asked. “Hey, Tinker, this woman Nathan knows, her husband died. There's a wake.” The information brought Tinker across the floor to join the musicians. “Want to go?” Blue asked.

“You can't go to the wake,” Nathan said. “You don't even know the guy.”

“Sure we can go,” Blue argued. “What's stopping us? Respect for the dead. That's what they teach you where I come from. Respect for the dead. One time, eh, when I was in grade six, that was before Tinker caught up to me in school, well this guy died who used to be janitor of the school. Well this morning the nun tells us Old Malcolm is dead. She told us to get our jackets on, made us get in ranks of two by two, and marched us through the snow all the way to the janitor's house. We all went in and looked at him. He didn't look like he was enjoying it very much. Suit and tie, as the other fellow says. A man should be buried with his boots on, and if those boots are a mop and a broom, what the hell, bury them with him. Anyway, the whole parade of us looked at him, then we got down on our knees and said the rosary. And we stole about a dozen plates of cookies and stuff out of the dead guy's kitchen on our way back to school. What that taught us, eh, because the nun said that's what it taught us, was respect for the dead.

“Now this guy who died fought in the friggin' war, didn't he? What more do you need to know about a man than that. He fought in a friggin' war! On our side, to boot! I say we go down there tomorrow. Nothing wrong with praying for a man's soul.”

“You're morbid, man,” Gerry said.

37

The following evening, Blue and Tinker walked solemnly into the funeral home where, according to the information posted on the wall, the remains of William Joseph Rubble were available for viewing between the hours of seven and nine p.m.

“That's the problem I have with these funeral homes,” Blue said. “They keep worse hours than the liquor store, the one back home, anyway. You barely have time to get comfortable at a wake and the undertaker is ushering you out and closing the door.”

—

Tinker and Blue had talked long into the night about the wake, and brought the subject up the following morning, carrying it into the afternoon. From Nathan they had found out where the funeral home was, and from the obituary in the newspaper they found out the times for viewing the remains. The Last Passage Funeral Home was open to the public from 2:00-4:00 in the afternoon, and from 7:00-9:00 in the evening.

“The evening's when we want to go,” Blue advised. “That's when things start to liven up, right, Tinker?”

Recruiting mourners for the evening visit presented Tinker and Blue with a few problems, most of them rooted in the fact that nobody else wanted to go. Most members of the commune, and the entire band along with its manager, had difficulty appreciating the social opportunity that had presented itself in the unfortunate death of a man no one had ever heard of, and whose wife had hired a hippie piper as a mean-spirited trick on him.

“What is it about this man's death that appeals to you?” Peter? asked Tinker and Blue.

“Each man's death diminishes me, as the other fellow says,” Blue replied.

“Donne.” Peter? stated.

“No, I'm not done, the dead guy is done,” Blue answered. “It's just that there's some things you don't get around to thinking about, you know, because they don't require any thinking. Like respect for the dead. A guy dies, you go to the wake. What's to think about?”

“I've never been to a wake,” Karma said.

“I went to my grandmother's funeral, but I was too small to go to her wake,” Kathy added, pooling her experience with Karma's.

“I buried a friend once,” Capricorn told the table. “He died of cancer. His cancer was caused by living next door to a factory that spewed out poison. His own father went on working in that fucking place although his son was dying and so were half the children around there. When he died, the factory gave his father three days off with pay. Compassionate leave, they call it. That factory is gone now, burned down, but my friend is still dead.”

“My arm—” Gerry started, then suddenly withdrew.

“Your arm what?” Blue asked, and the others let his question float in the sea of their silence while they allowed Gerry time to continue, or room to withdraw.

“I hated the violin. Every week my parents drove me to my lessons, made me play, made me practice, and made my plans for me. I was going to be a great violinist. Like you can
make
anybody be great. A person is great, or he's not, and I knew I was never going to be what they wanted me to be. One night, when they were driving me to practice, a drunk truck driver hit our car. I still don't remember anything about it, but when I woke up my arm was gone at the shoulder. So were my father and mother. Dead. I didn't go to their wake, or to their funeral. I was still in the hospital. All that came out of the accident uninjured, the doctor said when he told me about my parents, was my violin. My first thought was that I had a good excuse for never playing it again. That's a terrible thing to think of when your parents are dead and your arm's been cremated, isn't it? But do you know what my second thought was? How much I wanted to play it. I cried and cried and everyone thought I was crying for my parents but I was crying for my violin.

“At rehab, they had people fitting me for a new arm, but I told them I didn't want a new arm. What was the good of an arm that can't push a bow? One woman there who designed prostheses really tried to help me. It was her who designed my bow, but I guess that's not really about wakes, is it? Sorry about that.”

“No,” Blue corrected him. “This is exactly what happens at wakes, Ger. People remember stories about other wakes.”

“I've never known anyone who died,” Nathan said. “In fact, when I play at the funeral on Monday, that'll be the first time I was ever near one.”

“You guys don't hold wakes anyway, do you?” Blue said to Nathan. “Don't you plant your people before sundown or something?”

“Our burial rites are different than yours, yes,” Nathan replied, “but what music do I play for this guy's funeral?”

“We'll come up with something. Maybe I could write something and the whole band could perform it at the funeral,” a suggestion unanimously voted down. There was also a motion to vote down accompanying Tinker and Blue to the wake at all.

“I can understand people going to wakes in a small town where everyone knows each other,” Tulip said, “but this is San Francisco and wakes happen every day that we don't know anything about, or care about for that matter. It seems silly to me to go to a stranger's wake. I for one am not going.”

“You're wrong about this being a city, Tulip,” Blue said. “I used to think it was a city, too, but now, after a few months, Barney and I walk the same streets every day, nod to the same people, talk to the same people, eat in the same place. So do all of you if you think about it. A city is just a bunch of small towns. We live in one here in the district. Tinker works in a different small town, right?”

Tinker nodded his agreement. “Yeah. When I first went into the tunnel, I didn't know anybody. I would eat my lunch in a corner by myself until the rest of the crew invited me to eat with them and talk about things, and pretty soon there's lots to talk about. I met guys in the tunnel who worked with guys from back home. One of them even invited me and Blue to his daughter's wedding next spring. If I wasn't living here, eh, I'd probably be living with those guys wherever they hang out; that'd be a small town, too. Blue's right, about that, and he's right about the wake. The dead guy's not a stranger. Nathan met his widow and she asked him to come, and we're friends of Nathan's so it's the same as an invitation.

“I'll tell you this. Back home, eh, the older the dead person is, or the less you knew him, the better the wake. You never went to your grandmother's wake, Kathy, but I went to mine and I didn't have a lot of fun so you didn't miss much, but the other ones that Blue and me went to were great.”

—

Blue walked directly to the coffin and crossed himself while Tinker stood a polite few feet behind, waiting his own solemn moment with the deceased. Blue studied Mr. Rubble's powder-and-rouge face and recognized him for a boozer. Death couldn't hide that fact, not with a nose like that. Other than that, he didn't look like anybody Blue knew, but death changes a person. At almost every wake he ever went to, the remains barely resembled themselves, mostly because it was the first time he ever saw most of them in a suit and tie. That was probably true for Mr. Rubble, too. He barely resembles himself, so it's no wonder I don't recognize him, Blue thought.

Saying an “Our Father,” three “Hail Marys” and a “Glory Be,” Blue crossed himself again and took stock of the funeral room.

It was a small room, smelling like cheap perfume over an unwashed armpit. A woman, darkly dressed, was seated near the coffin. No one else was present. Blue walked toward her.

“Death's a bastard, to quote the other fellow,” he whispered, leaning to clasp her hand in consolation. His words of comfort brought her head up as quickly as Blue's dropped toward her, the clunk of skulls emitting a hollow echo through the room.

“Who are you?” she asked, rubbing her forehead.

“Blue. I'm a friend of Nathan, the piper you hired. When I heard about your husband being in the army, well, I'm from Canada, eh, and we got this guy back home, Farmer, who used to be in the army, too. Who knows, they might even of known one another over in Italy or Germany or in some tavern somewhere. I'll have to ask Farmer about him when I get home. He'd remember a name like Rubble. And he'd of come to the funeral. So I came for Farmer, for all the soldiers who couldn't get here,” the last words drawing Blue's attention to a chamber empty of anything but a bored-looking widow, himself and Tinker. Examining the wife more closely, he concluded that her husband didn't drink alone.

“You didn't know my husband?”

“Not in so many words, Missus.”

“Then I don't understand why you are here. Are you some kind of pervert or something?”

The blast of her breath in Blue's face informed him that not much time had passed between the widow and her last whiskey. “Oh, no, we're not weirdos, Ma'am. We do this all the time back home. It's called respect for the dead. Help the family through their suffering, if you know what I mean. Some people need a priest to do that for them when a man dies, and other people need a wee taste of the devil, as the other fellow says,” Blue said, patting a bulge in his belt.

“The devil?” the widow asked, growing alarmed.

“Missis, now don't take offence, but it's an old custom where I come from to offer the husband or wife of the dearly deceased a small glass of something to help them through their sorrow.”

Tinker, who had finished his moment with Mr. Rubble, stepped up beside Blue and offered his hand in sympathy. “It's something we do back home, Ma'am. Blue doesn't mean any offence.”

“Are you offering me alcohol?” the woman asked, primming in her chair.

“Only if it will help you through this terrible moment, Ma'am.”

“Exactly what kind of alcohol would you be offering?”

“I got rum and Tinker here has lemon gin,” Blue interjected.

“I prefer whiskey when I do indulge,” the widow confided, “but I won't turn down your generosity. I suppose a small drink would help. Gin would do nicely.”

“Is that a kitchen or a closet over there?” Tinker asked, taking the bottle from Blue's belt and adding it to his own. Discovering that it was a kitchenette, he went to fix the drinks, leaving Blue to console the widow.

“That's my buddy, Tinker, going to get you a drink. Awfully small, these funeral homes, aren't they?” Blue observed as he took a seat beside the widow.

“There's bigger. There's even bigger rooms in this funeral home,” Mrs. Rubble said, “but so's the cost of the funeral but— Look, just who are you?” the widow asked sharply, only to be interrupted by Tinker's sudden presence, offering her one of the three coffee mugs he carried. “Oh, thank you,” she said, reaching to relieve him of one-third of his cargo, then turned back to Blue. “I still don't understand why you're here,” she said more softly.

“Well, it's like this, Missus. Tinker and me got lonesome when we heard about your husband's wake. I guess you do it different in the city, but back where we come from, a wake's a guy's last chance to be alive. People always get sentimental and begin telling stories. Like maybe his brother tells one about him, and then a buddy of his, then someone else. Before long, the first thing you know if you're sitting there listening, is that you get a pretty good look at the guy even if you barely knew him. Tinker and me are old pros at wakes.”

“You want me to tell you some stories about that bastard?” Mrs. Rubble asked, nodding toward the casket then draining her cup and passing it back to Tinker. “Refill that for me and I'll give you a wake to remember.” Tinker took her glass and hurried off to the kitchenette, winking his assurance to Blue that this was going to work out okay.

“So how did you meet?” Blue asked.

“Oh, he was going off to war. You know young girls. They think a donkey looks good if he's wearing a uniform. Well, part of him was like a donkey, but you boys are too young for me to go into that. Anyway, the way it was during the war, we were cheering our boys on, not like those girls today, spitting on those poor soldiers. So he was going overseas and he only had a few days leave and we danced and we drank and laughed and sang and we sobered up married the morning he had to ship out. I never saw him again until after the war.”

Tinker returned with the refilled mugs. Each of them took a reflective sip, gazing at the coffin. Only a bulb of nose was visible from where they sat.

“So he came back from the war,” Blue prompted.

“It's one thing to send a man off to war. It's quite another to welcome him back. If he'd been killed I'd have probably gone on loving him forever, but I wound up living with him forever. At least it seems that long. I can't believe the bastard's dead, but he must be or else the smell of this liquor would have him rising up out of that coffin like Dracula.”

“‘Finnegan's Wake',” Blue nodded to Tinker.

“Who's that, dear?” Mrs. Rubble asked.

“‘Finnegan's Wake.' It's this Irish song about a guy named Jim Finnegan who everybody thinks is dead but then at his wake this fight breaks out and some of the liquor splashes over Jim and—”

“The liquor splashes over Jim,” Tinker sang, picking the song up from that point in Blue's narration. “My God, see how he rises/—”