Kathy Little Bird (11 page)

When Jack woke up, I asked him, “What do you think? Is it possible to feel bad about the right choice, and pretty good about the wrong one?”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s just a philosophical question. I thought you might know.”

Of course he didn’t.

J
ACK
and I stepped from one quagmire into another, from explosive scene to chaotic happening. Many times we sneaked out of a place because we couldn’t pay the bill. Out back doors, down fire escapes. In a coffee shop I’d pick the bread basket clean and squirrel away the little butter, jam, and honey pats. Even a salt cellar was swept into my purse, which already had broken crackers in the bottom. Jack made a lark of it. It was called “getting your money’s worth.”

Many times we couldn’t afford dinner. We’d go into a store for bread, cheese, and cookies, and eat in the car. We’d pick up those little packets of dried soup, where you just add hot water. The tap water in motels usually wasn’t very hot, but we managed.

We had to sell the ponies for less than Jack had hoped. I discovered that in all deals he was vastly optimistic and projected profits that were rarely realized. Without horses there was no reason to keep the trailer, so that went as well. After a transaction Jack always celebrated with a couple or three drinks. The worse he came off, the more he drank.

When a deal collapsed completely, we still had to have a party. He called this “celebrating bad news.” “That’s when you need it,” he said. “When things go right you’re happy anyway.”

I noticed, however, that he celebrated then too.

Unfortunately, the celebrations themselves were what got him down. The morning after, his high good spirits deserted him. He became morose and ugly, a side of him I’d not seen before.

I had to get used to bar talk too. I saw why Mum never let me near the Eight Bells; the men sprinkled their conversation with words I had been taught to avoid. However, I soon learned that nobody heard them. Like Abram’s “Praise the Lord,” it was simply a way of underlining what was said.

I learned that ponies were far from Jack’s only source of livelihood. He had peddled everything from Fuller brushes to insurance to a product that ostensibly removed stains on anything from blouses to saddles. It took the stain off—and the material as well. I’ve known it to bite through the trim of a car.

But Jack had a natural flair. The gift of gab, he called it. And we didn’t starve.

In the beginning it was fun, kind of a game, the two of us outwitting everybody else. Stealing out of bed before sunup, rolling the car fifty yards down the road before starting it. It was generally a house, as motels had a nasty habit of demanding payment in advance.

I wasn’t listening to the radio as much. I was listening inside myself, remembering the songs Elk Woman sang as she kneaded bread, as we searched for berries, as she lit her pipe. Some of the notes didn’t land squarely on the frets of my guitar, and when I tried them on a bar piano, they seemed to hide in the cracks between the white and black keys. But
they fit perfectly into their own melodies and produced strange tonalities that echoed the sounds and cries of nature. They flowed like the streams I’d played in, shone silver like the mudbanks I’d slid down. The notes were elusive, dew caught on leaves, tiny transparent prisms of sound, chords that spoke of rain and earth. And pounding moccasin feet dancing my mother on the long journey. Celebrating. Cree songs were full of celebration, of life and death in an eternal round.

Elk Woman used to explain it to me as we sat and smoked. Now, driving these long stretches with Jack, I tried to put it into words. I couldn’t, but I put it into sound. I got excited and sang out loud.

Jack didn’t like it. “What’s that outlandish screeching? Are you singing or yelling?”

“I’m feeling the earth breathe.”

T
HEY
say you remember first times, a first kiss, a first love. I remember the first time I was paid for singing. It was an elegant place with a piano, a big midwestern square piano in a corner by the bar. I rushed over to it and saw that it had been degutted, the strings torn out. Nevertheless I ran my hands over it. It was dusty and the finish marred by beer bottle rings. Still, the place was an improvement on most of the dives Jack had taken me to. It had fancy toothpicks in little cellophane packets. That seemed to me quite a cut above having them lie around in a cup.

We were pretty much on our uppers because Jack had taken to making bar bets, and the last couple of times he
lost. This particular time he left me eating a Salisbury steak with a side order of fried onions. After a week of chicken salad sandwiches with the chicken mostly absent, this tasted like heaven.

I was wolfing my food, barely conscious of what Jack was up to. He’d gone to the bar to cadge a free drink, and I saw that he was pulling one of his favorite cons. It was a number game he called Double or Nothing.

Jack would soften them up with tales of the great gambling capitals of the world: Monte Carlo, Las Vegas, Montreal. How on the train to Windsor Station a dedicated bettor would stake hundreds of dollars on the raindrops crawling down the windows or the timing of the next thunderclap.

Double or Nothing. He’d learned this fantastic game of chance from a man who pitched pennies with silver dollars. Each time you won, you could collect or let your bet stand, shooting for double. All you needed was a cocktail napkin to keep score on.

There was always someone curious enough to ask for details.

Jack would oblige. “You bet against the house. No checks, no credit, no rings or watches, cash on the line. You run out of cash, you got to fold. Each time it’s double your stake or quit.”

So someone slaps down a buck, and the bartender produces a paper napkin. Jack invites the mark to pick a number from ten to a hundred at random.

“Seventy-six,” says the mark.

Jack writes it down for all to see.

“Now write it backward and add.” Jack does the arithmetic.

Jack says. “Doesn’t win. Not a palindrome. If you quit now, you get your money back. If you want to go on, you got to double your bet. That’s the game—Double or Nothing.”

The mark puts down another dollar, and Jack goes on.

“Do it again. Write it down backward and add.”

The mark writes

“Aha!” Jack shouts. “You did it! That’s a palindrome. It reads the same way forward and backward. See, 484. And backward, 484. In this game a palindrome wins. You doubled your bet to two dollars. You got a palindrome. So you win two dollars.”

The mark holds out his hand for his winnings, but Jack smiles and shakes his head. “No, friend, you didn’t actually bet, so you didn’t win anything. That was just a demonstration. I was explaining the game.”

He goes on to another subject, but now three or four onlookers want to try the game. Jack protests he can’t bankroll a table full of players; they should go to Vegas or Montreal. They plead with him, all they want is to learn the game, what’s a dollar or two. One big spender calls for drinks all around, and Jack finally agrees.

The con was usually good for fifty bucks. The mark quickly figured out small numbers got you nowhere and would gingerly try something bigger, like 78. Wow! Eight-to-one profit. 79. Hallelujah! Thirty-two to one. Then he gets greedy. He goes for the biggest, 98 or what comes to the same thing, 89. But this baby goes on and on and on, each time forcing the mark to double his bet. Since it’s strictly cash, no credit, no checks, they usually quit at $64 or $128, netting Jack a fifty.

The trouble tonight was that the bartender got his hands on it first and put it against Jack’s tab. There wasn’t enough left to pay for our breakfast and my Salisbury steak.

I continued to sit in front of it. The manager came up and waved a hand in the general direction of the food. “Your boyfriend didn’t pay for this, miss.”

“He’s not my boyfriend, he’s my husband.” And I waggled my wedding band at him.

“It’s still not paid for.”

“I tell you what, throw in another cup of coffee and I’ll sing.”

“You’ll what?”

He looked so comically incredulous that I laughed. “Just one song. If you want more you’ll have to pay. Fifty dollars and I’ll sing till you close.”

“Well now, I doubt we’ll have to worry about that. But go ahead. Sing one song, and I’ll not only give you a refill on the coffee, we’ll make it dessert too.”

I went out to the car and brought back my guitar, then surveyed the room for the best spot, where I’d be facing the most tables and could still be seen from the bar. I chose a surefire number and tuned my guitar, speaking to it silently as I always did. “Sing with me,” I invited. I could tell that it was a little out of sorts from banging around in the trunk of the car. But I hoisted myself onto the old piano and from the first chord I struck, it was with me. We were a team. It seemed to know what I wanted before I touched the strings. I soared, it soared. I whispered, it whispered. Together we cried and exploded in raw uncooked energy.

The men at the bar didn’t touch their drinks. The people at the tables stopped eating. They’d never heard anything like what burst from me and my old guitar. I’d never heard myself sing like this either. The notes came out exactly the way I wanted, full and round, soft and dreamy, breaking into harsh cries of pain.

The audience was with me. I could do no wrong. Or rather, all my wrongs were right, and anyone could tell I’d been born left-handed. Sure, they’d changed me over, but I wouldn’t let them change a note of the music. It came out just right.

When I finished there was no applause. For a count of five, that is; then the storm broke. They clapped, they stamped, they banged on the varnished bar top. They whistled, they cheered.

The manager somewhat hesitantly let me know he couldn’t quite get fifty dollars together. So a collection was taken up. Nearly a hundred dollars was in the plate. I sang until closing.

My last number I screwed up the courage to tie a shoelace around my forehead and started with a whoop. It was the Cree way of saying, “This is me, here in the midst of creation. I’m one with it, with you.”

But the gang at the bar didn’t get it. The couples at the tables resumed talking. They weren’t listening anymore.