He suggested going out—dinner at Café Filippo was his sly proposal. Vanessa would never have thought of it, but sure, why not? He told her he’d met a musician who would be playing there tonight. “You’ve met more people in the last two days than I have in eight years here,” said Van, a joke which nonetheless pierced him. All day the snow had been melting, a wide thaw, so it was finally warm enough to walk into town. The air was damp. Filthy hard snow was still packed high against the walls of the shops, deeply impervious, locked there until the spring; but the quivering shop awnings were dripping melted water into his neck. Students in loud, loose, bleary groups shunted along the sidewalks, moving joyfully in and out of the warm coffee shops.
But it was quiet at Café Filippo. Alan was sorry that the band would have such a tiny audience. Presumably their fee was fixed and did not depend on numbers? It was pleasant there—wide wood floors, redbrick walls and a touchingly clumsy mural along one whole wall, which seemed to show a collection of musicians from the 1960s, playing together at an ideal party; he only recognized Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. The mural celebrated the fact that Baez and Dylan performed in this very café, said Van, before they were famous. A stage was set up at the front, with idle guitars propped against boxy amplifiers, and the white drum kit he had glimpsed in Ryan’s car. They ordered dinner.
Around ten o’clock, as Alan was getting weary and thinking about leaving, the musicians climbed onstage. He was glad that he and Van were near the back, in the shadows; he never had any intention of taking up Ryan’s suggestion of free drinks and a prominent seat. Now the room had filled up—those in the know did not come amateurishly early. Surely that was the Trask lady up at the bar? Wasn’t it her? Van confirmed the identification. The band was introduced to the audience: Ryan on drums, Wes on bass (tall, long-armed, with spiky peroxided hair), Cat on the banjo (youngish, bespectacled, in her twenties), and Emmy on acoustic guitar (older, with a long silver-gray plait). They were called the Mystery Tramps, a name Alan thought quite terrible. Van agreed, but said that it was almost certainly taken from “Like a Rolling Stone,” which perhaps mitigated the awfulness. Or increased it, whispered Alan, filling the role usually occupied by Helen. “How strange,” whispered Van back, scanning his mind, “that we’re here listening to music, without Helen!”
They played extremely well, far better than their name suggested they would, with precision and subtlety. Their second song was noisy and full of rage, and allowed the drummer to get busy: it was “one of our own compositions,” called “When the Blues See Red.” There were whoops and whistles from the loyal crowd. After it was over (Alan was mainly glad the noise had ceased), they took a moment to retune. To Alan, the process seemed unprofessionally slow. “It takes a village to tune a banjo!” joked the young woman. “We tune because we care,” added the older woman. Alan was getting restless. The next song, said the older woman, “was made famous by Mississippi John Hurt, but was probably played for years, maybe decades, before he sang it, and no one knows who actually wrote the beautiful darn thing.” It was called “Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor.”
She began by playing an intricate series on her acoustic, picking the strings. The accompaniment was minimal—the bassist was barely touching his guitar, and the drummer was hitting only a tambourine and kicking his bass drum. It sounded cheerful, it was cracking along at a good pace, but the words were wintry, soulful. Alan was fascinated, and sat up, suddenly full of concentration. He had never heard this song, but he and his parents had loved “Hard Times Come Again No More,” and one thing he’d always cherished about that tune was that it was a sad song, a lament, even a dirge, but with lyrics that hinted the other way, at resolution, solidarity, conviction.
’Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,
Hard times, hard times, come again no more.
That song had sometimes given him strength during his own hard times. It was neither purely sad nor happy, but had the wisdom of its mixtures; the fortifying power of dappled things. And it was the same with the song the band was now playing. “What is this?” he eagerly asked Van. “Shush, Daddy, I don’t know, just listen.” It was set in a winter landscape, there was a traveler, a bed for the night. He heard “Make me a pallet on your floor,” and he heard “I’m going up the country by the cold sleet and snow.” His eyes swam, he was even more grateful for the shadows.
Just make me down, make me down
Make me a pallet down, soft and low
Make me a pallet on your floor