musical interlude

HENRY AND RACHEL
(NOT A DUET)

The Stetson. Never been up on this stage before, I’m not even sure this place was here when I lived home. And for obvious reasons I haven’t been to a lot of bars since I came back. Step up onto the stage, grip the neck of the guitar a little tighter to keep my hands from shaking.

Blinking in the lights. That’s been awhile too. At least there’s not many people here yet. Four acts on tonight and I’m the first, and hardly anyone in the place except what you might call my entourage. Rachel and a couple of her friends, Mom and her—boyfriend? or something?— Richard. Mom’s friend Doris. Aunt Treese with Nancy and her husband. God love ’em for coming. The whole ragged-arsed family, gathering round. Not exactly the prodigal son, no fatted calves killed, but a Sunday dinner at Alf and Treese’s, steaks on the barbecue another evening over at Richard’s place. A room ready in the house I grew up in, and all the pizza I can eat downstairs. Oh yeah, sketchy little Frankie Junior and his girlfriend are here too somewhere. More than half the people in the bar are my family. Hell of a lot more than I deserve.

—Good evening ladies and gentlemen, thanks for coming out. It’s good to be back home. Long time since I played in St. John’s.

And never played here like this, never as a solo artist. Always backing up someone else, in someone’s band. Only reason I’m here tonight is because Bob Eveleigh somehow, against all odds, turned out to be kind of A Big Deal after he went to Nashville and recorded an album that made it into the Top Ten on the Canadian country charts. He’s the headliner tonight; in a couple of hours the place will be wall-to-wall with people coming out to hear him. It was all his idea, adding me into the lineup for tonight.

—Just a couple of songs at the beginning, he said. Get you warmed up.

—Nah…what am I warming up for? If I do start playing again it’ll just be doing backup for someone.

—No way! You did a lotta solo stuff up there in Toronto, I know, I heard all about that.

—Yeah but that was years ago.

—You gotta jump back in, it’s like riding a horse or a bike or whatever the hell they say. Come on. This is a great time to be back home, well, not if you want a job, but if you want to perform, it’s a great time.

People change. Bob used to be a self-absorbed blowhard, and maybe he still is, but he’s decent too. He wanted me to do this tonight and here I am. The rest of it—the family showing up, making a night of it—well, that was all Audrey. I don’t think she ever came out to hear me play when I lived here before, but she said she wouldn’t miss tonight.

—Anyway, since I’m here, back home after so many years away, seemed like it would be kinda appropriate to cover a song from here, a song everyone knows. About doing what I did, going away. What we’ve all done, maybe.

Strum the first chord, settle onto the stool a bit more, lean into the mic, as I sing those familiar words about living on a farm, in that wide open space. Sure enough, they’re all singing along by the second line.

***

—Well you’re not gonna go wrong, are you, doing a Ron Hynes song in front of a crowd like this, says Nick Lahey.

I’m at the bar talking to Nick, this seedy old drummer I’ve known forever who used to know Henry. He’s playing with some band that’s on later tonight. We’re listening to Henry’s voice, rough-edged but not unpleasant, belt out the song that might just be the unofficial anthem of Newfoundland.

—Yeah, it’s a good choice.

—Must be something for you, eh? Seeing your old man perform again.

—It’s not really again. I mean, I never saw him perform before.

—No?

—Well, no, I mean I was, like, twelve when he moved away for good, so I wasn’t going out to bars to hear him or anything, back then.

—And you never heard him play up in Toronto or nothing? All those years.

I didn’t even know he was alive. I don’t say that out loud.

—No, I never heard him up there.

—I heard him, when was it, 82, 83, something like that? My God, was it that long ago? Could’ve been even longer, I s’pose.

Nick is Henry’s age and has that beaten look you see in a lot of older musicians. Makes me wonder why I even want to make it in a business that makes you look like that after twenty years.

—Definitely in the early 80s, he says. He was playing in this, hell, this scuzzy little place out on the highway, not even in Toronto, it was about halfway to Oshawa. Me and Mike Davidge, it was, we were up there working construction, and we borrowed Mike’s sister’s car and drove out there.

—So it wasn’t just by chance? I mean, you actually knew he was going to be playing, you drove out there to see my…to see Henry?

—Oh yeah, yeah. Mike knew someone who told him Henry was playing, you know how it is with musicians. And Newfoundlanders.

Early 80s. So all that time I was growing up thinking I was an orphan, all that time Audrey believed her only son might be dead, there were musicians from home who knew where to find him, knew through the friend of a friend that he would be playing in some motel bar off the 401 halfway to Oshawa.

—Was it…was he good? What was it like?

—Oh, you know, it was one of those places, where, you know….

—Everybody’s drunk and nobody’s listening?

—Yeah. You know. But he did a good set, nice set. You know what?

—What?

He nods toward Henry on the stage. The old folks, Nan and Aunt Treese and Doris, are singing along.

—You talk about that song, a Ron Hynes song—you heard that new one of Ron’s, that one about the Man of a Thousand Songs?

—Yeah, yeah, of course.

—Right, and everyone’s like, that’s Ron, you know, he’s writing about his own life, he’s the man of a thousand songs, you know? But he’s not. I mean, he is but he’s not, you know? He’s writing about guys like your dad, you know. Ron Hynes was like that once, maybe. But now, back here at home, he’s a local hero. He’s like a rock star, well, not a rock star, but you know what I mean, right? But guys like your dad, geez, there must be a million of ’em. Guys going around singing in bars, in little dives no one’s ever heard of, no fans, no fame, no glory. Just like—doing it. For the sake of the music, that’s all.

On stage, Henry moves into Randy Travis’s “Forever and Ever, Amen.”

—Guys like Henry, he’s the real man of a thousand songs, you know? Nick says.

—I guess. Peeling at the label on the beer bottle with my thumb. —I guess, yeah, maybe.

***

One local standard, one country pop favourite. Time to get a little more rock ’n’ roll now. Not too rock ’n’ roll, this is The Stetson after all. But the Eagles should be OK. Bob said four songs, so I start into “Take it Easy.” A few more people have drifted in, probably here early to hear Bob. Rachel’s at the bar talking to that old sleazebag Nick Lahey. Does Rachel know that Nick knew her mother? That it was Nick’s car she took off in? Not likely. I accused Stella of sleeping with Nick, might even have been the night she died. What does Rachel know about Stella, I wonder?

It’s been harder with her than with Audrey, or Nan, or any of the rest of them. I imagined some big scene with Audrey and Nan, tears and accusations, explanations and apologies. Instead I come home to find Nan is in St. Luke’s, happy just to see me whenever I visit. Sometimes I bring the guitar and sing hymns, she loves that. As for Audrey, she never asks questions about the time I was away, says nothing about those years.

We eat supper together at her kitchen table, most nights. I’m learning to cook because nobody’s going to survive long on Audrey’s cooking, although apparently it’s worked out OK for her all these years. We eat supper and she complains about Frankie Junior and the crowd that hangs around the shop, about the smell of garlic and pizza sauce. Then she goes out with Richard, or over to Doris’s for a game of cards. I stay home and play the guitar, or I go out and walk the streets of St. John’s, looking at what’s changed and what stays the same.

But Rachel, she’s been skittish, and who can blame her? We live under the same roof but she’s rarely there for our supper-times, though she does say she prefers my cooking to Audrey’s. Rachel is out most of the time: work, her own friends, her own music. She’s got a lovely voice. I went to hear her one night at the Carriage Works, but she didn’t talk to me after the show.

She’ll never know how much nerve it took me, to ask her if she’d do a song with me here tonight. Flat-out refused, she did. Wouldn’t even think about it. And she was right. It would only be, what, sentimental. Like we were going for some big reunion scene, me with the daughter I never really knew. I didn’t try to talk her into it.

Last chord: now for the last song.

—This one’s for the woman who never gave up on me. I know it’s kind of an old cliché to dedicate a song to your mom but she deserves it, and old Hank was her favourite singer, so...

***

Everyone’s right into it, the old folks and the young ones, as Henry rocks out “I Saw the Light.” It’s his best performance of the night so far, raw and open and showing me something I’ve never seen in him before, not that I’ve had occasion to see all that much.

There’s a lot of Jesus in this song, isn’t there? What with the intro about his dear old mother folks probably have the impression that his mother gave him a good churchy upbringing and prayed him safely back home. And that’s a misrepresentation, to say the least. Nanny Ellen, maybe, but certainly not Audrey. But I guess “I Saw the Light” is kind of like “Amazing Grace.” Nobody wants to pick apart the theology. They use those churchy old words to sing about a different kind of redemption. Seeing whatever kind of light leads you forward, getting lost and found and carried home on three aching chords. Maybe old Hank himself meant it that way, or maybe he actually meant he’d let the dear Saviour in. Bit hard to tell at this point.

Henry finishes to a big round of applause, ducks his head and waves as he gets off stage, heads straight over to Audrey’s table and gives her a kiss on the cheek. It’s a bit stagey but what the hell.

I’m done being mad at him, I think. We’ve got this far. He’s been home six months, we’ve talked, we’ve lived in the house together, now I’ve listened to him sing. And life goes on. Turns out it wasn’t that big a deal after all.

He comes over, gives me a hug, and I try not to be stiff and weird and pull away from him. Can you believe he actually asked if I’d get up and do a song with him tonight? I told him no way, wasn’t going to happen. Maybe I’m over being angry, but saying no to him feels really good.

When Jake went back to Alberta the last time, Muscles in the Corner broke up, and so did Jake and I, although we didn’t realize that at first. I haven’t been in a band since then; I’ve been doing solo gigs, writing a lot. After spending a year telling Jake I wasn’t a songwriter. My day job got cut to part-time, and now I spend a lot of afternoons over a cup of coffee at Hava Java with my notebook, writing and writing, then going home with a guitar to see if the music in my head can be picked out on strings. I lock myself in my room with the guitar and a cassette recorder and that notebook full of scrawled pages, looking to see if there’s one good song or even one good line in the reams of crap.

Someone else is on stage now, and I’m back at the family table, wedged in with them all telling Henry what a good job he did.

—Buy you a beer, Henry? says Frankie Junior.

—I’ll take a Coke, thanks, says Henry, which confirms my suspicions that he spent at least some of his lost years hitting bottom and drying out. I haven’t seen him take a drink since he’s been home, not that we’ve been hanging out together a whole lot, but I would have noticed. Well, more power to him, if that’s the case.

Nan and the other old folks head home before Bob Eveleigh, the headliner, gets up on stage. Nancy and her husband stick around with Henry. Frankie and Lisa peel off to meet up with some people at some other club. I end up hanging out with the guys from Muscles in the Corner, one of whom is now in a punk band that’s playing at Bar None later. I trail along after them, and later, when the band (Pease Pudding Cold) turns out to be not as good as their name, I go to another bar with some other people.

It turns into one of those downtown nights, getting drunk, walking arm in arm with people I don’t know that well, listening to one band after another. At one point I see Frankie Junior with his crowd but I don’t see Henry again, which is good. I hope he’s back home safe and sober in bed. Which is a weird and sad thing to wish about your father, but when it comes to Henry, what’s not weird and sad?

Two in the morning, Erin’s Pub. Pretty drunk now, and I barely know the people I’m with. This one girl, Sarah…plays the violin. And her boyfriend, I can’t remember his name. Another guy and girl, but not a couple because the guy is One of The Gays, as Nan would say. And they’re at this table drinking Guinness, and up front there’s a guy singing acapella with just a bodhran, singing something in Gaelic in a voice so haunting and pure it gives me the chills.

Then he looks up. How, even late at night, even drunk, even years later, could I have mistaken his voice for anyone else’s? No other voice, no one else, anywhere in the world. Even when, for all I know, he’s been in Ireland so long he’s been kidnapped by leprechauns. It’s Larry Kennedy singing Irish songs in the middle of the night in downtown St. John’s, and it seems my father’s not the only ghost who can walk through the door.