10

All next morning I still felt uneasy about what I’d done, but it couldn’t have been the memory of the look in Rattray’s eye that bothered me, I couldn’t even see his face as he was led away. So, it must’ve been what I imagined that look to be. For someone who was nervous even with legal language, who had probably always felt guilty, it must’ve been a nightmare for him. It had been only three years since homosexuality could get you up to fourteen years in prison.

I was helping the MacAkerns set up for their picnic. We’d opened the house and swung wide the front door, an ornate double-winged monstrosity with a great rusted brass twist-bell and beveled glass, one pane which had broken and which had been replaced with a stained slab of chip-board. Windows painted closed with coat after coat of thick paint had been jimmied and propped up, and the musty smell of moldering parlour wafted out across the lawn where it was baked away by the sun.

Where the front porch wrapped around the western corner of the house we had created a stage. The corner of the porch was cut off at a forty-five degree angle with two pillars twelve feet apart, and the banister between them was obligingly half-falling down and easily removed, making for an open proscenium, which would work quite well if you avoided the great ugly rusted spikes sticking out from one side. Wallace had asked Brucie to hammer them out but had got him to stop when the pounding had threatened to bring down one of the pillars. Loudspeakers had been taken out of Bailey’s van along with his amplifier and mixer and set on the porch floor on either side. There were two microphones on stands in the centre.

The table was set over by where we had moved the tractor on the first day I had come to their house. It was as though Wallace had somehow divined even then what would need to be done, but there was probably nothing magical about it. The way he worked was with a vague plan as to the direction he wanted to go, and then he’d arrange things in a way which might at the time seem pointless, but which insured that he was never out of opportunities. It meant that his life was full of uncompleted projects, but with always enough other options to follow.

He was standing with Brucie on the front steps and he gave me a handbill announcing the time and date of the event: “MacAkern Potluck Picnic (and Antique Auto Show) with The Barely Boys!”

“That’s ‘Barley Boys,’” I said. “You spelled it wrong.”

“No I never. People will naturally think it’s the Barley Boys, but we may not be able to get them, and if we can’t, our ass is covered.”

“So who are the Barely Boys then?”

“You and Brucie,” said Wallace. “Robbie tells me you sound pretty good.”

I turned to Brucie. “What songs do you know?”

“‘D-d-deep In My Heart.’”

“What else?”

“Th-th-at’s it.”

“We have kind of a limited repertoire,” I said to Wallace.

“Don’t worry,” said Wallace. “You’ll come up with something.”

Bailey came out of the house and approached.

“Maybe you could sing ‘Speed Bonny Boat,’” I suggested to Wallace.

“I suppose I could…” he said. “You know the chords?”

“I can learn them.”

“And you and Brucie could come in with the harmony,” said Wallace, and his eyes started dancing with the thought.

“No you don’t,” said Bailey. “You’re not getting up on stage at all.”

“Why not? I could also do ‘My Love Has To The Lowlands Gone.’”

Bailey put one hand on his shoulder. “Wallace.”

“Yes?”

“You can’t sing worth shit.”

“Ah, come on…”

“You know that bagpipe thing you got on tape?”

“‘As Softening Shades Of Evening Fall’? What about it?”

“You’re worse.”

“Really?” said Wallace, dismayed.

“Don’t worry. We want you doing what you do best. One-on-one. ‘How you doing?’ ‘Lovely day today.’ And only talk politics if they bring up the subject. This whole shindig can’t look in any way self-interested. If they think you got them here just to get their votes, it will harm your reputation for generosity.”

“I didn’t know I had one.”

“Well you do. ‘He’s generous,’ they say. ‘I’ll give him that. If he’s got something, he’ll share it.’ I don’t understand it myself. I mean, when was the last time you actually bought a meal for somebody else.”

“This party will make up for that.”

“It’s a potluck. They’re bringing their own food.”

“Which I will generously share with everybody.”

“Nice.”

“What about the scotch? Who’s bringing the scotch?”

“Dunbar’s bringing the scotch.”

“But I’ve arranged that he should.”

“You are a river for your people,” said Bailey.

“Are the Barley Boys actually g-g-gonna show up?” said Brucie.

“I don’t know,” said Bailey. “I went down to see them and asked, ‘How’d you like to do a benefit concert?’ ‘We’d love to!’ said the leader, what’s-his-name, Niall. ’But it’ll cost you a thousand bucks.’ ‘How’s that a benefit?’ I ask, and Niall says, ‘It would benefit us.’ So, it looks like we put you two guys on stage and claim it’s some sort of community service. Go for the pity vote.”

“H-hey!”

“Ever worked on a stage before, Brucie?”

“N-n-no.”

“Christian?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s tougher than it looks. The very thought of being in front of the public can rip your soul out and hang its tattered remnants in the wind. Don’t worry about it, though, you’ll be fine. As long as you don’t get stage fright.”

***

The first guest to arrive was Fergie. He came down the causeway in the park truck and Wallace poured him a scotch and talked to him about what had happened to Rattray, making it sound as if he was only piecing it together himself from what he’d heard, rather than mentioning his part in it. Soon after that, Toe and Gump showed up with a lady who turned out to be El’ner, their mother.

“I want to pick your brains about your uncle,” she said to Wallace.

“Well, we’re trying to soft-pedal that, what with the election and everything.”

“Oh pooh!” she said. “Nobody gives a hoot about who you’re related to.”

“Maybe not,” said Wallace, accommodating and genial. “And you know, he wasn’t that bad anyway…” And he told her a long and completely improvised story which stressed Smooth Lennie’s good points, chief among which being his total and utter loyalty to the Conservative party. She even took notes, so that looked like it was working out.

Others started arriving until there were a good thirty people, then fifty, and growing. Some brought food, which was laid out on a table and picked at. Wallace served the scotch. Dunbar, a man with eyebrows like wooly caterpillars and the largest Adam’s apple I’d ever seen, followed around nervously and asked people their opinion on its taste, without drinking any himself.

“Not too smokey?”

“Not at all.”

“How about the peatiness?”

“Not too peaty, I think.”

The fall of Rattray was discussed extensively. Apparently, somebody had filled El’ner in with what everybody else knew because I overheard a conversation between her and her sons.

“But, he’s queer,” said Toe.

“Well, that’s no reason to beat him up!” she said, tapping with suppressed anger a rolled newspaper against her forearm. “Now, I want to know. Is that the reason you attacked him?”

I could see Toe watching her warily, hearing the accusatory tone which implied that if that had been the reason, it would be a bad thing.

“No,” he said.

Gump, catching on, supported his brother by shaking his head vigorously.

“Why, then?” said El’ner.

“Why then what?” Toe stalled.

“Why did you beat him up?

“Because….when we told him he was, he said he wasn’t,” said Gump.

“Well, if he’d admitted it, you’d have beaten him up for that!” said El’ner.

But by now Toe had assembled his argument. “No! I said we didn’t beat him up ‘cause he was gay.”

“So why did you, then?”

“Why did we what?”

“Why Did You Beat Him Up?”

“Because he’s gay?” said Gump, who’d lost track.

“No, we didn’t. Shut up, Gump,” said Toe. “We beat him up because… I know! Because he stole stuff from our vegetable stand.”

“And that’s all?”

“Yeah.”

She smacked Gump on the head with the rolled up paper, and then again to punctuate every word. “Don’t…Beat… People…Up!”

“Come on, Mom! Stop! He’s a horse’s ass!”

El’ner stopped hitting him. “Well, that’s true,” she said.

“He deserved it.”

“Yeah, Mom. I don’t give a shit if he’s gay or not,” said Gump

“You wouldn’t,” said Toe.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re gay.”

“You calling me gay?”

“Yeah.”

Toe punched Gump on the shoulder. ”You’re the gay one.”

Gump punched back, harder, and they left, punching and accusing each other of homosexuality.

El’ner sighed deeply. “Its not the sexuality. It’s pretending to yourself that you’re something you’re not. Life’s not complicated enough without that?” she said it to nobody in particular.

Fergie was standing to one side. “One lie breeds another,” he said to his invisible friend.

I didn’t have to be there at all. In fact, it was time that I should go tune up my banjolele.

But right then, a large town-car rolled into the parking area and three familiar-looking men dressed in expensive clothing of the bell-bottoms and leather jacket variety stepped out: The Barley Boys.

“Gentlemen, Gentlemen, Gentlemen!” greeted Wallace, moving toward them with his hand out in welcome. “So nice to see you! Caught your show at the Mall, when was it? Two weeks ago, and it was great! But here now, in the flesh! Live! In person! Well, I never. We’re your biggest fans. Come in! Don’t be shy! There’s food and scotch. Help yourselves.”

All this was met by The Barley Boys with silence and a sullen scanning of the grounds, not even acknowledging Wallace, a buzzing noise in their ear. They stood like a pride of lions still too lazy from last night’s meal to move in quite yet for the kill. After a long pause the largest, most heavily-bearded head swiveled around. Niall didn’t even look at Wallace’s outstretched hand. “You’re Wallace MacAkern.”

“I am! The very same! Independent Candidate for Barrisway riding in the upcoming election. Hope you vote for me!”

“Your man came to see me.” A thick Belfast statement.

“My man?”

“Your man, what was his name? B- something.”

“Bailey?”

“Aye, that was it.” Though he seemed to get no joy from solving that puzzle. “He asked if we wanted to perform a benefit concert.”

“Yes. He was telling me…”

“And we said no.”

“Yes.”

“In no uncertain terms.”

“I understand.”

“There was no ambiguity in our refusal whatsoever that I remember, was there boys?

“There was not,” said another Barley Boy.

“None,” said the third.

“So what I am saying is that by ‘No,’ if you catch my drift, we didn’t mean ‘Yes, we’d love to.’”

“ I see of course…” Wallace started but was cut off.

“…So you can imagine my surprise this morning when, upon opening The Guardian, I see an advert in the entertainment section that said we would be playing here this afternoon.”

“Well,” said Wallace, as though it would be a bit of an imposition, but one he could perhaps work around, “I suppose…I mean…we have a band already, but, well, I don’t see why we couldn’t make room in the program for such a fine… Sure! Why not? The more the merrier!”

“You misunderstand me, Mr. MacAkern.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. We didn’t come here to ask to play at your ‘picnic.’” He managed to make both syllables of the word sound independently distasteful and collectively foul.

“Then…why?”

“We came here to see who has been using our name to draw a crowd without our consent.”

Wallace played it for innocence. “I don’t follow…”

Niall snapped the wad of newspaper he was carrying under Wallace’s nose. “Read,” he commanded.

“‘This afternoon,” read Wallace, “at MacAkerns’ farm in Barrisway off Route 3. The first annual MacAkern Family Picnic. Come one, come all. Free food and refreshments.’ Yes, but I don’t see…”

“Read!”

“‘Entertainment provided by the B….” Wallace stopped, shocked. “But this is terrible!” he said, all concern for having become somehow involved, no matter how remotely, in any annoyance of people he so clearly admired. He looked at the advertisement again, confirmed that his eyes were not playing tricks on him and took charge and demanded, “Who’s the copy writer?” He looked around as though before another minute passed one of his staff would get to the bottom of this. In the full force of this performance, Niall’s lidded eyes looked deeper into Wallace’s, his lips turned from sneer to question.

“Barely Boys,” said Wallace. “Barely. I won’t say that we didn’t have you in mind when we named them, but I had no idea…” He leant in and explained how this awful mistake must have happened. “Brucie and his friend here had a few songs they wanted to do, and a couple of us were sitting around trying to think of what we’d call them, and they were boasting about some great feat they had performed that day, like you would, you know, at their age, and somebody said, ‘Yes, there’s no doubt about it. You’re both Real Men’ and Robbie (was it?) said ‘Barely that!’ and Melissa said, ‘Mere boys is all.’ Then I said, “Barely Boys! There’s your name!’ So we went with that. I won’t say we weren’t thinking about you, I mean with the greatest respect of course, as a tribute really…but…Oh! My God! Trust The Guardian to get it wrong! Well, that’s the last time I leave it up to them to edit the final copy. Melissa! I want the money back for that advertisement. We could probably sue them for damages as well.” He turned back to Niall. “I’m so sorry. What can we do to make it up to you?” Robbie handed Wallace the handbill. “There!” said Wallace looking at it. “See, The Barely Boys.”

“Where’s the scotch?” said the Terrorist Gnome.

“Scotch!” said Wallace. “The Barley Boys want scotch! Here, take a few bottles. There. Perfect. Try some of El’ner’s lasagna, too. Relax. Enjoy yourselves. Could I perhaps get you a ‘Vote MacAkern’ sign for your lawn?”

“No.”

“Of course not. Still. Enjoy yourselves. And my deepest most heartfelt apologies.” And Wallace walked away, shaking his head in sorrow at the number of details that can go awry in this world.

It was time for me to get ready to go on stage. I don’t know quite how I felt about that, because I had been furiously avoiding thinking about it since I had first agreed to it, but it was taking a lot of nervous energy not to think about, and it was soon time to actually do it. You couldn’t die from stage fright, but what about this mounting anxious stressful heart-pounding extreme discomfort? I looked around at the crowd of people in the sun, talking and drinking and eating. What right had I to demand their attention? Though maybe they would pay as little notice to me as to the tape of fiddle music now playing over the speakers. That would be a blessing. We could just get up and do the one song we knew, and then slip back into lovely anonymity.

“Are you r-ready?” said Brucie, quite at ease with it all.

“I have to get my banjolele.” I walked up onto the porch and around behind the house.

Under the roof of the porch and in the shade of the dune creeping close on this side, it was cool, dark, and quiet. Melissa was there with Robbie, smoking a joint.

“Want some?” said Melissa.

“It doesn’t work with me.”

“Then you might as well,” she said, although I didn’t quite follow the logic. But I was about to go on stage, and the photo on the front of The Mighty Voice of Jah tape showed three very relaxed people getting ready to do just that while smoking up, and right now I could do with some of their apparent self-possession. So, if only to get into character, as it were, I took the joint and inhaled, held it in my mouth to cool it as I’d been taught, and sucked the smoke into my lungs without coughing. It was so successfully executed that I took another, held my breath like a pearl diver, then exhaled. Just taking charge of my breath like that calmed me somewhat. I tuned up the banjolele for a minute or two, until it sounded quite perfect.

“What are you going to play?” asked Robbie.

“‘Deep, Deep in my Heart,’” I said. “It’s the only song we know. We haven’t rehearsed, really. It probably won’t be very good. I hope Brucie doesn’t freeze up.”

“Naw,” said Robbie. “He’s a natural.”

I paused for quite a long time. “Yeah,” I said, gradually more amazed that I hadn’t seen the connection before. “A natural, that’s it…

“You’re stoned,” said Melissa.

I looked at her. No, not stoned. It’s just that I’d figured out Life. The key was that you had to be natural…

If necessary, by artificial means. “Give me another toke,” I said, and she did. “But how do you do that, just be natural? I mean, it’s easy to say, but there’s gonna be people out there looking at me…”

“Shit, they don’t care,” said Robbie.

I considered this. “Oh no!” I said. “That’s worse.”

“Show time,” said Robbie.

Show time! Now? No! It couldn’t be! Too soon! I wasn’t ready! Why me? “I don’t think I can go on,” I said.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” said Melissa. “It’s important to just keep cool when you’re stoned.”

“I’m not stoned. I don’t get stoned.”

“OK then. You’re not stoned,” said Melissa. “But everything is going to be fine. Say it.”

“Say what?”

“Say ‘Everything is going to be fine.’”

“‘Everything is going to be fine.’”

“Just keep repeating it.”

So, Everything Is Going To Be Fine, I told myself as I walked toward the front of the house. Everything Is Going To Be Fine. Everything is going. To be fine. Fine, then, that everything is going to be. Going Fine is to be Everything? Then, my best so far: To be is everything. Going, fine.

It almost overwhelmed me with its profundity. From its Shakespearean opening to the calm acceptance of a final parting, it seemed to sum up all of Life. It was brilliant. I would have to find some way to work it into my beach report. Then I remembered that I was no longer repeating what I was supposed to. Wouldn’t it be awful if I had forgotten what Melissa had told me I must recite?… And then I realized that I had forgotten it.

Terror gripped me. I had forgotten that everything was going to be fine! Everything wasn’t going to be Fine. Fine was exactly what everything was not going to be! I was stoned! On pot. Which is illegal! …I’ll be thrown into jail! With Rattray! As my cellmate!…

But wait…Everything is going to be fine. That was it. A close call! Everything is going to be fine. Every sing is going two bovine. A Very Thinnest Go In To Beef Vine. Avery thinks he’s going, Tubby Fein…

“Ready?” said Melissa.

“No.”

“Let’s go, then.”

She and Robbie led me around the corner of the building into the sunlight. I concentrated on the details around me to stop myself from thinking about what was ahead.

The crawling tides moved the eel-grass on the shore. Leaves trembled like coins in a breeze through the Balm of Gilead…a lovely tree with a lovely name. Is there no Balm in Gilead? Why yes there is. This lovely moment. Now this one…and now…Oh, here’s another. They just keep coming… until…until…

I blinked my eyes and some quick figure flicked across my imagination. Better keep my eyes open, I thought. I hadn’t liked that. Make a mental note: Never blink again. This was better. Every song was going to be. Fine!

And while we’re on the subject, I thought for no reason at all, this thing about me not crying at Dad’s funeral? Maybe crying at funerals was just one of those things which you were told you should do, was in fact unnatural, and as such would not, in its falseness, truly honour my father. So that was all right. “Everything was going. Too benign,” I muttered, and I giggled at my own wit.

“What?” said Robbie.

“Nothing.”

“You OK?”

“No.” I giggled again.

There were maybe thirty people in front of the stage. Strangers and friends: Toe and Gump, El’ner and Dunbar, Fergie and Wallace. The three Barley Boys stood with their arms across their chests, holding their scotch in their fists, ready to let Wallace off with this one, maybe, if we were as harmless as we seemed and not the agents of some conspiracy to steal their name.

Melissa turned off the fiddle music and went to the microphone. “Hi everybody! And welcome to the first annual MacAkern Family Picnic! Great to see you all here, and could you please welcome, for your listening pleasure…The Barely Boys!”

There was some mild applause.

Far too soon I found myself onstage, standing beside Brucie, looking out at the audience, with the bright dune behind them seeming to pulse toward me. I gave my banjolele a strum. More people turned toward us. Brucie struck a mock operatic pose and sang the note “mi mi mi” into the microphone. His voice rang out like a bell across the lawn.

I strummed another chord and another, and laid down a rhythm. Natural. Brucie started singing, coming in perfectly on the beat, his voice beautiful.

He sang the first verse, and the significance of the lyrics almost overwhelmed me. I felt like when I had first set eyes on Claire. And when I joined in on the chorus, supplying the easy harmony, I wasn’t nervous at all. The utter simplicity of things dazzled me. You could do anything on a day like this and it would work out. It was even okay when Brucie stumbled on the words and sang “La la la,” and I started talking, like the kind of filler I had heard on the Mighty Spear of Jah tape. In “Jeremiah,” they had sung, ‘Is there no balm in Gilead? No physician there? Why then is there no healing for our wounds?’ So I said that, but instead I said, ‘Feeling for our wounds,’ getting it wrong, but it still worked, so I added, ‘Healing for our feeling,’ And the full import of this suddenly hit me. “Here we are on a summer’s day,” I continued,

“At MacAkerns’ picnic,

With the tide going out,

And the sun going down,

Not yet, but soon, or soon enough…” I strummed the rest of the line without saying anything. I didn’t know what to say next.

“Lalala la la la la,” sang Brucie.

Then I heard myself talking again. “On this evening, in this beautiful home. And I want this family to do whatever they want….but I’m being paid by people who want to kick them off… so it’s all very confusing…”

Then I stopped talking and just strummed and listened to Brucie. I had heard what I said as I was saying it, amplified and apart from myself, my own voice not from my mouth but from a different source in front of and to either side of me. It was the first time I had ever said anything over a microphone.

It also sounded, strangely, like my father’s voice, and that reminded me that I should ask him about those Balm of Gilead trees when I next saw him, and then I realized, with a shock, that that was impossible now, and that I would never see him again, and my whole body filled with that realization and made me sadder than I’d ever been before. I stopped strumming.

Never again.

I was up to my neck in the world and he wasn’t around to guide me through it. I was lost, as I had lost Claire, and plunged into a pointless war with Rattray…And right then I suddenly knew who was on the beach in my dream as I was drifting away from the shore: not me, but my father, and I remembered that look in his eyes, not conquered by the world, but aware of its enormity. And there for the first time in my young life I felt the pangs of painful wisdom.

I had never wept for him. That was the sad thing. And it was too late now, and this made me sad too. I had to blink my eyes a few times, as if I had opened them while swimming under salt water. I understood his demons; they were the same as mine. I saw what had saddened him, and they were the same things that saddened me. He’d had a father too, who’d had a father too, and all you could do in this world was weep.

So, I wept.

I wept for the dunes, for time, for life, I even wept for Rattray because we were all the same, after all, but mostly I wept for my father. Some dam I didn’t even know I had built cracked and released with a sigh, and I was standing in front of the microphone, my shoulders shaking and my chest heaving, sobbing in public.

“I never wept for him,” I said. “ My father…when he died…at his funeral…afterward…”

Robbie had come up to my side and had an arm around my shoulder. “Well, you’re weeping for him now,” she said to me. How did she understand so much?

People looked on, concerned. I saw all the completely unearned care that had been given me, and I wept for my ingratitude. Then I saw how I would have to join this circle of responsibility, and I wept for that. Robbie started to draw me away, but I turned back to the microphone.

“I took the potatoes,” I said. “It was me. I said it was Rattray, but it was me… I left that note. I didn’t mean it to sound sarcastic.. I couldn’t change any of my money when I went to Barrisway….Really…”

“That’s all right, Christian…” said Robbie.

I was just eighteen years old, but sometimes I felt eighty and other times I felt eight. Melissa came over to my other side, put her arm around my shoulder, and even though I was shaking with sobs, I felt her un-brassiered breast against my side and it made me feel better and whole. Then sadder. I continued sobbing as they led me off stage. Toe and Gump were there, looking embarrassed.

“I’m sorry Toe,” I said. “I’m sorry Gump.”

“Don’t you worry,” said Gump. “You’re from Montreal. Home of the Habs.”

“That prick had it coming to him anyway,” said Toe.

“And you knew Rocket Richard.”

“I only met him once…”

“Still. Put it here.” He held out his hand.

“We’ll go beat that fucker up again anytime. Just say the word.”

“No really. Don’t…”

“What’s this?” said El’ner, moving in.

“Nothing, Mom.”

“Did I hear you were going to beat up somebody again?”

“No.”

“I’m fairly sure that that is what I heard.”

“We didn’t mean it.”

I heard behind me the scrape of a microphone stand, amplified. I looked up and saw that the Barley Boys had mounted the stage.

“All right,” said Niall. “I gotta say that when we came here today we thought we were being ripped off…Our name, you know…But then, well, seeing those two, the little one with that voice of his, beautiful, and the taller one with the beat-up face…weeping like that for his da…I mean, publicly humiliating himself…groveling…sniveling…pathetic…My God… I think…Ah Jesus fuck…I mean, you can’t…” He was close to tears himself, then he snapped out of it. “We’re all here to teach the pricks who are doing this to our friends a lesson they won’t forget.” He jabbed his finger with his whole arm behind it at the house. “I suggest, right now, we take a can of gasoline and burn this fucking place to the ground!”

People in the crowd looked at each other. Bailey took two steps, tugged on Niall’s sleeve and Niall leant away from the microphone. They conferred. You could see Niall off-mic talking with annoyance at being interrupted, then with an oh-I-didn’t-know-that look on his face as he was re-briefed. He leant back to the mic. “Everything I’ve said before?” he said. “Well, what I meant to say of course was…that’s just the sort of prickish thing they would be saying. What we’re here for is to defend the right of our friends to stay here, and any prick who wants to come in and take away their home for the sake of some friggin’ park is gonna have to come through us first!”

The crowd whistled and applauded, even Fergie.

“Boys,” said Niall, “let’s give ‘em ‘My Love Has To The Lowlands Gone.’”

It was an unaccompanied sea-shanty in three-part harmony, and a beautiful tale. Love was the cause of grief, but was worth it. I almost wept again.