Kathy Little Bird

by Benedict Freedman

  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.

  76

  “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.

  “What’s the idea?” Jack demanded later. “You had them eating out of your hand. Then you start with that no-tune Indian stuff.”

  “You think it has no tune?”

  “And no rhythm. To get right down to it, it’s not music. It sounds like wolves howling in the night.”

  “Yes, yes! That’s part of it, the wolves. But also the trees bending in the wind. And someone crying, far far away—”

  “It’s not music, and that’s that. You want to kill your career before it gets started?”

  I didn’t argue, but I was beginning not to pay much attention to what Jack said.

  The hundred bucks in his pocket put him in a good mood, and he didn’t stay mad. We splurged and went to a class motel. There was perfumed soap, shampoo, and a hair dryer on the wall. We lay between clean sheets and Jack renewed his plans for my career. Suddenly I seemed a better bet than ponies.

  “Did you ever wow them. We’ll make a million on you. Two million. Maybe more. We’ll invest it too.”

  I let him talk. And there’s no one who could come through in that department like Jack Sullivan. He spoke of how I would climb on the charts. He spoke of the Grammys, of the Grand Ole Opry. There would be recordings in my future, contracts, deejays—maybe movies.

  I listened until he fell asleep. But I couldn’t sleep. I relived every note I’d sung that evening, going over the phrasing, changing the chords, adding a run, holding a final note. It had been like the evening at the Eight Bells, until I improvised the wind-band. I felt them slip away then, stiffen up, resist the alien modulations and the old, old way of looking at the world. They didn’t like to be reminded that there once was a world without trailers and jet planes and TV, a world that still existed on the Canadian prairies, and that would outlast their supersonic age.

  Why couldn’t they hear the wonder in the Cree songs? Why did they stand outside and refuse to enter? Was it because they’d never scuffed their feet in the dust of the road leading to the res, hadn’t sat and smoked with Elk Woman, hadn’t looked into the eyes of an old shaman who was my grandfather?

  This is what I had to give them, that no one else could. Only I could bring them a breathing world.

  Chapter Seven

  AS we junketed east Jack kept the car radio tuned to music stations, insisting I memorize the Peggy Lee repertoire. But in the long stretches between towns there was nothing but static. That’s when I went inside myself, recalling that many times I’d been able to call Mum out of her illness with the Cree songs. There’d been interest in her face as her hands pressed the intricate rhythms into the
bedclothes. Being Cree, she had them in her blood. Abram was Mennonite through and through, yet when I sang them to him he said, “It comes at you unexpected and sort of grabs you.”

  That proved anyone could like the music. Anyone but Jack and the people in the bar. Somewhere there was an audience for it, there had to be. Jack had his way in most things, but when it came to music I wouldn’t give in. I decided to try it again when I got a chance.

  By this time Jack thought we could cross to the American side. He avoided the traffic of the main route through Winnipeg and chose a small station with a single Mountie reading the Sunday supplement, who glanced at our papers and turned to Sports. The U.S. border patrol was more efficient. They asked us to open our bags and rummaged through them for about thirty seconds. Presto! we were in the States. You couldn’t tell the difference except that the roads were better. Jack told me Americans pronounce out like ow.

  We headed for Grand Forks and Fargo. Our routine was for Jack to park somewhere and leave me in the car while he went into the establishments and struck a deal. I could honestly say that I was a hit on both sides of the border.

  Jack claimed it wasn’t so much my singing as me. I knew what he meant; there was a magnetism between me and the audience, a connection that snapped, crackled, and popped.

  For the first time we had money, ate regular, and I was able to buy myself a pair of shoes. An eyelet blouse, I decided, was in my future, and a tight-fitting pair of jeans. We had reached a new plateau, and I think it was a plateau for Jack too. In fact he’d never had it so good. I was better than ponies. Motels and all that went with them—showers, soaps, shampoos, perfumes, hair dryers, and coffee in the room—were now our way of life.

  It was interesting how quickly we adjusted to the new lifestyle. The only trouble was Jack was able to drink more, and he did. I was the one who generally drove back to the motel with a morose and disoriented husband beside me. His gambling was more serious now, the stakes higher, the bets more outrageous. I thought of Loki the Trickster more than once.

  One thing that fascinated Jack was my name, von Kerll. He claimed that a von before any Kraut name, German or Austrian, was like the English sir. It’s the mark of the aristocracy.

  Jack was full of questions about my father, and got me to tell him all I knew of him.

  “He grew up at his grandmother’s place, a beautiful old home on the Bodensee.”

  “A beautiful old home,” he repeated musingly. “Could it be a castle?”

  “Could be,” I said, remembering my childhood fantasies.

  “But don’t you want to know? Aren’t you curious?”

  “Why should I be? He deserted my Mum and me, why should I care about him?”

  “He may be rich.”

  “So what if he’s rich. I don’t want anything from him.”

  “But if your parents were legally married…”

  “Oh, they were. I have the license.”

  Jack pulled over, stopped the car, and made me dig it out then and there. He read it carefully, word for word. When he looked up it was with a triumphant expression. “Don’t you see, you could be entitled to something. We could have hit on a sweet grubstake.”

  “You’re dreaming, Jack,” I said sharply. That’s one thing I disliked about him; he was always looking out for number one.

  Of course there were things I liked about him. If we passed a sign, even a hand-lettered one, advertising a rodeo, barn dance, outdoor concert, or county fair, he’d immediately scrap our plans to be somewhere or other by dinner, turn off, and drive a hundred miles out of our way. That’s what made it an adventure being married to him.

  I saw it first and exclaimed, “Look, a fair!”

  “How many miles?” he asked, but he really didn’t care; he turned off.

  It was a lovely fair, tents and a band with plenty of brass. There were rides and sideshows, a two-headed cow and the body of an alien in a large jar. The body was green and reminded me of the bloated carcass of a pig. We rode the water chute and slid to a splash landing. We flew an airplane in circles. We lay on a wheel that turned upside down and whirled around until sparks flew. We felt our way through the house of mirrors, flattening our grotesque faces as we bumped into ourselves. We laughed the whole time and I got a stitch in my side. “I have to catch my breath,” I said, and felt in my purse for Kleenex.

  That’s when I discovered our money was gone. All of it.

  “Pickpockets!” Jack wailed. “They work every crowd. I should have kept the money. I don’t know what we’ll do.”

  I knew. I undid my shoelace, tied it across my forehead and started to sing. Instead of moon, toon, spoon…a wild Indian railing preceded the first note. It was the chance I’d been looking for.

  It caught their attention all right. But when I launched into the body of the song, the crowds walked past us, sometimes dropping a dime into my open guitar case.

  “What the hell’s come over you? Give them what they want.”

  But I continued the dissonant Cree invocation. After an hour there was enough change for gas, so I stopped and looked around for Jack. He’d gone off to a corner bench to sulk.

  During the drive back he lectured me about sticking to what I did well and forgetting that weird Indian business. The longer he talked, the more determined I became. That’s when he guessed. “Have you got Indian blood, or what?”

  “My mum.”

  “Damn,” he said, “that’s just like you, Austrian royalty on one side and a redskin on the other.” Then after a pause, “Well, all the more reason not to sing those outlandish, heathen songs. Do you want the whole world to know you’re an Indian?”

  “Yes.”

  We weren’t close after that.

  THEN came an evening when I started to actively dislike my husband. It was closing time at one of those honkytonks, and the crowd spilled outside but were milling around, still talking, when an argument broke out. It was over a debt that one guy owed another. Before anyone knew what was happening, a knife was palmed and the next minute stuck in this fellow’s ribs. He crumpled up on the sidewalk.

  There was a lot of blood. Someone said he was dead. An old tramp who was shuffling by was the only one to get down on his knees and try to help. The old man put his fingertips on the wounded man’s carotid and bent to listen to his chest.

  At this point police and ambulance arrived. I felt Jack’s fingers dig into my arm. “Come on,” he mouthed, and started to back me out of there.

  An officer was going through the crowd, notebook in hand, taking names and addresses. As I watched, they placed the vagrant under arrest.

  “Wait,” I said to Jack. “He didn’t do it.”

  “Shut up.” Jack increased his pressure on my arm.

  “Take your hands off me, Jack Sullivan.”

  Instead he hauled me backward toward the car.

  “All right, all right,” I said, giving up and going with him.

  On the way back to the motel I started to think of Abram. Abram would have given his name to the officer. Abram would testify for the old man who had no one to stand up for him, no one in that crowd anyway. They were pals of the guy who had done the murder—because I was pretty sure the guy on the ground was dead.

  “Why didn’t you want me to give my name to the police?” I asked Jack.

  “Honey, you never give your name to the police.”

  “But they’ll pin it on that poor old man who had nothing to do with it.”

  “And that’s not your concern, now is it?”

  I didn’t say anything, but again I compared him with Abram, and I knew for a hard fact that I should have stayed in Alberta and waited for Abram.

  “What are you so quiet about?” Jack asked.

  “Nothing.”

  I told Jack I had a headache and spent that night on the far side of the bed. I didn’t sleep; I kept thinking of the old man, and of Abram.

  The next day, as we drove along, my mind kept reverting to the incident�
��that’s what Jack called it, an incident. I called it murder.

  “What will they do to him?”

  “What?”

  “The vagrant? Will they execute him?”

  “Will you stop it with that guy? He’ll go to prison, and have three squares a day, which is more than he has now.”

  “It isn’t right,” I muttered.

  “Kathy, will you for Pete’s sake leave it lay?”

  “I always thought the guilty were punished, and the innocent went free. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

  Jack pursed up his mouth. He looked mean. I didn’t like him much anymore. I twiddled dials hunting for a country music station and began to sing along with Loretta Lynn, but my heart wasn’t in it.

  We stopped for hamburgers and an order of fries.

  “How many minutes does it take to electrocute a person?’

  “Oh for God’s sake!” He clapped money down on the table and got up.

  “I’m not finished.”

  “Put it in a doggie bag. Wrap it in a napkin. I’m out of here.”

  I continued chewing.

  “Well,” he said, leaning over me, “are you coming?”

  I continued chewing.

  “All right, let’s have it. What’s going on with you? And don’t tell me it’s that damn bum.”

  “Abram always said you do what you have to do to live with yourself.”

  “Abram? Who the devil is Abram?”

  “You know, my friend—who saw us off.”

  “What’s he got to do with it?”

  “He always said—”

  “Yeah. Okay. I know what he said. So what?”

  “So I’m going back to the police station.”

  “Now see here, Kathy—”

  “I’m going back,” I repeated.

  “Well, I’m not.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll take the bus.”

  “I’m not giving you money for the bus.”

  “You don’t need to, I’ve got my own money.”

  “You been holding out on me?”