Simon the Fiddler

by Paulette Jiles

  The chaplain was talking and smiling at Colonel Webb and the women. He wore the black coat and cloth-covered buttons of a Union Army chaplain, and as Simon came to stand at the man’s side he felt her eyes on him. She gracefully turned her entire body to regard him, her skirts swinging. Simon turned to her in what he thought would only be a passing glance but he was held there. Her eyes were a clear, dark blue. After a second or two of paralysis, he inclined his head to her and then had enough sense to turn and address the chaplain.

  “Sir, chaplain, sir,” said Simon in a low voice.

  The chaplain swiveled his head, looked Simon up and down. “Ah? I uh . . .”

  “Yes, sir, I just was wondering if the ladies had a song in mind or a song they would prefer to sing, I mean to have played for the toast, or you know, when you, when the dinner begins here . . .”

  Just shut up now, he told himself. He kept his eyes resolutely on the chaplain. Colonel Webb turned and with one hand pressed the girl away from him and out of the way as if she were a chair or a door. Then Webb bent his gaze upon Simon with a What is this going on? expression on his bearded face.

  “Do the ladies have a song they prefer,” said the chaplain to Webb by way of explanation. The colonel’s wife had a set face and a pair of tightly shut hands in lace mittens. The girl with the black hair was finally able to step away from that hand and bent to the child and spoke to her. Simon watched her graceful movements, noted the ray of sunlight that fell on her hair and danced over the braided crown. Her flushed face. Simon was only a fiddler of a defeated army, but he would have given a great deal to catch this man alone. To have shoved that girl the way he did. He managed to smile at her, a quick bow.

  The girl tugged at her mother’s lacy sleeve. “Mama,” she said.

  “Oh well, then, do they?” Webb stared at Simon carefully. “Have a song they prefer?” He had the manner of men who have just come through a hot battle, in fact a losing battle, and Simon knew the colonel would still be strung taut and vigilant. There would be no quiet in his heart. Enemies everywhere. Simon bent from the waist.

  “Colonel, sir,” he said.

  Colonel Webb’s wife put her hand on his elaborately braided coat sleeve and said, “My dear, Josephina says her governess would very much like to hear a song from Ireland.”

  Governess. All right. Irish.

  Webb took out a handkerchief and patted his forehead. Like everyone, he was longing for the moment the sun went down. “An Irish song,” he said. “Mostly sounds like bawling out of tune. Well, go ahead then.” He glanced at the girl with a kind of secret contempt. “What is it? What do you want to hear?”

  Simon knew it was rude of the colonel not to use the girl’s name, but now he could look her in the eye again, into her beautiful dark blue eyes. She had a broad forehead and a quick manner, a relieved smile now that she was beyond reaching distance.

  “I hope I can play whatever you wish,” Simon said, with a polite smile. He was grateful to be wearing a clean white shirt instead of the old homespun grimed with gunpowder and bacon grease. So grateful that he felt strangely elevated and different. Her gaze made him different, he could not say how.

  She tipped her head back and forth as if trying to decide and then said, “And would you know ‘The Minstrel Boy’?” She spoke in a wonderful Irish lilt.

  To Simon’s enormous relief, he knew it. It was another sign that this was meant. This was a meant thing.

  “I do! I do indeed,” he said and he was afraid his tone was too eager, idiotic, or perhaps on the other hand maybe it was too reserved. He didn’t know which. Her round face and little black drop earrings. He could tell she had a narrow rib cage all bounded in a vertical stripe as slim as her waist. And God above she was shorter than he was. She gazed into his face with that intent expression and he felt that he might begin melting or dissolving in some way. He cleared his throat. “I am honored to play it for you, Miss. I am delighted.”

  And he was even more delighted when nobody corrected him when he said Miss.

  The colonel turned to Simon; condescending, irritated. He said, “Why are we messing around with this? Play whatever you want.” He moved away with one hand on his wife’s elbow, and the girl with the black hair and the child fell obediently into his train as he escorted them to their places. She sat down with a whirl of skirts and a straight back, her hands in her lap. Simon would have bet good money that every man in the dining hall had his eye on her but none of them had seen what he had seen and did not realize that here was a creature of great beauty in need of rescue or comfort or a staunch defender, none of which was in his power right now; only music.

  Simon slid along the wall, through knots of men in blue uniforms and officer’s insignia, most of which he could not read. Around groups of men in butternut or gray. There was an unsettled and brittle feeling in the hall; men who had surrendered to men they had just beaten. He slipped back to the bandstand. Strange how a musical instrument in your hand made you the innocent of the world. He stepped up onto the creaking boards of the bandstand that had been hammered together at the last moment and said, “Listen. They want an opening song called ‘The Minstrel Boy,’ men, it’s an Irish slow air, used to be called ‘The Moreen,’ four-four time and I’m going to do it in C, are we agreed?”

  The black color sergeant nodded to himself. “He has breasted the walls of the fortifications.”

  “Did I?” Simon paused and then laughed. “Yes, sir, maybe so.”

  The color sergeant, now a banjo player, regarded the group with a sergeant’s critical eye that they all duly recognized. “Ready?”

  Simon said, “Wagons ho.” And then, “One two, one-two-three . . .” and slid the horsehair down the strings.

  He put his heart into it; many knew the melody but few knew the words. It was long, slow, and full of yearning, it lifted all the faces to him and tilted them over into the stream of magic, some long-ago time when the wars had not yet begun, before the first shot and before the first lie and the first burning. When all was summer again and the cattle were safe in a green field. Simon heard the guitars bring off harmonizing chords and they all instinctively turned to Damon and gave him the bridge. He lilted it up into the high octaves and handed it back to them.

  As he played, Simon watched Mrs. Webb and the colonel shake hands with other officers, all of them bowing to Mrs. Webb and the little girl and the young woman with the shining black hair, now safely out reach of the colonel’s furtive hand. She lifted her head to the musicians, to Simon as his bow flashed and leaped in the long javelins of light that came through the overhead palm-leaf thatching. She watched him play with that same expression of a deep listening.

  He brought the tune to its end. There was some applause but after all they were supposed to be background music, this was not a concert. Nevertheless, Simon laid his bow alongside his leg, held his fiddle across his body at the correct angle, and bowed to her. To her, her alone, the black-haired girl with the blue sea-cloud eyes down on the Gulf of Mexico at the end of a terrible war.

  Simon saw the women do a sketchy curtsey at the toast—“To the ladies!”—and then they were escorted out. He saw the last flick of her brown-and-black-striped skirt as she disappeared out the door. Wondered where they were staying.

  “Fiddler.”

  “Yes!” he said in a loud, startled voice and then, ‘Mississippi Sawyer,’ D,” gave the opening notes with a double-shuffle and off they went into that reel and then another. Simon could hear the boy picking up low and high notes on the bodhran and then on other fast songs he made the bones clatter in triple clicks and the joy the boy took in it made Simon and the others smile over their instruments. Then Damon and his D whistle on “Blarney Pilgrim,” which was a jig. They did “Eighth of January” to give the black banjo player a chance to show off.

  Then the sun had set and the Rio Grande Valley began to cool down, the enormous Gulf sent forth sunset clouds in magenta and gold, and the lamps on all the tables
were lit.

  It was time to be mellow and sentimental. The officers didn’t know they were being managed. They never did. If any of them recognized their own shirts on the backs of the band members they were silent about it.

  “Lorena” was a good start. Then “Rye Whiskey,” slowly, so theatrically mournful the officers leaned back in their chairs and laughed, clapping one another on the shoulder. As agreed, the musicians left off their instruments and sang a verse a capella like a funeral lament over the tree that might fall on a person, who would live ’til he died. Simon could hear Damon’s steady bass in harmony and was relieved to know the man knew what he was about. Then “Home Sweet Home,” at which everybody joined in except those who were unable to sing because they had choked up. Simon could see several men with their heads bowed; another dashed at his eyes with his coat sleeve. Good. Simon would have preferred outright sobbing but that would do.

  When they came to the end, men began to stand up and shake hands in preparation for leaving. The Confederate and Union officers toasted one another and made edged jokes that could get lethal if carried too far. Finally, Webb lifted his glass and bid them all good night.

  The other players looked at Simon.

  “Go on,” said the banjo player. “Go now.”

  “All right,” he said, and walked down from the stage, past the tipped-over glasses and remains of beefsteaks on plates.

  “Sir,” he said. “Could you arrange for our pay?” He stood resolutely in front of Webb, unmoving.

  “Pay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There was a long silence, a sort of standoff as Webb waited for Simon to explain himself, but Simon remained stubbornly silent. He held his bow in one hand and his fiddle by the neck as if it were a turkey. Somebody dropped a dish in the kitchen.

  “Pay,” said Colonel Webb. “Well, I don’t know.” He raised his head to look at the stage, where the rest of them stood in their very civilian white shirts, holding their instruments and looking at him. The lamps were being blown out one by one. “I see,” he said. “Well, what you need to do is take up a collection.” His faultlessly clean hands drifted about his coat front.

  “Yes, sir, that seems like a good solution.” Simon turned on his heel and cried out in a loud voice, “Very well boys, the colonel says we are to take up a collection!”

  “You do it!” shouted the banjo man.

  “All right, I will!”

  Instantly they all put down their instruments and smiled expectantly at the officers. Simon took up a soup tureen, wiped it out with somebody’s napkin, and held it out to Webb.

  “You could encourage the others, sir,” he said. You despicable hound.

  Webb snorted. “Fiddlers. Always greedy. Avaricious. Take it and get the hell out.” He dropped in a half-dollar silver piece. “Get yourself home to whatever hole you live in.”

  Simon did not reply but turned to walk among the officers both in blue and gray with the soup tureen held out and even went out, where others stood talking in groups and did the same. They came up with $17 in coins, and Simon shared it out back in the storage room.

  “Not a bad haul.” Simon pocketed his coins and his anger. He wondered where the girl was, if she was safe. It was deep into the night and so she must be asleep somewhere, and he would have thought more about this but hunger overtook him. “Where’s supper?”

  “Here,” said the color sergeant, and led them into the kitchen. “Sit down. Y’all are hungry, I know.” He held out an invitational hand.

  Damon and the Tejano and Simon got their supper from the cooks and ate sitting at one of the long tables in the mess hall like rats arriving in the dark. Roast beef, potatoes, light bread, corn pudding, a jelly made from agarita berries. Not a crumb or a rind remained when they were done. Damon and Simon exchanged glances.

  “Where do they get all this food?” said Damon in a low voice.

  “If I knew I’d be there,” said the Tejano guitar player.

  Back in the storage room, Simon snatched up shirts where they lay on barrels and hemp bags. He changed his own and counted; one, two, three, four. He stood in front of Damon with his hand out. “Give me that shirt,” he said. “I’m going to take them back to the dog robber.” Damon folded it neatly and handed it to him.

  “I’ll do it,” said the banjo man. He stripped off his own white shirt and held it wadded in one hand and looked around for his uniform blouse. “I know him.”

  Simon opened his mouth, paused, always that hesitation in his speech. Then he said, “But I want to. I need some information from him.”

  “Ah,” said the banjo man. “Persistent aren’t you?” He shook his head and smiled. “You have taken a direct hit, my man.”

  The dog robber had left word with his orderly sergeant about the shirts and had himself gone to bed. Apparently, it was the orderly sergeant who did the books and had to account for money and shirts and pounds of salt. Simon found his way through the hot dark, threading among the adobe buildings, cookfires going out in clouds of ash as cooks doused them with dishwater while the stars floated up out of the sea. The staff sergeant was with Webb’s 62nd U.S. Colored Troops, who all had white officers. They had taken over a long barracks made of adobe and roofed with canvas. The sergeant had his own room at one end.

  Simon fetched up in his trim, quick walk at the sergeant’s doorway. The man sat with an oil lamp preparing his evening report. He raised his head. He was blond and spare, with half-moon eyeglasses.

  “Thank you, sir,” said Simon. He handed over the shirts. They were in a stack neatly folded. “Much appreciated.” He was once again dressed in his checkered shirt, his vest hanging open and his pants held up by suspenders, with no hat to identify him one way or the other.

  The sergeant regarded the shirts on his desk and Simon could see him counting them. “All right. Did you get paid?”

  “We did.”

  The sergeant said, “Good. Remarkable, since you should have been in the cells for assaulting a Union soldier after you had supposedly surrendered.” He took off the glasses and looked Simon up and down. “But then you’re a fiddler.”

  “Yes.” Simon didn’t know where this was going, if anywhere. It didn’t seem promising, but he plunged on. “Yes, sir, so, I wanted to ask about the young lady with Colonel Webb’s wife and daughter.”

  “You did, did you? And you a surrendered rebel of no rank. A musician. Asking questions about the colonel’s personal household.” The sergeant gazed up at Simon as if he had just been offered some very interesting fact.

  “That’s about the size of it.” Simon stood with both hands at his sides as if at attention because he thought that might help. He said, “I don’t know any way of sneaking up on the question.”

  The sergeant carefully lined up his report papers. “You are not the first to ask.”

  “Well,” said Simon. “No, I expect not.” He wondered what form of address was proper to a sergeant of the opposing forces, but since he didn’t know he just kept on. “Then, I’d just like to ask, sir, are you going to tell me or not?”

  “Yes. I will.” The thin blond sergeant considered the question. He said, “She is eighteen, Irish, and she’s signed a labor contract with the colonel that legally obligates her to three years of service. It’s better than starving in Ireland. What do you think?” He leaned back in his chair with a deceptively agreeable expression.

  “Yes, sir, much better, of course, an immigrant, Ireland, fortunate to get a good position . . .” Simon was trying to think and could only come up with fragments of sentences. So she was in the colonel’s power, somehow. The power of a contract, she an immigrant, away from friends or family to help. “You mean three years before she is allowed to, well, make acquaintances . . .” Simon gestured at random, finally put his hands in his pants pockets.

  “Exactly. The contract, as I understand it, means no courting, no visits, no sighing over secret letters or flashing those blue eyes of hers at anybody. Any. Body.
All her letters are read first by the Webbs. She is the governess and personal servant to an officer’s wife, and when young men try to present themselves for her attention we hang them. Hang. Them.” The sergeant smiled.

  A brief silence. Then Simon asked, “And how many years have expired?”

  “Why is this your business? You’re lucky you aren’t in manacles. Big iron ones.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s a crushing disappointment, isn’t it? Colonel Webb will take up garrison life in San Antonio as part of the occupation army. We are occupying you. May you enjoy it. Her name is Miss Doris Dillon. Great playing, by the way. Beautiful. Do you know anything by Handel, by any chance?”

  Simon ran the name over and over in his mind and then said, “Not yet.”

  “That’s what I like to hear. Positive thinking. You could possibly have a future in the U.S. Army. Regimental bands. Think about it. Good night.”

  Simon hesitated. He wanted very much to know how much time had passed since Doris Dillon had signed this contract. He wanted to know if others had seen that dismissive shove, how to approach the subject, if in fact he had misinterpreted a random gesture. He took a breath and held up one finger. The sergeant put on his eyeglasses again and carefully hooked the earpieces around his ears.

  “Get. Out.”

  He picked up his quill pen and turned back to his reports.

  Chapter Four

  The next morning at sunrise Simon bent over a basin of water, wiping sand and dirt from his eyes. When he lifted his dripping, unshaven face he saw a little excursion wagon coming from the gate of Fort Brown, the kind that was well sprung and had side curtains, the kind that rode more comfortably than the heavier freight wagons or buckboards. In it were Webb’s wife, little Josephina, several other women, and Doris Dillon.