Simon the Fiddler

by Paulette Jiles

  Young Patrick breathed through his nose and paused to see whether he would vomit. He didn’t. “I talked to her once. She is fair kind and I took off my hat to her. I was wanting to pull the head on my drum, you know, loosen the hoop and she said, ‘Oh, sit in the shade then and here’s a dipper of cold water.’ It was going on for two hundred degrees in the shade, on my mother’s grave.”

  Simon listened with drops of sweat draining from under his hatband. “And so she is from Ireland directly, herself.” Simon held his rucksack with the fiddle case jammed down in it in both arms. Maybe he was making a fool of himself out here on the hot ocean, in love like it was a taking, going someplace unknown and in what had to be admitted were mere rags.

  “Yes. I told her my parents back in Pennsylvania, they had come over too. From near Waterford. She said she was from Tralee, which is where a lot of Dillons come from, the ones that ain’t dead or come here.”

  “Dead of what?”

  “Of no food to keep them alive, since the potatoes all went to slush in the Black ’47.”

  “But she’s just come over, ain’t she?”

  “She has. Said she was very happy to find employment in America, even though she did end up in Texas and a battle besides. And I said as God is my witness, I never thought I’d have ended up in Texas either and look at me now.”

  “But where will she be in San Antonio?”

  “They said they were going into garrison at that old Spanish mission where the Mexicans killed everybody.” The shade of the sail rolled over him and back again, over and back.

  Doroteo nodded. “The Alamo,” he said. He smoothed down his mustache with his thumb and forefinger. “Didn’t do any good.”

  “That’s it. Alamo.” The boy swallowed and then sank back once more against the gunnel. His great ears were bright red on the tips and his large boots were nearly sole to sole as his knees flopped open.

  “What do they say about Colonel Webb?”

  “Say?” The boy opened his eyes.

  “He’s her employer isn’t he?”

  “He didn’t have nothing to do with no drummer boy.” Then in a cheerful voice, “But he was fair and easy with the men. The men liked him. He made them laugh.”

  Simon said, “Well, there you go.” He doubted, somehow, what he had seen. It was just the vague thrashing about of a man in a state of nerves after a battle. An unquiet mind.

  And so the day went on. They talked in a slow desultory way, releasing words as reluctantly as they sipped at the precious water. Patrick roused himself in the heat and glitter of salt water to say that he knew three dances. “I can do the flatfoot, a jig step, and a reel step.”

  “We are a regular traveling circus.” Simon lay back with his hat over his face. “Can you swallow swords?”

  “I never tried it,” the boy said, “and I ain’t about to.” The thought made him vomit over the side again. “Ah shit,” he said and wiped his mouth on his Union blouse sleeve.

  Far away to the west the Gulf coast came into view, so they turned north again. This caused more sail adjustments. The backstays and halyards sagged. The Tejano said that he had once been a fisherman on the Gulf in his former life, and sagging backstays and halyards—these ropes here—were not good. Damon agreed. It was a scandal the way they sagged. Patrick and Simon were told to tighten them and after they figured out how, they did. This put them on a beam reach again, going north. The plunging and bucketing smoothed out somewhat. Then Damon said that Galveston was on a long sand island that lay across the mouth of a deep harbor and the main place was on the inside, the harbor side. That’s where the saloons were. That’s where the money was.

  Chapter Five

  They sailed all day without seeing another vessel. The sky overhead was clear blue, as if they had left all rain behind and all hope of rain. Damon called up quote after quote from Edgar Allan Poe: No swellings hint that there may be a far-off happier sea, Nothing save the airs that brood over the magic solitude . . . And the boy called out for him to leave off, would he? He’d heard enough poetry. And Damon suggested that he go over the side and swim if he didn’t like it, ignorant spotted-faced little fiend and could he just stop puking? Simon and Doroteo shouted for them both to shut up.

  They glided north past a low and varied coast. They squinted with sun-reddened eyes on miles of white dunes and clumps of vegetation, including a few trees. Once they were close enough to see longhorn cattle grazing, egrets and buffalo birds fluttering about them in the hot and shimmering air.

  That night the wind changed and began to blow from the south. Doroteo said he was not sure where they would end up, because he could not see the shore and see there, the skies were clouding over.

  “I can’t see the North Star.” He leaned back and searched the soft rolling black overhead. “Estrella del norte, the fisherman’s friend.”

  Simon said, “That’s not good. How do we know we’re going north?” He pulled his suspenders off his shoulders and let them fall to his elbows. He unbuttoned his shirt and vest to the wind and sat with his eyes closed, feeling the relief of it, the blessed relief. It seemed to blow right through his ribs and into his grateful soul with a power never felt on land. The stars came and went.

  Damon said, “We’ll stick close to shore. Watch and see if you can see house lights.”

  There was a good foot of freeboard to protect them from the waves; it was, after all, a haulage vessel, but still the spray struck them when the catboat heeled. They sailed on into the darkness, thirsty and hungry. They had shared out all the water of the full canteen during the day. Patrick managed to keep down his swallow of water. It was oily tasting with tinges of red dirt and horse manure. They had no more than one half canteen now. With the heavy scrim overhead all they saw was the breaking white foam of waves on their starboard side. They silently listened to the sound of the waves and from somewhere on shore a low hooting.

  The Tejano stayed at the tiller. He said he would stay within reach of that hooting sound, because it had to be coming from the land. Simon fell asleep on his rucksack. They rose and fell, rose and fell. Simon lay clinging to the gunnel and slid back and forth, back and forth, in the sloshing bilge water.

  He woke up in the dark to Damon calling out. “Look yonder! That’ll be Indianola.” He lifted a hand to indicate a row of dim lights on the shore.

  “Let’s go there for water,” said the boy.

  “Hell no, the Yankees got it.” Damon stood to stare at the lights. “I never got my discharge papers. I just took off.”

  “So are we going in the right direction?” Simon asked.

  “Yes, yes. We’re good. Take the tiller and keep those lights on your left and then astern.”

  Simon took the tiller so Doroteo could get some sleep on the hard, unforgiving strakes with his pack under his head. It didn’t take long for him to get the way of it. He felt the living pull of the tiller in his hand as their sail drew them on northward. The clouds blew away and then he could see the North Star. He kept the masthead in a rolling circle with that dim star in its middle. He wondered why they had not had sense enough to steal more canteens or find some way to fill the ones they had. Too late now. But they were at liberty on the open sea and sailing toward their own futures, precarious as those futures might be. Then Indianola fell astern and was extinguished by the night.

  The next day they shared out one good drink each from the last canteen and by the afternoon Simon began to feel the torture of thirst. The waves grew larger and the sail filled until it was hard as a drum head; they heeled to the left and the bluff straight-up-and-down nose of the cutter dug in. The shore was so flat and low it was nearly invisible except for the occasional clump of trees and the airburst frondiness of the native palms.

  “Don’t drink the salt water,” said Damon. “Just don’t do it.” He took his turn at the tiller.

  “Let’s go in to shore,” said the boy. “I’m so thirsty I can’t stand it.”

  “What makes you
think there’s water on shore?” said Doroteo. “There isn’t any water on shore.”

  Simon pulled the fiddle case out of his rucksack, opened it, and shared out the two slices of mummified apple, half a piece each. It helped. They crowded into the shade of the sail on the lee side, and wherever the sun touched them it was like hot metal searing their skin.

  “Get back on the other side,” said Damon. “You sons of bitches are going to capsize us.”

  The waves flung them up and then down into the next trough and the boy became seasick again. He dry-retched as the bow sidled sideways up the next roller. Then he lay limp and silent and held his bodhran drum over his face like a parasol. Doroteo bent to him and urged him to drink the last drops of water from the canteen. The boy tipped his head back and let the few drops run down his throat and then lay back again. His wet yellow hair stuck out in discouraged tufts, his face was slack in the shadow of the drum head. His dark blue army shirt rattled in the wind over his body and he seemed to have lost ten pounds in the last twenty-four hours.

  “There’s fish down in there.” Doroteo gazed into the depths of the Gulf. They slid down another wave. “But we got no hooks, no tackle, no bait.” He dragged one hand in the water. “You cook them over an open fire with achiote, some epazote.” He closed his eyes against the glare.

  “So what are we doing in Galveston?” said Damon. His face, normally a dismal bluish color, was now seared with bright sunburn.

  “We’re going to play music and make money.” Simon bent his head against the sun as if against a storm of wind. “Everybody agreed?” He ran a hand through his hair and it was sticky with salt and so were his hand, his skin, his clothes.

  “I’m in,” said Doroteo and Damon. The boy lifted his hand and let it fall back again.

  Doroteo took his turn at the tiller once more, and he seemed somehow tireless, endlessly strong, as if made of some indestructible wiring. The sun was finally quenched under a layer of cumulus that came up out of the east and the boy seemed to revive. They all revived. Night came and Simon watched for shore lights but saw none. After some hours he laid himself against the side, curled around his rucksack. Then Patrick woke them up crying out about lights and music.

  Simon sat up out of dreams of clear water. “What?” he said, and stared around himself. Damon sat slumped against the thwart in the slopping bilge. The boy was shouting still. Doroteo stood at the tiller, staring.

  On the far horizon was a misty, gleaming city. Its light shone on the low cloud cover and in sparkles over the waves as each one lifted in turn. Over the water they could hear disconnected noises of wheels rolling over pavement and a long urban sighing of surf and music. Simon buttoned his shirt and vest and fought out of the confusion of dreams, the pain of thirst.

  “Galveston,” said the dark man. He smiled and the harbor lights reflected from his black eyes. He was like a devil come home to hell at last. “We made it.”

  “What’s the light from?” said the boy.

  “Gaslight,” Damon said. “Streets lighted by gaslight.”

  They approached over the midnight sea. Damon said, in exhausted and disconnected sentences, they would run up long sand island to north end, gap there, get inside harbor, wharves, city all on other side. He then stopped talking, as it was too difficult with his tacky mouth and split lips. He reached over the side and scooped up a handful of seawater, spit it out again. Then he signaled Doro to give him the tiller. Doroteo held it until Damon had his hand on it and they crawled past each another, switching places.

  They sailed past the Union works along the seaward side of the island. Timbers had been thrown up for bulwarks and Union soldiers paced along the berms. Faint lights came from barracks, spilling over the long stretch of white sand beach.

  They slid over the sea until the barracks were behind them and came to the passage between Galveston Island and a headland on the other side that Damon said was called Bolivar Point. There they saw a soldier on a high structure like a shot tower. He watched them sail past through a spyglass. He was illuminated by a light inside a bull’s-eye lantern, and he turned slowly, mechanically, keeping the spyglass on them. It was very strange. The soldier seemed like a clockwork figure in his precise movements. Simon wondered what kind of music they had here, lying in wait for them. Where the nearest source of water might be.

  They came through the gap under Damon’s directions and then sailed slowly, in a diminishing breeze, into a harbor where the blue-white illumination on the docks threw stark, harsh patterns of shadow and light. The gas lamps stood like sentinels along the streets. They all listened carefully and did not speak. From somewhere they heard disjointed music. As they came toward the docks they heard the heavy breathing of some kind of steam machine. Galveston lay asleep under the rolling slurry of cloud and the white light of burning coal gas.

  Then the breeze died entirely. They unshipped the oars and Simon flailed wildly at the water with them. At last they came upon the wharf, where all the ships were tied up, and there they saw Galveston’s long waterfront and its brick warehouses, many of them scarred with cannonball shot, presenting a grim face to the oily water. A sign on two tall poles said kuhn’s wharf.

  They lowered the sail and wadded it up in a sloppy and unseamanlike way and coiled the ropes. Simon grasped at his possessions and finally got his rucksack on his back, his blanket roll over his shoulder, and his hat on his head. They found a place to tie up under the lee of a great cargo ship, a steamer, whose watch leaned over the gunnels and called out to them.

  “Don’t you tie onto this ship, you sons of bitches. Hear me?”

  “Ya ya,” called Damon. “We hear you, stow it, tying onto the bollards.” Then he asked, “Still a pump around here?”

  “There is,” said the watch. He peered down at them and seemed to regret his harsh words. “Yes, just up in front of the seaman’s employment building.”

  Simon wondered if he had the strength to climb up the wharf timbers. “Give me the rope,” he said. His voice was weak. “I’ll go up and tie on.”

  “Esperate,” said Doroteo. He caught up the long tie rope called a painter, carefully rolled it into a large coil, made a hondo and a loop, and began to circle the loop over his head. He threw it with an expert overhand, lassoing the bollard high above.

  “Ro-de-o!” cried Damon. “Man of unsuspected talents.” He climbed up the ladder of timbers and fell down with his rucksack on his back, lost his Hardee hat, regained his feet and his hat, and then stood quietly gathering his strength. Simon reached the dock after several clumsy tries. Doroteo came after. All Simon could think of was that soon he would not be thirsty anymore, he was not going to die of thirst. There was no other thought in his head.

  “They’ll find this boat.” Patrick clutched his drum as he stood unsteadily in the boat and stared down the dark of the waterfront.

  “And so?” said Doroteo. “Not got our names written on it.” He reached down to help the boy but Patrick first handed up Doroteo’s guitar case and then struggled up himself.

  Simon said, “We have to find that pump.”

  “Then we got to find a place. Sleep, lay down,” said Damon. He looked to the left and then to the right. “Untie that boat. Let it float off. Then somebody finds it, they’ll just take it.” His voice was hoarse. “They won’t go and try to find out who came in on it. They’ll just take it.”

  “Yes. Good thinking.” Doroteo turned back, untied the painter, threw it in a long loop into the boat, and watched for a moment as it began to drift. They stumbled along Galveston’s harbor front with their baggage strung about them.

  They found the pump set in a concrete housing in front of the Seaman’s Employment Bureau and pumped water into one another’s hands. They drank and drank, extravagantly. They splashed water over their heads and the handle screeched like a banshee over the silent wharf. They drank again and refilled the canteens and then just sat for a while. They regarded the lights, the great buildings, the many sh
ips tied up at the wharves. Tall canted cranes, black skeletons, stood over the docks and from the ships came the sparks of watchmen’s lanterns.

  It took half an hour or more to recover, but at last they got to their feet, shouldered their burdens, and went on.

  As they walked, they passed the canteens back and forth as if they would never get enough water. They went past brick buildings and empty lots littered with bottles and broken kegs. Flyers advertising various events and services flapped in the sea breeze. One building front had been entirely battered in by cannon fire and glass lay in the street still. Their steps sounded loud on the pavement, the eerie light shone on every street, on the low clouds and a city asleep.

  Then Simon saw two figures approaching from far down the docks, two Union soldiers who fell in and out of step with each other as they checked the big warehouse doorways and shone their bull’s-eye up onto ship forepeaks. They moved through pools of gas illumination. Simon dodged through stacked bales and barrels with names printed on them: Pryor, Bailey. Steamships tugged at their hawsers. The soldiers were coming closer.

  “Hey, hey,” he called in a low voice and ducked into an alleyway between two warehouses. Rather than go crashing noisily through the trash, he sat down with his back against a wall. The others came after him running low and sat down alongside.

  “Patrol,” said Simon in a whisper.

  “Why are we hiding?” Damon whispered back.

  “I don’t know,” said Simon. “Seems like a good idea.” He thought of the revolver. Maybe he wasn’t allowed to have a revolver.

  “¿Se pueden callar?” Doroteo whispered. His head flopped back against the wall and it made the back of his hat brim stand up. Patrick snatched the Confederate cap from his head and jammed it down into his rucksack.