by Peter Bowen
“That Père Godin, he have what, fifty children?” said Du Pré. “I hear he just had twins, latest wife.”
“Ah, yes,” said Madelaine. “He is very charming man I hear. One, my cousins, Canada, she have one of his.”
Bassman was leaned up on one hand against the wall, talking to a pretty woman in a turquoise velvet dress, who was not his wife. His wife was home, swelling with child. Bassman and the woman went out.
Some of that grass, thought Du Pré, these musicians are some playboys. Good hearts, lots of damage, them good hearts.
Somebody handed Du Pré a glass of whiskey and water and ice. He drank thirstily. Playing made him burn. Tomorrow he would be exhausted.
Susan Klein bustled past. “What’s the occasion?” she said. “I’m damn near out of some of my booze.”
Du Pré put one palm up and he shrugged.
“Ver’ charming man,” said Madelaine. “Père Godin, he is some guy. There are some guys, Du Pré, that women just cannot get mad at. They are born, that. He is one of them.”
Du Pré looked at the silver-haired old fart. He was fairly tall and rail-thin and he had big hands with very long tapered fingers.
“We go maybe outside,” said Madelaine. “It is plenty hot in here.”
They struggled to the door and went out into the cool night. There was no cloud or moon and the stars burned in the velvet black sky.
“Wheh!” said Madelaine. “This is some better!”
Du Pré felt the silk cold on his back where the little wind from the west was touching lightly. His neck itched. He took off the silk bandanna wound around it.
Ahh, he thought, I don’t put it back on neither.
“I don’t see Bart,” said Du Pré.
“He come later,” said Madelaine, “I talk to him, he will be along, probably a few minutes.”
Du Pré nodded. Bart was so shy, really, that Du Pré couldn’t remember him in any crowd.
Booger Tom was pissing in the shadow of a cottonwood in the little park across the road.
Du Pré looked down the street. One of Bart’s Rovers was coming on, the big SUV pulled up and the rear window rolled down.
“Evenin’,” said Rolly Challis. Bart got out and he went to the back of the rig and he opened it and he took down a wheelchair and he unfolded it and snapped the pressure rings together.
Bart wheeled the chair up to the door and it opened and Rolly swung his leg out and Du Pré went to help Bart lower him into the chair. Bart pushed the wheelchair over to the steps that led up to the front door of the bar and Du Pré got on one side and Bart the other and they lifted the chair up to the boardwalk and then Du Pré pushed Rolly on in while Bart went to park his rig.
Père Godin came and he cleared the way for Rolly s chair and Du Pré wheeled him up right next to the tiny stage. Susan Klein brought Rolly a big glass of whiskey. Rolly took tobacco and papers from his shirt pocket and he rolled a smoke expertly and he licked the paper and tucked it in his mouth.
Madelaine lit the cigarette for him.
Oh, Du Pré thought, now I am knowing why all of this.
Père Godin got up on the stage and he lifted the heavy accordion up and he shrugged into the harness and he checked it for tune. Bassman stepped up on the stage and he picked up his fretless electric bass and he put the strap on and he turned toward his amplifier and he ran a quick scale and then he bent and fiddled with the knobs.
Du Pré kissed Madelaine and he stepped up and he picked up his fiddle and he plucked the strings with his left forefinger and listened close to the harmonics. He twisted the peg for a string that had gone a little flat.
A Métis that Du Pré didn’t know stepped up and he lifted a flat Celtic drum over his head and he began to beat on it with the stick, a fast rhythm with backbeats. Père Godin chuffed the accordion in time. Bassman did stops on his bass.
Du Pré nodded and he ripped off some icy little notes.
“Salteux!” screamed Père Godin.
One of the Métis war songs. The victory song.
Salteux, the Métis warriors, and this for the Salteur Du Pré and the Salteur Challis.
The Métis roared.
The ranch folk backed away and the Métis women went to the space in the center of the floor and they began to dance. They ululated, hands to mouths, while they bobbed, legs pumping. The floor shook. The many voices warbling the ululations blended, rose and fell.
Père Godin broke into riffs of reedy chords and notes not on the European scales.
Du Pré fiddled. He played notes from his blood. Smoke. Buffalo on the shortgrass prairie.
The Salteux had run the Sioux out of the Great Lakes country and the Cheyennes out of Wisconsin.
Du Pré fiddled between his two worlds of the blood.
He looked down at Madelaine.
Her eyes flashed crimson fire, so did her hair when the light struck just right.
Your babies are safe, Du Pré thought.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1997 by Peter Bowen
cover design by Mimi Bark
978-1-4532-4677-1
This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media
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New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
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