Hang Down Your Head

by Janice Macdonald

  “Yes, well, you wouldn’t,” sniffed the female Finster. “You haven’t spent your entire life having to deal with your mother flaunting her torrid affairs in front of her long-suffering husband. My father’s money should in no way be funding a celebration of dirty musicians. It was bad enough he lost his wife to them.”

  This was getting better by the minute. If I had a bead on this conversation, these were the children of the heretofore anonymous donor to the Folkways Project, who must have been a Mrs. Finster. The only Finster I had heard of in this town was the cardiologist, Dr. Manfred Finster. There was a Finster Library over in the hospital complex, I think. If these two were his children, and their late mother was his widow, then I suppose having it known that their mother had indulged a thing for musicians might be slightly embarrassing. However, since the bequest was anonymous, I wasn’t sure how they could see the connection coming to light, unless they were determined to stand in university hallways shouting about it, which seemed to be their intent and, come to think of it, could work.

  Dr. Fuller managed to herd them into her office and close the door. Their voices were muted, partly because the walls in the Centre were almost completely soundproofed to keep the constant playing of music from overwhelming other researchers, and partly, I knew, because of the unworldly calm Dr. F managed to instill into everyone who came into her personal orbit. If anyone could placate this outraged duo, she could.

  A dull rock developed in the bottom of my stomach as I digested all this. If the children of the anonymous donor were contesting the will, what would that do to my dream job?

  I stuck around for about half an hour but no one emerged, and I needed to pack things up and head home if I was going to be ready to go out with Steve. There was nothing I hated worse than missing out on the end of a story, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. Maybe Dr. Fuller would let us all in on the scoop tomorrow, although I sort of doubted it. She would probably think gossiping to us about the Finsters was unethical or something. Sigh.

  With one more look at Dr. Fuller’s closed door, I let myself out of the Centre and headed for home.

  2

  ~

  Steve swung by to pick me up straight from his shift, and he excused himself to clean up a bit in my bathroom and change into a different shirt. While it’s marvellous to share a life with someone, sharing a closet brings things to an entirely different level. You have to love a person a whole lot to sacrifice hanger space. To his credit, Steve kept only a few things at my place, mostly shaving gear, but he had left the odd T-shirt or two in my laundry. Those I didn’t begrudge. It was easy enough to empty out a drawer of my highboy, since I stored most of my winter weight clothes in my suitcase under my bed, anyhow. It wasn’t the clothing that made me realize that our relationship had shifted into a different level, though; that happened when Steve mentioned he had listed my phone number with all the desk sergeants for emergency contact possibility. Nothing says romance like being listed in every police station in town. Oh, the joys of dating a cop.

  We were dressed in Edmonton summer evening casual, namely clean jeans and T-shirts. Steve managed to get us a table near the stage, and I was still picking away at the last of my corn chips when Ben Sures was announced. He bounded on to the stage, and immediately commanded it. This was probably surprising to anyone who hadn’t seen him before, because he was barely five-foot-four. His twinkling eyes shone past the lights, and his sense of humour, often aimed at himself, was always evident, especially in songs like, “Dear Sarah.” In one song he claimed that, in a perfect world, he would be five-foot-nine. No matter how tall he was, I was still happy to support his career by buying CDs and tickets to concerts.

  It’s impossible to talk when live music is playing, although that didn’t stop the people at the table next to us, at whom Steve glared several times. I would have clammed up immediately if his stink-eye had been aimed at me, but the people just continued to yammer. We tuned them out the best we could to enjoy the show, and then paid up after the first set and headed out into the cool of the summer night. I had a sweater, which I immediately buttoned up. Steve’s metabolism was set much higher than mine, and he strode along without seeming in the least bit chilly. As we walked down the street to the car, Steve put his arm around my shoulder as we waited for a car to pass, partly for romance, but more for warmth. I was shivering a bit.

  “Randy, you could wear a sweater to a steam bath, girl!”

  “Well, once the sun goes down it’s still pretty chilly. It snowed on the Victoria Day weekend, after all.”

  “That was over a month ago!” He shook his head. “Nah, summer’s here to stay. No snow for at least … oh I’d say we’re safe for about twelve weeks.”

  “You seem pretty sure of that. Have you been sneaking off and taking a meteorology degree in your spare time?”

  He laughed. “Call it folk wisdom. You live somewhere long enough, you get to know these things.”

  His choice of the word “folk” tweaked my memory of what had happened at work that afternoon. I hadn’t had a chance to tell Steve about the strange altercation at the Centre. I asked him what he knew of the Finsters.

  “Well, there’s the Finster Library on campus and the Finster Building over by the General Hospital. Wasn’t the guy a heart surgeon or something? He died about ten years ago, and I’m pretty sure his widow, who was sort of philanthropic in the arts scene, just died recently. Or was it one of his kids?”

  “I think it must have been his wife, from what I overheard today. His grown-up kids were in the Centre, hopping mad about the bequest that their mother had made, which I am assuming is the Folkways bequest. If they screw that up, I could be out of a job.”

  “How fair is that? I mean, it’s not like some fake maharishi is hovering over a susceptible octogenarian’s shoulder here. Why can’t everyone just accept that people are allowed to disperse their assets any way they see fit? You say these kids of hers are middle-aged, right? By now they should be able to survive on their own, you’d think.”

  “I’m not going to survive on my own if they manage to screw up this job for me. Sessional gigs are harder to come by now that everybody wants to be degree-granting. A PhD is turning into the minimum requirement.”

  “And you’re sure you don’t want to do a PhD?”

  I shrugged, which made me shiver again. “It’s not that I don’t want it. I just don’t want it badly enough, I think. Aside from not being able to afford it, I just can’t really picture what I would want to dig into so badly that I could add to the body of knowledge and then be constantly delving into that same area. I’m too much of a generalist, I think.” By this time, we were at Steve’s car, and I huddled in the passenger seat, trying to warm up my hands by holding them between clenched thighs. Steve put the heater on to help me out, but then had to crack his window to survive, himself. It was this sort of thing that proved he loved me, I figured.

  “Well, I wouldn’t get too het up about things, Randy. From what you said, Dr. Fuller is right. There’s no way the university lawyers would have allowed the announcements to be made and work to begin without that bequest being ironclad. I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Besides, your contract is pretty ironclad itself. If the project gets canned, they’ll have to buy you out. You’d have a cushion, at any rate.”

  A cushion is not what I wanted. I wanted the security of a project that could last several years. But Steve was right. It wasn’t going to do me any good to worry. It’s not like there was anything at all I could do about the situation, in any case.

  The car was beginning to warm up, and I slid my hand off my thigh and onto Steve’s. There was more than one way to warm up.

  3

  ~

  Paul was right ahead of me as I came down the hallway of the Fine Arts Building toward the Centre’s door. No matter how early I came in—and my hours were by no means regular, since I was being paid for the project rather than by the hour—he was somehow a
lways there just ahead of me. It had become a bit of a game I played, trying to beat Paul to work. Good thing I was becoming more of a morning person as I aged.

  He had his keys out, which was just as well, since I had a Java Jive coffee in one hand and a newspaper in the other. As he ushered me into the laughably tiny open area with a flourish worthy of a liveried doorman, he smiled and whispered, “That was some fracas yesterday, wasn’t it?”

  I looked at him and nodded, wondering whether I was witnessing a miracle along the lines of burning bushes and parting seas. Although friendly, Paul wasn’t exactly what you’d call verbose. I’d barely ever exchanged a conversation with him worthy of a fellow passenger on a short flight, and we’d been colleagues for well over a month. This seemed downright garrulous, for him.

  I wasn’t complaining. There’s very little I enjoy more than a good gossip. People and their actions and adventures delight and entrance me. I should have been an anthropologist, I guess. Instead, I am just plain nosy.

  Since Dr. Fuller wasn’t in till noon, we had the Centre to ourselves. Paul opened the mail packet that had been dumped through the slot in the door, and started setting out the brochures for the Baroque Ensemble that had arrived. I went into the staff area behind the reception desk to start the coffee pot; one Java Jive coffee was not going to cut it for me today. Although it was a warm morning, with dew misting up off the lawns, it was chilly in the Centre. It was, in fact, chilly in the entire Fine Arts Building, a dark brick edifice with slabs of uneven grey concrete to relieve the walls of dismal bricks. Most people commented that it was odd that the one building on campus devoted entirely to the fine arts was so unredeemably ugly.

  While the coffee pot burbled, I headed back to the front counter to prime Paul for more of his thoughts on the ballyhoo from the day before. He’d been closer to the action, and who knows, maybe he actually knew the players.

  “So I take it those people yesterday have something to do with the Folkways Bequest?”

  “You’d better believe it. That was Barbara and David Finster, children of the late Dr. Manfred Finster and his lovely wife, Lillian. Geneticists on the other side of campus are probably shaking their heads in disbelief that two people of the elder Finsters’ calibre could produce two such repugnant offspring.”

  “Did you know the senior Finsters?” I asked. Maybe this whole secret bequest business was a secret only to me.

  “Well, I knew of them. My grandmother was actually one of Dr. Finster’s patients about twenty years ago, and Lillian was such a staunch patron of the arts around here that you knew her just by seeing her at openings. It’s sort of the way you think you should be able to go up and say hi to Colin MacLean just because you’ve seen him talking on CBC TV in your living room so often.”

  I nodded; I knew exactly what he meant. I had waved at MacLean once at the Fringe, and probably had him puzzled for five minutes, trying to place me among folks he’d interviewed over the years. It had taken me a few minutes myself to realize that I actually didn’t know him personally.

  “And the Finster juniors? Were they always with their mother at events?”

  Paul shook his head. “Nope, I never laid eyes on them till the time of the announcement. This is the second time they’ve both shown up here. Old David came on his own once before and I think now I spotted Dr. F talking with Barbara in HUB last week. I have a feeling they aren’t music lovers.”

  “Not from what we saw yesterday. Of course, it might be that they just love large inheritances more than philanthropy.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose we’ll ever know. Dr. F will keep this pretty close to her chest, I’m thinking. Ours is not to reason why, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.” With that Yul Brynner impression completed, Paul finished setting the date stamps and headed back to pour himself a cup of coffee. I wandered back to the corner where my headset was waiting for me. It was lucky I didn’t have a hairstyle that minded headphones on every day. I chose a CD at random from the Smithsonian sampler for background music while I tried to beat my best time on the cryptic crossword puzzle. The full-time job had lulled me into buying the Globe and Mail every morning, and after nearly two months, I could finish it within fifteen minutes four out of five days. I wrote “V.G. 100%” on the top of the finished puzzle for fun, and stretched. Now, with the coffee finally trickling through my arteries and my brain revved up enough to create whole sentences, I was ready to start the day.

  I glanced over what I’d been working on the day before, and decided that I’d given enough gloss time to the Carter Family for the moment. I moved on to Mississippi John Hurt, since his was a name I recognized mostly from Tom Paxton’s homage song, “Did You Hear John Hurt?” I liked his voice, but I really knew nothing about the blues. I recalled that Karen Hanson, an online friend of mine, had once written a book about the blues scene in Chicago. Maybe reading it would give me some insights and all my previous chatroom time would be seen as worthwhile. If you wait long enough, eventually everything connects.

  Everything connecting. That was the beauty and the trouble with Folkways. Moses Asch was a visionary, but he’d been almost too far-sighted. The collection included spoken word, porch-front recordings, blues, roots, folk songs and poetry. How do you create an organizing principle for a collection that includes everything from the porch-front party sound of The Carolina Tar Heels to the glorious Sunday gospel of Mahalia Jackson?

  The Smithsonian Folkways’ re-release of American Folk Music, a collection originally organized in the early Fifties by Harry Smith, was turning out to be my yardstick in terms of how this sort of material could be organized. A facsimile of the original handbook came with the six-record set, and it was amazingly detailed. Each of the eighty-four songs had “information on original issues, condensations of text, notes on recordings, and bibliographical and discographical references,” and the condensations themselves were often hysterically funny. If I could find a way to create for every recorded Folkways artifact that same delightful thumbnail sketch Harry Smith provided for his selection, then I would have been of use to the project, no matter what else I could provide.

  For the time being, what I could definitely bring, was a way to organize. I’m not sure if it was a particular gift, or just what Marshall McLuhan meant when he commented that an artist faced with information overload begins to look for recognizable patterns. This was all a morass of riches at the moment, but I had a sense that I was getting closer every day to seeing a pattern that might work to serve all the material well.

  It was barely eleven in the morning, and already I’d filled three pages of my notebook with reminders of people to contact, musicians to group together, and several strange notes to myself, like “What sort of name is ‘Eck,’ anyhow?” I stretched my arms high and yawned. At the apex of my elongation, I suddenly noticed a movement near the doorway to the Centre. Caught in that position, I immediately got a cramp in my shoulder, and even through my headsets I heard cartilage creak and snap as I brought my arms down sharply. As I pulled the headset down around my neck, David Finster smirked nastily as he glanced at the CD cases on the table, and said, “ I see you have the same reaction to folk music as I always have had—utter boredom.”

  “Oh, no, I’m not bored at all. I just get cramped sitting in one position too long, and need to stretch,” I defended myself quickly. The last thing I needed was somebody, especially this man, thinking I wasn’t totally enamoured with the job. “I just get caught up in the material and forget to move.”

  “There’s no need to justify yourself to me, young woman. In fact, if you were bored, you’d find a sympathetic ear. I spent my childhood trying to find a quiet place to avoid that sort of music. If it wasn’t on the radio, the players themselves would be huddled around the coffee table in the living room, rolling their own cigarettes and strumming beat-up instruments. One summer I even had to give up my bedroom and sleep on the back porch so that some old hillbilly my mother had adopted could rest up and sing about
living rough and riding the rails. Of course, the irony completely escaped my mother, as so much did.” He sneered his gaze around the room, mentally swiping the surfaces with an invisible white glove looking for grime. Even if I hadn’t been aware that this man was campaigning to remove what amounted to my livelihood, I don’t think I would have liked him. “I don’t suppose your boss lady is around, is she?”

  I looked over to the front counter area, but couldn’t spot Paul. Dr. Fuller’s office door beyond the counter was closed. With my headphones on all morning and my back to the doorway, I had no idea if she’d come in without me seeing her. If she was in, the door was usually open, unless she was with someone very important, or listening to music. I couldn’t hear anything except Frank Hutchison’s “Stackalee” coming through my headset, probably even more tinnily than it originally sounded.

  “I don’t think she’s coming in this morning, sir,” was all I could think to say. “Did you have an appointment? Perhaps Paul could help you. If you want to press the bell at the counter, I’m sure he’ll be right with you.”

  “What’s the matter, don’t you work here?” Finster had a really short fuse; he wasn’t about to be pawned off, as he apparently saw it. I had no desire to explain that I was hired to a specific project, rather than as a full worker for the Centre of Ethnomusicology, especially since I figured his interest in the place had far more to do with my project than anything else. I decided to hedge.