—Just a couple of songs at the beginning, he said. Get you warmed up.
—Nah…what am I warming up for? If I do start playing again it’ll just be doing backup for someone.
—No way! You did a lotta solo stuff up there in Toronto, I know, I heard all about that.
—Yeah but that was years ago.
—You gotta jump back in, it’s like riding a horse or a bike or whatever the hell they say. Come on. This is a great time to be back home, well, not if you want a job, but if you want to perform, it’s a great time.
People change. Bob used to be a self-absorbed blowhard, and maybe he still is, but he’s decent too. He wanted me to do this tonight and here I am. The rest of it—the family showing up, making a night of it—well, that was all Audrey. I don’t think she ever came out to hear me play when I lived here before, but she said she wouldn’t miss tonight.
—Anyway, since I’m here, back home after so many years away, seemed like it would be kinda appropriate to cover a song from here, a song everyone knows. About doing what I did, going away. What we’ve all done, maybe.
Strum the first chord, settle onto the stool a bit more, lean into the mic, as I sing those familiar words about living on a farm, in that wide open space. Sure enough, they’re all singing along by the second line.
***
—Well you’re not gonna go wrong, are you, doing a Ron Hynes song in front of a crowd like this, says Nick Lahey.
I’m at the bar talking to Nick, this seedy old drummer I’ve known forever who used to know Henry. He’s playing with some band that’s on later tonight. We’re listening to Henry’s voice, rough-edged but not unpleasant, belt out the song that might just be the unofficial anthem of Newfoundland.
—Yeah, it’s a good choice.
—Must be something for you, eh? Seeing your old man perform again.
—It’s not really again. I mean, I never saw him perform before.
—No?
—Well, no, I mean I was, like, twelve when he moved away for good, so I wasn’t going out to bars to hear him or anything, back then.
—And you never heard him play up in Toronto or nothing? All those years.
I didn’t even know he was alive. I don’t say that out loud.
—No, I never heard him up there.
—I heard him, when was it, 82, 83, something like that? My God, was it that long ago? Could’ve been even longer, I s’pose.
Nick is Henry’s age and has that beaten look you see in a lot of older musicians. Makes me wonder why I even want to make it in a business that makes you look like that after twenty years.
—Definitely in the early 80s, he says. He was playing in this, hell, this scuzzy little place out on the highway, not even in Toronto, it was about halfway to Oshawa. Me and Mike Davidge, it was, we were up there working construction, and we borrowed Mike’s sister’s car and drove out there.
—So it wasn’t just by chance? I mean, you actually knew he was going to be playing, you drove out there to see my…to see Henry?
—Oh yeah, yeah. Mike knew someone who told him Henry was playing, you know how it is with musicians. And Newfoundlanders.
Early 80s. So all that time I was growing up thinking I was an orphan, all that time Audrey believed her only son might be dead, there were musicians from home who knew where to find him, knew through the friend of a friend that he would be playing in some motel bar off the 401 halfway to Oshawa.
—Was it…was he good? What was it like?
—Oh, you know, it was one of those places, where, you know….
—Everybody’s drunk and nobody’s listening?
—Yeah. You know. But he did a good set, nice set. You know what?
—What?
He nods toward Henry on the stage. The old folks, Nan and Aunt Treese and Doris, are singing along.
—You talk about that song, a Ron Hynes song—you heard that new one of Ron’s, that one about the Man of a Thousand Songs?
—Yeah, yeah, of course.
—Right, and everyone’s like, that’s Ron, you know, he’s writing about his own life, he’s the man of a thousand songs, you know? But he’s not. I mean, he is but he’s not, you know? He’s writing about guys like your dad, you know. Ron Hynes was like that once, maybe. But now, back here at home, he’s a local hero. He’s like a rock star, well, not a rock star, but you know what I mean, right? But guys like your dad, geez, there must be a million of ’em. Guys going around singing in bars, in little dives no one’s ever heard of, no fans, no fame, no glory. Just like—doing it. For the sake of the music, that’s all.
On stage, Henry moves into Randy Travis’s “Forever and Ever, Amen.”
—Guys like Henry, he’s the real man of a thousand songs, you know? Nick says.
—I guess. Peeling at the label on the beer bottle with my thumb. —I guess, yeah, maybe.
***
One local standard, one country pop favourite. Time to get a little more rock ’n’ roll now. Not too rock ’n’ roll, this is The Stetson after all. But the Eagles should be OK. Bob said four songs, so I start into “Take it Easy.” A few more people have drifted in, probably here early to hear Bob. Rachel’s at the bar talking to that old sleazebag Nick Lahey. Does Rachel know that Nick knew her mother? That it was Nick’s car she took off in? Not likely. I accused Stella of sleeping with Nick, might even have been the night she died. What does Rachel know about Stella, I wonder?
It’s been harder with her than with Audrey, or Nan, or any of the rest of them. I imagined some big scene with Audrey and Nan, tears and accusations, explanations and apologies. Instead I come home to find Nan is in St. Luke’s, happy just to see me whenever I visit. Sometimes I bring the guitar and sing hymns, she loves that. As for Audrey, she never asks questions about the time I was away, says nothing about those years.
We eat supper together at her kitchen table, most nights. I’m learning to cook because nobody’s going to survive long on Audrey’s cooking, although apparently it’s worked out OK for her all these years. We eat supper and she complains about Frankie Junior and the crowd that hangs around the shop, about the smell of garlic and pizza sauce. Then she goes out with Richard, or over to Doris’s for a game of cards. I stay home and play the guitar, or I go out and walk the streets of St. John’s, looking at what’s changed and what stays the same.
But Rachel, she’s been skittish, and who can blame her? We live under the same roof but she’s rarely there for our supper-times, though she does say she prefers my cooking to Audrey’s. Rachel is out most of the time: work, her own friends, her own music. She’s got a lovely voice. I went to hear her one night at the Carriage Works, but she didn’t talk to me after the show.
She’ll never know how much nerve it took me, to ask her if she’d do a song with me here tonight. Flat-out refused, she did. Wouldn’t even think about it. And she was right. It would only be, what, sentimental. Like we were going for some big reunion scene, me with the daughter I never really knew. I didn’t try to talk her into it.
Last chord: now for the last song.
—This one’s for the woman who never gave up on me. I know it’s kind of an old cliché to dedicate a song to your mom but she deserves it, and old Hank was her favourite singer, so...
***
Everyone’s right into it, the old folks and the young ones, as Henry rocks out “I Saw the Light.” It’s his best performance of the night so far, raw and open and showing me something I’ve never seen in him before, not that I’ve had occasion to see all that much.
There’s a lot of Jesus in this song, isn’t there? What with the intro about his dear old mother folks probably have the impression that his mother gave him a good churchy upbringing and prayed him safely back home. And that’s a misrepresentation, to say the least. Nanny Ellen, maybe, but certainly not Audrey. But I guess “I Saw the
Light” is kind of like “Amazing Grace.” Nobody wants to pick apart the theology. They use those churchy old words to sing about a different kind of redemption. Seeing whatever kind of light leads you forward, getting lost and found and carried home on three aching chords. Maybe old Hank himself meant it that way, or maybe he actually meant he’d let the dear Saviour in. Bit hard to tell at this point.
Henry finishes to a big round of applause, ducks his head and waves as he gets off stage, heads straight over to Audrey’s table and gives her a kiss on the cheek. It’s a bit stagey but what the hell.
I’m done being mad at him, I think. We’ve got this far. He’s been home six months, we’ve talked, we’ve lived in the house together, now I’ve listened to him sing. And life goes on. Turns out it wasn’t that big a deal after all.
He comes over, gives me a hug, and I try not to be stiff and weird and pull away from him. Can you believe he actually asked if I’d get up and do a song with him tonight? I told him no way, wasn’t going to happen. Maybe I’m over being angry, but saying no to him feels really good.
When Jake went back to Alberta the last time, Muscles in the Corner broke up, and so did Jake and I, although we didn’t realize that at first. I haven’t been in a band since then; I’ve been doing solo gigs, writing a lot. After spending a year telling Jake I wasn’t a songwriter. My day job got cut to part-time, and now I spend a lot of afternoons over a cup of coffee at Hava Java with my notebook, writing and writing, then going home with a guitar to see if the music in my head can be picked out on strings. I lock myself in my room with the guitar and a cassette recorder and that notebook full of scrawled pages, looking to see if there’s one good song or even one good line in the reams of crap.
Someone else is on stage now, and I’m back at the family table, wedged in with them all telling Henry what a good job he did.
—Buy you a beer, Henry? says Frankie Junior.
—I’ll take a Coke, thanks, says Henry, which confirms my suspicions that he spent at least some of his lost years hitting bottom and drying out. I haven’t seen him take a drink since he’s been home, not that we’ve been hanging out together a whole lot, but I would have noticed. Well, more power to him, if that’s the case.
Nan and the other old folks head home before Bob Eveleigh, the headliner, gets up on stage. Nancy and her husband stick around with Henry. Frankie and Lisa peel off to meet up with some people at some other club. I end up hanging out with the guys from Muscles in the Corner, one of whom is now in a punk band that’s playing at Bar None later. I trail along after them, and later, when the band (Pease Pudding Cold) turns out to be not as good as their name, I go to another bar with some other people.
It turns into one of those downtown nights, getting drunk, walking arm in arm with people I don’t know that well, listening to one band after another. At one point I see Frankie Junior with his crowd but I don’t see Henry again, which is good. I hope he’s back home safe and sober in bed. Which is a weird and sad thing to wish about your father, but when it comes to Henry, what’s not weird and sad?
Two in the morning, Erin’s Pub. Pretty drunk now, and I barely know the people I’m with. This one girl, Sarah…plays the violin. And her boyfriend, I can’t remember his name. Another guy and girl, but not a couple because the guy is One of The Gays, as Nan would say. And they’re at this table drinking Guinness, and up front there’s a guy singing acapella with just a bodhran, singing something in Gaelic in a voice so haunting and pure it gives me the chills.
Then he looks up. How, even late at night, even drunk, even years later, could I have mistaken his voice for anyone else’s? No other voice, no one else, anywhere in the world. Even when, for all I know, he’s been in Ireland so long he’s been kidnapped by leprechauns. It’s Larry Kennedy singing Irish songs in the middle of the night in downtown St. John’s, and it seems my father’s not the only ghost who can walk through the door.
nine
TILL I DO SIGHT MY HEART’S DELIGHT
1994–1995
AUDREY
The only shift Audrey did behind the counter now was two to five on weekdays. They got a little crowd in the shop when the youngsters got off school and came in to buy pizza slices, pop, bars, and chips. She had to give Frankie Junior credit: he was in the shop every day from eleven in the morning till after midnight. He had an annoying habit of running out at odd times for ten or fifteen minutes, but he did put in long hours, and apart from Audrey’s daily shift he seldom took a real break. Nearly two years now since the old Holloway’s sign came down and the Pizza Presto! sign went up, and he was making a go of it.
“I could go back to doing Saturdays if you wants a full day off,” she offered once.
“You’re supposed to retire at sixty-five, aren’t you?” Frankie said.
“I’m offering to do you a favour.”
“Are you? Or do you just want more hours so you’ll have something to do?” The mouth on that one, no respect for his elders.
“Come back and talk to me about it when you’re sixty-five and see if you’re so glad to be put out to pasture,” Audrey said.
“How old will you be when I’m sixty-five?”
“A hundred and something, smart-ass.”
“When I’m sixty-five I’m not gonna be flipping pizza dough in this place, I can tell you that. I’m gonna be relaxing on my yacht in the Mediterranean.”
“You think so? You better have some kinda business on the side, because I been working this shop since I was half your age and let me tell you, pizza or no pizza, running a corner shop in Rabbittown never made anyone rich.”
“Well, I got bigger plans,” Frankie said. “I mean, I figure I’m doing all right, twenty-three years old and running my own business, right?”
Audrey gave him a long look. He was a stringy little thing, Frankie Junior, with a stringy little mustache, and just because he turned out to be a decent worker didn’t mean she couldn’t take him down a peg or two. She folded her Evening Telegram and laid it down on the counter. “Yes now, I s’pose you’re doing all right for yourself, twenty-three and running your own business. Only because you walked into a shop that your grandfather built with his bare hands sixty years ago and your grandmother and me ran ever since. You just waltzed into what other people built, is all you did.”
“Yes, but I saved it. This place wouldn’t be running now if it wasn’t for the pizza.”
“Saved it?” What’s saved? Audrey wondered, looking around the yellow room. Not the business she ran for all those years, not the place that used to be the centre of the neighbourhood. Only the legal entity, that the Holloway family still owned a business on this location, and if anyone saved that it was the Bank of Montreal. “I don’t know about savin’ anything.”
“Well all I’m saying is, I got friends my age unemployed, and I got friends up in Alberta working, and I’m pretty happy with how things are going for me down here. And I don’t mean this to be the end of it, this is just the start.”
Why did she still want to work in the shop every day? Audrey wondered about it herself sometimes. It wasn’t for the money. The bit of income she got out of the shop was little enough on top of her old-age pension, but it would come whether or not she worked. Something to do, mostly. She couldn’t sit looking at the four walls every day, even with Henry living there for a bit of company. She had bridge once a week, a scattered trip to the mall with Doris, occasionally Bingo with Treese. Sunday dinner, either at Alf and Treese’s or with Marilyn and George all the way out in Torbay. She still had her Sunday afternoon drives with Richard—these days they mostly did go driving, which probably meant they were getting old. Twice a week she and Marilyn went together to St. Luke’s to visit Mom. It wasn’t like she had nothing at all to do, but still and all she’d miss work if she didn’t have it.
As she watched Frankie mix pizza dough, Audrey thought that maybe the whole point of
work was to look forward to getting off work. When her shift was over she’d go upstairs, take off her shoes, put her feet up and watch The Price is Right. Heat up some tinned spaghetti for supper, most likely, unless Henry was in and wanted to cook, as he sometimes did. If she didn’t have the job she could have her feet up watching TV all day, but then it would feel like a waste of time instead of a reward. Work gave a shape to the day. She didn’t know what people did after they retired, although most of her family and friends were retired now and they seemed to get by all right. Marilyn and George went on a cruise last year and they were after Audrey to go with them, but she couldn’t picture herself at the likes of that, never mind the cost of it all.
Ping. Finally, a customer. Audrey figured it was a bunch of youngsters from Booth, pipping off early to get a slice of pizza before the rest of the school crowd got there. But no. Billy Walsh and Vern Cadwell slouched into the store. Those two were bad enough when they were little friggers trying to steal Fudgesicles out of the freezer. Now they were grown men hanging around the shop like teenage boys, neither of them with a proper job, sponging off Frankie.
“Whaddya at, b’ys?” Frankie greeted them. “What’s on the go?”
“Starved, buddy, gotta slice for me?”
“I s’pose, b’y. Wait till I gets this one out of the oven.”
They lounged against the counter, lighting up smokes, talking about nothing. “Ronnie around?” Frankie asked.
“Nah, Ronnie’s gone up to Alberta. Sure he’s makin’ twenty dollars an hour up in Fort Mac. He got nothing to spend it on either except booze and blow, he’s wasted twenty-four-seven.”
“Sounds all right, I’m surprised you never went up with him.”
“He wanted me to. I wouldn’t be makin’ that kind of money though. Ronnie got a trade—got his journeyman electrician.”
“Yeah but up there, even unskilled labour, you could be makin’ ten bucks an hour. Fifteen, maybe,” Billy pointed out.
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