Did You Declare the Corpse?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  I scarcely noticed the four men at the next table until one of them leaned toward us to ask, “Ye’re the Americans, then?” He was obviously most taken with Laura and Brandi, but gallantly included us all in his grin. He was long and lean, with gingery hair and a skimpy ginger beard. It was impossible not to grin back at him, he seemed so delighted to meet us.

  A pudgy man who should never have worn an olive-green pullover with that rosy face leaned in front of his companion to have a look at us. “Ye seem to be a few men short. Shall we put our tables togither, then?”

  “Och, let’s wait to see if their lot can play.” A third man nodded toward the stage. “We don’t want to be embarrassin’ ourselves by associatin’ wi’ amateurs, noo, do we?” It took me a minute to recognize Watty nursing a pint. His cheeks were shaved, his hair was brushed into shining gray curls, and he wore a creamy Fair Isle sweater over pressed black slacks. He looked ten years younger and downright handsome.

  “You clean up real good,” I called over to him. “But I see you’ve chosen to sit with the home team.”

  “Chust ’til I see how your lot can play. These twa lads”—he nodded at Ginger Beard and Red Face—“drive for Gilroy’s too”—they snickered, as if embarrassed to be found out—“and they contend that American musicians cannae keep up wi’ Scottish ones. I don’t want to embarrass myself by identifyin’ too closely wi’ ye until we see if they’re right.”

  “Their piper was heistin’ a chune out in the car park a leetle airlier,” quavered the fourth man, who looked older than Moses. “He sounded fine.”

  “I’ve heard the piper, Dad.” Watty dismissed Kenny with a wave. “It’s t’others I’m worrit about.” He winked at me.

  “Ours play just fine,” I informed him, without knowing whether they knew one note from another. “Can yours?”

  Their whole table broke out into uproarious but good-natured laughter. The pudgy man laughed so hard, he strangled on his drink and had to be pounded on the back. While the two older men performed that service, Ginger Beard leaned close and confided in a shout to be heard over the din, “Chust you wait to hear them. Davie Kilgour, the piper? He won a medal at the Braemar Royal Games a few years back, in front of the queen. He’s come from Bridge o’ Don for tonight’s event. And the fiddler on the end? He’s won more prizes than I can count.”

  Watty set down his empty mug and waved toward a passing waitress with a full tray of mugs. “O’ course, ye cannae count very high.”

  “Och, aye, there is that.” Ginger Beard took the mug he was handed and drained half of it in one draft.

  The music started at a volume that discouraged conversation. Pipes and fiddles moved through several tunes without a break, and it looked to me like Jim and Dorothy were keeping up fine. As they played medley after medley, I could have sat there all night and listened. Ginger Beard helpfully called out the name of each tune for our benefit. Occasionally the music would stop, leaving our ears ringing. Then someone would climb onto the stage from the audience and give us an a capella solo. Most were in Gaelic and three sang the same song, but the audience didn’t seem to mind. One man sang a very funny song in English about “Donald John,” who went down from the fields to choose a wife to keep him warm but decided to buy an electric blanket instead. From the laughter, applause and stamping, I wondered if it was a song people knew and liked or if they were clapping because he’d made it up himself.

  The musicians got at least as much pleasure out of performing as we did from listening. Kenny, of course, was in his element. Sherry was in the shadows, so I couldn’t see her face, but Dorothy’s was pink and glowing like it had been in Glasgow, and although Jim stayed near the back, his eyes were closed in what looked like pleasure as he sawed along.

  Waitresses moved among the crowd distributing drinks. I nursed my stout, but didn’t really like the taste, so I finally ordered a Coke with lots of ice. When I tried to pay, the waitress waved me away. “Och, it’s on the house tonight.” I thought that was darned nice of Gilroy’s to provide for its guests that way. Must just be those staying in the hotel, though—waitresses were collecting from other guests, including the bus drivers.

  Seemed to me like poor Watty kept getting stuck with most of their bills, too. The others managed to look the other way when each bill arrived. I hoped they weren’t taking advantage of him, but decided Joe Riddley was right. I did not have to worry about the whole world. Watty was old enough to take care of his own business. Besides, I had worries of my own.

  Drink was making Brandi friendlier than ever. Several times I practically had to lift her out of my lap. Joyce, on the other hand, was getting maudlin. “Life is a real bitch, you know that?” She spoke so low, only I could hear. “Some folks”—she nodded across me at Brandi—“get everything. The rest of us get dregs. Dregs.” She groped for a nearly empty mug, drained the last few drops, then realized that her own sat beside it, half full. She clenched her fingers around its handle so tightly, I hoped it wouldn’t break and cut her. “There’s no justice at all. Have you found that out yet, Mac? Justice is a myth. Some people get everything and the rest get nothing.”

  She lifted her mug and saluted me. “To equilibrium, and terrible consequences.” She drained the mug in two swallows, then rose to unsteady feet. “ ’Scuse me. I need to puke.” She threaded her way toward the lobby. I hoped she’d sober up a bit before she offended somebody in the group. People who are normally real inhibited have no business getting drunk in public. It’s too embarrassing, for everybody.

  When Joyce returned, her face was damp and pink but she looked relatively sober. The rest of the evening I caught her darting quick, uncertain looks my way, like she was wondering what confidences I’d pried out of her. I was too hot to care.

  At one point, the host of the evening stepped forward. “We’ve got four fine musicians here all the way from America. What say we ask them to give us a chune while the rest of us have a wee dram?”

  That was received with shouts, applause and stamping feet. Watty caught my eye and deliberately shifted his chair to put his back to us.

  As the Scottish musicians filed off the stage and headed for the bar, the piper clapped Kenny on the arm in encouragement. Kenny stepped to the front of the stage and bowed. His accent, I noticed, was now pure South Georgia. “Well, folks, we aren’t used to playin’ together as a quartet, but my wife and I do play with each other from time to time”—he paused for guffaws to ripple through the audience, for the humor had gotten pretty raunchy by then, and almost anything was taken to have an off-color meaning—“so we’ll be glad to oblige. Honey?” As she joined him, he said something to the drummer and started to beat out time with one foot.

  Jim and Dorothy waited at the back like orphans who didn’t get picked.

  The way Kenny and Sherry played together, you’d never have guessed they ever fought. As the first notes sounded, people nodded in approval and Ginger Beard called to us, “ ‘Lord Lovat’s Lament.’ ” When the piece was done, the crowd clapped and called, “More! More!” They played a second piece, then an encore.

  After that, one voice rang out, “Fiddles. Gie us chust the fiddles!” It was the award-winning fiddler, lifting his mug to Jim. I wondered if he wanted to show Jim up for some reason.

  Sherry looked a question at Jim. He nodded and moved forward. Kenny stepped back with a frown. The two fiddlers conferred, then lifted their bows and began. I don’t know what they played. If Ginger Beard told us, I missed it. I was too busy watching them, for there was chemistry between them that was magic.

  Who would have thought a rich man would play so well? I had figured music was his hobby and that the others let him play with them to be kind. Instead, the music that Jim and Sherry sawed together set my feet tapping and made me want to spring up and dance. They played like they shared one instrument. They played like they had made music together since the birth of the world. They played—

  “Aren’t they fantastic?” Joyce asked me.
“Better together than Sherry and Kenny, even.”

  I looked across at Brandi. If Sherry could have seen her, the heat from Brandi’s eyes might have melted her bones, but Sherry played on in sweet oblivion. Her sallow cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled, while Brandi’s talons tapped the table with tips like gore. She clawed at her lower lip with her upper teeth until all the lipstick was gone, and breathed in short, angry gasps.

  When the fiddling finally stopped, the two musicians stepped forward and bowed, flushed and damp. The room shook with applause and stamping. Jim reached out one arm and drew Sherry to him in a big hug. Brandi sucked in a gasp of air and dilated her nostrils. The award-winning fiddler jumped onto the stage and caught the two other fiddlers in a generous hug. Then he waved the rest of the musicians back onstage for another set.

  The old man at the next table who seemed, amazingly, to be Watty’s daddy, quavered, “I havenae heerd fiddin’ like that since Alasdair Geddys. Do ye mind Alasdair, Watty, or was he afore your time?”

  “Och, aye, I mind him. You took me to Glasga to hear him when I was a lad.”

  The old man shook his head sadly. “We’d niver have made it through the war without Alasdair’s fiddle.”

  Watty turned to explain to the younger men at their table, “Alasdair Geddys was one o’ the finest fiddlers in the British Isles back then.”

  The red-faced driver lifted his mug and drained the last drops. “I’ve heard of him, right enough. Where was it he came from, then? Somewhere on t’other side, wasn’t it?”

  “Auchnagar. He came from Auchnagar.” Joyce’s American accent cut into their musical ones like a knife as she spoke loud enough for them to hear her. “His son and daughter still live there.” She added, for those at our table, “I have a bit about him in my play.”

  Watty’s father quavered, “I mind he had two sons, Watty. But the older—what happened to him? Pirates, was it?”

  “I doot it was pirates, but nobody kent,” Watty told him. “He disappeared soon after his dad was lost and nobody ever heard from him again.”

  “What happened to Alasdair, then?” Ginger Beard asked. “Did he dee in the war?”

  “Pirates,” the old man said firmly, nodding his head.

  “Och, ye’ve got pirates on the brain. ’Twasn’t pirates at all.” Watty set his empty mug down with a thump and signaled for still another round.

  How could men’s bladders hold that much liquid? Mine was fast reaching its limit.

  The old man insisted, “ ’Twas pirates, right enough. He went to Ireland to play, mind, and on the way over pirates got him.”

  “He got that drunk, he fell off the boat,” Watty replied. “And puir lad, he couldna swim, so by the time they got turned aboot to try and recover him, he wasnae there.”

  “Och weel,” said Red Face. “I doot Davy Jones is gettin’ some fine music th’ noo.”

  The skirl of pipes announced that the music was about to recommence. The musicians played while the rest of us drank, applauded, and dripped with sweat. I was a bit disgusted, though, to notice that the other drinkers at the next table still let Watty pick up most tabs, and that when he didn’t, his daddy did. I wanted to shake some manners into the two young men.

  Toward the end, Jim and Sherry played a trio with the award-winning fiddler and Dorothy was asked to accompany a singer with a particularly sweet voice. I could tell they were all having a fine old time. Finally the host stepped forward. “That’s it for the night, folks. If the men will help shift the tables during the break, we’ll hae a bit o’ dancin’ after.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was past midnight.

  Across the room, the musicians climbed down from the stage. Kenny followed the Scottish pipers out. Dorothy made her way to us, glowing with happiness.

  Ginger Beard gave her a private round of applause that turned Dorothy’s face even pinker. “You were brilliant!” he told her. “Here, take my chair.” He got up and shoved it toward her with a bow, waving away her protests. “Ye’ll be deein’ me a favor, keepin’ it warm while I’m stretching my legs. Save me a dance when I get back, right enough?”

  She nodded. As he sauntered across the room, she collapsed into the chair breathing hard and deep, like she had just come up from too long underwater. “It’s hot up there, but wasn’t that fantastic?” She turned to Joyce, fanning herself with one hand. “Thank you so much for setting this up, eh? When you said to bring our instruments, I never imagined it would be so—so—” She floundered.

  “I didn’t do anything.” Joyce waved one hand toward Watty. “He found out the ceilidh was happening and that visiting musicians were welcome.”

  Dorothy leaned over and put her hand on Watty’s. “Thank you so much. This has been wonderful.”

  Watty flushed happily. “Och, it chust happened. Now let’s get some liquid inside you, so you’ll be ready for the dancing.” He caught the arm of a passing waitress. “A round for our visiting musicians.”

  “There’s only me,” Dorothy pointed out.

  Sherry and Jim still hadn’t come. I scanned the room, but they were nowhere to be seen. I turned to Brandi, and saw that the others were looking at her, too. When she noticed us, she scraped back her chair. “Excuse me. I have a headache.”

  Watty watched her stride across the room, chuckled, and saluted her back with his glass. “I doot ye’ll be passin’ it on to somebody else as soon as ye find her.” He turned back to me. “May I have the pleasure of the first dance?”

  I didn’t really want to dance without Joe Riddley there, but seeing as how Watty had spruced himself up for the evening, I stayed long enough for one. To my surprise, the dances were group affairs—like square dances rather than foxtrots or waltzes. Also to my surprise, Watty was an excellent dancer. I enjoyed myself so much, I let him persuade me to stay for a second.

  Laura danced the second dance with Ginger Beard in our set. Watty called it an eightsome reel. It certainly left me reeling. As we waited for our partners to fetch much-needed liquid refreshment afterwards, Laura leaned down to threaten, “I’m calling Joe Riddley as soon as I get back to my room. You’re having far too much fun with that Highland gentleman.”

  I took the lemonade Watty brought with a grateful smile, but whispered to Laura, “You can use my cell phone if you like.”

  When Watty suggested a third dance, I might have stayed longer, but my bladder was threatening to burst. I decided to retire before I embarrassed myself.

  When I got to the wide doors between the dining room and the lobby, Sherry swept past me with spots of red on her sallow cheeks.

  As I climbed the stairs to my room, I heard Brandi’s voice in the hall above me. “Just you remember, we have a deal. I’ve kept my side of the bargain so far, but if you welch on yours . . .”

  Jim’s reply fell like cubes of ice. “You betray me now, and I’ll break your neck.”

  “Then you’d jolly well better . . .” A slammed door cut off the rest.

  11

  To say that things were a tad strained in our group the morning after the ceilidh would be like saying General Sherman paid a social call on Georgia. Joyce’s job was no longer like herding cats. It was more like corralling coyotes.

  Nobody had gotten enough sleep. Those of us who had gone to bed soon after the concert had been kept awake by thumping music, which didn’t stop until four. I knew, because I’d sneaked a peek at the clock when Laura came to bed. Nobody got up that morning for an early run.

  Those who had stayed at the dance must have drunk too much, as well, because they came to breakfast as prickly as a brood of porcupines. When my chair scraped the floor as I pulled it out to sit down, Kenny glared, Joyce grimaced, Dorothy shuddered and Laura held her head between her hands and growled, “Do you have to be so noisy?”

  Jim and Brandi didn’t show up at all.

  Kenny ignored Sherry and latched on to Laura like a sandspur.

  Sherry looked daggers at Kenny and Laura the entire meal.<
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  The worry wrinkle between Joyce’s eyes threatened to become permanent.

  Watty wasn’t his usual cheery self, either, and was dressed again in his disreputable sweater, baggy pants, and filthy cap. When I called, “Good morning!” he glowered.

  As I slid into my seat on the bus, I murmured to Marcia, who sat behind me that morning, “The way Watty looks today reminds me of that old joke about ‘I’d rather die like my grandfather, peacefully in his sleep, than screaming in terror like the folks who were riding with him.’ You reckon he ought to be driving in his condition?”

  “Nobody’s compellin’ ye to r-r-ride this bus.” Watty flung a scarf I’d dropped into my lap and stomped back to the driver’s seat.

  “You have offended your Highland gentleman,” Laura murmured, but her words were as lifeless as yesterday’s seaweed at the high-tide line.