The End of Music

by Jamie Fitzpatrick

  “So, I’ll have, you know, a slide projected for the Picasso thing,” says Morris. “Okay. So. Picasso and his colleagues saw in aviation an analogy for their own work, which was conquering new dimensions, expressing new energy, and rejecting nostalgia. Their age was one of optimism, excitement, and the breakdown of the old order. In its early days, aviation was seen as an embodiment of energy, youth, transgression, danger, immediate experience, and the breaking of new boundaries.” He looks up. “Yeah?”

  Terry nods for him to continue.

  “Today we view technology with suspicion—embracing it, while at the same time worrying that it drains away the energy of true experience. This was not the case a century ago. The new technology of flight was seen as a source of renewed energy and vitality.”

  “You say ‘energy’ a lot,” says Red.

  “Okay. Cool.” Morris makes a note. “I mean, I’m just roughing it out right now. Okay. Almost done. So, beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror. Quoting the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. For proof, he might have pointed to our early fascination with flight, or to the current growing field of aviation archaeology. Okay, that’s it.”

  “Hear-hear!” shouts Red from flat on her back.

  “Good start,” says Terry. “You’ll want to shore up the leaps between modernism and romanticism. Just smooth that path forward.”

  “Yeah. I mean, it’s just the two-minute thing.”

  “Are you going to link it to the airport?” asks Andi. “I mean with that mural, it’s perfect, even more than Picasso.”

  “Picasso gets their attention, right off the hop,” says Morris.

  “True.”

  Red holds out her cup for a refill from Hawco. “So you’re probably going to get into the whole thing with authenticity and pastiche?”

  “Yeah, totally,” says Morris. “Like, you’ve got the original wreck, which is totally real. Then comes the other stuff, like the graffiti, and trash left by hikers and scavengers. It’s total pastiche.”

  “No,” says Red. “Pastiche is deliberate. It has to be self-conscious about what it borrows. The sources.”

  “This is more how we experience it.”

  “That’s just randomness, Morris. Don’t read so much into it.”

  “There’s human agency in those sites.” Morris twists, trying to address Red, who is still on her back on the bed. “We made them.”

  “Oh, so the plane intended to crash and kill a bunch of people and leave a pile of mechanical garbage.” Her hand rises and swoops it down.

  “Why are you hung up on intent?”

  “I see what Morris is driving at,” says Terry, adopting a conciliatory tone. “Newfoundland feels so ancient. There’s still a wildness to it. And to see these machines that used to be so state-of-the-art, to see them broken against this ancient beauty.”

  Morris grunts. Red smirks.

  “How about a tune!” calls Hawco. “How about it, hey?”

  “Not that song,” says Terry. “I know the one you’re thinking of. Not with ladies present.”

  “But we sing it every year,” says Red, who sits up and takes the bottle from Hawco to pour another round. “The ladies don’t mind at all, right?” She looks to Andi, who shrugs.

  “Oh, we’ll keep it clean, keep it clean,” says Hawco, and starts in, keeping time with his foot.

  Away, away, with fife and drum

  Here we come, full of rum

  Looking for women to pat on the bum

  In the North Atlantic Squa-ha-dron

  Carter checks his phone again. Still nothing from Isabelle. But Jordan has surfaced.

  Sad, even if everyone saw it coming. Just wanted to let you know that plans had to change to adapt to Leah’s wishes. Sorry to shut you out of the process like that, but she’s been driving the bus on this. Respect.

  “Come on!” shouts Hawco. “Who wants the next verse?”

  Terry sings:

  The RAF are on the bit

  Giving Hitler lots of shit

  Applause for Terry as Carter returns to the Air Canada booking page. The red-eye is still there. Same price. But his booking has expired.

  “Come on, Herb Carter,” shouts Terry. “Don’t be hiding back there. You got to learn a verse or two.”

  “Refills,” cries Red.

  “Just one more,” says Hawco. “Couple of fingers.”

  Carter refreshes the website and picks his flights again. His “confirmed booking” appears again. And somehow, the cost of his return fare just went up by over $400. He backtracks to “book my flight,” and the cheap flight he picked, the Tango Plus or whatever the fuck they call it, is gone. He logs off the system and logs back on again.

  Terry continues with a verse of the song about pilots taking pills and shitting from Yarmouth to Gander.

  The cheap fare is definitely gone. Terry finishes his bit—in the North Atlantic Squa-ha-dron—and they’re all clapping and shouting. Carter will straighten out the flight and announce that he has to go home for three days. When he tells them why they’ll slap his back and raise a toast. Andi will send him off with a sustaining hug.

  But he’ll be goddamned if he’s going to pay $1,270 for a round trip that was close to half that price an hour ago. Carter dials the number provided on the booking page. Outrage won’t get him anywhere. The airlines are numb to it. Far better to be disappointed. Don’t they have family emergency fares or compassionate fares, something like that? Carter recalls getting some sort of deal when his father died. He’ll hold Leah in reserve, play that card if he’s stonewalled. Do ex-husbands qualify as family? Surely, in a case of life and death. He could leave out the ex.

  All our agents are currently assisting other customers. Tinkly piano plays in Carter’s ear. He knows the tune but can’t place it.

  Red stands. “The one-six-one—”

  “Not that verse,” says Terry. “There’s no need.”

  “But who cares?” says Red. “Who gives a shit? I don’t.”

  She looks to Andi, who smiles and looks away, as if interested in something on the wall.

  “Heave it outta ya, missus,” cries Hawco, who has an arm strung around Morris, who shies from the embrace.

  Red tips back her head.

  The one-six-one crew number four

  Went out one night to find a whore

  With her legs spread wide

  You could fit inside

  The North Atlantic Squa-ha-dron.

  Carter’s phone announces an incoming call from Isabelle, but he can’t risk it. If the airline answers and he’s not there, he’ll lose his place in the queue.

  Hawco whoops and claps. The others follow suit, and drinks spill over. Terry smiles. “Ha-ha!” shouts Hawco, clapping Red on the shoulder. “You don’t mind, missus! You don’t mind at all!”

  The room telephone rings on the bedside table.

  “I imagine that’s management,” says Terry, and reaches for the phone. “We’re keeping somebody awake.”

  “Let me handle it,” says Hawco. “I know the b’ys.” Terry hands him the receiver.

  “Who’s next?” shouts Red.

  “Hello, sorry to keep you waiting. This is Evan speaking. How may I help you?”

  A person! “Oh, hi,” says Carter. “Yes. I was online, and, well, I was booking my flight…”

  Hawco holds the room phone to his chest and silently mouths, “It’s your wife.”

  Carter points to his cell. “Just ask her to give me two minutes.”

  Hawco offers a thumbs-up.

  “I’m sorry, sir. Can you speak up, please? How may I help you?”

  “One moment,” says Carter, and heads for the quiet of the bathroom. It’s locked. He knocks. They’re roaring behind him now, several voices singing about the pilot buggering the wireless bo
y.

  “This is Evan, sir. Can I help you?”

  “Just one moment.” Carter opens the door to his room and steps outside. He turns to shut the door behind him and Andi is standing there, trying the bathroom doorknob. Then Hawco appears, and the three of them are at the threshold, breathing the fetid night air. Hawco looks almost comically solemn, his eyes downcast. Carter’s chest floods with panic. Sam. Please, not Sam. It’s supposed to be just routine.

  “Is it Sam?” he asks, pulling the awful words from his throat. He grips the doorjamb to steady himself.

  “Who?”

  “My wife, when you talked to her.”

  The bathroom door opens and Morris emerges. “Whoa,” he says. “This town reeks.” He, Hawco, and Andi are bathed in a flood of brilliant bathroom light, the shit-sticky night air curling around them. The others have moved on to another verse.

  In Newfoundland when it got hot

  We used to fornicate a lot

  “You have a friend named Lee?” asks Hawco.

  “What?”

  Only the fools would be pulling their tools

  “Do you wish to continue this call?”

  In the North Atlantic Squa-ha-dron

  “Lee? Or Leah, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “She passed away tonight. Your wife wanted you to know.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” says Andi.

  “Holy shit,” says Morris.

  “Sir, can I help you?”

  Andi takes Carter’s fingers for a moment. The stink rolls over them, yet she still smells like outdoors. Like black soil and dust. He loves youth, with its clear eyes and fresh dirt and elastic limbs.

  “Then it’s not Sam. Of course it isn’t.”

  “No sir. This is Evan speaking. Do you wish to remain on the line?”

  18

  She never got to see Marty after. She waited too long. He was admitted to the Health Sciences on Monday, and she put it off for a day or two. Finally on Thursday she packed her bag for the drive into St. John’s. Then the phone rang. It was Marty’s wife to say he was gone.

  “I’m so sorry, Esther,” said Joyce.

  “And all that time we wasted dragging him into St. John’s,” she said. “We should have left him to die in bed.”

  “Arthur died in his bed,” said Joyce.

  “Anyway, we’re leaving today. Take him back home.”

  Joyce kept packing. But now she’d be driving to Cape St. Rose. After so many years.

  //////

  She set the bag in the front hall and called Donna across the street to water the plants.

  “Father O’Rourke is back,” said Donna.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Back in town.”

  “Not back with the church?”

  “No, no. That’s all over.”

  Joyce couldn’t imagine Father O’Rourke showing his face again. Nobody could have such gall.

  “Where did you hear this, Donna?”

  “It was all the talk when I dropped Cathy at school. They said he’s back to look after a few things, and it was all a misunderstanding. He didn’t run away with the Philpot woman from the choir. He left his vocation according to, you know, all the correct procedures.”

  “But of course he ran off with her. They had the room together in Clarenville.”

  “People are saying that’s all lies.”

  “But where’s the Philpot woman?”

  “No sign of her. I suppose her family knows.”

  “But Donna, surely…”

  “I suspect what happened was, she thought better of it. An ex-priest, and not a very good-looking one either. I’d say she had her fun and moved on.”

  Joyce needed food before the long drive. Bacon and eggs. She still couldn’t believe Father O’Rourke would show his face again. When he and the Philpot woman disappeared in August, people had been grateful it was a grown woman he’d taken up with. Not like the sick priests who prey on little boys, or those disgusting Christian Brothers who ought to be shot.

  //////

  Joyce didn’t mind the four-hour drive, even with the wind leaning into the car and the little gusts of dry snow. But the overpass down to the Cape nearly killed her. It took a big turn and climbed up to loop back over the highway, with the wind coming hard and nothing to break it. There was a thin layer of snow with little curved peaks, and she slowed as she hit ice patches, until one of those patches sent the car fishtailing. She whipped the steering wheel this way and that, and her mind stupidly called up a scrap of an old song. It repeated in her head until finally she came to rest sideways, with the back bumper kissing the guardrail. She was shaking and cold—suddenly the car was frigid—and she didn’t know how long she sat there before a man tapped on her window. Joyce was singing to herself as she rolled down the window. There was a noise behind him, which turned out be an idling pickup. She said she was fine. He wanted to know where she was going, and insisted on driving her there, with his wife following in the truck. Joyce said there was no need, but she was grateful for the company. During the drive he asked a lot of questions about her family. “So’s I can place you,” he said. She answered the questions until he said, “Yes, my dear, sure I know your crowd.”

  At the old house, the fellow and his wife insisted on going in and paying their respects to Esther. Of course, they stayed for a cup of tea and mentioned how they found Joyce with her car askew in the middle of the road, singing to herself. So for the rest of the weekend, Joyce was treated like a frail old lady on the brink. They wouldn’t let her help with anything. She was spirited away from the wake when the late-night drinkers took over—“You don’t want any part of that dirty old crowd,” said Esther—and treated regally at the reception following the service. Her privileged status allowed Esther to avoid her most of the time.

  In nearly fifty years since she’d left, Joyce had never been back home. She had always imagined her desertion as a dramatic episode. The girl who boarded the train and never looked back. Resented and envied for escaping the place, which crippled those left behind as surely as poison in the well water.

  But of course the Cape turned out to be no different than anywhere else. Everyone left. Emptying out was the ordinary business of outport Newfoundland. There was a teacher and two students, a school janitor with not much to do, and a crowd of old folks lining up to see the nurse who passed through every Friday. The church was closed, her father’s old store long abandoned. Joyce couldn’t imagine why anyone would stay at all. Or why anyone had put down stakes in the first place, for that matter.

  She met a man who said he remembered Joyce as a girl, coming around with deliveries from the store.

  “Everyone’s looking for a resettlement offer,” said the man. “Take the money and buy a house somewhere. Or pocket the money and move in with the kids. But we’re not small enough to get the government money yet, and not expensive enough. Those little islands, serviced by the ferries? Cost a fortune. Government can’t wait to close them up.”

  “Would everyone want to leave?”

  “Here? I’d say everyone would come around to it. What about Gander? Wasn’t there talk that the airport was finished?”

  “It’s doing nicely these days, I think.”

  “How do they make a go of it?”

  “Private jets, you know, and air freight and the military. Emergency landings too.” Joyce wasn’t sure exactly how the airport managed to stay in business.

  “Another one of Joey Smallwood’s boondoggles,” said the man. “Along with his chocolate bars and his hockey sticks and the rest of it.”

  “But Smallwood had nothing to do with Gander.”

  “He had his hand in everything.”

  At the funeral she had a good chat with the younger cousins on her father’s side. Most of their kids were in
Edmonton. Joyce talked about how she had almost moved to Edmonton once. TCA was looking for ticket agents to transfer out west, to Edmonton and Winnipeg. But then she met Arthur.

  She told Esther how Father O’Rourke had run away with the Philpot woman from the choir, and then come back.

  “They’ve got no shame,” said Esther. “You won’t see me back in church after today. Not until I’m in my own box.”

  The shaking from the near-accident persisted all weekend, right through the burial and the careful drive back. A steady vibration inside, as if her bones were ringing. It stopped when she got home. Then it flared up again, coming at her for a few minutes at a time, and waking her at night.

  Donna dropped by to return the house key. “Bill O’Rourke is gone back to school,” she said. “Gone to do welding.”

  “Who?”

  “Father O’Rourke. He’s going to get his welding certificate and make a fortune offshore.”

  “What kind of fortune?”

  “With Hibernia, I imagine. The rigs.”

  Father O’Rourke. Had she really taken Holy Communion from a man out for his welding certificate? Joyce wanted to say she would never set foot in church again. But she had made such vows before, and always drifted back. So she held her tongue.

  //////

  A week after Marty passed, she still hadn’t told Herbert. She called, and caught him in the middle of his new job. At a bakery, of all places. Joyce had never known him to show an interest in the kitchen. He said he would call back in an hour. She put on her laundry from the trip and went through the pantry to clear out a few forgotten cans and bag them for the food bank.

  The hour was up by then, so she sat at the kitchen table, next to the telephone on the wall.

  When Herbert called, she said, “Your Uncle Martin passed away last week.”

  “I never knew him, did I?”

  “No. We fell out of touch.”

  “You had that picture, though, of the two of you. Was he sick for long?”

  “Oh, for ages. He finally got married a few years ago, and I started getting Christmas cards from his wife. There was always a report on his health, and it was never good.”

  “Did you see him before he died?”