by Ed Kavanagh
I’ve been blessed. I’ve been playing for nearly eighty years and I’ve never bought a fiddle. My first came from Sister Angela and my second came from Annie. Over the years I’ve often wondered what I should do with Annie’s fiddle.
You probably assumed that I’d leave it to someone in the family. That’s what Pat Foran thought Annie should have done all those years ago. But Annie knew better. And I want to follow her lead. There’s just no one in our family who needs it. Not like I needed it.
You know that I still have a few students. I don’t charge them, of course. I enjoy teaching and it helps keep me young—well, as young as can be expected! A couple of my students I’ve had for years. But one of them is fairly new. He’s a boy I first met when he used to deliver the paper. Later I’d sometimes get him to run messages for me. His name is Stephen—another Christmas name! Annie used to say I was like the cow’s tail—always behind. Well, Stephen is like that. When I see him out on the street with the other kids, he’s always four or five steps behind everyone else. He’s another silent one, but there’s something behind those dark eyes.
Stephen lives at the top of my street, and it turns out that I used to know some of his family. His great-grandmother grew up with me on the road. She was one of the Clearys—another crowd who grew up rough. I guess a lot of them are still living rough.
I’ve been in Stephen’s apartment building—used to visit Meg Kielly when she lived there for a while in the ’80s. It’s not the nicest spot—makes my little place here in the seniors’ complex look like a palace. So you don’t need to be any great genius to know that the family is not too well off.
Sometimes Stephen would be in here when he was collecting the money for the paper, or when he was waiting to run a message. When he’d watch me play, I’d see that same rapt expression on his face that I used to have when I watched Annie. The same expression Annie must have had on her face when she watched her brother Jack. And I saw behind Stephen’s eyes what Annie saw behind mine: those shards of brokenness. That hole in the heart that turns a person inward and silent.
Of course Stephen has a fiddle, but it’s just a rental and the poorest kind of one at that. Annie would have said it’s only fit for kindling. So I think Stephen might be the one. And Annie would have wanted her fiddle to go to a child—a strayaway child.
Anyway, Marcia, when you and your mom come over for my birthday, maybe we can have a chat about what to do. Annie was the first to tell me that December twenty-first has the longest, the darkest night. But it’s the darkest nights that are always the best for giving.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thanks to David Benson, Regina Best, Korona Brophy, Iona Bulgin, Alison Carr, Chip Clark, Gail Collins, Gerard Collins, Linda and Tom Doody, Danette Dooley, Marjorie Doyle, Carla Furlong, Barbara Mercer, the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council, Donna Newhook, Sandy Newton, Jerry O’Brien, Susan Rendell, Bert Riggs, Gordon Rodgers, Geri Rubia, and everyone at Killick Press. Special thanks to my editor, Anne Hart.
Some of these stories have been previously published: “Children Green and Golden” in Arts in Formation and A Way with Words; it was also broadcast on CBC Radio. “Dancing Fool,” “The Red Merc,” and “Seagull Dreams” were first published in Tickleace. “Strays,” “Pot of Gold,” “Children Green and Golden,” and “The Red Merc” were winners in the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Competition. The quote on page 128 is from E.M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel. The quote on page 130 is a version of a quote by Susan Ertz. Song lyrics quoted in “Seagull Dreams” are from “The St. John’s Waltz” by Ron Hynes. Lyrics quoted in “The Red Merc” are from “Born Under a Bad Sign” by William Bell and Booker T. Jones. The lines quoted in “Wind” are from the poem “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz” by W.B. Yeats.
Music lovers might be interested to know that there is indeed an Irish fiddle tune named “The Strayaway Child.” The tune, a six-part jig, was composed by Michael Gorman, probably in the 1940s or 1950s. For my story, I have altered the date of composition.
ED KAVANAGH grew up in Kilbride, Newfoundland and Labrador, and now lives in Mount Pearl. He has worked as a writer, actor, musician, teacher, theatre director, university lecturer, and editor. In addition to the Amanda Greenleaf series of children’s books, he has published The Cat’s Meow: The ’Longside Players Selected Plays, 1984-1989 (co-author and editor) and released an album of his children’s songs: Alison Gross and Other Wickedly Wonderful Songs. He has also released three Celtic harp CDs: Weaving the Wind; One Star Awake; and On Strings of Light. Ed Kavanagh has been the recipient of fourteen literary awards in the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Competition. His first adult novel, The Confessions of Nipper Mooney, won the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award for Fiction, was a finalist for the Winterset Award, and was also nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.