I smiled. She was so young. And she bought my albums. My voice had been in her room, part of her growing up. I wish I had known that.
“With a voice like yours,” my daughter continued, “singing the way you do, I don’t see how you could give it up.”
“It gave me up,” I said with a laugh.
“I’m afraid I don’t believe you. It must be so difficult to do without music.”
“Music wasn’t always kind to me,” I said.
“But you touched so many people, made such a difference.”
“I never thought of it that way. It was just something I liked to do.”
“You didn’t realize the effect you had on people?”
“Not really.”
“But you did. And you haven’t changed. I mean, you’re as beautiful as ever. And you did that benefit of ethnic music in…was it South Dakota? That’s right, isn’t it?” She rushed on, completely caught up in enthusiasm, “How marvelous it would be if we could organize a benefit for Lone Walker and the vision site, and you’d sing that same repertoire.”
My mind jumped to the fatal benefit, as I heard my daughter say: “You would come out of retirement. If I could persuade you to do that—it would mean everything. More important even than a lawyer, your singing would bring everyone to the cause. They wouldn’t dare railroad Sam then. And the oil company would be beaten once everyone knew what they were up to. Is there a chance you could be persuaded to sing again?”
“It’s a totally impossible idea. I haven’t sung in three years, not a note.”
Kathy Mason shrank back against the leather of the booth. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that it came over me how wonderful it would be. Not that I don’t appreciate what you’re doing, it’s unbelievably generous. And as you say, it will get us a first-rate lawyer. But the other side will have lawyers too, a battery of them. I’m sure it will come right in the end because we have the truth on our side. Sam Lone Walker is innocent. Still, who knows? They could fabricate evidence, bribe witnesses, all the things they do.”
I had not expected Abram to enter this conversation. He did. “I think young Kathy Mason has the idea of a lifetime. Come out of retirement, sing for Lone Walker, sing for the environment.” He was so carried away that I almost thought he would say, “Sing for your daughter—” but he caught himself and finished rather tamely, “You’d be a sensation.”
“I’ve been a sensation,” I said wearily, “and look what it got me.”
Then I saw the disappointment in my daughter’s eyes. It was the only thing she had ever asked of me.
I berated Abram all the way home. “You took her side. Why? Why? Why did you do that? Why did you let me agree? I’ve got myself in too deep. I can’t do it. I don’t have any voice left. I can’t possibly go through with a wild, hare-brained scheme like this. I have to get out of it. You know I haven’t sung in years. It would be a fiasco. I’d be pathetic…. They strike up the music, I come out in a wheelchair, I open my mouth, and out comes a croak. Besides…I’m too old.”
“Old? Who’s old? You’re thirty-six and you look twenty-six. Sitting across from you I couldn’t tell which was the daughter.”
“Stop it, Abram. It’s your fault. I can’t go through with it…and I can’t disappoint her. Oh Abram, isn’t she lovely! A lovely girl. And did you notice?”
“Of course. She’s left-handed, just like her mum.”
I allowed myself only a moment before answering, then started in again, marshaling the myriad reasons why a benefit featuring Kathy Little Bird was out of the question. I argued, I yelled, just as I used to. I carried on and convinced myself all over again of the impossibility of it.
I kept it up even after we arrived home and ended locking myself in the bathroom, this time not to count pills. Now I had something to live for. At the deepest level, at the Sargasso Sea level, I wanted to disprove everything I’d concluded.
Tentatively I let out a single note, cautiously, more spoken than sung, more breathed than spoken. I tried a scale, also barely more than a whisper. The line was almost inaudible, but it was true. It was on pitch. It had timbre. The Little Bird sound was there, waiting to be coaxed out.
I tried broken chords, a third, a fifth, an octave jump. I added words, snatches of songs. Elk Woman’s Cree melodies, the Wind Song, the Shadow Song. I heard them in the bones of my head, I heard them flung back at me from the four walls.
Abram, on the other side of the door, expelled his breath in relief.
The music that I had disavowed, that I had kept resolutely choked down, reemerged.
I unlocked the bathroom, once more my rehearsal hall, threw it wide open, and came wheeling out singing at the top of my lungs.
Abram was transfixed.
Before he could speak, I asked, “What about the wheelchair?”
“Your voice is back. The chair? That’s irrelevant.”
ABRAM was right, and he was wrong. My voice was back, but it was far from my old sound. I had been so amazed and excited to hear a musical note issue from my lips that I jumped to the conclusion I was myself again. And Abram elevated a phenomenon into a miracle. He kept repeating “Praise the Lord” under his breath and, when I asked him for constructive criticism, shook his head as if perfection could not be improved.
The truth, as I discovered next morning when I tried to rehearse, was that my voice, although there were flashes of the old brillance, was creaky, cranky, and undependable. It would break in unexpected places, vanish completely at others, and become reedy on a high note.
It needed work, work, work. I remembered how Jim Gentle’s activist sentiments had wakened a tardy sense of myself as Indian. When I was a kid, I’d figured out I was forty percent Cree. That was as far as it went; my ethnicity had never played a part in my life. With Jim’s passion for causes, my own sense of identity awoke, and for the first time I’d followed the treatment of Indians on both sides of the border. But I turned from this when I turned away from him. Now, though, the prospect of reviving the program I’d worked out and almost sung gave me a spiritual high. It was more intense than even the songs themselves. I felt like the prodigal son. I had returned. I felt myself to be part of the First Nation people.
This benefit I would sing through to the end.
It gave me a nostalgic pleasure to get in touch with Jim Gentle.
“Kathy!” he said at the sound of my voice. “My God, you sound like yourself.”
“I’ve come a long way. I don’t walk and probably never will. But I sing.”
“You sing?”
“Yes, I do. I’m calling because I need you to organize another benefit. Can you do it? You’d have to drop everything. Will you?”
“Upside down, inside out, standing on my head and yodeling. What guts, Kathy. I’m proud of you, proud that you call on me. Whatever you want, it’s done.”
“What I want is to do the concert we tried for, and this time finish it. Incidentally, I’m not doing it as a way to return to show business. It would just be this once.”
“If it’s not a comeback, what is behind it?”
“Would you believe—I’m doing it to feel good about myself.”
“That’s the best reason.”
His laugh made me remember. I remembered our jam sessions, our work sessions. I remembered the good stuff.
GENTLE flew in.
It didn’t hit me the way it once had. I was able to look at him and know I was happy just to see him, that he was a good friend. One who didn’t come around at all seasons—only when music was concerned. That was the part of me he loved, and I was glad to have figured it out.
We set our sights on late August. It would be tight but we could do it. Besides getting myself and my voice in shape, there were a million things to attend to. I rented a studio downtown and Jim managed to drop by every day to hammer out repertoire. Sometimes he just listened. Jim hadn’t changed. He lived life in a major key, throwing himself totally into the moment. He plan
ned the build of the program, without in any way neglecting the smallest nuance. He pounced on my failure to hold a note, and criticized my diction. He was meticulous. He listened with his pores. His truth was music.
Gentle didn’t waste time on regrets. He never alluded to old involvements, never pitied me, but accepted that this was a new moment in time and this was the way I was. He didn’t think of me as a cripple or even handicapped, but imposed hellishly long hours on us both.
During one of our quick lunch breaks I told him that my CDs were now being distributed by a new firm, Doric. “They bought out the old company.”
“Yeah,” Jim grinned, “I know.” He stood up, drew himself to his full height of six foot five, and said, “Meet Doric Recording Company.”
“You? You’re Doric?”
“I knew way back, the minute I heard you, you were something special. You have what I call…floyt. If you don’t have it, you can sing like an angel and it means nothing. But when you got it…well!…So I raised money and made an investment. I bought up all your singles, albums, everything. I got you cheap because of the lousy publicity, being booted out of the country and all. Then I waited. Let it die down, until all anyone remembered is your sound.
“And now we’re starting to make it big-time, releasing your stuff slowly, feeding it into the market. You were always good for me, Kathy. And I’m glad, really glad that I have a chance to be good for you.”
He allowed only for a warm exchange of smiles before we were at it again. We worked at top speed, battling out our differences.
Gentle carried off a marvelous coup. I was still prevented from entering the U.S., but he got around that by recalling that in the fabulous fifties Paul Robeson, the great black baritone, had also been at odds with the INS, and told if he left the United States he would not be allowed back. His advance people scoured possible concert sites and hit on a great spot. A Peace Arch erected in an international park where Blaine, Washington borders on Canada. The arch is constructed of dazzling white concrete and the marine park where it’s located is a neutral area spanning the boundary of the two countries, commemorating their friendship. Citizens of both countries come together without border passes. There is an outdoor amphitheater and awesome views of Point Roberts, Vancouver Island, and the San Juans. So Robeson gave a memorable concert under the arch. “And,” Gentle finished up, “so will you.”
I STOLE time to have coffee with my daughter. Just to look at her was a tonic. The Wertheimers gave her their attic room, but I never saw her. She’d been sitting in on the planning of Lone Walker’s defense, and it took all her time. As a result she was flushed with excitement one minute, pale and nervous the next. Though she tried to present a calm exterior, I sensed that she was near panic. I think she believed Lone Walker, who had eluded capture, might show up at the concert, might even turn himself in.
“He’s really a wonderful person, Mrs. Willems, full of ideals, in a world that doesn’t work that way. By now, he must know I’m working to help him. And yet he isn’t in touch.”
“Perhaps he’s afraid of a trap.”
“You mean, that the concert is a set-up? He’ll see that for himself…police everywhere. It would be easy to take him.”
“Don’t worry. He’ll give himself up when he’s ready, not before.” I leaned across the table. “You love him.”
“Yes, I do. And it’s going to be hard to explain to Mom and Dad Mason. They’re the wonderful people who brought me up. But they won’t understand any of this: the benefit…you, the famous singer…and, on top of it, a wanted man. They’ll think I’m crazy. I know that.”
My voice was almost inaudible. “What about your biological family, the ones you came to find?”
“Actually, I found my uncle Jas. He’s a great guy, owns a pub on the outskirts of St. Alban’s.”
“Was he the only relative?”
“There was a brother, who’s dead.”
At this unexpected reference to Morrie I was jarred into a different reality, but Kathy’s voice brought me back. “I also met my father, but I don’t want to talk about him.”
My God—Jack. Something else Jas didn’t tell me. It’s a wonder it hadn’t all come out. Of course Jack was still on the payroll and too sharp to kick a good thing. I had Mac to thank for that. But I wondered if he’d been tempted.
When I told him about it, Abram put a bookmark in the volume he was reading. “You know, you can’t hide things forever.”
“I know. But I need this time to become friends.”
Abram knows when not to talk, when to put his arms around me.
My father came. I had invited him, but never expected him to actually come. He flew in the day before the benefit. I dropped by his hotel after Gentle and I finished for the day.
It couldn’t be casual between us. And I could see he had steeled himself against seeing me after two years still in a chair.
I thanked him again for coming. “It means a lot to me.”
He responded with the gallantry natural to him. “It means a great deal to me to be here, to see you take hold like this. Overcoming the odds. It reminds me of—of the circumstances I had to deal with. I refer to the amputation. I was in a chair for quite a while, and then crutches. If it hadn’t been for your mother…”
“I know from Mum that you handled it extremely well. I didn’t. For instance, this concert…I didn’t take the initiative. It’s for my daughter. I’ve met her, Erich, and gotten to know her a bit. She’s just as I imagined.” And I told him how it had come about. Taking my father’s hand, I said, “She doesn’t know. She has no idea who I am. Right now she’s grateful to me. I can’t jeopardize this. It’s more than I deserve, much more.”
He patted my hand and nodded.
“You’ll meet her after the performance, in my dressing room. You’ll love her instantly, as I did. There’s a spirited quality about her, and…
“And her name is Kathy,” he finished for me.
“I must have your word that you’ll say nothing.”
“But of course.” And then, “Are you sure that’s the way you want it?”
An emphatic “Yes” left no doubt. “There’s something else, even more difficult to carry out. So difficult that I’ll need your help.”
His look was an unformulated question.
I blurted out the decision I had forced myself to make. “After the concert I’m not going back to Abram.”
I could see his shock. “Not going back? Did I hear you?”
“Yes. Yes you did. I’m damaged, even more than you can tell by looking at me. I’m not able to be a wife to Abram. The only thing I can do is try to be fair.”
This time the pause was protracted.
“Does he know about this?”
“I need to get the concert out of the way. Then I’ll tell him.”
“I can’t believe this is right, Kathy…for either of you.”
“Only because I won’t let him go. But there is a young woman who is devoted to him.”
“And he? I don’t hear you saying he is devoted to her.”
“That’s because, oh you know how Abram is. He wouldn’t let himself even think…But if I weren’t around…Don’t you see, he could have a life.”
My father shook his head, unconvinced.
IT was thrilling to hold our event at Peace Arch, simply to know there was such a place in the world dedicated to people, to peace, and to music. They wheeled me on stage in the dark, a roving spot found me, and the combined audience of Canadians and Americans exploded in applause. It was only minutes since I’d screamed at Abram that I couldn’t possibly do it.
Then this blinding applause. Blinding because tears got in the way of sight. Abram was right, the wheelchair was invisible. A hundred thousand people were telling me they were glad I was back.
They were glad I was here, glad I was going to sing to them. As I faced this blur of humanity, another spot came on, and its rose gelatin wiped out the world.
&nbs
p; I had dug out my old wind-band and tied it across my forehead. I was singing for my daughter tonight. And for the Grandmothers who had guided her to me. I sang music drawn from the earth itself, intoned by Elk Woman as she baked bread, soaked hides, and drew stick figures on soft bark.
I began the first number with its low, throbbing notes, a song of shadows, elongated, flickering as though in firelight, but a staccato beat stole in and out of related time. Sung neither in English or in Cree, it was a boy and girl trading shadows. It was the moon, a shimmering resonance, showing its scarred face. It was Mother Earth weeping to her children, rehearsing her wounds—mineshafts and oil wells. The forests laid bare their old growth, dismantled and dead. No one can express betrayal like the Indian.
My voice thundered, cried, laughed, beguiled. Past the endless drift of possibilities I sang the years, I sang death, I sang rebirth, I sang it all. And in singing the spiritual values and the striving of the Indian, I sang my Mum as she’d be today. I sang my grandfather, who was dying even when he came to me. I sang my father, who had claimed me. I sang the AIM warrior, Sam Lone Walker, who I didn’t know, but who my daughter loved. The one person I couldn’t sing was Abram. The nearest I came was to sing the love that my mind felt and my body was denied—a plaintive, half-frenzied lament.
The audience was startled. They had never heard such weird juxtapositions of chords.
Silence hung over the arch, over the crowd. I couldn’t see them and now I couldn’t hear them. I only knew the audience was absolutely silent.
Spellbound? Captivated? Traumatized?
Was it a silence of resentment?
Then…a rush!
A roar!
I was wrapped in the thunder of a hundred thousand clapping hands, of calls, of shouts. Warriors in ancient lands, in ancient times, ate the heart of a brave enemy to make those qualities their own. The audience did that to me. They took my heart. It was too fierce to be love. And yet it was. They made me theirs.
I was pelted with flowers, bouquets tossed in my lap.