For All Nails #137: Hey Mister, That's Me Up On the Jukebox
by David Mix Barrington (with thanks to Noel Maurer and Dan McDonald)
Adam LaDuke was a man swelling with pride as he entered the Kendall Arms Tavern. The chalked sign on the slate by the door said "Tonight: Abby and Billy -- Ten Shillings cover" FN2 And they'd attracted a good crowd. Plenty of lokes and wheels lining the nearby streets, more people walking up from the train station. His girlfriend was starting to make a name for herself.
He automatically sized up the crowd as he paid his two crowns and headed for the main hall. The place was meant to look like a Tory pub, but the bulk of the patrons were Yanks like himself. There were a few Froggies, including some wheelers. There hadn't been any trouble with the Awn-ges Dawn Fair FN3 in months, but Adam was happy to see that Johnny Esquivel and five reliable boys from Hazard County were also in the hall. He thought back to the series of coordinated robberies back in July -- he now understood that they had been meant to show the Awn-ges and anyone else how easily The General could extend his reach anywhere in the North Woods. Apparently everyone in sight had been anxious to cut a deal then to split the levies from business owners all across Maine and beyond.
The crowd buzz suddenly stopped. Abby was singing the Froggie song.
- "Un Québécois errant, banni de ses foyers..." FN4
One old Froggie was drying his eye already. The song sure was wicked beautiful, even if he didn't understand a word of it. Abby knew a little French from school, and said the beginning was about a guy who'd been kicked out of his parlor and was now wandering around. Apparently the whole song had been written by one of the Froggies who'd revolted against the Tories in 1839, so it was wicked good politically too. Stupid Froggies, if they'd only listened to General Arnold in 1775...
Adam got himself a cider and sat down as the song ended to a good round of applause. Billy at the piano quickly picked up the pace, and Abby was into a Tania song, "I Can't Hold On".
- "Baby, this time it's goodbye,
- And you can be sure that I won't cry..." FN5
It wasn't one of Tania's sexier songs, which was just fine with Adam. It was fine for a bunch of men to watch her dance, he supposed, it was an honest way to make a living, but the thought of his woman singing about what she'd do when she got the boy alone -- that just wasn't right. That part of Abby should be for him alone.
It was wicked funny, how soon Abby had gone from being a secretary in Millinocket to a big singer here in Maine. As usual, it had been The General who'd made it happen. Back in August, when he'd first taken Abby to the secret camp, and she'd met the man she'd heard so much about, he'd wanted to hear her sing. She did some wicked foreign Bulgonian FN6 song she'd learned back in school, then a Tania song she'd learned off the radio. The General had set her up with Billy, and then given her a part-time job in Empire Falls keeping the books for some of his businesses.
The timing on that had been wicked good, because it turned out that Abby's boss back in Millinocket was cooking the books somehow, something to do with the dirty water from the paper mill. Hordes of Lobsters had come down on him all at once in September and taken him in, he'd heard. Abby's friend Peggy Maxwell, who she'd gotten to replace her when she moved -- she'd been in and out of court all fall, testifying. Thank God Abby was out of that situation -- who knew what the millies might've asked her about him, and their Yank friends. But they seemed content to have just Peggy, not that either Abby or him had been showing their faces in Nova Scotia much lately.
Ah, wicked, Abby had started into a classic song by El Rey:
- "You ain't nada but a perro, cryin' all the time,
- You ain't nada but a perro, cryin' all the time,
- You ain't a-never caught a lizard and you ain't no amigo o'mine."
Every Negro Adam had ever met played the piano, except maybe that Froggie one in Quebec. James Billington Preston, though, was a wicked good piano player -- he could make it sound just like Juan Bailleres' guitar. Billy was a nice enough guy, Adam supposed, but you had to worry about another man being so close to Abby all the time, talking about music and making music. Just the other day he'd been disrespecting El Rey, even, saying that he was only now starting to be a serious musician, and Abby had agreed with him! As if El Rey wasn't the biggest star in all of Mexico! FN7 Billy wasn't even right on politics (you had to wonder how he knew The General) -- the one time Adam'd started talking about the Rebellion Billy had cut him off with something about how Washington and Jefferson had owned slaves. Well everybody down there owned slaves, then, right? If the rebels had won they would've straightened it out eventually, just like the Tories have. It didn't much matter if you were supposed to be slave or free, anyway, as long as you were subject to a King.
Hey, now Abby was doing that wicked song off the radio, by that Hawley Hardin guy: FN8
- "I can see her now with her caminador FN9,
- Boppin' up and down right across the floor
- You should have seen her party, you should have seen her go
- I knew the bride when she used to buckaroo" FN10
The bride. The image of Abby in a wedding dress came to Adam's mind. Yep, that was where they were heading, as soon as Abby figured it out in her head. For all she was a few years older than him and had actually finished high school, sometimes Abby just needed a man to do her thinking for her, to straighten her out and let her know who she really was. She knew who she was now, he thought, up on the stage, but she kept saying lately that she didn't know if she was his girl or not. He thought it made perfect sense for them to sleep together all the time, Abby being on La Pildora and all, but she kept saying she wasn't ready and wasn't sure who she was. Well, Adam knew who she was -- she was never more herself that when she was on top of him like a cat in heat, the three times they'd gone all the way. You didn't have to be a wicked genius to figure that out.
Forward to FAN #138A: Broken Regiment.
Forward to 2 December 1974: If Dirt Were Dolares.
Forward to Clarissa Forster: Where Are They Right Now?
Return to For All Nails.