Edgar Pangborn - Davy

They were polite with all visitors, but in those encampments they put on no shows that would be visible from the Conicut side. No music, for music doesn’t recognize boundaries. No selling to Conicut customers, and no passing on of news. The gangs just sat there. A three-month block was enough to rouse every town and village in the land to a dither of exasperation and protest — nay, they were still grumbling about the “Rambler Strike” months later when we passed by, and I wished we’d been in on the fun, but we were away the hell up in northern Levannon at the time. Often during the three months a few handpicked, soft-spoken priests visited the encampments and offered themselves as members — temporary members, even members with limited privileges, anything to get the gangs back in the country before the public rioted. The hopeful fathers were regretfully told that the boss just hadn’t quite made up his mind but would be happy to inform them when he did. I think now, looking on it with the historical background that Nickie and Dion have given me, that if the Church had tried to get tough with the Ramblers the thing could have caught fire in a religious war, with results totally unpredictable; but they were smart, and played it soft. Then at last the gang at Norrock — by prearrangement, and that’s a story in itself, the way the Rambler newsrunners went flickering along the back roads and dim trails from gang to gang with few the wiser — did accept a nice wee priest as a temporary member, and set forth across the country.

They’d prepared for it. That was Bill (Lardpot) Shandy’s gang. Pa Rumley knew Lardpot; he said the man did everything the way he ate, never by halves. Before they set out with the priest, the big sexy pictures on the wagons were painted over with gray — drab and sad. Wherever they stopped, as if for the usual entertainments, no music was offered, just hymns. No plays, no peep-shows. Instead of the account of news from distant places that a Rambler boss customarily provides at the start of every visit, the priest was invited to deliver a sermon. This really hurt, for as I’ve said, the Ramblers are the one source of news that the people can trust: nothing else in our timid, poverty-ridden, illiterate world takes the place of the newspapers of Old Time. In much less than three months all Conicut was bubbling with rumors — earthquakes in Katskil, atheist uprisings in Nuin, Vairmant overrun with revolutionaries, prophets and three-headed calves. That priest, poor devil — Lardpot had purposely chosen a born innocent — did actually preach a sermon, twice, the second time to a loyal hard-core group of five elderly ladies; they couldn’t hear very well, but were gratified to learn the Ramblers had abandoned their nasty ways in favor of nice family-type instruction.

A law that originates in the Church is, naturally, never going to be repealed. [22] Correction: the Universal Tithing Law, which took an annual dollar from every individual over sixteen, was repealed in 324. True, the Church replaced it with what they call the More Universal Tithing Law, costing everyone a buck and a half; but the first law was honestly repealed, no crud. — Dion M. M. But before Bill Shandy’s gang reached the border of Rhode, the Archbishop announced at the Cathedral in New Haven that the wretched clerk who originally transmitted the archiepiscopal message had committed an odious blunder of omission, for which he was now doing a penance that would keep him occupied for a while — here they say the Archbishop smacked his lips and smole a somewhat secular smile. What the Archbishop really said — and if he hadn’t been so busy looking after the spiritual welfare of his flock he’d have learned of the error and corrected it much sooner — what he really said was that any Rambler gang which so desires may accept a priest as a member etc. etc. Observe, please, said the Archbishop, how vast a difference may result from the presence or absence of three little words, and do try to govern yourselves accordingly, and praise the Lord, and be mindful what you say. So there was dancing in the streets. I don’t see how the best of Archbishops could get much more etcetery than that.

So, in practise, the Rambler citizens of the world live mostly by what the Church, like an uneasy schoolmistress, calls the “honor system.” This means that a Rambler boss must take over in his own person many of the functions of policer, priest and judge. He is expected to see to it that pregnancies are reported, even if the gang is likely to be a hundred miles away a few months later. He must make sure women are properly attended through the critical time. And if by chance a mue is born when the gang happens to be not within reach of a priest, the Rambler boss himself must take the knife in his own hand and be certain it penetrates the heart, and with his own eyes see the body buried under a sapling that has been bent over on itself to form the symbol of the wheel…

Rumley’s other three wagons, except the theater wagon, each had enough compartments for a maximum of twelve people without obliging anyone to sleep in the “front room,” which was thought to bring bad luck — Rambler people were full of small superstitions like that, singularly free from the large ones. Including the headquarters wagon, the top limit for the whole gang would have been forty-two. Some gangs have six wagons or even more; that’s too big. Thirty-six people, the number after Sam and I joined, was comfortable, not so big that Pa couldn’t keep track of all that went on, but big enough so that the toughest bandit outfit wouldn’t attack us — Shag Donovan’s boys weren’t bandits but town toughs, a far stupider breed.

That first day in Humber Town, after accepting us into membership Pa Rumley took off to look after this and that, and I recall Bonnie Sharpe settled down with the back of her head against Mam Laura’s knee making small music with her mandolin, which left no one but Minna to look after Sam and me.

Rambler life followed a rhythm like that, of swift and obvious shifts from tension to calm. Bonnie had clearly relished heanng my story and Mam Laura’s questions and my Da’s occasional remarks, her humorous girl’s eyes huge and gray turning from one to another of us, never missing a thing. Then I was done, and Bonnie knew that Minna would look after us if nobody else got around to it, so for Bonnie I suppose the universe comfortably narrowed down to a trifling section of the red bear-skin, the shiny mandolin strings, the light sounds of music she was making, the pleasure she took in her own healthy body and the warmth of Mam Laura’s knee. A time of tension, a time of uncomplicated quiet with music in it — I learned that rhythm too, after a while. If Nickie had not also learned it I couldn’t get along with her as I do — well, without it she’d be someone else, unrecognizable. Spare me from living with worthy souls whose bow of enthusiasm is never allowed to rest unstrung.

Minna Selig, as she took us over to one of the other wagons, was wearing under her black curls a cute frown of thoughtfulness—

It has just this moment occurred to me that some of you who may or may not exist may also actually be women. If so, you would insist on knowing what else Minna was wearing, this preoccupation with what the other quail have on being an ineradicable trait which I have never been able to beat out of a single one of you. Kay — dark cherryred blouse and sloppy linsey pants, and moccasins like what we all wore — all except Pa, that is, who would have reamed out anyone he caught imitating his gilt nudes.

Minna found places for us, just by chance (she said) in the same wagon where she and Bonnie slept. A happy chance: I kept the same compartment all the four years. Bonnie went over to another wagon when she married Joe Dulin in 319, and Sam later moved in with Mam Laura, a courtship I’ll tell about — but only a little, only the surface happenings, for that’s all I know: there was a depth to it, naturalness, inevitability, which they would not have wanted to explain if they could, and whatever I wrote about it would be no better than half-educated guesswork.