William Gass - Middle C

He still had in his possession the very strange book he had picked up from the piano rack. It was old and badly shaken, the cover as loose as a coat, and contained the pieces Miss Withers was to sing marked by long slim inserts of paper; or so he had been given to understand, because the inserts did not jibe with the description of the program she had related to him over the phone, nor did the book itself, though it was called Songs That Never Grow Old and had at the front several pages of glamorous publicity photos of famous opera singers. Despite such initial promise, it was mostly a volume of “Polly-Wolly-Doodle”s and “When the Corn Is Waving”s. When an operatic aria did turn up, Joseph noted with a superior smile, it attributed “La Donna È Mobile” to Il Trovatore . Over the phone, just so, his mother said, You were misled, nothing goes honestly over those thin black droopy strings. I’ve seen them lining the roads like scratches on the sky. Joseph would have to return Songs That Never Grow Old to Miss Withers at the address of Mr. Kleger in Columbus, but he did want to learn a few tunes like “The Man Who Has Plenty of Good Peanuts” and “Bohunkus” before he did so. He had spent an evening on Wagner’s “To an Evening Star,” which was apparently a selection for the recital. “The Lost Chord” was also flagged, but Joseph didn’t know what opera it came from.

Here I am, speaking to you, you are trying not to listen, but you are listening all the same, and you hear my voice no differently than you see my face, my dress, the lace you always loved, and how would you like it if my lace were taken from me, torn from my neck and sleeves? and suppose that is all you saw then, scraps of me, pieces and remnants that became me — your mother now is a rag of lace — well, that is what the phone is doing, cutting off your voice like the nose from your face, so there is no smile where your teeth show, no gestures; this rude tube is setting you adrift in darkness, only your voice is allowed to remain, a ghost like that cat in the story who is all whiskers. It is an evil business that black phone is doing.

Joseph did for a time believe it.

But the songbook was a good fairy. Or so it seemed. After three weeks Joseph still had not returned it, caught up as he was in its traditions, its ardent sentimentalities, its violent bravadoes, and its innocence. Most of all, though, he was charmed by its idiocies. He had singsonged the words of “The Low-Backed Car” for Marjorie between bursts of healing laughter. They debated what a low-backed car was and decided it had to be a kind of pickup truck or farm wagon because the lyrics began:

When first I saw sweet Peggy,

’Twas on a market day.

A low-backed car she drove and sat

Up on a truss of hay …

Then they considered the copyright dates, which were 1909 and 1913, in order to calculate the age of the automobile. Since some of the songs were Civil War or earlier, the book’s two birthdays weren’t much help. The picture of Peggy perched upon a bale of hay was almost perfect, but as the song went on, its absurdities improved.

Sweet Peggy, round her car, sir,

Has strings of ducks and geese,

But the scores of hearts she slaughters,

By far outnumber these;

While she among her poultry sits,

Just like a turtledove,

Well worth the cage, I do engage,

Of the blooming god of love!

While she sits in her low-backed car,

The lovers come near and far

And envy the chicken

That Peggy is pickin’,

As she sits in the low-backed car.

For several days Marjorie imagined herself pickin’ chicken at her no-backed desk. Joseph blew her kisses as he passed. She responded by pulling imaginary feathers from her rolladeck. These fooleries were observed, but only once and at a distance, by Miss Moss, who was not amused and scurried off to her dungeon cell. Joseph had to arrive soon after with a request for glue and, by the way, letting her in on the joke lest she read into the kiss blowing more than was appropriate. The jealousies that lay between the two women were beginning to be more than an inconvenience that required delicacy and tact; their animosities were moving into Joseph’s mind like raccoons into an attic.

Still, the days were endurable and came and went like breath with only a few deep heaves to harm the pace. Joseph scraped by though he often felt like a scoured plate, just a bit cleaner than he thought cleanliness required. Along Quick Creek the winds picked up. They bowled through overhanging trees, rolled leaves down streets and sidewalks, rattled loose shutters, and hurried the streams. Sometimes, toward evening when the day cooled, flakes fell like little announcements. Miriam’s mums were rusty now as iron, and raindrops stung. They had been hail when they left their cloud. The Bumbler ran between towns with the sleepy regularity of the bus, while Joseph enjoyed Ohio’s dippy hills — the sumacs red as a poison label as if warning the others of the colors’ coming. Joseph became a regular at the church and frequently played on an old upright at its child-care center. He sometimes sang an old lyric or two in his thin, rather sharp voice. The kids loved “Polly-Wolly-Doodle” but, because of the congregation’s racial mix, Joseph had to be careful, he explained to Marjorie, not to let them hear the third verse, which went “Oh I came to a river, an’ I couldn’t get across, / Sing Polly-wolly-doodle all the day. / An’ I jump’d upon a nigger, an’ I tho’t he was a hoss, / Sing Polly-wolly-doodle all the day.”

It didn’t sound so bad when sung. Marjorie laughed, mostly in surprise, at the awkward rhyme. Is that what music did to affairs of the heart, to military anthems, to futile calls upon God, to sadness and loss? Even the most ordinary tunes could enliven exhausted sentiments and make acceptable some of the cruelest and coarsest of human attitudes. Things too silly to say can always be safely sung, he said, quoting some forgotten source. Joseph would play while softly singing “Tell me the tales that to me were so dear, / Long, long ago, long long ago; / Sing me the songs I delighted to hear, / Long long ago, long ago,” and every time he did he felt a twinge, as if he had lost a lover once, as if he owned a black man he could mount, supposing him a horse, or even as if he had lived “long long ago,” in a place called “yesterday,” enjoying the golden haze of wheat-filled hills or corn-green fields, strolling amid sunlit houses, standing at the edges of placid ice-cold lakes. Polly-wolly-doodle — it’s okay — do-dah-day — come out and play — hip-hip-hooray. Miss Withers would have sung her songs to chairs as armless as wounded soldiers. President Palfry would broadcast his beaming countenance without a fee. And the alumni would go away relieved of their savings for a rainy day.

Having had the experience twice already in his life, Joseph knew that on the next Fourth of July the national anthem was going to be bellowed by buxom ladies until it was as worn as the banner, and parades would feature survivors of foreign wars, limping along on roads lined by a national pride that waved paper flags stapled to brittle little sticks. Joseph’s world suddenly fell into the blahs as though into a bucket. Or down a drain that gurgled as if it had a stomach. He had them, the twelve blahs of Christmas. Perhaps the unromantic truth was that painters made poverty picturesque and Christ’s suffering grandly dramatic. He remembered how blood traced a graceful path down the Savior’s speared side; how architects built great halls to hold the egos of tyrants; and sculptors made Lenin’s ignoble nose look as if it deserved its own coin.

Joseph’s mother loved “The Man with the Hoe.” Maybe it reminded her of the farm life she had once enjoyed. Anyhow, it made her feel good, about what he wasn’t sure. Salomé cavorting with the head of John the Baptist, flames consuming sinners, pre-Romans raping Sabine women, were all highly acceptable subjects. Congregations of good people still sang “The Son of God Goes Forth to War.” “His blood red banner streams afar.” He tried to remember that the Christian soldiers of the popular hymn only marched as to war, and, when they had to do it, dressed like the people who put out pots for pennies to help the poor. They did their ring-a-dings at corners and the doors of stores. Ho-ho-ho. Blah-la-la. Christmas — with the gifts neither he nor his mother could afford arranged around it — terrified him.