Last Song Sung

by David A. Poulsen

  And then there was the CD. Why leave a CD of a song if its lyrics weren’t significant? Were they left by Ellie as a kind of come-and-find-me plea? If so, why lyrics? Why not just a note saying “I’m alive and living in Wichita, Kansas. Please come and get me”?

  But there was a CD. And there was also the thorny little matter of who had left it in the car.

  I had continued south, eventually curving east on Canyon Meadows Drive, then north on Macleod Trail, heading back toward Stampede Park and downtown. I was still a few blocks from what older Calgarians still called “the Stampede Grounds” when I decided I’d worked myself into a foul mood and needed to do something about it.

  I stopped at a bar, the Blind Beggar Pub, not because I was especially craving a beer, but mostly just to chill, maybe hear some music … or even snippets of conversation. I’d been to the place before and figured it would work for what I wanted. Some people around, but not a ton of noise.

  Once settled at a back corner table, I tried to force thoughts of my meeting with the Scubberds into the back of my mind. Not easy, as the magnitude of what I’d done and what I may have opened myself up to became clearer.

  I spent a half hour scribbling in my day planner and nursing a Big Rock Traditional. I read over what I’d written and realized I hadn’t progressed much beyond my earlier doubts. I very much wanted to be able to tell Monica Brill what had happened to her grandmother, but I was less and less optimistic that we’d be able to do it. Fifty years is just too damn long. I looked up from my notes and realized I’d vented my frustration out loud. Two women with big hair and stern mouths were staring unhappily at me.

  A check of my watch told me it was time to head home, get showered and changed for our dinner date and lyrics bee. I toasted the disgruntled ladies with the last of my ale and headed for the door.

  We had congregated at the Chianti Café at the south end of Macleod Trail. It had become a favourite of Jill’s and mine, and Cobb admitted he’d wanted to try the place for a long time. The pre-dinner conversation was light: Cobb’s son Peter’s school anecdotes, Kyla’s laughter at what high school apparently held in store for her.

  Cobb shook his head after his son’s account of sneaking a Big Mac meal into math class and consuming the whole thing without once attracting the attention of the teacher.

  “My son has not set the bar all that high in the area of academic performance.”

  “I’m passing everything, Dad.”

  “Remind me. Your last math mark was?”

  “Fifty-eight percent,” Peter replied, with only a trace of guilt.

  “But I bet he’s amazing in foods class,” Kyla said, which dissolved all of us into laughter and earned her a high-five from Peter.

  Dinner was a potpourri of fettuccine, lasagna, veal, spaghetti, and gnocchi, and all of it disappeared quickly amongst appreciative — and hungry — diners. The adults, without anyone actually suggesting it, limited ourselves to one glass of wine, all of us apparently aware that the lyrics puzzle would require full and clear-headed attention.

  As we were waiting for the dessert — tiramisu all around — Cobb chuckled and cleared his throat. “Before we get down to the serious business of unlocking the secrets of the mystery lyrics, I should update you on another fascinating element in our investigation. Well, actually, Adam would be the best person to tell you about it. Adam, why don’t you share with the group some of the more memorable moments from the tip line?”

  If there had still been a knife on the table, I’d have plunged it into Cobb’s heart, then pleaded temporary insanity. His suggestion was greeted by several voices. “Oh, yeah, tell us about it, Adam.”

  So I did. Bernie’s calls were a big hit, especially with the younger diners, and I have to admit I did a pretty fair job of recreating Bernie’s spectacularly annoying voice.

  The dinner over and the table cleared, it was time to get down to what had brought us there. I had made copies of the lyrics and passed them around the table, even though some had already seen them and brought their copies with them.

  “Okay,” I said. “There’s only one ground rule. And that is that there are no ground rules. No one needs to worry about saying or asking something stupid. The truth is, Mike and I have studied the hell out of the words on this page and have no idea what any of it means. So any and all suggestions will be welcome. I’ll take notes so that we can keep track of people’s ideas.

  “And just so you know how it actually sounds, I recorded the song on my phone so you can all hear it.” I played it for them twice. A few heads nodded, but no one spoke.

  There was general nodding around the table, and everyone buried their heads for a few minutes, either seeing the words for the first time or refreshing their memories of what they’d seen before. Though I could damn near recite the thing by heart, I refreshed my memory.

  Dream of a Dying

  Summer sun. Summer fun. Some were done

  They walked the gentle path

  At first asking only that the wind and rain wash their shaking hands

  Stopping peace to fame

  That person’s name

  Man at the mike … so, so bad

  But good at play

  And always the sadness, the love over and over

  The long man points and tells

  An owl sits and stares, sound around and through his feathered force

  So much like the other place. And so different …

  Midnight. Not yesterday, not tomorrow. A time with no day of its own

  The last of sun. The last of fun. The last time won

  They circle the windswept block

  At first telling the youngest ones it’s only a dream

  See the balloons, hear them popping

  Are they balloons?

  No more the sadness, the hate over and over

  The long man points and tells

  An owl sits and stares, sound around and through his feathered force

  Midnight. Not yesterday, not tomorrow. A time with no day of its own

  For a while it looked like no one was going to say anything, perhaps nervous despite my pep talk about saying something that made them look dumb.

  Jill was the first to speak. “Okay, the first thing I looked at was the shaking hands in the third line. I asked myself what might cause shaking hands, and I came up with cold, fear, or anxiety, someone elderly, maybe with Parkinson’s or something like it … or maybe they’re shaking from working really hard, maybe lifting something. I ruled out cold, because the first line talks about summer sun.”

  “That’s good,” I said, and jotted down Jill’s thoughts in the margin next to the third line. Then I looked up. “I’m still puzzling over that first line: Summer sun. Summer fun. Some were done. Other than the rhyme, what’s the writer saying there?”

  Lindsay Cobb frowned and tapped the paper with a pencil she’d dug out of her purse. “Sounds to me like something’s going on — you know, like the Stampede — summer sun, summer fun.… Maybe the some were done is talking about people who are tired at the end of a long day of walking around looking at things or doing stuff at a fair, or something like it.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “Or maybe not a fair … something less, something with a gentle path?”

  “Like the lake, a gentle path near the water?” Jill wondered.

  “I don’t know,” Mike said. “I mean, that sounds like a possibility, but later there’s a mention of balloons — sounds more celebratory than a day or weekend at the lake.”

  Jill nodded. “Good point. And it’s raining, so maybe whatever it is, it’s just a one- or two-day event, not like the Stampede, ten days long.”

  “Back in ’65, the Stampede was just six days,” I said, “but I see what you mean.”

  “Stopping peace to fame. That person’s name.” Lindsay pointe
d at her page. “I wonder if whoever that person is might be important.”

  “I’ll bet they are,” Peter chimed in, the first of the kids to venture an idea. “I was reading a thing the other day about this really old song, ‘You’re So Vain.’ You should know that one, Dad, it’s from your era.”

  “Carly Simon,” I said. “Which I guess makes me really old too.” I grinned at Cobb, who was shaking his head.

  “Anyway,” Peter went on, “the song is about this really rich dude who is kind of a jerk to the chick and is totally in love with himself. She never says the guy’s name, but the story I was reading said it was … oh, damn, I can’t remember …”

  “Warren Beatty,” Jill said.

  “Really?” I said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Guess that puts me in the really old club too,” Jill chuckled. “Anyway, that’s one theory.”

  “Sorry about the old remark — I was mostly talking about Dad,” Peter said.

  “I’ll have to kill ’im.” Cobb glared at his son, although I was pretty sure there was some smile in the voice.

  “Peter may have something, though.” I stared again at the words. “There is an implied person in here who could have some significance.”

  “Stopping peace to fame.” Cobb looked back at the lyrics. “Any ideas there?”

  No one said anything for a while. Jill shook her head. “I’ve got nothing.”

  There was general shaking of heads around the table, as apparently everyone was experiencing the same difficulty with that section.

  “The man at the mike? Thoughts there?”

  “I wonder if the person whose name we don’t have is the same person who’s really bad at the microphone.” Mike rubbed his chin and looked at me. I shrugged a noncommittal response.

  Around the table there was pretty much the same universal lack of ideas.

  I stared at the line on the page. “All we know is that he was really bad. Singer? Emcee? Or bad as in a total jerk? Hard to say.”

  The truth was, I was beginning to think that our family get-together might have been equally productive if we had been playing Scrabble. I knew people were trying, but it felt like one more nail in the coffin called the Ellie Foster case.

  “That brings me to something else,” Jill said. “I have two copies of the lyrics: the first one you gave me, and the one you handed out today. They’re not identical.”

  “Yeah, I saw that, too,” I said.

  “There’s one word that’s different — maybe it’s just a typo, or maybe it’s not.”

  Everyone leaned a little closer to the table to see the two versions Jill had in front of her.

  “Line six,” she said, pointing to the page. “In this one it says, That person’s name, but in the first one you gave me, it says, That pearson’s name.”

  “Yeah, I saw that, too. Probably a typo,” I said.

  Cobb shook his head. “Maybe. Maybe not.” He looked at Jill. “So you’re thinking that Peter’s unnamed person is actually named and the name is Pearson.”

  “That should make it easy,” I said. “There can’t have been more than a couple jillion Pearsons in Canada.”

  The group was suddenly stone-faced, and I knew my attitude was the cause.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Don’t pay any attention to me. I’m just frustrated.”

  “One of those jillion Pearsons was a prime minister.” The speaker was Cobb’s daughter, Layne, who was only nine and until now had been concentrating on her phone. Peter looked at his little sister in something akin to amazement, apparently having concluded she would have nothing useful to contribute to the evening.

  “You learned that in school? And remembered it?”

  “We studied Canada in social studies. And yeah, I remembered it.” She threw in a roll of the eyes to indicate her feeling for her brother at that moment.

  “Lester B. Pearson,” Kyla added. “I can’t remember exactly when, though.”

  “On it,” Pete said and bent over his tablet.

  Cobb leaned forward, his brow furrowed. “I’ve got nothing on the love and sadness or the tall man pointing, but I’m wondering … owl in French is hibou.”

  “Le Hibou was the coffee house Ellie played shortly before the gig at The Depression,” I explained to the group.

  “Wow,” Jill said. “That feels like it could be significant.”

  “Just a sec, I’m getting behind here,” I said as I furiously scribbled notes.

  After a couple of minutes, Lindsay Cobb mused, “And the thing about sound.… Music is sound.”

  “Damn, look at that,” I said.

  “What?” At least three of them said it at the same time.

  “That next line.” I pointed, actually excited about what we were doing for the first time. “So much like the other place. And so different … That could be The Tumbling Mustard.”

  “What’s a Tumbling Mustard?” Kyla asked.

  I gave them the Coles Notes version of what I’d learned about The Tumbling Mustard, including the comments from Paula Pendergast.

  “So much like the other place — they were both places where music was played, but according to at least a couple of people, there were big differences, too.”

  Jill was nodding. “If that singer, Paula, is right, and it wasn’t about the music like the other clubs were, could it have been about something else, maybe even something criminal? Maybe drugs? Or something else altogether?”

  “Got it.” Peter looked up from his device. “Lester B. Pearson, prime minister of Canada, 1963 to 1968.”

  “That one feels a little flimsy to me.” I tapped the line on the paper and shot an apologetic look at Layne, who had gone back to her phone but was clearly listening. She shrugged in reaction to my doubts.

  “It could just as easily be a typo and nothing more,” I continued. “Or some songwriter or bartender or anybody named Pearson.”

  “Could be.” Cobb nodded slowly.

  “Or not,” his wife added.

  Cobb continued to nod. “Or not,” he repeated. There was silence for a while as everyone bent to the task again.

  “I saw a show on TV once,” Kyla said. “It was about a school shooting somewhere in the United States. And I remember the reporter was talking to some of the kids after, and a couple of them said that at first they thought it was a bunch of balloons popping.”

  “I’m pretty sure I saw something like that once, too,” Peter added.

  “And asking Are they balloons? could be something like that” — Lindsay looked at her husband — “couldn’t it?”

  “Telling the youngest ones it’s only a dream.” Jill spoke slowly, thinking as she formed the words. “Maybe there was something they saw that scared small children, and parents told them it was a dream? I don’t know … I feel like I’m floundering, just trying to attach meaning to stuff I don’t understand.”

  “Okay, let’s look at what we’ve got.” I looked down at my notes. “A summer event of some kind, maybe like a fair. It talks about summer sun and rain, so hard to figure that part.… We’re told it’s at a place with a gentle path. The two folk clubs in Ottawa — Le Hibou and The Tumbling Mustard — might play a role. And there are balloons, so that reinforces the idea of a festival or something like that, whether it’s a one-day thing or longer. And the then prime minister may be mentioned, or he may not be. What am I missing?”

  “So maybe Ottawa is a part of this,” Cobb said. “Ellie played there not long before she came to Calgary, and we know she’d played there at least a couple of other times previously as well. And there might be a reference to Le Hibou in here, and maybe even The Tumbling Mustard. Feels like Ottawa could be important.”

  “And the prime minister lives and works in Ottawa,” Lindsay Cobb noted. “So if it is Pearson who’s talked about, yeah, Ottawa seems
to be a theme in the lyrics.”

  “Just a sec,” Peter said suddenly. “There was something I saw in the thing about Pearson online. Let me check again.”

  “Okay, while he’s checking, what else have we got? Balloons popping that could sound like gunshots. We’ve got a bad guy at the mike.… I wish we could piece some of it together so that it actually made sense.”

  “Whoa,” Peter said.

  “What?” Cobb looked at his son.

  “So Lester B. Pearson was his name, right?”

  There was a nodding of heads.

  “Anyone want to guess what his nickname was?”

  “Nobody wants to guess, Peter,” Cobb said. “So forget the drama and give it to us.”

  “It was Mike.” It wasn’t Peter who said it, but Jill. “I don’t know where that came from, but I remember that. Mike Pearson.”

  Peter looked crestfallen.

  “The man at the mike?” Maybe a play on words?” Lindsay Cobb wondered.

  “This whole thing feels like a play on words,” I said.

  “Maybe,” Jill said. “Sorry, Peter. I didn’t mean to steal your thunder.”

  Peter smiled. “It’s okay, because I’ve got something else that might fit too.”

  “What is it, Peter?”

  “That line, where is it — something about peace and fame?”

  “It’s right here,” Kyla said. “Stopping peace to fame, right before That person’s — or Pearson’s — name, and then Man at the mike … so, so bad.”

  Peter nodded. “Pearson was famous before he became prime minister. Guess what for.”

  This time nobody spoke, letting Peter make his announcement.

  “He won the Nobel Prize for Peace.”

  No one said anything for a while. Lindsay Cobb patted her son’s shoulder and nodded. Cobb finally said, “Peace to fame … good job, Pete.”

  “So maybe it is Pearson,” Jill said.

  “Could be, but what about him?” Cobb sat back and stared at the ceiling.