Dancing at the Rascal Fair

by Ivan Doig

  hoof and shoe, stag and mare,

  dancing at the rascal fair.

  Davie whipped through the last of his tasks as if afraid my lunacy might be catching. “Is there anything more, Mr. McCaskill?”

  “You’ve more than earned supper, Davie. And thank you the world, for your help here.” I fished in my pocket and handed him a coin. From the size of Davie’s eyes it was more of a coin than I’d intended, but no matter.

  There was a thing more I wanted done, but I needed to be the doer. I went to the freshly washed blackboard and in my best hand, which was an urchin’s scrawl compared to Anna Ramsay’s, wrote large the next verse to come:

  Dancing at the rascal fair,

  moon and star, fire and air,

  choose your mate and make a pair,

  dancing at the rascal fair.

  By last light of Saturday, the sun behind the peak called Phantom Woman and dusk graying the valley, people came. Rob and Judith. The Duffs and Erskines. I scattered oatmeal on the floor to help the moonbeams with our gliding. George Frew as ever was our fiddler, and the night began with the high beautiful tune of Green Glens of Strath Spey. I took a diplomatic first turn with George’s Mavis, toward convincing her that while I might never run a school the way she did, my dancing made up for it.

  The first time we earliest dancers stopped to blow, Rob glanced over his shoulder to be sure Mavis Frew née Milgrim was nowhere in hearing and declared, “This place definitely dances better since you’re the schoolkeeper, McAngus. What, have you put bed springs under the floor?”

  I was gazing around fondly, awaiting what—who—I knew would come. Must come. “Owe it to George, not me. He fiddles better as a married man.”

  Judith put in, “There’s a lesson there for you, Angus.”

  “You mean if I married, I’d be able to play the fiddle? Judith, that’s surprising. What would I need to do to be able to play the piano?”

  Rob chortled and batted my shoulder while Judith mocked a huff and declared: “Angus McCaskill, you are just impossible.” Ah, Judith, but I no longer was. I was purely possible. I was possibility with its wings ready, these days. “You have me right,” I mollified Judith though, “yet would you dance with me anyhow? Rob, there’s paper and pen in my desk there, if you’d care to jot down for yourself how Judith and I do this.”

  “I’m lending her to you with two sound feet, so bring her back unbroken, hear?” he stipulated.

  “Unbroken, nothing. She’ll be downright improved.” And Judith and I swung away together, Rob’s two closest people in this world, who once had kissed hotly at one of these gatherings and could grin a little rue at each other that we never would again.

  Archie and Grace Findlater came. The Shepherd’s Schottische. The Hahns and Petersons and Van Bebbers came. The Herring Lasses’ Reel. The Roziers from down the main creek, the Kuuvuses and Sedgwicks from town, they came and came.

  “Angus, lad, you can hear this schoolhouse of yours a mile down the road.” Lucas! And Nancy on his arm. This major night had brought even them.

  “What, did you turn the Medicine Lodge over to the customers?” I asked incredulous.

  “The same as. Toussaint showed up in town today, and so he’s tending the saloon for me tonight. If you can call that tending—giving away a drink to anybody who has a story Toussaint wants to hear, which is to say everybody.” Nancy, brown beside Lucas’s ruddiness, already was making heads turn here and there in the dance crowd. “But there’s more to life than what you can put in your pocket, ay?” concluded Lucas, squaring himself and casting a resolute look around my thronged schoolroom. “Good evening there, Ninian,” he called as that lanky figure capered past, “you’re as spry as King David up on his hind feet.” I thought the beard was going to drop off Ninian when he saw Lucas here. Then Rob and Judith were beside us, a last dab of startlement on Rob’s face as he said: “You didn’t tell me we were going to have this pleasure, Lucas.”

  “I didn’t want to spoil the surprise, Robbie. Nancy and I thought we’d come learn how to shake a leg.”

  When that didn’t bring anything from Rob except a smile as neutral as he could make it, I rapidly inserted, “This is definitely the learning place and they tell me I’m the teacher. Nancy, may I have the first honor?” And next quick thing, out on the floor Lucas was paired with Judith, one handless sleeve on her back and the other meeting the grasp of her hand in the musical air, while Nancy went into the swirl with me—she did not really dance but moved quietly with me, a dark-eyed visitor from an earlier people.

  After that tune, Lucas regathered Nancy and took her across to greet Sedge and Lila just as if he hadn’t seen them a dozen times that day. Evening proceeded toward night. On and on the music flowed and the sweat rolled. Thank heaven George Frew’s fiddling left arm was as oaken as the rest of him. Sedge taught us a square dance called Bunch to the Middle and we danced it until the floor would remember every step of it.

  By the holy, I loved these people. This night I loved all of Scotch Heaven, the Two Medicine country, Montana, America, the sky over and the earth under. Who could not?

  What I loved strongest of all entered now through my schoolroom doorway in a dark blue skirt and white shirtwaist and an ivory brooch at her throat. Anna. And her mother and father—surprisingly unprepossessing, for a pair who had given mankind such a gift—and others from Noon Creek, the Wainwrights and Egans and and Isaac Reese, all come in one wagon, and now entering our tuneful school eager for the reward of that ride.

  “Welcome across the waters to Scotch Heaven,” Rob called out to this delegation and drew a laugh from all. The South Fork and North Fork and Noon Creek taken together, you could still skim your hat across.

  “Brung the Ramsays along to translate for us,” gruffed the rancher Thad Wainwright. “I damn well might’ve known, the only heaven I’d get into I need to learn to talk Scotch to do it.”

  Hoping for battle-axe avoidance this first night, I waited until Anna’s mother and father took a dance together, then seized my chance to go over and greet Anna alone. “I see your chalk keeps talking after school, too,” she said of my rascal fair verse in white on the blackboard. Which I took as approval, on the grounds that it didn’t seem to be disapproval.

  “That chalk must have caught the habit somewhere. Do you know, it took me by the hand as I was walking past and made me write that?”

  “I suppose you objected strenuously all the while?”

  “Objecting is a thing I try not to believe in, particularly the strenuous kind. Just for example, Miss Ramsay, I’m hoping you won’t object to a turn around the floor with me right now? Sir Patrick MacWhirr wasn’t meant to be stood to.”

  A flicker went through her steady eyes, but if that was hesitation I’ll never mind a dose so small. Here came something else I’d hoped, her sidelong half-smile. Then up came her hand, writing in the air between us as if onto her Noon Creek blackboard. I waited, yes, astonished, while whatever it was got elaborately spelled into the atmosphere of my schoolroom. When done, she pronounced for me with vast amused deliberation: “unobjectionable.” And onto the dance floor I pranced with her.

  To Noroway, to Noroway!

  To Noroway over the foam!

  The King’s fair bride from Noroway—

  oh, Sir Pat, Sir Pat, Sir Pat, Sir Pat!—

  ’Tis thee must sail and bring her home!

  “I’ll need to see whether there’s a floor left for my pupils, after tonight.”

  “If there’s not, you will have to teach outside as did the ancient Greeks.”

  “Outside, were they. Small wonder all they ever knew how to talk was Greek. Think the tongues they’d speak if they’d gone to school to the pair of us.” She had to smile fully at that, and so did my heart. Anna was alive with loveliness, she was mine in my arms for as long as I could make the moment. “And what would they think of this at the Brechin dame school?”

  I saw the new moon, late yester e’en,

&n
bsp; with the old moon in her arm!

  If we go to sea, oh my dear queen—

  oh, dear queen, dear queen, dear queen, dear queen!—

  I fear we must come to harm!

  “They would think this Scotch Heaven of yours is a shameless place.” My heart keeled sideways. “Cavorting in a place of learning. See up there, even your presidents think so.” The jounce of the dancing had tilted Washington and Lincoln toward each other, and they did look like two old streetcorner solemns, confiding the world’s latest waywardness to each other.

  “I hope that’s not what you think,” I hoped desperately.

  “If a schoolhouse is the only place big enough for a dance,” she postulated, “then the schoolhouse should be used.”

  “My own thought, exactly. And so we’ll be dancing next at Noon Creek, will we?”

  I particularly meant the two of us. She only granted, “The school board has the say of any dance. But I’ll not object.”

  The sails were hoist on Mononday morn,

  the wind came up on Wenensday!

  It blew and blew and blew so forlorn—

  oh, Sir Pat and Queen, Sir Pat and Queen!—

  blew Sir Pat and Queen from Noroway!

  I bided my time for a small eternity—it must have been fully the next two tunes’ worth—before dancing with her again. But the wait was worth it, for during this circuit of the floor she sanctioned my suggestion that “Miss Ramsay” and “Mister McCaskill” might just as well be discarded to give “Anna” and “Angus” some wear. My aim this night was to dance with Anna enough times to begin to ratify us as a couple, yet not so many as to alarm her. So I didn’t mind—much—when Allan Frew took a turn with her. From his doggish look toward me I knew that Allan knew I would pound him back to milkteeth if he tried seriously to get in my way with Anna. She even went a few rounds with Isaac Reese and made him and his drooping mustache look almost presentable. Then Rob danced with Anna to Brig of Dee while I did with Judith, and I saw Judith’s eyebrow inch up at Rob’s nonstop chat there, but I knew that was just him being him. I thanked my stars that Rob was not in the running with me for Anna. Indeed, peer along the lovelit road ahead as far as I could, I saw no one else who was. Which was wondrous and sobering and exhilarating and bewildering and intimidating and sublime all in the same pot together.

  So spirited was Brig of Dee that it made Thad Wainwright come by and announce, “Angus and Rob, I got to hand it to you. You Scotchmen sure do know how to make feet move. Only one thing missing from tonight, so far’s I can tell. How come no bagpipes?”

  Lord of mercy, when was the rest of mankind going to quit thinking of us as wild Highlanders? Past Thad I caught Rob’s eye-rolling look, and if Lucas hadn’t been across the room trading sheep theories with Willy Hahn, I knew he’d have given a response that would rattle the room. The soul of moderation, I only told Thad: “We thought there’s enough wind in this country without making more.”

  “It’s kind of disappointing though, you know? With all you Scotchmen here under one roof, the rest of us figured we were going to see some real flinging.” The Noon Creek rancher chuckled a regret and moved on.

  Moon and star, fire and air,/choose your mate and make a pair,/dancing at the rascal fair, my verse on the blackboard spoke to me over Thad’s retreating shoulder. It made me remember aloud to Rob: “Fergus the Dervish!”

  Rob roared a laugh. “Fergus and his Highland whoops! He’d show old Thad some steps.”

  “Why don’t we? The two of us saw Fergus enough times at the rascal fair.”

  “You think we can?”

  “Man, is there something we can’t do?”

  “We haven’t found it yet, have we. You’re right, you’re right, it will take Barclay and McCaskill to show these Noon Creek geezers what dancing is.”

  “McCaskill and Barclay,” I set him straight, “but you’re correct enough other than that. See if our man Geoge can play Tarn Lin, why not, while I tend to the rest.”

  Apprehensively, Judith began: “Now, you two—”

  “No, love, it’s we three, you’re into this, too. And whoever Angus can inveigle into risking her—”

  I was across the room before my feet knew they were moving. I hadn’t a wisp of a clue as to how this person Anna would react to a dancing exhibition. Here was the time of times to find out.

  “It’s all for the cause of education, of course,” I prattled to her while those direct blue eyes worked on me. “Instruction for the world at large, think of it as.”

  The smile I wanted began to sidle onto her face. “I’ll believe you,” granted Miss Anna Ramsay, and lightly grasped the arm I proffered, “but thousands would not.”

  With Anna gloriously beside me, I hadn’t even a qualm about attempting the next impossibility across the room.

  “SING?!” Lucas repeated as if I’d asked him to shed all his clothing. “Angus, what in goddamn hell”—he stoppered that because of Anna’s presence, but there still was considerable flame in his next try. “Angus, lad, I hate to say that your common sense flew out the hole in your hat, but asking for singing from me . . .”

  “Lucas, you’re the only other one of us here who’s been to the rascal fair and watched old Fergus. If Rob and I are going to step out here and show how it’s done in Nethermuir, we need you to sing the tune of it.”

  Lucas was shaking his head vehemently when Anna spoke in firm fashion: “Mr. Barclay, we in Brechin always heard that the men of Nethermuir are brothers to the lark.”

  That halted his head. “Well, yes, I know that was always said,” Lucas confirmed without undue modesty. “We once in a while even said something of the sort ourselves. Tam Lin, did you mention, Angus?” I nodded. Lucas swallowed as if to be sure he had a throat there, then looked at Nancy. If answer passed between them I never saw it, but Lucas now said: “All right, all right, if I can remember any word of it.”

  Oh, you must beware, maidens all,

  who wear gold in your hair

  don’t come or go by Linfield Hall

  for young Tam Lin is there.

  • • •

  Dark and deep lay the wood of night

  and eerie was the way

  as fair Janet with hair so bright

  toward Linfield Hall did stray.

  I grant that other nationalities are known to dance, but it is my hypothesis that they must have learned how from the Scots. You can’t but admit that a land of both John Knox and Robert Burns is nimble, and we like to think that quality comes out on us at both ends, head and feet. Earlier that night I danced a reel with Flora Duff, who was wide as any other two women there, and she moved like a rumor. And now Rob and Judith and Anna and I were the four-hearted dancer of all dancers, gliding to and from, following the weave of the tune, answering Lucas’s un-heavenly but solid voice with the melody of ourselves, saluting the night and life with our every motion and capping them all with the time-stopping instant when Rob and I faced one another, each with a hand on a hip and the other arm bent high above head, and our two throats as one flung the exultant Highland cry, hiiyuhh!

  Her skirt was of the grass-green silk,

  her cloak of velvet fine.

  Around her neck so white as milk

  her fox-red furs entwine.

  About the dead hour of the night

  she heard Tam’s bridles ring.

  Her maidenly heart beat with might,

  her pulse began to sing.

  Put away geography and numeration and the presidents from yon to hither, pupils of mine and of my partner in whirl Anna, and write for us books of that dance. Scissor her lovely profile down the left of your pages and in eternal ink say how forthright she is even when set to music. Miss Ramsay seems to look into the face of the tune in the air and say, yes, you are what music should be. Make an exact report of the way she and I blend into a single dancing figure and then shift swiftly into two again and next meld with Rob and Judith. You will please find a line somewhere there,
too, for the heady Scotch Heaven serenade this schoolroom has never heard before tonight: hiiiyuhhh!

  She heard the horseman’s silv’ry call,

  ‘Come braid your golden hair

  in the fine manse of Linfield Hall

  for I, Tam Lin, am there.’

  She went within that hall of Lin

  fair Janet on her ride

  and now you maidens know wherein

  dwell Tam Lin and his bride.

  HiiiiYUHHHH!

  Our final whoop, Rob and I agreed, could have been heard by old Fergus the Dervish himself wherever he was cavorting in Scotland just then.

  The crowd too gave us whoops and hoots and claps of commendation as we two pairs of flingers vacated the floor to merely mortal dancers and Lucas accepted bravos from all directions. Escorting Anna off—I could have made a career of just that—I asked, “Don’t you suppose that changed their minds any about schoolhouse dances, over across in Brechin?”

  Where she held my arm I felt a lightest affirming squeeze. “If anything could,” was her voice’s lilting version.

  When I reluctantly left Anna’s side, I saw Rob gesture for me to come over where he and Judith were catching their breath between chat with Archie and Grace Findlater. Rob had a strange distant smile on him. As I came up, he gripped my shoulder. “I have to hand it to you, Angus, you do get an idea now and again.”

  I must have grinned like a moonchild, for Rob’s head went from side to side and he expostulated, “No, no, I don’t mean her. Any man with one eye that’ll open could get that idea. What I mean is our Fergus fling. Angus, it made me think back to all our rascal fairs together and Nethermuir.”

  “What, are you growing sentimental in your old age?”

  He gave me the caught smile of a mildly guilty boy. Whatever this was about, it had put that joyous shine on him of the day we stood on the Greenock dock. But he said only, “The surprises of this thing life. A person just never does know, does he.” George Frew’s fiddle began The Soldier Lad’s Love’s Lament. “And now that I’ve danced with you, McAngus, do you mind overmuch if I take a turn with my wife?”

  I got myself beside Anna one last time as the goodbyeing was going on, and began: “You know, of course, tonight was a mark your Noon Creek dance will have to match.”