Fiddler's Green, Or a Wedding, a Ball, and the Singular Adventures of Sundry Moss

by Van Reid

  Sundry paused over one or the other of these statements. He had taken note of the little girl’s expression. Tim, too, stood nearby, looking indefinite. “Yes,” he said. “Thank you.” He went to the table and sat opposite Melanie. “You have cousins in Brownville, Mr. Ring?” he said.

  Burne looked as if he might say, “What if I do?” or, “There are a lot of people who know my business,” but he vaguely recognized the tall young man. For almost a week, Burne had been drying out (and not entirely of his own will and choosing). He had seen visions and shaken his bed to pieces till he thought he was near death, nursed on small beer and barely aware of several people watching over him, including his tiny daughter. He could not say to whom he was indebted, and so he said nothing.

  Sundry appeared not to notice the scarcity of reply, but he surveyed the faces of Melanie and Tim before going on to other things.

  “Betty says you had a wonderful time last night,” said Minerva.

  It was perhaps more than Sundry had actually revealed, or actually meant to reveal. “It was very nice,” he said, and they were not sure whether this was meant as wry understatement or a signal of indifference.

  “The gowns must have been beautiful,” said Minerva.

  “They were,” said Sundry, “and some of the people in them, too.”

  “Don’t go pestering Mr. Moss about his night,” said Mabel. She was frying up some eggs and sausage for Sundry.

  Burne stared at his plate but didn’t appear to see it. Thaddeus stood to one side of the table, and leaning against the baker’s cabinet, he picked at the biscuit in his hand.

  “That must have been some dance,” said Melanie, who had heard Betty extolling the event (by way of her imagination and prematurely) the day before. Timothy made a face.

  “I don’t know that I was much use,” said Sundry, who continued to represent himself as ill suited for a society ball. “But a waltz is a waltz, I guess, and I don’t think I stepped on anyone’s feet.”

  “It’s a shame there isn’t someone to go along and help Burne find his relatives,” piped Thaddeus without preamble. He did not specifically regard Sundry when he said this, but Mabel otherwise gave the lie away by quickly turning her eyes from the young man.

  Sundry did not appear resentful, though he may have sensed what was intended by this remark; he simply said, “Thank you,” when Mabel laid his breakfast before him. Mabel felt shamed. He was a young man, after all, and not required to bear the burdens that others had taken to themselves. He had an air of competence about him, and they had come to respect the members of the Moosepath League, but it was not for the Sparks to weigh anyone else down with their concerns.

  She would have sent Thaddeus with Burne and his daughter if they could have spared him from running the tavern. She had a raw feeling about Melanie going off with her father. Burne was not fit company, in her mind, and if she could have prevented him from taking his daughter with him, she would have. She and Thaddeus had tried to convince the man to wire the authorities nearest Brownville for information about his relatives or to go ahead himself and send for Melanie when he found them; but he would have none of it, and it was too far a leap of vision for them to consider telling him what he could or could not do with his own daughter.

  Sundry Moss tended to breakfast with the concentration one exerts when one is trying not to concentrate on something. Mabel wished Thaddeus had not spoken, and Thaddeus himself perhaps wished the same, for he simply nodded at nothing when he had finished his biscuit, then returned to the tavern room. Melanie watched him leave, then regarded Mr. Moss as if something had been said and not answered, or as if something had been passed from one man to the other and she wondered what the second man would do with it.

  Mabel was thinking, Uncle Gillie has been putting the rum to him for twenty years or more, and here’s Burne Ring but six years drunk and dying by feet rather than inches! She was indignant with the man for not holding up better, though of course, when she thought about it, she remembered that Uncle Gillie was still in jail for almost flattening a police officer with a piano, so favorable comparisons against Burne’s use to society were a little tenuous.

  “My Uncle Elbridge went to Saco once,” said Sundry without any discernible prompting. “He was looking for a man who owed him six dollars.” No one said, “Oh?” or, “Do tell,” but there was an atmosphere of inquiry in the kitchen. Even Burne frowned and turned to Sundry, but the young man went back to his breakfast.

  Mabel smiled. The children looked more puzzled than ever.

  Annabelle asked, “Did he find him?”

  Sundry looked as if he had forgotten the topic of conversation. “Oh,” he said. “No, he didn’t. But he was down by one of the old tanneries and found a twenty-dollar gold piece in the street and came home.”

  Mabel liked the young man more for this bit of wise nonsense. Mr. Moss might have no intention of going with Burne and Melanie, but he would not hold it against the Sparks that they had almost asked him to. Mabel wished Thaddeus had stayed just a minute longer.

  Burne was still watching Sundry with that puzzled frown.

  “My uncle said he was ahead eleven dollars and thirty-five cents,” Sundry informed them. “After he counted the train fare. He never did see the fellow again.”

  “Did he spend the money?” asked Burne, his voice shaking with weariness. They all were startled to see him come out of his lethargy.

  “Well,” drawled Sundry, “Uncle Elbridge was a saving sort of man, but I think he bought a hat for eighty cents.”

  This seemed to satisfy Burne, and he turned to his breakfast and nibbled on a bit of egg. The two younger children watched him eat, and Mabel tapped Tim on the back of the head to remind him of his manners.

  “I think I’ll be back tonight,” said Sundry, which was as good as a promise. “I might go home to Edgecomb and visit my family tomorrow. No, thank you,” he said to the offer of more breakfast. At the door to the tavern room he stopped to consider Burne and the little girl, looking as if he might say something—perhaps good-bye or good luck. He nodded, raised a hand, and left. They could hear him speak to Thaddeus on the way out.

  “I thought he might go with them,” said Minerva in a low tone.

  “Hush,” said Mabel.

  “Ten dollars and fifty-five cents and a new hat,” said Annabelle. She was quick at figures and sometimes helped her parents with the ledgers. “Pretty good for a trip to Saco.”

  Thaddeus almost apologized to Mr. Moss as the young man came through the tavern room, but the young man was too brisk and the apology too uncertain. Sundry had his hat in his hand, and he waved it to Horace McQuinn and Maven Flyce, who looked as if they hadn’t left the corner table since the night before. Thaddeus stood at the window and watched the young man go down the sidewalk.

  “He’s all business,” said Horace.

  Maven had a substantial portion of his breakfast in his mouth, and he ruminated largely as he stared about the room, his extraordinary cowlick like a signal flag of surprise above his wide-eyed expression.

  “Something sweet in mind,” agreed Thaddeus. “I had half hoped he might have the time to help Burne and his kid make it up to Brownville.”

  “They in need of escort, are they?” said Horace.

  “I’m not sure about the little girl, but Burne is,” said Thaddeus. “She might be better off going without him. Leastwise, people would know to look after her.”

  “Maven will take them,” said Horace.

  “What?” said Thaddeus.

  Maven continued to chew and to look amazed.

  “Oh, Maven’s good at looking after things,” said Horace, himself with wide eyes and a solemn nod. “Steady as an oak.”

  Thaddeus looked almost as puzzled as Maven. The cowlicked man’s narrow form hardly conjured up such a vision, and he appeared, if anything, a little less steady while Horace volunteered his services. The astounded fellow gazed about the room as if he had missed something or as
if there might be another Maven Flyce he hadn’t heard about.

  “Maven’s helped me out many a time,” said Horace proudly. Thaddeus guessed that Horace was referring to his occasional forays into the transportation of unauthorized spirits, and it did seem that if Maven Flyce could help to deliver a cartload of smuggled goods, he should be able to accompany a grown man and a little girl from one railway station to another. Looking at Maven Flyce, however, Thaddeus wasn’t so sure.

  Maven finally swallowed that substantial portion of breakfast, took a breath, and said, “I am so amazed!”

  “Doesn’t surprise me a bit, Maven,” said Horace. He patted his companion’s shoulder as if he were that honored to be his friend. “A regular member of the Moosepath League,” pronounced Horace. “That’s our Maven Flyce.”

  28. Sundry Puts in His Own Oar

  No one back at the Faithful Mermaid could have guessed at the troublesome thoughts behind Sundry Moss’s untroubled expression. Having gone to sleep the night before contemplating his mind’s image of Miss Morningside, he had been wakened by a dream in which Burne Ring and his waiflike daughter had assayed leading roles. It seemed a little unfair, but on that day, almost a week ago, as he carried the stricken Mr. Ring from his filthy bed to the affable compass of the Faithful Mermaid, Sundry had been burdened by more than physical weight. The dark room and the man’s dark-circled eyes and the innocent face of Melanie Ring hovered like insects at his shoulder, and he had been startled to find Burne sitting in the kitchen when he opened the door to the back stairs that morning.

  Last night the Morrells’ Annual Charitable Ball had seemed a world away from the earthy existence of the Faithful Mermaid; this morning the memory affected him as strange and off-putting and, as he sat across from the ill-starred remnants of the Ring family, almost beyond the range of suitable discussion. A practiced equanimity, rather than a real and present one, had seen him through his breakfast in the company of Melanie’s wide eyes, but innocent as those eyes were of any conscious plea (and perhaps because they were so innocent), they followed him from the kitchen, through the tavern room, and out into the street. Only the perfection of the day could lift his spirits, and only his intended destination could distract him from that persistent sense of burden.

  Sundry strode the sidewalk as if he were in a hurry, though the morning was much too young to be paying anyone a visit. He thought he might go down by the harbor and buy a sack of roasted peanuts from one of the vendors there, then find a lonely piling at one of the quieter wharves where he could lean and think. Brackett Street was dense with business—people walking and haggling at the corners and by the storefronts, and wagons and carriages trundling past. Peddlers and laborers rubbed shoulders with local shipping magnates and captains (and lesser officers) of industry and captains of ships and sailors. Toward Commercial Street and the water, gulls wheeled the sky and a steam whistle carried over the roofs between.

  At the corner of York Street, Sundry spotted the business end of a large oar bobbing over the immediate throng and then intermittent glimpses of a blond head moving at a similar metronomic pace beneath this heroic implement. Sundry didn’t imagine that the sailor would recognize him—there had been many people on the wharf the day of Mister and Mrs. Walton’s departure, and the man in search of Fiddler’s Green had spoken most specifically to Mr. Thump—but he searched the sailor’s eye as the man came out of the crowd, and the two men paused on the sidewalk like acquaintances who chance to meet.

  Sundry nodded, and the sailor nodded, too. “That shrunk some,” said Sundry with little expression. Indeed, the great long sweep was not as long as when he last saw it and but a remnant of its former self.

  “It broke,” said the sailor.

  Sundry considered the oar, which had been separated into two distinct, if not matching, pieces. The big fellow hefted them over his shoulder like a pair of rifles. “I hope no one’s noggin counted for that,” said Sundry.

  The sailor shook his head. “I didn’t ship oar before crossing the threshold.”

  Sundry nodded again, and the sailor nodded again, too.

  “Do I know you?” asked the sailor.

  “I saw you down at the wharf last Saturday.”

  The sailor nodded. “I need to get this put back together,” he said.

  “Do you?”

  “I can’t be looking for Fiddler’s Green without it, and I don’t mean to find Fiddler’s Green in two pieces, so it must be put back together.” The sailor raised his head and straightened his shoulders as if he were about to repeat his lecture concerning this paradise and how to find it. No one in the vicinity but Sundry was listening, however, and he only eyed a young woman who was walking by before he returned to the matter and the person at hand.

  “You need a smithy,” said Sundry.

  “I need a smithy,” said the sailor.

  “I was about to say that,” said Sundry.

  The sailor blinked at him. He was wearing the canvas trousers, rough linen shirt, and dark pea-coat common to his kind. He had a knitted hat in a back pocket and a canvas bag on a stout rope. He was a powerful-looking fellow, and when he spoke, it was with an unexpected precision. When he didn’t speak, he regarded the rest of the world as if he expected it to hold up its end of the conversation and was puzzled when it didn’t.

  As if on some secret signal, the two men ambled the sidewalk together, the sailor changing course without hesitation, craning his neck and gawking about as if he hadn’t already seen the lower portion of Brackett Street moments before. Sundry knew of a blacksmith’s down by the waterfront, and the sailor seemed to understand this, though no such words passed between them.

  “Sundry Moss,” said Sundry.

  The sailor registered no surprise. “Robin Oig,” he said.

  When they reached Commercial Street, they paused for half a dozen wagons loaded with lumber that turned up the hill; then they crossed to the opposite corner and made their way past a gauntlet of street peddlers. When the noise of the horses and wagons had softened behind them, Sundry said, “You expect to find this place.”

  “What?” said Robin Oig. “Fiddler’s Green? Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Exactly,” said Sundry.

  Several kids ganged by, skittering a leather ball before them and jostling their elders. Upon colliding with the sailor, one of these scamps looked up at the tall, bearded man and dodged off after his fellows, impishly unrepentant. A piebald dog came barking behind. Sundry pointed across the way at a low-roofed building in the shadow of the warehouses and shipping offices near Perley’s Wharf. The ring of hammer and anvil chimed from the interior of the smithy, and diverse rough-looking fellows stood in the doorway, looking serious about watching someone else work.

  Weaving through traffic, Sundry and Robin Oig found themselves at the blacksmith’s door just as a short fellow with massive arms and permanently sooted cheeks came out of the comparative shadows. He had a pair of tongs in one hand and by these held up a smoking piece of iron that he plunged into the trough outside his door. There was a satisfying burble and hiss, and the smith pulled his work from the water for inspection.

  “That’s a piece of work you’ve got there,” said the blacksmith without looking around. “What happened to it?”

  “It broke,” said Robin Oig when he realized he’d been spoken to.

  The blacksmith looked up to consider the oar. The idlers who stood about formed a chorus behind him and also peered at the device.

  “That’s some oar,” said one of them.

  “Did you try to row the schooner all to yourself?” said another.

  Robin Oig frowned at the man as if he had said something rude.

  “He was cutting a wide path through a narrow door,” said Sundry.

  “I hope no one got in the way,” said the first man.

  “You’re not the fellow the cops laid out?” said a third.

  Sundry added his own inquiring look, but the sailor ignored the question. “Wha
t can you do?” he asked the blacksmith.

  “I’ll have to shorten it,” said the man.

  Robin Oig was sorry to hear this.

  “What I could do,” said the blacksmith, “is to mortise this one piece, tenon the other, then jacket and pin it all together.”

  “I need it put together,” said the sailor by way of hiring the man.

  The blacksmith nodded. He was interested in the job, and Robin Oig said to Sundry, under his breath, that this boded well for the efficacy of the oar in performing its duty. “I’d hate awfully for someone to work unwilling over it,” he said. “I’d probably find Philadelphia as soon as Fiddler’s Green.”

  “You can’t be too careful,” agreed Sundry.

  Another whistle blew from the harbor, and there was talk about an English steamer expected in today. No one at the forge went to look, however, as everyone was concerned about Robin Oig and his oar. The sailor explained to the unwashed crowd how that oar was going to take him to Fiddler’s Green, and no one appeared to doubt him, though whether these men simply thought him touched and in need of humoring or just too big to argue with, Sundry could only guess. The blacksmith seemed content to work.

  Sundry himself was of farm stock and interested in the manufacture and repair of gear. The present company was not without its own rough charm, and he learned numerous things on topics the idlers clearly knew nothing about.

  Robin Oig tugged at his beard, however, and looked as if he might try fishing for largemouth bass with a bare hook that had been kept in a drawer with an old shoe for three weeks or to avoid the deleterious effects of spirituous liquors by rubbing lard on the backs of his ears. One fellow, wise with pipe smoke, told of a friend who had heard of a farmer who’d taught a porcupine to sit up and beg and guard his house at night and shoot his quills with the skill of an archer at foxes and weasels that harassed his chickens (the farmer’s chickens, specified the fellow, not the porcupine’s).

  Listening to this rare news, the sailor had the appearance of a man who wished he had pencil and paper to write down the regimen by which these wonders were obtained. Observing the idle fellows and gauging the level of sincerity in their discourse, Sundry began to doubt if touched or too big had ever entered their assessment of Robin Oig.