The Dulcimer Boy (4 page)

“Wait.” The innkeeper pulled a cork bottle stopper out of either ear. “Now then, come again?”

“I was just wondering, sir, if you might please let me have something to eat.”

“Well, it isn't much of a menu,” the innkeeper said doubtfully, handing him one.

“Oh, but I'd like anything!”

“Well, some say the flounder's digestible. That's the special tonight—only two bits.”

“Oh,” said William. “But I haven't got two bits.”

“Try the clam chowder then. It's only a nickel, and a side of crackers comes along for nothing.”

William felt in his pockets. All he found was the little triangle of glass from the broken secretary.

“But I haven't got a nickel, sir. I haven't got a penny.”

The innkeeper nodded, taking this information in stride. He cast a beleaguered look across at the squeaky lady singer and then started to replug his ears.

“But can't I have anything?” William cried.

“I don't suppose you're any good at washing dishes,” said the innkeeper, one ear still open.

William shook his head sadly, thinking how jealously his aunt had always guarded her dirty dishes.

“I could sweep the…”

But the floors were covered with sawdust. The innkeeper lifted the other bottle stopper.

“Sir!” William cried. “I'll trade you my coat for dinner—it's too big for me anyway.”

Unfolding the coat, William set the dulcimer on a bar stool and handed the coat across the counter.

“Astrakhan.” The innkeeper nodded, as if he had expected this. “That's been out of style for ages.”

He handed it back.

Then he said, “What do you have there?”

Starved as he was, however, and even though there was something rather appealing about the hopeless man, William could not forget the last time he had handed over his dulcimer. He put it under his arm and replied, “Only my dulcimer, sir.”

“Dulcimer? What's that?”

“A musical instrument, sir.”

“Ah. I don't suppose you play it very well.”

“My brother likes my playing, but my aunt says it's miserable.”

“Miserable.” The innkeeper nodded.

He then turned his eyes toward the open doorway. Dancing on the threshold, wings flapping, squawking, was a flock of various kinds of birds.

“Now where do you suppose they came from?” he said wonderingly, tugging on his droopy moustache.

“Some from the forest, sir, beyond the meadows.”

“Some from the forest? How do you know?”

“They came with me, sir. They've been watching over me or something.”

“Watching over you or something? Why on earth would—”

A throat cleared. A sailor emerged from the shadow behind the door and pointed at the birds.

“Want 'em out, sir?” he said in a raspy voice.

The sailor had a forbidding aspect. His neck was purplish and grizzled; his head twisted a little
to one side. Yet he addressed the moist-eyed innkeeper with the greatest respect and, at the innkeeper's nod, shooed the birds out of the doorway.

“But why should they be watching over you?” the innkeeper continued.

“I don't know,” William replied. “They've just been following me around ever since I played in the forest this morning.”

“Following you?”

A subtle change came over the innkeeper's face. The moistness left his eyes, as if for an instant they had hardened.

“That caterwauling.” He sighed, casting another glance at the lady singer. “I can't hear myself think.”

He cocked his head, and William went around the bar and followed him through the swinging door into a kitchen. The kitchen was full of lovely smells. But the innkeeper led him
through the lovely smells into a little back office and closed the door.

“I don't suppose,” the innkeeper said, leaning back on an untidy desk and rolling the cork stoppers in his fingers, “you're very good on that thing. But let's have a listen.”

“If you like,” said William.

He sat in a chair in front of the innkeeper, tuned the dulcimer, and played a song of hopeless love. When he had finished, he looked up from the silver strings. The innkeeper was staring over his head at the office wall, as if at a beautiful painting. William looked around. The wall was bare except for a little calendar.

The innkeeper stared there so long that William began to feel ill at ease. But then the man looked down, staring from William's face to the dulcimer in his hands.

“Well,” the innkeeper said slowly. “Well.”

“May I please have something to eat now, sir?”

“Where on earth did you ever learn to—What did you say? Eat? Yes, of course. But just wait a little minute.”

He rummaged around on the untidy desk until he found a certain long sheet of paper.

“Well, now, you'll play for me again later? I'll bet you're hungry, aren't you?”

“Yes, sir,” William replied.

Near the top of the document, where it said:
AGREES TO PERFORM
, the innkeeper wrote:
YES
. Then he glanced at the calendar again. It was May 12.

“Well, now, today's May eleventh, isn't it? Now let's see. Did you say you hadn't eaten since yesterday lunch?”

“Yes, sir.”

So on the long sheet of paper, where it said:
AGREES TO PERFORM UNTIL
, the innkeeper wrote:
MAY II
.

“Well, now. Will you sing for your supper?
And speaking of that, how would you like pork chops with apple dumplings? Do you care for dumplings?”

“Oh, yes, sir!”

So on the long document, where it said:
WAGES
, the innkeeper wrote:
WILL SING FOR HIS SUPPER
.

“That's settled then. Just sign there at the bottom and I'll have the cook put the dumplings on.”

William could not think why he should have to sign his name for the cook to put the dumplings on. But he did it eagerly all the same, taking the pen and scrawling
“William”
where the innkeeper pointed.

“Fine,” the innkeeper said. “And now the last name.”

“But I haven't got a last name, sir.”

“Don't be absurd,” said the innkeeper. “Everyone has a last name. Without a last name, there might not be any dumplings.”

William began to wind a finger in his curly nut-brown hair. The connection between his last name and dumplings was obscure. The innkeeper, too, seemed mysterious, having lost the appealing moist look in his eyes altogether.

Suddenly the innkeeper opened the office door, letting in the smells from the kitchen. William signed
“Carbuncle”
after
“William.”

“Carbuncle,” the innkeeper said thoughtfully, looking at the document. “I'm afraid that won't do. Not the least bit catchy…. What was it you called that thing?”

“My dulcimer, you mean?”

“Dulcimer, dulcimer, dulcimer,” the innkeeper said. “Dulcimer. Around here we'll call you the Dulcimer Boy.”

William shrugged. He could not have cared less what he was called around there. As soon as he ate and had a nap, he would be setting out to get back to Rigglemore.

Soon a plate of pork chops and steamy dumplings was set before him on a tray. He skewered a dumpling. But then for a moment he simply inhaled the smell, wondering if perhaps Jules, too, had not eaten all that day.

H
E WOKE IN A
hammock. It was strung up in a little box of a room with sunlight leaking in between the boards on one wall. And there was a strange lapping sound, like a great heart beating nearby.

He dimly recalled falling asleep after eating. He had the uneasy feeling that he had taken more than a nap. Swinging out of the hammock, he peeked through one of the sunny cracks.

The room seemed to be in the back upper story of the inn, on the side that did not face Pawn Street. Down below, waves were beating against the foundation.

It was long and lovely, the sea. It stretched out beyond a harborful of ships and boats, out to where the ridges of the incoming waves were slender silver streaks in the morning sun, like the strings of his dulcimer. He turned and saw that the dulcimer was under the hammock, sitting on the folded coat. He gathered them up and went to the door. The door, however, was knobless.

He pounded on it. It opened almost instantly. In the hallway stood the sailor with the purplish, grizzled neck and the head that was askew. With the pleasantest smile he could manage, William slipped out of the room and down the back stairs.

The inn was deserted except for the innkeeper behind the bar. All the chairs were stacked upside down on top of the round tables, and the sun was shining through the dirty windows onto the sawdust floor. William went up to the bar.

“Good morning, sir. Thank you very much for your hospitality.”

“Good morning.”

William offered his hand over the counter, and the innkeeper shook it.

“I do hope we'll meet again, sir, so I can return the favor.”

He turned to go. But the grizzly-necked sailor, who seemed to have followed him downstairs, had sidled into the doorway.

The innkeeper came around the bar.

“Only piece of luck I ever had,” he said. “Ah, I see you've noticed his neck.”

William looked elsewhere.

“Found him hanging from a tree out near the lighthouse. When I cut him down, he was still breathing, and he's been loyal as a dog ever since. Never would tell me what he'd done, though.” The innkeeper lowered his voice. “Between you and me, I lock the cash register at night.”

The innkeeper cocked his head, and the half-hanged sailor stepped obediently aside.

“Well,” William said as they walked out, “I do hope we meet again.”

“Oh, we will. Several times a day.”

William squinted at the iridescence of the oily street in the sun.

“Really? Are you traveling to Rigglemore, too?”

“No, I'm afraid I have to stay here and innkeep,” said the innkeeper. “I wanted to show you my handiwork.”

He pointed to a freshly painted sign on the curb. It read:

 

THE DULCIMER BOY
PERFORMING NIGHTLY

~
Shows at 8, 9, 10, 11,
~

and Midnight

 

William stared from the sign to the innkeeper's face.

“But I'm leaving.”

“No, I'm afraid not.” The innkeeper sighed and proceeded to explain that William had signed a contract running until May eleventh, which was a year minus two days away. “But you're perfectly free till eight o'clock. Get some breakfast in the kitchen, go back to bed, practice your instrument—do whatever you like.”

William took the last piece of advice. He darted off down the oily street. He had not gone a block, however, before the half-hanged sailor caught up with him and plucked him up by the scruff of the neck.

William cried out at the top of his lungs. When he was set down again in front of the inn, he felt the street trembling beneath his feet.

An awesome horse had galloped up, a
chestnut that must have been twenty hands tall. William, flanked in the doorway by the innkeeper and the half-hanged sailor, stared in silence at its huge, flaring nostrils.

“Trying to scuttle off without settling up, is it?”

William craned his neck to one side. Atop the fabulous horse a small, ruddy-faced policeman was perched.

The innkeeper stepped forward and stroked the horse's neck.

“Only my new performer trying to run out on his contract, Johnny,” he said.

“Contract?”

The innkeeper ducked into his inn. He returned with the long document William had signed, and a tankard of ale, both of which he handed up to the policeman.

“This your John Hancock on here?” the policeman asked William.

“I suppose so, sir. But I still have to get back to Rigglemore.”

“Do you?”

“But of course he can't,” the innkeeper put in, taking back the contract. “He signed his name.”

“You signed your name,” said the policeman.

“But he said next year!” William cried. “My brother will lose his spirit and starve to death in the attic!”

“Really?” said the policeman.

“Still the law is the law.” The innkeeper sighed.

“That's right,” the policeman said. “The law.”

He handed down the empty tankard and reached into a pocket. The innkeeper insisted it was on the house. In a moment William's anguished protests were drowned out by the hoofbeats of the departing horse.

Having no appetite, William spent the day in the little wooden box of a room upstairs. He divided his time between swinging slowly in the hammock and staring through the cracks at the freedom of the sea. At one point the fusty smell of the room reminded him sharply of the Carbuncles' attic, and he pounded on the knobless door. The half-hanged sailor opened it. William showed him the leaf message, but the half-hanged sailor was not touched.

Just before eight o'clock the innkeeper came to fetch him down. As on the night before, the inn was nearly deserted, all but three tables being empty. At one of them a young sailor was nuzzling a girl with bright red lips and cheeks. A fisherman with a wind-weathered face sat at a corner table, still as a statue. At another table a longshoreman with a scar across his forehead was swigging rum.

Staring through the cracks at the freedom of the sea

William sat on a stool on the little stage and watched the innkeeper return to his bar and the half-hanged sailor step back into the shadow of the door. He began to play.

The longshoreman with the scar on his brow began to mutter over the music.

“What is this? Where's the tomato?”

William, who always felt rather solemn when striking the silver strings, managed to ignore this. He played a seafaring ballad, and when he'd finished that, he glanced out at the young couple and played a love song.

But the longshoreman did not let up.

“Put him to bed,” he muttered louder. “Bring on the goods.”

He began to pound his bottle on the table, and William was forced to stop in the middle of his third song.

Suddenly the fisherman with the wind-weathered face rose from the corner table and
stared calmly at the longshoreman.

“Says I to myself,” the fisherman said, “I wonder how you came by that scar.”

“Huh?” said the longshoreman, turning with a leer.

“Had your head cleaned out like a fish, did you, mate?”

The longshoreman's jaw dropped open. But although the fisherman was of an ordinary size, something about him, perhaps the dead-calm look in his eye, seemed to unnerve the other man.

“Whoever did it made a mighty good job of it, mate,” the fisherman murmured, taking his seat again. “Otherwise you'd know fine music when you heard it.”

After that the inn was silent except for William's playing. He played until it was time to take a break before the nine o'clock show. As he walked off the stage, the longshoreman with the scar was clapping as loudly as the others.

Six customers were there for the nine o'clock show. For the ten o'clock show there were more than a dozen. By eleven there were fifty. For the midnight show there was standing room only. The waitresses, used to plodding, were run ragged.

The next night the inn was packed by eight o'clock in spite of a cover charge the innkeeper had decided to take at the door. In between shows the sailors who had been unable to squeeze in shook their fists in the doorway and made threatening suggestions that everyone should take turns. But as soon as William walked back onto the stage, all heckling ended. A solemn hush fell over the seedy inn, and not even the clinking of glasses could be heard. Sailors stood silently outside in the street, listening to the ballads and the love songs, the sad and the sweet songs, songs of farewell and songs of adventure on the swelling seas. Sometimes William sang along with the dulcimer in his
clear, quiet tone; sometimes he let the dulcimer sing alone. But at the end of every hour he sang the same song—the one that had come to him mysteriously his first night with the dulcimer.

After that second midnight performance the dockfront crowd refused to leave the inn, stomping their feet and clapping their hands for more. The innkeeper led his weary performer up the back stairs, confiding that his coin had finally turned up heads.

William had been granted writing materials with the knowledge that any letter he wrote would be read by the innkeeper before being sent. Alone in his room, he wrote to his uncle, reminding him to remember Jules up in the attic. When this was done, he addressed the envelope:

Then he curled up in the hammock. In spite of his exhaustion he had to cover his ears to sleep, for the clapping and shouting were still rising from the inn below and the street outside.