Millar appeared among us. “Asa? Mr. Champion asks you to lead off the singing.”
Brainard rolled his eyes.
“He requests his favorite.”
“I guessed it,” said Brainard. “Sent his messenger boy to whistle me up like a low hound.”
“Woof, woof!” barked Sweasy.
Brainard stood in the aisle beside McVey and sang “The Man on the Flying Trapeze.” I realized his was the tenor voice I’d heard before. The stylish pitcher was a man of several talents.
“That song new?” I asked Sweasy.
He nodded. “Just come out last year. Sheet music’s selling like johnnycakes—in the hundreds of thousands.”
I couldn’t resist. “Climbing to solid platinum?”
Sweasy blinked and scowled. “How’s that?”
“Never mind.” I felt perverse satisfaction.
Most of the Stockings, aside from Brainard and Andy, proved to be wretched vocalists. But that didn’t stop them from harmonizing fiercely on choruses and turning the whole thing into a sort of competition.
Brainard finished and pointed to Gould, who rose with ramrod stiffness and, to my astonishment, affected a Chinese accent and sang a song in pidgin, the chorus of which began, “Oh ching chong opium, taffy on a stick . . .”
“Ever hear the like?” Andy asked from across the aisle.
“Never,” I replied.
Things did not improve. Doug Allison twanged out a racist minstrel piece called “Nancy Fat,” then Sweasy hissed his way through “The Girl That Keeps the Peanut Stand,” distorting maudlin lyrics with suggestive winks and leers. Harry then sang “Captain Jinks” in a pleasant baritone; I finally knew the words to a chorus. Harry then pointed to Andy.
“The Emerald Isle!” called Dick Hurley. “A hundred verses of ‘The Blarney Rose’!”
Andy laughed, shook his head, and sang, Jersey accents giving way to a broad, comical brogue.
“Mike Finnigan, a patriot,
He swore that he would raise
A mighty corps of musketeers,
That all the world would daze.
At the chorus, Mac, Sweasy, and Hurley stood up and they all joined arms.
“To see us march as stiff as starch
And listen to the cheers.
Fairer boys yez niver saw
Than Finnigans Musketeers.”
I noticed that not all of the Stockings were joining in with equal enthusiasm. “Those guys always stand up like that?” I asked Waterman.
“Micks, the lot,” he said dryly. “Andy was born in County Cavan.”
“That so?” I said, and suppressed a yawn. The day was catching up with me. The kerosene globes hissed faintly overhead, swaying beneath the vaulted enameled ceiling, splashing pools of yellow on walnut-paneled walls and burgundy seats. Rhythmical clacking underlay all sound. Next to my head rattled a steamy window. The darkness outside seemed remote. The voices comforted me. I realized that nobody here had heard a radio or recording. Music came to them directly, only from others. Why didn’t people sing together in my time?
“Sam’s my pick!”
My eyes jerked open. Andy was pointing at me. “No,” I said. “I can’t.” They shouted me down. I stood, my mind a blank.
“Something from the West,” prompted Andy.
I stood dumbly next to McVey and finally blurted out the first song that came to mind:
“From this valley they say you are going;
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile. . . .”
I beckoned for them to join, but they didn’t. When I reached the chorus they were leaning forward, listening intently.
“Come and sit by my side if you love me,
Do not hasten to bid me adieu,
But remember the Red River Valley
And the boy that has loved you so true.”
There was silence—then ringing applause. “More!” yelled Andy. Others echoed him. They seemed to mean it.
“But that’s all I know.”
They insisted that I sing it again. McVey played softly behind me, and they sang harmony on the chorus.
“That’s quite lovely,” Champion murmured, astonishing me by dabbing at his eyes with a lace-edged handkerchief. “Won’t you give us just one more Western tune?”
I racked my brain. “Okay, but this time one we all know,”
“Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play . . .”
Again they were silent. In the hush that followed, Andy remarked that it was the noblest song he’d ever heard.
“You warble like a bullfrog in heat,” Brainard said, leaning in close as I sat down. “But those’re prize ballads. We’d make a pile if we printed ’em.”
I looked to see if he was joking. He wasn’t. “But I didn’t write them.”
“Who did?”
“Haven’t the foggiest.”
“How’d you come by ’em?”
“They’ve been around for—” I paused. “Well, they’re not original with me.”
“They are hereabouts.” He examined the gold rings on his fingers. “How you calculate the odds of their bein’ entered with the government?”
“Copyrighted? I suppose if nobody’s heard them, they aren’t . . . yet.”
He looked at me. “There’s our chance.”
He was entirely serious. “I could use some cash,” I said. “But stealing songs isn’t my idea of how to get it.”
“Sure as sin somebody’s gonna cash ’em in. Why not us? Besides, how’s it stealin’ if nobody’s laid claim?”
I didn’t have a ready answer. Viewed from his standpoint, the future glittered like a treasure vault. By tapping my foreknowledge, wouldn’t I merely be nudging things along predestined channels? In this Darwinistic age would a Vanderbilt or Rockefeller or Carnegie hesitate in my shoes? Was the Gilded Age ready for Scott Joplin? Gershwin? The Beatles?
S. C. Fowler, Sheet Music Czar.
It had a certain ring.
But actually, wouldn’t I be changing the past instead of merely retracing it?
Then a more bizarre idea occurred to me: What if I’d passed this way before? What if I’d already created the songs myself—and possessed no recollection of
