Kathy Little Bird (21 page)

I held him, and stroked and kissed him. That seemed the best answer. He’d been badly hurt, they’d damaged his soul. I let my kisses do what they could, say the things one doesn’t know how to say.

The next moment I was gathered into him. I lay back, accepting his broken words, accepting his touch. He brought out the longing that had lain in me so long. Sweetest chords and wild discordant ones played over me, creating a pitch of frenzy that catapulted us beyond ourselves.

Sharing a ground-zero experience can do that for you.

W
EEKS
followed during which we were scarcely out of one another’s sight. Gentle attended my rehearsals, recording sessions, club and show appearances. This, over Mac’s protests, as I turned more and more to Jim. His opinion was important to me. If Mac knew the workings of show biz, Jim Gentle understood its soul. For it does have one. Vulnerable and in constant flight, it comes up now and again with brave ideas.

Was my idea for Cree songs one? I broached it once more in a tentative way to Mac, and got another put-down. So far I hadn’t brought it up with Jim in any serious way. I’d held back because if he rejected my music, he rejected me. But I didn’t think he’d do that. Jim would understand where no one else seemed to, that this music was part of me and lay behind everything I did.

I found it impossible to avoid comparisons. Mac hadn’t an artistic bone in his body and was known as a “no-talent guy.” Still, he had an uncanny knack for touching the pulse of the public, a sixth sense of what it wanted, what it would go for and what it wouldn’t.

Jim, on the other hand, was open to new ideas, took them seriously, explored them. That, and the special relationship that had developed between us, gave me courage. I decided to put my career in his hands. Without preparation or explanation I plunged in. “Jim,” I said, uncurling on the futon and unwinding my legs from his long ones, “I want you to imagine an old Indian woman muttering between her teeth, not bothering to remove her pipe, but lifting her voice to the Creator as she plants a patch of garden behind her house. Or a shaman, tall, lean, even older, white hair straggling to his shoulders, eyes burning fierce as embers, who breathes with the breath of the universe.”

“Can these things be sung?” Jim asked.

“Jonathan Forquet was old then; he must be dead many years. But he is a shaman, a Grandfather who touches both sides. Listen…” It was time to let loose. I sang my grandfather, introducing Gentle to him through the Wind Song with its stirring of trees and lifting of boughs. I closed my eyes and sang the Shadow Song, and the girl who hung around and took it all in.

I didn’t stop. I sang my grandfather’s invisible gift. I revealed it with all its tender unseeable glory to Gentle.

I finished and he sat shaking his head. When at last he
spoke, it was to respond as he always did when something touched him deeply, “Yeah.”

F
ROM
then on we were one person, like the Duke and Strayhorn, in love with music and each other. He understood my struggle with musical notation and showed me how to get on with it. He was a master teacher. He made a drawing of the circle of fifths depicting the relationship between keys. With this to navigate by I was able to transpose. He kept me at it, and soon, in spite of my hectic schedule, I had a full notebook.

He was in no hurry for me to sever my ties with Mac. On the contrary, he didn’t even want it. Instead of losing Mac, he thought of ways to add himself to the team. One idea we developed jointly—when he felt I was ready he would arrange a benefit concert where I could perform—yes—Cree songs.

I heard him say the very things I’d thought. “It’s a different audience, youthful, daring. They want the new, the innovative. I have a gut feeling that the stuff you want to do would go over big-time.”

Teacher, mentor, lover—Gentle laid traps for me to see how much I studied, to see how much I loved, to see how much I lived. Loving though they were, they were nonetheless traps. He would confront me suddenly and ask, “Why do you love me?” And I would have to come up with a reasoned answer that he found acceptable. One day I stopped at a little Jewish deli and brought him strudel. I heated coffee
and we munched. It was a great way to kill an hour before rehearsal. He leaned over to wipe a crumb from my chin and asked another of those Delphic questions.

“Tell me,” he demanded, “why do you want to sing First Nation music? What does it mean to you? Can you tell me? Do you even know?”

“Of course I know. I already told you. Can I help it if you aren’t satisfied with the answer? I picked it up when I was a kid and it’s always stayed with me.”

“Go on,” he urged. “You’re on the right track.”

I hunted in my mind. “I guess I want everyone to know it and feel about it the way I do, that it’s mystic and holy. First music, sung by first people.”

“Ahhh,” he said, “that’s what I thought. But look how I had to drag it out of you.”

“That’s because everyone is so unreceptive, even hostile. Yes, actively hostile about my singing it, or even writing it.”

“By everyone you mean Mac?”

“I guess so—and audiences.”

He didn’t pursue this but said, “You’ll need program notes. You can’t just spring this kind of stuff on people. It can’t be out of the blue. They have to be prepared, told about it, its antecedents, what it means, that it’s sacred. And at the same time wild and not to be tamed. Keep working, you’re closing in on it.”

“And then? Eventually? It will be part of my repertoire?”

Jim backed off a bit. “Go slow, it’s a successful career we’d be tampering with. All I’m suggesting is that you try them out in a benefit situation, see how they’re received.”

“When do you think, Jim?”

“You’ve more work to do. The songs need polish and arrangement. I can handle the rest. It will mean raising funds. Mac has to let you do one outside show a year, that’s guild rules. So if we don’t ask him or any of the agency people for anything, they’ve got no beef. I think your songs could start a trend, whip up interest among other artists. And we’d put it on for First Nation people. I know a cat in P.R. who will act as front man. You, my girl, would have to be your own dresser and makeup expert.”

“Just like the old days,” I said, rather liking the idea. “Actually I’m fairly good at it. Watching Trimble, I’ve learned to paint and highlight my exterior self. And the other I’ve given up on.”

I saw our love in a new way, a giving way…like any lovers that have so much there is bounty to share.

If you want to make the devil laugh, they say, make plans. Or was it Loki the Trickster, in hiding all this time, who saw to it that I forgot my purse? I knew where I’d left it, on the futon in Gentle’s living room. I went back and rang the bell. He didn’t answer.

He had to be there; I’d just left him. I rang again. This time I heard footsteps.

“Hey,” he said, “it’s my love.”

It wasn’t what he said, but the way he said it, in a thick, mumbled tone that didn’t sound like him.

From a sunny day I stepped into a darkened room. I squinted to see his face. It was twisted into a foolish grin. He was totally spaced out.

I stiffened.

I knew of course about the smack he’d taken in Vietnam, but I thought that was then…I should have realized. The psychedelic counterculture was cool, part of the music world, Timothy Leary, the whole bit. But I kept clear of druggies. Mac reinforced this. He was like a maiden aunt on the subject, pointing out the careers it trashed and reading obits with relish, especially those resulting from overdoses and suicides. But it wasn’t Mac; everything about the drug scene scared me. I didn’t want to attain greater awareness. I dreaded greater awareness. I wanted it to be
me
who thought my thoughts, felt my music. And the dreams I had I wanted to be my own.

“I left my purse,” I said, and, walking past him, retrieved it from the floor. I saw the cocaine on the side table, looking like spilled sugar.

“Little Bird, Little Bird.” He bent over me. “How’d you like to be a snowbird and fly with me?” There was a foolish laugh that went with the foolish grin.

Was this the man who had become part of my life?

I
WAS
angry with myself and remained angry for days.

At least I told myself it was anger. Anger was what I hid in. When it subsided I was left empty and arid. The snow came down black with dirt. I was glad; it matched my mood. New Yorkers hardly noticed. Pollution up, pollution down, what was the difference? I took aspirin and food supplements in an effort to feel better. When they didn’t work I stormed, “When will you stop fighting with yourself, Little Bird?”
The reply was easy…when I stop being an idiot. Because I should have known; anyone with half a brain would have known.

Gentle didn’t come around for a week. When he did, he came straight up to me. “Did it mean anything,” he asked, “that you didn’t bother to sit down? That you left immediately?”

“I would say so. It meant that I don’t want to see you again.”

“You don’t mean that.”

I stared at him stonily.

“But why? At least tell me that. Was it the sex?”

I shook my head.

“The music?”

The same nonverbal response.

“The drugs, then?”

“Bull’s-eye.”

“I knew it was the drugs. But everyone drops a little acid or sniffs a little coke. Why, right here in your own group…”

“I don’t want to hear. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who messes with junk is on another planet.”

Now that he was here, looking like Jim, sounding like Jim, it was hard to force myself to remember him as I had seen him. It was hard to walk away from Gentle.

I had built too fast and too much with this man. His love of music and my love of music. His willingness to share his talent…Then the other Jim intruded, vacant eyes, slobbering, “Little Bird, Snow Bird. Fly with me.”

It was a wracking experience. I didn’t know how to stop
loving. I tore him out of my life while I still loved him. It was like burying someone who is alive and won’t stay dead. At too many unexpected moments he would force himself into my mind. Too many things and places reminded me of Jim. I mean, when even the coffee machine brings a pang of heartache, what can you do?

Mac must have gotten wind of something. He knew I’d broken up with Gentle. Rumors circulate about everyone, but in this case, with Gentle staying away, it wasn’t difficult to figure. Mac chose this time for what he called a heart-to-heart.

There is a point in every conversation of this sort where you know what’s coming, and try to stave it off. Mac was working himself up to another proposal. I preferred him censorious and nagging to romantic. But I couldn’t stop him.

He segued into, “What you want, honey, is the right sort of guy. Not necessarily another musician, or even some good-looking stud, but a mogul, a CEO, someone who’s made it in the industry.” He meant himself, of course. “What do you say, Kathy? You need someone, otherwise there’s bound to be…episodes. Hell, you’re lonely. I’m lonely. What do you say?”

I took one of his hands and squeezed it. I wished I could say yes.

I did need someone, he was right about that. I looked around. Freddy came to mind. He was a sweet guy. He had stopped his hack for me with a row of cars, horns blaring, behind him. He had taken good care of my guitar. I was not going to live my life in New York, unhappy and wiped out.
There were clubs to take in, shows to see, music to hear. I ended by asking Freddy for a date, knowing he’d never get up nerve to ask me.

I was surprised when he called for me with a friend in tow, a nice chap who had a puppet theater in the Village. His puppets had the distinction of having been arrested. The charge, indecent exposure. We dropped in at several places, heard Deborah Benedict give a smash rendition of Piaf songs, listened to an exciting Tex-Mex bunch who also did Cajun, and wound up in a little dive that served up Basin Street blues.

There were moments when I sank into music. Even with other people making it, my feet tapped along. I pretended there was no such person as Jim Gentle. I pretended I was happy.

When at the end of the evening I was escorted through the lobby and up to my door, I turned to say I’d had a lovely evening, the two of them were kissing each other good night.