Green Grow the Rashes and other stories

Green Grow the Rashes

I first saw him in February. Despite the fact that winter still held a tight grip in Newfoundland, the city of St. John's was alive and kicking. We were set up in a bar just off George Street, and the place was packed with drinkers, dancers, drunks and those heading that way fast. Booze flowed, we played ever-faster, and everyone was having a high old time.

And yet...

I felt strangely dissociated from the whole thing. Even the old songs failed to stir me the way they used to. Twenty years of doing the same thing every day will do that to you, whether it be sitting at a desk, driving a bus... or singing in a bar. It was taking more and more booze to oil my gears every night. If Johnny and Dave had noticed, they had kept quiet about it. But that night in St. John's proved to be a turning point.

It started well enough as I made it through Flowers of the Forest and John Barleycorn, but less than an hour into the gig the whisky I'd been knocking down kicked in. Johnny started the fiddle intro to Green Grow the Rashes, Dave came in right on cue on the squeeze-box... and I fumbled the ball, being a full beat late on the first guitar chord. I was an old hand at winging it, so the general audience scarcely noticed, but I saw the look that passed between the two others with me on the small stage.

I had enough pride left in me to feel embarrassed. I turned away from their stares... and that's when I saw him. I say him, but it was some time afterwards before I was able to discern a gender. That first night it was just a darker shadow in a corner, but one that seemed to draw my eye, one that gained depth and presence as I sang the old song.

There's nought but care on every hand,

In every hour that passes.

I'd sang the same song a thousand, two thousand, times, but that night was the first in a long time that I felt it, and understood. Emotion poured through and out of me and I gave myself to it wholeheartedly. The song rose high and pure. I became aware that Johnny and Dave had stopped playing

The worldly race may riches chase,

And riches still may fly them, O,

And tho' at last they catch them fast,

Their hearts can ne'er enjoy them, O.

I had tears streaming down my face by now. The audience stood, mouths gaping, all eyes, most of them wet like mine, staring at me. I put one final push into it and brought the song to an end.

The applause nearly lifted the roof off the old bar. The darker shadow in the corner shifted. I peered, trying to see who was there, then Dave clapped me on the arm, handed me a beer, and the spell was broken.

~-o0O0o-~

It was a busy tour, and we were booked every night. We played most all of the settlements on the Irish loop, pushed the old van too hard over the long schlep to Gros Morne and back, and had three riotous nights in Clarenville. There was no recurrence of the magic I had felt that night in St. John's. Indeed, the black dog had settled in me again, and I'm afraid I took to the drink rather more heavily than I should have.

It was the rear end of March before we got back to St. John's and I didn't know whether to be happy or worried that we were to return to the same venue. I was even less pleased when Johnny and Dave had a word with me at the bar before we went on.

"Could you try to hold off on the hard stuff for the first hour, maybe two?" Johnny said. He laughed, but I saw it in his eyes... he was deadly serious. And so was Dave.

"Just don't screw up," he said. Any other time I might have argued the toss, but I knew in my heart that they were right... I just didn't know whether I wanted to do anything about it.