An Excerpt from As the Bodhran Called Our Feet to the Floor
by Anna Luther
June 5, 2007 — Published in On Writing
The church clock across from her apartment complex rang out one in the morning. Emma pushed the heavy metal-framed glass door of her complex open and started down the hallway to her apartment, D3. Something stopped her from getting very far. From under the door of D1, a faintly familiar sound, filtered under the door and leaked into the dim and slightly dingy hallway in which she stood. A swaying melody enchanted her, preventing her from advancing further to her small place. “By the clear and the winding stream,” murmured a voice softly, “in the valley of Strathmore …”
As though called by name, Emma snuck closer to the sounds … the tune was vaguely familiar, as though she had heard it once in a dream — or perhaps in childhood, before conscious recollection developed, but when the mind was already gathering things.
Memory washed over her like a sudden wave. Emma heard her father’s voice chanting the tale that now seeped from under the door before her. Far from the city that she now called her home, the place that now claimed all her time and thoughts … she saw herself in those fields, among those faces she loved so dearly.
Once again she froze, unwilling to move from her place on the dirty brown hall carpet. Emma looked down at the floor. Her long teal skirt and white t-shirt formed a startling contrast with the dankness around her. In the half-light dripping from the street lamp outside the complex door, the dirt colored carpet and putrid yellow walls looked even more depressing and unwelcoming than usual.
She could no longer resist the siren whisper of the music. She walked up to the door hiding the tunes teasing her and tapped gently on it. Her knock was received with gentle, harried chatter from what sounded like four or five souls gathered behind it. One of them rose and shuffled across the wood floor to the door.
“Did we wake you, miss?” An elderly gentleman with a shock of white hair across his brow and a fiddle balanced tenderly in his left hand opened the door. His bow arm hung loosely to his right, and he had an air of musical gentility about him. “I know it’s late, miss, and I’m sorry if we disturbed your sleep. It seems we’ve gotten a bit carried away by the old tunes.”
“No, no!” replied Emma. “Not at all! I was just coming home, actually. Please, I was wondering if I might listen a while, actually.” She addressed the gentleman before her, but her eyes wandered to the rest of the party gathered in the cramped but cheerful living room. The venerable fiddle player had gathered a guitarist, flutist, accordian player, and bodhran player for the night, and Emma needed to sit among their number, if only as a spectator to their art.
The guitarist, a young man with dark eyes, wearing in blue jeans and a deep green polo shirt, looked a bit taken a back. “Grandpa? What does she want?” He eyed Emma with suspicion, as an outsider that he didn’t quite believe he could or even wanted to trust.
“She’s asked if she might sit in with us for a while and listen.” He winked at Emma. “And perhaps sing.”
“I … I didn’t want to sing.” She stuttered and blushed. The old man had read her thoughts in her face even though she didn’t dare to speak them.
The tall gentleman welcomed her into his apartment, and she sat down. The fiddle player softly began “High Germany,” a song that Emma had sung many a time in her girlhood — that she could still frequently be heard humming when reverie stuck.
“Woe be to the orders,” she whispered, barely breathing, “that took my love from me…”
The fiddle droned gently beneath her light voice, airy and careful in the night. The flute player jumped in, supporting Emma with a gracious counter-melody that lilted and wove in and out, now higher, now lower, now in unison, joining the voice that Emma barely recognized as her own.
At last, not even the guitarist could hold out any longer, and he gently added a few broken chords under Emma’s now swelling voice. Verse by verse, she gained courage and found her nearly-forgotten voice once more.
The song over, the musicians sat in expectant silence.
Emma bravely began this time. “Broken-hearted I’ll wander… ”
The petite red-haired flutist shyly lowered her instrument and joined her voice with Emma’s, “Broken-hearted I’ll remain, since my bonny light horseman, in the wars he was slain.” The two intertwined their song unaccompanied, while the rest of the party company sat back and listened in admiration and melancholy as the two women wove a tale of love and loss, now alone, now together.
The women’s story told, the fiddler stretched his tired arms. “Would you put a pot of coffee on, Jimmy?” he asked of his accordion player, plainly a bit older than Emma’s 25 years but wearing less care on her face than she did.
Jimmy jumped up to get some coffee brewing, as the mantle clock was struck 2:30. The guitarist, whose name Emma was now quite curious to know, began picking out an old dance tune, a reel, on his instrument while Jimmy was gone. The first time through, the fiddler and the flutist just sat and watched the guitarist’s skilled fingers skip across the strings, but at last the flutist joined in, and the fiddler followed her soon after.
The trio seemed neither young nor old as they danced their way through ancient tunes with fingers, air, bow, and string. The flutist closed her eyes, plainly somewhere else in her mind, or her heart, and the fiddle player joined her in his own way. The guitarist strummed now, accompanying their duet and staring into the distance of his own memories.
His eyes found their way to Emma’s. She smiled at him, and he winked in return. Perhaps, Emma thought, he has forgiven my intrusion into his circle.
Jimmy soon reappeared, carafe in hand with mugs shoved under his left arm. “I’ll go grab the cream and sugar while you pour,” volunteered the flutist. She set her ebony flute down and rose quietly to help.
As soon as Jimmy had amply filled the mugs and the flutist (who Emma imagined must be named something exotic like Fiona or Aoife) had brought the cream and sugar, the gentleman who had led them all night piped up.
“I suppose we ought to have a proper introduction now that we’ve had a bit of music, hadn’t we? My name is Thomas.”
“I’m Emma,” she whispered, half out of shyness, and half out of reverence for the gifted musician.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, my dear girl!” Thomas clasped her right hand in both of his warmly.
“Our flutist is Susan; Jimmy you’ve heard named already, and the silent bodhran player is Sean. Our careful guitarist would be Colin.” He winked at Emma.
His gentle formality cheered Emma, and she found herself quite heartened by the kindness of all present.
“You seem to know quite a lot of the old songs,” Jimmy commented.
“I grew up with them,” Emma smiled. “My father always used to sing them all the time, and my mother played the guitar with him sometimes, when she was feeling well enough after the evening chores. Farm work was hard on her, although she loved it so much.”
“What took you from such a life?” wondered Susan aloud.
Emma frowned. “I didn’t want to be a farmer’s daughter or a farmer’s wife, so I moved here after college. I took a job at an insurance firm as a receptionist because it was the only thing I could find.”
“How long have you been here?” Colin asked.
“Three years.” Emma looked wistful. “But I do miss home.”
Thomas smiled sadly on her. “I lost my farm ten years ago, and moved here hoping to find something to do with myself. So far, the only thing the only thing I seem to have been able to find is a job bagging groceries at Safeway.”
Emma’s heart twitched with empathy for the man. “I’m so sorry.”
“Ah, but I have my friends and my family here,” he smiled, “and that makes it a little more bearable.”
Emma drained the last of her coffee, as they sat in gentle silence for a few moments, each lost in some memory of his or her own.
At last she stood up. “I’m sorry, but I really have to go home. I have work in the morning.” She frowned. Thomas was visibly saddened to see his new friend leave, and Colin was loathe to let her depart so soon after their meeting as well. “But I am only two doors away from you! We will meet again, I am sure.”
Thomas smiled. “We will, my dear, I am sure.” He glanced at Colin.
“It was a pleasure to make music with you tonight, Emma,” offered the guitarist. “I hope this is only the first of many such evenings.”
“I hope so, too.” Emma smiled good-bye on them all, but her eyes lingered longest on Colin. “Good night.”
With that, Emma opened the apartment door and stepped back out into the dark hallway, less despondent than before, cheered by the glow of the musicians down the hall.
Illustration by Lacey Anderson.
Anna Luther
Anna Luther is an obsessive musician-writer whose days are split between pondering the finer points of Bach and flogging verbose writers.
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