Andy nods at me.
Discipline, I think, sniffing up any mistiness on my face.
Two flat boulders form a step under the shade of a junior-sized dogwood. I plant my bottom on the higher boulder and rosin the bow. I start rolling up my left sleeves, but the sight of my reedy arm makes me roll them back down. Definitely not manly.
Blowing off the excess powder from the rosin, I run the bow over each string and wind the pegs as necessary. Then I play the D-flat scale, my favorite. Sounds good, so I get to my feet. My audience falls silent.
My showmanship only comes out when I hold the violin—with Lady Tin-Yin in my arms, I don’t care who watches. A peace comes over me, something I call my violin calm. I become someone else, someone quite entertaining, I like to think.
I compose myself with a deep breath. I put the wood to my chin, and launch into Paganini’s Caprice no. 24.
When Father first showed me the sheet music, I told him I couldn’t do it.
“You’re right,” he said, chopping vegetables with his cleaver.
“What?”
“Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right. Have a pea shoot.”
By the end of the week, I had mastered it.
The piece features crisscrossing strings, which look more difficult than they really are. I work in several triple stops, three strings played at once. Mr. Trask, a clarinetist himself, brought tangerines just to hear me play those triple stops. I would’ve played them anyway, but I think he brought those rare treasures to show me what he thought of my playing.
When I finish, no one claps. They all stare at me. Andy swipes her sleeve over her eyes and turns her face away from the boys.
“Ain’t never heard a fiddle like that,” says Cay, his jaw slack.
Peety’s head bobs up and down. “You got some skills.”
West glares at his boots.
Time to lighten things up. This one’s for you, Father, because banjo was your first love. Then I tear into “Oh! Susanna,” which no one can hear without dancing, especially Cay, who does a polka.
Our spirits are high as we ready for sleep. We arrange ourselves like cigars again in the same order as last night.
We hear another howl tonight—this one not a chorus of yips but a single lone cry. A wolf. Wolves grow twice as big as coyotes, and can take down large animals like moose. I sit up and shiver. The howl repeats, this time closer.
“Holy moly,” says Andy.
West rolls over on his side, away from me. “They don’t bother people. Probably crying over his sweetheart.”
“It’s the bears and the mountain lions we worry over,” says Cay, who’s still sitting up, looking out into the dark.
“What we do about those?” asks Andy.
“You gotta learn a few cowboy tricks,” he replies. “Sharpshooting. Roping. We’d show you, but you ain’t worthy.” He tilts his face toward us. The firelight makes his teeth gleam.
Andy snorts and elbows me.
Peety starts to snore, and then the rest of them tumble off.
Andy turns toward me, and whispers sleepily, “I’m happy they’s gonna bring us to the fort,” she says. “You’s in good hands.”
“Me? You, too, right?”
“Yeah, me, too.” Her breath gradually deepens.
I lie awake longer. What would I do if she did leave? Would I be able to pull off a boy act of one? Probably not if I cried. Then the curtains would fall for sure.
No sooner do I get Andy out of my mind when Yorkshire’s lecherous winking eye moves in, along with bank robbers and lawmen and Father. Oh, how you must have suffered.
My grief shadows me into sleep, but then shakes me awake several times during the night. Father in a bonfire, or a prairie blaze, always holding his hands out for me. I cannot pull him free because I am always too late.