The Dancing Man

 

            There was a small lonely empty house. No one had lived there since the 50s or 60s. It was on the same piece of ground where Twigg’s B’s had been living in the old pickup cab. The truck had been removed but the house was still there, largely intact, if you didn’t mind grass on the roof, or a couple of broken windows, things like that. There were a few pieces of old style furnishings inside, stuff nobody wanted. Maybe the owners had died and there were no inheritors. Maybe a few treasure hunters had gotten the good stuff.
            Maurice, when he wasn’t at the Stump House, with Bob and Suzie, had been sleeping there. It suited him. Howlers don’t need luxe, or even very clean. They need a roof and somewhere to lie down.
            He was remembering how to live on his own hunting skills. So, cooking wasn’t an issue. Sometimes he brought his kill to Aunt Suzie, she knew what to do with it, which suited him excellently.
            Many nights, if anyone had braved the brush, vines, and tall weeds to approach the small house they would have heard some startlingly familiar blues tunes played on harmonica. They might even have thought the place was haunted.
            Maybe if they had known who was really there, they would have preferred a simple ghost.
            Many mornings, he would rise when the sun woke the birds. He’d sit up and listen, and maybe try to put some of that into his tunes. Maurice slept on the board floor, on a pad of two or three old quilts and blankets folded over thickly. There was no running water, so if he wanted a drink or something he needed to get up and go out.
            He usually ended up at the Stump House. Bob and Suzie could always hear him coming when he was headed their way.
            On this particular midsummer morning, Maurice was riffing on the robin’s song, and adding just a little Jack Bruce to it. It was getting pretty good. As he trotted along he could smell the smoke of Suzie’s fire and something cooking.
            When he loped up to the fire, Bob was sitting there smiling in his dreamy way. Suzie was poking at something in a pan.
            “He don’t believe in matter much,” sang Uncle Bob, in his husky tenor.
            “Alright,” sang Suzie, in her smokey contralto.
            Maurice took that as a cue to play his robin blues tune over again for them.
            “He’s a dancing man,” sang Uncle Bob.
            “Why does he dance?” sang Suzie.
            Maurice was too excited to sit down. He paced around the Stump House, putting a little Train Time into the tune.
            “When he dances he becomes a cloud, a rock, a river!” sang Bob. “He unwinds himself from self. He’s light as air.”
            Maurice worked on that for a few minutes.
            “But what does that mean?” sang Suzie, looking from Bob to Maurice and back again.
            Maurice played some more.
            “It means he dances for all of us, light as a feather, no mass at all,” sang Bob.
            “I bet he could fly!” sang Suzie suddenly, as the idea occurred to her.
            “You bet he can!” sang Bob. “He flew with Maeve and her feather!”
            “Oh, he did!” sang Suzie.
            Maurice kept playing his robin blues. He was so into it that he had tears in his eyes.
            “It’s all about love,” sang Bob. “The Forest is filled with love.”
            “I see it now,” sang Suzie.
            “He dances for love of the Forest!” sang Bob.
            Maurice sat down then, and kept playing quietly. He was getting hungry now. Then he said, “You know, we could probably turn that into a song.”
            “It is a song, Maurice,” said Suzie. “And it just happened while we were waiting for this bird to cook!”
            “We just have to remember how it goes,” said Uncle Bob, grinning, because he had a good memory for a song and there was no way he would forget this.
            They sat around discussing what had just happened, and how cool it was, and sort of committing it to memory among themselves, while eating wild turkey soup from some more of Ooog’s nice wooden bowls, drinking the liquid and using their fingers on the turkey.
            “We need to practice it a few times,” said Maurice. “Then we should go perform it for Ralph and Ramona! They’ll love it! And you know what guys? It’s just as good as anything Folky Joe ever did, and he’s rich now!”
            “But we can’t do what he did,” said Suzy. “We can’t perform in public!”
            “No, that’s true,” said Maurice, “But maybe I could take it to Joe, and he could make a hit out of it, and he could give us a cut of the profits.”
            “I don’t know, maybe we should just start by doing it for Ralph, and his family, and whoever knows him around here,” said Uncle Bob. “I think it would be OK to invite Ranger Rick and Dexter.”
            “OK, Bob, I’m with you. Let’s just practice and do it for the Great Forest for now,” said Maurice agreeably. “I don’t know what we need money for anyhow. That might be too big of a change. Let’s just stay the way we are, or we didn’t learn anything from the song at all!”
            “We don’t even have any place to spend money,” said Bob.
            “I love it,” said Aunt Suzie.
            “So do I,” sang Maurice, “So do I!”

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