audience

One thing I liked about Mills was that life was never boring around him. He was an excellent pianist, and he was always drumming his fingers on the table, or any surface he could find, a park bench, his wrist, or the table at the corner diner. But he also got himself into trouble, more than he wanted, just because he was so good at the piano, and because he had no patience for people or all the problems they brought with them when they decided he was a great musician. I, on the other hand, was a two-bit fiddler who was lucky to get any attention at all, but I was good friends with Mills, at least: we both worked for wealthy old widows who were related in a twisted and competitive way, and we'd been friends for years, since we'd been in a band together long ago.

I worked for Victoria Irving, wife of one of the town's wealthiest scions, Maxwell Irving, who had owned a corn syrup factory along with his brother, Martin Irving, whose wife, Virginia, employed Mills. Victoria and Virginia were childhood friends, but were very competitive; they had each been quite beautiful, had each married one of the wealthy Irving brothers, and had each had several children who had kept that competitive spirit going. Victoria employed me somewhat irregularly, but would always feed me well and regale me with stories about the wealthy Irving clan: how they traveled the world, spending money, getting involved in international intrigue, squandering the family fortune or in some cases amassing their own independently. She had several grandchildren in the area, but one in particular concerned her, a 19-year-old named Arthur, who raced around town in a Mercedes, trying to pick up girls, with no particular goal in life, no desire to take over his share of the corn syrup factory from his father, no desire to do anything really, except make trouble, and try to make sense of the situation he was born into. It seemed quite natural to me, actually, as I sat drinking iced tea in her parlor, sweat pouring down my shirt, for a 19-year-old to be out there, driving too fast, not quite knowing what to do, but then, I saw life differently from Victoria Irving, and she knew that. I'd listen patiently, not hearing most of her complaints very clearly, and go back to weeding, cleaning out the shed, or doing whatever she wanted.

Mills often told stories about Virginia, on the other side of town, and her old piano, which was back in her carriage house, behind the mansion, and which she would let Mills play quite often, whenever he liked. He would weed her roses, and do much the same kinds of things I did for Victoria, but then she would let him play that piano back in her carriage house for hours. And he was truly gifted on that piano; I happened to know that. He'd quit playing in public, because he didn't like dealing with people, but he had a special thing for pianos, which he considered the ultimate instrument- both string and percussion, with every note in the human range, it could be beat, pounded, rapped, or gently, tenderly caressed from every direction. I loved to hear him play, but then, so did everyone, and that was part of the problem- he was actually grateful to find a piano in fairly decent condition, but out far enough away from everyone that he could work out the stuff he wanted to play, by himself, without people crowding around and gawking and pushing their business cards under his nose. He really wasn't concerned about making money on his gift- he'd already tried that, and it interrupted his desire to make the music he heard in his head.

He was especially aggravated a couple of weeks ago when Virginia's grandson, Andrew Irving, came home from Europe, a beautiful European woman on his arm, and took apart the piano one night, out in the carriage house, without bothering to put it back together, and for what reason Mills could not find out. The following day, as Mills was taking a break, the woman held him in a discussion about the piano; she seemed to be annoyed that Mills clearly preferred old pianos to beautiful young women, he said, but that was the way it was: Mills wanted them to put the piano back together; they wanted something out of Virginia which was not clear, since Mills was not listening to that conversation, but could only hear Andrew and Virginia vaguely, from the other end of the house. In any case he was out of a piano for a few days, until he got Virginia's permission to put it back together, which he finally did, still not knowing why the grandson had taken it apart. He had described Andrew as unpleasant, about the same age as his second cousin Arthur, who he no doubt knew from family gatherings, if not going to school in the same town. Both boys were no doubt about to attend some wealthy private university, but who knows where and when? We were sure that the two boys were both going through that extreme nervousness one has when entering an entirely new phase of life, whatever that might be; it was now mid-August, and Mills and I ourselves were trying to find work for the fall and the cold season, knowing that we couldn't live off these widows and their weeds and old sheds forever.

But it was a clear, cool Saturday morning, and I ran into Mills uptown, where he was nervous as usual, and upset again, one more time because of a piano. On this morning he was walking uptown to get a cup of coffee, on Saturday morning, and was accosted by some people who wanted his help moving a piano out of the American Legion. They had four people, but it wasn't enough; it seemed like a couple of them were hung over, unsteady on their feet, and hadn't seemed to plan the operation very well. They were wearing uniforms, but Mills pointed out, as he was talking to me, that one of them didn't quite match the others, and that bothered him, as if the uniforms were worn to throw people off rather than as a genuine uniform that some movers would wear on a routine moving job. But other things about the guys bothered Mills also. One had actually removed a cigarette from a pack that Mills had laid down next to the wall; had removed the cigarette and lit it, without asking, without bothering to find out whose it was. And Mills was clearly a perfect stranger, roped into doing this difficult moving job just because he was there, on the street, in front of the American Legion, at 7:30 on a Saturday morning. But another thing bothered Mills: this was a beautiful piano, one he'd love to play, quite old, in good shape, the kind they didn't make any more, yet these hung over guys seemed to have no appreciation whatsoever for its value; they handled it as if it were just another piece of old furniture. Mills described his feeling as if he were in love with a woman, wanting desperately to save her from a bad situation. This, he figured, was clearly not the place to try playing such a piano, at 7:30 in the morning uptown, outside the American Legion. The old pickup truck held it just fine, but the surly movers did nothing to secure it, and the truck didn't have a gate. They looked around for ropes, but couldn't find any. This didn't seem like professional movers to Mills; it was also not like professionals to try to move a piano when they are short one man, to always be grumbling about some guy named Burger who was supposed to be with them, but wasn't; to lift the piano in such a way that they almost destroyed it, though fortunately, they managed to get it up there in the end.

Mills didn't know it, but he had just encountered a rough group of drunkards who were actually stealing the piano, at 7:30 that Saturday morning. Known around town as the Fitch family, this crowd included several other drunks, including one kid, and including a guy named Burger also, who was related to them only indirectly, but was often in with them on various petty criminal actions that they were known for doing. People who read the arrest records in the newspapers were quite used to seeing names like Fitch and Burger in there for one thing or another; they were often caught doing alcohol-related crimes, like stealing whiskey, fighting in a tavern, reckless driving, or DUI, drunken driving. I suspected that they were regulars at the American Legion, which was actually a drinking establishment, and which may not have demanded that you be a veteran, I'm not sure what their rules were. They had a pretty good place, I knew, but it was a bar like any other, and had trouble legally keeping people like the Fitches away, that is, until they caught them actually stealing a piano from the place.

On this morning, however, Mills didn't know this, and was just upset that he had apparently witnessed an injustice being done to a piano, one that would have a rough ride on an old pickup with a cab full of hung-over losers who stole cigarettes in order to wake up in the morning. Mills' fingers drummed on the armrest of the park bench uptown as we looked down the street, about eight blocks down, where we saw some people gathering in the middle of the street. We could not see clearly what it was- it looked just like a small group of people. It was down Jackson Avenue about eight blocks, where Louisiana crossed it, a one-way street, two lanes, going south toward the highway. Right before Jackson Louisiana came over a steep hill and bottomed out right there at the intersection where we saw the people; there were a number of trees there and an old house on the corner. We decided to walk down the street and see what the people were doing; it was a beautiful day, and this was rare in August, so it felt good to just be outside, not working, not going anywhere in particular.

But as we walked, I suddenly remembered some things Victoria had said, while I'd been working with her. I often let her prattle go right over my head, as I would be covered with sweat, drinking iced tea, enjoying a break from weeding or whatever. But she had, at one time, mentioned trading pianos with Virginia. The situation was competitive, as everything was between them, but apparently she had bought an old upright piano for her son, at one point; Virginia had the heirloom piano, the really fine one, but wouldn't lend it to her or give it to her, even though she wasn't using it. Victoria had bought an upright and put it in her parlor; the son, Arthur's father, didn't play it much, but it looked mighty fine in the parlor, and every time Virginia came over, she would remark on how fine it looked and how she could never fit her old heirloom in the parlor in the same way that Victoria could fit that upright in hers. And so, she had ended up trading the upright to Virginia for the heirloom one, in some kind of complicated trade that both resented deeply later, but that involved other old family heirlooms as well. You see, they were still bound up in each other, as competitive as they were; they saw each other regularly, they went to each other's houses, they went to the same family functions, and they tried to keep track of Irving family heirlooms and their true value. But the ironic thing was, neither one had any conception of the true value of those pianos, and Victoria had ended up, years later, giving the heirloom to the American Legion, since she didn't have room for it, and couldn't find anyone to play it, and didn't care much about its dollar value. Victoria, also, grew bored with the upright, and put it out in the carriage house, obviously, where Mills had found it.

So now we put two and two together. Here Andrew, Virginia's grandson, arrives from Europe, snarls at everyone, and takes apart the upright in Virginia's carriage house for no apparent reason; six days later a rough crowd of drunken rogues haul out the heirloom piano from its roost in the old American Legion, uptown, stealing cigarettes, one man short, phony uniforms, careless moving techniques, hung over workers, at 7:30 on a Saturday morning. As Mills and I were walking, we had about concluded that the two bizarre events were no coincidence, when, lo and behold, we came close enough to the crowd on Jackson and Louisiana to see what they were doing. There was, in fact, a piano out in the middle of the road, a big old one, standing straight up, blocking one lane; cars were going around it, and the crowd was standing around, just looking at it, trying to decide what to do. Mills recognized it immediately as the very same one that he had helped haul out of the American Legion that morning, the heirloom piano, no doubt. His jaw dropped and I could clearly see his fingers getting nervous. He wanted to play that piano.

There was no sign of a pickup truck, no movers, no people in uniform, no hung over guys smoking, nothing. There were no police, just about twenty or so people milling around on a beautiful Saturday morning on a street corner with a piano, facing traffic that came over the steep hill on Louisiana, coming south toward the highway, and now had to make one lane in order to go around it, but patiently did that; obviously a piano like this belonged to somebody, who would come back for it at any minute. And this was the attitude of the crowd also, small as it was; people were mainly enjoying the beautiful day, the shade of the old trees at the corner; seeing an old piano out in the middle of the street, standing around waiting to see what would happen.

Sure enough, Mills couldn't resist. He found an old stump to sit on, and he dragged it over to the piano and started playing it. His fingers jumped and danced on the keys. Most were in pretty good shape- maybe they had been jarred, from falling out of the pickup truck, but it hadn't lost but one or two, and Mills seemed to play just fine with what he had. In fact, he got kind of warmed up- he hadn't actually performed in a while, but he knew how to make a performance, and he started to really sink his fingers into the tension of the ivories, feeling every little felt hammer inside it and striking each key in just the right way to make that piano sing in the Saturday morning air. The crowd was electrified. Perfect strangers, all twenty or so of them fixed their eyes on Mills as he got into "When the Saints Come Marching In," and a few more appeared from houses in the area or wherever he could be heard. Mills let the song get more and more complicated, more and more intense, and it was the kind of situation where one lost track of everything but the song, the richness of its texture, the interplay of the keys and notes. I say this as a musician, one who hears all this stuff, but I knew the crowd heard it too- nobody had ever heard music like this before. And it was right out on the corner of Jackson and Louisiana.

For a short moment it seemed like the world stopped. There was no traffic on either street. People who had been walking by had stopped dead in their tracks, transfixed by the scene and the music that was coming from that heirloom piano, which probably had never been played like this, even in the Legion hall, which had a pretty steady supply of characters. The people who had already been on the corner, standing there, continued to stand, watching, patient, in rapt attention. The fresh morning air hung in the canopy of the trees, took in every note, held it in harmony as the others came floating up; the piano filled the corner with joyous solos, bass, harmony, runs up and down the keyboard, every imaginable sound. The old stump that he had found had a way of not only holding him entirely, allowing him to put his entire weight into whatever keys he chose to play, but also seemed to catch him as he came back down; it was perfect, and I'm not sure where he found it or how it had happened to arrive out of nowhere. The piano responded to his every touch, his every motion. As a musician I knew Mills was at the top of his game- all those months practicing in the old carriage house came to this- he was the master.

But we heard an ominous sound from over the top of the hill, and then, a terrible sight, that none of us will ever forget. Two cars, coming over the hill, speeding, side by side. On the piano side, the Mercedes, with Arthur in it, a young guy driving way too fast, a demonic look on his face turning abruptly to stone-cold terror when he sees a big old piano in the middle of his lane at the bottom of the steep hill. Next to him, in a similar new and smaller car, roughly the same size, was Andrew, his second cousin. They were racing, apparently, driving way too fast, flying over the hill. Arthur hit the brakes and skidded right into Andrew, who skidded also; both came down the hill sideways. In a split second it was over; Arthur had smashed into the piano, Andrew had smashed into a tree.

Most people had seen it coming and had at least turned away from the carnage; even Mills had sensed it coming, and had gotten off of the stump and slightly away from the piano, as it shattered and left its pieces, its keys, its pedals, its machinery all over the street. Arthur died instantly, crushed in his car, a terrible sight I could not even look at. Andrew was even worse, over by the tree, where his car had accordioned up and made another huge wreckage which would take them days to clean up. But miraculously, nobody else died; I went into the mess after Mills, who I dearly loved, and he was badly injured by flying pieces of piano, but was taken to the hospital, and many weeks later, released. A couple of other bystanders were injured as well, mostly by flying piano parts, as the cars themselves had not hit anyone. The grisly accident brought fire engines and police from all over town and made a huge scene at that corner for several hours, as people like Mills were loaded into ambulances, the two boys pried out of their cars and taken to the morgue or wherever.

I stayed by Mills' side, in the hospital, for a week or two, but had to go back to work, and slowly put pieces of the story together after that. Yes, the piano had dropped right out of the Fitches' truck, right out onto the street; when they came to the bottom of the hill and bottomed out at the intersection; they didn't have the people to put the piano back in the truck, so they left it there while they went to get somebody. But they'd been pulled over for DUI just up the road about seven blocks; the truck had expired tags and everyone knew they were drunk, even on Saturday morning. But it was while the cop was writing them up and hauling them in, that the accident happened on Jackson and Louisiana.

But why had the drunken rogues gone and stolen a whole piano, which they clearly couldn't handle, and had no idea how to move? That story came out eventually also. Andrew clearly had come back from Europe knowing something: his grandfather had told his father, on his deathbed, about a valuable jewel, smuggled out of Russia, and welded to the inside of the piano. Andrew hadn't known which piano, of course, and took apart the upright looking for the jewel. When it wasn't there, he found out where the heirloom was and scouted it out, over in the American Legion. But somehow, through the woman, perhaps, or out of his youthful indiscretion, the drunks in the Legion had gotten wind of what was happening, and beat him to it. Maybe he had tried to hire them to use the truck? Maybe he had inquired about the piano, in a way that tipped them off? Maybe he threatened to take it back, as rightfully his? Whatever the reason, they had chosen to steal it that morning, and had- but they had only gotten to Jackson and Louisiana with it, when it fell right out of the truck, and landed upright.

But the story was yet even more bizarre. The police had been arresting the Fitches- the four of them, in the pickup truck, at the time of the accident. They'd taken pleasure in booking them for every imaginable crime- DUI, giving alcohol to a minor, failure to wear seatbelt, driving an improperly licensed vehicle, etc. They couldn't have known, and surely the Fitches didn't tell them, that there was a piano, a hazard in the road, seven blocks back, at Jackson and Louisiana where they'd left it. So, the police were busy at the time of the accident, though they responded, of course, as soon as they could.

But what had happened to Burger? He, apparently, had been thrown off the truck on the way to the American Legion. He'd either been thrown off, or pushed off; it wasn't clear. If the Fitches and the people in the truck even knew that he was gone, they certainly didn't go back after him, or try to find him, even though he could have helped them with the piano; that's why I concluded that they had pushed him. In fact, from that day, he disappeared from sight, for several years, and when he finally arrived back in town, he was a different man, and people had more or less forgotten whatever they'd remembered about his part in the drama of that day. But if one were to try to track down that precious jewel, I'd start with him; he was, after all, one of the few who would have known about it. Another would have been the girlfriend, the European woman whom Andrew had appeared with, at Virginia's house; she also was never seen again.

As for Mills, he was never able to play the piano again, due to the injuries he got that day. But it didn't seem to ruin him, or even leave him bitter. It was almost like he was freed from the confining feeling of having to play the songs he heard in his head; of having to perform them, as all songs must ultimately be performed. He had, after all, already reached what to him was the pinnacle, the top, of his musical career. He was not one to want the largest audience, the greatest fame, the big name on the marquee; he'd just wanted, one time, to do his best for someone, and he did.

As for me, I played the fiddle around town for years; I put "Saints" into my repertoire, and played it the best I could, knowing that I could never match, or even come close to what Mills had done on that day. I played it because Mills couldn't. I played it because I wanted to hear it, relive that day, even indirectly. Finally, I played it because I still had a fondness for Arthur, in spite of everything he had done. He wasn't really a bad kid, I figured; he'd just been doing what kids do, and he couldn't have imagined how badly it would turn out. I'd dedicate the song to him, see if anyone recognized his name; I figured, if I played the tune enough, eventually I'd find someone else, besides Mills, who had actually been there on that day.

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