Tinker and Blue by Frank Macdonald Page B

until he turned the corner and saw a guy his own age in sandals, jeans, tie-dye shirt and glengarry holding under his arm like a trapped insect the bladder of his bagpipes, the pipes themselves flaring out their beetle-on-its-back legs while the boy’s fingers ran along the chanter like happy children, releasing the notes to “Strawberry Fields.”
    The oddity of the creature on the corner, hippie and Highlander, piper and rock star, had stopped a small crowd, their faces a gallery of bemused expressions. Blue shouldered his way to the front of the listeners, waiting for the tune to finish. The drone of the bagpipes had played in the background of his growing up and had been, like the inflections of the Gaelic, generally rejected by his modern generation in favour of more exciting instruments. Travelling with Farmer had exposed Blue to a smattering of both the Gaelic and the pipes. Standing in the company of the utterly ignorant, Blue marshalled his vague knowledge into the stuff of authority so that when the young piper finished his piece to the awkward applause of his audience, Blue tested the musician’s repertoire to see if it equalled his own.
    â€œDo you know ‘Lord Lovat’s Lament’?” Blue asked while people tossed their offering of coins into the tin can at the piper’s feet.
    The piper did a double-take but being openly pleased by the presence of a connoisseur amid his audience began preparing his pipes for the tune. As Blue adopted the stoic expression of the hard to impress, the music flowed from the instrument with a graceful sadness that reminded Blue of what he had heard about the tune, that it was composed for Lord Lovat while he watched from the deck of a transport ship as Scotland receded from his sight forever. He listened to the oddly brisk lament thinking that the first time that lament was played on dry land it was on the shores of the New World where Highlanders were washing up by the thousands after the Clearances. Cape Breton maybe.
    A small silence, like a final note in the tune, followed the piper’s performance, giving Blue time to rise out of the reflective spell cast upon him by the piper.
    â€œYou from the Cape?” Blue asked him.
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œThe Cape. Cape Breton. You can’t play like that and not be from the Cape, boy ... I mean, buddy.”
    â€œI’m from Seattle,” the piper said.
    â€œGet outta here,” Blue said. “Seattle! What’s the world coming to, as the other fellow would say. How can you play like that and not know the island?”
    â€œWhat island? I’ve been in a pipe band since I was eight.”
    â€œThey’d get a big kick out of you back home, boy. An American playing the bagpipes. Next thing you know you guys will be playing hockey. Can you play anything you want on those things?”
    â€œPretty well.”
    Blue told him what he wanted and the piper replied that Blue’s request was about as simple as requests got, and pocketing his money followed Blue to the corner where the others were still waiting.
    â€œI’m Blue, by the way,” Blue offered his hand.
    â€œNathan Goldstein.”
    â€œGet outta here!”

15
    Tinker had seen pictures of the fife-and-drum and the ketchup-stained bandages leading Fourth of July parades in the United States and this wasn’t one them. This September parade was led by a hippie piper, a one-armed fiddler, a couple of strung-out street guitarists, several girls in granny dresses dancing to the music of their own tambourines, followed by a beggars-and-thieves chorus of about forty familiar faces from around the neighbourhood. Under normal circumstances, Tinker would have sat back and watched the music ensemble pass on its way to protest some foreign or domestic injustice, but normal circumstances were absent from this assembly which was being parade-marshalled by Blue who carried a case of beer under each arm while