CHAPTER 29
innette had arrived at her appointment with Theo inquisitively.
Kendrick had approached his meeting skeptically.M Ellen’s state of mind when she showed up at her bestowal would be pure conjecture. Nervous? Ceremonious?
Basil Cannonfield was the embodiment of calmness when he strode to the Fedder, as if it were entirely reasonable and predictable that a gift- giving, one-named stranger would summon him by handwritten letter to a fountainside rendezvous on a Thursday night in early May. As he approached Theo, he was smiling with the same boyish grin Asher had captured so precisely in the portrait.
“Mr. Theo, I think I’ve seen you before. You were standing off to the side of me last weekend, two nights in a row.”
“I was indeed.” Theo laughed like a child caught in mischief. “And I enjoyed your performance. I didn’t know you had seen me.”
“Well, Mr. Theo, you’re not my typical audience, so you sort of stood out.”
It was an odd start to a conversation between total strangers. The two men looked squarely at one another, at ease and unguarded.
“Actually, Mr. Theo, in my line of work it’s rare for anybody to stop and listen, so, when somebody does, I can’t help but notice. Thank you, too, for what you put in the envelope. A twenty is a big deal in this kind of work.”
“Well, Mr. Cannonfield, it’s nice to meet you.” Theo put out his hand again as if to do a proper introduction. He nodded at the young man’s guitar. “It looks like you’re on your way to work.”
“It’s Basil — BC is what some of my friends call me. Yep, it’s still a bit early but, yeah, I’m on my way to work. To my office. There aren’t many rewards for being a thirty-two-year-old street musician, but it’s kind of nice being my own boss. I set my hours. Are you in a hurry?”
Theo shook his head. “Not at all. I’m my own boss too. This,” he
gestured to the bench, “is my new office.”
They sat close together in the middle of the bench. Basil stretched his arm across the back, as if taking the old man under his wing. There was no sign of reluctance, and one might reasonably have taken them for father and son. Or grandfather and grandson.
Basil kicked off the conversation with the same reasonable question Minnette had asked at the first bestowal.
“So, Mr. Theo, I know what your letter said, but what’s the deal?
Why are you doing this? It’s a nice thing to do, but there’s got to be more to it than that.”
Theo gave his well-rehearsed explanation.
The Chalice walls.
The inspiration.
The objective.
Basil listened without interruption, impressed by the story and charmed by the musicality of the old man’s voice — a voice seasoned with an exotic accent, spoken through lips that were bent into the constant suggestion of a grin, and reinforced by eyes that seemed to glisten with their own internal light.
“Basil, you have seen your portrait before, yes?”
“Well, I’ve glanced at it. I know Asher a little bit, and he told me he was going to draw it. When they first hung it on the wall, I went in and took a look, but it felt kind of funny to stand there staring at my own face so I didn’t look at it for long. But I have looked at a lot of the others. Asher is amazing. I can’t understand why he’s not big time yet.
I bet he’d be really happy to know you’re doing this. I still don’t get it myself, but it’s pretty cool.”
A light breeze from the south stirred the oak. A leaf, as bright as a canary feather, one that had somehow held onto a limb through the long winter, finally lost its hold and fell into Theo’s lap. He picked it up.
“Ah. A coin of gold.”
“That’s a good idea for a song, Mr. Theo.”
“So, Basil, you do write songs?”
“I do. But I don’t get to play them very often. People give tips for songs they already know. I play popular songs to pay the bills, and I write my own songs because it’s what I enjoy. It’s good therapy. ‘Coins
of Gold.’ I like that.”
“What kind of songs do you write? What category, what genre, do you put them in?”
“I’m not sure what to call it. I grew up listening to all kinds of music —my parents’ music, my grandparents’ music. Blues, rock, big band, Motown, crooners, country, folk, classical, movie soundtracks. Really, I love it all. If there is such a thing as ‘gumbo music,’ where you just put in a little bit of everything and see what comes out, maybe that’s the category. Whatever it’s called, it’s a lot of fun, and you sure can go
broke doing it.”
Basil’s big grin took over his face.
“How long have you been doing this sort of work?”
“You want the long answer or the short one?”
“Long version, please.”
“OK, so, my dad was in the army. He’s retired now, but we moved a lot when I was a kid. I’m still not sure which place to call ‘home.’ We were in Golden for all my high school years. I liked it here mostly because of my English teacher and my band teacher. One of ‘em made me believe I could write words, and the other convinced me I could write music. Summer of my sophomore year, I got a job and saved my money and bought a guitar and a chord book. That’s when I started learning how to play. After a couple of years, I knew a few songs and had written some, and I was starting to sing in front of people. It felt like a ‘calling’ or something, but I knew — and my parents reminded me often — how hard it is to make a living as a musician.
“After high school, I went away to college and got an English degree, so I could be a teacher. I read this essay one time about an English teacher. Whenever somebody asked him about his job, he would say he taught a course in magic. That made sense to me. Still does. He taught his students that words and books are like magic.”
Theo thought of Ellen and the spell that words and books had cast over her mind.
“Anyway, I got my degree and teaching certification and came back here. My parents had been transferred to another base by then, but my older sister was still in Golden. She’s six years older than me, but we were real close. Growing up military and all the moving around we did
helped us to become really good friends. An army of two. That’s what we called ourselves. I wrote a song about that.”
Basil paused, took a breath, leaned forward, then rested his elbows on his knees and gazed into the fountain. Theo was tempted to say something and wanted to ask some obvious questions, but he maintained his silence.
“BC, we’re waiting for you!” Someone shouted from the direction of the Chalice. He straightened up and acknowledged the speaker with a wave of the hand, then turned to Theo.
“Don’t worry about them. They’ll be there whether I start a minute from now or an hour. So, anyway, I taught at one of the local high schools for several years. It was a low-income school, lots of single- parent stuff. It’s hard to teach kids the magic of words when they can barely read them, and I was frustrated a lot, but I lowered my expectations and stayed at it. I was starting to get the hang of it and had some small victories. But then my sister — Genevieve — was diagnosed with cancer, and her husband left her. ‘In sickness and in health’ obviously didn’t include caring for a wife with cancer.” Basil shook his head in obvious disgust. “I quit my job to help take care of her. It was tough, but I was lucky I had some money saved up and could be there for her. At first, she could get out, and we’d try to do things around town, day trips and stuff. Even when she was sick, she was fun to hang out with, but it was hard to watch her get weaker and weaker.”
Basil paused to take a breath. Theo remained silent.
“Eventually, it got where Genevieve couldn’t do much of anything, so we stayed home except for doctor visits and things like that. She slept a lot, and since she liked to hear me play, I wrote a bunch of soft songs to help her rest. They weren’t the kind of thing I could ever perform on a sidewalk. I loved it when I could sing her to sleep. An audience of one.
The best ever.”
Theo nodded. “Thank you for telling the story. I’m very honored.
And your sister, is she OK?”
“After about a year, she died.”
Theo winced.
“That was four years ago, but it seems at times like four hours. Her
death sort of knocked me down. So much for the army of two. I didn’t have the heart to teach anymore, at least not right away. I was a mess.
Get this. My sister had a life insurance policy, but she didn’t think to change the beneficiary when she got sick, so her husband got a lot of money. And then while we were having her funeral, he went into her house and took a lot of stuff. It’s been four years, but if I saw him right now, I don’t know what I might do to him. I’m just glad they didn’t have kids.”
Theo shook his head. Basil sat up straight as he continued. “So, it was heartbreak and rage and just a heck of a time for me. They were some dark days. I took over my sister’s lease and still live there. My girlfriend is with me now, but for a long time, I was there alone.
Sometimes I’d sit by my sister’s bed and play songs. Probably sounds kind of morbid or crazy, but those moments were my rescue. I could still imagine I was singing her to sleep. Anyway, I’m not sure where the idea came from — maybe it’s like that urge you had about the portraits — but one day I had the thought of singing on the street. I’d seen others do it and figured I could give it a try. I knew I wasn’t ready to go back into teaching. It took a while to figure out the rules of being a street performer — who can stand where and all that — but I finally got it straight. And it took a while to get used to being ignored by people, but that comes with the territory. You gotta have thick skin to do this for a living. You ain’t gonna make it long if you don’t.”
Ain’t?
Theo took note of the southernism. Ain’t. It was his first time to hear it used. It was a word that played squarely into the sort of stereotypical caricature of the South that Theo had brought to Golden.
In truth, Basil had been a serious student in college and could diagram a sentence with impressive exactitude. He was capable of the King’s English. But he also knew the patois of the street and was well- versed in the fine points of southern jargon. There was, to him, something lovable and endearing, even artistic, about the dialect of the Promenade. He felt no shame speaking and singing in the vernacular of his neighbors.
And then, as if suddenly aware that he had not yet responded to Theo’s question, Basil gave the short answer, two words: ”Three years.
I’ve been doing street music for three years.”
“Do you only play on certain nights?”
“Most weeks spring through autumn, I play at least three or four days a week, especially weekends. In winter, Shep lets me play in the shop sometimes. I don’t make much money, but my girlfriend and I are pretty low maintenance. I don’t know how much longer I’ll do this.
Believe it or not, it’s pretty hard work. My poor dad thinks I’ve lost my mind, and my mom worries about me starving. I should have outgrown my need for their blessing by now, but what they think still matters to me. I considered doing some tutoring or substitute teaching just to be able to tell them I have a respectable job.”
Theo perked up. He knew a little girl who might benefit from having a private tutor. “So, you still teach sometimes?”
“Not yet, but maybe.”
“Do you still write songs?”
“All the time. I don’t finish many. If I had a reason to, concerts or something, I think I would. But mostly I start them and quit before I’m finished. I hope someday I can record a few of them, a good recording, just to see how they’d sound with a bit of polish. In fact, have you seen the guy who carries the cello around? Simone? I barely know him, but I told him I was gonna write a song for him and his cello. That’d be kind of interestin’, wouldn’t it? So, Mr. Theo, that’s me. What about you? Your letter said you just recently moved to town.”
Another shout across the median, the same voice as previously, called out to Basil. He waved it off as he’d done minutes earlier.
“It looks like you need to get to work,” Theo said. “Your fans are getting restless.”
Basil chuckled. “If I depended on them for my next meal, I’d be in trouble. But maybe I do need to go. Let’s talk again sometime, OK?”
“Basil, before you go, may I tell you something?” Theo pulled the paper off the portrait and held it on his knees so that it was plainly visible to the both of them. “I want to tell you what I saw when I looked at your portrait.”
Basil said nothing, but, emboldened by the old man’s focus on the drawing, looked at it himself as Theo’s finger touched the glass.
“I saw a boy in the smile. It’s a face that hasn’t forgotten playfulness.
I think children would be drawn to this face. But I also see a man.
There is wisdom here, I believe. In the eyes. A young, tender heart; a wise, old soul. That’s a good combination. Wisdom and playfulness.
There is the possibility of a saint in this face. This could well be a portrait of St. Basil.”
Basil shook his head at such a ludicrous suggestion. St. Basil? “No time soon, I’m afraid. I’ve already told you enough to permanently disqualify me from that club. I hate my brother-in-law. I wimped out on teaching kids in poverty. I’m living hand to mouth. My mom says I’m living in sin with my girlfriend. I’m hardly making the world a better place. They’d have to change the requirements of sainthood a lot
for me to ever be one.”
Theo smiled and patted Basil’s knee.
“Basil, my good fellow, there is a term for ones like us. ‘Raw material.’ Read your Augustine. And remember, heaven can draw a straight line with a crooked stick.”
Though still doubtful, Basil grinned. ”I suppose so, but sainthood?
Don’t think so. Maybe I’ll just try to be the guy you see in the picture.
Wisdom and playfulness?”
Theo patted Basil’s knee again and nodded his old head. “That’s a start. Tender heart, wise soul. That’s a good start. Go sing like that fellow tonight.”
They rose to leave. What started as a handshake became the comfortable and confident hug of two old friends. Basil picked up his guitar case and backpack with his left hand and gripped the portrait, loosely covered with the wrapping paper, in his right.
“Well, Theo, wish me a good night.”
“Yes, yes. May all your tips be tens and twenties.”
“Now don’t get carried away.”
“Then may all your tips tonight fall from heaven. Coins of gold.”
“I like it. Hey, Theo, you didn’t ask me about my name. People always ask about my name.”
“Ha. They ask me about mine too. Let’s leave it at this: You are Basil, and I am Theo.”
A gold leaf fell between them. Another late departure.
The lanky figure took his place on the sidewalk, strummed loudly,
lifted his voice, and sang. Theo remained at the fountain, listening to the sounds of street noise before heading west to watch sunset over the river and then returning to Ponder House.
