Free Grand Change by William Andrews Page B

the tune before they got the curtain up.
    I guess you could say the inevitable happened then. Although I don’t think it would have if they’d given us more time to rehearse. It was kind of like getting hit with a bucket of cold water when you’re not expecting it. That dry, deserted feeling grabbed me and froze me up, knocking me off stride; it grabbed Wally at about the same time and everything flopped into squawks and offbeat guitar dings.
    Wally kept at it though, kept working away with his bow arm locked. Then I saw his jaw start to work. Then his tongue lolled out and he bit down on it with it still a ways out and still trying to work. When I looked at the crowd, the few faces I could see had an awestruck look. Then it was like something simmering into blowing up until we were hit by a gale of laughter that came in a belch. I glanced to the off-stage corner and saw the teacher standing with her shoulders bucking, her face beet red and her lips pursed shut. But Wally limped away, with me getting a ding in now and then. I was worried he might bite off his tongue. The roar of laughter carried on for some time after they dropped the curtain on us, with Wally still working away like he was trying to catch up.
    In the end he stomped backstage, stiff-necked and with his peculiar belligerence. “I ain’t playing no more,” he said. “Laugh at a fellow like that.”
    Over in a corner, behind one of the movable back walls, Linda Robbins and Janet Fuller were waiting for their skit. Janet was finding it hard to keep a straight face, but Linda came over with something akin to sympathy in her blue eyes and on her plump face, framed by blonde curls. “That’s okay, Wally,” she said. “You gave it your best and you did a good job.”
    That wasn’t much help, since even he knew he didn’t.
    Wally went and hid in the basement right up until the closing chorus and he wasn’t too fussy about coming out then, but the teacher coaxed him to it. Trouble was, when everyone saw him again, there was another belch of laughter. He stood singing with a shoulder hitched up and his head canted like a dog in the rain. Then he realized he was the centre of attraction, and his face lost its stiff twist. He squared off to the audience with his head back, and the roar got louder.
    I guess if Santa hadn’t come about then, they’d have laughed until they got home. But he came, ho, hoing his way in from the cold. He went through his usual greeting, then handed out the gifts—prearranged by the hat raffle—amidst that bluster and excitement brought on by presents, the giving and receiving.
    They kind of lost it again when Santa dealt Wally his. “Ho, ho, ho, to fiddling Wally Mason from someone who cares. Now I wonder who that could be?”
    When everything was all over and we were getting on our overcoats and overshoes in the buzz and muddle, big Stewart Lucas, with his paunch bulging from his open overcoat, his open overshoes flapping, his piano key teeth going from ear to ear in his big, round face, came and said, “Wally, I never thought you had it in you. To put on a show like that must have taken some doing. And Jake, that get up you had on your guitar made it all the funnier.”
    The Old Man and Nanny went home just after we played. One of the milk cows had bloated that afternoon and John Cobly had to come over and tap her. They wanted to get home and keep an eye on her. I went home with the Masons.
    It was a cold, dark night. There was a slight wind, but you could still hear the squeak and crunch of sleigh runners amidst the bumps at the pitches, coming in ragged cadence along the string of rigs, with the surprised yelps and laughter. Wally and I weren’t laughing, though. We rode in glum silence.
    The Boss was sitting by the radio listening to Inspector Faraday wedge out a grudging “Merry Christmas” to Boston Blackie.
    He eyed me sideways with a