The third night, though, he pushed his newspapers aside early and took longer pulls from the glass and chain-smoked. At fi rst he stared at nothing but his own cigarette smoke, and his eyes seemed loose and faraway. Gradually his eyes found the rest of the bar and a smile grew on his face, as if someone had pasted it there too hastily.
When Danny first heard him sing, he couldn't connect the voice to the man. Bishop was small, wispy, a delicate man with delicate features and delicate bones. His voice, however, was a booming, barreling, train-roar of a thing.
"Here he goes." The bartender sighed yet didn't seem dissatisfi ed.
It was a Joe Hill song, "The Preacher and the Slave," that Nathan Bishop chose for his fi rst rendition of the night, his deep baritone giving the protest song a distinctly Celtic flavor that went with the tall hearth and dim lighting in the Capitol Tavern, the low baying of the tugboat horns in the harbor.
"Long-haired preachers come out every night," he sang. "Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right. But when asked how 'bout something to eat, they will answer in voices so sweet: 'You will eat, bye and bye, in that glorious land above the sky way up high. Work and pray, live on hay, you'll get pie in the sky when you die.' That's a lie, that's a lie . . ."
He smiled sweetly, eyes at half-mast, as the few patrons in the bar clapped lightly. It was Danny who kept it going. He stood from his stool and raised his glass and sang out, "Holy Rollers and Jumpers come out, and they holler, they jump and they shout. 'Give your money to Jesus,' they say. 'He will cure all diseases today.'"
Danny put his arm around the guy beside him, a chimney sweep with a bad hip, and the chimney sweep raised his own glass. Nathan Bishop worked his way out from behind his table, making sure to scoop up both his whiskey bottle and his whiskey glass, and joined them at the bar as two merchant marines jumped in, loud as hell and way off key, but who cared as they all swung their elbows and their drinks from side to side:
"If you fi ght hard for children and wife Try to get something good in this life, You're a sinner and bad man, they tell, When you die you will sure go to hell."
The last line came out in shouts and torn laughs, and then the bartender rang the bell behind the bar and promised a free round.
"We're singing for our supper, boys!" one of the merchant marines cried out.
"You're getting the free drink to stop singing!" the bartender shouted over the laughter. "Them's the terms and none other."
They were all drunk enough to cheer to that and then they bellied up for their free drinks and shook hands all around--Daniel Sante meet Abe Rowley, Abe Rowley meet Terrance Bonn and Gus Sweet, Terrance Bonn and Gus Sweet meet Nathan Bishop, Nathan Bishop meet Daniel Sante.
"Hell of a voice there, Nathan."
"Thank you. Good on yours as well, Daniel."
"Habit of yours, is it, to just start singing out in a bar?"
"Across the pond, where I'm from, it's quite common. It was getting fairly gloomy in here until I took up the cause, wouldn't you say?"
"I wouldn't argue."
"Well, then, cheers."
"Cheers."
They met their glasses, then threw back their shots.
Seven drinks and four songs later they ate the stew that the bar- tender kept cooking in the fireplace all day. It was horrid; the meat was brown and unidentifiable and the potatoes were gray and chewy. If Danny had to guess, he'd bet the grit it left on his teeth came from sawdust. But it filled them. After, they sat and drank and Danny told his Daniel Sante lies about western Pennsylvania and Thomson Lead.
"That's just it, isn't it?" Nathan said, rolling his cigarette from a pouch on his lap. "You ask for anything in this world and the answer is always 'No.' Then you're forced to take from those who themselves took before you--and in much bigger slices, I might add--and they dare call you a thief. It's fairly absurd." He offered Danny the cigarette he'd just rolled.
Danny held up a hand. "Thanks, no. I buy 'em in the packs." He pulled his Murads from his shirt pocket and placed them on the table.
Nathan lit his. "How'd you get that scar?"
"This?" Danny pointed to his neck. "Methane explosion." "In the mines?"
Danny nodded.
"My father was a miner," Nathan said. "Not here."
"Across the pond?"
"Just so." He smiled. "Just outside of Manchester in the North. It's where I grew up."
"Tough country I've always heard."
"Yes, it is. Sinfully dreary, as well. A palette of grays and the occasional brown. My father died there. In a mine. Can you imagine?" "Dying in a mine?" Danny said. "Yes."
"He was strong, my father. That's the most unfortunate aspect of the whole sordid mess. You see?"
Danny shook his head.
"Well, take me for instance. I'm no physical specimen. Uncoordinated, terrible at sports, nearsighted, bowlegged, and asthmatic." Danny laughed. "You leave anything out?"
Nathan laughed and held up a hand. "Several things. But that's it, you see? I'm physically weak. If a tunnel collapsed and I had several hundred pounds of dirt on me, maybe a half-ton wood beam in the mix, a terribly limited supply of oxygen, well, I'd just succumb. I'd die like a good Englishman, quietly and without complaint."
"Your father, though," Danny said.
"Crawled," Nathan said. "They found his shoes where the walls had collapsed on him. It was three hundred feet from where they found his corpse. He crawled. With a broken back, through hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds of dirt and rock while the mining company waited two days to begin excavation. They were worried that rescue attempts could put the walls of the main tunnel at risk. Had my father known that, I wonder if it would have stopped his crawling sooner or pushed him on another fi fty feet."
They sat in silence for a time, the fire spitting and hissing its way along some logs that still held a bit of dampness. Nathan Bishop poured himself another drink and then tilted the bottle over Danny's glass, poured just as generously.
"It's wrong," he said.
"What's that?"
"What men of means demand of men without them. And then they expect the poor to be grateful for the scraps. They have the cheek to act offended--morally offended--if the poor don't play along. They should all be burned at the stake."
Danny could feel the liquor in him turning sludgy. "Who?" "The rich." He gave Danny a lazy smile. "Burn them all."