Kathy Little Bird by Benedict Freedman & Nancy Freedman

Author:Benedict Freedman & Nancy Freedman [Freedman, Benedict & Freedman, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9780425200711
Goodreads: 155713
Publisher: Berkley Trade
Published: 2004-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

WEEKS followed during which we were scarcely out of one another’s sight. Gentle attended my rehearsals, recording sessions, club and show appearances. This, over Mac’s protests, as I turned more and more to Jim. His opinion was important to me. If Mac knew the workings of show biz, Jim Gentle understood its soul. For it does have one. Vulnerable and in constant flight, it comes up now and again with brave ideas.

Was my idea for Cree songs one? I broached it once more in a tentative way to Mac, and got another put-down. So far I hadn’t brought it up with Jim in any serious way. I’d held back because if he rejected my music, he rejected me. But I didn’t think he’d do that. Jim would understand where no one else seemed to, that this music was part of me and lay behind everything I did.

I found it impossible to avoid comparisons. Mac hadn’t an artistic bone in his body and was known as a “no-talent guy.” Still, he had an uncanny knack for touching the pulse of the public, a sixth sense of what it wanted, what it would go for and what it wouldn’t.

Jim, on the other hand, was open to new ideas, took them seriously, explored them. That, and the special relationship that had developed between us, gave me courage. I decided to put my career in his hands. Without preparation or explanation I plunged in. “Jim,” I said, uncurling on the futon and unwinding my legs from his long ones, “I want you to imagine an old Indian woman muttering between her teeth, not bothering to remove her pipe, but lifting her voice to the Creator as she plants a patch of garden behind her house. Or a shaman, tall, lean, even older, white hair straggling to his shoulders, eyes burning fierce as embers, who breathes with the breath of the universe.”

“Can these things be sung?” Jim asked.

“Jonathan Forquet was old then; he must be dead many years. But he is a shaman, a Grandfather who touches both sides. Listen…” It was time to let loose. I sang my grandfather, introducing Gentle to him through the Wind Song with its stirring of trees and lifting of boughs. I closed my eyes and sang the Shadow Song, and the girl who hung around and took it all in.

I didn’t stop. I sang my grandfather’s invisible gift. I revealed it with all its tender unseeable glory to Gentle.

I finished and he sat shaking his head. When at last he spoke, it was to respond as he always did when something touched him deeply, “Yeah.”

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