Arcadio Read Free

stilled listeners. They heard a mysterious song sung only once. Those listeners are gone, all but one, and the first singer is gone but not the song. I sing it again. Canto .
    In my vision I went to the riverbottom—twas in early May, I recollect. I was headed toward the wondrous bather’s pool when I begun to hear the faint music, silvery and watery and softly throbbing, and it was like a warmth around my head and face and seemed to come out of my own head, music of my own. It softly pulled me through the palmettos and the dewberries and the crawling vines. And then when I looked up I saw the early-morning specter of the old abandoned railroad trestle. Aloft against the hot blue sky, vaulted higher than I ever remembered it, held ascendant by frail legs rising out of the green willows and wateroaks of the bottomland, aloft and slender and as fragile as if it were made of paper, hung the condemned trestle, a lonesome bridge of orange-colored rails and gray ties that weather had taken over after the trains were forbidden, a lonesome pier reaching over a white riverbed of shell, vanishing into a green billow of woods, a crossing of dreams, of secret trespasses, flights of ghosts and fairies, and since it was removed from the dead weight of iron was now the fragile avenue of weightless things, slide of snakes, feet of frogs and tread of birds, the passing over of groundless, footless things, motes and beams and flowers of floating snow, and winged seeds and blown crystals of rain, a transfer for winds and fogs and aerial lights and fires.
    And there I saw the being sitting under the trestle, in the latticed light, leaning against a leg of the trestle that, although it stood in the white shell of the dry riverbed, was green and garlanded with blooming vines, woven with trumpetvine and honeysuckle and morning-glory, like a Maypole. He was dressed in an old army uniform. An officer’s cap was aslant on his head and he had a harmonica clasped between his lips, blowing and sucking and fluttering an odd tune.
    All of a sudden the music stopped and the figure stood up and spoke to me out of the pale green latticed light from the wild bower in the dry shell. And it was very strange and was not like anything I had ever laid my eyes on; it was fearful, it was strange.

3
A Singer at Large
    MY NAME IS ARCADIO, and I will not do you no harm, come under the shade of this old rayroad trestle if you wan to. Train’s gone. Por favor: siéntase , set down please, here by the blooming vines of morningglory and honeysuckle that smells so sweet in the morning sun, here in the bed of the river, white bed of shell, river’s gone too. You look like you been walkin for some time in the hot riverbottom through the palmettos and the dewberries and the crawling vines, siéntase . Set down. If you wan to.
    How did you find me did you hear my tune did you come to where the frenchharp played, tis an old tune you heard acomin from the dead river’s bed, “The Waltz of the Spotted Dog,” my old tune that I played out in the Show, a sad waltz, some folks have said that tis the same tune as “Missouri Waltz” if you have ever heard a tune called that, “Missouri Waltz”; tis not, tis not the same tune, compadre . When I was in the Show. And never said a word, only sound my breath made was through this little harp, played it once for each Show, Old Shanks made me do it, well did keep me awake and showed I had some talent. Sometimes tears of my eyes run down into the little harp, I blew the music through my tears, a watery sound for a vals , this little arpa harp is rusted from the salt of my tears, little salted frenchharp. When tears dry up their salt bites deep as rust. Ever see that on something? Makes a little speckle of rust. Tears can rust, compadre . Hope you never had to cry too many. You wan hear.
    Cantando, compadre. Canto . But there was a long time when I didn’t sing no song. I am at large. Which