Page 61 of Goode Vibrations

“Need to stop soon, Errol. Been a hell of a long day.” I glanced at him.

Asleep? I laughed. Fine. I’d figure it out myself.

I saw a sign for Lake Eau Claire County Park; a few turns, a dead end, some slow crunching rolling down remote back roads and bumping over rutted two-tracks, and I found a spot on the lake where it was highly unlikely we’d be discovered. I wasn’t sure if it was illegal or whatever, since we weren’t technically an RV and we weren’t camping, just parking to sleep.

I pulled around so the passenger side sliding door was facing the lake, and shut off the engine. Sat with the silence sudden and thick, except Errol’s soft breathing. I wasn’t tired, suddenly. Or, rather, exhausted to a degree that simply falling asleep wouldn’t be possible.

Unbuckled. Pivoted to put my feet between the seats and unlaced my boots, kicked them off, laid my socks over them.

Errol snorted, stirred, woke up. “Poppy?” Disoriented. “Where’re we?”

“Parked on the shores of Lake Eau Claire, Wisconsin.”

He sat up, looked around. “Nice spot.”

“Glad you approve.”

“How long was I out?”

“An hour, maybe an hour and a half.”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to nod off. I had, like, a pot of coffee, so I’m not sure how I even managed it, honestly.”

I shrugged. “It’s fine. But now I’m wired and tired at the same time.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I know the feeling. Let’s get out and stretch our legs.”

A quick look around the area revealed that this was a spot that saw fairly regular use—cigarette butts, a fire ring near the shoreline, a garbage bin with a metal lid chained to it, a picnic table. Errol pointed at the fire ring. “You fancy a fire?”

“Sure. Will we get in trouble?”

He shrugged. “Nah. Keep it small, I doubt anyone will notice.”

I lifted my palms up, slapped them against my thighs. “I hope you know how to make one, because I don’t.”

His laugh was somewhere between derisive and sarcastic. “Yeah, Pop, I can make a fire.”

And he did, quickly, efficiently. He gathered an armload of sticks and branches of varying sizes, used a stick to dig a small hole in the ashes within the ring and set a bunch of the smallest sticks in a pyramid shape, points steepled together. Shredded some bark and broke up other sticks even smaller, piling it all under the steeple of sticks, and then tossed a lit match onto the whole. Some gentle blowing, and the flames caught. After another few minutes, the flames were bigger and yellow and bright, and he gradually built it up to a merry little blaze that gave off decent heat in the cool of the summer night.

We sat side by side, watching the fire flicker.

He glanced at me, long and slow and meaningful, thinking, letting me see the emotions in him. “Poppy, I…” he trailed off. “You know, I think I know a better place to start than talking.”

I laughed. “Well color me intrigued, Errol.”

He pounced up onto his feet, went to the back of the van, returned with the fiddle case. Sat down with it on his lap. Turned the tag to face me. Pointed at the bottom name, E. Sylvain. “Me, Errol Sylvain.” The one above it, B. Sylvain. “My dad, Bastien Sylvain.” He withdrew the card, gently, flipped it over and showed me the other side—there were another four names, in increasingly smudged and faded ink, going from the most recent on top to the oldest on bottom; he pointed to each in turn as he named them. “My grandfather, Jean-Paul; great-grandfather, Marc; great-great-grandfather, Emil; and my three-times great-grandfather, Henri Sylvain.”

“So when you say this is a family heirloom…” I said, somewhat awestruck.

“I mean exactly that.” He traced the middle curve of the instrument with a reverent finger. “It’s not worth much, like, it’s not a Stradivarius or anything of the sort, but it’s priceless because it’s old as hell. Henri Sylvain was born in the mid-seventeen hundreds.”

“Wow.” I watched him touch the strings, the bow. “So cool that you have it.”

He eyed me, then his attention returned to the instrument. He sighed. “Yes, it is cool to own such an old thing, something that ties me to my ancestors.” He lifted the fiddle out of the red velvet case with exquisite care. Held it by the neck with familiarity, resting the other end on his knee as he deftly removed the bow. Let out a slow, sad breath. Rose to his feet. Turned away to face the lake, campfire at his back, the orange glow sending his shadow dancing in long twisting flat gyrations on the placid surface. Fiddle held at his side, bow pointing to the earth.

He…played?

If he could play the fiddle as well, I was going to be mightily annoyed that any one person could contain so much talent.