Ev’s Letter to Posterity

Copyright 2005

When Ev asked me to write this I didn’t mind. It’s not too hard to write about the past. The present I couldn’t have: you don’t know what’s important, what will stick in your memory years later. (And I won’t be here years later.) Anyway it’s all too boring. As an old trapper you don’t feel any color. One thing today that interests me, these families trappers are getting up now. There wasn’t that before, trapper men and women didn’t commit to each other, and arranged their fun around getting babies. Now the young people have gotten impatient with waiting for things to get better and are just doing it in spite of all. They think we were a soft, cowardly lot for not doing the same thing. Maybe so. Ev thinks it’s sad, the little kids always having to be moved around. Sad, nomad, that used to be a popular rhyme. People got sick of it. I don’t know. I think the kids seem happy enough.

Ev found me useful to begin with, because I could read and write. (A lot more trappers can now. Not all of them, though.) I guess he needs someone to speak for him. And I’m it. Last spring we heard a woman ask who Ev was. Later he put himself to giving her a message. It scared her, a bit, and that upset him. He thinks she’s a little girl he remembers stomping and dancing at a show of his. I’m not sure. He says the girl had one blue eye and one green eye and so does the woman.

Ev was a singer. I was his backgrounder. That’s lots of the instruments and writing to people trying to get them to pay us. There were others for instruments but Ev and I stayed together the whole time. Ev started because he’s a sickly man, not a cold but that he doesn’t catch. After twenty five years of that he turned it to good account. He became a singer. It worked. The girl with different colored eyes was the littlest to dance at an Ev show but not the only one. Soon after we got together he was so popular that we got good instrument-players, and a girl named Bex. She was something else. She was a dancer. She was flexible, and knew no shame. Both those things will help if you want to become a good performer. She made people laugh, and broke her ankle a lot, and danced anyway, sometimes.

Our music was very danceable. I didn’t understand the idiot backgrounder before me who tried to use heavy music with Ev. With Ev’s voice you didn’t need a lot of music, just bass and percussion and some riffs.

The thing about Ev’s voice was that it was hoarse from all that sickness. When he had to perform the next day, and he wasn’t sick, we would have him sleep without a blanket near some water, like a pond or river. And he just wailed away. He had risked everything and so wasn’t about to hold anything back. It was the same with me too. I had done it because no matter how bad off I was it couldn’t have been worse. The Barrow Years were awful for trapping. That’s when that paste was around. During winter that’s what you ate every day. Some people ate every other day because it was such a chore. The stuff was thick and awful. Now it’s in every comedy, but gets more laughs than it did when we tried to make it funny. People who tried to make jokes about it back then, too often, weren’t altogether well-liked, and found it hard to get partners for the next season.

Fensley mentioned it a lot in his songs. He was the best songwriter in probably forever. Though he was a miserable sort. No one got mad at him for making light of the paste because no one liked him to begin with. Fensley said he wrote five hundred songs when I last saw him. He must have a thousand now. He’s still going at it.

Ev would add shouts here and there in the songs. His voice would get deep and rough as the show went on. The girls just ate this up. He was more exciting than Risin Shett. That ticked Risin off to no end. Risin was a good actor. I would say the best of anyone except Fensley got the audience to think he was enjoying himself. Fensley was pretty good too, but he couldn’t imitate any sort of people the way Risin could. When Temmian captives started pouring in Risin got a lot of them to think he was befriending them. He just wanted to study them. By the time they had been stereotyped Risin had already been singing about them. He was right in with the first. I guess that’s what he wanted.

But he spent too much time worrying about that. That’s not what audiences care for. They want to get going. Ev did it a lot better than Risin. Risin said we were musical demagogues, which means we didn’t have talent, I guess. He was right. Ev didn’t know about music. I never had an ear for pitches or anything. I became a pretty good songwriter anyway.

We did beat out Risin over the threat songs. For some reason the theme of a violently jealous boyfriend got popular among trapper women for a while. This was funny because trappers never got jealous, not back then. The idea of a guy threatening to kill a girl because she found a different guy was like dragons breathing fire and that line. But people like fantasy, I guess. A woman called The Mage wrote a lot of songs with imaginary stuff in them, and she’s still popular. Though I don’t think she sings well.

Anyway all of us music types tried to outdo each other with threat songs. Some highlander wrote a good one but never found anyone to perform it right. So I think Ev and I came out on top. He wasn’t sick when he sang it, but he let some of his words slur. It worked. It freaked and excited all the girls. It was the most popular. And, I think it was the best. It reminds me of Fensley’s song that goes “we’re here and fearing together,” because they’re both eerie. (Fensley’s is more eerie, but I was going for dancability.) And I hope you’ve had the chance to hear that performed right. A Fensley song is delicious when done right.

Ev was born a trapper. I used to find it funny how he made a production when he saw cities. Not ports, cities that aren’t on trappers’ routes. A few trappers acquire tents. In winter there are huts and houses, but Ev wasn’t used to houses without snow. The stone foundations almost scared him. He wanted to know what you did if you had to leave the house. I told him you just left the house. But it’ll still be standing there, he said. Then a couple of girls got him more used to the idea. There was lots about other people Ev was in awe of. I can’t remember it all. I only remember being amazed at there being lots of it. One thing, Ev couldn’t get over how much city people ate. They put so much time into it. And they enjoy it. It is a lot different from berries, rabbits, and The Paste. It wasn’t long before Ev learned to enjoy it too.

I’m trying to remember what else about the cities but I can’t. I remember Ev’s performances a lot better. It took me a while to get the hang of songwriting. So we covered plenty. Ev had the last word on a lot of classics. I couldn’t improve too much except make it a bit busier, a bit faster. If you don’t know what else to do, change the tempo of the song. It gives you ideas. But Ev’s singing was fantastic. When we got a bunch of shows in a row Ev couldn’t practice. His throat couldn’t take the shows all twice. Sometimes he would sing a new song for the first time on stage. That bothered me because it’s important to me to do a job well if you’re going to do it. But Ev pulled it off almost every time. Though there was the time he forgot the words to Oyse’s “Sandy Myleins.” He forgot words a lot, but that time he couldn’t make them up quick enough. “Myleins” is a fast song, even for us. But it was short. I believe in short songs, and short shows. That was something Risin never learned. He always did too many songs a show. I guess he wanted to show off how much different types of songs he could make and perform well. But it would have been better to cut it down. I can’t remember a single Risin song. Though even now I could tell you one from the first two chords. Risin really was much better than me, and his partner was at least as good as Ev. I won’t let him know I think so while I’m alive though.

I wouldn’t mind telling his partner. I forget his name. He was a highlander. It’s hard to let your guard down to a highlander. It’s even harder to grant anything to a man who’s better-looking than you are. But the highlander was a nice person. He was probably the nicest I ever met. It was odd. He looks exactly the sort mothers warn their daughters about falling for. He wasn’t a very good performer to start with. But even Risin knew he needed someone to sex up his shows. And the highlander learned from Risin. I feel bad about Risin. He hated to give up performing, especially since he really was good at it. I guess it was easier because the highlander was so nice, but it still would have been hard.

Bex was so mad when the highlander married a village girl. She thought after the trappers had gone ahead and accepted him he might have stayed with them. And she said the girl was too young. Bex started to look old after a while, all at once. I will never forget the time someone in the audience told her she was too old for dancing. She beat him half to death. We had to run before the overlord got on us all. The other trappers in that crew weren’t happy either. I’ve heard from some that Bex is still dancing, and from a few that she’s dead.

Ev and I kept on another year. The third was the best. During the fourth the end crept. We couldn’t do anything but march to meet it. Ev was losing his voice. It had been under too much strain. The win was over. As Fensley put it, “The gamble gone sour.”

I have to admit I liked Fensley. He was so good. He could manage to make himself look like anything, on stage, once the music started. He could even look attractive, given a good beat. He pulled off all sorts of people. He played a very good drunk for several songs, and he barely ever touched a drink himself.

He’s older than me, but he’s not in the fog I’m in. He’s still in music. When it started changing he learned the new style. He wrote “Purple” and all the boys of the latest generation think it’s the greatest song they have.

Toward the end Ev tried to get me to do backgrounding for someone else. Ev lost this argument. After all, he couldn’t talk. Once it died it stayed dead long enough for him to be shut out of music for what’s left of his life. I don’t think it will be that long. Trappers don’t last, and Ev’s still sickly.

He has a bit of voice now. When he really strains himself he can say a few sentences, but it’s dry, low, and hard to hear. What the woman with the different-colored eyes heard was not even a rasp. There’s none of that sexy catch left to it anymore.

I’ve been thinking about the trapper family kids. They’re going to be the ones who read this, if anyone does. So they ought to be the ones can decide whether or not they were happy enough. I mean, I hope they are. Not only so I can be right about it, but that they aren’t, you know, unhappy. Overlords don’t like this family bit at all. I’m surprised to see that they can’t do much about it.

So now I’m a trapper, with Ev. I spent so many years among them that it wasn’t hard.

Sometimes I hear other performers doing my songs. Some even ask permission. We weren’t so polite in our day. I was very close to saying no the other day to one woman for no good reason. I felt ugly. But I did say yes. She didn’t do a bad job.

I guess that’s about it.