Simon the Fiddler

The band is reviewed and interrogated by a servant named Heidemann, who agrees to pay them $25 for the evening’s performance despite his suspicions about their departure from the Confederate army. They scramble to clean themselves up and find suitable songs for the elevated audience. After arriving at the house, they go near the kitchens to rehearse and promise to play music to convince a servant girl to give them food. The son of the household, Pryor Jr., checks to make sure that they are not playing any music too common; his sister asks for a specific song, but Simon does not know it. They play through their set twice, and then Simon plays “La Savane” for the servant girl, who dedicated it to her lover in New Orleans.

As the party dies down, the cook tells Simon that Miss Pryor has requested to see him in the house so that she can show him the song he didn’t know. She makes no move to do so, instead complimenting his ability and eventually saying that he could teach her how to play and move with the family to St. Louis. She tells him a variety of things that she could do with her social power, which he has trained himself not to believe due to a run-in with a married woman when he was 17 that ended emptily. To Miss Pryor’s amazement, he repeatedly turns down her offers, telling her, “I hate teaching. I love howling. The evening has been beautiful and so are you” (111). She insists that she wants to help him live up to his potential, and he kisses her in farewell, wondering how many men she has tried to help. When the band leaves, Simon is also paid with a blue handkerchief wrapped around a 50-cent coin.

The perspective shifts to Doris, who is traveling with the Webbs and is astounded by the unfamiliar environment, particularly the fauna and flora. She loves animals, which were precious commodities in Ireland and seem to be common in America; she is baffled by mustangs in particular, which are free to anyone who wants to catch them. She is distracted by the 14-year-old Webb daughter, Josephine, who begins to complain when her bonnet breaks. Doris mends the bonnet and contemplates the difficult and confusing standards for her in this new world. She continues to enjoy the journey, not wanting it to end, particularly because Colonel Webb is not traveling with them. Josephine and Mrs. Webb begin to mock her for how much she enjoys the natural world. A sergeant from Connecticut comforts her. She thinks idly of Simon, about whom she knows little; the Mexican maid, Mercedes, told her that Doris had bewitched him, which pleases her; she senses that he, too, enjoys the natural world as she does.

The perspective shifts back to Simon and the band, who have been tormented by a storm but have been making better money in recent days. Simon receives a letter from Doris, addressed to Patrick. Wanting privacy, he takes the letter to the beach, reminding himself that whatever Doris has written is to Patrick and approved by the Webb household. He deduces positively about her personality from her delighted descriptions of the natural world but realizes that he doesn’t know her at all and that he isn’t worth anything as he is. Simon thinks about his childhood; he grew up with a friend whom he loved named Stand McFarland, who is now dead. He realizes that he no longer laughs. He returns home, but Patrick tells him to keep the letter private and not to read it to him.

Simon, now having $50 to his name, sees an advertisement about land for sale and goes to inquire. The man selling the land tells him about several complex and dangerous pieces of land that he has available and tells him that land is no longer simple due to claims. Simon decides that he wants a piece of land—400 acres south of the Red River—but cannot pay the real estate agent the $250 down payment. He decides to find the owner of the land, Solomon Bradford, not trusting the real estate agent.

Patrick and Simon concoct another letter for Doris under many pretenses, and they begin to write back and forth, but very impersonally. At a wedding, Patrick sits down at the end of a song, suddenly struck with fever. Despite Patrick’s protests, they go to find a doctor.

The doctor diagnoses Patrick with yellow fever and says that he might live if he survives the first round but will almost definitely die if it recurs. He prescribes willow bark and laudanum. Five days pass, and Patrick hardly eats and loses weight. He tells Simon about visions of the war and how all his memories will die with him, which Simon protests. Patrick protests his own death, saying that he is too young, which makes Simon cry. On the sixth day, Patrick vomits black blood and begins to bleed from his eyes and ears. Damon tries to take him to the hospital, at least to see a priest, and Patrick dies soon after the priest arrives and crosses his forehead.

They bury Patrick and clean out the house. Simon writes his own letter to Doris to inform her of Patrick’s death, unable to hide his grief. The band leaves behind everything they own, afraid of the fever, and departs for Houston. They jump on a train and fall asleep in the freight car.

They jump off the train as it nears Houston and explore the city, attracting attention and respect for their instruments. The city is sprawling, chaotic, and anxiety-inducing. They find a place to camp and try to sleep; Simon struggles to calm down but eventually falls asleep.

The next day, they find an abandoned flatboat and listen to a nearby man’s extremely long tale about the flatboat’s history. They decide to take residence on the flatboat, which is large enough to hold them all somewhat comfortably, and go to hunt for work. They are quickly told that people only want performers who look successful to sell the narrative that things are improving, so they hunt for other jobs.

Simon gets a job shoveling coal and earns the nickname Moonshine due to his pale and thin body. Doro and Damon work loading hides and rubble. None of them make enough money to turn a profit, and they barely make enough to survive.

Eventually, Simon receives a reply from Doris, who is grieved by Patrick’s passing and composes lies about her relation to Patrick to get the letter past the Webbs. Simon grows suspicious through the letter that she is being treated poorly. He goes to sit and think on the edge of the boat, mourning his lack of privacy, and he hears a singer in the distance, which gives him a moment of peace.