“Yes,” said Doroteo. “I thank God every day He did not give me that hog hair you got on your face, man.”

They went over a list of tunes and ran through them until late afternoon. First tune was “Ailen Aroon,” because it was simplest, and then several of the tunes they had played at the officer’s dinner. They all looked up at the same time when they heard some church bells ring out five o’clock. Then they walked out with their clothes too loose on their thin bodies, lugging their instruments. The fine sand poured into Simon’s broken boots. He ran his thumbs under his suspenders and hoisted them higher on his shoulders. The lowering sun glowed red hot and hostile, but they struck out with determined step, music cases in hand.

The center of Galveston on the harbor side was composed of brick buildings two and three stories tall. They gave only a glance down the broad street called the Strand to take in its houses of several stories with turrets and cupolas, shaded by palms, those houses far away and guarded by money, by their air of a coastal nobility. Their task on this first evening was to find the places where they might be hired. They found at least five saloons, four dining establishments, three hotel bars, and several places that could only be called low dives on the harbor front.

At each place they stopped to listen to the competition. At the first they paid for plates of bread and butter with coins from the officer’s dinner and devoured every crumb. The boy licked his fingers until Doroteo elbowed him.

Simon gazed around at the other men sitting slumped back in their chairs to listen and knew they all shared memories of the chaos of the Civil War, of death and destruction, poverty, dislocation. But he had his music. He could lift them out of all that for a few moments. Music is clean, clear, its rules are forever, another country for the mind to go to, and so this search for employment among the drinking places of Galveston did not bother him. To Simon, the world of musical structures was far more real than the shoddy saloons in which he had to play. Nothing could match it, nothing in this day-to-day world could ever come up to it. It existed outside him. It was better than he was. He was always on foot in that world, an explorer in busted shoes.

They listened to a badly tuned banjo and a concertina, not great but the duo had volume. They walked on.

One dining room had a piano, a cheap one; they stood quietly back against the wall and left as soon as they saw a waiter coming toward them with a determined expression on his face. One of the saloons had a group of three players on guitar, fiddle, and banjo, churning out jigs and shanties. They came upon the thin flute player in a place called the Windjammer. He nodded to them and then finished his piece and came to sit with them.

His name was Peter Hendrick and he was hired here and there to provide music for the pleasure and enjoyment of not only the patrons of saloons but dancing parties, garden parties, and the various thrills and delights of the small theater on C Street. But he was moving on to Houston, where there were more places, more money. Unlike Galveston, that town had not been fought over twice, blockaded and shot up, and half the population evacuated.

Damon was relieved of care and worry by this information. He sat back in his chair and pushed his hat off his brow. There was no way he could compete with that German flute, not with a six-hole pennywhistle. The silver flute had sixteen holes and could cover three octaves.

“Well, bon voyage,” said Damon and smiled like a villain.

Hendrick told them two other facts about Galveston that they should know; that often great storms would come, storms called hurricanes with winds that could pick up a grown man and deposit him five miles inland without a stitch of clothes on his body, on my mother’s grave. And then there was the yellow fever, which turned a person the color of a pumpkin while at the same time he vomited black stuff. So if one of the storms came, they needed to dig in low somewhere.

“What about the yellow fever?” Simon asked. With water, good sleep on solid land, and some food, Simon had regained his strength and his living, tight verve, his low-spoken intensity. He had lived through a battle, had been shot at and shot back, survived the Gulf of Mexico in a small boat, and knew what lay ahead: work, music, land, a girl. Surely he could survive the fever and a hurricane. He wiped his reddish hair from his face and in front of his taut and famished body he held the Markneukirche in its case.

Hendrick paused and then lifted a hand palm up in a helpless gesture. “Well, just kiss your behind goodbye, boys, and leave some money for your funeral.”

They shook hands all around and wished him luck.

And so they began their rounds, giving saloon owners and proprietors of low dives what they had for a repertoire. They played while the owner sat in judgment, men with dirty aprons, men listening with their heads bowed and their hands between their knees. They were raw and uncoordinated and had to keep glancing at one another to stay together. One after another the owners said no. They said, I could use that fiddle but not the rest of you and merely shrugged when Simon shook his head. They said, Well, we already got somebody this week. They said, I was looking for a group that had brass—trombone, cornet. We need somebody that can play piano.

They kept on trying. Galveston seemed a city of darkness and the sea since they only walked out after dark and slept most of the day. They became creatures of gaslight and shadows. Soon they were out of ready money and very hungry.

They finally got their first employment in a saloon alongside the Hendley Hotel but within two nights were ousted by another group with a much sharper sound. This other group was composed mostly of sailors without a ship, a scratch band like themselves, but they had all been on the same crew and had sung sailor’s shanties together, so they were coordinated like gears in a machine.

“No, no, sorry boys, this sailor group is better. Patrons like them better. If your fiddler won’t play with them then your boy there with the bones and that drum, he’s good, they could use him.”

“No, sir,” said Patrick. “I am faithful to my friends and you can go to hell and shovel ashes.”

“He didn’t mean that.” Simon stepped up behind Patrick and gave him a quick, secretive punch in the kidneys. “He was raised in an engine room by a coal slinger. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

They hustled out, quickly.

As soon as they were on the street Simon cried out, “Did you have to? Did you just have to?”

“What?” said Patrick. His jug ears were bright red. He seemed on the verge of tears. In the gaslight they sparkled on his lashes, a look of distress on his young face.

“Insult the owner. That was a great idea. Insult the owner. Yes, that’s it. That’s how we get work.”

“I never was in a band before, I never learned.” Patrick clutched his bodhran in front of himself, a shield held out against Simon’s anger.

“Learn now or get the hell out.”

“Simon,” said Damon.

Simon marched on half a block in silence and finally got hold of himself. Then he said in a taut voice that they had to practice five songs and get them down perfect. Note perfect. If they had those faultless, then they could fake the rest until they learned them. As it was, they were sloppy and uncoordinated and the more he thought about it the madder he got. They tore at pieces of old bread as they walked along, biting it as if it were some stubborn foe. It tasted terrible.

In their shack with half a candle to light their slovenly existence Simon jerked the suspenders from his shoulders and unbuttoned his shirt in the deadly oceanic heat, put both hands on his hips, and said, “Goddammit, we have got to start all at the same time and stop all at the same time.” He turned on Patrick. “And if I hear you start that damn drum one beat ahead of us one more time I am going to jerk a knot in your tail, do you hear me?”

The boy sank back on the tar keg he was using for a seat, lowered his head, flushed red.

“Simon, Simon,” said Doroteo. “Es joven.”

“Yes, well, so was I at one time too and nobody cut me any slack.”

Which was not true and Simon knew it. The old man had cut him all kinds of slack. He looked out the window in search of a distraction. He had resolved to keep his temper in hand, because as his old man had told him over and over again, great trials and tribulations awaited him if he did not. Across the sand-filled street in the moonlight, a cat crept out of a dislocated house wall and trotted down the street with a kitten in her mouth. “Very well. I have not lost my temper. I have myself firmly in hand. Patrick. Here. It’s not when I bring the bow up, it’s when I bring it down. Got it? When I bring it up it’s ‘get ready’ and when I bring it down to the strings and nod to you it’s ‘haul away.’”

“We’re a scratch band,” said the Tejano. “We just got together. The fault is not with us.”