Simon calmed himself, made himself listen. Suddenly he raised his head. “Why hell, that’s ‘Put Your Little Foot.’”

“I have no idea what you call it up here in English, but it is a dance of dignity and gracefulness and there is no putting little feet.”

“They’ll fall to dancing,” said Damon. “Grandmothers will cry out, despairingly. ‘Dance O maiden feet along the strand so cool and sweet . . .’”

Simon suddenly needed to get out of the stifling shack and the talking. It hit him as if a heavy weight had fallen on his head. He went out the door for the pump. He walked in the burning sun of late September stripped to the waist, with the checkered shirt dragging in his hand.

He knew this poem would go on to describe the maiden feet rotting in the grave and worms crawling out of jewel-like eyes and towers falling into a sullen sea. He poured dipper after dipper of cool water over his head. As he walked back past sun-bleached, unpainted wooden dwellings, some abandoned, some being lived in, he fought to get his hands into the shirt armholes and with gratitude heard Patrick tell Damon to give it a rest, just give it a rest.

They walked down the Strand in the heat of the day, managed to find the three-story house. It was embellished with gables and Palladian windows and quoins. There was a wall around the front lawn. A black servant in a white coat opened the cast-iron gate for them and they were then rushed in a body to the rear garden.

Simon looked around at the astonishingly level grass, the spindly chairs and overhead palm trees, the tables being set out. They all felt stiff and unnatural in their borrowed coats and borrowed cravats, their new-ironed white shirts with repaired bullet holes. They were cautious in this place and among these people; they were fresh from nights in low dives and fending off drunken sailors who wanted to buy them drinks, or fight them, or stagger up and demand to play their instruments. And three of them had been in the Confederate forces.

There were a number of early arrivers in Union blue; officers with a lot of ornamentation on their sleeves. Simon walked smartly to the majordomo to ask him in a confident voice about someplace private to tune their instruments and rehearse. With luck they would be told to go someplace near the kitchen. The old majordomo, with his face of worn stonework, lifted a hand to indicate a separate building behind a stand of laurel trees and said,

“Pump. Kitchen. Woodshed. Facilities.” Then he turned on his heel and began to pursue a boy who stumbled along carrying wreaths of paper flowers, crying out, “You will ruin them, you little fiend!”

They laid down their instruments on the stage, shoved through the hedge of laurel, and ducked into the kitchen. The smell of good cooking made them faint.

There were four women in there: a black cook who was very thin, her head in a snow-white cloth, eyeing them distrustfully, and another black girl rolling out dough with a bottle in lieu of a rolling pin while two young white women loaded hors d’oeuvres on trays.

“Hey hey, we’re the music this evening,” said Simon and then they bore down on the food like Comanches. They ate a good third of the appetizers—bone marrow on toast, tiny meatballs swimming in a red sauce, herring in a peppered cream, tubes of rolled ham and the German Harzer cheese on toasted rye bread—in the space of fifteen minutes while the cook looked on in astonishment. Doroteo picked up a marrow on toast and inspected it carefully, as if searching for recipe guidance. The boy Patrick swallowed miniature sandwiches entire; Damon delicately lifted a pig-in-a-blanket, regarded it, and then ate it. He put another one in the pocket of his borrowed coat. Simon saw the cook turn to snatch up three bottles of wine and drop them into the water butt.

“My lord!” cried one of the serving girls.

“Starved,” said Damon.

Simon devoured another meatball. “Living on our wits,” he said. “Starving. Stove up with heat and insufficient food. Now, tell me, what song would you like to hear?” Simon smiled at the girl who had said My lord. “We will play it for you.” He leaned forward from the waist. “And that is just between us.”

The girl flushed. She was dark, with bright red cheeks like the Creoles of New Orleans. She rolled her black eyes to one side in a fit of thinking, wiped the flour from her hands, and said,

“Ummmm . . . I bet you don’t know ‘La Savane’?”

Simon saw her lift a hopeful face to him and then she laughed a small laugh and looked down. She took out a pale blue handkerchief and fanned herself with it to cover her shyness, her embarrassment.

“That I do,” Simon said. He paused with a meatball in the air. “My own version. I will play it for you if you keep the food coming. It’s in G-flat major.” Then his face grew abstract with inner musical calculations.

“T’inquiete pas!” she cried. “It’s for me, homesick.” She lifted a floury hand. “For somebody that, so, he and me, we love that song together. He is in New Orleans. He is not here. Play it for me and I would bring you all the food you like.”

“Jesus,” said Damon. “Can you play it in another key besides G-flat major? That’s six flats.”

“Do you know it?”

“No, but I could hit harmony notes once I hear the first part, if you play it in D.”

“I know it,” said Doroteo. “Do not fear, Simon, I will back you up.”

“Good. No,” said Simon. “I’m sticking with the G-flat major, that girl wants to hear it so bad, and I ain’t going to mess it up trying to change keys on it. You do the best you can with your G whistle.”

Simon sat on a keg to eat Harzer cheese with chopped bacon and fresh spinach, bent over, thinking of the intricate geography of “La Savane.” It was an old Creole song. Simple, but you could do variations on it until the cows came home. The others regarded him with some anxiety as they ate. He had earned them a full meal of mouth-watering food, and even though the food was all somehow very miniature, their bodies were responding like sea anemones in a current, the flavors new and delectable.

They were finally evicted from the kitchen and hustled to the bandstand. The stage had been thrown together with pallets and covered with a tarpaulin. Fortunately, it was in the shade of several live oaks. They unshipped their instruments. Simon made sure his bridge was straight and got out his A fork and rapped it against the hard-shell fiddle case. They all listened intently, as if hearing a voice from a distant star. They then made droning, plucking noises; Doroteo quickly tuned one string against another all the way down E-A-D-G-B-E with a final triumphant ping on the high E, and then ran his forefinger to the twelfth fret and struck out the harmonics. Simon worked his tuning pegs, tuning off his A string. He tightened the hair of his bow and rosined it, glancing covertly at every face, every uniform in the crowd. The habit of years.

As they stood carefully poised, listening to one another’s instruments, a young man who said he was Mr. Albert Pryor Jr. came upon them in a rush. He stopped and gazed at them with suspicion. Then a young woman with light-brown hair, in a swinging flare of pale green hoopskirts, walked slowly to stand at his side. Junior did not introduce the young woman but he turned to her and said, “Hello, Sis, is it all going all right?”

Apparently everything was going all right.

“Now what are you playing?” He turned back to the musicians. “We want nothing low.”

“Low?” cried Damon. “Us? Are you referring to sailors’ verses or those frenetic Southern mountain jigs so beloved of the poor whites? Of course not.” He did a little toss of his head and smoothed down his greasy waiter’s cravat.

“Well,” said young Pryor, and then stopped. He blinked. Damon did not.

Simon said, “Yes. Well, we thought ‘Lorena’ and ‘Robin Adair’ and then some Steven Foster. Maybe ‘Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair’ and ‘Beautiful Dreamer’ and then a varsoviana, leading with the guitar.” He half-turned and opened up one hand to the Tejano.

Doroteo bowed.

“And then some light airs, maybe ‘The Parting Glass’ . . .”

“Is that Irish?”

Simon paused and then said in a positive voice, “No, it is not. It is Scottish, as a matter of fact. I know my music, sir.”

“Maybe a tune that is a little livelier?”

“‘The Glendy Burke.’”

“Well, that will do, I suppose.”

“It all sounds very nice.” The sister turned on them a gracious, hesitant smile. They all bowed. Then she lifted an admonitory forefinger. “There’s a new song, come down from the North. They’re playing it in Omaha and St. Louis. Very pretty, it’s called ‘Red River Valley.’ Do you know it?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t,” said Simon.

“It’s very popular with the cavalry. Oh, I should play it for you . . .” She looked around distractedly. “It would be so lovely on the violin. This is our winter house and we’ve just come back and we wanted a song that was new and special.” Then she said, “I’ll sing it.”