Read Online The Freedom in American Songs by Kathleen Winter - Free Book Online

are ancient.” And then she started singing a song from memory.
    When I grow too old to dream
    I’ll have you to remember.
    When I grow too old to dream
    Your love will live in my heart …
    She had what they called a voice like a bird, although Kerry knew it was not really like a bird’s—it was the voice of a human whose heart was kind. “That song,” she said, “was written by Oscar Hammerstein when I was twenty-two.”
    â€œCan you teach it to us?”
    â€œI’ll play it for you on my organ,” she said, and after supper she pulled out her stool and played and sang the song over and over again with Kerry joining in until he had learned it. “I’ve got some more sheet music in my trunk,” she got up, “all Rogers and Hammerstein, and some of the old musicals from Broadway, I used to play them all on my organ.” Kerry followed her down the hall and there by her bed that had big cushions all over it she opened a box and took out all kinds of music. Some of it bore pictures or cartoons and Mrs. Boland told Kerry and Xavier they could lie on her cushions with the cat and see if they could sing any of the songs while she made them cocoa. “You’ll know some of those songs,” she said. “See that one?” She sang I’m Gonna Wash that Man Right Outta My Hair … “You’ve heard it, I know you have. Everyone’s heard that.” Mrs. Boland made the cocoa and they drank it on her cushions and she asked them to sing some of their old songs to her and they did, and she fell fast asleep. There was one little lamp on and the cat was asleep too, and soon they were all sleeping in those lovely cushions that smelled of Mrs. Boland’s lavender soap.
    Long past midnight, just before dawn, Kerry awoke. Someone had turned off the little lamp but he could see the cat, Mrs. Boland, and Xavier, still asleep, in the bit of streetlamp light spilling through the half-open curtains. His first thought was that his mother and father would be angry that he had not come home, but his second thought was more of a sensation than a thought—he realized his body and Xavier’s had moved against one another and he had his face against Xavier’s chest, and his arm was resting on Xavier’s belly and thigh. He reached up with his mouth and barely touched it to the skin of Xavier’s face, and at that moment he saw that his friend too was awake. The electric touch of forearm and belly, mouth and face, tantalized them, magnetic and feather-tentative, until Xavier reached Kerry’s face and pulled it up to his and kissed him long and hard, his grandmother sleeping on the other side of the cushions. Xavier had always been the braver one, Kerry realized. Xavier the older, Xavier the taller, Xavier the bolder. They took their clothes off furtively and Kerry felt astonished that another human’s body felt so hot, like a furnace. It was the most ecstatic event of his life, and the most terrifying. They gave each other the tenderest lovemaking in the world, and it was the first time Kerry had felt anything this exquisite, and he did not care whatever it meant he was. They fell asleep again but it was only five am when there was a loud knock on the door, then a pounding, and shouting voices.
    Mrs. Boland woke, alarmed, and put her dressing gown over her clothes, and let Kerry’s father and his brother Steve come in, and two other men who told Mrs. Boland as kindly as they could that she would have to come in to the station on Amherst Road and answer some questions about having a neighbour boy, who was a minor, in her bed, and about sexual practices that had been going on in that bed, practices which Kerry’s brother Steve had witnessed through the window and reported to his parents.
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    After that night it was as if someone had taken Xavier Boland and his grandmother and their house and put them under glass, so that they were no