Chapter 11: The Common

On Sunday morning the church board called Thad at home.

The Foundation had withdrawn its yearly grant, effective immediately.

Without it, the board said, the hall's insurance could not be paid, and the program would have to find another home by Friday.

Thad sat on the stage steps with the phone in his lap and his head down.

"Her reason is in the letter," he said. "Unforeseen concerns about the supervision of minors."

"Concerns about me," I said.

"Concerns about you, and about my tie, and about whatever else a woman like that can think of before lunch."

The children were arriving for the Sunday rehearsal, and I watched them come in with their cases, eleven of them.

The girl with the missing teeth was already tuning.

"I have an idea," I said.

"I hate your ideas. They come with weather."

"We take them to the Common."

Thad lifted his head.

"Now?" he said.

"It's sunny. It's Sunday. There are four thousand people on that grass and none of them know we exist."

"We'd be busking."

"We'd be playing," I said. "In public. For free. The way we always do."

He considered me for a long second.

Then he stood up and clapped his hands, and eleven children looked at him.

"Who wants to go outside and make a lot of noise?"

By one o'clock we had set up on the path below the Parkman Bandstand.

We had a row of folding chairs and a cardboard sign in marker.

DORCHESTER STREET STRINGS. PLEASE LISTEN.

I stood in front of eleven children, with my mother's cello between my knees, and my left index finger taped.

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