Nicollet Mall, Minnesota, 1983

At age thirteen and in search of spare change, Heather took to playing guitar in the fresh air walkways of Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis.

            She strummed outside the Powers Department Store, guitar case opened, yesterday’s coins and bills scattered to create the image of money already donated. She had a last name but when Harold, the old security guard with the white Navy cap, asked for her non de plume, she got confused and blurted out her first name only.

            His hands were rough but squeezed with care. “Nice to meet you, young lady. I’ll protect your spot. Please, sing your songs.”

            She played covers of songs her parents danced to while cooking: the Supremes’ “Baby Love, the Boss’s “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”, Marley’s “Three Little Birds”. She mixed originals in with covers of current pop music: Cyndi Lauper, Michael Jackson, Hall and Oates, Lionel Ritchie.

            Pedestrians turned into an audience when she played the covers. Interestingly, they paid more after she finished her original songs. Harold pointed that one out.

            One day he opened his metal lunch pail and pulled out two halves to a ham and Swiss sandwich. He handed her one and emptied a bag of pretzels on the top of his Thermos. “Eat. You’ve earned it.”

            They ate. Harold told her stories about his Navy days. Heather listened and quietly hummed, tapping her lap in rhythm with footfalls.

            “You e’er hear of sea shanties?”

            “No, sir.”

            “It’s a song to keep you sane when the waters churn your stomach to pulp. Pick up that guitar. We sang this one outside Korea. Called ‘Haul Away Joe’.”

            Heather was a quick study. The next week he was singing background to her lead:

When I was just a little lad or so me mammy told me
(Away haul away, we’ll haul away Joe)
That if I didn’t kiss the girls me lips would grow a-moldy
(Away haul away, we’ll haul away Joe)

Away (ho!) Haul away, we’ll haul away together
(Away haul away, we’ll haul away Joe)
Away (ho!) Haul away, we’ll haul for better weather
(Away haul away, we’ll haul away Joe)

The crowds got a kick out of a 13-year-old singing about moldy lips and the king of France losing his head. Harold continued saving her stage and serving lunch with a side of autobiography.

            “After the war, a shipmate went home to Michigan. I followed. We crewed ships on Lake Michigan until he wived a woman he met in Haven Park. Cozy little lake town. They were building a dam there. Converting water into electricity. He asked me if I’d help build the tunnels. Maybe find my own bride.”

            “How long did you stay?”

            Harold’s laugh made her feel at home. It comforted like vegetable soup. “Long enough to nab a bride, lose her, find another, go back to the other, and then the second, discover buried treasure. Whisper those words of wisdom and let it be, young lady. I headed home to Minnesota to care for my Ma. Here I stayed.”

            “Did the bride, the another, or the other, go with you?”

            There went his laugh again, a foghorn on a misty lake. “Lords, there were others waiting. The spats. You’re an old soul, aren’t ya?”

            “So they say.”

            One day, Harold wasn’t there with his smushy smile and lunch pail. She reluctantly played for the crowd that had gathered before she had opened her guitar case.

            The next day was the same. And the next. And the next.

            Days later, after her biggest crowd yet—fourteen fans, half of them applauding—she overheard the store manager tell the new security guard that Harold passed away in his sleep. Cause unknown.

            The next day her father passed. Cause: heart attack.

            She came to the mall because the bills in her guitar case were beginning to stack. Her mom didn’t earn enough cleaning houses to make up for her dad’s income. Heather could’ve helped clean houses, but she was already making more playing for strangers than scrubbing bathroom tiles.

            And every chord strummed, every note sang, honored Harold.

            Then one day, at dawn, a man in a tweed jacket and top hat watched her perform. He wasn’t like the other pedestrians, halting when they heard her voice raise an octave. This man with curious eyes tapped his pointer finger on his watch while he listened, pursed lips finally opening after the completion of one song, “Haul Away Joe.”

            He deposited a $100 bill into her guitar case.

            “Edie McCollum, Portrait Records. Let’s make a deal.”