Fare Thee Well, Part Seven

by J. Rosemary Moss

Genre: Fan Fiction (Bonanza)
Rating: PG-13

LINK TO PART ONE

~

New York City 1850

Kevin and Adam were uniting their voices, pausing only to quench their throats with the worst beer to be had in New York. They were taking turns drinking from the rusted, beat up tin cup that Kevin refused to part with.

Adam was somehow managing to keep up with the chords of the song, despite the fact that Nora—one of the Irish bar maids—had her arm around his shoulders. She didn't seem to notice that she was hampering his ability to play the guitar.

But it was no hardship to have her pressed up against him. Besides, she was adding her sweet soprano to the song. So he didn’t complain, he just kept singing:


Well, I’ve sailed with this Burgess once before
And I know the bastard well
And if a man is a sailor he can get along
And if not, he’s in a floating hell!


Everyone at the bar joined for the chorus:


So fare thee well, my own true love
When I return united we will be
It’s not the leaving of Liverpool that’s grieving me
But my darling when I think of thee…*


As they sang a black man jumped up on the bar. One of the Irish fiddlers quickly joined him and together they began that strange new 'tap dance' that was growing out of the Irish jigs and the black shuffle dances.

Adam grinned as he tried to pay attention to his chords, the song, the girl and the dance all at once. For all its filth and squalor, there was something to be said for the Five Points.

“We’re going to get ourselves murdered there sometime,” he remarked later as the three of them—Kevin, Nora and himself—made their way home to the cramped flat that he and Kevin shared.

Nora laughed. “Aren’t you two darling? Keep bringing that guitar and you’ll always find welcome.”

“Aye, but he’s afraid of being murdered for that guitar,” Kevin explained with a twinkle in his eyes.

Adam grinned. “The thought had crossed my mind.”

“Well, aye, that might happen,” Nora owned.

“Never mind, it’s well worth the risk,” Kevin opined. “Confess it, Adam—you’re grateful to me for dragging you down there. Wouldn't it have been a shame not to have met Miss Nora here?"

Nora snorted. “Ha! I’m just angling to make enough coin from the pair of you to get me out of Five Points,” she informed them, giving each a calculating look in turn. “Adam here will polish up me up and then I’ll leave you both for the first rich old man that dangles his wallet at me.”

Adam laughed as Kevin pretended to be devastated. “Don’t you want to seduce me into marrying you?” he demanded.

She smiled and shook her head. “I don't think that I’m the marrying sort. And if I were, I wouldn’t set my cap on either of you. You’re an artist, Kev, and you’ve only money when some paper or other buys your pictures. And as for this one—” she paused to indicate Adam—“well, he plans to spend the rest of his life out in the territories.”

Adam grinned at the inflection she put on ‘territories.’ In Nora’s mind Nevada might as well be Antarctica.

“You have a point,” Kevin owned. “Poor Adam will spend the rest of his days breaking his back on that ranch of his father’s.”

“You might break your own back,” Adam retorted. “Don’t you mean to accompany me to the Ponderosa?”

Kevin winked at him. “Only if I live long enough.”

“Well, that’s another reason not to fall in with you, Kevin Doyle,” Nora put in. “I’m staying right here in New York.”

Kev sighed dramatically. “I’ll try to recover from your cruel rejection,” he told her. “But as for Adam here—I’m afraid you can’t have him anyway. He’s on reserve for a little girl in New Orleans.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “Kev here is convinced that he has the sight,” he explained.

Nora laughed. “Holy Jesus, so is every other Irishman. I never believe any of them.”

*Traditional lyrics

LINK TO PART EIGHT