Tig

Tig had never been to sea, he had been to college. He wore a navy pea coat and a gray watch cap, and wrote songs on a harmonium squeeze organ. The high and whining melodies wheezed and huffed, and he sang a nasally verse through the top of his head. They were all about the wives of working men, their rough hands and rough poetry. His band got very popular among the college crowd. They would sway back forth singing along, songs of a common memory none of them shared. Tig read books about whaling and looked at the stern faces of the men in the pictures. He copied their beards, and way of standing like unmovable foundations, and imagined stories about them to sing a song about.