A Distant Music

by BJ Hoff

  They gaped at her as if she’d lost her wits entirely.

  But Maggie wasn’t about to give them a chance to start arguing. “Losing the flute has got a lot to do with Mr. Stuart’s misery, don’t you see? Isn’t he always talking about how important music is? Remember last spring, when we were practicing the songs for the Easter program, how he said he wouldn’t even like to think about life without music?”

  Now two or three began to nod, and Kenny Tallman again spoke up. “He said he reckoned music is to the soul like food is to the body.”

  “I recollect what he told us that one time,” Summer Rankin ventured softly, “after he played that song about Kathleen… Kathleen…”

  “Kathleen Mavourneen,” Maggie finished for her.

  Summer nodded. “He said music is like the voice of the heart.”

  Some of the others exchanged looks, but no one said anything until Junior Tyree spoke up. “Mr. Stuart, he said he figured music was p’urt near in-indepensable.”

  “Indispensable,” Kenny corrected promptly.

  “Yeah,” said Junior.

  They were quiet for a time, thinking their own thoughts.

  “A silver flute must cost an awful lot of money, I expect.” Summer broke the silence and then coughed.

  Maggie hunched her own shoulders against the sound. These days when Summer coughed, it sounded like crockery breaking somewhere deep down inside of her.

  “How much, do you figure?” asked Junior Tyree.

  Summer shook her head, her hand still covering her mouth as the cough subsided.

  “A fortune, I bet,” Lily declared with a dramatic roll of her eyes. “Probably thousands of dollars.”

  “Maybe not thousands,” Kenny Tallman said, frowning behind his thick spectacles. “But a lot.”

  “How much is a lot?” Maggie asked, interested only in facts, not guesswork.

  Kenny twisted his mouth to one side, thinking. Maggie knew she could depend on his answer. Kenny might be peculiar-like, kind of nervous and fidgety much of the time, but he was smart all the same. Real smart, especially when it came to money.

  Maybe because he was one of the few in Skingle Creek who even knew what money looked like. Kenny and the hoity-toity Lily Wood-bridge.

  “A new flute like the other one,” Lily put in, “would cost at least a thousand dollars.”

  Maggie found little encouragement in the fact that Lily had lowered her earlier judgment of thousands of dollars.

  As if he’d read her mind, Junior Tyree piped in. “Might just as well be thousands for all the chance we got of comin’ up with that kind of money.”

  Kenny Tallman looked at Lily with a frown. “What do you know about the price of flutes?” he said.

  “I know,” Lily drawled, propping her hands on her hips and eyeballing Kenny as if daring him to question her further.

  As usual, Kenny was too smart to egg Lily on. Instead, he just shook his head and turned to Maggie. “Most likely, a special flute like Mr. Stuart’s would cost hundreds of dollars at least.”

  Maggie pulled a face, her mind running ahead. “Well, it seems to me the thing to do is find out exactly how much we can come up with. Kenny, you and Lily and Junior go talk to the older crowd over by the pump.”

  Maggie wasn’t about to approach the older students. Her sisters, Nell Frances and Eva Grace, were always hanging out with this group, and lately they thought they were too important to give Maggie or anyone else the time of day. Besides, Billy Macken and his buddy Orrin were over there too. Maggie kept out of their way as much as possible.

  “Me and Summer—Summer and I—will go see what the others think.”

  She stopped, glancing at Lester Monk, who hadn’t said a word but was clearly expecting to be included. “Lester,” she said with a sigh, “you come with us. We’ll ask the Crawfords and Sammy Ray Boyle how much they can give.”

  “The Crawfords ain’t going to have nothing to give,” Junior said. “They don’t even bring their lunch pails anymore, not since their daddy broke his leg in the mine.”

  Maggie had forgotten about the Crawford twins’ bad luck. Not that she had much sympathy to spend on those two. Duril and Dinah Crawford were just about the biggest nuisances in school. Duril could be downright spiteful sometimes, and Dinah wasn’t much better. Still, they were Mr. Stuart’s students just like all the rest of them, so they ought to be included.

  “Well, ask them anyway,” she said. “We need to ask everyone. Lester, go and find us a jar. There ought to be one in the supply pantry. Look on the shelf with the paper and paints.”

  Lester grinned big, as if pleased to be useful, but he quickly turned sober. “What if Mr. Stuart sees me?”

  Maggie waved off his concern. “Just tell him we need it for outside. He won’t care. And get a big jar, you hear?”

  “I’ll ask my mama and daddy to help,” Lily volunteered as Lester took off at a run. “I’m sure they’ll want to contribute.”

  Maggie looked at Summer and rolled her eyes at Lily’s big word, but she held her tongue. Meanwhile, Kenny Tallman nodded in a way that told Maggie he would ask his daddy for help too.

  Silently, Maggie began to tick off the possibilities if all the grown-ups were to make a donation, and her spirits brightened considerably. Not that she or any of the others could expect much from home, of course. Only Kenny and Lily had parents who could afford to part with their money. But she was almost certain that her older sisters would give something from their egg fund, and maybe she could even convince her da to put in a little.

  As for herself, she had saved almost five dollars from cleaning the Carlee sisters’ house every other Saturday over the past few months. She tried not to think about the fact that she had been saving her wages for Christmas.

  Besides, she had already bought Summer’s gift—a scarlet hair ribbon for her friend’s “angel hair.” She could hand make her other gifts as she had in the past. A new flute for Mr. Stuart was more important than store-bought Christmas presents.

  Every little bit would help, so she must do her part. If everyone chipped in something—why, there was no telling how much they might end up with!

  Their first attempt at a collection was not a huge success, but neither was it a total failure. The problem was that scarcely anyone had any money, except for Lily Woodbridge and Kenny Tallman. Miners were paid largely in the paper scrip that could then be traded at the company store for goods. But it wasn’t of much use for a collection.

  Lily, of course, made a great show of unknotting her handkerchief and putting in “what little she happened to have”—which turned out to be only ten cents! Kenny, however, had seventy-five cents, of which he kept only fifteen and put the rest in the jar, promising to bring more the next day.

  The older students hadn’t been much more help than the younger ones, but at least everyone had put in a little something. Everyone except for Billy and Orrin, who claimed the collection was a dumb idea and refused to give a cent. Duril and Dinah made light of it too, but everybody knew they didn’t have anything to give. Maggie thought the least they could have done, though, was to keep their ignorant remarks to themselves.

  She consoled herself with the thought that everyone had agreed to go home and ask their parents for help, so by next week there ought to be more money for the jar.

  “So, then—that’s what we’ll all do,” announced Lily Woodbridge right after school let out. “As soon as we get home, we’ll ask our parents to contribute. Some of us,” she said with deliberate emphasis, “should be able to bring in more in a few days.”

  The look she angled at Maggie seemed to imply that this would almost certainly not be the case with the students whose fathers worked in the mines.

  Maggie squirmed a little, acknowledging to herself that Lily was probably right.

  Da had all he could do—and didn’t he remind them of it often enough?—just to keep food on the table for them. Maggie feared she already knew how he would react to t
he idea of putting money in a jar for a musical instrument.

  Still, she had to ask. This was her idea, after all, and everyone else was going to try, so she must do her part too. But after she said goodbye to Summer at the foot of the Hill and turned toward home, she began to pray mightily that she wouldn’t be one of the few whose folks couldn’t—or wouldn’t—contribute.

  Three

  Waiting for Matthew

  A copper-skinned six-footer,

  Hewn out of the rock…

  Joseph Campbell

  Eva Grace! Nell Frances! Come give me a hand now!”

  Kate MacAuley balanced the baby on her hip as she set the table. Wee Ray was teething and fussy, and earlier she had nearly let the pot of potatoes cook dry while she tried to distract him from his sore gums.

  The girls walked into the kitchen, and she handed the cross little tyke to Eva Grace to feed, and then she sent Nell Frances to the washroom with the towels she’d heated in the oven for Matthew and a bar of new soap. “Mind you don’t forget to put the old soap scraps in the bucket,” she told Nell Frances.

  Matthew claimed he was the only miner in Skingle Creek whose wife heated his bath towels in the winter, but of course that wasn’t so. Kate happened to know that she wasn’t the only woman in town who indulged her man, though to her way of thinking Matthew MacAuley might deserve the extra attention more than most.

  Now that the baby was out of her arms and wouldn’t be chilled, she went to open the kitchen door. The damp November evening was quiet and tinged with the odor of wood smoke and the more acrid smell of burning coal. Most of the morning’s snow had melted off, but the porch steps were still coated with a dusting of white.

  As Kate stood listening, the whistle from the mines sounded. She drew a breath of relief and silently gave thanks for another day of no cave-ins, no explosions, and then she closed the door and turned back to the kitchen. Matthew would be home soon, looking for his supper, and she still had the biscuits to flour.

  As she worked at the stove, she glanced back now and then, watching Eva Grace, their oldest at fifteen years, dandle their youngest—nearly fifteen months—on her knee. Every so often the girl managed to get a spoonful of potatoes in her little brother’s mouth.

  “As soon as he’s finished, change his didy and put him in his chair so you can help me. Your da will be tired.”

  “Da is always tired,” the girl said, her tone careless.

  Kate turned. “And I suppose you would not be tired, then,” she snapped, “working under the ground for twelve hours a day, six days a week?”

  Without looking at her mother, Eva Grace spooned another bite of food into Baby Ray’s mouth. Then she pushed his bowl aside and got to her feet, tucking her brother into the crook of her arm. “I didn’t mean anything,” she said.

  “Then mind your tongue.”

  After the girl left the room with the baby, Kate looked over her kitchen. The biscuits waited to be baked, the potatoes were done, the bacon frying.

  A good meal.

  It wasn’t always so.

  Again she went to the door and stepped outside, this time as much to watch for Maggie as for Matthew. Ferguson had asked the girl to work an extra hour at the company store tonight. Kate didn’t like the child coming home after dark. But they needed the little money Maggie could add to the jar each week.

  After another moment she saw the rows of flickering lights moving down the Hill from the mines, the lamps on the miners’ caps appearing like a wave of lightning bugs.

  But still no sign of Maggie.

  Trying not to worry, Kate went back inside. By the time the bacon had crisped and the girls had returned to the kitchen, she heard Maggie running up the steps to the kitchen door and then stamping her feet dry. At the same time, the door to the washroom off the kitchen slammed shut, signaling Matthew’s return.

  Kate expelled a long breath of satisfaction. Her family was home.

  Maggie had watched her da closely when he first arrived home, his face black with coal dust from the day’s work in the mines. He was weary as always but did not seem overly cross. Even so, she would keep her silence until he came in from the washroom, scrubbed and wearing his after-work overalls. Perhaps she would even wait until after supper. His mood often brightened after he’d had his meal.

  She helped to clear the table without being asked, which brought a quirk of her mother’s eyebrow. Then she sat, trying not to squirm as Da drank the last of his tea.

  Finally, Maggie could wait no longer. She wiped her hands down the sides of her skirt and cleared her throat. “Da? I was wanting to ask—” The words came spilling out in a rush, like marbles shaken from a sack.

  Her sisters looked up, and Maggie hesitated, but only for a second or two. “Mr. Stuart’s students are taking up a collection, you see.”

  Now it was her da who lifted an eyebrow, though he remained silent.

  “For a new flute,” Maggie hurried on, “to replace the one that was stolen—you remember, don’t you? We’re all of us asking our parents for help.”

  Her father said nothing. He merely pushed his empty plate a bit farther away from the edge of the table.

  Maggie swallowed. “So, then, do you think you could give something for the collection?”

  Her father turned a long, silent look on her. Maggie held her breath, aware that her mother was looking on with a troubled gaze.

  “A collection, is it?” Da’s face was pinched with the beginning of a scowl.

  A gnawing took up in Maggie’s stomach, but she managed to nod and smile.

  He continued to stare at her. “Are you daft entirely, girl? When it’s all I can do to feed the lot of you, you would ask for money for such foolishness?”

  The angry red stain creeping up his neck should have warned Maggie to back off, but instead she hurried to explain, to make him understand. “But it’s not foolishness, Da!” she blurted out. “Not at all. Mr. Stuart is sick and getting sicker since his silver flute was stolen. We only want to help by giving him back his music, don’t you see?”

  “What I see,” her father said, his voice a low rumble, “is that your Mr. Stuart has apparently taught you nothing at all in the way of common sense!”

  “Matthew—”

  Maggie a shot a hopeful look at her mother, but Da seemed bent on ignoring them both.

  Maggie was not exactly afraid of her da. He never switched his children, as did some of the other fathers. But he was a big man, and with his unruly copper hair and dark red beard, he seemed terrible fierce when he was in a temper.

  Even so, Maggie found his anger less wounding than his contempt. At the moment he was looking at her as if he might be raising himself a fool, and Maggie had all she could do to hold back the tears scalding her eyes.

  She glanced at Eva Grace and then at Nell Frances for some sign of support, but neither met her gaze. Instead, they sat like two great lumps, staring down at their hands as if they had suddenly taken to growing claws.

  Clearly, there would be no help from her older sisters.

  She summoned what remained of her confidence, balling her fists at her sides and biting at her lower lip. “Please, Da, won’t you just let me tell you about it? Everyone has pledged to bring what they can. I’ll be putting in a part of my cleaning wages, and sure, Nell Frances and Eva Grace want to help with some of their egg money. But the only way we can hope to raise what we need is if the parents give too.”

  She had her sisters’ attention now, all right. She could feel the two of them glaring at her. As for her mother, she had gone still as a stone.

  Red-faced, Da looked from Maggie to her sisters, his big fists knotted on the table in front of him. “Now you listen to me, you girls, and you hear what I’m saying! This family has no money to give away.”

  He leaned forward, his eyes hard. “We all work at this house, except for Baby Ray, whose turn will come soon enough. We work to keep a roof over our heads and clothes on our back and food in the pan
try. I expect if one our neighbors were hungry, we would give him bread enough to keep him from starving, but if I ever hear of any one of you wasting this family’s hard-earned money on such folly as you’ve spoken of tonight, you’ll sore regret it, and don’t think you won’t! I don’t go breaking my back in the mines so my children can throw my wages out like garbage.”

  It was all Maggie could do to utter a word without strangling. Still, she risked his wrath with one more attempt. “Please, Da—it wouldn’t be throwing money away! We only want to help Mr. Stuart!”

  Her father banged one fist on the table. They all jumped, and from his high chair Baby Ray began to whimper.

  “I’ll see Margaret Ann by herself!” Da said, his tone sharp as he stood. “The rest of you tend to your lessons.”

  Maggie shriveled inside as her mother took Baby Ray from his chair and gave a nod to Eva Grace and Nell Frances, who followed her from the room. She was in for it now. Da hadn’t called her Margaret Ann since last summer, when, in a frenzy to get away from a black snake, she’d accidentally sent several jars of green beans crashing from the shelves in the fruit cellar.

  She sat as still as light, her face burning as if scorched by an iron, while her da stood watching her, his big arms crossed over his chest. Maggie waited for him to launch into one of what Eva Grace called his “word whippings.” His face was a thundercloud, and he looked to be working up steam for a fierce scolding.

  Maggie braced herself, gripping the sides of her chair, trying to swallow down the lump in her throat so she wouldn’t shame herself by breaking into tears. But the tongue-lashing for which she tried to steel herself was slow in coming. Indeed, Da was keeping silent for an unusually long time, though his hard look never wavered.

  “All right now, girl,” he finally said, leaning over and planting both hands on the tabletop. “I think you had best tell me what this is about, for I’d be willing to wager that you’re the one behind this business of a collection.”