A Distant Music

by BJ Hoff

  The fear was there, in her eyes, looking out at him. If she knew the rest of it, she might not be able to keep it to herself. She might even tell her father. Mr. MacAuley looked to be a man who could take care of the biggest and meanest of bullies—but what would happen to Maggie afterward? Her father couldn’t stand guard over her all the time.

  But what if he kept his silence and Billy and Orrin got tired of picking on him and went after Maggie anyway? What if not telling on them turned out to make things worse when maybe he could have kept her safe if he’d only done what she’d been begging him to do: tell Mr. Stuart?

  His mind slammed a door on the thought, but not before a cold dread settled over him.

  “Kenny?”

  Maggie was watching him with a pleading expression in her eyes. “Please, Kenny. Please tell Mr. Stuart. Tell someone.”

  The bell rang just then, calling them back to class. Kenny looked at her and then toward the building. “We’d better go in,” he said, adding, “I have to stay after school, so I won’t be able to walk to the company store with you.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “So you are going to tell Mr. Stuart?”

  He shook his head. “He asked me to stay. He’s probably going to question me about the black eye.”

  “What are you going to tell him?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “But you’ll have to lie if you don’t tell him what happened.”

  “Then I’ll lie!” Kenny shot back. “Now will you just leave me alone?”

  He could have clubbed himself the instant the words were out. Her face fell, and she jerked as if he’d slapped her.

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I didn’t mean—we’d better go in.”

  Apparently, he needn’t have worried overmuch about her feelings. The fire was already back in her eyes. Another second, and she whipped around and marched back into the schoolhouse, leaving him to follow.

  One thing about Maggie: She had her pride.

  He wondered if there would be anything left of his own pride when all this was over.

  If it ever was over.

  The boy was lying. Jonathan knew it as surely as if somebody had blared it out with a megaphone. He had been a teacher too many years not to know a youthful lie when he heard one, had come up against that evasive, trapped look in the eye too many times to dismiss it.

  He sighed. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  “I see,” he said when Kenny finished his tale about the fall in the woods. “Well, I expect you were fortunate that you didn’t break a bone.”

  The boy nodded, seeming to relax a little. “Yes, sir.”

  “But you most likely did take some lumps, didn’t you?” Jonathan pressed. “I noticed that you seemed to be favoring your left arm earlier.”

  Kenny blinked, and again came the shifting glance, the anxious note in his voice. “I…yes, sir. I guess I bruised it some.”

  “Did your father have Dr. Woodbridge take a look at you? Just in case something is broken?”

  “No! No, he…didn’t think it was necessary.”

  “Really?” Jonathan smiled at him. “My father always overreacted when I got hurt. He’d drag me to the doctor for the least little thing.”

  The boy managed a lame smile but said nothing.

  Jonathan could almost feel the youth’s growing discomfort, but he couldn’t bring himself to let go of this quite yet. Frustrated with his own failure to break down the boy’s wall, he decided to be blunt. “Kenny, whatever you say to me is in confidence. Please tell me if someone did this to you. Did someone hurt you?”

  The boy gave Jonathan a startled look, as if trying to gauge what he might know and how he knew it.

  Oh, yes. He is definitely lying.

  Jonathan kept his gaze steady, his voice low. “Kenny? You can tell me the truth.”

  “No! I told you, I fell. That’s all that happened. It was nighttime, and I don’t see so good anyway after dark. I just…fell.”

  Jonathan studied him. A chilling awareness that something was terribly wrong seized him, but he hadn’t a thought as to what he could do about it.

  The boy was frightened, that much was evident. Again came the thought of Judson Tallman and the rumors that had never quite died about him and his wife. If this was a case of a father mistreating his son, then something had to be done. No child should have to live in fear of his own parent.

  No child should have to live in fear of anything.

  But if the boy wouldn’t talk to him, what could he do?

  Jonathan sensed he would accomplish nothing by pressing further. Young as he was, something about Kenny Tallman made it clear that he wasn’t one to succumb to pressure. There was a strength there, a kind of steely self-containment, that belied the boy’s age and almost fragile appearance.

  It seemed that all he could do for now was to make certain Kenny knew he had a place to come to, a place of safety, should he ever need it. That wasn’t enough, of course. It wouldn’t be nearly enough if the situation turned out to be as vile as Jonathan feared it might be. But for now there seemed to be nothing else to do.

  “All right, Kenny. You may go now.”

  The boy was off the chair before Jonathan finished.

  “You may go, but I want you to promise me that if you need help—any kind of help, for any reason, at any time—you’ll come to me.”

  Kenny wouldn’t look at him, and his voice was so low as to be almost inaudible when he answered. “Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Stuart.”

  Jonathan got to his feet. “I mean it, son. There are things we’re simply not meant to handle alone, things we can’t handle alone. God puts other people in our lives so we won’t have to handle those things by ourselves. Remember that there’s always help.” He paused. “You have only to ask, Kenny. Don’t ever forget that.”

  Kenny looked up, and in that instant Jonathan knew the boy was struggling not to confide in him. He looked for all the world as if any second the words would come spilling out of him in spite of his best efforts to hold them back.

  But the moment passed, and Jonathan was left to watch the thin, seemingly forlorn youth make his way down the aisle for the door.

  He watched until the door closed. Then he sank back down onto his chair and prayed.

  Twenty-One

  Maggie in Charge

  I have dreamed,

  I have planned,

  I have prayed—

  I will do.

  Anonymous

  It was Thursday evening, and Matthew still hadn’t heard a word from the other school board members. By now he was impatient with the lot of them and irritable with just about everyone else. After finishing his supper, he scraped his chair back from the table and announced that he was going for a walk.

  “Matthew, it’s sleeting,” said Kate.

  So it was, but he was tired of sitting around in the evening wondering what the other men on the board were going to do. He had already had his say, and there was nothing more he could do except to wait for the vote. But so far Pastor Wallace hadn’t called for a meeting.

  For his part, he thought it was past time. Just how much longer were they going to wait, after all?

  As if she had read his mind—and sometimes Matthew suspected she could do just that—Kate said, “I’m sure you’ll be called to a meeting soon.”

  “What in the world is taking them so long? They could have elected a governor in this length of time.”

  “It’s only been a week, Matthew.”

  “ Only a week? Kate, this is important. We need to take care of this now, not next month!”

  “Who are they voting for, Da?” asked Maggie.

  Matthew looked at her. “We’re not voting for anyone. We’re just trying to reach a decision.”

  “About what?”

  “It’s grown-up business,” Matthew said.

  The girl looked miffed, but her expression cleared after a second or two. “If you go for a walk, can I go partway with
you, Da? I want to visit Summer.”

  Matthew looked at Kate, who shook her head slightly. “Not this time,” he told Maggie.

  “But why, Da? I haven’t seen her since last week, and tomorrow evening I have to work at the store until seven, so I can’t go then, and—”

  “Maggie,” Kate broke in quietly, “I’m afraid this just isn’t a good time to see Summer.”

  Something in Kate’s low tone seemed to have set off a warning. The girl turned to look at her mother. “Why?”

  “Maggie, Summer isn’t—”

  Kate stopped, glanced at Matthew, and then went on. “I ran into Mrs. Rankin at the company store yesterday. She said that Summer’s having a hard time of it right now. It seems…she doesn’t have the strength to visit with anyone.” She paused. “I’m sorry, Maggie, but you might as well know that Summer is in a bad way.”

  Matthew found it hard to swallow. The pain in his daughter’s eyes was so raw, so intense, he felt as if he’d been struck with the same blow.

  Silence hung over the table. Nell Frances and Eva Grace, usually chattering or arguing, now sat darting glances back and forth from their mother to their younger sister. Even Baby Ray had ceased fidgeting in his chair, his smile uncertain as he sensed the tension around the table.

  Maggie’s gaze locked on her plate, which still held most of her supper. “Summer is going to die, isn’t she?”

  It was the hard, thin voice of an older woman, not that of his twelve-year-old, lively natured Maggie. Maggie, the one whose spirits were usually inexhaustible, her faith in all that was good in life seemingly unshakable. The sound of that pronouncement and the defeated set of her shoulders chilled Matthew’s very soul.

  “Summer is going to die,” she said again in that awful voice. “And so is Mr. Stuart.”

  “Somehow things will come out all right, Maggie,” Kate said, her tone gentle. “God knows what He’s doing.”

  The girl didn’t so much as look at her mother. “Nothing is ever going to be all right again. And I can’t see that God is doing anything.”

  “Maggie, no—” Kate reached across the table toward her, but Maggie was already on her feet, the back of her hand against her mouth as if she were struggling not to be sick.

  When Kate rose as if to follow her, Matthew caught her arm and shook his head. “Best give her some time,” he said. “She needs to come to grips with the truth.”

  “That’s asking a lot of a twelve-year-old,” said Kate.

  “That’s asking a lot of any one of us, man or woman grown,” said Matthew, the taste of bitterness burning his mouth. “Nevertheless, it’s how things are.”

  Maggie headed straight for the washroom. It was the only place where she could be alone, the only room with a door she could close to shut out the rest of the household.

  Sadie had followed her, whimpering a little at the closed door until Maggie opened it and let her in.

  For a time Maggie paced, wave after wave of anger and helplessness churning up in her and clamoring for release. As she crossed the room again and again, she pressed her hands against her ears, as if to deafen herself to the pounding of her own blood and the world outside.

  If she could have screamed without somebody running to rescue her, she would have. From time to time she struck the palms of her hands together, hard, as hard as she could bear. Then she began to yank at her hair, wanting to hurt herself, needing to make the pain inside of her accessible, something she could physically reach.

  Finally exhausted and shivering in the cold, she slid down the rough-hewn, unpainted wall and sat huddled on the floor, her legs propped up, her head resting on her knees. Sadie came and squeezed her head onto her lap, and Maggie mindlessly began to stroke the dog’s spotted fur. Like warm silk beneath her hand, it was unexpectedly comforting.

  Eventually her heartbeat slowed, the rage quieted, and the sharpness of her pain grew dull and numb. The dog’s even breathing seemed to fall in with her own, and this, too, was somehow calming.

  She tried not to think, but there was too much clutter in her mind to avoid wading through it. She ought to pray, she supposed. Ma was forever saying that prayer had a way of turning burdens into blessings, but she wasn’t sure she believed that anymore. Maybe that worked when you were little with small problems, but she was no longer a little girl, and her troubles seemed to grow bigger and heavier all the time.

  In truth, she didn’t really know how to pray about the things that were happening. She felt as if something had given her world a hard shove, and now it was tilted, with the things of life falling every which way and craziness and ugliness replacing all she had once trusted and depended on.

  If this was growing up, she wished she could stay a child forever.

  She remembered Mr. Stuart telling them that the Savior knew everything that happened to them and cared about it all, that there was nothing too small or unimportant for His attention. Over the years of Mr. Stuart’s teaching, Maggie had come to see God not as she once had—as a feeble old man who spent His days sitting on some kind of a throne and giving orders to the angels—but more as the quiet-voiced, gentle-natured Son who smiled a lot and loved children and music and everything about the beautiful world He had made. Although it was hard to imagine how He could see a place like Skingle Creek as something beautiful, Mr. Stuart said He did.

  But if that was so, why would He let a little girl who had never done anything bad in her whole life get so sick she might die? And why would He let no-accounts like Billy Macken and Orrin Gaffney beat up on someone like Kenny Tallman, who was the nicest boy in school, no exception? Kenny, who was always doing helpful things for the younger students or sticking up for the slow ones, like Lester Monk and others. What about Benny Pippino—Pip—who had lost his hand? And poor old Mrs. Hunnicutt, who could have starved to death or died of the cold and nobody would have even known. And the Crawford twins’ da, injured in the mines, leaving his entire family at the mercy of whatever the town could scrape together to keep them going.

  And Mr. Stuart. Especially Mr. Stuart. If God really knew everything and cared about even the smallest things, then what was He thinking, to allow a good man like Mr. Stuart to keep growing weaker and sicker when the children needed him and loved him and depended on him more than any grown-up in town could ever understand?

  Why?

  Her head hurt from holding back all the tears that had been building up, and she finally had to let them go. They were so hot as they streamed down her face they seemed to scald her skin, and when she tried to wipe them away she tasted the warm, bitter salt on her hand.

  Why? she asked again. If You really know everything like Ma and Mr. Stuart claim, and if You really do care about everything that happens to us, then why don’t You do something? It’s not enough to just care about bad things happening to folks if You don’t care enough to do something about it!

  Maggie tried to recapture the picture of Mr. Stuart, standing at the front of the class, his smile somehow taking them all in at once, as he told them about “A Love So Great.”

  “A love so great it held the Son of God on the cross when He could have freed himself with a word…One plea to His Father, and the cross would have crumbled into splinters, and He would have escaped into heaven…But instead He bore the unbearable and died an ugly and horrible death so that we wouldn’t live only a few years, but instead would live forever, with Him, in His kingdom.

  That’s how big God’s love is. That’s how much He loves us, every one of us. There isn’t any part of our lives that He doesn’t know about or care about. If you’re ever tempted to think God has forgotten you or simply does not care, remember the cross. That’s how much He cares. How much more proof of His love do you need?”

  Maggie leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes, still smoothing Sadie’s fur with one hand. She walked through the chaos in her mind, and with each step she tried to face every bad thing, every fear she encountered, as if somehow simply confr
onting what she dreaded most would make her strong enough to endure it. But when she tried to meet head-on the awful truth, the dread reality of what was going to happen to Summer and Mr. Stuart, she stopped, unable to go any further.

  She wanted Mr. Stuart to be right. She needed him to be right. She needed to believe “without a doubt.”

  He had told them there would be times when their faith would be tested, when they might have doubts and questions about what God was doing and why He was doing it. And when that happened, Mr. Stuart said the thing to do was to just to “keep on plowing through the doubts and the questions…live as though your faith is as strong as ever, as though you have no doubts or questions…and sooner or later you won’t. You’ll believe ‘without a doubt.’”

  With her mind still locked on the teacher’s words, but exhausted now from the riot of her feelings, Maggie began to feel sleepy and almost dozed off. Suddenly, she opened her eyes with a start, as if someone had tugged at her. There was something she had to do, something that in the midst of the past few fragmented, frenzied days she had set aside and nearly forgotten.

  Mr. Stuart’s gift. The gift for his birthday party. She’d followed through almost by rote the plans and preparations for the party itself, mustering the help of the other students and parents—her own included—and she’d seen to the countless details that needed to be resolved to make the event a success.

  But in the process, she had neglected her gift for the teacher. Hers and Summer’s gift. She had made a promise to Summer, had set the plan in motion, and then she had forgotten it.

  That last night they had been together, the night they planned their special gift for Mr. Stuart, Summer had seemed almost fierce in her insistence that Maggie take care of everything. Indeed, she had shown more interest, more energy, than Maggie had seen in her for weeks.

  Maggie had tried to hide her skepticism about the idea, though she suspected Summer knew she had her doubts. But Summer had persisted in her notion that it would work, that it would be “the perfect gift.”