Beethoven in Paradise
Page 11
Sybil took a sandwich out of the bag and held it in her lap, frowning down at Martin. He lifted his eyebrows and looked up at her through the tuft of hair that had fallen over his eyes. She set her mouth tighter and glared at him.
He watched out of the corner of his eye as she unwrapped her sandwich and took a bite. She lifted the bread and peeked inside. Her mouth twitched at the corners, then broke into a grin.
“Peanut-butter-and-banana,” she said, shaking her head.
Martin grinned.
“You worked things out with your dad yet?” Sybil asked.
When Martin told her about the violin, she got off the lawn chair and sat beside him on the grass. “What are you going to do now?” she said.
“Well, first I’m going to pay Wylene for the violin.”
“Then what?”
“I haven’t exactly figured that out yet.” Martin got up and went in the shed. He grunted as he pulled out a heavy box. He wiped the dust off the top and pulled the packing tape away.
“Wow, check this out,” he said, peering into the box.
Sybil looked in. “That’s a saxophone.”
“I know,” Martin said. “Whose is it?”
“Dad’s, I reckon.”
“How come it’s out here?”
“Who knows? He’s all the time getting stuff from people when he works on their car. That’s how I got my rototiller.”
“Wonder what something like this costs.”
Sybil shrugged. “I’m going to get us a drink.”
Martin watched her walk off. When she rounded the corner, he took the saxophone out of the box. He blew the dust off it and then wiped it on his T-shirt. He glanced up to make sure Sybil was nowhere around, then put the saxophone in his mouth and pretended to play it. He leaned way back, lifting the instrument into the air the way he’d seen blues musicians on TV do it. He closed his eyes and puffed his cheeks out, lifting his fingers up and down on the keys.
When he opened his eyes, Frank was sitting on a lawn chair eating a sandwich. Martin quickly put the saxophone back in the box and disappeared into the shed. He moved boxes around noisily.
“You think I should put that in the keep pile or the go pile?” Frank called from outside the shed.
Martin clanged and banged stuff around. He carried a bent-up TV antenna out of the shed. “Depends on if you want to keep it, I guess,” he said.
Frank took a bite of his sandwich. Tomato juice dripped onto his lap. “I sure ain’t gonna chuck it. That thing’s worth something.”
“How much?”
“Hell, I don’t know. It was worth a brake job to somebody over in Pickens.”
“How much is a brake job?”
Frank laughed and wiped his mouth. “How much you got?”
Martin looked away and said, “I can’t buy that sax. I got to pay for a violin.” He looked back at Frank. “But maybe we could work a deal?”
“Now you’re talking. What kind of deal?”
“Well, maybe I could trade something for it.”
Frank grinned. “What’ve you got?”
Sybil came around the corner of the house carrying a tray with three tall glasses. She set it down on the card table. “I’m going to set up the sprinkler,” she said, heading for the garden.
Martin stared out at the garden, watching Sybil stoop to pick weeds as she walked through the tall rows of corn. “I don’t know. Nothing, I reckon,” he said.
Frank took a long drink. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. “Aw, I bet you could come up with something,” he said.
“You think so?”
“Sure I do.”
Martin’s stomach fluttered with excitement. Maybe he could come up with something. Maybe he had nowhere to go but full steam ahead. After all, he had crossed the Rubicon.
Twenty-three
“How MUCH DOES a brake job cost?” Martin asked his mother.
She looked up from her paint-by-number picture. “A brake job? Lord, you’re asking the wrong person.” She dabbed her paintbrush in the paint and squinted at the tiny numbers on the picture. “Who needs a brake job?”
“What about a saxophone?” Martin said. “How much you think a saxophone would cost?”
His mother put the brush down and sat back on the couch. “You mind telling me what you’re talking about.”
Martin told her about the shed and the saxophone and the deal he could work if he only had something to trade.
“Problem is,” he said, “I hadn’t got anything to trade. And if I had the money to buy something to trade, then I wouldn’t be needing to trade in the first place. Know what I mean?”
His mother nodded. “That’s a problem, all right,” she said, and went back to her painting.
Martin finished cleaning out the shed in two days. Now Frank was going to pay him extra to help haul stuff to the dump. He took one last bite of cereal before heading out the door. When he got outside, his mother was slamming down the trunk lid. She looked up at Martin and waved a bag in the air. “I got something for you,” she called, grinning.
“What?”
She sat down on the steps. “Close your eyes and hold out your hand.”
Martin felt the same giddy excitement he used to feel when he was little, waiting for surprises.
She put something flat and hard in his hand.
“Okay,” she said.
Martin opened his eyes and looked down at the orange-and-blue license plate in his hand. Alaska, the Last Frontier.
“Hot damn!” he said.
His mother laughed.
“I got to go,” Martin said. He ran to the side of the house to get his bike, then stopped and ran back to where his mother sat on the steps. He kissed her on the top of the head and said, “You’re the best.” He jumped on his bike, then turned to look at his mother one more time. She still sat there, smiling, and for a minute Martin thought he saw that same peaceful face he had seen on that Bible-clutching little girl on the church steps all those years ago.
When he got to the Richardses’ house, he went straight around to the back, swinging the bag as he walked.
Sybil straightened up when she saw him and smiled. She rested a basket of string beans on her hip. Her broad face was tanned, her nose sprinkled with freckles. She moved toward him in that slow-motion way of hers.
“What’s that?” She pointed to the bag.
“Something for your dad,” Martin said. “Is he here?”
She pointed to the side of the garage. A beat-up Toyota was parked on the grass. Two skinny legs stuck out from underneath it.
“Hey, Frank,” Martin called. The legs moved, and Frank emerged from under the car. He squinted up at Martin. His cheek was smudged with grease.
“Well, hey,” he said. He stood up and tossed a tool into his toolbox with a clang. “What’s up?”
“I came to work that deal.”
“I’m game.”
Martin opened the bag and took out the license plate.
“Hooeee,” Frank whooped. “Sybil, would you look here?” He held it up for Sybil to see. The three of them stood there, beaming at one another. Martin thought about that day he had looked back at Sybil and Frank standing in the garden and had felt like an outsider. Now here he was standing with them. On the inside.
It was Frank who broke the spell. He went to the shed and came back with the saxophone.
“It’s all yours, buddy,” he said.
Martin took the saxophone and ran his fingers over the little dents on the side.
“Did Beethoven ever play the saxophone?” Sybil asked.
Martin laughed. “I doubt it,” he said, “but I bet he could have.”
He looked down at the saxophone. “Mind if I leave my bike here?”
Sybil shook her head. Martin put the saxophone in his mouth and blew. A puff of dust shot out the end. They all laughed. Martin blew again. A low, hoarse sound came out.
Martin started walking slowly toward the
street. He held the saxophone to his lips and blew. The saxophone squawked. The squawk got louder.
Martin kept walking and blowing, squeaking and squawking, down the road and over the Rubicon toward Paradise.
Also by Barbara O’Connor
Me and Rupert Goody
Copyright © 1997 by Barbara O’Connor
All rights reserved
SUMMERTIME, words and music by George Gershwin, DuBose and Dorothy Heyward, and Ira Gershwin
© 1935 (Renewed 1962) George Gershwin Music, Ira Gershwin Music and DuBose and Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund
All rights administered by WB Music Corp.
All Rights Reserved
Used by Permission
WARNER BROS. PUBLICATION U.S. INC., Miami, FL 33014
HOW GREAT THOU ART by Stuart K Hine
Copyright © 1953 S. K. Hine. Assigned to Manna Music, Inc., 35255 Brooten Road. Pacific City, OR 97135. Renewed 1981. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. (ASCAP)
Designed by Filomena Tuosto
eISBN 9781466809949
First eBook Edition : January 2012
First edition, 1997
Sunburst edition, 1999
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
O’Connor, Barbara.
Beethoven in Paradise / Barbara O’Connor.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Martin longs to be a musician, and with the encouragement of two very different friends, he eventually is able to defy his mean-hearted father and accept himself and the talent within him.
ISBN: 978-0-374-40588-5 (pbk.)
[1. Self-acceptance—Fiction. 2. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 3. Music—Fiction. 4. Friendship—Fiction.] I. Title. II. Series. PZ7.0217Be 1997 [Fic]—dc20
96-17289