The Song Weaver

by BJ Hoff

  His words fell away, and for a moment he slumped against her.

  “We can’t think that way, Matthew. It will drive us both mad.” Kate took him by the hand and led him to the sofa where they sat for a long time in silence, holding each other while she quietly wept and Matthew, obviously, tried not to.

  The pain was still raw, like a hacksaw filing away at her heart. Perhaps it was even harder for Matthew, she realized. Most of the time he thought he needed to keep his feelings to himself, showing nothing even to her. Yet grief contained was heavier than sorrow shared.

  “We will get through this,” she said quietly. “We must. For our other children—and for wee Gracie. And for ourselves. God will carry us through until we’re able to walk on our own again. He will.”

  He nodded, saying nothing, his bearded cheek pressed close to hers.

  Kate continued to hold him, this man she had lived with so long she scarcely remembered life without him. His need for her comfort, as always, drew him into her heart.

  She wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. She had to be strong for him. She had to. When she faltered, Matthew grew uncertain, even frightened. She had seen it so many times over the years. Her weakness weakened him. Her strength seemed to bolster him, restore him. But ever since Eva Grace’s death, weakness had dogged her like an unrelenting buzzard. Physical weakness, yes, but emotional and spiritual weakness as well. Most days she felt as if it were all she could do to make it through to nightfall. Her body seemed lifeless, her mind numb.

  Caring for the baby helped. Lately she had begun to feel a faint hint of strength returning. Her days had purpose again. Gracie needed her and depended on her. And Maggie and Jonathan needed her help so they could get on with building their life together. Every time she was tempted to give in to the weakness, to give up and stop trying to come out of the cave of sadness her grief had dug for her, something would tug at her, reminding her that she couldn’t quit. There were still those who depended on her.

  Especially Matthew. It had taken her years to realize that he wasn’t as strong as he let on to be. Oh, physically, he’d been an oak tree for most of his life. And even though he claimed his faith couldn’t hold a candle to her own, Kate had seen that faith at work and knew it surpassed his own perception of it. In most ways he was a mountain of a man. But emotionally—and unknowingly, she thought—he looked to her for his own resilience. If he found it in her, he could call his up. If she wavered, so did he.

  She wondered sometimes if that wasn’t the way it was meant to be. If a man and wife were to be as one, if they truly made each other complete, then didn’t it only make sense that what one lacked, the other would supply? That they would find what they needed in each other?

  And if once in a while she grew weary of letting him think she was strong, when in truth, at that moment she was anything but, wasn’t that merely a gift she could give him without complaint? A kind of grace God allowed her to offer the man who was indeed a gift to her?

  Such thoughts were deep. Too deep. The best she could do at this moment was to hold on to her husband, give him whatever warmth and consolation she knew how to give. Let him draw from what strength she had left in her.

  She could only hope it was enough.

  Chapter Ten

  Jonathan’s New Idea

  Christ,

  Grant us this boon,

  To look with Thine eyes of pity and love

  On all men’s need:

  To feel from within, with Thee,

  The bite of pain, of hunger, of wrong:

  To live wholly beyond ourselves,

  In deep and active desire

  Of help for the needy and weak.

  John S. Hoyland

  Jonathan looked up from his desk to scan his classroom. It was a good opportunity to study his students, as they were all deep in concentration, working through the test papers he’d handed out twenty minutes before. The sight of all those young, intense faces never failed to move him. Some brought an ache to his heart, others a smile. But each evoked a feeling of almost paternal interest and affection. Most days he saw more of these children than their parents did. Certainly he cared deeply about their welfare.

  One thing about children: No matter how hard things might be with family financial struggles, inclement weather, even learning challenges, they somehow kept an innocent cheerfulness that never failed to lift his own spirit. Conditions were particularly difficult at present for mine families, but for the most part, the children retained their carefree liveliness.

  He also enjoyed the diversity in his classroom and appreciated the differences among the students. His gaze came to rest on Selma Lazlo, and he couldn’t stop a smile at her shining head bent over her test paper. Here was a child who, along with her younger brother, Huey, had once wrenched his heart with her guarded, solemn features, her shabby appearance, and her difficulty in relating to other children—and adults as well.

  The products of a violent, abusive home, both Selma and her brother were now living with Ben Wallace and his wife, Regina. Although Selma apparently had not been physically mistreated, little Huey had been badly beaten over an extended period of time. The mother who beat him was now deceased, having been shot by their father. In fact, Burian Lazlo was presently confined to the county jail, awaiting sentence for the murder.

  In the brief time since the Wallaces had taken Selma and her brother into their home, the children had undergone remarkable changes, and not merely in terms of their physical appearance. The sober, furtive mannerisms that once characterized the two of them had gradually given way to a more childlike lightheartedness and cheerful demeanor. Even their schoolwork had greatly improved, and they were beginning to make friends among their classmates.

  His attention shifted for a moment to the other side of the room, where the older students were finishing up a history quiz. For a change, thirteen-year-old Annabeth O’Toole wasn’t flirting with Mike Zinco at the desk behind her but was actually frowning in concentration.

  Annabeth worried him. Her widowed father had his hands full holding down a job in the mines and raising two sons and a daughter. Annabeth, the oldest of three, was a precociously pretty blond who looked a good two or three years older than she was. She managed to ensnare just about every boy within range with her dimples and long eyelashes.

  Jonathan didn’t envy Colm O’Toole the onerous responsibility on his shoulders. His daughter, even at her young age, was turning out to be one of the most comely girls in school. Growing up without a mother to counsel her had to make her adolescent years more difficult for Annabeth—and for Colm as well—than they might have been otherwise. He wished he could think of something that would turn Annabeth’s attention from boys to a less hazardous sort of diversion. So far he hadn’t come up with anything, but he was still mulling it over.

  Just then a movement by Maggie’s brother, Ray, caught his eye. The boy was leaning back, one hand raking his sandy red hair as he frowned at the test paper in front of him. Obviously confounded, he repeatedly tapped the desk with his pencil and twisted his mouth to one side.

  Jonathan expelled a long breath. Ray was no student. He was bright enough, no doubt about that, but he disliked the books and the classroom. He’d much prefer being outside planting a crop or feeding animals. Maggie and her family were intent on the boy getting a good education, and Jonathan was hardly one to minimize the importance of his doing just that. But, realistically, he had little hope of keeping his young brother-in-law in the classroom more than another year or so.

  He looked back to his own desk, to the paper he’d been making notes on earlier. A number of ideas, mostly for the school and his students, though not entirely, had been buzzing around in his mind over the past few weeks only to be pushed to the back of his thoughts during the time of his marriage, Eva Grace’s death, and taking over the care of Gracie. For several days now they’d renewed their struggle for his attention.

  At the moment he needed to bring the
period to an end and prepare for dismissal. He folded his notes and tucked them into his pocket to review later.

  “Time,” he said and started down the aisle to collect the test papers.

  After supper that night, while Maggie was giving Gracie her bedtime bottle, Jonathan put a recording of Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song” on the phonograph. As they sat together on the sofa, listening to the piece that had quickly become one of Maggie’s favorites, Jonathan smiled to himself. He’d once wondered if Maggie would enjoy the phonograph as much as he did or if, lively as she was by nature, she might find the simple act of sitting and listening to music somewhat boring.

  Clearly his concern had been needless. Most evenings, if he was later than usual in turning on the phonograph, she kept after him until he did. Yet when he would have showed her how to start it herself, she refused. “I’ll not risk breaking something so valuable and so special to you.” No amount of coaxing could change her mind.

  She was still rapt in the music when she lifted Gracie onto her shoulder to burp her. “It seems to me,” she said, “that what makes music so special is that you don’t need to understand it to enjoy it.”

  Jonathan looked at her. She had a way of tossing out these little statements and then stopping for a moment, as if she were looking for some sign of agreement from him before going on.

  He nodded, waiting.

  “You, for example, most likely do understand what we’re listening to, but I can’t think you enjoy it a bit more than I do, even though I haven’t a thought as to what it’s all about or how it comes into being.”

  Jonathan didn’t always get her point, but this time he did. “You’re exactly right. That’s because even though I know something about music, I listen with my heart, the same as you do.”

  At that instant Gracie let go a satisfied burp, and Maggie smiled.

  Jonathan reached to touch Maggie’s hair and then the baby’s head. “Speaking of music—I have an idea. Something I’ve been considering for some time now. I’d like to know what you think.”

  She tucked the baby close, got up, and went to the rocking chair. “Tell me while I rock Gracie.”

  After seeing her settled in the rocker, Jonathan asked, “Do you remember the night of my birthday party at the schoolhouse, the night you gave me the penny whistle from you and Summer?”

  Her eyes misted. “Oh, yes,” she said softly. “Of course I remember.”

  “Then you remember the music the students and their parents performed as a kind of birthday gift.”

  She nodded. “I’ll never forget that night. How could I? I even wrote about it in my book.”

  “Yes,” he said, “you did. Just as you wrote how the music changed the people in the room–and the town—afterward. How things got better after that, at least for a time.”

  “That’s how I remember it. Something happened that night. I’ll never understand it, and you said you didn’t understand it either. But for a long time after that night, things were different in Skingle Creek. The town came together. For the first time in a long time, people grew closer, almost like a big family. And they looked forward, instead of giving up.”

  He nodded. “Things are bad in town right now, Maggie. The men’s wages have been cut again, and the weather has shortened their hours. The mine bosses are fighting all mention of a union, even though they know it’s going to happen sooner or later. That’s caused a lot of anger and frustration among the miners. To make matters worse, we had so many men injured last year in the cave-in—including Matthew—that some are no longer able to work. The town needs something to lift their spirits, to keep them going.”

  He paused. “There’s no arguing that they need actual physical and material sustenance more than the kind of thing I’m thinking of. Still—”

  “What are you thinking of?”

  He hesitated. “I don’t actually have it worked out very well in my mind yet. It’s just an idea—”

  “Tell me.”

  Maggie studied him as she rocked the baby. He looked genuinely excited. This was a facet of Jonathan’s makeup that still surprised her. She had to admit that up until their engagement, when she grew to know him better, she had seen him as a decidedly serious, dignified, and studious man. And in truth, he was all that at times. But she had come to realize that he also possessed a distinctly light-hearted side, a relentless sense of humor, and a boyish enthusiasm for ideas and new ventures—his own as well as those of others.

  How had she missed these facets of his personality over the years?

  Well, he’d been her teacher, after all. From first grade through graduation. Although she’d always been keenly aware of his kindness and his gentleness, she’d known him primarily as the most prominent authority figure in her life other than her parents. That role itself demanded respect from his students, imbuing him with an aura of gravity, whether real or imagined.

  At the moment, however, he seemed hard-pressed to contain the enthusiasm that appeared primed to spill over at any second.

  “You’re familiar with the way the miners sing on their way home from work?” he asked now.

  “Sing? Oh, yes. They’ve done that for as long as I can remember. I’ve always liked hearing them.”

  “But have you ever noticed just how good they are? How well they sing? And how much they seem to enjoy it?”

  Maggie glanced down to find Gracie already asleep. She touched her cheek with her index finger and brushed a kiss over the soft, warm spot she’d touched. “Let me put Gracie to bed,” she whispered, getting up from the rocker. “I’ll just be a moment, and then you can tell me all about your idea.”

  “I’ll go up with you.”

  Halfway up the steps Gracie opened her eyes and, seeing Jonathan following behind, let out a wail for him, which Maggie knew pleased him no end.

  It was another half hour before they finally got her settled and back to sleep—and before Jonathan could relate his idea in detail.

  Afterward, sitting together on the sofa, Maggie said carefully, “It’s a grand idea, Jonathan. But perhaps somewhat…ambitious, don’t you think? Do you really believe you can persuade enough men to take part?”

  “Yes,” he said firmly, his expression not dimming a bit. “Oh, not at first. We both know the miners have their own way of doing things. But I’ve thought a lot about this, Maggie. And I’ve prayed about it even more. I believe I can make it happen, and I’m convinced it will be a good thing. For the miners and for the town.”

  Maggie was trying to share his enthusiasm, she really was, but it seemed like such a fanciful idea. The people of Skingle Creek needed so much. The churches tried, but they couldn’t begin to keep up with the need for such essentials as food and clothing. It had already been a hard winter for many, and it wasn’t over yet.

  As if he recognized her skepticism, Jonathan took her hand, saying, “What? I can tell you have some reservations.”

  She searched his face, her heart warmed by the light in his eyes and the earnestness of his expression.

  “I think that no one but you could make it work. But I believe you will do it.”

  He smiled. “I confess that I do covet your faith in me. But do you mean that? Or are you saying it just to salve my feelings?”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Oh, I believe you might. But I’ll not press the issue. So you’ll help me then?”

  “Help you? I can’t think what I could do.”

  “You can work on your father, to begin with.”

  Maggie lifted an eyebrow. “Da?”

  “The miners look to Matthew as a leader. If I can get him involved, most of the others will come around. Matthew will see to it.”

  Actually, he had a point. For years Da had been recognized as the one to go to when a miner had problems of any kind. He’d been a foreman before the cave-in a little over a year ago, but by his own choice had gone back to being a fire boss after his injury. No matter what position he might hold, however, Mat
thew MacAuley was one of the most experienced, diligent, and reliable miners among them, and to a man they treated him as their leader.

  “If you want my opinion,” she said, “you’d do better to talk to Da yourself. There’s no one he respects more than you. I’m still his knock-kneed daughter. He seems to find it hard to refuse you anything.”

  “You were never knock-kneed.”

  “How would you know? You never saw my knees until we were married.”

  “You had a knack for skinning them, as I recall, tomboy that you were. I remember handing you the iodine more than once. But back to Matthew. You really believe he’ll listen to me?”

  “You convinced him to let you marry me, now didn’t you?” she said, giving him a nudge.

  “A good point,” he said.

  Maggie knew from the look in his eye that Jonathan’s idea would soon bear fruit.

  Chapter Eleven

  Visitors

  We are stronger, and are better

  Under manhood’s sterner reign:

  Still we feel that something sweet

  Followed youth, with flying feet,

  And will never come again.

  Richard Henry Stoddard

  Jonathan had known since noon he was going to be working late, but he hadn’t realized it would be this late. Fortunately, Carolyn Ross offered Maggie a ride to her parents’ house, and he insisted that she go on without him. He’d also told her that the family shouldn’t wait supper for him, and it was a good thing. By four-thirty he still hadn’t finished preparing his monthly report to the school board when he glanced out his office window and saw Ben Wallace coming up the walk.

  “I was hoping you’d still be here,” said Ben as he walked into Jonathan’s office.

  “Report time,” Jonathan said, pointing to the papers in front of him.

  “I know how much you enjoy that.”

  “Indeed.”