Mountain Solo

by Jeanette Ingold

  I start to her "Keep calling," I yell. "I can't see you."

  "Here!" she shouts. "I'm up here!"

  I get to her first. She's standing over the bird, which is on the ground, bleeding some and no longer struggling. Its eyes still flash angrily, though.

  "You'd better stand back," I tell her.

  "Why?" she asks. "It can't do anything" But she minds.

  Moments later Dad gets to us, and then Meg, who angles up from the other direction.

  Using his sweatshirt and shirt as hand protectors, hood, and ties, Dad swiftly covers the bird's head and immobilizes its strong legs and taloned feet. Then, able to work safely, he examines a long tear on the bird's breast. "The cut's not deep, anyway," Dad says. "Probably got it Ming into bushes."

  Then he begins the delicate job of untangling fishing line. There are yards of it, wrapped around the hawk's wings, looped around its neck, caught between feathers. The bird tries to fight and then sinks back into stillness.

  Finally Dad says, "I think I've got it all."

  Amy, who's been watching intently, biting her lip, asks, "What will we do now?"

  "Let's see if it can fly," Dad says. "I want all of you well out of its way." He swiftly frees the hawk and jumps back.

  For a moment the bird continues to lie so still I wonder if it's died. But then I see its chest moving with its breath, and then a leg stretches out, toes extended, talons raking the air It heaves itself upright and flails its wings. And then it's flying, a hesitant low flight that quickly turns into a wing-pumping climb and then, high above the ridge, into a current-riding glide. It screams its harsh, slurred cry one more time, only now it sounds like triumph.

  "Oh!" I say, and I realize I've been holding my breath.

  "Oh!" Amy echoes.

  Meg, looking stern, waits for Amy's explanation.

  Amy shows her a canister of pepper spray. "Pop forgot this. I wanted to take it to him."

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "Because you'd have taken it instead of letting me go." Amy's voice becomes a whisper and her eyes plead. "I wanted to help Pop with the hawk. It needed a chance like we gave Midnight."

  I see an unspoken signal go between Meg and Dad, and Dad says, "Amy, why don't you and I start back to camp?"

  "Let's give them a few minutes," Meg tells me. "Your father will know what to say, both about her good intentions and about the risk she took running off alone."

  "Dad's good at knowing what to say," I agree.

  Only Dad's talk must not go quite the way we anticipate, because when Meg and I get back to camp we find Amy in angry tears. This time because of me.

  "Pop says you're going back to New York," she says. Are you?"

  "Probably," I tell her.

  "Then I hate you. You promised to stay."

  For a moment she looks as if she's considering disappearing into the woods again, but she catches Meg's warning glance and goes only as far as the bank above Rattlesnake Creek.

  "I'll go talk to her" I say.

  "HEY," I SAY, dropping down next to her "You don't really hate me, do you?"

  "Yes. You promised."

  "You know I didn't."

  She sniffs. "Is your mom making you go?"

  "No."

  "Then why?" she demands. "If you can stay here, why don't you?"

  "Because right now I belong where I can learn to be the best musician I can be."

  She considers that and then asks, "But what if you mess up again?"

  "I don't know," I answer "I might. But you wouldn't want me not to try, would you? To have less courage than you showed tonight?"

  "You mean taking the pepper spray to Pop?"

  "No. I mean wanting to help the hawk even though you knew it might die and make you sad like you were for Midnight. That was pretty brave."

  Amy sniffs again. "I guess." She wipes her nose on her sleeve. "Mom got pretty mad at me."

  "You scared her."

  "Yeah." She looks sideways at me. "I don't really hate you."

  "I know. And even after I leave, it won't be like we'll never see each other again. I'm going to come home every vacation from now on. And between vacations we can e-mail."

  She asks, "Can I visit you in New York?"

  "I'd love you to. I'll take you to school with me."

  "Good!" Amy says. "I can meet Ben."

  "Say," Dad calls, "is this a private conversation?"

  "No, come on!" I call back.

  He and Meg join us just as the evening sky deepens into the last shades of twilight.

  We spend a few minutes planning our hike home and then we grow quiet as two owls begin calling to each other across the gulch. I'm about to try answering them when a muted splash alerts us to the dark shape of a beaver gliding through the water below. Suddenly it dives from sight, its tail slapping hard against the water and making a loud thwack that cracks the air.

  I don't know which of us say, "Wow!" Maybe all of us. I add, "I've never heard that before."

  ***

  THE DAY after we come out of the woods, I begin preparations for my return to New York. Not that I will go right away—I've decided to spend the rest of the summer with Dad, Meg, and Amy. But I have to let everyone know what I'm doing.

  Mom, when I call her says, "I knew you'd come to your senses. I'll telephone Mr. Stubner."

  "Please don't," I tell her "I'd like to start handling more things like that for myself." Then I add, "And I'd like to start deciding more things for myself too, especially about my music."

  "We'll see," she says. "When the time comes—"

  "Mom, the time already came, only I didn't know it. From now on, some things really do have to be different."

  I wait to hear if I'm asking to return on terms Mom won't accept. I can imagine her saying, If that's what you're expecting, you'd better stay where you are.

  But instead, after a long, long pause, she says, "We'll work things out, Tess. Together" Then she adds, "I've missed you."

  I call Mr. Stubner next. He tells me to enjoy my holiday and please bring him back a quart of huckleberries. He's always wanted to try some.

  Ben's and my conversations are private. We have so many that I have to put in some hours at the clinic to pay for my share. And Ben calls me even more than I call him. He hasn't gotten another girlfriend. He wants to see me in my pearl-colored, shape-fitting formal. He's working on a new composition that he's going to call "Tess."

  I think Amy's forgotten about wanting violin lessons, which is probably just as well. Drums, I'm thinking, might be more her style. Anyway, she's on to a new project. After I buy my phone card, Amy and I spend four dollars of our joint kennel-cleaning earnings on ice-cream cones, and we put the rest in a jar she labels, TRIP TO NEW YORK.

  Of all the things I'm doing, though, what I enjoy the most is playing my violin again. And every time I play it, I become more certain that I've made the right choice, even though I don't know where my choice will eventually lead.

  The morning I take my violin out to the nursing home, Meg and I walk in to find at least thirty people gathered in the activity room. Mostly they're nursing-home residents, but Dad and Amy are there, and also Mr. and Mrs. Dreyden, whom I've invited. I give my old violin teacher a big hug And I hug Mrs. Armitage, who accompanied me at my first recital. I invited her to be a guest, but she said she'd rather accompany me again.

  One of the nurses tells me, "We thought Katharina understood that it was you who'd be here, but for the last hour she's been telling everyone her father was coming to play."

  Katharina, though, looks at me with only the briefest flicker of puzzlement before her face clears. She says, "I knew you'd come back."

  "Meg and I have lots to tell you," I say. "We found where you used to live and we've brought you pictures. But first, would you like to hear some music?"

  "I wouldn't be out here if I didn't," she answers.

  I begin with several old melodies that I think the nursing-home residents might kno
w, and I'm pleased to see feet tapping and even a few people singing.

  Katharina listens with pleasure lighting her face, and when I stop, she says, "Just like Papa. I always did like his music best."

  "I'll end," I say, "with a rather long piece. It's the violin concerto called Summer by composer Antonio Vivaldi."

  I nod to Mrs. Armitage, pull my bow in the first downstroke, and hear the first note go out just right. And then I'm off and flying through the concerto's marvelous beginning.

  And even though I'm caught up in the sound, some part of me is aware that my audience is caught up with me. I can feel my music reaching out to them, and, closing my eyes, I know that's exactly how I want it.

  EPILOGUE

  Frederik 1918

  You want help with the dishes?" Frederik asked.

  "No," Maureen answered. "You go on reading the paper Anything special in it?"

  "War news." He scanned the front-page stories, his feelings mixed as they always were when he thought about the war with Germany. He and Maureen were doing all they could to grow food for America's soldiers, but Frederik wished the fight was with a different enemy. After all, his father had been born in Germany, and both of Frederik's uncles. In fact, as far as Frederik knew, his uncle Conrad still lived in Munich.

  Frederik hadn't heard from him after the round of letters the year Frederik's father died. The war had put him in Frederik's mind again, though, and Frederik hoped he was all right.

  Sometimes Frederik wondered about the decision he'd made that summer, where he'd be now if he'd chosen to go to his uncle Conrad instead of coming here.

  Maybe he'd be a German soldier? But, no, Frederik didn't believe that. The United States would always be his country, and he couldn't imagine ever betraying it. No more than he could imagine having any wife other than Maureen or any daughter other than Katharina.

  Still, it gave a body pause to think how just one decision, made differently, might have changed his whole life and the lives of others, too. And he'd had to make it when he was just a kid!

  If he'd gone to live with his uncle Conrad, he'd never even have met Maureen. But of course, while some of the best parts of his life wouldn't have happened, some of the worst parts wouldn't have, either.

  Frederik again heard in his mind the sharp crack of the blasting cap that Katharina had found and somehow set off. In the two years since, he'd come to realize the sound would always be a part of him, as vivid as his memory of bringing her home from the hospital afterward.

  They'd sat up with her all night, trying to ease her when she whimpered or cried out, and toward dawn, Maureen had asked Frederik to get out his violin.

  "I couldn't play," he'd said. "The last thing I want is music."

  The look Maureen had returned had been long and measuring "Since when," she'd asked, "did you start playing just for yourself?"

  Now her voice brought him back to the present. "If you're just daydreaming over that paper how about getting out your fiddle?"

  "I'll be glad to," he answered.

  Fiddle, he thought, smiling Uncle Conrad being a music professor, he'd have probably wanted it called a violin. Or whatever the German word for violin is. And he'd surely have taught Frederik to play a different kind of music than Frederik had taught himself.

  Frederik tuned his instrument as he walked outside, A string first. He turned the next peg and felt it crack, and his D string went from taut to slack. "Ahhh!" he exclaimed. "No!"

  Katharina, playing on the porch, asked, "What's wrong?"

  "A tuning peg has split down the middle."

  "Can you fix it?"

  "I guess I'll have to make another."

  "And then will you play?" she asked.

  "I'm going to have to do that, too, since I have requests from both members of my best audience!"

  "That's me and Mama, right?" Katharina asked.

  "That's you and your mother" be agreed.

  WHILE FREDERIK whittled a new peg, he thought about how much his daughter loved music and how he wished he could teach her to play his violin. But with her hands the way they were, that would never happen.

  The best he could do was play for her when she asked.

  It was growing dark by the time he finished whittling and sanding Maureen brought out a kerosene lamp so he could see to position the new peg and run the D string through and around it. He tuned, tested, and then announced, "It's holding! What music should we break it in with?"

  "A waltz," Maureen suggested.

  "Something fast," Katharina said.

  From farther up the gulch came the first, tentative call of an owl. Hooo hoooo.

  "No. Wait!" Katharina said. "Can you answer him?"

  Frederik blew out the light, tucked the violin to his neck, raised his bow, and listened.

  The call came again. Hoo hoo-hoo hooo hoooo.

  "I can try," Frederik said. Lightly touching the lowest string, he began playing a gentle harmonic, haunting and soft as the night.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My sincere gratitude for help with this book goes to many:

  To the educators and students who provided insight into the lives of gifted young people striving for excellence. I'm especially indebted to Mindy Chermak and Anne Dykstra of New York City's Professional Performing Arts School; to the students there who talked with me about their hopes and worries and about how they thought Tess might feel and might meet a crisis; to Roberta Kosse and John Tucker of the Professional Children's School in New York; and to Andrew Thomas of the Juilliard School.

  To violinist Margaret Nichols Baldridge and to Joseph Henry, director of the Missoula Symphony Orchestra.

  To U.S. Forest Service foresters and historians Mary Horstman, Milo McLeod, and David Stack for sharing their knowledge of Rattlesnake history and their enthusiasm for historical archaeology.

  To the helpful staffs of the Montana Historical Society Library, the Missoula Public Library, and the University of Montana Mansfield Library, and particularly to the Mansfield's retired archivist, Missoula historian Dale Johnson.

  To longtime Montanans Bud and Janet Moore for talking with me about trapping, to biologist Dt Richard Hutto of the University of Montana for answering my questions about hummingbirds, and to bird rehabilitator Kate Davis of Raptors of the Rockies for helping me see Midnight.

  To my faithful (and persevering) writing buddies, Peggy Christian, Sneed Collard HI, Hanneke Ippisch, Wendy Norgaard, Dorothy Hinshaw Patent, and Bruce Weide.

  To my family, especially to Carie, Troy, and my husband, Kurt, for a memorable camping trip that began with ascending the Rattlesnake's Stuart Peak. To my son, Kurt, for keeping Montana's beauty before me.

  And to three special people: my editors, Diane D'Andrade, who glimpsed the book I wanted to write, and Michael Stearns, who helped me find a way to write it; and my agent, Elizabeth Harding, who stayed with me through each step.

  SOURCES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

  Music and Musicians

  BOOKS

  Feldman, David Henry, and Lynn T. Goldsmith. Nature's Gambit: Child Prodigies and the Development of Human Potential. New York: Basic Books, 1986.

  Goulding, Phil G. Classical Music: The 50 Greatest Composers and Their 1,000 Greatest Works. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1992.

  Hoffman, Miles. The NPR Classical Music Companion: Terms and Concepts from A to Z. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.

  Kenneson, Claude. Musical Prodigies: Perilous Journeys, Remarkable Lives. Portland, Ore.: Amadeus Press, 1998.

  Stern, Isaac, and Chaim Potok. My First 79 Years. New York: Knopf, 1999.

  Winner Ellen. Gifted Children: Myths and Realities. New York: Basic Books, 1996

  INTERNET SOURCES

  Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. www.lincolncenter.org

  MENC: The National Association for Music Education. www.menc.org

  Symphony Orchestra Institute, www.soi.org

  Montana History and Archaeology

 
; BOOKS

  Cohen, Stan. Missoula County Images, Vol. II. Missoula, Mont.: Pictorial Histories, 1993.

  Farr, William E., and K. Ross Tools. Montana Images of the Past. Boulder Colo.: Pruett Publishing Co., 1978.

  Koelbel, Lenora. Missoula the Way It Was: A Portrait of an Early Western Town. Missoula, Mont.: Gateway Printing & Litho, 1972.

  Moore, Bud. The Lochsa Story: Land Ethics in the Bitterroot Mountains. Missoula, Mont.: Mountain Press, 1996.

  Poe, Forrest, and Hossie Galland-Poe. Born in Rattlesnake Canyon: An Oral History of the Rattlesnake Valley 1910–1940. Edited by Mark Ratledge. Missoula, Mont: Birch Creek Press, 1992.

  Spritzer Don. Roadside History of Montana. Missoula, Mont: Mountain Press, 1999.

  INTERNET SOURCES

  Society for American Archaeology, www.saa.org

  Society for Historical Archaeology, www.sha.org

  USDA Forest Service Passport in Time Volunteer Archaeology and Historic Preservation Program. www.passportintime.com