How High the Moon

by Sandra Kring

  I went straight to my room and flopped on my bed. Through my shut door, I could hear water sloshing in the tub as Teddy wrung out his work clothes. My shade was up and the Frys’ drapes were open. Their lamp was shut off but each time the TV screen flickered bright, I could see Charlie’s head.

  I didn’t want to admit that I was luckier than Charlie. But Charlie’s ma was in heaven, while mine was only in Hollywood. And mine was coming home as soon as she made her dream come true, but Charlie wouldn’t get to see his ma until he was an old man and got called home. And if I was forgetting my ma in five years, Charlie probably wouldn’t even remember his ma’s face by the time he got to the Pearly Gates. He might even walk right past her without knowing it was her.

  Maybe it was thinking about Charlie’s dead ma that made me remember the old funeral song, because even with one ear pressed against my flat pillow, that’s what I heard myself humming.

  It was the song that the old lady who lived down the hall above the bar in Peoria taught me, because she didn’t think it was right for a kid to be singing barroom songs. She taught me two of them, and when Ma came back because I puked on the old lady’s quilt and cat, I sang them both for her. Ma didn’t like them, though. She clamped her hands over the sides of her head like earmuffs and said, “Oh, those funeral songs give me the willies. Sing something else, Teaspoon.”

  I could hear Ma saying that, and almost stopped myself when the humming turned to soft singing. Almost like she could hear me. But I wasn’t singing it for her anyway. I was singing it for Charlie. Even if he couldn’t hear me. Just as I sang it a long time ago for the old jukebox man.

  It was the night before we pulled out of Peoria, and the regulars from downstairs had a little party for us. We even got a going-away cake, chocolate with vanilla frosting. They bought Ma beers until she was tippy, and gave me so much soda pop that my belly got fat and achy (I didn’t know how to burp on purpose then). All night long the regulars kept asking Ma why we had to go, and every time, she’d answer, “I told you. You sit too long in one place, and you grow mushrooms under your ass.”

  It was a fun party, but still I felt bad because I knew I’d never see those people again. Not Stella, who’d made the cake and who had hands spotted like a leopard and who called me Toots before and after I got the name Teaspoon. Rusty, who came straight from work every night, dirt still under his fingernails, and always bought two beers and one candy bar for me. Don, who was my ma’s boyfriend from time to time, who once picked me up and gave me a piggyback ride around the pool table, and later taught me to play a little. But the one that caused me to feel the saddest at the thought of never seeing him again was the old jukebox man.

  He hadn’t come the Wednesday before we were leaving, and when I asked Clem who owned the bar if he was coming to our party, he said probably not, because he wasn’t a regular. Just the jukebox man. “His wife died last week,” he said. “That’s why he didn’t show up Wednesday. Doesn’t matter, though. He comes more than he needs to, anyway.”

  But he did come. Not to scoop coins out of the jukebox, but to say his good-byes.

  He went to Ma first and took off his hat, standing beside her stool until she stopped talking to Don and turned to look at him. His whole body made little nods as he wished her well in her move and in life, and the whole time he talked to her, his old eyes were peeking sideways down at me.

  When Ma went back to her laughing and talking with the regulars, the old jukebox man asked me if I’d sing for him, one last time. I told him I would, and the folks at the bar who’d heard him ask started shouting out their favorites. But I didn’t pay any attention to what they were yelling. Instead I watched the old man, who was walking over to the jukebox, slower than I’d ever saw him walk before, his back folded over like the heavy sad he was feeling was sitting right on his shoulders.

  So I stopped, right there in the middle of the empty floor. And I started singing the best of those two funeral songs the old lady had taught me—“Amazing Grace”—because the jukebox man had a funeral.

  I sang it Acapolka, because that song wasn’t on the jukebox. Closing my eyes so I could sing it good, because I wanted it to be like one of those parting gifts they give game show contestants who don’t win, and I wanted the prize to be good.

  I guess the people on the stools only wanted to hear barroom songs, because they didn’t clap when I finished the song. They just sat there, a few of them wiping their eyes, until Ma lifted her glass and said, “What is this, a party or a funeral?” and they laughed and turned around to pin their elbows back on the bar.

  But not the jukebox man.

  He just stood there looking at me with watery eyes, his lips twitching like they didn’t know if they wanted to turn up or down. Then he came to me and lifted me up, his arm holding me like the seat of a swing.

  “Teaspoon,” he said. “I hope the only blue you ever have in your life is the blue in your eyes. But if those sad times come—which they’re bound to—you remember to keep a song in your heart. Making music when you’re happy, it got the power to heal others. But making music when you’re sad, it got the power to heal you.”

  He took one of my dusty feet and gave my toes a jiggle with hands like Mr. Morgan’s, chocolate on top and vanilla on the bottom. “It don’t matter if that hurt go all the way down to here. Music will reach down there, scoop it up, and leave them feeling light enough to tap again.”

  Then the old jukebox man itsy-bitsy-spidered two fingers up my leg and across my belly. Pausing over the place that thumped when I ran extra-fast or got scared, telling me that the music would lift the sad from there, too, then he itsy-bitsied to just under my chin. “And then the music stops here,” he said, making a tickle on my neck, “melting that lump that’s making your throat close up like a fist.” Then he reached his fingers above my head, as high as his hand could reach, “Carrying that sad all the way to heaven so the good Lord—who got bigger and stronger arms than you—can hold it for you.”

  I didn’t even know I still had that memory in me, but I guess I did. And remembering it made me look over at Charlie’s house and feel twice as sad for him. Sitting in that old-smelling house with nothing to do but watch love stories with no happy endings, with no means to make music that could carry his sad up to Jesus.

  I didn’t call to Teddy to say I was going over to the Frys’, I just wiped my eyes and went.

  “Who is it, Charlie?” Mrs. Fry called when Charlie answered my knock.

  “Teaspoon,” he said.

  “Teaspoon?” Mrs. Fry said, like she’d either forgotten who I was, or didn’t hear.

  Teddy said that watching TV in a dark room was bad for your eyes. Mrs. Fry was half blind already, so I guess she didn’t think it mattered if she lost what little sight she had left—though she should have thought of Charlie, who had enough afflictions already, without her turning him into a four-eyes. I poked my head into the dark room. “Just me, Mrs. Fry. I came to say I’m sorry about being so naughty tonight. I didn’t mean to act up like that. I’ve got afflictions, though. Like your Poochie. But I’m going to learn to do better because I got somebody to help me now. Anyway, I’m sorry.”

  Mrs. Fry stretched her neck out, like maybe I could hear her a bit better over the blaring TV if she leaned forward. “You make your peace with Teddy, too?”

  “I did,” I said.

  “Good, because he’s a good man. And he’s doing right by you.”

  “I know that,” I said.

  I asked Charlie to step out on the porch, where it was dark and he couldn’t see that I’d been crying, and I said my sorrys to him. “And you can play my ma’s piano whenever you want, but you have to wash your hands first. With soap. Every time. Got it?” Charlie nodded fast and grinned like a chimp.

  I started down the porch steps and turned when I felt Charlie practically breathing down my neck. “Geez, Charlie. I didn’t mean right now. It’s late and Teddy’s gotta get to work early. I got my Sunshine mee
ting with Brenda in the morning, too.”

  When I got home, Teddy was still in the bathroom wringing out clothes. “There’s some of Mrs. Fry’s homemade bread on the table if you’re hungry,” he called. “There’s some slices cut, and strawberry jelly in the refrigerator.” I unwrapped the bread, which still smelled like new and was glossy from butter that had melted into the crust while it was still hot.

  The next morning, I got up and scrubbed myself squeaky clean like Brenda. I put barrettes in my still-damp hair and buttoned a sweater over my dress to cover my elbows and stepped outside. And there he was. Charlie Fry. Waiting for me at the bottom of the steps so he could follow me to the Starlight like a duck who didn’t know who his mama was.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Maybe, when you do good after doing bad, Jesus gives you a reward since you were sorry. That’s what I thought, anyway, after I made my apologies to Teddy and Charlie and Mrs. Fry, and then showed up for my Sunshine Sisters meeting to find Johnny Jackson in the parking lot, leaning up against a dinged-up Perkins Construction truck wearing an employee shirt, smoking a cigarette and tapping the toe of his engineer boot with the heel of the other.

  “Johnny!” I shouted as I jumped off my scooter and turned it over to Charlie. “What are you doing here? You working for Mr. Perkins now?”

  Mr. Perkins was up on the back of the truck, which was long and flat like a stage, unhooking the belts that held stacks of wood the color of honey. Another guy, small as Teddy and with a beard that looked like it had dandruff, was helping. The little guy looked over at Mr. Perkins when I said that. And even though he had a cigarette stuck in his mouth, he said, “We’ll see how much work we get out of that hood, huh, Glen?”

  Mr. Perkins didn’t grin. Instead, he nodded over toward a white pickup, where Johnny’s friend Doug—the dopey-looking one I called Dumbo Doug (but not to his face) because he had ears big as Dumbo’s—was rooting around in the back. “Probably more work than we’ll get out of that moron. He can’t even find his tool belt and he had it strapped on him two minutes ago.”

  Mr. Perkins jumped down when the wood was unhooked. “Crissakes,” he said, glancing at his watch. “If she was in such a goddamn hurry to get this work done, then you’d think she’d be here on time to let us in.” He spit on the cement, then added, “That’s rich folk for you. Their time is always more important than yours. Someone gets here in ten minutes to open these doors, or we’re pulling out.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Brenda’s probably letting you in because her and I got a Sunshine Sisters meeting this morning. But you don’t have to worry about her not showing. She’s very responsible.” Dumbo Doug said something under his breath that only the little guy heard, and I could tell by the way the guy snickered that it wasn’t something nice, either.

  Figured. Dumbo Doug was a part of that little group of people who didn’t like the Sweetheart of Mill Town, along with—sad to say—Johnny Jackson, and most of his friends. I knew this for a fact, because the day after Brenda got crowned, Johnny and his friends were working on Johnny’s hot rod while I sat on the steps with Jennifer and Jolene looking at clothes in the Montgomery Ward catalog, and I heard Johnny say that Brenda Bloom was a stuck-up bitch, just like her ma. And Dumbo Doug said that a one-legged cat had more talent in its missing leg than Brenda Bloom had in her whole body.

  When Brenda pulled into the Starlight parking lot ten more minutes later, she looked rattled. And as she hurried to the door, fumbling in her purse for the keys, she gave the Perkins crew the same look folks gave Poochie when they passed the Frys’ yard. The bearded guy named Mel looked back at Brenda like he was Mr. Miller and she was a Taxi Stand Lady. Dumbo Doug didn’t look at Brenda, though. He was too busy looking at the new car Mrs. Bloom had given Brenda for a graduation present. He whistled like that car was a lady, and said, “Holy shit. A brand-new Thunderbird. Rag roof. Thunderbird blue. Holy shit.” Johnny didn’t look at the car. Or at Brenda, for that matter.

  Brenda was apologizing all over the place as she unlocked the door with a newly engaged hand—the ring not pretty and dainty like her, but big and clunky and old-lady-gaudy like Mrs. Gaylor—and Mr. Perkins said it was okay, even though a few seconds earlier it wasn’t, and inside we went. Me and Brenda went back to the concession stand, even though we weren’t going to make boxes or stock the candy, and the guys went to stand in front of the screen and listen to Mr. Perkins, who I think was delegating to them.

  Brenda looked at Johnny plenty that morning. Not with her head turned to the front of the theater to stare, like I think I did, but glancing with short little looks from the corner of her eye. I was looking at him so I could figure out if the fluttering in my belly was love. And Brenda? I think she was just trying to figure out if he was going to hurt her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Long as I could remember, Teddy never missed a day of work. But two weeks after Johnny started working at the Starlight, I came home to find Teddy wearing a bandage wrapped around part of his hand and running up half of his arm. His fingers were poking out, and they looked puffy and sore. “What happened to you, Teddy?” I asked.

  “Oh, I just took a little spill at work and sprained my wrist,” he said, wincing. “A couple of days off, and I’ll be good as new.” Teddy had his newspaper spread flat on the table and was holding it down with one elbow as he turned the page.

  “Well, look here. An engagement picture of your Brenda and Leonard Gaylor,” Teddy said, flattening the pages with his good hand. I hurried over to stand behind him, and sure enough, there they were. Leonard sitting and Brenda standing half behind him, her hand on his shoulder, that aggie-sized ring on her finger.

  I never saw Leonard before, I’d just heard of him—I didn’t go to his games, and he didn’t come into my neighborhood—and he wasn’t handsome at all like I’d imagined. He had one of those faces that looked like somebody pinched their fingers over his nose when he was a baby—while it was still squishy and soft like clay—and gave it a tug so hard that his upper lip got pulled forward right along with it, and neither boinged back into place after they let go. “He’s ugly,” I said.

  “Teaspoon, you need to learn not to comment on people’s looks,” Teddy said.

  “Why?” I said. “People comment on my looks all the time.” Soon as I said it, though, I got it. “Oh, you mean if they’re ugly.”

  Teddy cleared his throat. “Well, a man doesn’t have to be handsome to be a good person.”

  If anybody should have been an expert on that, it was Teddy, so I listened up as he read the article out loud. It didn’t say anything about Brenda I didn’t know, but there was lots about Leonard. Mostly about how he won lots of awards.

  “He’s obviously a very accomplished, respectable young man,” Teddy said when he finished reading. “He’ll probably make a good husband for Brenda.”

  I was happy at the thought of having Teddy around for a couple of days, but Teddy sure wasn’t happy about not being able to work.

  That night, just to cheer Teddy up and help him forget about his throbbing wrist, me and Charlie put on a show for him and Mrs. Fry. Okay, maybe it wasn’t perfect—it was what you’d call an impromptoe performance after all. And maybe that string of medleys wasn’t planned, but necessary because we didn’t know the rest of each song, but still we had a lot of fun. “When it rains it pours,” Mrs. Fry said when she saw Teddy’s wrist, and she gave his good arm a there-there pat.

  Mrs. Fry was right on that count, too, because the next morning—Teddy’s first day being stuck home—we got our first good soaking rain since school got out, and I woke up to a grumbling sky and a grumbling Teddy.

  I always liked the sounds of summer storms, that thunder in the distance rumbling like a drumroll, and lightning clanging like marching band cymbals. “Wow, it’s really coming down, huh, Teddy?” I called as I got out of bed and went to my window.

  The sky was so dark it looked like night, even if it was seven o’clock in the morning. Charlie wa
s standing at his bay window, his head tipped back watching the sheet of rain that ran down from the eaves. He gave me a slow wave.

  “Hey, Teddy, is it true what Mrs. Fry says about how if you go out in the rain and get wet, you’ll catch a cold?” I asked as I headed to the bathroom. “I don’t know if I believe that, or else we’d get sick every time we took a bath. I don’t care if it’s true, anyway. I got a Sunshine meeting this morning and I’m not going to miss it.”

  Teddy didn’t answer, probably because he didn’t hear me over the storm, to say nothing of the racket he was making with pots and pans. “Mrs. Fry knows a lot of things, but she doesn’t know everything, I don’t think,” I shouted, my voice echoing in the empty bathroom like I was singing. “She sure doesn’t know how to cut hair, anyway. You see Charlie’s head yesterday, Teddy? She’s got it all gouged up again.”

  There was a crack of lightning so close that I swear, the hair on my arms stood up. I jumped off the toilet quick because Mrs. Fry said you weren’t supposed to be around water when it was lightning. Even if she didn’t know everything, I wasn’t taking any chances.

  When I got to the kitchen, water stretched clear from the doorway to the table, puddling on the floor. I looked up and sure enough, water was coming down from that brown, bulged stain on the ceiling that gave us grief last summer. “Whoa, Teddy. The roof’s leaking again,” I said, but he was already squatted down in front of a cupboard we hardly used, clanging around with his good hand. “Teaspoon, would you come here and get that big soup kettle way in the back?”

  While I moved pans to tug it out, Teddy grumbled at himself for not replacing those boards that got wrecked in last summer’s bad storm, and for slapping a tar patch over it instead, because now look at the mess he had on his hands after a winter of heavy snow.

  “Well, Teddy, like Mrs. Fry says, a poor man has poor ways.” I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but I knew it was something she’d say at a time like this.