by Diane Noble
“But why, Ma? Why?”
“There are many reasons, and someday you’ll understand. You’ll know I did it for you.”
Before Daisy said a word, Violet and Clover padded into the kitchen. Clover was carrying Rosemary, who reached for her mama. With a smile of confidence that she was truly doing the right thing for Daisy, for all the children of Red Bud, Abigail stood and gathered the baby into her arms. Sometimes a mother had to make difficult choices, choices that children would not understand until they were grown. It was painful, true, but it was for the best.
“Whath wrong?” Violet slid onto the chair next to Daisy. She reached for her sister’s hand. “Why are you cryin’, huh?”
When Daisy did not answer, Clover sat on the other side. “Is it about the drama show? Are you still worried nobody’ll come to tryouts today?”
“It’s not that,” Daisy said, sniffling softly. “Mister Taggart saw to it yesterday that everybody will be there—even the sixth-level girls.”
Abigail walked to the stove, bouncing Rosie on one arm, and dampered the fire under the coffeepot. “Enough talk about Mister Taggart. It’s time to get ready for school.”
“But Daisy’th cryin’, Ma.” Violet sounded ready to cry herself.
“She never cries,” Clover added. “Never. But she is now.”
With that, Daisy stood and ran from the kitchen. A moment later, the bedroom door closed with a bang.
“Get your clothes on, girls,” Abigail said evenly. “Hurry, now, or there won’t be time for toast and jam.”
She fought to keep from following Daisy. She wanted nothing more than to hold her little girl in her arms and let her dream her dreams. Instead, Abigail turned to the business of spooning oats into a small bowl for the baby.
Percival Taggart stopped by the mercantile to pick up his mail from the post office that afternoon, just before music class. Surprised by a thick, official-looking envelope, he slid his finger beneath the seal and read it as he walked down Main Street toward the schoolhouse.
It was from the chairman of the schoolhouse board, Lester Knight-Smyth. At first he thought it might be a reprimand for the stern discipline Percival had meted out on the man’s daughter Brooke the day before.
Then he realized it was more than that. Much more, though he had to wonder if making Brooke apologize to the tavern keeper’s son in front of the whole class had been the final straw in Lester Knight-Smyth’s thinking. And who knew what Brooke told her father about the incident.
Behind the letter were two lined pages filled with signatures. He scanned them with a sinking heart. Nearly every family who had a child in Red Bud school, including those in his music classes, had signed. There was no doubt that the people of Red Bud wanted him to leave.
Even without the accompanying letter from Knight-Smyth, the signatures were sad proof that his time here was done.
He looked up into the thin wintry sky. Lord, how could I have been so wrong? I really thought this was where You wanted me. Just yesterday, I thought I had it figured out. I thought I knew where I belonged. Now this?
It had been one thing to think about staying when pondering his own resignation, but the reality of getting sacked was quite another. He must have been addlebrained to think about staying in Red Bud, no matter the opposition.
He trudged on to the schoolhouse, his step heavy, his spirit close to breaking again. He passed the tavern and glanced over at it, suddenly thirsty. So thirsty he thought he might die if he did not stop for a whiskey.
What would one glass hurt? Perhaps it would buoy his spirits, give him courage to face the children today.
For today of all days would be the hardest to live through with his charges.
He would tell the children that he would be leaving after all. And that would be that. He would pack up his music, the instruments, and the stands, just as he started to do yesterday. Only this time there would be no turning back.
His feet carried him straight to the clapboard shed where the boys had stolen the whiskey bottles a few weeks back. He cleaned a spot on the window with his sleeve and peered in.
There they were, lined up in a neat row. Bottle after beautiful bottle of the wondrous, amber liquid. He could feel its sting on his tongue, its warm glow in his throat. Licking his lips, he stepped to the door.
It was padlocked, of course. But that would be an easy enough fix. He reached for his pocketknife, pulled it out, and lifted a single blade outward. With the padlock in one hand, the knife in the other, he hesitated.
Inside, the dark bottles called him. Then he heard small footsteps behind him, rushing, stumbling along the pine needle–covered path. A child, no doubt.
He bit back his irritation. So strong was his desire, he could already taste the amber liquid. It would not release him. He did not want it to.
“Mister Taggart…?” Even with his back still to the girl, he knew her identity.
Shame flooded over him as he turned slowly. “Daisy.”
She gazed at him with innocent eyes. “This is the shed I was telling you about. The one where the wise men and angels will find the Christ child.”
“That’s not why I came here.”
“I know.”
His thirst for whiskey was gone now, and he looked at the ground, shaking from the intensity of what he had just been through.
“I was looking for you before and I saw you head this direction.” She fell quiet, though looking like there was more she wanted to say.
“We should be getting back to the schoolhouse,” he said.
“My ma told me something this morning—about that, more than likely.” She fixed her gaze on the unfolded letter still in his left hand. “If that’s from the school board.”
“It is.” He shrugged.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
They had walked back up the path to the road, and now turned left toward the schoolhouse. In the distance, the shouts and laughter of the children carried on the wind.
“I wondered,” Daisy said, “if the school board might change their mind about you leaving after everybody sees the play.”
“After?” he said gently. “Daisy, they mean for me to go now.”
“Ma said after the end of the term.”
“The fall term is over when school lets out, just before Christmas.”
She smiled at him. “But the new one doesn’t start until after the holidays. Promise to leave, then maybe after the drama show, the school board will change its mind.”
They reached the rusty gate leading into the school yard, and he pulled it open so she could enter. “I will speak to the school board about your request. That’s all I can promise.”
Her eyes shone bright. “Until you do, can we go on with our rehearsals?”
He did not want to extinguish the flicker of hope in her eyes. “I suppose it won’t hurt.”
She clapped her hands together and almost danced a jig, right there in front of the rest of his charges. “Tryouts, everybody,” she called to the children waiting by the music room. “Come on, let’s go!”
Three days later, Hannah Sweet told Abigail the news as they took down their clothes from lines on either side of the picket fence that separated their yards: The board was allowing Mister Taggart to teach music lessons through the month of December. That meant the children’s drama show would still be put on. Not only that, Come, My Little Angel was the talk of Red Bud. It seemed the children were already selling tickets to the play, Hannah Sweet said with an arched brow. Two bits apiece. And the proceeds, so they said, were to go for building a church.
Abigail yanked another clothespin off the line. Now she understood Daisy’s dancing eyes of late. And she did not like it one bit. The child was openly defying her. All this talk of angels and playacting and selling tickets had to stop right now.
As soon as the last pair of drawers was taken from the clothesline, she woke Rosie from her nap and set out for the schoolhouse.
&nbs
p; If the school board could not stand up to the drunkard who was corrupting the children of Red Bud, by jiminy, she would do it single-handed.
She marched up the hillside, Rosemary cooing in her arms. The baby’s cheeks were pink from sleep, and she made sweet babbling sounds, squealing and giggling from time to time. The faster Abigail walked, the more the baby laughed, as if her mother’s stiff marching were tickling her funny bone.
It was downright impossible to remain mad as a wet cat when a baby cooed and patted your cheeks with dainty wet fingers.
On top of that, the nearer Abigail got to the schoolhouse, the more soothed she was by the music that poured from the little room off to the side of the play yard.
Even Rosie stopped her cooing and cocked her head to listen.
The sound seemed to float on the air, soaring upward and joining the whistling of the wind through the pine boughs.
Rosie clapped her hands and chortled in delight, her gaze fixed on the treetops as though she saw something that Abigail could not see.
And from that plain, unpainted clapboard music room, the voices of children rose, some off-key, some loud, some soft, some filled with warmth and light and laughter. But together, the words poured forth in a choir unlike any she had ever heard.
“Come, my little angel, is your halo on straight… bring your gifts so fair… to the One you love… to the King above, He loves you so. Come, my little angel, put your halo on straight…”
Abigail did not know when the tears began to trickle down her cheeks. Or why they flowed at all. She did not believe in angels, or in the King above.
Still, the music wrapped around her heart like a blanket of glorious light, touching every part of her being.
So she stood, transfixed, on the dirt road called Main Street, listening to the children sing, and wondering about Rosie’s fascination with the breeze in the treetops.
ABIGAIL KEPT THE strange occurrence near the schoolhouse to herself, but she pondered it day and night, filled with wonder each time she remembered the melody the children sang that day.
Albeit begrudgingly, she silently allowed the drama show to proceed. A kind of peace was struck between her and Daisy as the days passed, especially as she helped all three girls learn their lines. This business about angels was daft, that was for certain, but it was good for them to exercise their minds with memory work.
The second week in December, only ten days until the performance, the younger girls, as usual, were helping with supper.
“Ma, will you help make the costumes?” Clover counted eight potatoes and lifted them out of the metal bin.
“We can’t afford the materials, child. You know that.”
“But we have them already.” Clover frowned, concentrating as she cut the dark eyes out of the first potato. “They were donated.”
“Donated?” Abigail patted a venison roast with crushed wild bay leaves. The meat was a rare treat, taken from the cold storeroom in the cellar that morning. “Who has that kind of money these days?”
“Thome people in town gave uth them,” Violet said from the stool where she stood in front of the sink, scrubbing carrots.
“Not just some people, silly,” Clover said with a sniff. “It was Brooke Knight-Smyth’s father and mother who ordered the material from Mister Ferguson at the mercantile.”
“Ma, they’re beauty-full,” Violet breathed, scrubbing a carrot. “Mithus Knight-Thmyth made one as a thample. White flannel, they are. And cardboard for the wingth.” She sighed. “With thilver glitter cloth cut in fringeth. And wire halos.” She put down the carrot she had been scrubbing and demonstrated with wet hands over her head.
Abigail wondered why Lester Knight-Smyth had changed his mind about Percival Taggart, then pondered how she could find the time to add another task to her day. “I suppose so,” she finally said. “Mark me down for three gowns. One for each of you.”
“Yippee!” Violet dropped her carrot again and clapped.
“Thank you, Ma!” Clover squealed and grabbed her mother around the waist, giving her a hug. “Thank you! We’ll be the prettiest angels in the choir.”
“I with Alfred and Grover could be in our drama thow,” Violet said sadly and picked up another small carrot. “We’ve got boy angelth, you know.”
Abigail smiled softly. Orin had been hinting lately that the boys’ work at Western Sierra might be coming to a close. A few exchanged looks with the boys made her think that a Christmas surprise might be in store.
The boys had been on their best behavior recently and had even taken to reading in the evenings around the fire and speaking of how they did not hanker to spend the rest of their lives in mindless employment.
With that pronouncement only the night before, Abigail had met Orin’s eyes over their book-bowed heads. Orin gave her the secret smile she adored and nodded ever so slightly, and she knew what he had known all along. Their boys had learned a much-needed lesson—one that the same number of weeks in school could never have taught them.
“Likely they’ll not be in the drama show,” Abigail said with rare pleasure flooding her heart. “But I imagine they’ll attend.” She looked down at the trusting little face that tilted toward hers. “Neither will want to miss hearing you sing.”
“I get to do more than that,” Violet said. “I get to announth the littlest angel’th arrival in heaven.” Her tongue played with the place on her gum where her tooth was missing.
Abigail’s heart caught again, and she tousled Violet’s hair. “And your brothers will be there to watch. They wouldn’t miss it.” How, she wondered, had she had ever thought that she would?
Daisy raced in from the drama practice for the upper-level children, letting the kitchen door close with a bang behind her. She pumped water at the sink and gulped the glassful down in just five swallows.
“Child!” her mother admonished. “Slow down.”
“Ma,” she managed to say, though still out of breath. “Ma! You’ll never guess what!”
Violet, Clover, and Ma turned to stare.
Clover was the first to speak. “Is it something about the drama show?” She looked worried. “Again?”
Holding a carrot in one hand, a scrub brush in the other, Violet watched her with large grave eyes. “I thtill get to thay my part, don’t I?”
“It’s something else entirely.” Daisy paused, nibbling on her bottom lip, then grinned at them all. “We have sold thirty-nine tickets!” She danced in a circle, clapping her hands. “That means all those folks are coming to see the drama show.” She grabbed Violet’s small wet hands, helped her from the stool, and danced in a circle around the kitchen.
Laughing, Clover joined her sisters in their jig, then Daisy noticed Ma was just standing there by the stove, looking uncomfortable. Daisy halted abruptly. “Join us, Ma? Please?”
Her mother fluttered her hands toward her face. “Well now, I can’t dance. You go on. Have your fun.” She turned back to crumbling bay leaves on a hunk of venison, but a small smile played at her lips.
“I remember when you used to dance, Ma,” Daisy said. “And sing, too. I remember when our house was filled with music. I was just a little tyke, but I remember.”
Ma did not look up again, and when she spoke her voice held a sigh and the smile was gone. “That was a long time ago, child. A long time ago. I don’t remember how anymore. So don’t go asking me again.”
Later that evening, Percival sat at the piano working on the finale for Come, My Little Angel when the first explosion rumbled down the mountain.
He stood abruptly, looking toward the window that faced Red Bud square and the mountain above. He saw a belch of dark smoke expelled from the tunnel before he heard the second blast. This one was powerful enough to shake the windows and cause the floor to move beneath his feet.
The emergency whistle began its bleat seconds later. Three long draws. Silence. Then three more followed. Again and again, the mournful whistle blew, calling all available men to the hillsid
e to bring out the injured. The dead.
“Oh, God,” he breathed as he reached for his coat. “Oh, God! Be with them all!”
He raced to the bottom of the steep rail grade that carried men and equipment up to the tunnel each morning. Only one flatbed car at a time could be pulled by cable, and the first had already started up the mountain, filled with rescue workers and Doc Murphy. The screech of metal wheels against the iron track carried downward with the drifting smoke to where Percival stood watching helplessly with the other men. In the background the company whistle continued its eerie three-beat wail.
Shivering, Percival stuck his hands in his pockets and glanced over at the worker standing next to him. “Anyone know what happened?”
The man looked grim. “All’s we know is that it was something powerful. Worse than most.” He kept his eyes trained on the cable car that was still creeping up the incline. “My brother’s in there today. I won’t rest till I know he’s safe.”
“I’m sorry,” Percival said. “I’ll be going up with you next load. I’ll help with the rescue.”
Around him families had gathered in whispering clusters, mostly womenfolk and children. At the edge of the crowd stood Abigail James, a baby in her arms, her three older daughters clinging to one another and staring upward toward the tunnel.
He whispered another prayer for the safety of the men in the tunnel, then walked toward Abigail.
She seemed to sense his presence even as she kept her eyes on the car still creaking slowly to the top of the mountain. “My husband and son are up there,” she said. Her daughters looked up at him, their faces white with fear.
“They have my prayers.”
She turned toward him, a vexed look on her face, then glanced down at her daughters, apparently reconsidering her response. Her expression softened and fear replaced the vexation. “Thank you.”
Another rumble came from someplace deep in the mountain, and he held his breath as a fresh plume of smoke rose above the tunnel.
Beside him, Abigail gasped, and her daughters started to cry. “M-my pa’th in there,” Violet said, staring upward. “An’ my brother Alfred.”