The Orphan Band of Springdale

by Anne Nesbet

  There was a silence, which was especially silent on Josie’s part. Josie was right next to Gusta, though, so Gusta could feel her shoulder start to tremble.

  “Hello, Augusta,” said Miss Kendall, and it was clear that she, too, was having some trouble keeping her breath steady. “I’ve brought you something that belongs to you.”

  And she set the French horn case down in the middle of the hall.

  Everyone looked at the French horn: all the boys, Josie, Aunt Marion, Miss Kendall, Gusta, and even Gramma Hoopes, who came into the far end of the hall from her office.

  “Grace Kendall,” said Gramma Hoopes, frowning and standing very straight, the general effect being that of a short, human-shaped icicle.

  “Good to see you, Mrs. Hoopes,” said Miss Kendall. “I hope you’ve been well. I’m just here to return Augusta’s horn. As you can see.”

  “You kept it a mighty long time,” said Gramma Hoopes.

  “There was a sad misunderstanding,” said Miss Kendall, her voice low and melodious again, as it used to be. “Augusta, my dear child, I’m so sorry about that. I have spoken with my brother, and from what he said, I understood, I gathered — anyway, I saw that keeping this instrument would be a grave injustice. And it seems to me a French horn like this should be with someone who loves it very much. I’m so sorry about the . . . misunderstanding. I want to make things right, whatever way I can. If I can’t return the money, at least I can give you back your horn. And you have so much talent, Gusta. I do hope you’ll play and play.”

  Oh, it took Gusta by surprise: her love for that horn just swelled up and filled her heart and then spilled right over into that hall. She had missed it so much. There was still the problem of Uncle Charlie, and her father was still endlessly far away, but the horn sat in that hall, silently telling everyone that sometimes the world does what is right, and lost things come home.

  Gusta couldn’t say a word.

  Miss Kendall had hesitated there for a moment, too; she was looking now slightly past Gusta’s shoulder and up.

  “And you, Josie,” she said, softly. “I’m beginning to see how I have . . . been misled — about this whole situation.”

  But Gusta noticed that Miss Kendall’s eyes stayed carefully away from Aunt Marion, who was wiping her hands nervously on her apron, front side and back side, front and back, as she hung back in the hall.

  “All right, then,” said Gramma Hoopes. “Very kind of you to stop by, I’m sure. Gusta, say thank you to Miss Kendall. And then we’ll not keep her any longer, will we?”

  But before Gusta could speak a word, Miss Kendall reached out across the last foot or so of air between them and took Gusta’s hand in both of hers.

  “Thank you, Augusta,” she said. “Your advice was excellent. And you, Josie. Good-bye, now, everyone.”

  And an instant later she had let go of Gusta’s trembling hand, backed out of that hall through the front door, and vanished.

  “Well!” said Gramma Hoopes grimly.

  “My peas!” said Aunt Marion, and dashed back into the kitchen where the peas were growing mushy on the stove. There was almost surely no hope for those peas. Even Gusta knew that much about peas. They are delicate creatures and don’t like being forgotten.

  But Gusta’s mind was busy thinking about Josie, not peas. She looked at Josie, and she looked at her horn, and her heart ached from both hurt and happiness, and she wasn’t sure what she should say, actually, other than “Jo —”

  Josie interrupted her by clapping her hands together.

  “Aaaaand the Orphan Band’s back in the picture!” she said. “Just let them try to stop us now!”

  Then there was the great Saturday in early July when it seemed like half the residents of Springdale came spilling out into the park near the mills, to hear the traditional preliminary round of competition for the upcoming Seventy-Fifth Annual County Fair. So many people! Georges Thibodeau ran up to tell Gusta he was crossing his fingers for her, for sure. A smiling Mr. Bertmann pressed a small cardboard square into Gusta’s hand: “For you, for luck, dear girl! It’s Nelly’s first photograph!” Aunt Marion and Gramma Hoopes and all the Hoopes Home kids had come along to hear the music, too. So had a small army of hungry mosquitoes, but that didn’t dampen any enthusiasm. If you can’t stand a mosquito or two on occasion, Maine is not the right state for you.

  Kendall Mills had had its own band since the early years of the century. They had fancy, real uniforms with braid on them, and absolutely no member of that band was either female or under the age of fifteen, so while the Kendall Mills Band was noisily warming up on that bandstand — by tradition they would be playing first, in honor of their blue-ribbon win in the previous year — the upstart members of the Orphan Band of Springdale had to work hard to keep from thinking about how much shorter and younger and fewer they were than the band from Kendall Mills.

  There were other groups milling about nervously, people with harmonicas in their hands and even a trumpet or two, but they were also all adults.

  And then it was getting closer to the moment when it would be time for the concert to start, and Gusta couldn’t help but notice that Josie’s face was full of a wild and anticipatory happiness. Josie, unlike most people, felt as comfortable on a stage as on her own front porch. Maybe more comfortable.

  “Come on, let’s get ready,” said Josie, and the girls were about to start moving up toward the grandstand steps, to be ready when the Mills Band had finished, when a nervous-looking man with a fancy hat on his head, a big piece of paper in his hand, and sweat beading up on the sides of his face hopped up on the stage.

  “Well, hello, folks,” he said to the crowd. “I think a lot of you know me. I’m Rufus Green, supposed to be your master of ceremonies today”— sprinkling of applause, which Mr. Green damped down by waving his hands at them —“but see, I’m here to tell you — there seems to have been a bit of a turn of events.”

  What did that mean? Gusta and Bess exchanged glances, but neither of them had any idea. All they knew was what anyone even without glasses would probably have been able to figure out: Mr. Green was mighty worried and troubled about something.

  “Guess I’ll go ahead and let Mr. Kendall of the Fairgrounds Steering Committee make his announcement to you now.”

  Mr. Kendall!

  The girls looked at each other and (much more surreptitiously) over at Gramma Hoopes, who was seated with the boys and Aunt Marion.

  The crowd was murmuring. The part of the crowd that was Georges Thibodeau wasn’t going to settle for merely murmuring, of course.

  “LET THE BANDS PLAY!” he shouted from way over by a big tree. It gladdened Gusta’s heart to hear him, still interrupting even though school was out for the summer.

  And then Mr. Kendall himself came up from the other side of the grandstand. Gusta felt her brow furrowing, just seeing him there. Josie made a slight hissing sound. Gusta wasn’t brave enough to turn and actually look at her face.

  Mr. Kendall skittered up the steps. He avoided looking anywhere near the Orphan Band, but that didn’t surprise Gusta one whit.

  “Good evening, citizens of Springdale,” said Mr. Kendall. “As part of the Steering Committee for the Springdale Fairgrounds, I’m here to announce a major change of plans for this year’s county fair.”

  Then he did look in the Orphan Band’s direction, and there was poison in that look, which was not a nice thing to see.

  “In this year, 1941, we are looking to modernize and professionalize our use of the fairgrounds and to bring in some needed revenue to the Fairgrounds Committee. Therefore, instead of the traditional amateur competitions at the county fair this coming August, we have arranged for a fine group of New York City performers to come up to the fairgrounds and put on a first-rate stage show, with matinee and evening performances August eighteenth through the twenty-third, for a nominal fee. That’s ten vaudeville acts booked directly from New York, plus the usual midway attractions that you know and love.
And I guess our fine men of the Kendalls Mills Band will just have to continue their reign as champions through to 1942.”

  There was a stunned silence in the park.

  “What did he just say?” said Bess to Gusta and Josie.

  That was the end of anything like a hush in that park, because about a hundred people asked their neighbor something pretty close to what Bess had just asked Gusta and Josie.

  “It means no Blue-Ribbon Band this year,” said Josie, her lips very tight and grim. “Nor any Red-Ribbon Band, either, what’s worse for us. That’s what it means.”

  Questions were beginning to be shot up at Mr. Kendall on the stage — how much the tickets would cost, what this meant for all the other competitions, like the heifers and the jams and the cakes and the pies, and why nobody had announced any of this earlier. The men in the Kendall Mills Band had the decency, at least, to look like they were sweating the sweat of embarrassed discomfort in their gold braid – trimmed uniforms. Had they known this was happening? Gusta couldn’t quite tell from their faces, but she guessed maybe not, from the surprise written in their tense shoulders and elbows.

  Mr. Kendall stared at the crowd like he was just daring them to say the Fairgrounds Steering Committee could not out-and-out cancel the fair — and next to him, poor Rufus Green stood mopping his brow, and stammering out nonanswers to all those questions.

  “In the paper,” he kept saying. “There’ll be an announcement in the paper tomorrow.”

  Gusta had been distracted by surprise or looking in the wrong direction, or she might have been able to stop the next bad thing from happening. The next bad thing was that Josie suddenly went striding up the grandstand steps, ukulele in hand.

  “Mr. Kendall!” she was saying, and there was something almost Gramma Hoopes – like in her voice.

  “Oh, dear,” said Bess, tugging on Gusta’s sleeve, and when Gusta saw Josie climbing those steps, she just instinctively followed her up, horn and all. She had the faint impression that all the Hoopes Home kids had just jumped to their feet at once, off there to one side, and Georges was on his feet, too, over the other way, but Gusta’s attention was mostly riveted on Josie and on the angry figure of Mr. Kendall on the stage just beyond Josie.

  “Josie, wait,” said Gusta. “Wait!”

  “You!” said Mr. Kendall, and Gusta, despite her glasses, had trouble telling whether he spat that word mostly at Josie, or mostly at her, Gusta. Probably at both of them. She caught up to Josie, balanced the horn in her left hand, and put her right hand on Josie’s waist: solidarity forever . . . even when your cousin is doing something that may be awfully ill-advised.

  “Mr. Kendall!” said Josie. “Are you telling us you just sold out our whole county fair to some New York folks for money?”

  Mr. Kendall glared at her. His glare and her glare did (Gusta had to admit) look a little alike, around the edges.

  “I said nothing of the sort,” he said. “I said we’re modernizing. And bringing in professional talent. And in any case, if you think you and this child of a criminal fugitive can just get away with your indecent slander, if you think —”

  “Papa is not a criminal, though,” said Gusta. It just burst out of her. Then she remembered she was only up there on that stage to drag Josie away or protect Josie or — well, anyway, not to start shouting herself.

  “Your father —” said Mr. Kendall, making that word sound like the most poisonous and vile thing in the whole entire world.

  Although he himself was probably the most poisonous and vilest person to be saying anything, just then, about fathers!

  “No,” said Josie. “Stop.”

  And the strange thing was, he did stop. He made the mistake of looking away from Gusta, looking at Josie’s angry, glaring face, that was (you had to admit) not entirely unlike his own, just at that moment. And you could see him remembering something, maybe a lot of things, including what it meant for him to be shouting at Josephina Hoopes, here in public on the grandstand in the park. He was still mad, Gusta could see that, but in that split second he backed into being almost an actual human being again.

  “We’re the Honorary Orphan Band of Springdale, and we came here to play some songs, and that’s all,” said Josie, and now she wasn’t just talking to Mr. Kendall. She was looking around at that whole crowd’s worth of upset people, who had come down to the park to hear some music. And then she turned to look right at her cousins, at Bess and Gusta. “Didn’t we, girls?”

  They nodded. What else were they going to do? And in any case, a bright and floating sort of feeling was beginning to rise up in Gusta’s chest, the feeling of something shadowy you’ve feared for a long time suddenly being hit by a piercing ray of sunlight and fading away.

  Mr. Kendall was backing away from Josie, from all of them.

  “So what I think is, we should play anyway,” said Josie. “Even if we can’t hope to be the Red-Ribbon Band. What do you think?”

  She was sort of asking Bess and Gusta, but a lot of people in the crowd all around shouted friendly noises up in their direction in response.

  “Yes!” said those friendly noises. “Go on, now. Play us some music!”

  So they did.

  They played “Angeline the Baker” and “Hard Times in the Mill” and a couple of cheerful, quick-moving songs they had made up themselves, and it’s safe to say no band composed of French horn, ukulele, voice, and bean jar ever had a more enthusiastic reception anywhere.

  At one point Gusta looked out over the brassy curve of her horn at that smiling, clapping crowd and saw something her own eyes could hardly believe: Gramma Hoopes, nodding her head in time with Bess’s beans!

  And when they climbed back down from that bandstand, with the flush of having been onstage still warming their cheeks and their insides, the Hoopes Home clan came pushing joyfully through the crowd: Gramma Hoopes taking the lead, with the boys and Delphine and Aunt Marion trailing along after, and all of them smiling wide as frogs.

  “Well done, you three harridans,” said Gramma Hoopes. “Though, really, that name has got to go. ‘Orphan Band’! Outlandish! But the lot of you can find your way around a tune, I’ll grant you that.”

  “It was great! You were great! You sure told him, that Kendall! That was great! And then you sung great!” said Larry, so excited he had lost half his words, and the boys all nodded — even Clarence.

  To everyone’s surprise, Gramma Hoopes didn’t scold Larry for mentioning the forbidden name. Far from it. She gave a satisfied sniff instead.

  “That man basically just announced he has sold out his own town,” she said. “What good can come of something like that, I’d like to know?”

  Aunt Marion was a few feet behind the rest of them, because she was shifting the weight of Delphine from one arm to the other. She heard what Gramma Hoopes said, though, and she shook her head. “Why, there’s been a fair every year since forever! This was going to be the seventy-fifth, that’s what the paper said. Whatever are we going to do?”

  “Rise above, Marion,” said Gramma Hoopes. “What we will do is rise above. And eat our own preserves. Tell me, though, you girls: Whatever inspired you to take up singing and playing that way? To think you could compete with those Kendall Mills men?”

  “Well, to be honest, Mrs. Hoopes — I mean, Gramma,” said Josie. “To be completely honest, we just wanted a chance to be the Red-Ribbon Band. So you would know that singing can be as, as”— and she flashed a grin at Gusta and Bess, which was a cue.

  “As real as jam!” they sang out together, that band of not-really-orphans, that chorus of cousins.

  Light fingers, light fingers!” said Gusta’s mother, laughing, because Gusta’s fingers were already streaked with blue.

  It was a true summer day, the air very warm, birds occasionally commenting from their perches in the trees. Gusta was learning how to pick blueberries on the far side of Holly Hill, where a rocky slope had kept the trees properly discouraged.

  Blu
eberries like to grow low to the ground, in places where the sun can sweeten them.

  It was like gathering treasure, working across the slope of that hill. All those thousands and thousands of berries! Gusta discovered she didn’t even have to lean down all the time, which was good because leaning wasn’t awfully comfortable; she went ahead and plopped herself right down on a little rock and turned very slowly from one side to the other, picking the little purple-blue spheres and dropping them into her bucket, fast as she could go.

  As fast as she could go wasn’t very fast, as of yet. She was working on that. Her mother’s light fingers worked as quick as a blur, somehow stripping whole bunches of berries into her bucket at once.

  You had to pull on the berries without pinching too hard — without pinching at all, actually — because they were wild, young blueberries, and a little tender-skinned. It was like your fingers were just brushing by, inviting the blueberries into the bucket. Not demanding, not insisting: inviting.

  When her mother’s bucket was almost, but not quite, full to the brim, and Gusta’s holding about an inch’s worth, they switched pails and kept going until both of them were full.

  “There!” said Gusta’s mother, taking off her sun hat to flap some air across her cheeks. “That’s two pies accounted for, plus some extra. Let’s go up that way and sit a moment.”

  They climbed up the hill to the captain’s old lighthouse, which turned out to be the perfect place to share the bottle of tonic her mother had smuggled along. Once in a blue moon, Gusta’s mother liked to drink a root beer. (No, more than that: she liked to produce a bottle of root beer as if it were a wicked indulgence and sip it with gusto.) So now she and Gusta tasted a few more of the berries, just to make sure they were still as tangy-delicious as they had been ten minutes before, and they passed the tonic back and forth, bubbly and sweet.

  Tonic, berries, mother . . .

  It was good to be alive on a day like this one, with the crickets singing out of the grasses and the mosquitoes only coming around just enough to remind you how lovely it was that mostly they were staying away.