Sing Them Home

by Stephanie Kallos

  Yes, We’re Open.

  “Hi again, Viney.” Bud has returned.

  Viney feels disoriented. She has no idea how long she’s been sitting here, waiting.

  “I’ve got the agenda now,” Bud adds. “I was just drawing up the order of things. Besides the vote, it’s mostly just a bunch of announcements. There’s the chili feed coming up, we need a treasurer’s report on the Doc Williams funeral relief fund, that kind of thing … Nothing much. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “Well, I’m over at Welly’s, going through some of his papers, and … Did you know about his correspondence with Wales?”

  “Gosh, let me see, I think he did say something about that to me once.”

  “It was with our sister city on Gwynnedd Island. With some monks there. We sent money to them back in the 1940s when their monastery was damaged during the war.”

  “Huh. I forgot all about that,” Bud says, his voice wistful. “I completely forgot we even had a sister city … How about that.”

  This conversation is not going the way Viney had hoped. A more direct approach is required.

  “Did you know that the mayor was hoping to get something going with our sister city? Sponsor a visit?”

  “You mean a goodwill kind of thing?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Huh. Maybe. He mighta mentioned it.”

  Shit. She should have thought this out more carefully before she called Bud, maybe even waited a month or two.

  But no, she’s counting on the fact that the mayor just died to help her get the town to listen to his idea. She’s got to bring this to the community right away if she’s going to leverage town feeling to incite action. It’s going to take a lot of energy. Wooing energy. Shit! For the first time in her life, Viney wishes that she were a different kind of person, someone with a sweet and accommodating nature. Someone nice.

  Bud Humphries is nice. He’s a milquetoast, but he’s nice.

  “I’d like to bring up an idea the mayor had, something he’s been thinking about and discussing with these monks for years. If it gets introduced right, I think folks might go for it.”

  “Huh.”

  “I just want to know if you’d be open to it. Show some positive interest. You know how some of the council members can be.”

  “I’ll back anything the mayor had his heart set on, Viney, you know that. I’m just wondering what I should call it, how I should title it for the agenda.”

  Viney sighs. “You know, it would be a lot easier if I could tell you about this in person. Could you come over when you get off work, join me for supper? God knows I’ve got enough food.”

  “That’s awful nice of you, Viney. Five-thirty okay?”

  “See you then.”

  Viney hangs up and surveys the papers scattered across Welly’s desk. Twenty-three years of correspondence. It’s all here, everything Welly wanted for this town—and Hope, too—and if she has to be the steward for all that (and who else, really?), then she’ll do it.

  She starts replacing the “Sister City” letters in the folder, in their proper order. At the bottom of one letter, Welly has scribbled something in his famously illegible script.

  Henry’s e-mail address, she reads, squinting through a magnifying glass, brotherhenry@saintgwenfrewi.org.

  Viney snaps the file shut, shoves it into the cabinet. Then she goes downstairs, tosses some ice cubes into a tumbler, and pours herself a rum and Coke. (In the process of clearing out Welly’s side of the bedroom closet, Viney discovered a substantial cache of travel-size liquor bottles secreted in dozens of shoeless shoe boxes; she’s decided to make her way through them, one bottle at a time.)

  She’s just about to settle down in the living room when she hears a car horn outside. It’s the taxi.

  Viney gestures the driver to the front door. His face is unshaven and joyless. It seems to Viney that he’s far too old to be doing this kind of work.

  “Thank you for coming,” she says.

  “You goin’ to Beatrice?” he asks.

  “Not me, no. I’m actually sending something with you.” Viney hands over the piece of paper with the address. “It’s going here, to the Food Bank.”

  The driver looks perplexed. “What is?”

  “Come in. I’ll show you.”

  Viney leads the driver to the kitchen and opens the freezer door.

  “That’s a lot of meat,” the driver remarks.

  “Will it be any trouble?” Viney asks. She feels nauseated.

  “No,” the driver answers. “It’s just not what I was expecting.”

  “Listen. I’ll give you ten dollars extra—fifteen—if you’ll load it up yourself. I’m not feeling very well.”

  “Sure,” the driver says, his voice softer. “Have you got something to put all this in?”

  Viney hands over a box of extra-large plastic garbage bags. “Will this do?”

  “Great,” he says. “This is a nice thing you’re doing, ma’am.” He starts loading the bags. “Must be over a hundred pounds in here.”

  She goes into the living room with her drink, settles down on the sofa, and turns on the TV. There’s a soap opera on.

  She listens to the driver come and go from the kitchen, intending to get up and thank him when he’s finished. But five minutes into The Guiding Light she falls into a deep sleep. She won’t wake up for several hours, when the civil defense siren goes off, just as it does every Monday at exactly five o’clock.

  Startled into a panicked semiconsciousness, she rushes home, picturing Bud Humphries loitering on her front porch, expecting to be fed.

  * * *

  When Mr. Norris, age eighty-eight, shows up for his Green Ginko Power Smoothie, Bonnie is fully prepared to give him every consideration. But after hearing him complain about all those noisy misbehaving brats at the mayor’s Gymanfa and their permissive parents—This country will be going to hell in a handbasket if these young kids don’t straighten up!—it’s clear that he is not the person she is looking for.

  After Allan, Pete, and Dylan Labenz come by—have they always been so wounded, so pessimistic, so immature?—Bonnie begins to realize that this process might be more difficult than she thought. Considering the Labenz boys for their baby-making potential has transformed her way of seeing. She feels as though she’s meeting them for the first time instead of the thousandth.

  She pulls out her list and reluctantly crosses off four names. Only a few hours into the search and her possibilities have already been reduced by 10 percent.

  Bonnie regards the list with such dour focus that she fails to notice the arrival of another prospect.

  “Bonnie. Bonnie, are you there?”

  “Oh. Hello, Blind Tom. Hey, Sergei. Want a treat?” Bonnie holds out one of the organic dog biscuits she keeps on hand for her canine customers.

  “Sit,” Blind Tom commands. Sergei obeys, accepting his biscuit with the dignity of a celebrant receiving the Communion wafer.

  “He is such a well-mannered dog,” Bonnie remarks, hoping this observation might get Blind Tom to open up, in the same way that complimenting a parent on their child’s good behavior is a reliable conversation-starter. She and Sergei eye him expectantly.

  Blind Tom’s expression remains solemn. He clears his throat. “He snores.”

  “Really.” Bonnie waits for Blind Tom to elaborate. He doesn’t, so she readies the ingredients for his smoothie.

  Consider all comers, she reminds herself. Feeling guilty about taking advantage of Blind Tom’s disability, she nonetheless studies his face with unabashed interest as she drops mango and avocado chunks into the carafe.

  His dark glasses obliterate any real sense of what he looks like—so much of a person’s expression is carried by their eyes—but his complexion is pale, and his skin retains deep, puncturelike holes in places, as if he’s a plucked cactus.

  As Bonnie starts up the blender, she wonders whether she might get a better sense of Blind T
om’s identity by meeting him in the land of sound instead of sight. She closes her eyes.

  Immediately, she feels disoriented and dizzy. She scowls, scootches her feet out of her tennis shoes, and sets herself into a wider stance. This helps. She hears the blender stall and starts thunking. Deprived of sight, Bonnie discovers that Blind Tom has a point: The sound is unnerving.

  “IF IT TAKES TOO LONG FOR EVERYTHING TO GET SMOOTH,” she shouts, “IT GETS WARM. I LIKE THEM TO BE COLD, LIKE SOFT-SERVE ICE CREAM.”

  Tom shouts back. “IT DOESN’T BOTHER ME IF THEY’RE NOT THAT COLD. HAVE YOU CONSIDERED THE DATES?”

  “WHAT?”

  “I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT IT, AND I WONDER IF IT ISN’T THE DATES THAT SLOW THINGS DOWN.”

  “I USE MEDJOOL. THEY’RE NOT AS STICKY AS THE OTHER KIND AND THEY DON’T HAVE PRESERVATIVES. THEY’RE THE BEST.”

  “HOW DO YOU PREPARE THEM?”

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN?”

  “I WAS ASKING AROUND IN THE BULK FOOD SECTION AT THE HEALTH FOOD STORE UP IN BEATRICE THE OTHER DAY, AND THEY TOLD ME ABOUT DATE PIECES. THEY FEEL LIKE PELLETS, THE KIND OF THING YOU FEED RABBITS AND HAMSTERS AND GUINEA PIGS.”

  This hints at valuable information. Bonnie turns off the blender temporarily. “Did you keep pets when you were little?” she asks, eyes still squeezed shut.

  “Not rabbits or anything, no. When you’re visually impaired, teachers are always taking you on field trips that feature opportunities for sensory stimulation. Zoos. Pet stores. That kind of thing.”

  “Oh.” Bonnie turns the blender back on and recommences thunking. She wonders if Blind Tom would prefer being called “Visually Impaired Tom.”

  The smoothie is ready. She turns off the blender. She considers trying to pour it into the cup without the aid of her eyes, but—not wanting to risk spillage—decides against it.

  When she turns to hand the smoothie over to Blind Tom, his expression is different. He’s not smiling, but something about him suggests that he’s amused.

  “So what do you think?” he asks.

  “About what?”

  “The pellets.”

  “Oh. They’re floured.”

  “What?”

  “I tried them once because they did seem like they’d be convenient. But the way they get them to not stick together in the bin is to dust them with flour, so they give the smoothies this really awful gluey undertaste.”

  “Darn.”

  “Why?”

  “I bought some for you.”

  Tom holds out a large plastic bag that has BULK FOODS written on it and contains a huge amount of date pellets. “Gee, Tom, that was really nice of you. Thanks.”

  “But you don’t like them. You don’t use them.”

  “I bet they’d be really good in bread or something,” Bonnie says, not wanting to hurt Blind Tom’s feelings. It’s a sham of an offer, however; there’s no oven in Bonnie’s woodshed and she doesn’t know the first thing about baking.

  “Will you be at the town meeting tonight?” Tom asks.

  Bonnie hadn’t considered this. Almost every man on her list will be there. She hasn’t been to a community meeting in ages, but she’d be foolish not to go to this one.

  “Definitely.”

  “I’ll see you there.”

  “Yep. See ya.”

  Blind Tom and Sergei start to walk away. “Best smoothie I’ve ever had,” Tom comments, “but I still think it’s dangerous.”

  Bonnie watches them go, feeling flat and ambivalent about Blind Tom’s potential suitability. Now that she’s started looking, she realizes that it would be foolish to rush into anything. She really needs to keep her options open. She shouldn’t rule out the possibility of something extraordinary happening, something completely unexpected, magical even. Not yet, anyway.

  There might be someone out there—someone she hasn’t even met!—who ignites a strong, unequivocal feeling, someone whose mere proximity illuminates everything. Attraction can work like that, or so Bonnie has heard. So many love songs have lyrics with words like heat, fire, sparks, flame.

  With Blind Tom—nice as he is—Bonnie feels no sparks. He brought her a big bag of something she doesn’t need and can’t use. He’s never kept pets renowned for their fertility. What could be clearer? She crosses him off the list.

  The kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Prohaska, comes by just after noontime with the new crop of five-year-olds; this year, her class totals eight. Mrs. Prohaska’s visit is a beginning-of-the-school-year ritual that Bonnie looks forward to.

  “Hi kids!”

  “Hello, Miss Jones!”

  Bonnie takes orders for the sugarless frozen smoothie pops she’s stocked in the freezer: Dixie cups filled with Superman’s Strawberry, Madeleine’s Melon, Babar’s Berry, Harold’s Purple Crayon Grape. The children lap up their smoothies on a stick while Bonnie explains how smoothies are made and why they are so good for you.

  Then she lets the children help her assemble Mrs. Prohaska’s favorite smoothie: a virgin Piña Colada named for Princess Leah: after delivering a lecture on the importance of having grown-up company in the kitchen, Bonnie oversees their efforts with butter knives and soft fruits and then lets them take turns pushing the button on the blender. She does not instruct them in the art of thunking.

  “This is the best Princess Leah Pina Colada smoothie I’ve ever tasted,” Mrs. Prohaska declares.

  Bonnie dispenses stickers and hands out a basic smoothie recipe for the children to take home and try. After saying good-bye, she starts to close up, counting the till, crossing another day off the calendar. She notices Blind Tom’s bag of date pellets. She picks it up, raises and lowers it a few times, switches it from her left hand to her right. What to do …

  Leave it here, probably. She supposes she could give the floured dates another try. Before settling the bag into the fridge, she cradles it in her hands one last time.

  Around seven pounds, she concludes. Maybe seven pounds four ounces.

  The name on his birth certificate is Morgan Geraint Mathias Jones. He is affected by a degenerative eye disorder known as retinitis pigmentosa.

  He can see quite clearly actually—within specific, prescribed limits. His legally blind status does not arise from having vision that is universally blurred but peripherally limited: he sees the world as two adjacent circles framed in black.

  Because retinitis pigmentosa is a progressive disease, the area described by these circles continues to shrink steadily, inexorably.

  Once upon a time, these circles were much bigger: backyard trampolines, Conestoga wagon wheels, the steering wheels of pirate ships. They’ve been inner tubes; extra-large, large, and medium pizzas. They’ve been the size of Frisbees, floodlights, headlights, dollar pancakes.

  Someday he’ll look through paper towel rolls, then drinking straws, then the eyes of tapestry needles, and so on until his view constricts to nothingness. Anticipating what this might be like, Morgan sometimes thinks of bagels that have expanded overmuch, so that only the smallest puckered indentation remains to indicate the place where there was once a hole. At other times he likens his eyes to cameras with F-stops that will eventually shutter down completely, a cinematic effect signaling the end of a scene or a cartoon’s finale.

  That’s all, folks.

  That’s how it will be someday.

  But for now, he still has a view of the world, albeit a limited one. If Bonnie really wanted to get an accurate idea of Blind Tom’s current capabilities, she shouldn’t squeeze her eyes shut; she should walk around looking through a pair of medium-sized mailing tubes.

  Autumn is a busy time for piano technicians. The jumble of summer activities is finally over. Schools and community colleges and universities are in session. Piano teachers are welcoming back their old students and recruiting new ones. Church choirs are practicing again. Community theater directors are rehearsing their season openers—big cast, feel-good musicals like The Music Man or My Fair Lady or Fiddler on the Roof. Nu
rsing home activity directors are lining up a year’s worth of musical entertainment for their music-loving residents. Finally, lonely pianos that haven’t been touched for months are getting attention; and because most of them have not been lucky enough to reside in climate- and humidity-controlled environments, the person doing business as Blind Tom has all the work he can handle.

  He loves his job. He only wishes he didn’t have to be on the road quite so much; it’s hard on his driver. In the sense that making house calls comprises much of their working lives, small-town piano tuners have a lot in common with country doctors.

  Blind Tom became Blind Tom when he was twenty-two years old and about to receive a diploma bearing his given name from the Emil Fries School of Piano Tuning and Technology in Vancouver, Washington.

  A month before graduation, the current person dba Blind Tom (né Phineas William Guffy) contacted the school to inquire if there were any gifted, hardworking students who’d completed their training and might be interested in purchasing a piano-tuning and repair business. Mr. Guffy had owned Blind Tom’s for over thirty years. He was ready to retire, move to Arizona, spend more time with his grandchildren, and be listed as P. W. Guffy in the Phoenix phone book. He went on to explain that the business was small but well-established. It was located in southeastern Nebraska.

  Morgan Jones was the only student to express interest.

  “It’s a very small town, you understand,” Mr. Guffy cautioned. “This isn’t Lincoln, or even Grand Island, where there are enough pianos to keep you busy without leaving the city limits.”

  “I understand.”

  “This thing is, young man, I don’t wanna sell to you if you’re not willing to do what it takes. There’s been a Blind Tom in business in Emlyn Springs since the 1800s. It’s a part of this town’s history, you see, and it would break my heart if this place went down. If you’re gonna keep it going, you’re gonna have to make a lot of dust on a lot of back roads. Can you do that? Can you promise me you’ll do that?”