24

Howard Palfrey’s niece, Miss Gwynne Withers, hoped for a career as a serious singer. She went to her knees every night as she’d seen it done in pictures to pray for a solo recital in Carnegie Hall. However, at the moment, she was preparing for a small soirée at the president’s house, and, although she was hiring a highly regarded accompanist from Columbus for the affair, to practice properly she needed some suitable assistance nearly every day. By words of mouth that Joseph never heard, he had been recommended to her. Consequently a call to the cottage came while Miriam was in the yard unrolling wire mesh upon which her clematis might preen. (They were on a party line at last, though Miriam believed that she could ring anyone she wanted whether they had a phone or not and was miffed when Joseph explained that the only phone nearby his room belonged to Miss Bruss and that he was to be brought to it, or to the one at the library’s main desk, only by matters of the gravest import.) Miriam was endeavoring to flatten the mesh with her feet and was consequently unable to reach the instrument before the ringing went away out of all hearing like a disobedient child. She felt that anything that came by phone, as unaccustomed to its trivialities as she was, had to have a telegram’s vitality and, like it, bore bad news, so she fretted over having missed the message that could have been sent from Urichstown. From who else but her son? from where else but that town? If Joey had not taken a job in such a distant place, she wouldn’t have invited the phone into her home. Now that it was there she heard its sound as a command or an outcry and felt tethered to it like a dog. So Miriam was reluctant to return to her yard again and after a period of anxious waiting went regretfully to her shift (as she put it) in the rubber dishpan plant.

The following day, a Saturday, the instrument rang again, this time as she stood in her kitchen where it clung to the wall, she felt, like a big black bug. The jangle gave her such a fright a porridge spoon flew from her hand to do its own ringing. Miriam was quite baffled by the high fresh voice she heard when she answered with her own. It was a woman wanting to hire her son for something. This was suspicious. Miriam explained that her son worked in Uhrichsville, five or more miles away, and could not readily be reached, then wished she had not given up that information; she promised to pass on the woman’s inquiry and wrote down a number, then rued her promise the moment the phone was hung; she vowed to improve her ease with talking to a funnel, and considered making a number of calls just for practice—to friends who worked at the plastic plant and were familiar with the vocal manners of Americans; she debated whether she should really pass on such a seemingly innocent message to Joey who might not know how to handle it; she wondered whether the alarm clock might confuse and frighten her now that its rival in ringing had arrived in her home, and slept fitfully, as a boat bobs, in the direction of Sunday.

Monday morning Marjorie received the same call, and she beckoned Joseph to the instrument with raised eyebrows and a gruff wave to the row of new arrivals he was straightening. How did you get my name, he wanted to know but did not ask. This was especially puzzling because his caller wanted a library in Uhrichsville. They had reached Urichstown instead, Joseph explained. To the other end of the phone, this seemed not to matter. Miss Gwynne Withers needed an accompanist while she practiced for her recital. It could be done in the evening if that suited his schedule, but the need was urgent, the alumni board had been alerted and expected six songs at the very least. It was inconvenient indeed to have a different accompanist for practice and performance, most unwise, but it couldn’t be helped since Mr. Kleger was the best available before you got to Cleveland, and the well advised, of course, did not look south in this state for anything honorable. Her explanation passed Joseph like most cars on the highway. How did you learn where I worked, he wanted to know but did not ask. It had to be his mother. From whom else but his mother? where else than home?

Joseph began to explain that the only piano available to him was in a church basement that echoed like a range of hills, moreover the choir liked to practice on the floor above, though there was a woman with rather a nice contralto who sang … she might enjoy … but Miss Gwynne Withers was in too great a rush. They would have to use the piano in the president’s house … of Whittlebauer … where the recital would be … for the alumni board and various officers of the college’s vast … Classical of course, he would be given the music when he came and could practice it in his basement if he needed to practice before their practice. But I, Joseph said and then thought better of it. The fee was handsome enough to kiss. What kind of classical? lieder? Ah … no. Good, but he didn’t say that either. Mostly opera? good. What operas? Mostly Italian, of course. A few French. Joseph silently thanked the God he had forsaken and hung up. Bemused, going over the conversation, trying to understand it, Joseph drifted away from the front desk and Marjorie’s quizzical look, now cast in plaster, and disappeared down the stairs to the Catacomb Room without a word without a word without a word to the Major.

Joseph managed to persuade his Bumbler to climb the considerable hill to the college whose buildings stood around a leveled knob like tired towers, ivy covered and slovenly maintained. The institution was done up in gothic armor except for the gym, which had once been—still was—a Quonset hut. Otherwise, just over the knob, immured among a few trees, a stately Georgian mansion stood, where the president hung out, entertained, and shook local hands. It had a view of the far valley rather than the town. When Miss Gwynne Withers had given Joseph directions to his destination, she added that President Taft himself had given a speech from the West Porch concerning, she thought, the need to bust trust. Although at long distance, Joseph and Miss Gwynne agreed: Bust trust? whatever for?

In a large lounge where many armless chairs rested next to the walls stood a very glamorous piano, its lid latched like a candy box, and next to it, in perhaps the position she would assume at her recital, posed Miss Gwynne Withers, slim and decorous in brown hair and a long brown gown. The music he would need was already on the rack. The piano was frightfully imposing and shone in the late light like dark chocolate. Joseph strode. At least he tried, but his nervousness made it more a stumble and a grab. He raised the key cover, but it slipped back with a clack. I am wearing something long to proximate any dress suitable for the occasion that I may eventually choose, she explained. Joseph sat down at the nearest end of the piano bench. He slid slowly into position. What was the music? “The Bell Song” from Lakmé. It was vaguely familiar, but one glance at the score told him he would make a hash of it. He struck a few keys: A … C. The notes thudded against the piano’s closed lid. They sound like animals trying to escape. Miss Withers winced, whether at the comparison or the performance. He hit a few more. No. Tennis balls. Joseph propped the lid up, but to his considerable relief the piano remained disastrously out of tune. He couldn’t play it even for her warm-up. Nothing musical would ensue.

When the young lady began to sing a few scales anyway, Joseph heard a pleasant light soprano that at least knew how to tra-la-la. Her hands were one fist. A shiver of strain showed in her voice. Joseph felt sorry for her and her situation. Is there a tuner in town? Perhaps in some city nearby? Uhrichsville? It’s Urichstown. Anyway, he would try. She would try. Tomorrow it could be tuned. It would be. It had to be. Then they could proceed. They would take the necessary time, make the necessary effort. In the songbook, the chosen pieces were marked by torn strips of paper. Joseph made for the Bumbler. He would need to return to Urichstown immediately, although Miriam was expecting him. Perhaps the Major would know of a tuner, or perhaps Miss Moss might. He feared a flurry of phone calls. That would be inconvenient. And he had to practice that night in the basement of the church. When he left the lounge Miss Gwynne Withers was sitting in a side chair, her brown gown spilling down her thighs.

Miriam tried to be incensed while talking on the phone. Joseph apologized. He apologized for returning to Urichstown. He apologized for not being able to talk further on the phone. He apologized to the Major for doing family business on library time by talking to his mother on the phone. He apologized to the janitor of the church for staying so late and for using its phone as well. Miss Moss knew a man who did piano tuning and said she would phone him; then she phoned Miriam to tell her to tell Joseph that the tuner would turn up at the time desired. When Joseph phoned his mother just to check in and apologize once again, he got Miss Moss’s message. Joseph then reached Miss Gwynne Withers with this information. Meanwhile, she had found someone in Woodbine by phoning everyone she knew to ask for help. Well, they thought, one of the tuners ought to make it. The next day. In the morning. It might take a while to get that whale to whistle. She would try to phone.

Neither of them showed up.

Two days of calling, begging, even beseeching by Miss Withers went for naught, and President Palfrey, now apprised of the situation, decided that the wise thing would be to call the recital off, since no one wished to have Miss Gwynne Withers be at less than her best, besides there would be other occasions, perhaps even more suitable, to showcase her lovely talent. The president was sure that the alumni board would be equally amused by some magic that Professor Rinse performed while employing in quite a unique way other instruments of the orchestra, even though many alumni might have witnessed a bit of it before because he was in considerable demand nearby—he would draw lengths of silk from his fist and use them to play something on the violin—well, the entertainments were scarcely at the same cultural level, and, yes, “amused” was not the right word for the effect of Miss Withers’s endeavors; still, the problem could be solved best by abandoning ship, although only Miss Withers’s father, Mr. Grayson Withers, put it that way, probably because he had served some time in the navy during the war.

Mr. E. J. Biazini was put out because he had driven to the college all the way from Urichstown per instructions received by phone from his old friend Miss Moss and was unable to find the piano; Miss Moss was peeved that matters had been mishandled after all her efforts, calling both hither and yon on the phone and sending her old friend Mr. Biazini to tune a ghostly grand piano; while the phones themselves miffed the Major, ringing, as she said, off the hook but not on library business. Miriam was now convinced that—traveling over wires for so many lots and even blocks let alone from town to town—Woodbine to Lowell, Lowell to Uhrichsville—a perilous passage—she was convinced that what one said at one end was squeezed into something quite other and quite else by the tortured time of its arrival. Think of what happens to toothpaste, she argued, with what relevance Joey did not pursue. President Palfrey didn’t want to spend any money on the gosh-awful piano, he told intimates, not right now with the budget busted and the underpinnings of the West Porch in need of repair, so he wrote Joseph a nice note thanking him for his helpful efforts, as did Miss Gwynne Withers, though she sent her thanks by phone from as far away as Columbus, where she had fled to be consoled and advised by the master accompanist, Herbert Kleger. Joseph thought it was awfully nice of them to thank him, he was not lately used to thanks, more and more like scowls were the looks that the Major sent his way, and his mother was in an awful mood, unhappy at having to live near wires, even stretches of mesh that honeysuckle might one day embrace, perfume, and wither on.

He still had in his possession the very strange book he had picked up from the piano rack. It was old and badly shaken, the cover as loose as a coat, and contained the pieces Miss Withers was to sing marked by long slim inserts of paper; or so he had been given to understand, because the inserts did not jibe with the description of the program she had related to him over the phone, nor did the book itself, though it was called Songs That Never Grow Old and had at the front several pages of glamorous publicity photos of famous opera singers. Despite such initial promise, it was mostly a volume of “Polly-Wolly-Doodle”s and “When the Corn Is Waving”s. When an operatic aria did turn up, Joseph noted with a superior smile, it attributed “La Donna È Mobile” to Il Trovatore. Over the phone, just so, his mother said, You were misled, nothing goes honestly over those thin black droopy strings. I’ve seen them lining the roads like scratches on the sky. Joseph would have to return Songs That Never Grow Old to Miss Withers at the address of Mr. Kleger in Columbus, but he did want to learn a few tunes like “The Man Who Has Plenty of Good Peanuts” and “Bohunkus” before he did so. He had spent an evening on Wagner’s “To an Evening Star,” which was apparently a selection for the recital. “The Lost Chord” was also flagged, but Joseph didn’t know what opera it came from.

Here I am, speaking to you, you are trying not to listen, but you are listening all the same, and you hear my voice no differently than you see my face, my dress, the lace you always loved, and how would you like it if my lace were taken from me, torn from my neck and sleeves? and suppose that is all you saw then, scraps of me, pieces and remnants that became me—your mother now is a rag of lace—well, that is what the phone is doing, cutting off your voice like the nose from your face, so there is no smile where your teeth show, no gestures; this rude tube is setting you adrift in darkness, only your voice is allowed to remain, a ghost like that cat in the story who is all whiskers. It is an evil business that black phone is doing.

Joseph did for a time believe it.

But the songbook was a good fairy. Or so it seemed. After three weeks Joseph still had not returned it, caught up as he was in its traditions, its ardent sentimentalities, its violent bravadoes, and its innocence. Most of all, though, he was charmed by its idiocies. He had singsonged the words of “The Low-Backed Car” for Marjorie between bursts of healing laughter. They debated what a low-backed car was and decided it had to be a kind of pickup truck or farm wagon because the lyrics began:

Then they considered the copyright dates, which were 1909 and 1913, in order to calculate the age of the automobile. Since some of the songs were Civil War or earlier, the book’s two birthdays weren’t much help. The picture of Peggy perched upon a bale of hay was almost perfect, but as the song went on, its absurdities improved.

For several days Marjorie imagined herself pickin’ chicken at her no-backed desk. Joseph blew her kisses as he passed. She responded by pulling imaginary feathers from her rolladeck. These fooleries were observed, but only once and at a distance, by Miss Moss, who was not amused and scurried off to her dungeon cell. Joseph had to arrive soon after with a request for glue and, by the way, letting her in on the joke lest she read into the kiss blowing more than was appropriate. The jealousies that lay between the two women were beginning to be more than an inconvenience that required delicacy and tact; their animosities were moving into Joseph’s mind like raccoons into an attic.

Still, the days were endurable and came and went like breath with only a few deep heaves to harm the pace. Joseph scraped by though he often felt like a scoured plate, just a bit cleaner than he thought cleanliness required. Along Quick Creek the winds picked up. They bowled through overhanging trees, rolled leaves down streets and sidewalks, rattled loose shutters, and hurried the streams. Sometimes, toward evening when the day cooled, flakes fell like little announcements. Miriam’s mums were rusty now as iron, and raindrops stung. They had been hail when they left their cloud. The Bumbler ran between towns with the sleepy regularity of the bus, while Joseph enjoyed Ohio’s dippy hills—the sumacs red as a poison label as if warning the others of the colors’ coming. Joseph became a regular at the church and frequently played on an old upright at its child-care center. He sometimes sang an old lyric or two in his thin, rather sharp voice. The kids loved “Polly-Wolly-Doodle” but, because of the congregation’s racial mix, Joseph had to be careful, he explained to Marjorie, not to let them hear the third verse, which went “Oh I came to a river, an’ I couldn’t get across, / Sing Polly-wolly-doodle all the day. / An’ I jump’d upon a nigger, an’ I tho’t he was a hoss, / Sing Polly-wolly-doodle all the day.”

It didn’t sound so bad when sung. Marjorie laughed, mostly in surprise, at the awkward rhyme. Is that what music did to affairs of the heart, to military anthems, to futile calls upon God, to sadness and loss? Even the most ordinary tunes could enliven exhausted sentiments and make acceptable some of the cruelest and coarsest of human attitudes. Things too silly to say can always be safely sung, he said, quoting some forgotten source. Joseph would play while softly singing “Tell me the tales that to me were so dear, / Long, long ago, long long ago; / Sing me the songs I delighted to hear, / Long long ago, long ago,” and every time he did he felt a twinge, as if he had lost a lover once, as if he owned a black man he could mount, supposing him a horse, or even as if he had lived “long long ago,” in a place called “yesterday,” enjoying the golden haze of wheat-filled hills or corn-green fields, strolling amid sunlit houses, standing at the edges of placid ice-cold lakes. Polly-wolly-doodle—it’s okay—do-dah-day—come out and play—hip-hip-hooray. Miss Withers would have sung her songs to chairs as armless as wounded soldiers. President Palfry would broadcast his beaming countenance without a fee. And the alumni would go away relieved of their savings for a rainy day.

Having had the experience twice already in his life, Joseph knew that on the next Fourth of July the national anthem was going to be bellowed by buxom ladies until it was as worn as the banner, and parades would feature survivors of foreign wars, limping along on roads lined by a national pride that waved paper flags stapled to brittle little sticks. Joseph’s world suddenly fell into the blahs as though into a bucket. Or down a drain that gurgled as if it had a stomach. He had them, the twelve blahs of Christmas. Perhaps the unromantic truth was that painters made poverty picturesque and Christ’s suffering grandly dramatic. He remembered how blood traced a graceful path down the Savior’s speared side; how architects built great halls to hold the egos of tyrants; and sculptors made Lenin’s ignoble nose look as if it deserved its own coin.

Joseph’s mother loved “The Man with the Hoe.” Maybe it reminded her of the farm life she had once enjoyed. Anyhow, it made her feel good, about what he wasn’t sure. Salomé cavorting with the head of John the Baptist, flames consuming sinners, pre-Romans raping Sabine women, were all highly acceptable subjects. Congregations of good people still sang “The Son of God Goes Forth to War.” “His blood red banner streams afar.” He tried to remember that the Christian soldiers of the popular hymn only marched as to war, and, when they had to do it, dressed like the people who put out pots for pennies to help the poor. They did their ring-a-dings at corners and the doors of stores. Ho-ho-ho. Blah-la-la. Christmas—with the gifts neither he nor his mother could afford arranged around it—terrified him.

Joseph had lost a father once, long long ago. Was that actually so bad? Blah or ha-ha or ho-ho. He didn’t know. But that little pang he felt as pleasure when he played and sang the long-ago song made him happy about what? It made him happy about loss. The dear dead days beyond recall.

Blah de blah ah ha, hurrah, ho ha, blah blah.

Pitches and beats, pitches and beats, that’s all the blahs were, pitches and beats. It made him want to skippedy do dah. Hit it boys. That odd command meant: start together now. The words were all so violent: hit it, strike up the band, pick up or capture the beat. There was also stomping at the Savoy. Reading at sight from his hymn book Joseph sang

Now the chorus, boys, the chorus:

This last, Joseph presumed, was the street number of the shop, not the price of the overcoats. One tra and ten las rollicked along after poor sheeny Levi like yappy little dogs.

His songbook had suckered him. He had a tune for his temper:

He stared at the keyboard as he sometimes had to, ordering the piano to play, willing it to anticipate his fingers. This exercise was not a Czerny, nor a Cramer either. He had to relax his fingers. They needed to be fluid, loose as cooked pasta.

Whats that you hummin?

Joseph had been singing just above his breath. It has no name. It’s improvised.

You a real musician then, Miss Spiky said in some surprise. Her hair had been cut and combed out of its customary wrappings. It transformed her appearance, but she remained wide. Now Joey would have to find her another name. He might just ask for the present one.

Instead he said, No, not real. I’m just a pick-it-out, pick-it-up player.

Thats the best kind. You humm you is down in the dumps. Well thats what blues are for. Singin em brings the spirits up.

Yes, it does but that’s what’s got me down.

What?

Sometimes you deserve to be down in the dumps.

Hey, I own a dump, I dont have to live there. She sang “I gotta right to sing the blues, / I gotta right to feel low down.”

Joey laughed. Music is cheap medicine.

Thats right. What else so cheap does so much good?

You really love singing in the choir, don’t you?

Shurely do. We all go up together. We just rise up together like steam from the road.

May I ask what your name is? My name is Joseph Skizzen.

My name is Hazel Hawkins. People call me Witch.