The Promise of Jesse Woods (15 page)

I nodded.

“At some point the music will have to be more for you than her. You can’t learn and make it part of you when you’re doing it only for someone else. This is about you, Matt.”

I smiled, not really understanding, and stepped away from the piano while she played “Für Elise,” a Beethoven
piece about a girl he must have loved. I couldn’t help but think of Jesse as she played the melody.

Music has a way of burrowing into your soul. As much as I wanted to play modern songs, old Ludwig did his work. The song was in A minor, and he had evidently gone through ups and downs in the relationship because one part was sad and the next was cheery, but it quickly turned again and sounded like his team had lost a doubleheader. Or maybe an arm on the train tracks. Or maybe Elise loved somebody else.

About two minutes in, the piece rose in intensity and Mrs. McCormick sat forward and focused her gaze on the page, her loose skin dangling and jiggling. The song, from its beginning to its flourishing end, was a story, the ebb and flow of life. I did not know if Beethoven had ever moved from Pittsburgh to Dogwood, or if his family had problems, but without any lyrics, he had captured my feelings about falling for an Appalachian girl.

“Now you try,” she said.

We went through the first page that day and she taught me more about hand position and feeling the song than my mother ever communicated. Music, according to Mrs. McCormick, was not something performed as much as it was experienced. You didn’t
play
a song, you breathed it and interpreted it, sifting and enhancing it through everything you saw and heard and loved. Despite the acrid, pungent aroma of her breath, the afternoon invigorated me.

“Practice, practice, practice,” she said when my mother
arrived. She put the music book with “Für Elise” under my arm and winked.

There followed days of roaming the hills and riding bikes and fishing with Dickie and Jesse, though Jesse often broke away early. Her mother wasn’t in the best of health and Jesse fetched groceries and medicine and bought packs of Pall Malls from a vending machine inside the only pool hall in town, which my parents strictly forbade me to enter.

“Only the lowest kinds of people go to a place like that,” my mother said one day as we passed it. It looked dark inside and I imagined all sorts of illicit behavior, but Jesse and Dickie laughed when I revealed this.

“You preacher boys sure have it rough,” Jesse said.

I heard my parents speaking in hushed tones early in the morning at the kitchen table. Ben was something we never talked about as a family. We talked freely of others’ problems but never our own. But here they spoke of him and of his dropping out of school and, worse than that, taking up with a girlfriend who “wasn’t good for him.” He and Cindy were living together, and their travels had led to an even bigger source of family shame. There were also hints that things weren’t going well at the church and that Old Man Blackwood was causing problems. Maybe it was the size of my ears, but I was always able to take in their conversations. When their words turned to me and they spoke of Jesse and Dickie, I heard sighs as if my friends were problems to solve. One morning they lowered their voices so far that I caught only bits and pieces.

“. . . should do it for him . . . ,” my father said.

“. . . don’t want to encourage . . . ,” my mother said.

“But if we think of him . . .”

I nearly crept into the hallway to hear but stayed in my bed until my grandmother called me to breakfast.

“How would you like to spend your birthday?” my mother said about a week before the big day as we drove to Huntington. She needed to pick up some sheet music from the Kenny Music Company.

“With Ben,” I said. The look on her face made me regret saying it. “I don’t know.”

“You have no idea?”

I shook my head as she parallel parked on Third Avenue. As a child born in the summer, I was not accustomed to a fuss like my brethren who had birthdays during the school year. There were always cupcakes or popsicles celebrating classmates when I was in elementary school. As I entered junior high, there were parties at pizza parlors or the local pool. My birthday was always a muted family affair, but without Ben, it would be even less celebratory.

I browsed through the store, looking at music books and trying to come up with an answer. My mother bought several pieces of sheet music for her ensemble at church and we ate at Dwight’s. I ordered a burger and fries and we talked.

Just as I took a big bite of coleslaw, a signature of the restaurant, my mother said, “What if we invited Dickie for the party?”

I stopped chewing. “Are you serious?”

“Matt, don’t talk with your mouth full.”

I swallowed. “Could Jesse come too?”

“I think Jesse might complicate things.”

“Why?”

“It’s just that . . .”

“Why do you hate her?”

“I don’t hate her. I’m concerned about the kind of influence she’s having.”

“Then why are you saying Dickie is okay?”

She sipped some iced tea and sat back. “I thought it might mean something to you to have him.”

“What about Dad?” I said.

“We can invite him, too.” She smiled.

“No, I mean what does he say about it?”

“He’s fine with Dickie.”

“Could we ask him about Jesse?”

“Let’s just make this a boys’ birthday invite, okay?”

I finished my meal and we rode home, the conflict rising inside me about how to invite only one of my friends. We listened to Paul Harvey on the way. Every day at noon Mom heard his take on the news. She was tired of the normal war reporting and the country’s unrest. She was tired of the constant negative coverage of the election and her beloved president. She would hit the Off switch on the TV each evening and say to Walter Cronkite, “No, that’s the way you
say
it is.”

Dickie immediately agreed to attend, but when he asked about Jesse, I told him it was a “boys only” party. He looked confused.

“This is not my idea, it’s my parents’. They only want you.”

He shook his head. “First time for everything.”

“What do you mean?”

“Most people around here don’t want me close to anything they’re doing. But I got to say, it feels kind of mean not to let her come.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“And I don’t want to go and try to keep it a secret. Even if it does cost me some cake.”

“What if we tell her? What if we tell her to come by that day and when she shows up, we invite her inside? My parents will have to let her stay.”

Dickie shrugged. “She’s going to know she wasn’t invited, though. You going to tell her the truth?”

“If we tell her my parents don’t want her there, she’ll never come. She’ll boycott the whole thing. You know how she is.”

“Yeah.”

We thought about it, sitting there in Dickie’s garage, flies swarming at a trash can in the corner. It seemed an impossible situation.

“Why don’t you talk with your dad?” Dickie said.

I found my father alone at the church, studying. I knocked lightly on the door and he took off his glasses.

“I have a problem,” I said.

He sat back. “All right.”

I explained the whole thing in a long, rambling sentence that captured the situation as best I could.

“You’re between a rock and a hard place.”

“I just want Jesse to be there, Dad. And you’re the only one who can convince Mom.”

He scratched his chin and stared at the open Bible and his three-by-five cards. “Go ahead and invite her. I’ll explain to your mother.”

I didn’t hesitate, didn’t ask if he really meant it, just jumped up and ran to the door.

“Don’t say anything to your mother between now and then, okay?”

I rode to Dickie’s and gave him the good news. Then we rode to Jesse’s house together.

“Do you have to wear something special?” she said after I told her she was invited.

“No, we’re going to spit watermelon seeds and throw water balloons,” I said. “Wear what you normally wear.”

“Well, I got to bring a present, don’t I?”

“No, that’s the other thing. Nobody brings presents. Everything will be provided.”

She looked relieved. “All right then. I guess I’ll come.”

On the appointed day, my mother drove to Huntington and bought a dozen Stewarts hot dogs. She got enough vanilla ice cream from Dairy Queen to feed the town. Jesse and Dickie were standing with me in the kitchen when she returned, and Daisy Grace was clinging to Jesse’s leg like a tick. My grandmother looked like she wanted out of her own house.

My mother took one look at Jesse, then glanced at my father. She was clearly taken aback, but she covered well and collected herself. I guessed he hadn’t told her of the plan and there were whispers in the pantry, so I took my friends to the backyard and we unwrapped our hot dogs from the paper napkins and ate.

Dickie and Jesse said it was the first time they’d ever had a Stewarts hot dog and they couldn’t get over the sweetness of the root beer. We ate watermelon, spitting seeds from the top of the picnic table over the clothesline into the horseshoe pit. Dickie, it turned out, had the most air in his lungs and won the competition, though my father came in a respectable second. My uncle Willy and aunt Zenith made a cameo appearance and we took some pictures of all of us. We tossed horseshoes and played badminton. Closer to dark, after ice cream and sheet cake, my father handed me an envelope. Dickie and Jesse looked a little self-conscious that they didn’t have presents.

“You’ve gone through a big change moving here,” my dad said, “and I’m hoping this will help ease some of the pain.”

I opened it quickly and pulled out eight tickets with the Cincinnati Reds logo on them. July 12 and 13, Reds vs. Pirates. I gave him a hug, then pulled back.

“Wait, why are there four tickets to each game?” I said.

My mother smiled, but it looked more like a grimace, and she nodded for my father to explain.

“There’s one for you, one for me, and two for any friends you want to take along.”

I stared at him, not comprehending. Then I looked at Dickie and Jesse. Their faces lit like Christmas trees. They looked like they had just won a thousand dollars on Let’s Go to the Races.

“We’ll go early Wednesday morning,” my father said. “Gerald will handle the prayer meeting and Bible study. Thursday is an early game, so we’ll come back late afternoon. I spoke with your mother, Dickie. She said it would be all right. Jesse, I haven’t been able to reach your mother.”

My mother’s face showed a pain that looked almost like betrayal.

Jesse studied the ground and pulled Daisy close. “She’s feeling poorly and we don’t have a phone.”

“We’ll work it out,” my father said. “I’ve made reservations at a hotel in Covington, Kentucky. We’ll get two rooms—”

“Two?” my mother said.

“One for the women and one for the men—and then walk over the bridge to the game.”

“You’re staying in a real hotel?” Jesse said.

“Do you think your mom will let you?” I said.

“It might be a problem.”

“We’ll talk with her and explain,” my father said. “It would mean a lot to Matt to have you two there watching the Reds get beat.”

My mother quickly walked inside, apparently remembering something in the kitchen.

“Yeah, and you should bring your glove,” I said, smiling. “My dad caught a foul ball once at a Pirates game. There are lots of pop-ups that come into the stands.”

“You don’t have to throw them back?” Jesse said. “That can’t be true.”

“It is, you’ll see.”

Later that night my mom came into my room while I was reading Harper Lee. Jem and Dill were trying to get Boo Radley to come out. Jesse and Dickie were not only slow readers, they were slow listeners. I had abandoned trying to read to them because they stopped me to ask questions so much and sometimes I didn’t know the answers. So I read on without them.

“Were you surprised at your present?” my mother said.

I smiled. “Dad mentioned the game a few weeks ago, but I can’t believe Jesse and Dickie are coming.”

“Mm-hm. I can hardly believe it myself.” She said it with a mix of irony and disdain.

“This is the best birthday ever,” I said, trying to cheer her. I gave her a kiss but she walked out of the room looking weary.

Jesse returned early the next morning and knocked on our door. My grandmother peeked through the curtains and shook her head. “I told you, those Woods are like stray cats.”

I walked outside and sat by her on the porch, where we watched Daisy Grace pull dandelions and blow on them in the yard. Jesse had a hangdog look.

“I can’t go with you.”

“Why not?”

She jerked her head toward Daisy. “Plus, I got chores.”

“But it’s just one night. Dickie and I can do your chores when we get back. And if your mom can’t watch her, we could find somebody.”

“There ain’t nobody else to trust.”

“Don’t you have cousins who—?”

Her face flashed fire. “No way. It’ll be a cold day in—” She caught herself. “It’s just that Daisy can’t be around them people.”

It was ironic that Jesse’s family felt the same about their cousins as my parents felt about Jesse.

“Maybe if we take Daisy Grace with us, I could go,” Jesse said in a soft voice.

“You think?” That hadn’t crossed my mind, and I wondered whether my mother would consider it. Our car had room for six, but it would be tight.

“Let me ask,” I said.

I ran in the house and my grandmother complained about the noise. I found my mother in the backyard hanging laundry. She held clothespins in her mouth, working with unwieldy sheets, the dew from the clover staining her house shoes. I tried to explain the plan and cultivate sympathy for Jesse.

She held the sheet and pins, squinting into the sun just peeking over the hill. “What’s going on with her mother? That doesn’t make sense. That she would let that little girl tag along with us.”

“She’s not feeling well. Please, Mom? Daisy’s not a problem.” I said it convincingly, but I knew Daisy had a heart
that was prone to wander. And if she caught sight of the pool, she would probably never want to leave the hotel.