The concert was splendid. Even our rockin'est rollers were caught up in the wonderful web of music.
Even I lost myself for long lovely moments in the bright melodic trails that led me out of the gray lanes of familiarity. But I also felt the bite of tears behind my eyes. Music is made to be moved to, and my unresponsive feet wouldn't even tap a tempo. I let the brasses and drums smash my rebellion into bearable-sized pieces again and joined joyfully in the enthusiastic applause.
"Hey!" Rigo said behind me as the departing stir of the crowd began. "I didn't know anything could sound like that. Man! Did you hear that horn! I'd like to get me one of them things and blow it!"
"You'd sound like a sick cow," Janniset said. "Them's hard to play."
Their discussion moved on down the aisle.
"He's gone." Twyla's voice was a breath in my ear.
"Yes," I said. "But we'll probably see him out at the bus."
But we didn't. He wasn't at the bus. He hadn't come out on the bus. No one knew hove he got out to the ranch or where he had gone.
Anna and Twyla and I piled into Anna's car and headed back for Willow Creek, my heart thudding with apprehension, my thoughts busy. When we pulled up at Somansons' there was a car parked in front.
"The McVey!" Anna sizzled in my ear. "Ah ha! Methinks I smell trouble."
I didn't even have time to take my coat off in the smothery warmth of the front room before I was confronted by the monumental violence of Mrs. McVey's wrath.
"Dress him!" she hissed, her chin thrust out as she lunged forward in the chair. "'Dress him so's he'll feel equal to the others!" Her hands flashed out, and I dodged instinctively and blinked as a bunch of white rags fluttered to my feet. "His new shirt!" she half screamed. Another shower of tatters, dark ones this time. "His new suit! Not a piece in it as big as your hand!" There was a spatter like muffled hail. "His shoes!" Her voice caught on the edge of her violence, and she repeated raggedly, "His shoes!" Fear was battling with anger now. "Look at those pieces-as big as stamps-shoes!" Her voice broke. "Anybody who can tear up shoes!"
She sank back in her chair, spent and breathless, fishing for a crumpled Kleenex to wipe the spittle from her chin. I eased into a chair after Anna helped me shrug out of my coat. Twyla huddled, frightened, near the door, her eyes big with fascinated terror.
"Let him be like the others," McVey half whispered. "That limb of Satan ever be like anyone decent?"
"But why?" My voice sounded thin and high in the calm after the hurricane.
"For no reason at all," she gasped, pressing her hand to her panting ribs. "I gave all them brand-new clothes to him to try on, thinking he'd be pleased. Thinking-" her voice slipped to a whining tremulo,
"thinking he'd see bow I had his best interest at heart." She paused and sniffed lugubriously. No ready sympathy for her poured into the hiatus so she went on, angrily aggrieved. "And he took them and went into his room and came out with them like that!" Her finger jabbed at the pile of rags. "He-he threw them at me! You and your big ideas about him wanting to be like other kids!" Her lips curled away from the venomous spate of words. "He don't want to be like nobody 'cepting hisself. And he's a devil!" Her voice sank to a whisper and her breath drew in on the last word, her eyes wide.
"'But why did he do it?" I asked. "He must have said something."
Mrs. McVey folded her hands across her ample middle and pinched her lips together. "There are some things a lady don't repeat," she said prissily, tossing her head.
"Oh, cut it out!" I was suddenly dreadfully weary of trying to be polite to the McVeys of this world.
"Stop tying on that kind of an act. You could teach a stevedore-" I bit my lips and swallowed hard. "I'm sorry, Mrs. McVey, but this is no time to hold back. What did he say? What excuse did he give?"
"He didn't give any excuse," she snapped. "He just-just-" Her heavy cheeks mottled with color. "He called names."
"Oh." Anna and I exchanged glances.
"But what on earth got into him?" I asked. "There must be some reason-"
"Well," Anna squirmed a little. "After all what can you expect-?"
"From a background like that?" I snapped. "Well, Anna, I certainly expected something different from a background like yours!"
Anna's face hardened and she gathered up her things. "I've known him longer than you have," she said quietly.
"Longer," I admitted, "but not better. Anna," I pleaded, leaning toward her, "don't condemn him unheard."
"Condemn?" She looked up brightly. "I didn't know he was on trial."
"Oh, Anna." I sank back in my chair. "The poor kid's been on trial, presumed guilty of anything and everything, ever since he arrived in town, and you know it."
"I don't want to quarrel with you," Anna said. "I'd better say good night."
The door clicked behind her. Mrs. McVey and I measured each other with our eyes. I had opened my mouth to say something when I felt a whisper of a motion at my elbow. Twyla stood under the naked flood of the overhead light, her hands clasped in front of her, her eyes shadowed by the droop of her lashes as she narrowed her glance against the glare.
"What did you buy his clothes with?" Her voice was very quiet.
"None of your business, young lady," Mrs. McVey snapped, reddening.
"This is almost the end of the month," Twyla said. "Your check doesn't come till the first. Where did you get the money?"
"Well!" Mrs. McVey began to hoist her bulk out of the chair.
"I don't have to stay here and have a sassy snip like this-"
Twyla swept in closer-so close that Mrs. McVey shrank back, her hands gripping the dusty overstuffed arms of the chair.
"You never have any of the check left after the first week," Twyla said. "And you bought a purple nylon nightgown this month. It took a week's pay-"
Mrs. McVey lunged forward again, her mouth agape with horrified outrage.
"You took his money," Twyla said, her eyes steely in her tight young face. "You stole the money he was saving!" She whirled away from the chair, her skirts and hair flaring. "Someday-" she said with clenched teeth, "someday I'll probably be old and fat and ugly, but heaven save me from being old and fat and ugly and a thief!"
"Twyla!" I warned, truly afraid that Mrs. McVey would have a stroke then and there.
"Well, she is a thief!" Twyla cried. "The Francher kid has been working and saving almost a year to buy-" she faltered, palpably feeling the thin ice of betraying a confidence, "to buy something. And he had almost enough! And she must have gone snooping around-"
"Twyla!" I had to stop her.
"It's true! It's true!" Her hands clenched rebelliously.
"Twyla." My voice was quiet but it silenced her.
"Good-by, Mrs. McVey," I said. "I'm sorry this happened."
"Sorry!" she snorted, rearing up out of her chair. "Sour old maids with never a chick or child of their own sticking their noses into decent people's affairs--" She waddled hastily to the door. She reached for the doorknob, her eyes narrow and venomous over her shoulder. "I got connections. I'll get even with you."
The door shuddered as it emphasized her departure.
I let the McVey sweep out of my mind.
"Twyla," I took her cold hands in mine, "you'd better go on home. I've got to figure out how to find the Francher kid."
The swift movement of her hands protested. "But I want-"
"I'm sorry, Twyla. I think it'd be better."
"Okay." Her shoulders relaxed in acquiescence.
Just as she left, Mrs. Somanson bustled in. "Y' better come on out to the table and have a cup of coffee," she said. I straightened wearily.
"That McVey! She'd drive the devil to drink," she said cheerfully. "Well, I guess people are like that. I've had more teachers over the years say that it wasn't the kids they minded but the parents." She shooed me through the door and went to the kitchen for the percolator. "Now I was always one to believe that the teacher was right-right or wrong-" Her voice faded out in a long familiar story that proved just the opposite of what she'd said, as I stared into my cup of coffee, wondering despairingly where in all this world I could find the Francher kid. After the episode of the gossip I had my fears. Still, oftentimes people who react violently to comparatively minor troubles were seemingly unshaken by really serious ones-a sort of being at a loss for a proportionate emotional reaction.
But what would he do? Music-music-he'd planned to buy the means for music and had lost the wherewithal. Now he had nothing to make music with. What would he do first? Revenge-or find his music elsewhere? Run away? To where? Steal the money? Steal the music? Steal!
I snapped to awareness, my abrupt movement slopping my cold coffee over into the saucer. Mrs.
Somanson was gone. The house was quiet with the twilight pause, the indefinable transitional phase from day to night.
This time it wouldn't be only a harmonica! I groped for my crutches, my mind scrabbling for some means of transportation.
I was reaching for the doorknob when the door flew open and nearly bowled me over.
"Coffee! Coffee!" Dr. Curtis croaked, to my complete bewilderment. He staggered over, all bundled in his hunting outfit, his face ragged with whiskers, his clothes odorous of campfires and all out-of-doors, to the table and clutched the coffeepot. It was very obviously cold.
"Oh, well," he said in a conversational tone. "I guess I can survive without coffee."
"Survive what?" I asked.
He looked at me a moment, smiling, then he said, "Well, if I'm going to say anything about it to anyone it might as well be you, though I hope that I've got sense enough not to go around babbling indiscriminately.
Of course it might be a slight visual hangover from this hunting trip-you should hunt with these friends of mine sometime-but it kinda shook me."
"Shook you?" I repeated stupidly, my mind racing around the idea of asking him for help in finding the Francher kid.
"A somewhatly," he admitted. "After all there I was, riding along, minding my own business, singing, lustily if not musically, 'A Life on the Ocean Waves,' when there they were, marching sedately across the road."
"They?" This story dragged in my impatient ears.
"The trombone and the big bass drum," he explained.
"The what!" I had the sensation of running unexpectedly into a mad tangle of briars.
"The trombone and the big bass drum," Dr. Curtis repeated.
"Keeping perfect time and no doubt in perfect step, though you couldn't thump your feet convincingly six feet off the ground. Supposing, of course, you were a trombone with feet, which this wasn't."
"Dr. Curtis," I grabbed a corner of his hunting coat. "Please, please? What happened? Tell me! I've got to know."
He looked at me and sobered. "You are taking this seriously, aren't you?" he said wonderingly.
I gulped and nodded.
"Well, it was about five miles above the Half Circle Star Ranch, where the heavy pine growth begins.
And so help me, a trombone and a bass drum marched in the air across the road, the bass drum marking the time-though come to think of it, the drumsticks just lay on top. I stopped the jeep and ran over to where they had disappeared. I couldn't see anything in the heavy growth there, but I swear I heard a faint Bronx cheer from the trombone. I have no doubt that the two of them were hiding behind a tree, snickering at me." He rubbed his hand across his fuzzy chin. "Maybe I'd better drink that coffee, cold or not."
"'Dr. Curtis," I said urgently, "can you help me? Without waiting for questions? Can you take me out there? Right now?" I reached for my coat. Wordlessly he helped me on with it and opened the door for me. The day was gone and the sky was a clear aqua around the horizon, shading into rose where the sun had dropped behind the hills. It was only a matter of minutes before we were roaring up the hill to the junction. I shouted over the jolting rattle.
"It's the Francher kid," I yelled. "I've got to find him and make him put them back before they find out."
"Put who back where?" Dr. Curtis shouted into the sudden diminution of noise as we topped the rise, much to the astonishment of Mrs. Frisney, who was pattering across the intersection with her black umbrella protecting her from the early starshine.
"It's too long to explain," I screamed as we accelerated down the highway. "But he must be stealing the whole orchestra because Mrs. McVey bought him a new suit, and I've got to make him take them back or they'll arrest him, then heaven help us all."
"You mean the Francher kid had that bass drum and trombone?" he yelled.
"Yes!" My chest was aching from the tension of speech. "And probably all the rest."
I caught myself with barked knuckles as Dr. Curtis braked to a sudden stop.
"Now look," he said, "let's get this straight. You're talking wilder than I am. Do you mean to say that that kid is swiping a whole orchestra?"
"Yes, don't ask me how. I don't know how, but he can do it-" I grabbed his sleeve. "But he said you knew! The day you left on your trip, I mean, be said you knew someone who would know. We were waiting for you!"
"Well, I'll be blowed!" he said in slow wonder. "Well, dang me!" He ran his hand over his face. "So now it's my turn!" He reached for the ignition key. "Gangway, Jemmy!" he shouted.
"'Here I come with another! Yours or mine, Jemmy? Yours or mine?"
It was as though his outlandish words had tripped a trigger. Suddenly all this strangeness, this out-of-stepness became a mad foolishness. Despairingly I wished I'd never seen Willow Creek or the Francher kid or a harmonica that danced alone or Twyla's tilted side glance, or Dr. Curtis or the white road dimming in the rapid coming of night. I huddled down in my coat, my eyes stinging with weary hopeless tears, and the only comfort I could find was in visualizing myself twisting my hated braces into rigid confetti and spattering the road with it.
I roused as Dr. Curtis braked the jeep to a stop.
"It was about there," he said, peering through the dusk.
"It's mighty deserted up here-the raw end of isolation. The kid's probably scared by now and plenty willing to come home."