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itself seemed to be truly beating the crap out of an awful lot of the
people they knew. But it would be Zechariah of all people who would
finally get her attention in the most profound way.
She had been cooking breakfast in the cabin while everyone was out
doing morning chores when he returned alone. He had stood watching
her for a minute and commented that he hoped she wasn t going to burn
their home down and she wondered at both his choice of words and
what she was doing wrong. Then completely out of any character she
had ever seen in him he stepped towards her and touched a scar running
through her hairline. She stiffened and he withdrew his hand as he
spoke. I heard you had to put your trumpet away for awhile again.
He paused as he let her awareness of his knowledge sink in. When he
spoke he used an expression that she knew meant he was trying to
demonstrate his awareness of his infinitesimally small place in the
universe. This child knows that the scar you carry on your heart is far
bigger than all the scars you ve got on the rest of you put together. It
can grow a lot more and I m afraid it probably has to grow at least a
small piece but what you don t know is how big it can grow. You
can t possibly know that and every time I pray I ask that you never find
out. Andrea felt her insides tie themselves up in a knot like she hadn t
felt in years. Zechariah was never, ever this intrusive. For a moment
she had been incredulously terrified that something sexual was on his
mind but he had just let her know that his next few words would be far
more frightening than that. She hoped desperately he would shut up
and go away as she spilled some of what she was cooking onto the
stove. He looked at the stove, letting her defeat his gaze as he looked at
the mess she had made, trying to make it easier for her to hear whatever
he was going to say next. You re a fighter and I don t think you ll
ever not be so you ve got that. But you have no idea at all who the
enemy is. All I can tell you is that it s not some violent child. He
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stood for a moment as if thinking of something else to say and then
turned around and went back outside. When she thought he was gone
she hurled the pot and all it s contents out the door as far as she
possibly could. She stood immobile for a long moment while her rage
followed the pot on an impossibly long trajectory out the door and then
as she remembered exactly where she was she went outside to retrieve
the pot and resume cooking breakfast. As she finished cleaning up the
mess she saw Zechariah. He d been sitting watching her the entire time
in the silence that was his most effective means of communication in
matters of only moderate importance. She walked back into the cabin
and had a sudden vision of Denise at the stove. She was about to sing
something and Andrea was telling her that she hadn t been able to write
it yet, that it was a melody that she just couldn t feel. And then because
she was Andrea she began to cook breakfast again as she promised
herself that she would discuss all of this with her two friends sometime
today, all day if necessary, letting Mountain Girl be cryptically blunt
and Andy ramble until she could somehow feel the rhythm and
harmony of Zechariah s words.
Because they were a cheap big band they played a lot of stuff for
older groups also, people who were nostalgic for the big band swing era
and for who they had to tone down some of their rock arrangements,
even some of the subject matter and language in a few vocals. But this
dance was a big deal for them and they weren t going to tone anything
down in any way. It was a dance for the school Andrea, Andy and
about a third of the other band members attended. They had all been
terribly excited that after their name came up discussion of which band
to hire had abruptly ended. They had a lot of new songs they had
worked out, many of them popular rock tunes and the rest relatively
lesser known jazz and blues pieces. By now several members of the
band had begun to try to arranging songs that they liked themselves and
she was realizing that they each had their own style and that depending
on who s chart she played the band could sound very different. Henry
had been to hear them several times and several of the other members
were taking lessons with him now. In return the band members had
composed several songs purportedly about him. At least his name was
in the titles: Henry s Blues, Henry s Boogie, Henry s Eighty Eight,
Henry s Rocket. He had been amused by the last one because he didn t
particularly care for rock music. But it was still fun to have the song
named after him.
Mountain Girl had been hearing about the band for years now. As
in the beginning, Andrea would confide in her all her fears and
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frustrations about it, wondering if it was worth the effort. Mountain
Girls response had always been the same: If you want to do it and are
good at it then do it. What else are you going to do? Andrea had
gotten herself a new trumpet and now kept the second hand one Andy
had gotten her on the mountain where she would practice new ideas,
seating herself on a little cliff overlooking a valley a discrete distance
from Zechariah and his love of quiet and completely unaware that he
once in a while sought her out to listen to her. She would play to the
wilderness with not a single harmonic in return echoing from the vast
spaces, feeling like Joshua in the mountains and wondering if she could
make the mountains fall with some of her mistakes. And she had made
some log drums for them to play on together, not very good ones at all
but it was still fun to fool around with their little drum circle. She was
learning a lot from that experience she thought, with perhaps the
biggest lesson being that sometimes being good was not the most
important thing. But none of this was the band and Mountain Girl s
friends had decided that it was time for her to hear for herself what that
sounded like. They had gone up to the mountain and brought her back-
it helped so much that Andy could drive now. They had cleaned her
up, bought her a dress and told her that she would be Andy s date. She
would sit with the friends of the band.
And there she sat. Although she had gotten to know a few other
people over the years nothing like this had ever happened to her. With
the exception of her trip to the carnival she had never seen so many
people in her life and that at least had been outdoors. This was
unnerving to her in a way that she had never experienced before but
with her two friends there she hoped that she would be okay. There
had been a few attempts at conversation initiated by the others which
had gone no where. She sat quietly watching while the rest of the
people she was sitting sort of forgot she was there. And then the band
began to play and none of this mattered anyway.
She and her father both sang to themselves from time to time. She'd
listened to Andrea practice innumerable times and they had had fun
playing with the drums Andrea had made. On her infrequent trips to
town she occasionally heard music coming from a radio. And Andrea
had told her that some of the noises that filled her life, the wind or the
calling of animals to each other, was a form of music. None of this had
prepared her in anyway for what her ears were suddenly telling her.
She sat stunned at the realization of what she hadn't know a few
minutes before. And then half ways through the 2nd song she
understood. She understood why no matter how much she talked
Andrea always seemed to think she'd left something unsaid. Several
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couples walked out into the open space on the floor in front of the band
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