The Organ Bench Nobody Could Take
Only Gloria argued. “That boy ought to be ashamed of himself.”
“He’s 29, Gloria.”
“I was married with two kids at 29.”
“He’ll be ashamed on his own time. I don’t need to help him. And I’m not going to be the reason he leaves this church with his head down, if he leaves it.”
“You’re a better woman than I am.”
“I’m not. I’m just tired, and I’m not done.”
The part of the week I had not planned was Annie Kate.
Annie Kate Underwood is Sherman’s granddaughter, 11 years old, with her front teeth too big for the rest of her face and hair the color of a wet fence post. For two years, on Wednesday afternoons, she had come to the sanctuary after school, because her mother worked until five at the feed store. I had taught her piano on the church’s old upright and, once she was tall enough, the organ. She could reach the pedals if she scooted to the front of the bench and let her heels hang off the edge. She was not good yet. She was careful, which is rarer.
That Wednesday she came in at 3:40 with her backpack on, and sat down on the back pew, and did not get up. I was pretending to dust the bench. When I looked over she had her chin on her fists.
“Are you still going to teach me?” she said.
“I’d say so.”
“Mama said you might not come anymore.”
“Your mama’s right about most things. She’s wrong about that one.”
She thought it over. Then she came up the aisle and sat down where she always sat, at the front of the bench, and opened her book to the page we had left. We were working on the left hand of “Blest Be the Tie That Binds,” which is the bass line, and which she kept rushing, as everybody does.
“Slower,” I said. “Let it ring before you leave it.”
I leaned over to show her, and I put my left hand down to play the passage, and the thumb caught. It was the joint at the base, the one that has been going on me for two years. I got through the line. I took the octave out of the second measure the way I had been taking it out of everything since last fall.
Annie Kate watched my hand and said nothing. She went back to her own book and played the line again, slower, and let it ring.
She never mentioned it.
Friday he came out to the farm.
I saw the white Corolla come up the lane at a quarter past four, slow, over the washboard ruts, the way a man drives when he is trying not to spill a casserole. He had the casserole on the passenger seat. I could see it through the windshield, wrapped in a towel.
I let him knock twice before I opened the door.
Caleb Rhoades is a tall, thin young man with a boyish haircut and a wedding band he turns on his finger when he is worried. He held out the dish.