Martin had found his harmonica in one of Hazeline’s bags. It lay there at the bottom of that bag so silver and shiny he just couldn’t stop his hand from reaching in and taking it. He had gone into the woods behind the trailer to play it and couldn’t make himself give it back. When his father found it, Martin had gotten the buckle end of a belt across his backside. But that belt was the good news compared to having to tell Hazeline what he’d done. Hazeline had looked at him for a long time, so quiet it nearly killed him. Then, calm as anything, she had said, “Well, you just better put that thing to good use, then, you hear me?” And that was all.
Now Martin waited as Hazeline pushed the car door shut with her foot. “You ready?” she asked. “I’m starving, ain’t you?” She looked Martin up and down, then shook her head and wiped a smudge off his cheek. “I swear, Martin, you hadn’t got enough meat on you to choke a chicken. What you need is some grease in that stomach of yours. Let me give this to your mamma and we’ll get going. Look here, ain’t these the cutest things?” She took two framed pictures out of one of her bags. Puppies pulling clothes off a clothesline. Kittens tangled up in yarn.
“I found these,” she said. “Right on top of Earl Ketchum’s trash can. Don’t that beat all?”
Before Martin could answer, Hazeline had disappeared into the trailer. The faint smell of whiskey hovered in the air where she’d been just seconds before. By the time Martin got inside, Hazeline was already pulling on window shades, letting them fly up with a snap.
“It’s like a damn tomb in here, Doris,” she was saying. “Where’s Ed? Church?” She laughed at her joke, the too-loud cackle of a laugh that Martin loved.
“Hi, Hazeline,” Martin’s mother said, not looking up from the TV Guide in her lap. “Martin’s gotta be back by three for baseball practice.”
Martin’s insides squeezed up, making a hard ball in the pit of his stomach. He felt Hazeline’s eyes on him.
“Let’s go,” he said, heading for the door.
They had turned onto the main highway and were halfway to Howard Johnson’s before either one of them said a word. It was Hazeline who broke the silence. “So, your daddy still making you play baseball?”
“Yeah.”
“How come?”
Martin shrugged. “I don’t know. I reckon he just likes baseball.”
There were a number of things Martin wasn’t very good at, and lying was one of them. His face turned red, and sometimes he got a twitch in his left eye.
Hazeline laughed. Smoke chugged out of her mouth like smoke signals in a cartoon Western.
“Just likes baseball, does he?” She looked at Martin out of the corner of her eye. “Martin, you keep forgetting I’ve known Ed Pittman since he was eating mashed peas and peeing in his diapers. He likes baseball about as much as he likes working—and you and I both know how much he likes working.”
“He’s working now,” Martin said. “He’s been at Furniture City since before Thanksgiving.” Why did he have this sudden urge to defend his father?
“You’re changing the subject,” Hazeline said. She lit another cigarette with the stub of the first one. “We were talking about baseball.”
Martin sank into the seat and put his feet on the dashboard. He stared out the side window.
“He says all boys play baseball,” Martin said.
Hazeline let a little “pfff” squeeze out between her lips. “He sure is good at writin’ the Rule Book of Life, ain’t he? Hell, the only thing I remember him ever hitting with a baseball bat was your uncle Vernon.” Hazeline cackled, and her cigarette wobbled up and down in the corner of her mouth. She squinted as the smoke trailed up in front of her face.
“You ever tried to tell him what you think about baseball?” she asked.
“About a million times.”
Hadn’t he tried to tell his father he didn’t really want to play ball?
“Maybe you need some help getting your point across,” Hazeline said. “I’m an expert on that subject if you ever want some lessons.” She winked at Martin.
He took the harmonica out of his pocket and played a no-name tune to change the subject.
“Okay,” said Hazeline, “I can take a hint.”
Martin played whatever tune came to his head and stared out the window at the kudzu-covered fields. The big leaves of the kudzu vine seemed to gobble up everything in the South Carolina countryside. Martin had been told it grew a foot a day. He didn’t know if that was true or not, but he had seen it swallow up mailboxes, trees, even whole barns.
“Make me laugh,” Hazeline said suddenly.
This was a game they’d been playing since Martin was little and first found that harmonica.
Martin started playing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”
Hazeline laughed so hard she started coughing and pounded the steering wheel. When she’d recovered, she said, “Now make me cry.”
Without so much as a pause, Martin switched to “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” The notes drifted out slowly, sadly. Martin closed his eyes and let the music circle around him and take him away. The slippery vinyl car seat disappeared right out from under him and he floated into a calm nothingness. When the song was over, he kept the harmonica at his mouth for a few minutes till the spell was broken, bringing him back to reality. The smoke-filled car. The billboards and telephone poles along the highway. He looked at Hazeline. Tears quivered in the corners of her eyes until she blinked, sending them rolling slowly down her brown, leathery cheeks.
“You’re getting too good at this game,” she said.
“At least I’m good at something.”
Hazeline punched him playfully. “Aw, now, you’re good at lots of things,” she said.
“Name three.”
“Okay.” Hazeline puffed on her cigarette. “Playing that harmonica, making grilled cheese sandwiches, and getting crabby old Hazeline to laugh once in a while.”
Martin laughed. “You ain’t crabby,” he said. “Least not all the time,” he added, tucking his harmonica back into his shirt pocket.
Hazeline turned the big Studebaker into the parking lot of Howard Johnson’s and stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray. “Let’s go put some meat on them bones,” she said, poking Martin in the ribs.
Martin followed her across the parking lot. The tune of “Oklahoma!” was swirling around in his head again, and Martin set his pace to it. “Hey, crabby,” he called to Hazeline, “wait for me!”
Four
MARTIN DIDN’T SEE Wylene for four days. She’d been working second shift, from three in the afternoon until eleven at night. Martin knew how much she hated it when they were short-handed at the plant and she had to work second shift. Now she was back on first shift and pulling into the trailer park just as Martin got home from school.
He was pretty sure she was still going to be upset about missing the concert. Wylene could hang on to a bad feeling for a mighty long time. The minute he saw her get out of the car, he knew he had been right. Her mouth was set tight and turned down at the corners. Her eyes darted around, not looking at him.
Martin set a smile on his face and walked over to her car. “Want to play Chinese checkers?” he said.
“No, thank you.” She lifted a grocery bag out of the trunk. Martin picked up a bag and followed her into the trailer.
“Might be a thunderstorm tonight,” he said, lining up soda cans neatly in the refrigerator.
“That so?”
“Reckon we could use some rain.”
Wylene glanced at his shoes. They didn’t look dirty to him, but he took them off anyway. Speckles of sand fell out onto the floor.
Wylene sorted the groceries in silence. Canned goods together. Boxes together.
“Mind if I put a tape on?” Martin asked.
“Suit yourself.” She arranged the boxes by height in the cupboard.
“Got any requests?”
“Whatever.”
Martin looked through the tapes. Schubert
Symphony No. 9. Salute to Hollywood. Vivaldi Violin Concertos. At last he found it. Beethoven Piano Sonatas.
He put the tape on, then settled into his favorite spot on the floor, his back against the couch. He watched Wylene out of the corner of his eye. Her face was set in a determined frown. As the notes filled the trailer, her face began to soften and the edges of her mouth curled up into the tiniest bit of a smile.
Martin slumped into a heap of relief and grinned up at her.
“Mr. Beethoven does it again,” he said.
Wylene chuckled. “You’re a hard person to stay mad at, Martin Pittman.” She sat on the couch, dabbing at the perspiration on her forehead and neck. Her red hair was damp and frizzy around her face.
Martin could always count on Beethoven to bring Wylene around. After all, it was Beethoven who had brought them together in the first place. It had taken about a hundred times of walking by Wylene’s trailer before she had done more than give a quick, you’d-miss-it-if-you-blinked wave at Martin. Then one day music like he had never heard before drifted out of her front door.
“I like that music,” he’d called to her.
Wylene had looked up from her weeding and stared at him. “You like Beethoven?”
“I reckon I do and never knew it till now,” he’d answered with a grin. And that had done it: opened the door a tiny crack.
Now the two of them sat in silence, listening to the music, nodding their heads with the rhythm.
“It just seems impossible that Beethoven was deaf, don’t it?” Wylene said.
Martin nodded.
“I mean, can you even imagine not being able to hear and still making up such beautiful music?” Wylene continued.
Martin closed his eyes and listened, trying to imagine.
“You know,” Wylene said, “they say Beethoven used to saw the legs off his pianos so he could feel the vibrations of his music through the floor.”
Just then a car drove by, horn honking, music blaring from the open windows.
Wylene grunted as she pushed herself up off the couch. “That Riley Owens don’t know the meaning of the words ‘peace and quiet.’” She pushed the front door shut on her way into the kitchen.
“Want a ham biscuit?” she called to Martin.
“Sure.” Wylene made the best biscuits of anybody he knew, including his mother. If Wylene ever got up the nerve to come to a Paradise potluck supper, his mother would lose her title as the best biscuit maker in the county. Until that happened, which would be about two weeks from never, Martin was the only one who knew Wylene’s hidden talent.
She set a plate of ham biscuits on the coffee table and dropped back down on the couch, fanning herself with a freckled hand.
“Why you reckon I’m so sad all the time?” she asked suddenly.
Martin took a bite and thought carefully about that unexpected question.
“I mean, I got my health,” she continued. “I got a nice home, a nice job.”
Martin nodded and chewed. He couldn’t argue with the health and home part, but he wasn’t so sure about the nice job part. Eight hours a day, five days a week, inspecting handkerchiefs, throwing the bad ones into the discard bin and sending the good ones on down the conveyor belt and into the folding machine, didn’t sound like much of a job to him, but he was glad Wylene liked it.
“You know what I like most about you, Martin?” she asked.
Martin’s mind raced, searching for possible answers. Before he could find one, she continued.
“I like that you’re so comfortable being you.”
Now that was something he never would’ve thought of. “I guess I ain’t got much choice in the matter,” he said. “I mean, who else am I gonna be?”
“No.” Wylene waved her hand at him impatiently. “I don’t mean you could be somebody else. I just mean you never want to be somebody else.”
“Who else would I want to be?”
“Oh, never mind,” Wylene snapped. She picked at a thread on the cushion of the couch. Her parakeet chirped and scattered seed onto the floor.
“Dern it, Pudgie, I just swept in here.” She went to the kitchen and came back with a broom.
Martin was still thinking about what she had said. “Sometimes I wish I could pitch like TJ.,” he said. “Or flirt with girls like Riley.”
“But you never want to be T.J. or Riley.” Wylene swept birdseed out the front door.
“I’d have to be some kind of idiot to want that,” Martin said. “Riley’s about as nice as a possum with rabies, and TJ.’s nice but he ain’t too lucky—he got Riley for a brother. Who in the world would want to be them?”
“Lots of people, probably.”
“Aw, come on, Wylene. Are you kidding me?”
“Well, think about it,” she said. “They got the only double-wide in Paradise. Their mamma looks like a fashion model just stepped off the cover of a magazine, bringing all them boyfriends home every night like life is just a party.”
“You want to be her?”
Wylene shrugged. “Maybe.”
Martin shook his head. He was sure he was never going to figure Wylene out. “Okay, I reckon there is somebody I’d like to be,” he said.
Wylene stared at him with wide eyes. “Who?” she asked.
Martin grinned. “Ludwig van Beethoven, that’s who.”
Wylene laughed. “Well, the Moonlight Sonata sure would sound funny on a harmonica. You got to get you a real instrument if you’re ever going to be Beethoven. When are you going to ask your parents about that piano I told you about? The one that girl at the plant is selling?”
“Aw, Daddy’d have a hissy fit if I even mentioned wanting a piano again,” Martin said. “Besides, we don’t have room for one. We don’t have a double-wide like the Owenses, remember?” He smiled at Wylene, but she didn’t smile back.
“You could make room if you really wanted to. You got a real knack for music, Martin. You’re just wasting your God-given talents if you don’t get yourself something besides a little ole harmonica to play.”
She made it sound so easy. But he knew all he had to do was say the word “piano” to his father and all hell would break loose. It just wasn’t worth it.
“Why don’t you just go look at it,” Wylene said. “It don’t hurt to look.”
“Naw. No use pining for something you can’t never have.”
“Lucky for us Mr. Beethoven didn’t have your attitude, or we’d have a lot less pretty music in this world.”
When the music stopped, the two of them sat in silence. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. A baby cried. A car door slammed.
“I better go,” Martin said. “See ya.”
It was much cooler outside than it had been inside the trailer. Martin hadn’t realized how late it had gotten. The bluish glow of television sets shone through open trailer doors. Martin took his harmonica out of his pocket and tried to play the Moonlight Sonata as he headed for home.
Five
SIX MILE WAS the kind of town you were born and raised in, not one you moved to from somewhere else. It wasn’t surprising, then, that Martin had been the New Kid for nearly a year. Now someone else held that title.
Sybil Richards was the tallest girl Martin had ever seen. She had walked into class that morning and stared back at the sea of curious faces with a look of pure confidence. She stood up straight, not hunched over like most of the tall girls Martin knew. Her hair was cut in a perfect square around her wide face. She wore a denim skirt that nearly reached her ankles and a T-shirt that said DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY. Silver bracelets clinked and jangled on each arm, and her big hands clutched a smudged patent leather purse.
When she walked down the aisle to an empty desk, her sandals scuffed and flapped. Some of the kids poked and jabbed one another with delight, theatrically struggling to keep from laughing. One girl laughed right out loud, a sputtering kind of laugh that shot out from between closed lips. She clamped her hand over her mouth in pretend embarrassmen
t.
Sybil Richards sat down with a swoosh of her skirt, her bracelets clanging loudly against the desktop. She gazed back at each staring face, sending heads whipping around to face the front of the class. Martin turned quickly before her eyes had a chance to meet his.
After class, Martin hurried outside to find T.J. He spotted him with a group of kids and waited while T.J. high-fived each one before coming over to where he stood.
“Hey, Martin.” T.J.’s freckled cheeks spread out in a wide grin. A baseball hat covered his buzz cut.
T.J. had an ease about him, a natural friendliness that had drawn Martin to him like a moth to a flame. He wondered how T.J. had learned to make friends so easily. Martin had moved so many times he’d never quite got the knack of it. T.J. had once begged Martin to teach him to play the harmonica. Martin had tried and tried, but T.J. just couldn’t seem to get the hang of it. Maybe it was the same way with making friends. Maybe you just had to have a natural talent.
The two of them fell into step together as they headed for home. They took turns kicking a dented, rusty beer can up the side of the road.
“I guess you ain’t the new kid anymore,” T.J. said. He gave the can a whack with the side of his sneaker and sent it tumbling noisily along the asphalt.
“Yeah, I guess not,” Martin said. He felt a wave of gratitude to Sybil Richards.
Martin ran ahead to kick the can before it rolled into a gully by the roadside. “You ever want to be somebody else, T.J.?”
“Sure, lots of times.”
Martin stared at his friend. “Like who?” he said.
“Oh, I don’t know. Roger Clemens or Michael Jordan or somebody like that. Or maybe that kid whose dad owns the lumberyard. He’s got a van with a TV and a refrigerator in it.” T.J. kept the can moving up the roadside. “How about you?”
Martin wondered if T.J. would laugh if he said Beethoven. “Naw, I can’t think of anybody.” He gave the can one final kick and followed T.J. into the trailer park. Now that the weather was getting warmer, doors and windows were open, spilling out the sounds of life from inside. Wylene’s music drifted out through her open front door. Tammy Wynette singing, “Stand by Your Man.” The words faded as the two boys continued down the road. Next came the sound of laughter from a TV, the clatter of pots and pans, the high-pitched squabbling of children. At the Owenses’ trailer, T.J. pushed open the gate. A moon-shaped crevice was etched into the red dirt where the gate dragged on the ground. A BEWARE OF DOG sign hung on the chain link fence, even though the Owenses didn’t have a dog. Never did have one as far as Martin knew.
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