Down by the River

by Lin Stepp

  “There’s no need to be smug and arrogant, either.” Grace gave Margaret a critical glance. “Although Mrs. Carson is almost eighty, she’s a beautiful, gracious woman. And you may be surprised at how well she plays.”

  “Right. I’m sure I will.” Margaret offered her mother a contrived smile.

  She got up to get herself another cup of coffee. “Don’t worry, Mother. I’ll be nice. I promised you I’d visit, and I will. But I’m only doing this to help your business and your image here in the valley. I want the inn to continue to be successful—and the shop, too. So I’m doing everything I can to cooperate. I hope you appreciate that.”

  “I do appreciate it.” Grace leaned over to kiss Margaret on the cheek as she sat back down. Margaret had come around about the changes in Grace’s life more than Grace had expected her to, and Grace was grateful. “I also appreciate the good reports you’ve given to Elaine and the boys. I actually think they’re all planning to come over when it’s time for your school to begin.”

  Margaret grinned. “I talked them into packing up the rest of my stuff and bringing it over Labor Day weekend so you and I don’t have to drive over to get it. I think Frank was eager not to have me come back to Nashville. He was very cooperative.”

  She took a bite of the egg and sausage casserole on her plate. “I also selfishly wanted them to come to my opening concert at the college. The music department is presenting a concert that holiday weekend so visiting parents can come. It makes the college look good to show off the school’s talent. The school is hosting an art show and some sporting events, too.”

  “Well, I’m excited.” Grace peeked into the dining room to check that everyone was comfortable. “It will be the first time all of my children have visited me here.”

  “Well, they may not be crazy about everything. Don’t expect too many compliments.” Margaret was always so candid. “But they will love the river and the yard. This place is remote, but the property is pretty. And the mountains are nearby.”

  Vincent came back into the room carrying a loaded plate of egg and sausage casserole, biscuits, and fruit, and then sat down at the kitchen table with them to begin to eat. Margaret all but ignored him, applying herself to her food and reading the Sunday paper.

  Grace noticed that Margaret’s actions never fazed Vincent, no matter how often she snubbed him. He always treated her with cordial warmth and charm no matter how she acted or what she said.

  “Here’s the blueberry jam you like.” Grace put a jar on the table in front of Vincent’s plate.

  “Thanks.” He smiled at Grace—not a rascally smile like Jack’s, but a pleasant smile. It crinkled his eyes and brought out the cleft in his chin.

  She smiled back at him. “You’re welcome.”

  Vincent spread jam lavishly on a biscuit and then dug into his breakfast with relish for a few minutes. He caught Margaret’s eyes when she glanced over at him and gave her a knowing smile that made Margaret’s cheeks heat up.

  Vincent pushed back his plate then and started on his coffee. “You both might be interested in knowing we’re having a special speaker at the church next Sunday. He’s an old colleague of mine from Montreat. I’ve known him since I was a boy.”

  “What’s Montreat?” Margaret asked, looking up from her perusal of the Sunday newspaper.

  “It’s a four-thousand-acre religious conference center in the mountains of North Carolina, not far from Asheville.” Vince focused those intense blue eyes on her. “My family lives in Montreat, and I grew up there. Before I came here to Creekside I worked as the conference director with Montreat’s youth and young adult ministry program.”

  “You mean you grew up right in the middle of a religious center?” Margaret wrinkled her nose.

  Vince smiled. “I did. There were always ongoing conferences for churches and organizations, musical events and meetings of artists’ groups, educational association gatherings, and special retreats going on. It was never dull. And the area is beautiful there. Montreat sits amid twenty-five-hundred acres of wilderness.”

  “Well, that explains a lot,” Margaret mumbled. “Growing up in some religious center in the boonies of the mountains has to have its effects.”

  Covering for Margaret’s rudeness, Grace asked with interest, “What do your parents do there?”

  Vincent took a sip of his coffee. “My father is in marketing and development. My mother works in several organizational capacities and is usually a greeter and hostess when new groups come in.”

  “That sounds interesting. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “I have one younger sister, Laura. She always loved the outdoors—dragged me along collecting mushrooms and biological species from an early age. She went into plant pathology, is working on her PhD at North Carolina State.”

  Margaret looked up with interest. “Looks like she’s going somewhere with her life.” She studied him. “With a smart family like yours, how did you end up in the ministry and in a poky little church in Townsend, Tennessee? Couldn’t you have done more with yourself?”

  “Margaret!” Grace was shocked.

  Vincent, unruffled by Margaret’s remarks, reached across the table and put a hand on hers. “I came here for a reason, Margaret. And because I was called. You know, there is a great deal you don’t know about me.” He said the latter in a softer, silkier voice.

  “Well, there’s a lot you don’t know about me, too.” Margaret lifted her chin, but then her eyes went back to where Vincent still held her hand. She tried to pull it away, but he held on to it for a minute.

  “I may know more about you than you think. I know you cherish a dream in your heart to write music—but you’ve never told anyone about it. You didn’t think it fit in with the program. I know you wrote a song when you were young, but that someone laughed at you over it and it hurt you.”

  Margaret flushed and jerked her hand free from Vincent’s. “Did Mother tell you that?” She flashed an angry look at Grace.

  Grace shook her head. “I didn’t even know that. Is it true, Margaret?”

  Margaret stood up, her face flushed. “I don’t like people probing into my private life, Mr. Westbrooke. Even pastors.”

  “Not even God?” he asked pleasantly, standing up also.

  She flashed back a quick answer. “I don’t believe in that sort of thing.”

  “Perhaps not now,” he answered her. “See you in church, Margaret.”

  He started for the door. “And thank you for the breakfast, Grace.”

  “You know you’re always welcome.” She smiled at him. Margaret flounced out of the room when he left. “That man infuriates me. Nosy. Intrusive. Always hanging around here. Never taking the hint that I’m not interested in him. He’s insufferable.”

  Margaret was stormy throughout the early part of the church service an hour later. Grace felt pleased Margaret had still been willing to come. Margaret was volatile sometimes, and even now, in church, Grace found herself a little worried about what Margaret might do. However, as the service moved on, Grace noticed that Margaret’s mood seemed to change.

  Watching her, Grace saw Margaret’s eyes focused on Jo Carson at the piano in front of the church. The congregation was standing and singing at this point in the worship service. It was the practice of the church to frequently slip from bits of one hymn or song to another, as though the tunes were linked together in a medley. The congregation used their hymnals at certain points, while at other times they followed the words of the songs projected on a screen behind the narthex.

  Vincent led the congregational singing himself, in a fine tenor voice. He and Jo Carson seemed to have a special kind of communion about what direction the songs should go in each Sunday. The choir followed along flexibly with whatever pattern they set. Several in the choir had gifted voices and often sang solos.

  The services at Creekside were quite different from what Grace had been used to in the big Presbyterian church in Nashville. Vincent’s messages w
ere more like teachings and very Bible-based. He included informal times in which the congregation could offer prayer requests or praises. Sometimes he let members give short testimonies about what God had done in their lives. The informality took some getting used to, but Grace liked the differences now.

  She had also learned to take her Bible to church every Sunday. Vincent always had the congregation turning to passages while he preached. Grace had felt odd the first Sunday when she realized everyone was participating in the service in this way while she didn’t even have a Bible with her.

  The service had moved on to the offertory now, and Jo Carson played the piano while the Sunday offering was being taken up. She moved through a medley that included parts of several old hymns that had always been favorites of Grace’s.

  Margaret leaned over toward Grace to whisper. “She’s hardly even looking at her music. Once I even saw her playing with her eyes closed.”

  “She’s very good.” Grace whispered this comment back and smiled, glad Margaret seemed to be enjoying the service. Grace hadn’t been able to persuade her to even go to church for several years.

  Leaning in again, Margaret added, “There were some times earlier when I don’t think she was sure what she was going to play. She’d stop and look toward Vincent; he’d start to sing something, and she’d pick up and follow him. It was odd. Sometimes she seemed to move into a new chorus after a completed one, and he would follow her. It’s as though they were tuned in to each other.”

  The offertory ended, and Vincent moved into his Scripture lesson and message. He preached on finding your true calling and vocation in the Lord. It made Margaret squirm. Grace wasn’t sure if that was because something in the message made Margaret uncomfortable or if Vincent’s compelling voice and intense blue eyes made her uncomfortable. He was a very charismatic speaker.

  As the service ended, Margaret surprised Grace by pulling her back from starting out of the church. “I want to go talk to the pianist,” she said.

  Jo still sat at the piano bench talking to another parishioner.

  Grace spoke to her as they walked up. “I’m Grace Conley, in case you’ve forgotten my name, Mrs. Carson. I own the Mimosa Inn next door to the church.”

  “Yes. And I missed your lovely gathering last week because I had a cold.” Jo smiled and nodded toward Grace cordially.

  “This is my daughter Margaret. She’s a music major at Maryville—and a pianist. She wanted to meet you.”

  “I’m pleased to meet a fellow pianist.” Jo reached out a hand toward Margaret, and Margaret slipped her hand into Jo’s for a moment in greeting.

  Margaret moved closer to the piano. “I’d be interested in seeing the music you’re playing from. You did such diverse medleys, and I liked the way the songs flowed from one to the other so smoothly. Is that a technique you learned in music school?”

  Jo Carson chuckled softly. “No, child. I never had the opportunity to go to music school or college.”

  “Well, who did you study under individually?” Margaret was curious.

  “I never had formal lessons, child. We had the old piano in our home that had belonged to my grandmother, and I picked up playing by ear. Started early, I was told. My father said I just had the gift for it. Later an aunt spent some time teaching me to read music and gave me a hymnal to practice from. Lord, I remember being so excited to get that hymnbook. Over the years, I learned every single hymn in that old book.”

  Grace saw that Margaret’s mouth had dropped open.

  “You never took formal lessons?” Margaret’s voice sounded disbelieving. “But how did you play all those songs in the service without music? How did you follow? And sometimes I thought for sure you were hearing a song you already knew and then moved into playing it.”

  “Oh, honey, I was playing by the Spirit then. A church service belongs to the Lord, and sometimes He just gives me the song He wants to have sung. I hear it within, and then I give a nod to Vincent and I play it. Sometimes he is hearing the same thing within. And sometimes he hears the instructions first, and he nods to me and I follow. It’s nice how God orchestrates it. So if it seemed to go well, He deserves the credit.”

  Even Grace had trouble following that explanation, and Margaret, for once, was speechless.

  Jo Carson smiled. “I started playing for this church as a young girl of about sixteen, and I’ve been playing here ever since. It’s a kindness that God has continued to let me serve Him in this way for so long.”

  Jo Carson’s son Berke and his wife Sally came up to join them then. They all lived a short distance down the street on the River Road. Grace knew Berke and Sally had come back home to move into the old Carson homeplace with Jo after Berke’s father died. Berke and Sally’s two children were grown, and Berke and Sally had wanted to leave the northern winters. Berke worked for a computer repair company in the area and Sally as the secretary for the Creekside Church.

  “Are you ready to go, Mother?” Berke asked. “If so, I’ll help you up and out to the car.”

  “It was nice to meet you, Margaret.” Jo said as her son linked her arm in his and helped her walk down the steps from the piano.

  “Yes, it was nice to meet you, too.” Margaret said these words quietly, staring after Jo Carson.

  Sally watched them start up the aisle. “Her eyesight is getting worse. She has macular degeneration, you know. It isn’t safe for her to try to get down these steps on her own anymore.”

  “But how does she see to play?” Margaret was incredulous.

  Sally smiled. “She knows the keyboard in her heart. At home, she might play for hours. She can still play about any song she listens to often enough. We’ve gotten her tapes of the classics, and she plays many of those by ear. But hymns are still her favorites. It’s a wonderful gift she has.”

  Sally talked then about what a nice time she and Berke had at the gathering at the Mimosa the week before. Grace noticed Margaret simply continued staring quietly after Jo Carson.

  At the door of the church, Vincent stood talking to his congregants as they left the service. He took Margaret’s hand, and Grace knew from the way Margaret acted that she was affected by his touch.

  He smiled at her. “I’m glad you talked to Jo Carson. She said she’d like you to come and visit her one day. She’d like to hear you play.”

  “I’ll try to do that.” Margaret offered a forced smile.

  “I enjoyed your message,” Grace added.

  She and Margaret walked down the church steps and started down the street toward the Mimosa. As they reached the door to the screened porch, Grace looked over to see tears streaming down Margaret’s face.

  “Why, Margaret, what’s the matter?”

  “She plays totally by ear.” Margaret sobbed. “She’s never taken a formal lesson, and she can play like that. So well. So freely. It seems so unfair. After all the hours and hours and hours of lessons and practice I’ve had. That someone could just play like that. Without any of the work and the agony and the criticisms and the struggle.”

  Grace reached over to hug her child. “She practiced and practiced, too, Margaret. Didn’t you hear her say so? And Sally said she still does. It hasn’t come without work and labor on her part, either.”

  “But she didn’t have to endure all the lessons!” Margaret sniffed, the tears rolling freely down her cheeks now.

  “Maybe you’re looking at it wrong. You had the opportunity to have lessons. I don’t think Jo Carson ever did. If I remember, Sally told me Berke’s mother grew up with very little. Her family lived up in the mountains, and there were nine children. I doubt there was money for lessons. Wasn’t it good that God gave her a way to use her gift? Without that, she wouldn’t have been able to do anything with her talent. There would have been no opportunity.”

  Margaret frowned as she followed Grace from the porch into the kitchen. “Well, that’s a pretty story, Mother. But it’s hard not to feel resentful when you’ve worked as hard as I have—and then
to meet someone who can sit down and play like that without having had to study at all.”

  Grace dropped her purse and Bible on the kitchen table. “I don’t think you need to feel jealous of Jo Carson, Margaret. You possess a beautiful gift of your own—well developed and well exercised. There’s hardly a comparison between the two of you.”

  Margaret sat down moodily in a kitchen chair. “I didn’t know Vincent could sing and lead music. You didn’t mention that to me.”

  “I didn’t think to.” Grace sat down at the table to join Margaret.

  “He must have musical training to be able to do that. But he’s never mentioned it to me.” She scowled.

  Grace chuckled. “It’s not as though you strike up many conversations with Vincent Westbrooke, Margaret. There may be a great deal about Vincent you don’t know.”

  “You sound just like him!” Margaret glared at her mother. “That’s what he said this morning.”

  “I’m sorry.” Grace shrugged. “I forgot he said that. But you can hardly blame Vincent that you know so little about him.”

  Margaret fidgeted with the strap on her shoulder bag. “It’s really amazing how he and Jo can tune in to each other to perform the music the way they do. She said they hear the music within. How do they do that?”

  Grace thought for a minute. “In the same way God talks to you in your heart when you pray and ask for answers. Or in the same way you get a leading from God about what you should do sometimes, I think. Only they get it about the music to use in the service.”

  Margaret caught Grace’s eyes then. “This isn’t the kind of church we’ve always belonged to, Mother. It’s different.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “I don’t know.” Margaret looked thoughtful and sighed.

  Grace looked at the clock. “I have homemade chicken salad left over from yesterday. Would that be all right for lunch? We could eat fruit and biscuits with it. I have some of both from the buffet this morning.”

  “That would be fine.” Margaret stood up. “But let’s go change first.”