How Sweet the Sound

by Jacquelin Thomas

  Stepping into the adjoining kitchen-dining room he got another surprise. The area was twice the size of the cozy living area. The white-and-yellow kitchen was spotless, with a breakfast island and two high-backed stools to his right. To his left was a beautifully carved buffet with a silver tea service on top. Over the single pedestal dining table was a six-globe pewter chandelier. Through a double-glassed doorway straight ahead he saw a thriving tropical palm and the rounded curve of a black baby grand.

  “This place is great. It’s nothing like my rental.”

  “I’m not renting. This is my home,” she said, taking a seat in one of the side chairs on the other side of the table.

  Unsure if he had detected a bit of frost in her voice, he chose to think positively. “You certainly have a beautiful one. You put my place to shame.” Taking a seat across from her to give her the space she obviously wanted, he looked around again at the crown molding, hardwood floors and textured walls. “Maybe I can talk my landlord into doing a few things to my place. Did you have a contractor?”

  Her face instantly closed. “Yes. Would you like some lemonade or iced tea before we get started?”

  So, they were back to square one. There was definitely a chill in her voice this time. “No, thank you.” Placing his case on the polished cherry surface, he unzipped it and drew out several sheets of paper. “I decided to ask the members of Revelation what they thought of the songs you selected.”

  “Yes?” she said, leaning toward him to place her hands on the table beside a stack of sheet music and a tablet.

  For a moment, Caleb was captured by how the light overhead touched the gentle curve of her face. He cleared his throat. “I’m afraid they weren’t that taken with your selections.” And that was putting it politely. They’d complained for ten minutes.

  She took it better than he expected. “The music is a departure from what they’re used to.”

  “Exactly.” Caleb leaned closer to show her the sheet music in his hand. “I thought we’d compromise on one selection so we could at least get started next week. How about ‘Stand?’ It has a traditional beat, but with enough tempo in the chorus to appeal to everyone.”

  Grace slowly nodded. “It’s a good song. I think it will speak to a great many people.”

  “And ‘Stomp’ is a selection they’ve done with great success.” “Stomp” lived up to its name with a fast, hand-clapping, foot-stomping beat that got people out of their seats from the first note and didn’t let them sit down until the music was over…if then.

  Even before he’d finished, she’d straightened, her mouth compressed in a narrow line. “I thought I had made it clear that my choir won’t sing a song better suited for a nightclub.”

  He barely refrained from telling her that as the music director she did not own the choir. Instead he showed her another piece of paper. “This is the list of the top gospel albums and songs in the country. I grant you there are also the traditional songs within the Southern gospel and gospel music, but the ones that are getting the most attention are the ones that have more of a beat which, I think and most people agree, is why they speak to the people where they are.”

  “I’m sure they played music in Sodom and Gomorrah, too,” Grace said, her chin tilted, her arms folded.

  Caleb mentally counted to ten and tried again. “Just because gospel music makes you want to get up and clap your hands doesn’t mean it has suggestive words the way some of the secular music has. We have to reach people where they are.”

  “We don’t have to stoop to what the world is doing to do it.” She unfolded her arms. “I will not compromise my principles.”

  He rolled his eyes heavenward and asked for patience. “Making music that causes people to lift their hands in worship and praise won’t hurt our principles.”

  “Perhaps not yours,” she snapped.

  He straightened. “What do you mean by that?”

  She shoved her hand toward him in obvious disgust. “Just look at you. You’re supposed to be an example for your students. Instead you act like one of them with the way you wear those tight jeans and run around in that sports car. You should act your age. You’re disgraceful.”

  That ripped it. “Coming from you I take that as a compliment. God wants his children to have joy in all things. You’re so uptight and sanctimonious you’ve forgotten that as well as how to have any fun.”

  Her eyes widened in outrage. “How dare you say those things to me!”

  “It’s no more than the truth. If you’d stop looking down your nose at everyone else you’d see as much.”

  Glaring at him she came to her feet and planted her hands on the table. “I do not look down my nose.”

  He stood as well and copied her pose. “Yes, you do. There’s no bend in you, no give. The only way is your way. If you don’t change, you’ll wind up a never-been-kissed old maid.”

  Hurt darkened her eyes.

  Instantly contrite, Caleb reached his hand toward her to apologize. “Grace, I’m—”

  She jerked upright. “Leave and don’t come back.”

  Seeing her eyes blink, hearing her unsteady voice, he feared she was near tears. He gathered up his papers and turned to go. He wasn’t sure he could handle tears, especially knowing he had caused them. Opening the door, he glanced over his shoulder, felt his gut twist. He hadn’t meant to hurt her and felt compelled to apologize. “I’m sorrier than you’ll ever know.”

  She looked away from him and didn’t say anything. He hadn’t really expected her to.

  Outside he slowly walked to his car. Instead of getting in, he glanced back at the front door, hoping against hope that Grace wasn’t inside crying. If she was, it would be his fault…again, and this time he wasn’t sure any amount of food or apology would get her to talk to him again. His position as chair of her department certainly wouldn’t do it. Some of the worst, underhanded, backstabbing was done in academia. The corporate world had nothing on them.

  It would take God to make this work.

  He glanced skyward. “As always, it’s in Your hands.”

  Caleb was reaching for the door handle when a late-model truck parked in front of the house. A tall, middle-aged man in knife-edge creased jeans and a blue-plaid shirt climbed out. His dark eyes narrowed as he studied Caleb. His light-brown face didn’t curve into a smile nor did he nod his graying head as most people in the small town did when Caleb met them. Reaching back inside the cab, he pulled out a tool belt and strapped it around his trim waist.

  The contractor. Caleb glanced back toward the house. Somehow he knew Grace wouldn’t want anyone to see her while she was upset. Tossing the notebook into the passenger’s seat, he moved to intercept the man. “Good evening. Does Grace expect you?”

  The man folded his arms across his impressive chest. “And who might you be?”

  A reasonable question. “Caleb Jackson. And you?”

  “Oscar Thompson. Grace’s father.”

  Chapter Six

  Caleb closed his eyes. When he opened them Mr. Thompson’s hands rested on his waist, much too close to his tool belt, which held an assortment of sharp and very lethal-looking items.

  “You look rather worried, son,” Mr. Thompson said in a voice as slow as molasses in the winter, but his eyes were as sharp as glass. “Should I be?”

  “I made her cry,” Caleb confessed, swiping his hand across his face. “It’s not the first time. I don’t mean to. I’m sorry, sir.”

  Surprisingly, Mr. Thompson’s hands moved away from the tool belt. He leaned casually against the side of the truck. “You’re that professor at the college who plays that music she doesn’t like, aren’t you?”

  Caleb wasn’t sure if he should breathe easier or not. “Yes, sir.”

  Mr. Thompson glanced toward the house. “I might be the one that owes you an apology.”

  “What?” Caleb’s brows bunched in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

  Grace’s father’s troubled gaze slowly ca
me back to Caleb. He turned and removed a toolbox from a locked compartment in the truck’s bed. “I better go in. Meet me at the city park on the north side in thirty minutes. We’ll talk.”

  “All right,” Caleb agreed, but Mr. Thompson had already moved on. Puzzled, Caleb got in the car and started the motor. He didn’t back out, however, until the front door opened. As much as he strained to see Grace, he only caught a glimpse of her white blouse before Mr. Thompson went inside and the door closed.

  Putting the ’Vette in Reverse, Caleb backed and headed toward the park. Another appointment he didn’t plan to be late for.

  “What were you and Caleb talking about?” Grace had tried to work on her lesson plans in the music room while her father put in baseboard molding in the dining room, but had only lasted five minutes. Her father certainly hadn’t volunteered anything.

  “Nothing much.” Down on his knees, he nailed the molding in place to match the new hardwood floors. “Seemed like a nice young man.”

  Grace tsked, then came down beside him to hand him the nail he was reaching for. “You wouldn’t think so if you knew what he said to me.”

  Taking the nail, he faced her and asked, “Did he get out of line”

  Grace blinked. Her father stared back at her. It didn’t take much to recall the fiasco with Lowell and how afterward every time he saw her, he’d run in the opposite direction. When she’d mentioned it to her mother, she’d said the “men” had had a talk with him. “No. No, sir.”

  Nodding, he moved and tapped the nail into the wood.

  Grace moved with him, assisting as needed until they were finished. Closing his toolbox he came easily to his feet and waited until Grace was upright before he spoke. “I’ll come by next week to start on the deck in the back.”

  “Thank you, Daddy,” she said, feeling awkward as she always did when they were alone.

  Picking up the toolbox he went to the door and opened it. “If you ever want to talk about anything, you call.”

  “Yes, sir,” she replied dutifully, but they both knew she wouldn’t. She couldn’t forget that there were too many times in the past that she had wanted to talk to him and he wasn’t there. “If you’ll wait, I’ll write you out a check.”

  “It’ll keep.” His expression sadder than she had ever seen it, he quietly left.

  Grace felt tears prick her eyes. She didn’t know if she was crying for herself or her father.

  “Grace doesn’t like your music because that’s the kind of music that took me away from her and my family.” Mr. Thompson explained as he and Caleb leaned against the hood of his truck. In front of them the three-acre city park was alive with a little league softball game, children playing on the swings and late-afternoon joggers.

  Caleb heard the roar of the crowd watching the game, but his attention never wavered from Mr. Thompson. The older man stared at the children yelling and playing on the swing sets and crossbars. Caleb noticed the sadness in his face which was strongly reflected in his eyes.

  “I was the lead singer in a group called the Mystics. Man, we thought we were the best. The Miracles didn’t have anything on us. I would have put my pipes up against Smokey Robinson any day. We were going to the top.” He shook his head and took a drink from the can of cola in his callused hand.

  “We never even made it close, but we chased that dream all over the country for fifteen long years and my family suffered because of it. Every time we’d get a gig, off I’d go, hoping this time it would lead us to the top. It never did. We moved so many times I lost count. By the time I accepted it never would, Grace was a junior in college and she and I were almost strangers.”

  “I’m sorry,” Caleb said. He knew what it was like to chase a dream.

  “Yeah, me too.” Mr. Thompson’s sigh of regret came from deep in his chest. “Deloris, her mother, wanted to stop the moving when Grace’s older brother got in high school. After seeing how drugs and gangs were destroying so many young people in the cities, she wanted to move to Summerset when our son was in the tenth grade. I did what she wanted, but I kept trying to catch that elusive star.”

  The crowd at the softball field roared. Neither Caleb or Mr. Thompson noticed.

  “Because of those uncertain days, Grace doesn’t like change or the unexpected. Like her mother, she can pinch a penny until it screams. She saved and bought the house two years ago and started fixing it up. She craves stability more than anything in this world and that house gives it to her.”

  Now Caleb understood why she didn’t like change. “You’ve done a good job remodeling.”

  He stared off into the distance. “She doesn’t know I know, but her mother had to practically beg her to let me do the job. I’ve always been able to fix things. That’s how I was able to get work when we moved so much. Her mother thought it would bring us closer, plus save Grace some money. It did neither. Grace makes any excuse not to be in the room while I’m working and she pays me by the hour, just like I charge other people.”

  Caleb heard the loneliness and remorse in his voice. “Perhaps one day she’ll be ready to move on.”

  “I pray she will every night.” He faced Caleb. “Today, for the first time, she helped me like she used to as a little girl. I have you to thank for that.”

  “Me?”

  “She wanted to know what we had talked about. Of course I didn’t tell her, but she stayed and helped me anyway. Felt good having her give that much of herself.” His face saddened. “She’s forgiven me, but she can’t forget that I wasn’t there for her. She won’t let herself need me again.”

  “Since I seem to upset her every time we’re together more than five minutes, she may be helping you a lot in the coming weeks,” Caleb said with a wry twist of his mouth.

  “Grace is doing what she believes,” her father defended.

  “I know, but I happen to think she’s wrong.” Caleb’s hand fisted on the can of soda he’d accepted from Mr. Thompson earlier. It was still full.

  “You ever think it might be you?” Grace’s father asked.

  Caleb’s head drew back in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

  “One of you is going to have to meet the other halfway. You ever sat down with one of her suggestions and tried to increase the tempo? Maybe start off slow then take it up a notch or two?”

  He hadn’t. “My students vetoed every one of her suggestions.”

  Mr. Thompson looked Caleb directly into the eyes. “Seems Grace might not be the only one set in her ways. If you’re the hotshot music man I read and heard you are, it shouldn’t be anything for you to take those songs and rearrange them.”

  “Grace will scream bloody murder if I change one note into what she calls ‘music better suited to a club,’” Caleb said.

  “She might, but there are two things in both of our favor. Grace loves the Lord and she has a good heart. She wants the gospel concert to be a success,” Mr. Thompson said. “Today is not the first time I saw the longing in her face when she looks at me. Maybe she’s getting there.”

  Caleb said nothing, just took a drink of his cola. If Grace hadn’t been able to get over her conflicted feelings about her father for these many years, what chance did he have for her to get over her anger with him in time to prepare for the gospel musical in less than two months?

  If one choir member asked her at church when they were going to start practicing for the concert, twenty of them did. She’d given them all the same pat answer of “Soon” and hoped they didn’t see the worry in her face. Caleb, with his unacceptable demands and unfounded accusations, had put her in a terrible position. After prayer service she hurried through the side door to the nursery, but she wasn’t fast enough.

  “Grace, I need to talk with you.”

  Trying not to groan, she turned to see the president of the gospel choir, Roxie Sims, hurry to catch up with her. Dressed in one of her trademark wide-brimmed hats that exactly matched her lavender suit and shoes, she came to a halt in front of Grace. “I’m gl
ad I caught you. The choir members are anxious to get started.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I realize that, but Caleb and I are still working on the music,” Grace told her, wondering how many more times she’d have to repeat that.

  The older woman’s arched brow shot up. “It’s taking a long time, isn’t it? You didn’t have that much trouble with the songs for the gospel competition.”

  “No, ma’am, but there are extenuating circumstances.”

  Mrs. Sims drew herself up straighter. “Then as president, perhaps I should know.”

  Grace considered telling the retired school teacher that she was no longer a student in her English class, but some habits you didn’t outgrow. Besides, Mrs. Sims had never been one to gossip. “We’re having a difference of opinion on what to sing. He wants some of that finger-popping music, but I insist it be traditional music.”

  Just then the voice of the youth choir drifted through the sliding doors. From the sounds of it, there were fewer this Sunday than the last four Sundays when they had sang. “It’s a shame their parents can’t get them to practice. I bet they know the lyrics to every secular, scandalous song on the radio. They need to be in church learning about Christian values.”

  “True, but as the grandmother of one of those missing young people, I can tell you we won’t get them singing ‘What a Friend We Have In Jesus’ the way we did when we were growing up.”

  Caught between being offended and disbelieving, Grace whipped her head around. As the music director of the church, all music had to be cleared through her. “There’s nothing wrong with that song.”

  “For us, no.” Mrs. Sims put her gloved hand on Grace’s shoulder. “We’re in competition with the devil, Grace. We have to reach the young people where they are.”

  Grace recalled that Caleb had said the same thing. “But we shouldn’t be confused with him.”

  “The young people hear secular music each day the Lord brings. They dance to it, sing to it, talk on the phone to it. Then they come to church and hear music that, in their opinion, is old-fashioned and ‘old-fogy’ and tune us—and with that the Word—out.” Mrs. Sims removed her hand. “If you’ve been around any teenagers or young people, you know they’re masters at tuning us out.”