American Anthem

by BJ Hoff

  Renny looked around the pretty room with its big windows letting in the first light of dawn, and the thought of leaving it to again go on the streets was like a knife to her heart. But wasn’t it more painful to live in a household where she wasn’t wanted than to live on her own in a city of strangers?

  Abruptly, she stopped pacing and went to wash her face. She had her chores to do, and the rest of the family would be up before long.

  A few minutes later, she left the house quietly—and unnoticed.

  That afternoon, Renny found Maylee waiting for her. The younger girl looked a bit better today, less pallid and tired. She also looked excited. She was propped up on a huge mound of pillows with another plump cushion at her midsection. On this the kitten—Maylee had named it Cookie—was curled up in a ball, sleeping.

  Renny grinned at her as she handed over the day’s “treasure”—a small glass jar that held a few marbles contributed by the MacGovern twins and a scrap of pale rose material with a faint green stripe. Nell Grace had sent the latter, thinking it might be just the right size for Maylee’s doll bed.

  “Oh, Renny, marbles! I’ve never had marbles before. And this material—it’s so pretty! Are you sure Nell Grace meant for me to keep it?”

  Pleased by Maylee’s response, Renny perched on the side of the bed. “It was her idea. And the boys have plenty more marbles.”

  The dozing kitten stirred, stretched, and yawned, her attention immediately fastening on the piece of material in Maylee’s hands. She batted at it a few times, then lost interest and tried to poke her head down in the jar of marbles.

  “No, Cookie,” Maylee scolded. “You’ll get stuck, you foolish kitty. Here,” she said, handing the jar to Renny. “Set it on the windowsill, would you, Renny? That way the marbles will catch the light.”

  When Renny returned to the bed, Maylee was looking at her with an odd expression, and again Renny thought she seemed excited about something.

  “The maestro wants to talk to you!” Maylee blurted out. “You’re to go down the hall to his study before you leave.”

  Renny’s hands turned clammy. What had she done?

  “Why does he want to talk to me?” she croaked.

  “Don’t worry, Renny! It’s a surprise. You’ll see!”

  “You know what he wants, then?”

  “Yes…”

  Renny could see that Maylee was both eager and reluctant to tell.

  “Well?” she prompted. “What?”

  Still the other girl hesitated. “Well, I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell you…”

  “Sure, you are!” Renny eyed her warily. “Am I in trouble for something?”

  “No! Why do you always think you’ve done something wrong, Renny?”

  Renny gave a shrug. “I used to get in trouble now and then.” She paused. “Before, when I was a lot younger.”

  “Well, you’re not in trouble now.”

  “I expect I can’t be sure of that, now can I, since you won’t tell what this is about?”

  “Oh, all right! It’s something really, really good, Renny! The maestro is going to ask you to play your tin whistle in the Independence Day concert! In the park!”

  Renny stared at her friend. “What concert? What park? What are you talking about anyway?”

  “On the Fourth of July—America’s Independence Day—the maestro and his orchestra are going to perform in Central Park. It’s a special celebration to celebrate the country’s one hundredth birthday! And the maestro wants you to take part in it. He wants you to play your tin whistle! Aren’t you excited, Renny?”

  Renny made a face. “You must be mad entirely. Or else you’re funnin’ me. Conn MacGovern says the—maestro—is famous. Him and his orchestra both. Now just why would a man like that be wantin’ anything to do with the likes of me?”

  Maylee’s expression turned sober. “Why are you always so hard on yourself, Renny?” she said.

  “I’m not hard on myself. I’m just trying to figure out what you’ve been eating that’s made you crackers.”

  Maylee shook her head. “You’re forever making light of yourself. Sometimes I just can’t figure you out, Renny Magee.”

  Renny tapped her head and grinned. “ ’Tis because I’m smarter than you, don’t you see? Now, what brought on this foolery about the blind man and my tin whistle?”

  Maylee frowned. “He has a name, Renny. Don’t call him ‘the blind man.’ Most folks call him Maestro because he’s a great musician.”

  “Oh, he’s a great musician, is he?” Renny shot back, enjoying a chance to tease her friend. “You wouldn’t be sweet on him, now would you? I’d watch out for Miss Susanna, if I were you. She won’t like you taking a fancy to her sweetheart!”

  “Oh, Renny, you’re…incorrigible!”

  Renny hadn’t a thought as to what incorrigible meant, but she could tell that Maylee wasn’t really upset with her.

  “Are you going to be serious or not?” asked Maylee.

  “Yes, ma’am. Please, ma’am, go ahead with your story.”

  “This will be a very important concert. The maestro and his orchestra will be performing some special new music he wrote in honor of the United States. There will probably be thousands of people there, according to Miss Susanna.”

  Renny studied her friend. Confusion and disbelief warred with a flare of excitement. Maylee couldn’t know what she was talking about. Could she? Why, the blind man—the maestro—had never even heard her play the whistle.

  She didn’t realize she’d voiced the thought aloud until Maylee replied.

  “He has so heard you, Renny. Plenty of times. When you visit me—and outdoors too.”

  Still skeptical, Renny didn’t reply. The man was Conn MacGovern’s employer, after all, and MacGovern was her employer. That being the case, the maestro was the head of this whole place and the boss of them all. Why would he even give her a thought?

  Still, she’d have to say that he was always kind enough when they chanced to meet—which was seldom indeed. He never treated her like most of the grownups back in Ireland had, as if she were no more than a troublesome dog on the street. To the contrary, he was politeness itself. He would give her a smile and a funny little bow and call her “Miss Renny,” almost as if she were a lady.

  Ha! That was because he couldn’t see her. One glance would tell him Renny Magee weren’t no lady! Though Vangie had done her best to tame her hair, it more often than not stuck out like a destroyed bird’s nest. And although she had taken to wearing a skirt now and again—only to humor Vangie, of course—she wore a pair of boy’s trousers under the skirt so she could climb a tree whenever she wanted or go hiking in the woods without scraping her legs.

  Maylee’s voice jarred her back to her surroundings. “Renny? You’re not afraid of the maestro, are you?”

  Renny straightened. “I’m afraid of no man,” she stated. “And certainly not a blind man.”

  Maylee looked hurt, and Renny instantly wished she could take her words back. “I didn’t mean anything,” she muttered. “But I’m not afraid.”

  In truth, she wasn’t afraid of him. It was just that she never quite knew how to act around the man or what to say. It was strange, even uncomfortable, knowing he couldn’t see her, when she could see him.

  “Well,” she said, giving a small laugh, “perhaps you ought to tell the maestro what I look like. That would take care of this peculiar notion of his, I’ll warrant.”

  “See,” said Maylee, “you’re doing it again.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Making light of yourself. The maestro wouldn’t care what you look like, even if you were ugly as an old witch—which you’re not. He wants you for the music you make with your tin whistle, not for the way you look.” She paused. “You don’t even know how pretty you are, do you, Renny?”

  Renny burst out laughing. “Now I know you’re crackers! You’re touched in the head for certain, girl!”

  Maylee just shook her head
. “You ought to appreciate what you have, Renny. You could always look like me, you know.”

  Renny swallowed, suddenly feeling awful. Poor Maylee, too thin by far, and with her almost bald scalp and peeling skin and old-age spots all over her hands and arms. There was no denying that she looked more like a little old lady than a girl of eleven years.

  “You’re pretty, too,” she lied without a qualm.

  Maylee smiled at her. “No, I’m not. But I will be someday.”

  Renny cocked her head and looked at her.

  “Some day I won’t look like my own grandmother anymore. I’ll have a perfect body, and I’ll be strong and healthy. Like you.”

  It dawned on Renny then, what the other girl was getting at. “You’re thinking about heaven,” she said.

  Maylee glanced toward the window, where the late afternoon sun had struck the glass jar of marbles with shafts of light that made them sparkle and flare. “Yes,” she said softly. “I think about heaven a lot.”

  When she turned back, there was a look in her eyes that squeezed Renny’s heart and yet made her wonder at the stillness her friend seemed to wear like a cloak.

  “Sometimes,” Maylee went on in the same quiet voice, “I can’t wait to get to heaven, so I won’t look like this or hurt anymore or be a bother to others. Some day I’ll be out of all this.”

  She glanced down at her frail body. “Someday I’ll be able to be myself, the way I really am inside, instead of what people think I am now, when they can only see the outside of me. I’ll be able to run. I could even challenge you to a race—what do you think of that? Or maybe I’ll even be able to fly.” She smiled. “I think it would be the finest thing of all, to be able to fly. To just throw off this ugly old body and fly free.”

  Renny didn’t know what to say. She simply stood, staring at the floor and trying hard not to think about the day Maylee was referring to. Because that day would mean her friend would be gone. Gone forever.

  “Now, then, Renny Magee,” Maylee broke into her thoughts, her tone now brisk and matter-of-fact. “You just march yourself down the hall and listen to what the maestro has to say. I promised I’d send you to him when you arrived, so you mustn’t wait any longer. Besides,” she added, “I’m very busy. I’m making you a present for Easter.”

  “You’re making me a present?”

  Maylee nodded. “Easter Sunday is next week, and I’m making something I think you’ll like. It’s not much, of course, since I can’t go out to get what I need. But Miss Susanna is helping me.” She paused. “I love Easter, don’t you? I love hearing about the empty tomb, how Jesus escaped from being dead and came back to life, to live forever.”

  Renny liked the story about Jesus rising from the dead, too, but right now her mind was racing, already trying to think of a gift—something special—she could get for Maylee. Only when the other girl gave her a stern look and wagged a finger at her, ordering her once more to “go,” did she start for the door.

  More than an hour later, Renny practically flew down the hill between the Big House and the MacGovern cottage.

  Maylee had been right! The maestro had asked her to play her tin whistle at the concert.

  There would be two fiddles, he’d said. Two fiddles, an Irish drum—the bodhran—and herself, with her tin whistle. She would be playing his music—music he’d written himself. A “selection” he’d called it, with an Irish “motif,” whatever that meant.

  He and Miss Susanna would help her with the music, he’d told her. “Although I expect you’ll pick it up quickly, gifted as you are,” he’d said.

  Gifted. A great musician like himself had called her “gifted”!

  Faith, and her not knowing the first thing about the dark squiggles on the paper he’d showed her or the fancy words he’d used in that Eye-talian way he had of speaking.

  And she was to be paid, he’d said! She would be paid to trill a tune or two with some fiddlers and a drum.

  Renny was tempted to pinch herself to make sure it was real!

  She was nearly wild with excitement, so much so that not until she reached the back door did the thought of the MacGoverns and their troubles come barreling in on her. But the minute she stepped into the kitchen and heard the babe wailing in the bedroom and saw Nell Grace all teary-eyed with wee Emma squirming in her arms, it all came rushing back.

  She felt a sting of guilt for allowing herself such happiness when the people she loved more than everything in the world were burdened with so much trouble.

  Only then did she remember that she probably wouldn’t even be here for that foolish concert in July. More than likely, she would be gone by then.

  And so, more than likely, would Maylee.

  19

  A MOTHER’S LOVE

  If I were drowned in the deepest sea,

  Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!

  I know whose tears would come down to me,

  Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!

  If I were damned o’ body and soul,

  I know whose prayers would make me whole,

  Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!

  RUDYARD KIPLING

  Conn MacGovern had known few days without worry over the past twenty years. Lately, he had known not even one.

  Pitchfork in hand, he straightened, catching the perspiration on his brow with his shirt sleeve. He stood leaning on the door of Amerigo’s stall, breathing in the pungent odors of the stables and the horses, staring at nothing, worrying about everything.

  Behind him, the big black stallion threw his glossy head over the door of the stall, snuffled Conn’s neck inquisitively, then snorted and returned to his restless pacing. They got along well, the big horse and the big Irishman. In a sense, they’d rescued each other—Amerigo from the brutal treatment of his previous handlers, Conn from a life of jobless misery in the slums of New York. Their chance encounter at the harbor, when Conn had managed to calm the frantic stallion and earned himself a position on Michael Emmanuel’s estate, had seemed like a new beginning, a harbinger of hope.

  But in just a few months—half a year—it had all gone sour.

  Conn’s stomach clenched and burned with the sense of dread that had hounded him for days. What with the pitiful look of his newborn son, the long faces of his other children, and his wife’s unrelenting sorrow, he felt himself engulfed by despair. Even Renny Magee seemed hard-pressed to force a true smile these days, a stark departure from her usual tomfoolery.

  Scarcely an hour went by these days when Conn wasn’t struck anew by the memory of how he had failed his wife throughout the years of their marriage—all the times when he couldn’t put food on the table, when they’d lost their home because he couldn’t find work and had no money for rent, when he couldn’t prevent his children’s illnesses because they couldn’t afford the needed medicines. Those past failures, bitter as they were, seemed small in comparison to his failure now to help his Vangie in her time of need.

  Always before, it had been she who managed to buoy him and the children, to rally their spirits and keep their hopes high. No matter how hard things were, Vangie’s strong faith invariably had held desperation at bay for them all.

  But now it was Vangie who was drowning in despair, and he seemed helpless entirely to save her. Nothing he said, nothing he did, made a difference. It was as if her grief at the loss of Aidan was gnawing a hole in her spirit, eating her up from within, where no healing could reach the wound.

  Conn had tried everything he could think of, but most of the time he had all he could do to keep from giving in to his own grief and sense of hopelessness. In front of the children, he did his best to hide his pain and keep a cheerful face. The children needed a strong father they could depend on, a father with a backbone, not a weak-kneed whiner as fearful as a child himself. But the truth was that without Vangie’s unflagging faith and optimism, he knew himself to be pitifully weak, a man undone.

  The stallion made one more circle of his roomy stal
l, tossed his head, and gave the walls a purposeful kick just to make the point that he could escape the stable if he wanted.

  “Ah, my boy,” Conn told him with a rueful smile, “we’ll be havin’ none of that. It’s wantin’ your own way so strong that gets you in trouble.”

  He leaned both elbows on the top of the stall and reflected, “Guess it’s what gets us all in trouble.”

  There was no escaping the fact that their son’s death was, at least in part, his own fault. If only he hadn’t waited so long to write and make peace with the boy, Aidan might have made the crossing sooner, thereby avoiding the doomed ship that had cost him his life. Or, if only he hadn’t been so hardheaded and, as Vangie often accused him, bent on asserting his will with the lad all the time, perhaps Aidan would have come across with the rest of the family and they wouldn’t have been separated to begin with.

  If only…if only…

  Conn knew no good could come of thinking this way. It did nothing but deepen the despondency in which he already felt trapped. What he needed to do was act, take steps to make things better. There must be something that would rouse Vangie from the state she was in, something that would make her smile again, allow her to hope.

  But what?

  He had asked himself that very question over and over again throughout these oppressive days, but there was never a reply, nothing but a cold and heartless silence.

  The thought occurred to him that perhaps he and the children had depended too much and too long on Vangie. And now that she needed them to be strong for her, they didn’t know how to begin.

  Perhaps for the time being the best they could do was to lean on each other. If they could be strong for one another, then perhaps some of that strength would eventually find its way to Vangie and she would see that this was her time to depend on them.

  Sighing deeply, Conn MacGovern picked up his pitchfork and opened the door to the next stall. Even when he didn’t know what to do, he always knew how to work.

  Vangie MacGovern stared down at the small red face at her breast. His tiny fists were clenched as if in anger, and he jabbed at her and the air even as he nursed.