How High the Moon (16 page)

And Walking Doll did look more like a kid than a lady as she wheeled her way back to us, her head lolled sideways because she was laughing so hard, her cheeks bright pink as she jumped off. Just then, Mr. Miller’s Lincoln Continental reached the stop sign. Walking Doll stopped giggling, but she put a smile on her face as she poked her hip out to the side and ran her hand down it. Mr. Miller watched her without turning his head all the way.

After his car passed, we could see that he was gawking in his rearview mirror. “I don’t like Mr. Miller,” I said. “He sounds mean when he talks to Teddy, even when he’s smiling. His girl, Susie, is mean like him, too. Though she doesn’t even try to sound nice.” I said this like I’d forgotten that Teddy was a Benedict Arnold.

“Oh, he’s a bastard all right,” Walking Doll said, her voice quiet and low like a growl.

I looked up at her. “Then why’d you smile at him?” I asked. She
didn’t answer. She just kept staring down the street with narrowed eyes, watching Mr. Miller’s Lincoln disappear. Walking Doll didn’t look like a kid no more.

The last of the day’s sun dipped down behind the tin roof of Pop’s store, so that the glare that was usually there on sunny days was gone. “You better go home now, kid. It’s getting dark, and we’ve got things to do.”

I was half of a block from home when I saw Teddy on the sidewalk, coming from the Frys’ house and going to ours, holding a bundle wrapped in tinfoil like it was a baby. (That was Teddy for you. So good that he wouldn’t walk on the grass, even if it was yellowing from a lack of rain.)

Across the street, Jolene and Jennifer were sitting on their steps when I pulled into my yard, the white toes of their new shoes glow-in-the-dark bright. “Hey, Teaspoon,” Jolene called, “want to come over and see our new saddle shoes?” I pretended I couldn’t hear them over the shouting match Jack and James were having in their yard, and scootered around my house to sit on the back steps.

I should have known that Poochie would start snarling the second I got back there. Poochie was like that. Even when he caught a glimpse of people on the sidewalk, he went nuts. Snarling and biting at the air like he thought they were going to come into his yard and pull out his vocal cords, even though I’ll bet not one person in the whole neighborhood would have stepped into that yard to do that, even they wanted to. I wanted to yell at Poochie to stop getting his fur in a bundle, but I didn’t want Teddy to hear me. Not that yelling would have done any more good than Mrs. Fry’s twisted knuckles giving him a warning rap against the kitchen window, which is exactly what she was doing.

Teddy must have gotten suspicious that I was in the backyard when he heard Poochie carrying on, though, because a few seconds later the doorknob jiggled and Teddy poked his head out.

I pressed myself flat against the corner of the house, siding
scraping like sandpaper against my back as I hid in the dark shadow coming from the bush. Teddy opened the door and stepped out. Standing on the steps and cocking his pointy head this way and that, being nosier than I ever was. “Teaspoon?” he called.

Poochie’s barks gobbled up my name the second time he called it.

Teddy stood there for a bit, looked over at Poochie, and went back inside.

“You girls seen Teaspoon?” I heard him call from the front door a few seconds later. And then the sound of Jolene Jackson’s voice, screechy as a finger rubbing against wet glass. “She went around the back of your house a few minutes ago.” I made a mental note to punch her twice as hard the next time we fought.

Teddy came out the back door again, his hands hanging limp, then finding their way into his pockets. “Why didn’t you answer me when I called?” he asked, even though I don’t think he knew exactly where I was. When I didn’t answer, he sat down.

“I know you’re mad at me, Teaspoon,” he said, talking to me like I was sitting beside him. “And I can’t say that I blame you. I know how it looked, me sitting right there, letting Charlie touch your ma’s piano.”

I wanted to stay hidden, but when my mad came out, so did I. I stepped into the glow made by the Frys’ porch light. “Why’d you do it, Teddy?” I didn’t want to cry, but I could feel that my eyes were going to make tears anyway.

“Well, Teaspoon,” Teddy said with a sigh. “Because I looked at Charlie. That’s why. Haven’t you ever noticed the way that boy looks at your ma’s piano when he comes over? Like he’s starving to death for the sounds only that piano can make.”

“Charlie don’t look like he’s starving for anything to me,” I said.

“Teaspoon,” Teddy warned. “You know what I’m talking about. Tonight when Mrs. Fry suggested he play, Charlie’s eyes lit up. I could see his fingers twitching.”

“His fingers
always
twitch,” I reminded Teddy. I crossed my arms.

“Teaspoon, you’re lucky. Your gift is in your voice, and you can
open that gift anytime you want. But imagine if it wasn’t. If you needed an instrument to make music happen. And it was taken from you.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go stealing his ma’s vocal cords if mine got taken away, that’s for sure.”

“Come on now,” Teddy said. “Hurt and upset as you are, you know that’s silly.”

I wanted to smart-mouth Teddy some more, but I couldn’t because I had a lump the size of a fist in my throat.

“Teaspoon, Charlie won’t wreck that piano by playing it. He’ll help it stay in tune.”

“He’ll get gunk all over it, Teddy. You’ve seen Charlie’s hands. They’re as grubby as my elbows—always smeared with dried jelly, dirt, or head scabs… who knows what else.”

“Then ask him to wash before he plays.” Teddy sighed. “Teaspoon, you know what it feels like to miss a mother, now don’t you? But at least you can have hope that you’ll see yours again. Charlie won’t be reunited with his dad until he’s a grown man, and he’ll never see his mother again. That’s pretty sad, now, isn’t it?”

“Boy, Teddy. You might not be a sinner, but maybe you
do
need to start going to church if you don’t know that Charlie
will
see his ma again. In heaven.”

Teddy stood up. “Okay. If you don’t want Charlie touching your ma’s piano, I won’t make you change your mind. What I will ask you to do, though, is to give it some thought. Living with regrets over what we did, or didn’t do, is a heavy burden to carry, Teaspoon. Now come on inside. It’s late.”

I went straight to my room and flopped on my bed. Through my shut door, I could hear water sloshing in the tub as Teddy wrung out his work clothes. My shade was up and the Frys’ drapes were open. Their lamp was shut off but each time the TV screen flickered bright, I could see Charlie’s head.

I didn’t want to admit that I was luckier than Charlie. But Charlie’s ma
was
in heaven, while mine was only in Hollywood. And mine was coming home as soon as she made her dream come true, but Charlie wouldn’t get to see his ma until he was an old man and got called home. And if I was forgetting my ma in five years, Charlie probably wouldn’t even remember his ma’s face by the time he got to the Pearly Gates. He might even walk right past her without knowing it was her.

Maybe it was thinking about Charlie’s dead ma that made me remember the old funeral song, because even with one ear pressed against my flat pillow, that’s what I heard myself humming.

It was the song that the old lady who lived down the hall above the bar in Peoria taught me, because she didn’t think it was right for a kid to be singing barroom songs. She taught me two of them, and when Ma came back because I puked on the old lady’s quilt and cat, I sang them both for her. Ma didn’t like them, though. She clamped her hands over the sides of her head like earmuffs and said, “Oh, those funeral songs give me the willies. Sing something else, Teaspoon.”

I could hear Ma saying that, and almost stopped myself when the humming turned to soft singing. Almost like she could hear me. But I wasn’t singing it for her anyway. I was singing it for Charlie. Even if he couldn’t hear me. Just as I sang it a long time ago for the old jukebox man.

It was the night before we pulled out of Peoria, and the regulars from downstairs had a little party for us. We even got a going-away cake, chocolate with vanilla frosting. They bought Ma beers until she was tippy, and gave me so much soda pop that my belly got fat and achy (I didn’t know how to burp on purpose then). All night long the regulars kept asking Ma why we had to go, and every time, she’d answer, “I told you. You sit too long in one place, and you grow mushrooms under your ass.”

It was a fun party, but still I felt bad because I knew I’d never see
those people again. Not Stella, who’d made the cake and who had hands spotted like a leopard and who called me Toots before and after I got the name Teaspoon. Rusty, who came straight from work every night, dirt still under his fingernails, and always bought two beers and one candy bar for me. Don, who was my ma’s boyfriend from time to time, who once picked me up and gave me a piggyback ride around the pool table, and later taught me to play a little. But the one that caused me to feel the saddest at the thought of never seeing him again was the old jukebox man.

He hadn’t come the Wednesday before we were leaving, and when I asked Clem who owned the bar if he was coming to our party, he said probably not, because he wasn’t a regular. Just the jukebox man. “His wife died last week,” he said. “That’s why he didn’t show up Wednesday. Doesn’t matter, though. He comes more than he needs to, anyway.”

But he did come. Not to scoop coins out of the jukebox, but to say his good-byes.

He went to Ma first and took off his hat, standing beside her stool until she stopped talking to Don and turned to look at him. His whole body made little nods as he wished her well in her move and in life, and the whole time he talked to her, his old eyes were peeking sideways down at me.

When Ma went back to her laughing and talking with the regulars, the old jukebox man asked me if I’d sing for him, one last time. I told him I would, and the folks at the bar who’d heard him ask started shouting out their favorites. But I didn’t pay any attention to what they were yelling. Instead I watched the old man, who was walking over to the jukebox, slower than I’d ever saw him walk before, his back folded over like the heavy sad he was feeling was sitting right on his shoulders.

So I stopped, right there in the middle of the empty floor. And I started singing the best of those two funeral songs the old lady had taught me—“Amazing Grace”—because the jukebox man had a funeral.

I sang it
Acapolka
, because that song wasn’t on the jukebox.
Closing my eyes so I could sing it good, because I wanted it to be like one of those parting gifts they give game show contestants who don’t win, and I wanted the prize to be good.

I guess the people on the stools only wanted to hear barroom songs, because they didn’t clap when I finished the song. They just sat there, a few of them wiping their eyes, until Ma lifted her glass and said, “What is this, a party or a funeral?” and they laughed and turned around to pin their elbows back on the bar.

But not the jukebox man.

He just stood there looking at me with watery eyes, his lips twitching like they didn’t know if they wanted to turn up or down. Then he came to me and lifted me up, his arm holding me like the seat of a swing.

“Teaspoon,” he said. “I hope the only blue you ever have in your life is the blue in your eyes. But if those sad times come—which they’re bound to—you remember to keep a song in your heart. Making music when you’re happy, it got the power to heal others. But making music when you’re sad, it got the power to heal you.”

He took one of my dusty feet and gave my toes a jiggle with hands like Mr. Morgan’s, chocolate on top and vanilla on the bottom. “It don’t matter if that hurt go all the way down to here. Music will reach down there, scoop it up, and leave them feeling light enough to tap again.”

Then the old jukebox man itsy-bitsy-spidered two fingers up my leg and across my belly. Pausing over the place that thumped when I ran extra-fast or got scared, telling me that the music would lift the sad from there, too, then he itsy-bitsied to just under my chin. “And then the music stops here,” he said, making a tickle on my neck, “melting that lump that’s making your throat close up like a fist.” Then he reached his fingers above my head, as high as his hand could reach, “Carrying that sad all the way to heaven so the good Lord—who got bigger and stronger arms than you—can hold it for you.”

I didn’t even know I still had that memory in me, but I guess I
did. And remembering it made me look over at Charlie’s house and feel twice as sad for him. Sitting in that old-smelling house with nothing to do but watch love stories with no happy endings, with no means to make music that could carry his sad up to Jesus.

I didn’t call to Teddy to say I was going over to the Frys’, I just wiped my eyes and went.

“Who is it, Charlie?” Mrs. Fry called when Charlie answered my knock.

“Teaspoon,” he said.

“Teaspoon?” Mrs. Fry said, like she’d either forgotten who I was, or didn’t hear.

Teddy said that watching TV in a dark room was bad for your eyes. Mrs. Fry was half blind already, so I guess she didn’t think it mattered if she lost what little sight she had left—though she should have thought of Charlie, who had enough afflictions already, without her turning him into a four-eyes. I poked my head into the dark room. “Just me, Mrs. Fry. I came to say I’m sorry about being so naughty tonight. I didn’t mean to act up like that. I’ve got afflictions, though. Like your Poochie. But I’m going to learn to do better because I got somebody to help me now. Anyway, I’m sorry.”

Mrs. Fry stretched her neck out, like maybe I could hear her a bit better over the blaring TV if she leaned forward. “You make your peace with Teddy, too?”

“I did,” I said.

“Good, because he’s a good man. And he’s doing right by you.”

“I know that,” I said.

I asked Charlie to step out on the porch, where it was dark and he couldn’t see that I’d been crying, and I said my sorrys to him. “And you can play my ma’s piano whenever you want, but you have to wash your hands first. With soap. Every time. Got it?” Charlie nodded fast and grinned like a chimp.