EIGHTEEN
At about the time that Joseph began work at the restaurant, Stefan started to help his father on the farm. As a result, the two friends saw less and less of each other, but every so often they would still escape up to Tillman’s Wood with Johann Kliever’s rifle. They hid in the undergrowth and waited for unsuspecting wildlife to wander into their path. Their aims gradually improved. Stefan in particular had a good eye and was able to hit his target more often than not. They often walked back to Joseph’s house with a collection of dead animals in a sack, but not all outings were so successful. One hot afternoon in early summer, the boys had bickered at each other the whole time they lay hidden, and as a result they had missed everything they shot at. After two hours they trooped back down the hill, their bag still empty, both in foul moods. Each blamed the other for his misses. Stefan stormed through the forest with his father’s gun over his shoulder. Joseph hung back, seething in silent fury. He wanted no more to do with Stefan that day. As he made his way down the hill toward the house, Joseph realized that he now preferred Lomax’s company to Stefan’s.
When they approached the bottom of the hill, Stefan was so far ahead of Joseph that he was only just visible through the trees. Suddenly Stefan stopped moving. After a moment, he reached for the gun. “Oh, boy. Just wait until you see this!” he shouted. “Sitting target!”
“What is it?” called Joseph.
“Fat little beast,” said Stefan. “I think he’s
sunbathing
.” He raised the shotgun to his shoulder.
“Wait,” said Joseph, quickening his pace. Stefan appeared to be aiming directly into his backyard. “Don’t shoot anything until I—”
But Stefan did not wait.
The shot cracked through the air. Stefan lowered the weapon and yelled in delight. “Got him!”
By now Joseph was running as fast as he could. “What did you do?” he gasped.
“Down there on the roof,” said Stefan triumphantly.
My father squinted through the trees, cold dread clawing at his gut. On top of the old outhouse lay a familiar gray ball of fur. There was a dark stain on Mr. Jim’s exposed belly where Stefan’s bullet had scored a direct hit.
F
or three days Rosa would not leave her bedroom. The little house echoed with her grief. That fat little raccoon was the best friend she’d ever had, and now he was gone. My aunt wept and wept, inconsolable in her loss.
In the end, it was Lomax who rescued her.
One afternoon he knocked on the door of the bedroom and peered inside. As usual, Rosa was sitting on the bed, her face stained with tears.
“I got something for you,” he said. Under his arm he was carrying a flat piece of wood with black and white squares painted on it. He laid it down in the middle of the floor. “You know what this is?”
Rosa shook her head.
“This here is a chessboard. You ever heard of chess?”
Rosa shook her head again.
“It’s the greatest game in the world.” From his pocket Lomax produced a small bag. Inside were thirty-two tiny chess pieces. He tipped them onto the board and began arranging them in their starting positions. Rosa watched closely, not saying a word. “I carved these myself,” he said. “Want me to show you how to play?”
Rosa wiped her eyes, nodded, and clambered off the bed.
For the rest of the afternoon, Lomax showed her how each piece moved. My aunt did not blink as his long fingers glided across the board, pushing the two armies into war.
Finally Lomax groaned a little and stretched his arms above his head. “I tell you what. Sitting on the floor all afternoon is hard work when you’ve got bones as old as mine.” He looked out the window at the approaching twilight, and then back at my aunt. “I have to go now.”
For the first time in hours, Rosa moved. She reached out and grabbed his wrist. “Come back tomorrow,” she begged.
Lomax’s eyes twinkled. “I’ll be here.”
Every day after that Lomax sat on the floor and explained a new technique—the pin, the fork, the sacrifice. Rosa listened and watched. He never had to explain anything twice. Chess made complete sense to my aunt. She was hypnotized by the tapestry of patterns that could be spun by those wooden pieces. Within the game’s limitless permutations she found a means of expressing herself. She improved with mesmerizing speed, fueled by natural flair and ferocious determination.
Chess was always more than just a game to Rosa. She waged war over that board. After a while Lomax stopped giving her lessons and they just played. As kindly as he could, he thrashed Rosa day after day, but each loss just made her more determined to win the next time. She spent hours alone with her chess set, learning the secrets hidden within those sixty-four squares.
With his homemade chessboard Lomax opened up a whole new world for Rosa. There she could escape the sadness of her loss. Little by little, the light returned to her eyes.
A
fter the shooting, Joseph and Stefan did not go hunting again.
Perhaps it was inevitable that the boys’ friendship would not survive the incident undamaged. Joseph was angry with Stefan for what he had done, even though his friend hadn’t known that Mr. Jim was Rosa’s pet. It didn’t help that Stefan was unrepentant about what had happened. To him the episode was nothing more than a fine piece of marksmanship. When Joseph explained about Rosa’s attachment to the raccoon, Stefan laughed in his face and then marched down the hill, the gun slung over his shoulder. Joseph stood there and watched him go.
They did not see each other for several weeks after that. When Stefan finally appeared and shrugged a lazy apology, Joseph knew that things would never be the same again. He could still hear the harsh bark of his friend’s mockery in his head. Perhaps inevitably, he turned more and more to Lomax for comfort and advice. Whether Lomax was qualified to dispense the kind of wisdom that Joseph was hoping for is perhaps questionable; but he was there, and he was willing. Joseph sought Lomax’s opinion on a wide variety of topics, but in the end his questions would always circle back toward Cora Leftkemeyer.
Joseph and Lomax now found themselves disagreeing about what should be done about Cora. Lomax maintained that further theorizing was useless. It was time for Joseph to put all that talk into practice. Joseph knew that Lomax was right, but by then his infatuation was so all-consuming that the prospect of rejection was unthinkable.
Lomax saw the despair in his young friend’s eyes, but he was losing patience. “You think that girl’s gonna wait for you?” he asked. “You think she’s tellin’ all them other fellas to skit, ’cause she’s waiting for her little neighbor to summon up the courage to talk to her?” He shook his head. “She don’t even know you
exist
, Joseph. Every time you see her comin’, you start off in the other direction as fast as you can go.”
This was true enough. Cora and her father had visited the restaurant the previous week and Joseph had been so terrified that he hid in the kitchen and begged Jette to take their order.
“I’m just not ready,” he told Lomax.
Lomax sighed. “You keep this up and you won’t need to worry about being
ready
.”
Every night Joseph tossed and turned in his bed, miserably awake, unable to escape his tortured thoughts of his beautiful neighbor. One evening, as he stared into the darkness, unable to sleep, he decided to go and see Lomax. Even his friend’s grouchy disapproval had to be better than this. He quietly pulled on his clothes and slipped out of the house.
The streets were quiet. An almost full moon bathed the town in a ghostly light. As he approached the restaurant, Joseph heard Lomax’s cornet floating through the still night air, cushioned on a soft piano chord. He stopped and listened. It was difficult to imagine a life without Lomax now.
Just then Joseph heard approaching footsteps. Not wanting to be caught out so late, he stepped into the shadows cast by the restaurant wall. A moment later a trio of dark silhouettes appeared, moving stealthily and with purpose. The men walked right past him, unaware of his presence, and vanished around the corner of the building. Joseph stood frozen. There was no reason for these men to be here, so late at night.
He heard a soft knock at the back door, three brisk raps and then two slower ones. The music stopped. A moment later there was a low murmur of voices, but Joseph couldn’t make out what was being said. He remained hidden in the darkness, his stomach a churning pit of apprehension. Finally Lomax’s mysterious visitors began to walk back down the alleyway. My father held his breath as they passed by him for a second time, walking more quickly now. After a moment Lomax resumed his quiet music-making at the piano.
Joseph stood in the shadows, lost in thought. Then he crept down the alleyway, took a deep breath, and knocked on the door—three quick thumps, two slow. Moments later the door opened. He heard Lomax before he saw him.
“You folks must be thirsty tonight if you already—Aw, shit.”
They looked at each other in silence.
Finally Joseph found some words. “What are you
doing
, Lomax?”
Lomax crossed his arms. “I might ask you the same question. Why aren’t you in bed?”
“I couldn’t sleep, so I came to see you. Who were those men?”
Lomax blinked. “What men?”
“The ones who just knocked on your door. The ones you thought were
thirsty
.”
The word hung between them. Lomax studied Joseph for a moment and then shrugged his shoulders. “Man’s gotta make a living,” he said.
“A living?”
“People can’t buy liquor anymore, but they’re still thirsty.”
Joseph frowned. “So you’re—”
“Making a little moonshine, that’s right. Little trick I learned long time ago.” Lomax gestured behind him. “There’s a whole kitchen back here,” he explained. “Seemed a shame not to use it.”
“But what if you get caught?” asked Joseph, fretful.
“Caught by who?” Lomax asked. “The chief of police, that Mr. Scott, he’s my best customer. He already drunk the rest of the town dry, and now he got himself a little taste for it.” Lomax laughed softly. “I ain’t worried about him.” He paused. “You know who I
am
worried about?”
“Who?”
“Your mother. If she hears about this, she’ll whup my behind and send me packing so fast my head’ll spin.” He eyed Joseph. “You gonna tell her?”
More than anything, Joseph didn’t want Lomax to leave. He shook his head.
And so Lomax continued to operate his clandestine business from the back door of the restaurant under cover of darkness. The diners seemed oblivious to all that illicit late-night trade, but they weren’t, of course. Many of them would quietly return at night, skulking down the dark alleyway in search of a bottle of Lomax’s fearful brew.
S
ince Frederick’s departure for the war in Europe, Jette and her children had struggled through each uncertain day. Lomax became a new sun around which to orbit, and their unsettled existence finally came to an end. Joseph was learning to be a man. Rosa had found solace and reward at the chessboard. Jette’s new business was under way. She was finally able to imagine a new future for them all.
It was Lomax who was the curator of these dreams. This stranger brought hope to my family, and with it, peace.
NINETEEN
By then Joseph was sixteen years old. He enjoyed being a workingman, and was pleased that his job at the restaurant meant he no longer had to go to school. His favorite time of the day was early in the morning. He quietly performed his chores, folding napkins, cleaning silverware, and setting tables. He relished the solitude. When the doors opened and the outside world swept in, he would not have another moment to himself.
Alone, he often sang to himself. His angelic treble had deepened to a warm and rich tenor, just like his father’s. Joseph had begun to sing the songs and arias that he had heard Frederick perform in that same room. The music had been buried somewhere deep within him, and now it emerged, note-perfect, after years of silence.
One morning he was singing snatches of
Rigoletto
as he swept the floor of the dining room. Lomax emerged yawning from the kitchen, and leaned against the door frame, watching. When Joseph finally noticed him, he stopped at once.
“You never told me you could sing,” said Lomax.
Joseph looked sheepish, and then grinned.
“You ever thought about serenading your pretty little neighbor?”
“Cora?” Joseph looked doubtful.
Lomax nodded. “She might like to hear that.”
Of course, Joseph knew the story of Frederick’s musical ambush of his mother, that Sunday afternoon in Hanover. He stood in the middle of the floor, lost in thought.
That night Joseph crept out of the house just before midnight. Lomax was waiting for him by the gate.
“You ready?” he asked.
Joseph shook his head. “Not really.”
Lomax patted him gently on the back. The Leftkemeyers’ house stood in darkness. They walked around the side of the building until they were standing beneath a window. “This the one?” whispered Lomax.
Joseph nodded. “I think so.”
“What you goin’ to sing, anyway?”
“‘Nessun dorma.’”
Lomax looked at him.
“It’s Italian,” explained Joseph. “It means ‘Nobody sleeps.’”
“You don’t know nothin’ in
English
?”
“But this is from
Turandot
.”
“Look, it could be from Tallahassee for all I care. But this girl don’t speak Italian, far as I know, and—”
Joseph touched Lomax’s arm, suddenly calm, confident. Puccini had pedigree when it came to this sort of thing. “I think it’ll work,” he said.
Lomax shook his head. “Nobody sleeps, huh. Well, let’s hope you got that bit right.” He squeezed Joseph’s shoulder. “I’ll be over there.” He pointed to a nearby tree. “And remember, don’t say
nothing
. Just let the music do the work.”
“So I just sing the song and then disappear?”
“Right.”
“And what if she doesn’t recognize me?”
“Oh, don’t you worry about that.” Lomax grinned. “Now go sing.” And with a wave he retreated into the darkness.
The night air was warm and still. Joseph gazed at the sky, wondering whether Frederick was up there somewhere, willing him on. Finally, he turned toward Cora’s bedroom window, quietly humming the opening bars of the aria to make sure he had the pitch about right. He crossed his fingers and took a deep breath.
Lomax couldn’t see anything from behind the tree. As he stood in the darkness, waiting for Joseph’s song to begin, it occurred to him that none of the women
he
had ever known were at their sweetest or most romantically inclined when unexpectedly woken up in the middle of the night. As the minutes passed, he became increasingly apprehensive. Finally, he poked his head around the tree trunk and squinted toward the Leftkemeyer house.
Joseph stood in a patch of moonlight beneath Cora’s window. His body weaved in gentle rhythm. One hand rested on his chest, the other was raised up to the heavens. Lomax watched as his lips formed all those beautiful Italian words.
Not one sound came out of my father’s mouth.
T
he next night they tried again. And the next. For a week Lomax watched as Joseph fought for control of his mutinous vocal cords. Each night my father would finally retreat, his face hot with tears. Not even the ardor of first love could free him from his old phobia of public performance. Perhaps that should have been no surprise. Cora Leftkemeyer was the most important audience of all.
Joseph was devastated. His silence became a prison from which he could not escape. The strain of his nightly frustrations began to show. His eyes became ringed by dark shadows of exhaustion. He yawned as he took orders and ferried plates to and from the kitchen, his mind still trapped beneath Cora’s window. To make matters worse, his father’s ghost had settled on his shoulder. Joseph wanted to live up to Frederick’s legacy. He longed for his own story to tell about Puccini.
Lomax was soon wishing he had never suggested the idea. He loved Joseph, and he couldn’t bear to watch him suffer. Joseph continued to make his nightly pilgrimage alone. The hopelessness of the situation revealed a stubborn streak within him. He had no plan except to carry on, in the hope that one night his voice would finally emerge from his throat, fluttering into the night air like a magical bird in a fairy tale.
Luckily, Lomax didn’t believe in fairy tales.
I
t was a Sunday afternoon in September. Joseph had been singing silently beneath Cora Leftkemeyer’s bedroom for almost a month, and he looked wretched. He was sweeping up the first fall of leaves from the maple tree at the bottom of the yard, and he sang as he worked. Lomax and Jette watched him from just inside the kitchen door, where they could not be seen.
“He has a fine voice,” said Lomax.
“Just like his father,” murmured Jette.
They were silent for a moment as they listened. “Miss Jette,” said Lomax, “why are you hiding?”
She turned to look at him. “Didn’t you know?” she said. “Joseph can’t sing in front of people.”
“He can’t?”
“Not if he knows they’re there.”
“He never told me that,” said Lomax thoughtfully.
“It’s a long story.” Jette was silent for a moment as she remembered storming out of the Nick-Nack before Joseph’s first public performance. No measure of regret could ever unpick the past. All that beautiful music was inside him, and she had trapped it there for good. She had always considered her furtive listening penance for what she had done. “His voice is so beautiful.” She sighed. “Where are you going?”
“Be right back,” said Lomax.
A few minutes later Lomax was leading a wide-eyed Cora Leftkemeyer across the yard toward her future.
He motioned for her to stop behind a small row of tightly clustered spruce trees. He held his index finger in the air. “Listen,” he whispered. Joseph was invisible behind the wall of green, but his voice floated through the air. The melody was sweet and clear and true. The two of them stood silently behind the trees, listening to my father sing. They must have looked an odd sight. Lomax towered over the girl, whose skin was as white as his was black. He wore his usual old shirt and tattered overalls. Cora was still dressed in her best church clothes. After a while Lomax pointed to a spot where she could look through a small gap in the trees. Cora moved forward and stared through the branches. Then she did not move for some time.
Finally she stepped back and turned to Lomax. “Why have you brought me here?” she asked. Her cheeks were flushed.
“Miss, do you know who that is?”
“He’s my neighbor’s son.”
“Your neighbor’s son, that’s right.” Lomax nodded. “His name is Joseph Meisenheimer. He’s a friend of mine.”
The two were silent for a moment as they listened some more.
“Why have you brought me here?” asked Cora again.
“Go to your bedroom window at midnight tonight,” said Lomax softly. “Look outside. See what you see.”
T
hat night, Cora Leftkemeyer hid by her bedroom window and watched Joseph perform his silent tribute. She stood quite still, her fingers coiled tightly around the fabric of the curtain. It was a cloudless evening, and in the light of the moon Cora could see his lips moving soundlessly. She remembered the voice she had heard that afternoon, rich and clear, full of beauty and hope.
The following evening, Cora knew that sleep was a million miles away. She made a careful chink in the curtains and stared out of it, waiting. The Leftkemeyers’ garden was cast in ghostly shadows, as still as the clock on her wall.
When Joseph finally appeared beneath her window, she felt her heart tumble. Once again, when he opened his mouth, no sound emerged. But it no longer mattered.
Cora Leftkemeyer could hear his song.