“EARTH TO MARTIN. Earth to Martin.” The entire American history class exploded in laughter. Martin jumped and sat up straight.
“Yes, sir?” he said, keeping his eyes on his desk. He traced the carving in the grimy wood with his finger. Jo Ellen Loves Roy.
“You care to join us, Mr. Pittman?” the teacher said.
Martin said, “Yes, sir,” although actually no, he didn't care to join them. He'd rather have stayed where he'd been before he was so rudely interrupted. Playing the violin. Outdoors somewhere. Nobody else around. Nobody scuffing their shoes or thumping their pencils or popping their chewing gum.
Martin watched the minute hand on the clock over the door jerk straight up. He was out the door and halfway down the hall before the bell had finished ringing. He turned toward the main office, ducking and dodging the rush of kids scurrying in the opposite direction. Outside the guidance counselor's office, Martin stopped to examine the bulletin board that covered the dirty wall. It was a crazy quilt of notices and fliers. Charlene needed a ride to Atlanta. Randy would paint, do yard work, or house-sit. Candace W. was looking for a nonsmoking baby-sitter for three small children.
“You want free rabbits?”
Martin turned to see Sybil inspecting the bulletin board, her hands jammed into the pockets of her baggy jeans. One toe of her sneakers was covered with silver duct tape.
Martin ran his hand over the top of his head. “Nope,” he said. “I used to have a rabbit.”
Sybil cocked her head. “What happened to it?”
“I turned it loose in the woods.”
“How come?”
Martin grinned. “It was Easter.”
Sybil smiled and looked back at the bulletin board. “What are you looking for?” she asked.
“Just looking.”
“Need a job?”
Martin shot her a look. How come she always knew so much about him? This girl was downright spooky sometimes. “I need thirty-seven dollars and twenty-two cents,” he said, pretending to read a notice on the bulletin board.
Why had he said that? What was he going to say when she asked, “What for?”
“Me, I just like to look,” she said. “You never know what you might find on a bulletin board. My mom found a divorced white male looking for a fun-loving, romantic blonde. Only problem was he forgot to mention that he didn't have a job, is ugly as sin, and was going to move in with his sister in Dallas. Then again, I guess my mom didn't see that as a problem, seeing as how she hightailed it out to Dallas like a dog in heat.”
Sybil slung her backpack over her shoulder. “Good luck finding a job,” she said.
Her baggy jeans flapped as she walked away, making a whooshing sound that echoed in the empty hallway. Martin waited until she was out of sight before following her. Just as he opened the big double doors and went out into the bright sunlight, Sybil was skateboarding down the sidewalk, her jeans billowing out like sails on a sailboat. As she passed, she looked at Martin and saluted. He tried not to, but he couldn't stop himself. He smiled and saluted back.
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Martin went back to Pickens twice to make sure the violin was still there. He hadn't gone into the shop, just stood outside staring in the window, imagining that he was playing the violin.
Once a woman had stood beside him, looking in the window, too. Martin's stomach had balled up tight, and his heart had jumped clean up into his throat. It hadn't occurred to him that anyone else had a perfect right to walk
into that shop and buy his violin. He had watched the woman out of the corner of his eye. When she leaned over and squinted to get a better look at something, he followed her gaze. A gold locket in a velvet case. Martin nearly jumped up and kissed her.
He felt like he was going to bust wide open if he didn't tell somebody about the violin. For the longest time, he had been afraid that if he said the words out loud, the violin might disappear. Martin believed a broken mirror guaranteed a person seven years' bad luck. He avoided anything with the number 13 on it. Hadn't stepped on a sidewalk crack in his whole life. And up to now, he had been pretty lucky about most things. He didn't want to spoil his luck, but it seemed like the time had come to tell Wylene.
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“Shoot,” Martin said under his breath when he heard the music floating out of Wylene's trailer. Frank Sinatra poor-me-I' m-so-lonesome-and-nobody-loves-me songs. That meant Wylene was in a mood. Sure enough, she came to the door red-nosed and teary-eyed.
“Hey,” Martin said with exaggerated cheeriness. He pretended not to notice her pouty mouth.
“Hey.” She flipped up the latch on the screen door but didn't open it for him.
Inside the trailer, Martin had to adjust his eyes to the darkness. A fan whirred back and forth in the corner. It was barely four o'clock in the afternoon, but Wylene had her bathrobe on.
“Fourteen more days of school,” Martin said. He stuck a
finger in the parakeet cage and let Pudgie peck it. “I sure got me a case of summer fever.”
“Mmmm.” Wylene propped her feet up on the coffee table and fanned herself with a
Reader's Digest.
“What's the matter?” Martin couldn't believe he had asked that. He felt like a big ole trout being reeled into the boat.
Wylene took a deep breath and let it out in a gush of a sigh. “I don't know,” she said, shaking her head slowly and looking down at her slippers. “You know, every night I go to bed telling myself tomorrow's a new day. And every morning I wake up saying today I'll be happy. But somewhere between waking up and going to bed again, Mr. Sad and Lonely sneaks in and grabs me. And no matter how hard I try, I can't shake him off.”
Suddenly resentment oozed over Martin like a quart of molasses in a pint jar. Finding that violin was about the best thing that had ever happened to him. He had come here ready to share his good news with his closest friend, and there she sat in a red bathrobe crying for no good reason.
“I found a violin,” he blurted out.
Wylene stopped fanning and looked at him.
“A what?”
“A violin.”
They stared at each other for a minute. The fan whirred soothingly back and forth. Frankie crooned on about strangers in the night.
Wylene sat up. The sag in her shoulders lifted. “Where?”
“Pickens. In a pawnshop.”
“Well, I'll be”.
Funny, now that he had told her, Martin didn't know what to say next.
“Well?” Wylene said, dipping her head slightly in anticipation.
“Well ⦔ Martin looked around the room. He had thought so much about that violin, but sitting here in Wylene's trailer actually talking about it made him realize that most of his thoughts had been fantasies, crazy little dreams that were about as far away from reality as an acorn from an oak tree.
“Well?” Wylene said again.
“Well, I don't know.”
“What do you mean, you don't know?” Wylene looked at him like he was some kind of lunatic or something. He was beginning to wish he hadn't told her.
“I mean, I don't know,” he said a little louder.
“Well, don't you see? That's the perfect instrument for you, Martin.” Wylene stood up. “I don't know why I never thought of it before. It's much better than a piano! It's small. It don't take up a bit of space. You could keep it right under your bed. And you can play all kinds of music on it. It's practically the sweetest-sounding instrument there is.” She paced back and forth, gesturing excitedly. “I mean, it's perfect.” She drew the last word out long and loud, then stopped suddenly and looked at Martin.
“Well?” she said again.
“There's only one problem,” Martin said. “I don't have fifty dollars.”
“Well, get fifty dollars.”
“How?”
“I don't know. Sell something. Collect bottles. Get a paper route. For heaven's sake, Martin, it ain't fifty million dollars”
“The money's not the problem.”
“Then what is the problem?”
“There ain't no way Daddy's gonna let me have a violin.”
There! He had said it at last, the thought that had been there since the first moment he had stood in front of J. H. Lawrence and Son. The thought that had been so tiny and hidden away, but he had known it was there. Like a chigger you can't see but sure can feel the itch of.
Wylene looked at him with one of the calmest faces he'd ever seen her wear.
“Well then,” she said slowly, “you just explain to your daddy that you have a gift. That the good Lord has blessed you with the gift of music.”
“I don't think he wants to hear about the good Lord, Wylene”
“Then you tell him to mind his own damn business and leave you the hell alone!”
Martin stared at Wylene, his mouth hanging open. He had never heard Wylene so much as raise her voice, and now she was doing it and using cuss words to boot.
Wylene sat down and took a deep breath. She looked at
Martin with such serious eyes he couldn't look back at her. He wove his fingers in and out of the crocheted afghan folded neatly on the back of the couch, trying to prepare himself for whatever serious thing she was about to say.
“I would never in my life hurt your feelings on purpose, Martin,” she said. “You been a good friend to me. Better than anybody else. Better than my own kin even. That's why it hurts me to watch you being kicked around like a stray cat.”
She leaned forward and peered into Martin's face. “I sit here every weekend and watch you go off to them ball games, and it dern near tears my heart out,” she continued. “I can't help but wonder what kind of daddy would make his son do something that was so against his natureâand then add insult to injury by denying him what he was put on this earth to love.”
Martin cleared his throat. He picked dirt out of his fingernails. He looked at the clock and was relieved to see it wasn't suppertime yet. He felt a long walk coming on.
“HOT KRISPY KREMES,” Hazeline sang as she came into the trailer.
“You're late.” Ed Pittman didn't look up from the TV.
“Well, good morning to you, too, Sunshine,” Hazeline said, a cigarette bobbing up and down in the corner of her mouth. “Mmmm, don't these smell good?”
Martin hurried over to get a doughnut. He took a bite of the warm, sweet dough. There was nothing in the world like a Krispy Kreme doughnut. It was like biting into a sugar-coated cloud. Hazeline had a knack for getting to the doughnut shop when the doughnuts were still hot.
“What time is this damn game, anyway?” she asked.
Mr. Pittman cocked his head and looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “This damn game is in twenty minutes. And if Zsa Zsa Gabor in there don't get a move on, we're gonna be late.
“Move it, Doris!” he yelled, making Martin jump.
Martin wiped his sticky fingers on his baseball uniform and took another doughnut. Usually before a game he was too nervous to eat. But today was different. Ever since he'd seen the violin, he'd felt different about everythingâeven baseball. He couldn't figure out exactly how or why. He just knew he did. A little more peaceful, maybe. It was almost as if the violin had given him the tiniest little glimpse into a future that could be his. At first he had wanted that violin so bad he was ready to run back to Pickens and throw a rock through the pawnshop window to get it. He'd take the next Greyhound bus to anywhere, just him and his violin. But of course that idea had simmered down to more rational thinking. That was where he was nowârational thinking. But rational thinking was an art he hadn't quite perfected yet.
“I'm coming.” Doris Pittman came out of the tiny bedroom yanking pink curlers out of her hair. “I smell doughnuts.”
“Why you making Martin do this, Ed?” Hazeline asked, glaring at her son, her hands on her hips, skinny elbows jutting out to the side.
“Do what, Mamma?” Mr. Pittman asked.
“This baseball crap is what.”
“I don't consider baseball crap.”
“Well, maybe Martin considers baseball crap. You ever think of asking him?” For such a small woman, Hazeline had a way of filling up the whole trailer.
Martin's father turned. “You consider baseball crap, son?” he asked slowly.
“No, sir.”
Behind him, Hazeline snorted and snuffed her cigarette out in the sink. In this, family there was no way to agree with one without disagreeing with the other.
No one spoke on the way to the game. When Hazeline went that long without talking, it was a pretty safe bet she wasn't happy. Martin's father cursed when the car hit a pothole in the road. His mother hummed softly in the front seat. Martin tapped his foot in time to the humming, trying to figure out what song it was till he realized it was just a nervous, filling-in-the-quiet kind of tune.
By the time they got to the ballpark, the game had begun. Martin wasn't even out of the car yet before he heard Riley Owens.
“Thank goodness,” Riley said in a prissy voice. “Martin Armpit's here. I was so worried he wasn't gonna make it.” Riley grinned at the row of girls giggling beside him. “This team would be in big trouble without Martin Armpit.”
Hazeline rolled down the car window and yelled, “Shut up, Riley.” Martin flushed when the girls laughed even harder.
“That punk gets my goat worse than anybody else alive,” she muttered.
“For once we agree on something, Mamma,” Martin's father said.
Martin helped his mother with the lawn chairs and cooler.
“Get on over there, Martin,” his father said, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the bench.
Martin couldn't have been on a more perfect team. They were lousy hitters, which meant they struck out so fast he hardly ever came up to bat. And they had T.J. for a pitcher. T.J. was the best pitcher in Six Mile, maybe the best in the whole county. Thanks to him, their team's time in the outfield was usually cut so short Martin hardly even touched the ball, only occasionally heard the dreaded sound of the bat hitting the ball, signaling the possibility that he would be expected to catch.
Catching was something other kids must have been born knowing how to do. They were always throwing and catching things like it was no big dealâapples on the school bus, borrowed pencils in class, quarters in the cafeteria. But to Martin, catching seemed about as natural as socks on a rooster. When he was little, his father was all the time hollering, “Catch!” Martin would freeze as some object came hurtling toward him. A lifetime of practicing hadn't made one bit of improvement. All he could do in a ball game was cross his fingers and hope the ball didn't come his wayâand thank T.J. for being such a good pitcher.
Usually when Martin stood out in right field, he felt sick. His head hurt, his stomach churned, and his mouth went dry. But today he was almost enjoying himself. The warm
May sun on his face made him drowsy. In his head he played slow, soft concertos on the violin. He wanted to lie down in the sweet-smelling clover and listen. Not even the sound of the bat hitting the ball rattled his good feeling today. When he missed a ground ball coming right to him, he didn't even care about the kids yelling at him, didn't think about what his father would say.
Once he glanced over at his family. Hazeline hooted and hollered at the umpire, shaking a skinny fist. His father paced by the bleachers, throwing his arms up and talking to the sky. Martin smiled and went back to his concertos.
When the game was over, he knew his team had lost by the sad faces and drooping shoulders of his teammates. He whistled on his way back to the car. His father slammed the trunk. “You even know what the score was?” he said.
“No, sir.”
“You beat anything I ever seen, Martin.”
Hazeline stuck her head out of the car window. “Get in the car, Ed”
Mr. Pittman jerked the door open and got in. Martin climbed in the back beside Hazeline.
“You can wipe that smirk off your face,” his father said.
Martin looked out the window at the other boys with their families.
“We have to go through this every damn time,” Hazeline said.
Martin's father hit the steering wheel. “No we don't. Maybe just one time Martin would stop picking daisies in the outfield and play the game.”
“Can we go home now?” Hazeline said. “I'm getting a headache.”
As they pulled out of the parking lot, Martin watched a group of boys pile into a van. He tried to picture himself climbing in with them. Cracking jokes and poking ribs. Maybe grabbing someone's baseball hat for a friendly game of keep-away. When the van disappeared from sight, Martin looked around the car at his family. The back of his father's thick, tense neck, his hands clenched on the steering wheel. His mother gazing off into the distance, the edges of her mouth lined and droopy, her eyes dreamy. Hazeline, her arms crossed tightly, an unlit cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. Martin caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror. He was smiling. He closed his eyes, leaned his head against the back of the seat, and listened to concertos the rest of the way home.