Cold River (31 page)

MANDY SIGHED AGAIN
as she watched him go, realizing after a moment that she was holding the soup can against her cheek. She set it down, picked up a corner of the napkin, and dropped it in the wastebasket.

At that moment, Elizabeth called up to Mrs. Berman, who was on the landing outside her office. “Mr. Farley is on the phone about the cellos. Is Mr. Timberlain in?”

“He’s on his way down,” the secretary called back. “He should be there in five minutes.”

Mandy blinked twice and pursed her mouth as the seed of an idea wafted into her head. She opened her desk drawer and pulled out the yellow directory card. Running her finger down the list, she found Glen Farley’s name at the bottom of the page, only he wasn’t the music teacher. His room number was listed as the metal shop.

Metal shop? She checked again to make sure she was tracking across the page correctly. What would that have to do with cellos? Maybe she’d heard wrong. Maybe Elizabeth said bellows. That would make more sense.

Mandy put the directory away, but the idea was taking root and sending out tendrils, growing like Jack’s beanstalk in the fertile soil of her mind. She spent the rest of the afternoon either on the phone or on the internet, and just before quitting time, she called Mo and made an appointment to talk to him the next day about the music budget.

It was only later that evening, when Leesie asked her about Guy, that Mandy realized she hadn’t given him another thought.

Leesie giggled. “I wish you could have seen the expression on your face! It’s funny how quickly you can get over a guy, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and then you wonder what you ever saw in him. Ugh.” Mandy shivered.

As Leesie laid her homework out on the kitchen table, Mandy said, “I’ve been thinking about an orchestra.”

Leesie looked up. “Is this a game? Am I supposed to guess which orchestra you’re thinking about?”

“No, silly! I’m thinking about a North Cascades High School Orchestra.”

Leesie grimaced and shook her head. “It would never fly.”

“Why not? You sell these kids short. I want to give them a taste of something beyond
upriver.
I think, if we can give them something fine, a way of expressing themselves as an ensemble, it will really do lots for them as they go out in the world.”

“Believe, me, Sweetiebug, I don’t sell them short. In fact… ” Leesie didn’t finish her sentence.

“What? You were going to say something. In fact, what?”

Leesie grinned. “Never mind. Say, can you help me here? Define
paradigm
.”

It took Mandy a moment to shift gears. “Paradigm? It’s a framework, or model, that is accepted and that everyone works— and even thinks— within.”

Leesie furrowed her brow. “So a paradigm shift would be— ”

“You know when you hear people talk about thinking outside the box? Maybe that’s what it means. Seeing the world in a whole different way. It’s like moving from base ten to base five in math. All of a sudden, ones and zeros and place value mean something completely different.”

“Thanks, Mandy. That makes sense. I think I can answer this question now.”

Leesie bent her head over her homework, and Mandy sat down with her book. Though her eyes traveled over the words, her mind was working on the steps necessary to introduce a string program into a resistant school district.

The subject occupied her focus so much over the next few days that she forgot to worry about the next “accident” that was to befall her. Twice she passed Stevie Joe Hawes’s red pickup pulling onto Timberlain Road from her gravel road without having the hair on the back of her neck prickle. And when Doc MacDonald called to check on her, it took a moment for Mandy realize what he was talking about.

Mandy read everything she could get her hands on about the benefits of a school orchestra. She talked to administrators in other rural districts that boasted a string program and even traveled the hundred miles to a small district outside of Seattle. They were eager to talk about their string program but unwilling to cheer for Mandy’s crusade. They even seemed to try to discourage her. At the end of the day, she sat across from Mrs. Wilson, a spare, gray-haired music teacher who looked over the glasses perched on the end of her nose and asked Mandy, “Have you heard the expression
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it
?”

Mystified, she nodded.

“Why on earth do you want to change the music program at North Cascade?”

“Oh, well, bluegrass,” Mandy said. “I would hope to expand the horizons of the students beyond the confines of that valley.”

Mrs. Wilson stared at Mandy for a moment. “How long have you been there?”

She did the math. “Um, a little over a month.”

“Do you know anything at all about North Cascades’ music program? Oh, I don’t mean the bluegrass bands. I mean the complete program.”

Mandy opened her mouth to reply and then shut it again. “I guess I don’t.”

Mrs. Wilson stood and went to her bookshelf. “F. Granger Timberlain wrote the book on an integrated music program,” she said over her shoulder. “Well, not the book— the pamphlet, really.” She pulled a spiral-bound booklet from her shelf and dropped it in front of Mandy. “I can’t believe you haven’t read this.”

“There’s been lots to do,” Mandy said in a subdued voice. “We’ve got a levy to get ready for, and we want to revamp the reading program.”

“But not the math program?”

“No. The math scores are excellent, actually.”

“And do you know why?”

Mandy shook her head, and Mrs. Wilson amazed her by breaking out in song.

In a distinctly Caribbean accent and rhythm, the gray-haired music teacher sang the seven times tables, all the while dancing around with her arms above her head, clapping as she swayed forward and back. Mandy watched, round eyed, and when the older lady stopped and indicated with raised brows and upturned palms that she was waiting for an opinion, Mandy could only stare. “I’m sorry. That’s clever, but… ”

“Page seven. Open the book.”

Mandy obeyed and saw a half-page picture of a small steel band playing on a stage, with a gym full of elementary children dancing, their arms above their heads much as Mrs. Wilson’s had been.

“All of the math facts— and I’m talking about addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division— have been put to music and dance. There are any number of small steel band ensembles that go several times a week to help the grade school kids learn math songs and dances. These kids know their facts. They learn the patterns and can work complex problems in their heads. They don’t use calculators in school until they hit algebra.”

Mandy studied the picture and read the narrative underneath.

Mrs. Wilson went on. “Add to that the fact that the shop classes build the instruments, and they have to use math to figure out depth and temper and frequencies and metallurgy and any number of things. Math begins to mean something. And it all begins with music.”

“Yes, but a steel band playing ‘The Banana Boat Song’?”

“Last year I attended a concert where they played the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth and brought down the house. I never miss Opening Festival. March is a pretty gloomy time in the Pacific Northwest, but listening to that steel band is like standing in the sunshine.”

Mandy paged through the book. “I didn’t realize,” she said lamely.

“Well, I don’t imagine anyone welcomed you with open arms. When we heard that Grange Timberlain had been replaced, we couldn’t believe it. Last December he helped me write a grant to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for money to duplicate his program.”

Mandy stood. “Thank you, Mrs. Wilson, for telling me this. I feel so stupid.”

The older woman put her arm around Mandy and walked her to the door. “Don’t. I’ve just given you a little education. Education is a good thing.”

Mandy nodded and turned to make her way through the corridor to the parking lot. As she pushed through the door at the end, she heard someone call her name.

Turning with the door half open, she saw Mrs. Wilson standing in her doorway. “It ain’t broke,” she called. “Don’t try to fix it. Embrace it.”

Mandy waved to show she had heard, but she couldn’t muster a smile. She let the door swing closed behind her, and as she walked through the drizzle back to her car, she reflected that she could use a little sunshine.

SATURDAY EVENING, MANDY
stood in the hallway in front of the door to the high school gym and took a deep breath. She had promised Leesie she would come, but she would much rather have hibernated in her loft this evening, so she wouldn’t have to face F. Granger Timberlain until Monday. She didn’t know which made her more reluctant to face him— the fact that he’d caught Guy trying to kiss her or that she had been just about to propose a district orchestra to the man who wrote the book on music programs.

She put her hand up to smooth her curls and felt the flower pinned there. Somehow the feel of Vince’s gift gave her courage. A single, fragrant gardenia had arrived that afternoon with a note that said,
Save the last dance for me.
The ribbon gracing the blossom was claret red, and though Mandy had intended to wear one of her tailored pant suits, when she saw the color of the ribbon, she pulled a dress of soft burgundy crepe out of her closet, one with a fitted bodice and a flowing skirt.

She hung up her coat. Hearing a band inside the gym playing a lilting tune, she pushed the door open a fraction and peeked inside. The setting was so familiar, so normal, that she took heart. She had seen this scene so many times before— high ceilings with cages over the lights, basketball backboards pulled up out of the way, brown walls, and brown bleachers. Even the gymnasium smell signaled familiar territory.

A young man suddenly pulled the door open and surprised both Mandy and himself. He stepped back out of the way to let her enter; she murmured thanks and wandered in. Staying close to the wall, she circled around to find a seat on the bottom row of bleachers opposite the band stand.

People of all ages thronged the floor, grooving in the styles of several different decades, but all seemed carried away in the joy of music and dance.

Mandy’s toe tapped in time as she watched the band. There were three girls, one on mandolin, one on guitar, and one on fiddle, while a boy played the standup bass and another played the banjo. None of them looked older than thirteen, but their playing was energetic and assured, and their rhythm was dead on. Mandy inclined her head and closed her eyes as she listened to the riffs the fiddle played counter to the mandolin’s melody, and she smiled at how fresh and inventive it was.

Suddenly a voice spoke into her ear from behind. “So how did you get on with the Dog’s Dinner after I left?”

She jumped and turned around in her seat. “Oh, you startled me!” she said to Grange. “I didn’t hear you come up.”

“Actually, I came down. I was sitting up there and saw you come in.”

Her eyes flicked up to the top of the bleachers, where several people were obviously interested in her conversation with Grange. “I see,” she said, turning back around.

He sat beside her. “So, what do you think of those kids?”

“They’re marvelous. How old are they?”

“Middle school. They’ll be playing at Opening Festival for the first time this year.”

Mandy looked around. “I haven’t seen Leesie,” she said.

“She’s back in the music room. Want to go wish her well?”

“Yes.” Mandy stood. “Just tell me how to get there.”

“I’ll take you.” Grange rose as well. Putting his hand on her elbow, he guided her through the crowd to a corridor on the far side of the gym.

Nervous at finding herself alone with him in a dimly lit hallway, she searched for something to say. “How many bands do you have playing tonight?”

“You mean bluegrass? Three— this one, Leesie’s, and one other. They’ll all play at Opening Festival. And then the school band is going to play.” He grinned. “I guess this is what would pass for a spring concert at some other schools. Ours is more of a structured jam session and dress rehearsal for the festival.”

Just then Leesie, Jake, and four other students came out of a room, carrying their instruments. Mandy hugged her sister awkwardly around her bass fiddle and told her to break a leg. She wished Jake well and then noticed that their mandolin player was her computer tech. “Hello, Oscar,” she said. “I didn’t know you played too.”

“You’ve got to play bluegrass if you go to Inches,” he said.

Leesie blew a kiss over her shoulder and headed toward the gym. When Mandy started to follow, Grange touched her arm. “They won’t be on for a bit,” he said. “Would you like to see the music room?”

“Why, yes. I would.” She followed as he continued to the end of the hall. “I’d be glad for the chance to talk to you, too.”

“Uh-oh. Those words usually mean I’m in your black books.”

Mandy shook her head. “Nothing like that.”

“I’ve been expecting you to come visit the high school. The principal, Fred Wimmer, said you invited him to your office.”

She felt her cheeks getting warm. “That sounds a little black bookish. Are you offended?”