World And Town Part 17

"You mean, why don't they get up a mission to Africa, right? Or start an environmental ministry or something." Candy rucks up her chin. "When, I mean, will you look at the earth."

"That is just a fact," declares Beth.

"Because they believe in salvation through faith," honks Grace. "They don't believe deeds matter."

"But where Paul told us to spread the Good News, shouldn't we do that whether we're getting credit or not?" Candy's red hair is s.h.i.+ning. "And why do they keep to themselves the way they do?" She's upset about a recent ec.u.menical powwow, which the pastor of the Heritage Bible Church refused to attend. "Opening up their own school as if everyone else has cooties. And people mix us evangelicals up with them-that's what gets me! As if we're all the same, because we don't want our kids watching p.o.r.n. Because we don't want to see babies getting killed. Because we honor G.o.d's plan and believe in the family. When, I mean, they are just fanatic!"

Silence.

"That is just a fact," says Beth, finally.

Flora, all in green, appears with a coffeepot in each hand. Her flat, smooth nose is s.h.i.+ning with sun and her earrings flicker, too-a little fish hanging in each lobe. Thanks, they all say. Caf. Decaf. Thanks.

Greta looks at Hattie. "Do I hear your friend the Cambodian girl's involved with this church?"

"I don't know the extent of it," answers Hattie, slowly. "But this blue car does come to pick her up and bring her to some center."

"You have got to stop that." Beth jabs at the air with a toothpick. "You have got to nip that in the bud."

Hattie nods.

"Maybe get her involved in something else?" says Greta.

A great suggestion, but when Hattie asks for ideas, only Candy has an action item for her, namely to pray on it. Because in her experience, she says, G.o.d can be a genius at this sort of thing.

The cell tower has somehow pa.s.sed after all.

"How could anyone do this?" demands Hattie. "With all of town so against it? Who?"

But it is just a fact, as Beth would say. Jim Wright has not only gone and allowed an appeal of the cell tower case but, confoundingly, approved a permit. As long as he's lived in town! explodes Greta. Owing as much as he does to his neighbors and teachers! Everyone who's ever lent him a can of motor oil is irate. But, well, he's taken his money, and two other zoning board members besides-both of whom have already skipped town with their families.

Good riddance! says everyone.

And when it turns out that plywood is being stolen from the cell tower building site, well, no one is exactly distraught. People don't like it that crime is going up in general-new folks, they say. New folks bringing problems in their pockets. But in this case they just shrug. Someone building himself a deer camp, they joke. Cash 'n' carry, only without the cash.

Now the plywood on site's been stamped with the cell tower company's name, and there are NO TRESPa.s.sING signs posted, too. As for where the plywood's gone to, though, who knows?

"Somebody must know," insists Hattie.

Because in a town this size, people do generally know who's behind things. And this is Riverlake, after all. A good town, a town that prides itself on having everyone in its picture.

But no one, in this case, has seen anything.

It rains so hard on the Fourth of July, the Pride of Riverlake doesn't even march this year.

Sophy pokes at her cheek with an eraser. "I wish they'd stop."

"Of course you do," says Hattie.

"I wish they'd kill each other already."

"Oh-don't say that." Hattie pushes a plate of Russian teacakes toward her, and Sophy does take one. Instead of eating it, though, she nudges it from one spot on the table to another, like a chess piece. "Is your dad still hitting Sarun with newspaper?"

Sophy goes on nudging but nods.

"Then it isn't likely to happen soon, thank goodness. It's hard to kill someone with newspaper."

Sophy looks up. "I guess that's good."

"Yes, it is," agrees Hattie. "It is good." She sees Joe, emaciated and yellow, his eyes stuck open and his chin fallen back; she hears Lee's long, loud silence.

But no more thinking of these things. There's a lesson to teach; and so, though it is b miao zhu zhng-like pulling at seedlings to make them grow-Hattie teaches. And at the end, has an idea.

"Qng wen," she says, as they put away their books. "I've seen you playing the guitar."

"My old boyfriend gave it to me. I'm teaching myself." Sophy looks proud of herself. "I have this book."

"Qng n sho Hany," says Hattie. "Do you remember how to say 'I have a book'?"

"Wo yu y sh. I mean, Yi ge."

"Y bn."

"Y bn."

"Good. The whole sentence, please."

Sophy rolls her eyes but says, "Wo yu y bn sh," and stands up.

"Hen ho. Well, here's my question, then"-is this impulsive? Never mind-"would you like guitar lessons? If I am able to arrange them?" It's Hattie's attempt to get Sophy involved in something else.

Sophy sits back down.

"I can't promise," Hattie warns.

But Sophy does not hear her. "Yes!" she blurts. "Yes! I'd love that! Yes! I would! Yes!" Her lips are parted and her eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g; she looks as though she might cry.

"I can try but-really-I can't promise," Hattie warns her again-encouraged by Sophy's response but hedging, as Everett would say. She has to.

Still, Sophy keeps exclaiming and when Annie comes to visit, throws the poor dog right up in the air. Annie's face is as shocked as a dog's face gets; Hattie laughs.

And at yoga the next day, she ignores the way Carter circles Jill Jenkins. She ignores Jill's tossing of her s.h.i.+ny black hair; she even ignores Jill's backbend demonstration, though how truly remarkable that, with just the lightest support of Carter's well-placed hand, Jill can still do a backward bend right straight into a bridge. Well, if it ain't a tendered loin! Lee would say. But Hattie ignores even Lee. Da gun-she simply watches, at headstand time, for Carter's return to the world of the right-side-up. He is the last of the headstanders to come back; but here come his feet, finally, lightly touching down. One and then the other. And there-he's levered his long body upright, moving with such grace that Hattie half forgets her mission for a moment: It is as if some invisible agency has judiciously supplied a bar, at just the right moment, at his hips. And here, now, he stands, before her-a barefoot man with a magenta-colored face. A zinnia.

He untucks his T-s.h.i.+rt.

"Guitar lessons? I am rusty as the Tin Man," he begins-taken aback but relieved, too, she can see, to be having a normal-ish conversation with her. "Moreover, I am in danger of turning into a one-man rec center," he says.

Still, come Sat.u.r.day afternoon, Hattie is introducing Carter to the Chhungs. She doesn't stick around. But from back in her house, she can see Carter produce his guitar with a flourish; Sophy, she can see, too, is already enthralled. The dogs need their teeth brushed; every s.h.i.+rt Hattie owns has a spot on it; and for once she has a clear idea what she's going to focus on if she ever makes it back to her bamboo-a more natural splay of the leaves. Like the fingers of a hand, she thinks. She wants them to fall like the fingers of a hand.

But out come her binoculars instead. For there sits Carter, laughing up a storm, joking and whistling. He produces a harmonica and another guitar-or, no-what is that? A banjo. Hattie didn't even know he played the banjo. But there he sits, strumming the thing and howling and generally showing off. And there's the whole family, come out to watch him-Sarun and Mum tilting their heads back and forth while Chhung taps his foot and slaps his knee. He's still wearing his brace, but can sit all afternoon in his guard chair now; it's an encouraging sight. How much more cheering yet, though, to see him like this-imitating someone in a Western, it seems. Hattie can't hear much over the banjo, of course, but her mind supplies a soundtrack easy enough: Tap, slap, tap, slap. Is this the demonic man of the afternoons and evenings?

Tap, slap, tap, slap.

Tap, thwap, tap, thwap.

Carter switches back to his guitar, waving his audience good-bye; and now the lesson begins. Sophy plays; he points something out. She plays a little more; he nods-better. They both bend over their instruments; you can almost see the learning move between them, like a ball. What a good teacher he's always been! Learning is a dance, he used to say, and even from a distance Hattie can see how their rhythms are firmly in synch. He imitates that little waggle she makes with her head; she laughs; they try different picks. He presents a book to her. Then for stretches of time that grow longer as the lesson goes on, they drape their arms over their respective instruments and talk; the symmetry ends. For he is mostly talking and gesturing now, while she is mostly holding still, rapt.

Hattie can remember holding still, rapt, once upon a time, herself.

Carter's ways of moving have not changed, Hattie sees. The motion of that stick, for example, as he draws something on the ground; the moment of pondering that comes next. He ponders with his elbows on his knees, his wrists loose, his hands dangling like fruit-hmm. An exaggerated pondering this is, more about modeling pondering than about pondering plain and simple. And now come the retreat of the hands, the advance of a foot. His back straightens as he corrects a line with his heel, making an elaborate scuffing motion. He rolls his eyes as if to suggest just how mistake-p.r.o.ne he is, how very like a normal Joe-a little corny self-deprecation, designed to put you at your ease. Which Hattie always did love him for-the out-and-out graciousness of it. Never mind what he's explaining, which, if Hattie knows Carter, may or may not have anything to do with the guitar at all. The handedness of nature, the location of the fertile crescent, the miracle of gastrulation-Carter could be talking about anything, believing as he does both that one thing should be allowed to lead to another and that you should never cordon off certain topics as too technical or too abstruse. Or too sensitive: Hattie does hope he and Sophy will get to talking about the Bible one day-Sophy going off in the blue car more and more, Hattie notices. To that center. That church.

Ginny's church.

In Chinese, Hattie would say Carter hu zu ren-that he has a way with people. Which is not so much a matter of skill, maybe, as of humility. I never go walking with three people, Confucius said, but that one of them proves a teacher. Now she watches as he lays down his stick and, with a rueful smile, looks at his watch. How genuinely he would love to stay, his body says. What a marvelous time he has had. But, well, next week. He stands and stretches. Mum appears, then disappears, then appears again; so that when Carter leaves, it is with three paper plates of food, in a stack. His shadow against the trailer as he thanks her is enormous. Hattie watches as he turns his car around-watches Sophy watching him turn around, too. Standing there on the crate by the front door, waving, her head tilted to the side. One hand plays with her hair.

A fifteen-year-old girl! A sixty-seven-year-old man!

But, well, a father figure.

Mum appears behind her; Carter waves to them both in his rearview as he heads up the drive. Did he notice Sarun digging? Did he register the pit? What with all his waving, he could well have missed it, Hattie sees.

Well, maybe she'll point it out next time. For now, she puts on some music-first, some Brahms four-handed piano music. Then a Brahms clarinet thing Carter's mother used to love. Proof, she liked to say, that some blooms come late.

Joe, of course, used to have a different reaction to it-to Hatch music, as he called it.

Carter Hatch, Carter Hatch, he used to say. Why didn't you marry that Carter Hatch?

And when Hattie said it was him, Joe, she loved, he laughed.

How easily she could never have met this Carter Hatch! But one day back in Qingdao they began to talk about the Communists the way they used to talk about the j.a.panese. The People's Liberation Army, they said. The fighting. The fighting. The fighting was everywhere; the fighting was coming. It was coming here. And then where would they go? Everywhere else in China people moved inland. But how could they move inland, with the Communists inland of them? They had best learn to swim, said Hattie's father.

Hattie's mother begged a favor of one of the missionary couples with whom she'd originally come to China. Of course it was a tragic story, a terrible story, that the Wilders' daughter had been killed in an anti-foreigner uprising-the sort of story that tested a person's faith in G.o.d to the utmost. But it did mean they had an extra set of papers with which to leave the country. And so Hattie's mother wrote them: Please. If you would please at least take my daughter. How she wished she had made the kids citizens! Everything would work out eventually, she was sure. But if the Wilders would first take this daughter, well, how grateful she would be.

The Wilders' daughter having been adopted and, it so happened, a half-half like Hattie. A hun xue'er.

"It's G.o.d's will," said Reverend Wilder.

Molly Wilder's hair had been lighter than Hattie's, but with some hydrogen peroxide Hattie's was made to match; a doctor carved a small cut into Hattie's right cheek, too, where Molly Wilder had once been hit by a windmilling ski. Of course, Hattie was amazed, as she sat for her surgery, to think of this Molly, skiing. And what exactly was a windmilling ski?

Never mind. Her mother found some eye shadow like Molly Wilder's-green stuff, the color of inchworms. She curled Hattie's eyelashes with a scissor-handled clamp, and applied mascara; the mascara came in a cake, like a slice of ink stick. And when she was done, Hattie's brothers gaped. A foreigner! Even Mrs. Wilder, when she saw Hattie, was amazed. "Molly!" she cried, and swooned. She was wearing a cross heavy as a pickax; it lodged itself in her armpit.

And the next thing Hattie knew, she was having supper with her mother's family in Iowa. The food was strange, and the forks and knives, but she had expected that. The slabs of meat, the blood on the plate-she had been warned. And hadn't she grown up in Qingdao, after all, with an American mother? She had eaten all sorts of things. The silence, though-she had never in all her life sat at a silent table.

"Days don't get more glorious than this," Grandpa Amos would say eventually, with a flare of his enormous nostrils. He raised his jutting eyebrows, as if to counter some shrinking force centered in between his eyes. "And to have our grandchild returned to the bosom of the family. Well, we have to thank the Good Lord for that."

"Pa," one of Hattie's uncles would say then. "You have been saying that every night for a week."

"Well, it's still true." Grandpa Amos smoothed out his napkin as if, like his face, squares of cloth wanted attention if they were to maintain their rightful expanse. "And isn't she a joy."

Grandma Caroline shook. Though she had Hattie's mother's name, and Hattie's mother's ways, she was, awfully, nothing like Hattie's mother at all. Instead, she was thin and nervous, with hands that trembled so bad she sat on them. And, as if to go with her darting way of talking, she had a stinging way of thinking.

"I suppose her stature is her father's," she said now. "Doesn't it seem her father's?"

Hattie tried not to cry.

"How about if you tell us something about China," said Grandpa Amos, consolingly. "How about if you tell us what it's like there?"

And, staring at the sprigs on the plate ware, Hattie tried to think what to say. Farmers that they mainly were, her aunts and uncles were disappointed that she knew nothing about soy-what they grew-though she was at least able to explain that farmers did not use combines in China, preferring, as they did, water buffalo. And of course, Hattie did like soy sauce, and soy milk. More than that she really couldn't supply; but happily, Uncle Jeremy insisted that that was enough-maybe because he, unlike the others, had nothing to do with the growing of anything. He was an anthropologist-a kind of spy, he explained, if you can imagine a spy looking, not for secrets, but for understanding.

"It's good to have you home," he said, adjusting his gla.s.ses. And, "You have your mother's spirit, may we see her again one day."

That made Hattie want to cry, too, as did the ongoing efforts to save her heathen soul. "Eternal life," Grandpa Amos would say, over ice cream. "Maybe you're not ready to accept Christ's sacrifice. I can understand that. But eternal life." He'd shake his head. "That's a lot to give up." Grandma Caroline sat her down on a hard bench. " 'The unbelieving shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone,' " she said. "That's what the Good Book tells us. Fire and brimstone. Do you know what brimstone is?"

"Sulfur," said Hattie.

"So your mother did teach you something."

"She told me to look it up myself."

For all the tension, they certainly would have held on to Hattie, had that seemed the Lord's plan. But, well, Grandpa Amos's prostate; and Grandma Caroline's thyroid, besides. The Good Lord did not seem to be equipping them for a young girl's care. Plus how much sense did the country make for Hattie, anyway? A place she would probably be treated like a freak, said Uncle Jeremy. No, the answer was for the family city folk to take her-if only he and Susan weren't headed to Tanzania! But, well, Susan's research. Uncle Jeremy did have some Christian friends, though, also living in the city, with a big house. What if Hattie were sent to live with them until her parents got themselves out of China? Picture her a kind of exchange student, he said. Though, of course, if she were to teach the other kids a little Chinese, well, wouldn't that be nice?

How many musical instruments the Hatch family had! Their music room housing not only several violins, but a viola, and a cello, and a harp, and several wind instruments, besides. The piano was Mrs. Hatch's baby Bechstein; Dr. Hatch's Steinway console sat closed up in a corner. Maybe with its big name and small sound, it really would be relegated to the bas.e.m.e.nt someday. In the meanwhile, the piano in the bas.e.m.e.nt was Carter's no-name spinet.

"To each his own ears," Mrs. Hatch would say gently. "If you would please just close the bas.e.m.e.nt door."

Carter being a fan of country music, of all things, who, besides the piano, played the harmonica and guitar.

Hattie had just turned seventeen when she came. Carter was fifteen-blue-eyed like his father, and still growing but huge already, people said. Taller than his father, and gangly, with a way of twisting himself up that was almost girlish. No one would listen to him play except Mrs. Hatch, when she wasn't fund-raising for her symphony, and Hattie-which Carter said didn't bother him. Still, he would always tell Hattie when he had learned a new song, and play it for her first chance he got.

"Is it insipid?" he would ask.

"Insipid?" She would frown. "I don't know. What does that mean?"

That made him laugh. "Insipid is what it is. Like it never read any books. Like it never met a sarcastic person. Like life is a field full of daisies."

"But you like it?"

"I don't know. I guess. I mean, it's not a Brahms quintet." He strummed a little.

"What's a quintet?"

People called him a sweet boy, almost as brilliant as his older brother Anderson. He was the charming one, the sensitive one, the one who would play four-handed piano with his mother. Reedie was the baby. Hattie liked them all, and tutored them as best she could, though they were not too keen on learning an extra language. Weren't Latin and French enough? Dr. Hatch wanted them to be Renaissance men, but even Renaissance men, they complained, did not speak Chinese. The only reason they paid any attention whatsoever to their tones or characters was because they knew how stranded poor Hattie was. Dr. and Mrs. Hatch talked about it-the Revolution, the chaos. It was in the newspaper.

"Do you think you'll ever see your real family again?" Reedie would ask at dinner, playing with his food. "I mean, your Chinese family?" And, "Is it true Jeremy told your American family we were Christian?" And, once, "Are you going to stay long?"

Mrs. Hatch shushed him.