Mountain Solo Page 5

  WE EAT SPRAWLED against our backpacks, on a slope where huckleberry bushes thick with the beginnings of berries grow in open shade. Dad says we should remember the spot and come back when it's time for picking.

  Meg says, "I think I'll take a little walk," and disappears around a bend in the trail.

  "She has to use the bathroom," Amy tells me.

  "I figured."

  "So when we get home, will you teach me to play your violin?" she asks.

  "What made you think of that?"

  "Nothing Will you?"

  "We'll see," I say. I lean back and close my eyes.

  A minute later I'm startled upright by a loud squeal. Amy is grinning at me from behind her cupped hands, and a blade of grass is stretched taut between her pressed-together thumbs. She says, "Say you'll teach me your violin!"

  "I said, we'll see."

  "If you don't, I'll make you sorry!" She blows the grass blade right in my ear I push her away and we end up rolling into Dad, who groans.

  "So," Amy says to me, "how long will it take me to get good?"

  "At what?"

  "Your violin! When you teach me!"

  "That's if I teach you," I say. "And it would depend on what you mean by 'good.' But a long time, anyway."

  "How long?"

  "I don't know."

  "How long did it take you?"

  "I don't know," I repeat. "There's still an awful lot I haven't learned but ... Good enough so somebody would want to hear me play? I guess half a dozen years. That's about how long it took before I played my first recital."

  "Six years?" Amy says. "My best friend at school only started piano last fall, and she's already played in two recitals."

  Meg, returning in time to hear Amy, says, "Those were different from the kind of recital Tess is talking about." She looks at the uphill trail in front of us, sighs, and asks, "Well, shall we do it?"

  Tessie

  Like a general pushing her army, Mom marched me through one, two, three violin teachers before she came to Mr. Capianelli, who told her that only rarely had he had the honor of teaching a pupil with my gifts.

  I was nine, beginning fourth grade, and playing a bigger violin now.

  Mr. Capianelli was new to Montana, having come to Missoula for a year's sabbatical from his professional obligations. He hadn't planned to take on students but made an exception for me.

  At the start of each lesson, while I tuned and warmed up, Mr. Capianelli talked to Mom about all the great musicians he knew, including some violinists he'd taught.

  What I liked best about Mr. Capianelli was that when I played my violin, he played his, and he played so, so well. He would lead, and I'd try to match him, and when I was able to, I could hardly hold my excitement inside.

  I didn't like it, though, when he explained what I needed to work on, because he explained it to Mom instead of to me. "Her fourth finger needs strengthening," he'd say, marking passages in my exercise book. "Please see that Tess spends extra time with these."

  I spent a lot of time practicing Dad left for his clinic really early in the morning, and my first practice session of the day was the hour before the school bus. Then when I came home from school, Mom worked with me until she needed to start dinner She called it directed practice because she told me what to do from what Mr. Capianelli had told her.

  After dinner I played for another hour and that was when I got to play whatever I wanted. If Dad was home he'd listen and smile and sometimes he'd tease me. He'd say he'd heard a violin could make a sound that would crack glass and why hadn't I learned to do that?

  Sometimes Mom and Dad argued about how much I practiced. "It's not natural," Dad said. "She ought to be doing more of the things other kids do. Soccer or Girl Scouts. 4-H, maybe."

  "Tessie isn't like other kids," Mom answered.

  They compromised. Mom ruled six days, but Saturdays belonged to Dad and me. I began going with him to the clinic on Saturday mornings. His assistant let me help feed some of the animals, and arranging pet photos on the lobby bulletin board became my special job.

  On Saturday afternoons Dad and I would do whatever I chose. He would ask if I wanted to invite a friend over to play or to go to the movies with us, but I'd say no. Instead I'd ask him to take me exploring We went all over along canyon creeks in the Bitterroots and across the hillsides west of town, but mostly we hiked in the Rattlesnake woods, near home.

  With a flourish, Mr. Capianelli placed new music before me. "Brahms's Sonata no. 1 in G Major," he said. "Our work from now on, because with this you will make your debut."

  He turned to my mother "I think that by late spring, Tess will be ready to give her first recital."

  "I've been in recitals before," I told him. "My last teacher—"

  "No, no!" Mr. Capianelli exclaimed as though I'd said something amusing "I don't mean to hide you among a dozen children in a program that only parents could enjoy. No! You, my precocious Tess, will give your own performance, and I promise that it will be one no one ever forgets!"

  I held back a giggle. That was just the way Mr. Capianelli talked, and I'd learned to listen for the sense beneath his words. Besides, the music he'd set out was pages longer than anything I'd ever tried. Of course, I'll need my own recital, I thought. There won't be time left for anybody else if I play all this.

  My lessons increased from one to two a week, and Mom began driving me to school and picking me up afterward so that I didn't waste practice time sitting on a school bus. And we had to squeeze in other sessions, too, when I could work with the pianist Mom hired to accompany me.

  That part was mostly fun, but one time I asked Mom, "Can I skip today? I'm tired."

  "I don't see how you can," she said. But then she put her arm around me. "I know how hard you're working, What if you do just one hour right now, and then afterward we'll go to that new ice cream place and you can order whatever you want. And I won't even tell you not to spoil your dinner!"

  Mom rarely mentioned the recital around Dad, and I didn't think he realized how special it was going to be Not until Mom brought home the invitations she'd had made up. They weren't just copies of something she'd put together on her computer; but real ones like for weddings.

  * * *

  YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO A VIOLIN RECITAL

  GIVEN BY TESS THALER,

  NINE-YEAR-OLD STUDENT OF MR. VINCENT CAPIANELLI,

  WITH MRS. BESS ARMITAGE AT THE PIANO.

  SUNDAY, APRIL 28, AT THREE O'CLOCK

  MUSIC RECITAL HALL, UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA

  * * *

  Dad exploded. His face reddened, and a vein in his neck pulsed in and out. "What do you think you are doing with this child? Do you have any idea?..." He got louder and louder although I'd never ever heard Dad yell before.

  I covered my ears and slipped away to my bedroom, but my parents' angry voices followed and pushed through my hands.

  "Mr. Capianelli believes..."

  "...exploiting her ... Who the hell does he think he is?"

  "Good experience working with an accompanist..."

  "...and a recital hall! What is this going to cost?"

  "...just renting..."

  "You're out of your mind," Dad said. "A pianist, formal invitations ... She's a nine-year-old, for god's sake. You have gone way over the top."

  I took my blanket into my closet and shut the door Curled up in the dark, I closed out everything but the music that I carried in my head.

  I wore a white organdy dress, white shoes, and thin, high white socks. Mom tied and retied a blue ribbon that held my hair out of my eyes, and she dabbed a bit of pale pink gloss on my lips. Dad rubbed it off with a handkerchief. "Do you want me to leave right now and take Tess with me?"

  I tugged on his hand. "Please stop being mad. I'm going to play really good."

  We were getting ready in a classroom a few doors down from the auditorium where I'd perform. People passed by, looked in, and waved.

  Mom waved back. "Oh," sh
e said, "the Smith-Callahans have come," and "Dear Mrs. Breyley is here with her cronies."

  When she took me down the hall to use the women's room a last time, we found it full of more ladies that Mom knew, and they all told me how sweet I looked.

  Then the bathroom emptied, and then die corridor and Mom said, "Three o'clock!"

  She led me around a back way into die recital hall, into a space hidden from the audience. Out on the brightly lit stage, Mrs. Armitage already sat at the grand piano. Mr. Capianelli strode out and introduced himself and then began talking about me and the music I was going to present.

  Mom straightened my dress and said, "Play your best. Don't forget to smile." She gave me a little push when Mr. Capianelli gestured for me to join him. "I'm counting on you."

  People applauded, and then Mr. Capianelli left the stage. I raised my violin and nodded to Mrs. Armitage to begin, just the way we'd practiced.

  I played with my eyes mostly closed, because that was how I listened best. Sometimes, though, I watched my fingers flying through especially hard parts. Once I glimpsed pleased feces and understood that the audience liked my music. I felt glad, because I liked it, too.

  Actually, I loved it. This was the most gorgeous, shining violin music I knew, and I played every note the very best I could. The lovely sounds carried me along and made me forget everything else. Except that there was a moment in a pause between two sections when I glimpsed the audience again. For an instant it was as if I could see what they were seeing: me in my white dress, so carefully positioning my bow for the next downstroke.

  And then it was time to play again, and I closed my eyes.

  When I was finished—after the final notes faded away—everything was silent for a moment. Then people began clapping, and the clapping grew louder A camera flashed, and Mom put a big bouquet of pink roses in my arms. With my violin they made a lot to hold on to, but I held them close and smelled how sweet they were.

  Then we went out to the front lobby, where everybody was sipping fruit punch and nibbling on little cookies. They lined up to tell my parents and Mr. Capianelli and me what a pleasure my performance had been. Mr. Dreyden, my very first violin teacher gave me a big hug "You played beautifully," he said.

  I asked why his eyes were shiny. "Are they?" he asked. "Must be hay fever."

  Even after we went out to the parking lot, people kept saying nice things. One man called me a "dear little wunderkind" and said he'd like to hear just one more piece. I thought he was asking me to play again, but Mom covered my hands with hers and shook her head. If she hadn't, I might have taken out my violin and played a whole second recital, I was that wound up.

  "WHAT DOES wunderkind mean?" I asked.

  "It means you did yourself proud," Dad answered, his eyes meeting mine in the rearview mirror.

  "It's a German word," Mom told me. "It means 'wonder child.' That's you, Tessie. Our wonder child."

  "How about stopping for an ice cream cone?" Dad asked. "I'll treat to two toppings."

  "Not in her good dress," Mom answered.

  Anyway, I wasn't hungry even for ice cream. My stomach still twirled with excitement, and I felt like I did after a whole day of going on rides at the county fair: tired but full of happiness.

  That night, when Mom and Dad came in to turn my light out, I asked, "What was that word again? The one about how wonderful I was?"

  Dad frowned. "Tessie, you mustn't—" he began, but Mom cut him off.

  "Wunderkind," she said. "You're our darling little wunderkind who amazes everyone."

  Wunderkind. I went to sleep trying on the word, and the next morning, I learned another word that meant almost the same thing I found it in a newspaper that had been put at my place at the breakfast table. It was opened up to a photo showing people clapping and me hanging on to my violin and the roses. Mom read the caption with me: "Child prodigy Tess Thaler nine, delights an audience with her grown-up skills."

  Wunderkind. Prodigy. Me.

  Frederik 1905–1906

  Frederik Bottner awakened in the half-light before dawn, jostled by die sleeping stirrings of the stranger who shared his train seat. He glanced at the dim landscape passing by the window and then looked harder trying to make out if a silvery gleam high on the hillsides might be snow.

  Surely not, not in September. But then, Frederik had no references for deciphering country like this.

  Through a fitful night, he had been aware in snatches of the train passing from short-grass prairie into Montana's western mountains. Its coal-fed engine had labored up inclines, jerking him awake over and over as it pulled passenger coaches and boxcars over high trestles and through dark tunnels.

  Boxcars: They were emigrant cars; each rented by a homesteading family for $22.50 and filled with chests and plow blades, seed bags and rootstock all rubbing and creaking together, each packed with nervous animals unsteady on rumbling floors.

  Frederik's horse, Patch, was in one of them, along with the few head of livestock and some tools that were about all Frederik still owned now that the South Dakota homestead was sold and the debts on it cleared. His belongings didn't half fill the car and he'd shared the rental with a family who needed extra space.

  That is a dusting of snow, he thought. How early does winter come to Montana, anyway? There was so much he didn't know about this place he'd decided on. But at least the journey was over The train slowed, whistle blowing, as it pulled into Missoula. Outside the window, railroad men shouted orders and did work that made metal clang on metal.

  Frederik got his traveling bundle and his father's violin from the overhead rack.

  THE FIVE-MILE wagon journey from town to a crossing over Rattlesnake Creek took Frederik and his Uncle Joe until early afternoon, even without the livestock they'd arranged to have brought after them.

  "Are we about to your place?" Frederik asked, as his uncle guided the team onto the narrow bridge.

  "No! We've still got several miles to go. And more getting to know each other to do, also. What I want you to tell me—"

  Whatever Uncle Joe's question was, it didn't get asked, because just then a shot rang out, frightening the horses and throwing Joe into a struggle to keep the wagon on the bridge. Frederik, scrambling to the back where Patch was tethered, saw a young man gallop by on a large roan.

  "Mein..." His uncle swore, half in German, half in English, as the wagon lurched back from a near plunge into the creek. Frederik grabbed for Patch's lead while his uncle fought to bring the careening team to a halt. And then, as the wagon pitched into the long ascent up from the bridge, the horses slowed of their own accord.

  "Who was that?" Frederik asked when he returned to his seat.

  "Augie O'Leary," Uncle Joe answered, sounding half strangled with anger "Young hooligan."

  "But what was he doing? Did he shoot at us?"

  "More likely shot to scare. He and his father, Naill, do their best to sour this valley, and for no reason other than they're plain crazy mean. I was able to buy my place because of Augie. The Middlers, that I got it from, pulled out rather than let their daughter get tangled up with him."

  "Oh!" Frederik considered the information about the O'Learys before turning his attention to the rest of what his uncle had said. "You're not homesteading?" Frederik asked. He wondered why anybody would want to pay for land when you could get it from the government for free.

  "The Middlers wanted to sell, and four hundred fifty dollars for a quarter section and all the buildings—it was a bargain compared with working up a place from scratch."

  "But you got the O'Learys for neighbors?"

  "I keep a good fence between me and them," Uncle Joe said. "I stay clear of Naill's land and his mine claim, and I generally don't have trouble."

  UNCLE JOE'S PLACE, one of the homes farthest out in the Rattlesnake, was reached by a wagon-track road that dipped and swayed alongside the main creek.

  The ride took Frederik and his uncle past ever more isolated dwellings where men wa
lked behind mule-pulled plows to turn over field stubble, children dug potatoes, and women stirred wash in open kettles. Small plots of cleared land hugged the creek bottom or canted upward onto brushy hillsides where cattle and sheep foraged among tree stumps.

  His uncle, following Frederik's gaze, said, "A lot of this country was logged for railroad ties back in the eighties."

  Finally they turned onto a pair of tracks that led through a ragged field to a small cabin.

  "This is it," Joe said. "Lots to be done, and I'll be glad for your help."

  Just then a voice shouted, "Bottner!" and they turned to see three people on horseback coming from the road.

  As the riders neared, Frederik recognized the roan horse and realized one of the people was Augie O'Leary. The others were a large, rough-looking man and a girl about Frederik's own age. They led packhorses loaded down with panniers, tools, and bedrolls.

  Uncle Joe, flushing, muttered, "Dear Lord, I thought we made a bargain: I'd be civil to Naill O'Leary when I saw him, and You'd make sure I didn't see him."

  The riders halted a few feet off, and the older man told Uncle Joe, "Augie said you was bringing new people. You warn 'em to stay off my land."

  "Now, Naill," Frederik's uncle answered in a calm voice, "my nephew Frederik here is all the new people, and I'll see he knows what's yours. Nobody's looking to encroach."

  Augie pulled up a deer rifle and casually aimed it just past Frederik. Grinning, he jerked it back in mock recoil.

  Frederik and his uncle both started angrily forward but halted when Naill ordered his son, "Put it away."

  The girl, looking annoyed and embarrassed, told Frederik, "Don't mind my brother He doesn't have good sense or manners, either one."