Mr. Rice cleared his throat. “Thousands were suffering and dying when Christ was born, Louise.” He was clearly discomfited by my behavior. I was sorry now that I had begun but was in too deeply to retreat.
“Yes,” I agreed grandly. “But the world has not seen, neither has it heard, such a tragic turn of events as we face in this our time.”
Tiny little one-syllable explosions went off about the room like a string of Chinese firecrackers. Mr. Rice looked stern.
My face was burning. I’m not sure whether I was more embarrassed by the sound of my own voice or the snorts of my schoolmates. I sat down, my whole body aflame. The snorts broke into open laughter. Mr. Rice tapped his baton on his music stand to restore order. I thought he might try to explain what I had meant, would try in some way to mediate for me, but he said only, “Now then, let’s try it once more from the beginning—”
“God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay,” sang everyone except me. I was afraid if I opened my mouth, I might let go the enormous sob that was lurking there, right at the top of my throat.
It was nearly dark when school got out that afternoon. I rushed out before anyone could catch up with me and walked, not home, but across the length of the marsh on the one high path to the very southern tip of the island. The mud had a frozen brown crust and the cordgrass was weighed down by ice. The wind cut mercilessly across the barren end of Rass, but the hot shame and indignation inside me made me forget the wind as I walked. I was right. I knew I was right, so why had they all laughed? And why had Mr. Rice let them? He hadn’t even tried to explain what I meant to the others. It was only when I came to the end of the path and sat down upon a giant stump of driftwood and stared at the sickly winter moon waveringly reflected on the black water that I realized how cold I was and began to cry.
I should not forget that it was Caroline who came and found me there. Sitting on the stump, my back to the swamp and the village, I was crying aloud, so that I did not even hear the crunch of her galoshes.
“Wheeze.”
I jerked around, angry to be found out.
“It’s past time for your supper,” she said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Oh, Wheeze,” she said. “It’s too cold to stay out here.”
“I’m not coming back. I’m running away.”
“Well, you can’t run away tonight,” she said. “There’s no ferry until tomorrow morning. You might as well come in and have supper and get warm.”
That was Caroline. I would hope for tears and pleadings. She offered facts. But they were facts I couldn’t argue with. It would be next to impossible to run away in a skiff at any time of year. I sighed, wiped my face on the back of my hand, and rose to follow her. Even though I could have walked the path blindfolded, I felt foolishly grateful for the homely bobbing comfort of her flashlight.
The watermen of Rass had their own time system. Four-thirty was suppertime winter and summer. So when Caroline and I walked in, our parents and grandmother were already eating. I expected a reprimand from my father or a tongue-lashing from my grandmother, but to my relief they simply nodded as we came in. Mother got up to bring us some hot food from the stove, which she put before us when we had washed and sat down. Caroline must have told them what had happened at school. I was torn between gratitude that they should sympathize and anger that they should know.
The school concert was Saturday night. Sunday was the only day the men did not get up before dawn, and therefore Saturday night was the only night anyone of the island would consider spending in a frivolous manner. I didn’t want to go, but it would have been harder to stay away and imagine what people were saying about me than to go and face them.
The boys had helped Mr. Rice rig up footlights, really a row of naked bulbs behind reflectors cut from tin cans, but they gave the tiny stage at the end of the gymnasium a magical distance from the audience. As I stood there on the stage floor in front of the risers, I could barely make out the familiar features of my parents in the center of the second row of chairs. I felt as if those of us on the stage were floating in another layer of the world, removed from those below. When I squinted my eyes, the people all blurred like a film that has jumped the sprockets and is racing untended through the machine. I think I sang most of the program with my eyes squinted. It was a very comforting feeling thus to remove myself from the world I imagined was laughing at me.
Betty Jean Boyd sang the solo for “O Holy Night,” and I hardly flinched when she went flat on the first “shining.” Betty Jean was considered to have a lovely voice. In any other generation on Rass she would have been worshiped for it, flat as it was, but in my day on Rass, everyone had heard Caroline sing. No one should have had to bear that comparison. Poor Betty Jean. I was puzzled that Mr. Rice should give her this solo. Caroline had sung it last year. Everyone would remember. But this year Mr. Rice had chosen a different solo for Caroline, a very simple one. I had been angry the first time he had sung it over for us. Caroline’s voice, after all, was our school treasure. Why had he given the showy song to Betty Jean and a strange thin melody to Caroline?
Now Mr. Rice left the piano and stood before us, his arms tense, his long fingers slightly curved. His dark eyes traveled back and forth, willing every eye to meet his. There were a few polite coughs from the shadowy darkness behind him. It was time. In just a few seconds it would begin. I didn’t dare to shift my gaze from Mr. Rice’s face to Caroline’s head, two rows behind and to the right of me in the back row, but my stomach knotted for her.
Mr. Rice’s hands went down, and from the center of the back row Caroline’s voice came suddenly like a single beam of light across the darkness.
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
Why Jesus the Savior did come for to die
For poor on’ry people like you and like I
I wonder as I wander—out under the sky.
It was a lonely, lonely sound, but so clear, so beautiful that I tightened my arms against my sides to keep from shaking, perhaps shattering. Then we were all singing, better than we had all night, better than we ever had, suddenly judged, damned, and purged in Caroline’s light.
She sang once more by herself, repeating the words of the first verse so quietly that I knew surely I would shatter when she went up effortlessly, sweetly, and, oh, so softly, to the high G, holding it just a few seconds longer than humanly possible and then returning to the last few notes and to silence.
A sharp report of applause suddenly rattled the room like gunfire. I jumped, first startled by the sound and then angered. I looked from the dark noisy blur to Mr. Rice, but he was already turning to take a bow. He motioned Caroline to step down and come forward, which she did. And when she turned to go back to her place, I was disgusted to see her dimpled and smiling. She was pleased with herself. It was the same expression she wore when she had thoroughly trounced me in checkers.
When we left the gymnasium, the stars were so bright, they pulled me up into the sky like powerful magnets. I walked, my head back, my own nearly flat chest pressed up against the bosom of heaven, dizzied by the winking brilliance of the night. “I wonder as I wander…”
Perhaps I would have drowned in wonder if Caroline, walking ahead with my parents, had not turned and called my name sharply. “Wheeze, you better watch out walking that way,” she said. “You’re likely to break your neck.” She had now moved beyond my parents in the narrow street and was walking backward, the better, I suppose, to observe me.