A Sister’s Love Song
by Tom Gatten
For seventy-three years Alvina Lee Wilson had been doing something to help out at her family’s reunion every July in Standsburg, Pennsylvania. This year, as the reunion president for the ninth or tenth time (she wasn’t counting), she had come a little early to the Grange Hall kitchen to start getting the desserts and drinks ready for the evening session of the reunion. While she moved things around and wiped up the counter here and there, she hummed and sang, as she often did, verses and phrases from old hymns that came into her head. Now she was quietly singing, There is music in my heart…Oh, there is music in my heart, pulling the big aluminum coffee urn to the edge of the serving counter so the wastebasket would catch the drips.
It wouldn’t be long before her family would be crowding around for an evening of dessert and music that would signal the end of this year’s reunion. This would be an extra special evening because Alvina’s brother Henry would be playing his guitar and singing publicly for the first time since he’d had his stroke almost eight months ago, a day before his eighty-first birthday. Music in my heart…music in my heart. ’Tis my glory every morning singing in my heart.
After a while the hymn recalled to her how, in the past, Henry, his wife, some of the men he worked with in the coal mine and their wives would stop over on Saturday evenings to visit her and her husband, Doyle. That was before the black lung took him down and the Lord took him home. They would sit out on her front porch pickin’ and singin’ and, sometimes, while she was in her kitchen dishing up some ice cream or cake, she would have to stick her head out the door and steer Henry away from the camp songs that were, well, just not suitable—especially on her front porch. She knew how things were supposed to be and camp songs were not a part of it.
But she wouldn’t have to worry about such things tonight. Henry would probably just play two or three hymns—if he could, if he felt strong enough—and call it quits. With her son Joe and her nephew Ted playing and singing with him, she shouldn’t have to worry about camp songs anyhow. She reflected that tonight, because she was the reunion president, the Grange Hall was, in a way, a great big version of her own front porch, filled with family. There definitely wouldn’t be any camp songs here tonight—not if she had anything to say about it.
The hall was quiet except for the squeak and clatter of the folding chairs and tables her nephew and his teenage daughters were setting up in the dining area. Alvina walked back into the kitchen, lifted her pan of apple cobbler from the table by the sink, and set it on the counter next to her Aunt Minnie’s banana cream pie. She looked over all the pies and cakes and brownies and walked towards the back door. Headlights swinging into the parking lot told her more people were starting to show up, and she turned back from the doorway. “Everything looks okay,” she whispered, and taking another look around the kitchen and the hall filling with her family, she was back with her hymn—in my heart…in my heart…there is music every morning.
They had been blessed with a wonderful day for the reunion picnic. A hundred-and-eighteen people, including babies, had come to the town park from seven states, and her cousin Wilma’s daughter Sharon had even made it home from her army base in Germany—music in my heart…music all day long.
Alvina stood a moment with her hand on the dish towels—and found herself staring back across the kitchen towards the back door, wondering where Henry and the boys were. “They should be on their way by now,” she whispered.
Before long her second cousins, Olive and Nan and Emma, were setting out more desserts and the lemonade for the evening get-together. When they had finished, they joined the growing crowd in the dining hall, and Alvina pulled the dish racks up to the edge of the sink and wondered about Henry. How he had seemed to have grown so distant and unpredictable since his wife died and seemed to have aged so much since his stroke. She hoped there wasn’t anything going on inside of him that the doctors had missed. It was too much…she didn’t want to think about it—
Some of the grandchildren had been coming into the kitchen to poke around and try to get a brownie or a cookie ahead of everyone else. Alvina shook her head at one of the boys who was slipping cookies into his shirt pocket, and, as he dropped his hand and turned back towards his friends, she reached into the sink and started rinsing off some silverware. She was thankful she had been able to help her brother in his time of grieving and then again, later on, with the physical therapy after his stroke. After her husband went home to be with the Lord, Alvina knew more than ever how her brother felt after his wife died, and how important it was now to have her around to help him out when things got difficult. She put the silverware in the dish rack and saw her granddaughter sitting on the kitchen counter.
“Heather May Wilson!” she snapped. “Pull your skirt down and get on the floor!” Alvina adjusted her glasses with both hands as her teenage granddaughter slid off the counter where she had been sitting and talking to a couple of boys. “Wearing a skirt! You know better!”
Her face red, the girl left the kitchen, and the two boys, about her age, with eyes averted, followed her into the dining hall where forty or fifty people had gathered, some already seated with their desserts at the long tables. Alvina shook her head. Straightening out the cookie thief and her granddaughter reminded her that Henry, at his age, still had to have an eye kept on him when it came to his songs. There were so many hymns and other nice songs he could sing—and then…there were…camp songs.
With a start she wondered where Henry and the boys could be. She walked back to the kitchen door and looked out. They should have been here by now. She switched on the yard light. She hoped her brother was okay, that nothing was wrong. A few people were walking from the parking lot across the grass towards the front door. Oh well, it’s not even eight o’clock. She turned to see herself in the little mirror hanging from the deer antlers mounted by the pantry. Her white hair pulled back in the bun was all in place. Her collar had some fuzz on it. “That needs brushed,” she said as she raised her hand to the collar of the light blue blouse.
She looked out the door again, anxious about Henry’s not being there yet. But he’s with Joe and Ted. She shouldn’t worry. She knew Henry had his moments. But she shouldn’t worry about it. She should take her own advice, “Why worry when you can pray?” Now she saw them getting out of the van, the three of them in bright short-sleeved shirts. Joe was forty-five already and Ted would be fifty in two weeks. She shook her head. How time flies. Alvina watched how Henry was moving very carefully, and how he seemed alert and helpful as they lifted their guitars out of the van.
Now they were coming towards her, Joe, carrying a guitar, Ted, with two under his arm, and they were both keeping close to Henry. Alvina pushed the screen door open, and as they approached the doorway Henry shuffled and swayed back and reaching for him Alvina bumped the door and Joe caught his arm and Henry turned around as if to see what had caused his feet to slide, but, Alvina knew, feeling a tightness in her chest, the effects of the stroke had caused him to stumble.
“It’s about time you got here,” she said, as they came to the door.
“Hi, Mom,” Joe said, coming in first.
“Thanks for giving your uncle a ride,” she said and whispered, “Is he okay?”
“No problems,” he said, moving past her into the kitchen, “no problems.”
“Hello, Sis,” Henry said, as he carefully stepped up to the threshold and came in with Ted right behind him, “is the coffee ready?” He looked tired, but his eyes sparkled and his cheeks seemed to have more color now than they had had at the afternoon picnic.
“Coffee’s ready. I’ll get you a cup. They’re all in there waiting for you to get started.” She reached out and fixed the part in Henry’s snow-white hair and turned to give Joe the once-over.
Joe brushed his hand over his hair.
“Look all right, Mom?”
“Your hair’s just fine,” she said, “but Ted’s sideburns need trimmed.”
“Come on, Aunt Alvina,” Ted said, “you’re always pickin’ on me.”
Alvina waved him off and turned to see Henry’s fingers poking at a chocolate cake. She started to tell him for the thousandth time not to pick at the frosting—but stopped when he rested his hand on the edge of the counter. With a shudder she realized he hadn’t been picking at the frosting at all, and now he was trying to hide the trembling of his hand. Alvina looked away so he wouldn’t catch her staring and busied herself with taking off her apron and hanging it up on the deer antlers.
“Come on, everybody,” Joe said, as he gently took Henry’s arm, “let’s get started.”
“Do you still want your lemonade?” Alvina asked, straightening her brother’s collar as they started moving.
“No, thanks,” Henry laughed, “I’m all set.”
Alvina followed them into the dining hall, poured herself a cup of fruit punch, and stood watching them go to the head table and open their guitar cases. After a moment her sister Ruth, who was three years older and a little taller than she, went to the head table and hit a serving spoon on a frying pan to get everyone’s attention.
“I know some of you had to leave the picnic a little early,” Ruth said, “so I wanted to tell you that Stella Johnson was elected president of next year’s reunion committee, and the reunion will be the third Saturday in July, and you should send pictures for the family history to Joanna Beasley by the end of November. And if you have pictures of anybody in the service, especially in uniform, please send them. Alvina glanced around the room, and feeling a deep satisfaction with the way things were going, folded her hands under her chin.
Ruth stood a moment tapping the serving spoon on her forehead, and then shook it towards the audience. “I forgot to say the kids beat the grownups in the softball game this afternoon!”
People applauded and some of the kids reached around giving each other high fives as Joe strummed a few chords on his guitar.
Ruth lifted her hand again and pointed to Ted. “Now we’re going to have the blessing.”
After Ted gave the blessing Alvina realized it was time for her to find a seat and sit down. She picked up her fruit punch and headed to the front of the hall. As she walked closer to the tables where everyone was sitting she saw her youngest granddaughter in a red dress, standing on a chair, holding onto her mother’s arm, one table back from the musicians. “Sit by me, Grammy, sit by me, sit byme,” she was saying.
“Okay, Tiana,” Alvina said, “I’ll be right there.”
What a wonderful reunion, she thought, looking at all the faces as she walked around to the center aisle. She looked at Henry to give him a word of encouragement, but he was busy tuning-up with Joe and Ted, and he couldn’t see her. Alvina set her punch on the table and sat next to her granddaughter. Her daughter Jan, on the other side of Tiana, was talking to her cousin Charlotte who’d come with her husband to the reunion from Long Island. There is music in my heart,Alvina hummed, music in my heart.
Joe waved his guitar over his head a few times to get everyone’s attention. He said he was going to start with a hymn he hadn’t sung for a while—“Calling Today.” He adjusted his guitar, repeated “Calling Today,” and started singing. While he sang in his mellow baritone Alvina thought he did very well, and when he was done she was pleased to hear the approving comments people were making about her son’s singing. Joe and Ted each sang two more hymns.
Ted finished up his last hymn with a nod to Henry, and Henry nodded back and stepped out to stand beside him.
“Okay,” Ted said. “Now Henry and I are going to do an old favorite, and then he’s going to do two or three for you himself. And when he’s done, we can all just visit and enjoy all those great desserts you brought.”
Alvina watched Henry standing there, looking ready to play. He looked okay. They sang “Amazing Grace,” and although she couldn’t hear Henry very well, he seemed to be doing just fine with the harmony. When they were done everyone applauded and a few people were wiping tears from their cheeks, glad, she thought, to see Henry back to singing after his stroke.
Ted moved away and left Henry standing at the center of the table.
Henry looked out over his glasses. “‘Give Him the Glory,’” he said, pointing upward as he named the hymn. He paused to adjust his guitar, which he’d named “Nellie Belle” years ago. He sang one verse of the hymn in his lovely second tenor voice, and when he had finished, he looked around, and for the longest time, Alvina thought, didn’t do anything. She was still upset by his stumble and the sight of his hand trembling on their way in to the kitchen. She was beginning to wonder if maybe something serious was bothering her brother. She saw him moving his lips as if he was whispering to “Nellie Belle.” A few people shifted around on their chairs while he continued whispering. After a few moments Henry looked up, adjusted his glasses, and smiled. “This is for Sharon,” he said, “all the way home from Germany. Thank you for coming, Sweetheart.”
Henry’s comments brought a ripple of clapping across the audience leaving him looking around at the crowd and nodding strangely as if he was dozing off. As the applause faded Henry looked up and seemed to caress “Nellie Belle” as he began singing “You Are My Sunshine.”
As Henry sang Alvina flushed with a tender happiness for Henry’s loving gesture and for what she imagined Sharon was feeling. When Henry nodded to indicate he was done with the song, Tiana clapped her hands on Alvina’s knee, and Alvina reached down and lovingly rubbed her granddaughter’s back while she kept her eyes on Henry. She saw Henry’s hand shake, worse than it had in the kitchen, much worse, and he pressed it against the guitar, she could tell, hoping nobody would notice.
“Play a camp song!” somebody yelled. Alvina glared in the direction of the request. She should have known. It was Eddie Weaver, Edna’s son—the one who got a DUI last month out on Moose Run at three o’clock in the morning.
“Yes. Sing a camp song,” somebody said from way in back.
Alvina looked sharply to see who had chimed in but couldn’t tell who it was.
“Camp song,” somebody said down to her left. It sounded like Ruth’s granddaughter, the one in high school who wore the tight sweat pants all the time.
“Cam-song, cam-song, cam-song, cam-song,” Tiana said, patting Alvina’s knee, “cam-song, cam-song, cam-song.”
“Hush. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Cam-song, cam-song,” she giggled, scrunching a smile and squinting.
Alvina moved Tiana’s hands from her knee, sighed, straightened the pleats on her long, gray skirt, and looked up. She heard a couple of chords. “Rock of Ages?” “Glory to His Name?” Maybe it was a new hymn. She listened. No. No. Not a camp song. Please, Lord, not now, not here. Henry was warming up for a camp song. She could tell by the way he arched his eyebrows and kept time with his foot. She couldn’t see his foot and she couldn’t hear it, but she knew just how it was going down there under the table, with a secret rhythm all its own. But she noticed his hand wasn’t shaking at all as he sang the old camp song about coal miners getting in trouble with the foreman. As he sang quite a few people nodded in time with the simple melody. Then he was done and there was some applause. That song was okay, she thought. That one was okay.
Alvina folded and unfolded her handkerchief and watched Henry smiling to the applause. She hadn’t seen him smile like that in months. For a long time. She raised her eyebrows and whispered, “A long time. Years, maybe.”
Now Henry was strumming his guitar and looking as if something had startled him, as if a horsefly had just buzzed in his ear. He looked at Joe and Ted as if he was puzzled about something, and with a glance to Alvina, he nodded and turned back to the audience, into another song. Alvina knew the song, having heard it now and again over the years, and her heart sank. She sighed deeply. Please, Henry, not now. Please. They’ve never heard you sing it. Why now? Please, Lord, not now, please, please, please. She kept pushing out the pleats of her skirt as he sang—
Oh, the boss and the foreman
And the boss in tweed
Were going…
Henry stopped and strummed a couple of chords and started over to get it right.
Oh, the boss and the foreman
Were dressed in tweed
And riding to the dance.
They came to town on sorrel mares,
And, oh, how they could dance.
He shook his head several times and stopped and started again.
They came to town on sorrel mares
And, oh, how they did prance…
Alvina listened again to how the boss and the foreman met two professional dancers at the Saturday night dance—“He can’t be doing this;” she whispered, “he can’t be doing this”—and how they invited them back to the boss’s home for something to eat and maybe more dancing and how things developed until the foreman in a romantic swoon said to his dance partner,
You’ll have to meet my father and my mother.
Alvina knew what was coming,
And the dancing girl said, ‘Oh, no, no’…
Alvina sighed and, trembling, stared down at the handkerchief in her lap and kept pushing out the pleats in her skirt. Please, Lord, please, stop him. After a moment she realized Henry hadn’t started again—he had completely stopped, right before the next line, the naked line, she had called it, and the room was totally quiet, absolutely, totally quiet, and fearing she didn’t know what, she looked up and saw Henry, open-mouthed and nodding over his guitar and moving his finger on it as if he was puffing his breath on a cold window in winter and writing some message that kept fading away.
Nearly everyone in the hall seemed to lean towards him a little, trying to help him get going with the song they had never heard before. Even the grandchildren stared in silence as he seemed to puff on his guitar and write on it with his finger. Alvina could see his other hand beginning to tremble, and he looked afraid, terribly, terribly afraid. She moved the handkerchief in a little circle on her skirt, and, watching her brother’s face, felt a great pressure growing within her, a great, indescribable pressure, an immense silence that kept growing and growing out against the walls of her heart, against the walls of the hall, into the walls, through the walls, outside and over the grass, across the parking lot, over the fields, up the hills, between the trees, into the forest, and way, way, beyond. Oh, Lord, she felt like such a weak instrument, such a weak, useless instrument. And Henry looked so, so afraid as Alvina kept hearing over and over again the last words he had sung before he got stuck, And the dancing girl said, ‘Oh, no, no….’ And the dancing girl said, ‘Oh, no, no….’
Now she was hearing echoes—shimmering, fading echoes of “Amazing Grace” and her Uncle Chester’s hound dog songs from what she had just sung out to her brother, loud and clear, from the deepest part of herself—
Oh, no, no, we’ve got to go. We’ve got to go.
We once were shaky, but now we’re sound;
were drunk, but now we see;
And you’re an old hound goin’ round and round,
Barkin’ up an empty tree….
As the echoes of her words subsided, she could hear Henry picking up with the end of his camp song—something happened with the gravy, and the two guys ran off to join the navy.
The Grange Hall was quiet for several moments and then erupted in laughter and applause, and from somewhere she heard “Aunt Alvina rocks!” as the laughter and applause gradually mellowed into the sounds of bumping chairs and people getting up and moving around. Alvina watched Henry lift the strap over his head, hand his guitar to Ted, and start around the table towards her.
When Alvina glanced around everybody seemed to be looking at her. Her daughter Jan was leaning towards her, open-mouthed. Tiana was bobbing her head and rocking back and forth on her seat. Alvina watched Henry shuffle around the table and stop in front of her, his arms hanging at his sides. He stood a moment staring at the floor and bent down close to her ear. “That was amazing, Sis,” he said, shaking his head, “truly amazing.”
Alvina’s lips trembled and she covered her mouth with her handkerchief.
“Where did that come from?” he said, leaning closer.
“I don’t know,” she said, brushing the tears from her cheeks, “I don’t know.”
“I shouldn’t have started the song in the first place,” Henry said. “I don’t know why I did. I’d forgotten about that naked line.” He rested his hand on her shoulder. “I was looking for some other words,” he whispered, “but they just weren’t there for me.”
Alvina’s looked at her handkerchief and folded it back-and-forth in her lap.
Henry started to move away and then stepped back, brushed his hand across Tiana’s hair, and leaned down to Alvina’s ear again, pulling her close for a hug, “You saved my behind,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” she tried to say, but nothing came out. Alvina watched her brother shuffling back to where Joe and Ted were putting away the guitars.
Alvina could feel the spirit that had flowed out of her to the way beyond coming back to her heart in soft, rolling waves, forming a warmth in her chest. She could feel something on her leg—it was Tiana tapping on her knee to get her attention. Alvina looked down and saw her granddaughter staring up at her, chewing on the hem of her little red dress.
“Grammy’s funny,” she said.
“You think so?” Alvina said. “Now put your dress down and find your other shoe.”