The Pantry Door, Julie Steimle [read aloud books .TXT] 📗

“His clarinet?” Katy stroked the instrument with the tips of her fingers.

Her grandmother nodded. “He’d want you to play it. He always played when we came here for Founders’ Day. I thought that you could play this year.”

Lowering her head, Katy sighed. Yes. Even the quiet small town would have missed hearing Grandma Schmidt’s musical renditions calling people to come to one kind of booth or another. Though many had looked on him with suspicion when he had first moved in, he was now a legend to the other generations as the eccentric that added real musical variety.

“Ok.” She didn’t know why she was agreeing exactly, but Katy did yearn to play that clarinet. It would be like holding her grandfather’s hand again. It didn’t matter who would be watching.

She took the instrument out of the case, cleaning it first then piecing it together. As soon as she had it fully assembled, her grandmother collected the case and cleaning rod and stuffed them both back into her bag. The band was still setting up the stage, some of them tuning their guitars and fiddles though the others were still working on the sound system, so Katy lifted her head and set her mouth to the reed, drawing out one familiar melody her grandfather had taught her.

The people around her stopped where they stood. Their heads turned, inclining to hear the music that gradually mingled with the trees and leaves on the boughs, floating upward like the feathery down from dandelions. Several of them had begun to walk towards the stage, pausing paces away with their eyes lifted to where Katy stood playing the melody like something from another world. Many knew that the granddaughter of Peter Schmidt was as talented as he was. But knowing and witnessing are two different things. In witnessing, truth had become obvious.

No one clapped when she finished, but others called for her to play more. Katy obliged, though she didn’t know why. She never cared to entertain another soul since she had quit her orchestra. But she was not doing this to entertain. Katy played because she loved the feel of the wood underneath her fingers. She loved the music that flowed from the instrument, how it connected her with something else, something that she could not touch though it felt so near. In a way, Katy could feel Nissa close by listening, and she hoped that maybe Nissa would be able to hear her play.

But the band was ready, and they waved to Grandma Schmidt with the kill gesture to get Katy off the stage. Seeing the gesture herself, Katy ended her piece and hopped down to the grass, still holding the clarinet, though she felt like she ought to hand it back.

“Keep it for now,” her grandmother said, waving her off. “Unless you want to go play with the other kids, then I can hold it for you.”

Katy looked up at the park’s playground. Mostly little children ran around the swing sets over the sand, but there were a few big kids sitting on the geo-dome jungle gym just chatting. Most of the people were still setting up booths.

Lifting her eyes to her grandmother’s face, she just shrugged. “They’re going to want me to play again, aren’t they?”

Her grandmother gave an honest nod.

“Ok.” Katy reached out her hand. “I’ll hang onto it. But can I have some money to buy some food?”

Winking at her, her grandmother dug right into her purse and removed her already fat and packed wallet mostly stuffed with coupons. She drew out a five-dollar bill and passed it over to her. “Don’t spend it all in one place. If you need more later, you’ll have to negotiate.”

Folding the five, Katy smirked and stuffed it into her pocket. “Don’t worry. There isn’t a whole lot here I want to get.”

She walked off into the rows of booths being set up, but Katy merely glanced at the wares on sale. There were handicrafts made from dried cornhusks, dyed and shaped into dolls, animals, and random shapes. Straw ornaments hung from racks next to tumbled rocks on chains. Katy smirked at the carved stones there, finding one that was a flat pendant selling for a dollar. After trading her five for four ones and the pendant, Katy trudged on, keeping one hand in her pocket and the other wrapped around her grandpa’s clarinet. She walked all the way to the end of the row where the old farmer Johnson sat telling a dramatic story to children and adults under the shade of a tent awning.

“…So the youngest prince and the wolf climbed higher up the mountain until they reached the stony church. And at the church was an enormous wood door with iron hinges and an iron handle with an iron lock. The youngest prince reached up to the handle to pull open the door, but it was locked fast. The wolf turned to him and said with a ghostly howl, ‘There is the key, but it is too high up.’ The key hung on a hook at the top of the church steeple. But just before the boy gave up, thinking all was lost, the bird he had helped flew down and fetched the key for the prince. With the key, he opened the door. And they went into the church to find the well, where in the well would be the duck. And in the duck the egg that held the giant’s heart….”

Katy squatted down and settled in with them to listen to one of the many old folk stories Mr. Johnson told. Her grandfather had much respect for the elderly man who in the end had outlasted him even though they were comparable in age. Mr. Johnson winked at her as she sat on the grass cradling the clarinet in her lap.

“They caught the duck, and out popped the egg. But it fell down, down, down into the deep well. Again the boy cried, ready to believe all was lost. But as luck would have it, the fish he had helped near the river threw back the egg they had dropped to the youngest prince who took it at once and declared, ‘Now we have the giant’s heart. Now we can save my brothers’.”

Katy watched Mr. Johnson draw in a breath with a dramatic pause. It made him look and feel like an old sage. A shiver of warmth ran down her arms. Holding the clarinet and listening to Mr. Johnson talk was almost like getting her grandpa back. Almost. The yearning was still there, yet she listened with a secret hope inside that when the story finished, her grandpa would give a warm rolling laugh, pat her on the shoulder, and challenge her to a small race to the first game they could reach.

“And when the youngest prince returned and showed the heartless giant that he had his heart, the giant trembled, shaking and making the ground shake under him, begging the boy not to hurt it. The giant even turned all those stone figures in his garden back to their old selves. But when the youngest prince’s brothers discovered that he had the heart, they took it from him, shouting up at the giant that his evil rein was at and end—and crushed it in their hands. The giant collapsed to his knees, stirring up the wasp nest where his heart should have been. As the heroes and other princes rejoiced, the youngest prince sobbed, for the giant had been his first friend. He had hoped he could give back the heart, so the giant could feel pain and love and friendship. And when he became king, he was merciful even to the unwise, warning them never to end up like the heartless giant.”

Mr. Johnson bowed, indicating that the story had ended.

Everyone in the tent clapped, including Katy who liked the way the old man made voices so dramatic. As the clapping died down, Mr. Johnson cleared his throat, reached for the bottle of water set aside for him and took a swig. Gulping it down, he then cleared his throat and looked up expectantly at the children.

“Do you want to hear another one?” he asked.

“Yeah!” several of the younger kids called out, rocking in their seats for more stories.

Katy sat back also, waiting to hear the story he would tell next. She hoped it would be something dramatic rather than boring.

“Have you ever heard the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin?” He winked at Katy as the children gave mixed responses.

She moaned quietly, now wanting to get up. There was one thing she had forgotten about this old man. Her grandpa and he used to tell stories together with Grandpa Schmidt playing tunes occasionally to make it more colorful.

“Come on, Miss Neilson. You know the tunes. Play for us while I tell the story.” He grinned with so much expectation that she felt too guilty to say no. In all other situations, she would have run off, giving the old coot a piece of her mind. But all the little kids sitting on the grass stared up at her with their big eyes, each of them with heartbreaking gazes that wished for the moon.

Closing her eyes, Katy cursed the old man in her head and got off the ground. As she dusted off her rear, she stepped over to the open folding chair next to him and sat down on the edge in a way to tell him she was there not by her own will. She lifted the clarinet up, knowing he wanted her to play pieces from the Pied Piper Symphony.

“Once long ago…” the old man led in, but Katy hardly listened. She knew the lead in music to the suite and gently played the melody. When he described the wealthy, but fairly proud town of Hamlin, Katy played the part where the mayor in the symphony talks to his people about their prosperity. When he talked about the coming of the rats, Katy went right into the rat’s entrance tune, which jumped and bumped and skittered as if hundreds of rats ran over the entire town. Then as Mr. Johnson described things being so bad that the mayor offered sixty pieces of silver to the one who rid them of the rats, Katy took a breath and waited to play the Pied Piper’s tune.

“Hey! Kid! Keep it down! We’re trying to listen to the music!” A man in dusty jeans and a flannel shirt worn over a dirty tee shouted at her.

“Then go to the stage, you jerk!” Katy shouted back, setting the clarinet down.

“Now, Miss Neilson—” Mr. Johnson urged.

But the man whom Katy now recognized as a grown-up Gibson stomped into the tent and glared at her. “What did you say to me?”

The man stood over her, reeking like he had already gone through a couple beers. He looked ready to pound her into the grass unburdened with a conscience that would remind him she was just an eleven-year-old child. The other children around him scattered. They too expected him to mash her down. Their parents glared but only backed away. The tent had emptied almost immediately.

“Thomas Gibson, what are you doing?” Mr. Johnson stood up. “She’s a child, and you’re an adult.”

“And she is sassing me!” The man reached out and grabbed one of Katy’s pigtails.

But Katy snatched her own hair and yanked at it, banging the clarinet on his hand while at the same time kicking his shins. He dropped his hold.

“Ow!” Thomas Gibson hunched over just as Katy darted from the tent. “I’ll get you, you little brat!”

Katy scrambled under two tables past the skirts of three ladies dressed up as pioneer women in calico and bonnets. Crawling behind the fishing booth and under the stand where kids were throwing rings to get them around the necks of bottles, she then slid through a rain of ping pong balls that missed the