Jude's Music

Eleven

Mrs. McBride was at a small card table in her living room when I entered her house. Once again, she had scraps of cut-outs and ribbons and photos swirling around her. "Why Nat! How nice of you to drop by. Come on in. I've got loads of work to do, and you can give me a smart hand."

"What kind of work?" I asked, pulling up a chair and sitting down at the table.

"Scrap-booking. Pasting, cutting, arranging. You know – work that isn't really work unless you're five years old or seventy-seven, in my case." She winked at me. I really liked her. She was the kind of old lady I wouldn't have minded having as a grandmother. "So what brings you into my living room?"

A few days had passed since I'd last spoken with Jude. School and my mother had kept me fairly busy, and I hadn't been able to get out to his house. But what he'd said to me – along with what Jill had told me about Mr. Pebble that same day – put some thoughts into my head. I was beginning to have serious ideas, and I needed someone to confirm the strange things I was wondering about. Mrs. McBride seemed like just the right person to turn to.

She sensed that I had some things to ask her about, but before I answered, she stood up. "I'll go put the kettle on," she said. "Let's get some sort of hot drinks in us, all right?"

Soon the drinks were made, and the two of us were sorting through a box of old photographs over steaming mugs. "Why are you making a scrapbook?" I asked her. "What's going to be in it?"

"Scraps," she smiled. "I'm just putting together puzzles of the past, like they say. But now tell me, dear . . . oh, watch that stack of photos – it's about to fall over on you. As I was saying, how are you getting along in school?"

"All right," I said, not wanting to talk about school at all.

"And how's the Lee girl?"

"Good. She took me to see the old stump in the woods. By the lake."

Mrs. McBride lifted her eyes and an interested gleam came into them. "Oh really? You mean Moss Lake?"

I nodded, shifting old black-and-white pictures back and forth on the table in front of me. "Do people swim in there?" I asked, trying to pass time before I brought up what I really wanted to know.

She looked back to the tan pages of her scrapbook. "No. Not any more."

"Why? Is it dangerous?"

"That's what they say. Kids used to go there to swim in the summer all the time, and in the winter they'd go to skate. I remember doing all of it when I myself was about your age. Not even so long as fifteen years ago there were boys and girls making use of that lake. Now it's just sitting idle."

"Well," I wondered, some stubbornness in my words, "why don't kids go there now?"

Pursing her lips, Mrs. McBride looked slyly at me. "Would you like to go for a swim in Moss Lake?"

I hesitated at first. Then I said, "No." It would do no good to lie to the old lady; she was as sharp as a pin.

"And why not?"

"Because I think it's scary. It was too quiet and empty. And the house next to it . . . ?" A chill made all the hairs on my arms stand up.

"Aaah . . . the house. Yes, that's what it always comes down to, I'm afraid. All the land around that one house – the pine forest, some of the school field, and the lake – are property of the man who lives inside."

I was impatient. "But why doesn't he want people there? Who is he, anyway?"

Mrs. McBride nodded, accepting my impatience with grace. "A sad man, Nat. A very sad man. His name is Edmund Black. He hasn't been out of his house in years – has young Martin Switchett take him his groceries once a week. From what I can remember, a young woman once died in the lake. Can't recall how, exactly. Pulled by weeds, maybe. Or it could have been winter and the ice broke. Nevertheless, because of that incident, Mr. Black won't let any person near the water. I wish I could tell you more, dear, but my memory's as much bits and pieces as all my scraps here around me are."

I didn't say anything right after her. The time had come for me to bring up what I really wanted to talk about. After a moment of gathering my nerves together, I asked, "Do you know Jude Wood?"

Rather than sigh or grin or make any other sign of having known what I was going to eventually ask her, Mrs. McBride picked up a pair of scissors and began to snip out a picture from a magazine. "I know who he is, but I haven't seen the boy in several years." That wasn't a surprise to me. I was about to ask her what she knew about him, but I decided to just let her talk. And she continued, just like I wanted her to.

"I don't know much at all about his family. He moved here about nine or ten years ago with his father. Don't they live over in the woods near town? I thought that might be about where they were. Mr. Wood is like me, in a way. I don't think he has a car! Imagine that. I heard he works in the lumber yard about a mile from here. He walks there everyday, a bit like I walk to town. That's how they live in those woods, I guess. You can't drive a car into them, that's for sure. But all I really know about Jude and his father is that they keep to themselves. I can't even recall the last time I saw either one of them." She looked up at me. "Do you know the boy?"

She hadn't asked if Jude was my friend, and I was glad of that. I didn't know what to call him. "Yes, sort of." I tried to find the proper words. "I'm not sure if I . . . or if he . . ."

"The boy is strange to you, right? He's puzzling – somewhat of a mystery."

"Yes," I said with evident relief. "I don't really know him very well, but he's so different."

"Do you think you'd like to be his friend?"

Turning toward the window, I thought. Why did "friend" have to be such a strong word? "I think I might like to try. But I can't just be friends with somebody because it makes me feel better." I was thinking about how listening to his music filled me up with something I couldn't name – about how relieved I felt when I heard it.

"You're absolutely right," said Mrs. McBride, taking the picture she'd cut out and putting it around a photograph like a border. "You wouldn't be a real friend if you only did things for yourself. If you really want the boy to begin to care about you, you have to care about him."

"I do," I said sharply. Then, with more confidence, "I do." The two of us fell silent. I pushed my thoughts back and forth like I was pushing the photographs on the table back and forth. Then I asked, "Mrs. McBride, do you think that some people can feel when other people are sad?"

"Definitely. If something was wrong with me, you'd sense it. Or your mother and sisters – when they're down in the dumps you can tell. And if people that you love are sad, it makes you sad. Don't you agree?"

My chest shuddered. I thought about how true that was. When my father went, my mother's sadness made mine so much worse. After a time I wasn't even able to tell whose hurt I was feeling: mine or hers. Before my nose began to itch (which always meant tears) I replied, "Yes." But what I was getting at was slightly different than what Mrs. McBride was answering to. "How about people that you don't know?" I pushed. "Can you feel if other people are sad even if you don't know them? And if you don't see them ever? If you've never met them at all in your entire life?"

The woman glanced at me in curiosity, but not for a long time. Her wonder was quickly covered with the common sense kind of expression that I saw on her often. "Now that is a different question. I have to tell you, Nat, that I haven't personally met someone who claimed to feel what the rest of the world feels. Or, at least, I've not met someone who admitted to it. Still, I don't think it's too far a stretch to believe that there are people like that. If a person can be extremely sensitive to things in the air or certain illnesses, why couldn't there be some people who are just that way with feelings? As a matter of fact, I think that all of us would be a little kinder toward one another if we understood the way others felt and the kinds of things they were going through."

She paused, and I realized why I liked talking to her so much. Mrs. McBride didn't pry. She didn't ask me why I had brought up such an idea or what made me think of it. She knew that if I wanted to throw another piece of information into the conversation, I would, and if I didn't want to say one more word, she wasn't going to force me to.

"I'm afraid," Mrs. McBride added softly, "that such a person would suffer a great deal of pain. And, as you said, if they didn't even know the people they were feeling it for, how would they be able to understand what was happening at all? Yes, I would be terribly sorry for a soul in such a state. They wouldn't know how to relieve their own illness, because they wouldn't even know they were ill."