Nathan Armentrout’s Fipple Organ
On May 14, 2010, the day after Rosa Rio died, Nathan Armentrout, cradling his morning cup of coffee in his ten unusually long fingers, surveyed the demolished side of his house and the deep excavation of his yard. In the basso profondo part of his brain, Rosa Rio’s death mirrored the transitory ruin of where he lived. His house—transferred to his name by his parents with whom he had lived for twenty-three years, the last five of which he had spent preparing for his Grand Project, saving practically every cent he made working in the Shaver and Huffman Piano Factory. He was one of four tuners, and the only one of the four who wasn’t blind. Traditionally, Shaver and Huffman hired only blind tuners because they developed much sharper hearing than sighted tuners. But the North Carolina School for the Blind had eventually phased out its piano tuning training because most piano factories had begun using electronic tuners or tuning apps.
Nathan fell into his job shortly before he graduated from high school. A gospel group, The Blind Trust Trio, composed of the three blind piano tuners, were performing at his church. Ordinarily, Blind Trust consisted of a piano, fiddle, and guitar. On this particular night, though, the piano player couldn’t make it. The church’s musical director was quick to volunteer Nathan’s services to the trio. The two men were so impressed with Nathan’s playing, particularly his “ear,” that they persuaded him to apply for a tuning job that had just opened up at the piano factory. Relieved to be offered a summer job that didn’t require him to work in the furniture factory where his father was a foreman, Nathan jumped at the opportunity to find a musical employment that didn’t require him to go to college. Before he got to know the members of The Blind Truth Trio better, he toyed with the idea that they might ask him to join their group, but the leader, Paul Newland, explained to Nathan after he’d been tuning pianos for three months that as talented as Nathan was, the big attraction of their group was that they were all blind. For most of the people in the audience, three blind men making music was akin to a miracle.
Besides, Nathan soon realized that he really needed to focus his time and talent on building his pipe organ. Once the extensive renovation was completed and the side of his house had been extended seventy extra feet, along with his basement, he would be ready to begin installing the pipe organ he was already in the process of building. His parents, now living in Tampa, knew they couldn’t talk him out of his Grand Project, but when he told them over the phone about his vision for his pipe organ alcove addition, they did ask him if he wasn’t rushing into the project a little hastily. It had been more than a year since his father had been persuaded by his brother to move to Florida and go into the custom furniture manufacturing business. Wanting to keep their house in Hibriten in the family, Nathan’s parents had deeded the house over to him. The monthly payments they’d worked out with the bank were still significantly lower than any sort of housing that Nathan could have found had his parents decided to actually sell the house.
When they had suggested that Nathan move to Tampa with them, Nathan had been seriously tempted. It had been in Tampa back in 1994, when Nathan was seven years old, where he received his inspiration to play the organ. Thanks to his aunt and uncle taking him and his parents to the Tampa Theater to see a series of Buster Keaton silent films. But it wasn’t the films that wrapped around his imagination and awakened in him his unwavering passion. It was the music played by an elderly woman on a gigantic Wurlitzer Theater Organ.
Of course, the theater itself was like nothing Nathan had ever seen. It was more ornate than any building he had ever entered, more like a cathedral or a fairytale palace, more ornate than even a Disney movie. The ceiling yawned above as if he were sitting under a night sky because it was dark with lights that twinkled like real stars. The walls made Nathan feel that he might glimpse the ocean if he only tilted his head at the right angle, but it was an ocean much stranger and more exotic than the one next to his aunt and uncle’s house. An ocean that was more interesting than the one on which he’d spent the previous day getting sunburned and bored sitting on his uncle’s boat, watching him and his father fish. On the theater’s every ledge and shelf, in every nook and cranny, every artificial cove and grotto, Nathan caught glimpses of statues, artificial flowers, and melancholy gargoyles.
Then, with a rumble that sent vibrations through the massive velvet curtains draped above and along the sides of the stage, even the statues standing in opposite corners of the stage seeming to tremble, music rose from the floor, the song that Nathan would later learn was Rosa Rio’s signature piece, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses.” As the top of the ornate Wurlitzer theater organ came into view, Nathan felt a shiver in the back of his skull, his scalp prickling so intensely that his brain shuddered in harmony. Then when the organist’s head appeared, her hair impossibly smooth (and as Nathan would realize many years later not actually Rosa Rio’s real hair since at that time she was already ninety-two years old) and magnetically auburn, Nathan felt the tremors in his brain seeping into all his vital organs, throbbing all the way down to the soles of his feet, pooling into thorns of pleasure, his fingers aching with harmonious desire. Simultaneously and from the same stimulation, Nathan grew his soul and discovered that music engendered it.
When the organ and the organist rose completely into view, the house lights shut down and a spotlight illuminated Rosa Rio, affirming that she and the organ were the most extraordinary combination in creation. Nathan stopped breathing: the music, the woman, and the organ coalesced into a visual and auditory magnificence: dark, rich wood grain, fantastic array of white, red, and yellow stops in a cozily arabesque curve above the triple keyboard, the woman’s glistening hair, her blue blouse’s sequins glittering coquettishly, her swaying as she seemed to be climbing with her hands AND her feet up a moss-covered bluff or sometimes, she was swimming in the melodies she simultaneously produced and traversed.
Unable to withstand both the visual and auditory impact flooding from the stage, Nathan had to close his eyes, but he immediately realized that in doing so, the music induced in him a sense of vertigo even stronger than what he’d felt on the one rollercoaster ride he’d been on when his car crested the highest peak and then plunged down toward earth as if he were a fallen angel. Unlike on the rollercoaster, though, this vertigo brought with it the assurance that Nathan could fly. The organ’s music enveloped Nathan like clouds made out of marshmallows (his favorite food at that time). He rode the rhythms of Rosa Rio’s performance like the cycloidal thermals in a cumulonimbus cloud. The roiling chords both invigorating and threatening him in an enticing sort of way. The lower register of the organ filled him with throbbing shadows and dread while the middle register swelled toward outer space and vibrated with restlessness. The upper register stunned Nathan like lightning flashes and sleet made from diamonds.
The bass notes seeped into Nathan’s muscles like a deep massage, relaxing and rousing him at the same time. The middle range tones, full of transitional ambiguity, caressed him, assured him that all shadows were transitory, like his mother’s voice guiding him from an unpleasant dream or from his fear of the dark, explaining to him the difference between death and sleep. Then the upper tones dawned, and Nathan felt the promise of morning, scented with honeysuckle and sweet potential that pricked him with anticipation, an aesthetic acupuncture that would thereafter accompany him every time he slid on a bench in front of an organ console and set the stops for the piece he was about to play, whether for practice or for an audience. And no matter what he wore when he rendezvoused with an organ keyboard, whether he was performing for a wedding in some small chapel whose instrument was some barely audible off-brand with only a single sticky keyboard and only four or five recalcitrant stops or in some grand mega-church with a Curtis Organ relative housing somewhere around 10, 000 pipes, Nathan held in his mind the image of a glittering Rosa Rio—then a few years later, the equally bespangled glamor of Diane Bish. Through Bish, his obsession shifted from theater to pipe organ.
With their otherworldly resonance, Diane Bish’s pipe organ performances added a reverberating mystique to the instrument that Nathan had already recognized as the avatar of his soul, heart, nervous system, and genetic disposition. From the moment that he first heard Bish play Widor’s Toccata from Symphony No. 5 on the Ulm Cathedral pipe organ during one of her televised performances for her show The Joy of Music, Nathan felt himself thrilled to a profoundly deeper dimension of making music.
As Nathan took another distracted sip of his coffee, his Westminster door chime interrupted his plans to inspect more closely the work that had begun on his organ alcove. “Who,” he wondered, as he hesitantly and with some resentment, approached his door, “would be ringing my bell at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning?”
Smiling on the other side of his storm door glass, stood a woman who looked vaguely familiar to Nathan. She was slightly shorter than he, but broader—in a firm way—shaped by the somewhat tight, red overalls she wore. Her smile was aggressively bright, but definitely sincere and impressed upon her cheeks two deep dimples. The dimples called up a name in Nathan’s memory. “Trudy?” he asked, pushing the storm door open.
“Ha!” Trudy Houck responded, her dimples plunging even more deeply into her cheeks. “I know I didn’t get you out of bed because I heard you playing your organ at seven o’clock this morning.”
“I didn’t know I was that loud.” Nathan couldn’t remember how long it had been since one of the neighbors had commented on his early-morning organ playing. From the first day he and his father had installed his Wurlitzer 805 Centura Professional in the basement, he’d been warned about keeping the volume turned down. Of course, since his parents had moved to Tampa, he had slid the volume lever up a few notches. With his parents out of the house, he had forgotten that he had neighbors—most of whom were elderly, even older than his parents, with hearing problems which prompted them to up the volume on their televisions. But with Trudy appearing on his front porch, Nathan wondered if she presented a potential problem. What was she doing here anyway? She’d moved out not too long after they graduated from high school.
“Oh no. That’s not why I’m here.” She swiped her hand in front of her face. “That’s not why I’m here. Besides, I used to like some of what you played. I thought you did a great version of “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” And “Nights in White Satin.”
“Boy, I’ve not played them in ages. They were historic even back when we were in high school.” Nathan began to feel uncomfortable standing there, holding open his storm door. But he really didn’t want to invite Trudy in. Her parents were nice enough, very much like his parents. But he had very vivid memories of Trudy and her cousins—always loud, sunbathing in the back yard with their boy bands playing obnoxious tunes about how exciting it was to be young and pumped full of hormones. And on the school bus, chomping on their gum, bullying anyone not related to them or less vociferous in expressing their shallow opinions.
“Well, a lot of music has flowed under the bridge since we were virgins.” Again, Trudy flexed her audacious dimples. Her eyes shifted to Nathan’s hands.
Nathan slid his knee against the storm door and slipped his hands behind his back. “You got married, didn’t you?”
“About a year after high school.” Trudy’s dimples disappeared.
Now, Nathan felt a little more comfortable. He’d had this conversation many times over the last few years. Performing at weddings and funerals all over the county thrust him into contact with people he went to high school with, and relatives of people he went to high school with. “Somebody from Hibriten High?”
“No.” A fellow I met taking my OTR truck driving certification class at the community college. Morris Graybeal from down in Wilkes.”
“Well, where you two living?” What Nathan liked about this version of a conversation was all the topics he had to choose from. According to how Trudy might respond, he should be able to ask about her children. Unfortunately, the problem with this sort of conversation was that it was difficult to steer toward a conclusion. What he should have asked her, what really caught his attention, was her confession that she took truck-driving lessons. He found the subject to be so repulsive that his curiosity made him almost interested in having a conversation with Trudy at nine o’clock in the morning. But he really needed to get back to his organ.
Taking a step closer to the door, Trudy reached out and grasped the storm door’s handle, pulling it slightly away from Nathan’s knee. Her dimple beginning to reappear. “We lived just on the outskirts of town. We were buying a little house on that street behind where the Ideal Supermarket used to be.” Trudy pulled the door open a few more inches.
Nathan resented her taking control of his door, but he wasn’t quite sure how to react. It would be too obvious if he did what he wanted to do and jerk the door back to a more respectable opening. But if he didn’t assert his preference...
“But I’ve moved back in with Mama and Daddy for a while,” Trudy confessed. “Me and Morris just stripped the gears on our marriage.” Once again, her dimples disappeared, buried under a melancholy sag in her cheeks.
“Oh, I know that must be hard on you.” As an organist for frequent funerals, Nathan knew how to sound sympathetic.
Trudy nodded, moving even closer to the door which she pulled open a few more inches. “It’s been harder than it should be. You know, it’s a mess having to take apart a marriage, even if it’s only been five years long. But sometimes, you have to shift from the long haul to overhaul.” Trudy raised her eyes to meet Nathan’s. “To be honest, the easiest part was leaving Morris. The other parts—dividing up the furniture, selling the house, admitting how mismatched we really were, and then having to move back home. Starting all over again—it’s like hauling a herd of elephants up a steep grade of gravel road.”
“That’s a difficulty I can’t imagine.” All Nathan could imagine at the moment was how cold his coffee was going to taste when he was finally able to get Trudy off his front porch. “You made any plans about your new life?”
“Well, I plan to keep hauling freight. I saw a moving truck the other day with the company’s motto painted on the side: ‘Neptune Movers: The Potentate of Totin’ Freight.’ That’s the direction I’d like to take.”
“Working with a moving company?”
“No, no, no.” Trudy tossed her head back and laughed. “I want to be a potentate.”
Briefly, Nathan beheld an image of Trudy decked out in one of those Cecil B. DeMille Egyptian queen costumes, built primarily around a pearl-studded bikini foundation. Then, with a mild shock running across the dome of his skull, he realized that this was an image he’d connected to Trudy back when they were in high school, particularly in the summers when Trudy and her rowdy cousins sunbathed in her back yard. “That sounds like an ambitious goal.”
“Well, Mama said when I told her I was leaving Morris that a divorced woman better learn how to compensate herself.”
“Going to throw yourself into your work, huh?”
“That’s the plan.” Trudy pulled Nathan’s storm door just a little wider, leaning forward until the tips of her nose and chin crossed over Nathan’s threshold.
Forced to take a step back, unless he wanted to share an unacceptably intimate space with Trudy’s face, Nathan acquiesced to the civility that Trudy had forced upon him. Being civil didn’t really bother him as long as he could dictate the terms. Over the years of performing for people who didn’t really appreciate the depth of pipe organ music, or true organ music in general, Nathan had figured out that he had achieved his reputation for dignity by being able to control the level of civility in dealing with the public, whether in churches, auditoriums, and even in the tuning department at Shaver and Huffman. But Trudy had ambushed him. Waylaid him into civility.
“I’ve hit a hitch in my plan, though.” Trudy actually took a step into Nathan’s house. “And I think you can help me get back in the high gear.”
“Now, Trudy. I’m the last person in the neighborhood who can offer you advice on marriage or driving a truck.” He pointed to his 1977 Ford Maverick in his driveway. “Not to insult your profession, but 18-wheelers terrify me when I have to deal with them on the highway, and my organ music has made me unfit in the eyes of most women.”
Letting the storm door ease shut behind her, Trudy summoned her deepest dimples as she patted Nathan’s arm. “Don’t call yourself unfit. You’re just lying to yourself. And it just so happens it’s your music that’s brought me over for this visit.”
“Are you talking about my organ music?”
“Oh no. I’m talking about your electric banjo.” Trudy punched Nathan lightly in his stomach. “Of course I’m talking about your organ music. That’s all I’ve ever heard coming from your basement since we were kids.”
“I don’t recall you being a fan.”
“Well, sure, I did tease you about it back then. But didn’t everybody?”
“Pretty much.” Nathan didn’t actually get his Wurlitzer 805 until 2001, for his fourteenth birthday.
“It’s all you talked about. ALL you talked about.” Trudy’s gaze drifted down to Nathan’s hands once again. “And all those odd songs you played for the talent shows.” Trudy continued to stare at Nathan’s hands. “What was that you played...I guess we were in the eighth grade...that made people throw pennies up on the stage.”
“Oh Lord.” Even after nearly eleven years, Nathan could still feel all the contents of his abdomen contract when he thought about that performance. “That was the worst three minutes and sixteen seconds in my life.”
“WHY would you pick such a gloomy song to play for a bunch of junior high school kids?” Trudy laughed, but her question did carry a sincere curiosity.
“It was Edvard Grieg’s lyric piece, ‘Evening in the Mountains.’” Nathan paused and inadvertently, found himself motioning Trudy toward his living room. “At the time, I thought it was one of the most beautiful piano pieces ever written. Much less sentimental than what I’d played by Chopin or even Beethoven. Besides, it expressed to me how I felt about being in the eighth grade. I had that horrible Mr. Brutweiler who didn’t miss a chance to criticize me for not wanting to play baseball because I worried about my hands. I stayed depressed that whole year. But you know how sad music can redeem sad feelings.”
“Do I ever.” Catching sight of the construction going on at the far end of Nathan’s living room, Trudy halted in mid-step. “That must have been some wild-ass party that had you tearing down your wall like that. I always thought you was too shy to rip up your own property.”
“No, if I’d had a wild party, I’d have sent you an invitation.” Nathan glanced at Trudy to make sure she knew he was joking.
“I’d have come, too, as long as you didn’t ask me to help you clean up afterwards.”
“I’m in the process of turning the living room into my music room. I’m making room for a pipe organ.” Nathan sat down in his recliner and motioned Trudy toward the couch five feet away from him.
“Mama told me you lived here by yourself now.” Trudy lowered herself onto the arm of the couch, her knees pointing toward Nathan. She leaned forward. “Still working at the piano plant, too.” She tilted her head back just slightly and considered Nathan through half-closed eyes.
“I like the work. I like working with musical instruments.” Nathan detected the undercurrent of Trudy’s gaze. What she really wanted to do was ask him why didn’t he go to college if he thought he was so smart. “In fact, I’m building the pipes for my organ in what used to be my father’s workshop out back.”
“So, how many will that be?” Trudy crossed her legs and rested her elbows on her calf. Her dimples revealed either amusement or awakening curiosity.
“Well, the average church organ with four manuals—keyboards—will have somewhere around 6,930 pipes. The largest pipes, usually made of wood can be two feet square and thirty-two feet high. The smallest ones will be a little smaller than a pencil.”
“How many have you made so far?”
“Eight.”
“How long has that taken you?”
Rather than explain to Trudy all the difficulty he had in finding the supplier for his wood and training himself in the woodworking process, not to mention the specialized tools he had to collect—and then there was his job at the piano factory and all of his performances, Nathan decided just to give her the bare numbers. “Three years.”
“Okay.” Trudy closed her eyes. After a few seconds, she said, “So at your present speed, you’ll get all your pipes built in about 2,566 years.”
“That consideration has worried me to the point that I know I can’t have a church-sized organ in my house.” Nathan looked past Trudy to study the destroyed wall on the opposite side of the room. His organ alcove. Space, he realized also limited his dream—as well as time. “I hope I’ll be able to build my organ to about half that size. Around 3,465 pipes.”
“So you’ve moved into the much more doable range of...” Trudy bobbed her head three times, “1,283 years.”
“I’m counting on my pace to pick up once I perfect my technique.”
“Oh, that sounds reasonable.” Trudy twisted around to inspect the organ alcove more closely. “If you could maybe quadruple your speed, you could get finished in just 641 years. Too bad most of your older relatives won’t be able to attend your premiere.”
“They’re not big fans of pipe organ music anyway.” Now, Nathan studied his elongated fingers, unaware that Trudy studied them too. They gave him the confidence that he could, in the name of organ music, defy his internal limitations without disrupting other people’s perceptions of reality. His fingers were proof of that. There was no genetic reason in the world why he should have such extraordinary hands. He had willed them to stretch until by age sixteen, he had a twelve-note spread in each hand. His organ teacher at that time, Mr. Melvin Underdown, told Nathan that he’d never seen anybody in Caldwell County with such a hand spread. And Nathan had to believe Mr. Underdown because he was also the organist at Hibriten’s largest Baptist Church with one of those 6,930 pipes connected to its organ’s quadruple keyboards.
“You planning on retiring when you turn five hundred?” Trudy glanced back at the wall under construction.
Nathan felt his palms beginning to itch with impatience. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, you’ve got that wall to pay for, and even as a do-it-yourself project, seems to me even a small pipe organ will cost you, even if you finance it over two or three hundred years, with even a low interest rate, you’ll get eat up.” Trudy returned her attention to Nathan’s hands. “And I expect medical expenses for a man going on five or six hundred years will be a lot more than you’re paying right now.”
Since he turned twelve and started begging his parents for his own Wurlitzer organ, he’d heard financial warnings about the cost of musical ambition. When Mr. Underdown had told Nathan’s parents about the six thousand dollar price tag on the 1978 Wurlitzer 805 Centura Professional, all Nathan heard for three weeks was how they couldn’t afford to go in debt for such an expensive instrument when there were so many good, and newer, organs at much more reasonable prices. But then, Mr. Underdown had stepped in and motioned during a church deacon’s meeting that the church should take up a love offering for Nathan because the boy had been a reliable substitute organ player for the church for years and years, never missing a rehearsal, never questioning the choir director’s instructions, and never ever asking for money. The congregation was so enthusiastic in its support of Nathan’s organ dream that his parents had no choice but to make up the two thousand-dollar difference not raised by the love offering. That miraculous transaction had occurred nine years ago. The world had cooperated with Nathan’s need. Just as his body had cooperated with his desire for exceptional organist’s hands.
“One of the most influential organists in my life, Rosa Rio, lived to be nearly 108, and she enjoyed pretty good health all of her life.” Nathan knew how Trudy would respond.
“How many organists do you know who have made it even to three hundred? Much less six hundred?” Trudy stood up and adjusted the bib of her overalls.
Something about her gesture disturbed Nathan almost as much as her looking at his hands. “Well, Diane Bish is sixty-nine, and she’s still going strong.” Nathan wondered if he should offer to show Trudy one of the Diane Bish’s performances that he’d taped from her “Joy of Music” videos, maybe the one where she played the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ in Philadelphia. Or better yet, that performance of Widor’s Tocatto.
“Do you think you can get her to help you make some of your pipes?”
“Oh no. She’s always performing or composing.”
“Well, look,” Trudy put her hands in her back pockets and strolled toward what had once been Nathan’s parents’ dining room table, but now served as the quality control station for his organ pipes. “Maybe we can work out a deal...” she paused at the table and contemplated the four-foot wooden pipe that Nathan had just finished the night before.
“What kind of deal?” Nathan viewed any sort of partnership as an invasion of his privacy. Especially when his needs drove him to seek assistance.
He’d been depressed for a month after he came to a business arrangement with Craig Huffman, the carpenter who was building his organ alcove. Craig agreed to do the work for free in his spare time. In exchange for Craig’s labor, Nathan agreed to play for Craig’s daughter’s wedding and five of his cousin’s weddings, whenever those might occur. He also agreed to perform ten times at Craig’s church: two Christmas cantatas, two Easter cantatas, two Epiphany cantatas, five church reunion anniversary programs, and five funeral services on the occasion when prominent church members died (several elderly members were in competition for the honor). Although Nathan felt he’d gotten the best of the deal because Craig’s church had a wonderful Allen G350 Church Organ, he still felt a touch of floating vertigo whenever Craig showed up to work on the construction project. His contract with Craig would probably take him five or six years to fulfill. One of the cousins whose wedding he must play for was only eleven years old. But the thought of some bond with Trudy prompted an acid reflux response in Nathan.
“You don’t know it, but I’m good with my hands.” Trudy glided her fingers over the organ pipe she’d been inspecting. “I took a woodshop class in high school. The only girl in a shop of twelve boys.”
“I thought about taking that class. But it was too rowdy.” With all the distractions of multiple power tools and rampant testosterone, Nathan feared losing a finger or two—and then goodbye to his twelve-note spread. “Besides, I didn’t have time for enrichment or vocational classes because I was asked to be an accompanist for the school’s beginning and advanced choruses.” Nathan hoped he could obscure Trudy’s suggestion.
“This is one of your organ pipes, right?” Trudy leaned closer to examine the wood.
Nathan hurried over to Trudy’s side. “Yep. Brazilian rosewood. That’s one of the C pipes.”
“Yes. I can SEE it’s a pipe.” Trudy laughed. “Why does it have this big notch up here?”
“What I’m building are flue pipes. I decided not to use reed pipes because they take longer to construct, and as you’ve pointed out, I’m already working under serious time constraints.” Nathan slid past Trudy to stand closer to the notch that she had pointed out. “Another name for a flue pipe—and one that I like better is a fipple pipe.” No way in the world did Nathan plan to tell Trudy that another name for the fipple pipe was the labial pipe.
“Sounds close to ‘nipple.’” Trudy’s dimples grew so intense her cheeks took on a glow. “Do you mind if I pick up your pipe?”
Of course he did, but Nathan couldn’t think of a civil way to deny her request. And after all, she had gone to the trouble to ask. “Just be careful. The finish is just barely dry.”
Pursing her lips, Trudy lifted the fipple pipe. “Heavier than I thought it’d be.” Then she carefully turned the pipe so she could look through its length. “Hollow.”
“I’m going with the open-ended pipe design instead of the closed design.” Nathan found himself breathing very shallowly.
Trudy turned her attention to Nathan for a second. “Time-shaving step?”
“That, and I also prefer the quality of sound that comes from open-ended pipes.”
Trudy placed the pipe back on the table but leaned over the notch. “This is what makes the sound? This notch?”
“It works like a recorder’s mouthpiece...”
“A recorder?” Trudy lost her dimples.
Reluctantly, Nathan recognized that he would have to use a comparison that he hated, since Trudy didn’t know what kind of recorder he was talking about. “It works the same way a whistle does.”
Trudy laughed. “You mean to tell me your organ pipes are like big, wooden whistles?”
It was the reaction that Nathan expected. For over two hundred years, the pipe organ had been the most complicated machine mankind had ever produced, but it started with such a simple mechanism—wind being split by a tiny lip of wood or metal or clay. The basic problem with all of mankind, Nathan had concluded years ago, was that people had too much trouble seeing the beauty of simplicity. Not to appreciate simplicity was the foundation of all ignorance. “Yes, I plan to spend six hundred years building big wooden whistles.”
“Okay, I think I can help you out.” Trudy leaned against the table, crossed her arms, and smiled in such a level way that her dimples seemed to vibrate. “See, I came over this morning to ask a favor of you. But after hearing your plans to build your own pipe organ, I’m sure we can help each other.” As she spoke, Trudy pulled a flash drive from inside the bib of her overalls and held it out to Nathan.
Detecting Nathan’s confusion, Trudy grasped his wrist, lifted his hand, and cupped it around the flash drive. For a few seconds, long enough for Nathan to notice how warm her hand was, Trudy kept her grip on his curled fingers.
“It’s a collection of my favorite songs—the saddest and the happiest,” Trudy said, releasing her grip on Nathan’s hand. “They got me and Morris over some long stretches of highway. But since we’ve divorced, they don’t satisfy me the way they used to.”
“No wonder,” Nathan replied. “They remind you of your marriage.” He started to say failed marriage but caught himself. “You need to move on to some new favorite songs.”
“No. No I don’t.” Trudy threw her shoulders back and jutted her chin toward Nathan’s face. “All these songs were my favorites long before I got jack-knifed over Morris. What I’ve figured out is if I could hear these same songs—to sing along with—but in a different sort of mood, then I could scrape off all the depressing Morris goop and get back to the way the music used to make me feel.”
Studying the flash drive, Nathan wanted to avoid looking at Trudy’s face for as long as possible. Many people had asked him to record organ music for them, but usually it was for music he had played at a wedding or a funeral—and for his recitals. Ancient ladies at his church had asked him for more specific songs: “Snow White Dove,” “Peace in the Valley,” “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder,” “In the Garden,” “On That Glad Morn”—songs to celebrate a righteous death as Nathan had come to think of them. Other people had asked if he could play more secular favorites on the organ. By far, some of the older, but not quite antique members of his congregation asked for “Nights in White Satin,” “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” and “Lay, Lady, Lay.” Then there were the fans who asked for organ versions of Beatle songs. But one of his personal old songs for the organ was Santo and Johnny’s “Sleep Walk.” At a very early age, when he was around twelve or thirteen, Nathan had purchased a copy of Rosa Rio’s album Come Rain or Come Shine: Two Organs and Rhythm, Featuring Rosa Rio, and he realized any song sounded better when transcribed for the pipe organ. Not long after, he’d ordered a copy of Rosa’s music book, Double Arrangements for the Hammond Organ in which she explained in detail how to transcribe popular songs for the organ. Nathan had memorized her lessons and her versions of “Whispering,” “June Night,” “Sleep,” “There Goes My Heart,” “Rain,” “My Mother’s Eyes,” and “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.”
“So can you turn my favorite songs into organ music?” Trudy nudged Nathan in the stomach with her knuckles.
“Of course.” Nathan tried not to scoff.
“And in return, I’ll help you build your organ pipes.” Trudy took a step away from the table, her body aimed vaguely toward the front door, but she kept her eyes on Nathan. “How long will it take you to make the recording for me?”
Relieved that Trudy was leaving, Nathan felt a wave of generosity wash over him, but didn’t want to rush into any sort of arrangement until he had more time, much more time, to think about it. “I’ll be happy to make a CD for you. Just give me a day or two. I’ve transcribed country songs before, and they’re all pretty much based on twelve chords in predictable progressions. No big deal.” Nathan moved beside Trudy so he could open the door for her. “Let’s wait and see about you helping me make organ pipes. We’ll have to see how our schedules match...or don’t.”
“Now, Nathan, don’t ride your brakes on my offer.” Trudy paused in the doorway. “I learn fast, and I’m good with my hands.” The dimples dawned brilliantly.
“See how you like the CD I make for you.” Nathan felt on firmer ground. He patted Trudy’s shoulder. “You might be disappointed. After all, I seem to remember you sharing the opinion of most of our classmates that pipe organ music is creepy.”
“Okay, I did think that, and I know I gave you a hard time about it—FIVE years ago.” Trudy gave Nathan a firm push with both her hands. “A lot of highway has rolled under my chassis since then, boy.” She let her palms rest on Nathan’s stomach. “When you’re in the middle of making a big mistake, you get some perspective on all your mistakes. And long-distance driving gives you plenty of time to line up your regrets. Besides, all the driving I’ve done has made me curious about hearing your organ music again. But I need to start with songs I’m familiar with.”
Slightly embarrassed by Trudy’s confession, apologies of any sort always fostering awkwardness in him, Nathan thought about returning her touch, but had no idea where to aim a consoling caress. “Organ music can be an acquired taste.” For a moment, Nathan tried to imagine how Trudy would have responded if she had been sitting beside him in the Tampa Theater back in 1992 when Rosa Rio and her Wurlitzer came rising up through the stage floor.
At two o’clock that afternoon, Nathan sat in the furtherest corner of the front pew at the Hibriten First Baptist Church. He wasn’t terribly fond of their 1979 Casavant 15 Rank pipe organ, but it was a fine instrument for funerals. And while he was never excited by the sound of the Casavant, he did appreciate how the fifteen sets of pipes were displayed. Unlike the visible pipes of the large church organs, the Casavant pipes were functional as well as highly decorative. Nathan especially liked the finished oak pipes at the back of the pipe alcove. He conceded that the reed pipes had a nice timbre, but he didn’t regret choosing fipple pipes for his dream organ because they were much less trouble to keep in tune.
Although the minister had asked him only to provide thirty minutes of pre-service music and thirty minutes of post-service music, Nathan had arrived at one-fifteen and started playing. In addition to his talent, he liked to share his time with people paying him to perform. This funeral in particular was enjoyable because he hadn’t been asked to play any “favorites” of the deceased. All of that music was being provided by the church choir. Long ago, he’d compiled several play lists for his funeral performances. Today, he spent his pre-service time piping out “Amazing Grace,” “I Surrender All,” “In the Garden,” “Be Still My Soul,” “Draw Me Close to You,” “Nearer, My God to Thee,” “Faith of Our Fathers,” ”Near to the Heart of God,” “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” and “The Old Rugged Cross.” If he had wanted to, Nathan could have stretched out any of three or five of the hymns to last for the forty-five minutes he played, but he’d learned over the years that people at a funeral stopped paying attention to any song if he worked too many variations on it. Instead, he preferred to let them play “Name That Tune” if they seemed too restless.
Legally, Nathan could have remained sitting on the organ bench through the service, but he chose to move down to the most obscure seat on the front pew for two reasons. First, after playing for forty-five minutes, he welcomed the opportunity to relax his back. Certainly, he enjoyed sitting in front of an elaborate organ console in full view of a fairly large congregation, but the rather modest console of the Casavant didn’t compensate for the organ stool’s lack of a resting place for his tense spine. Second, even with a modest foot pedal array, like the one on the Casavant, Nathan had to pay close attention to his feet. If he grew inattentive during a funeral or a wedding service, his feet would seek the diversion of lightly tapping the pedals, working out on their own, progressions that Nathan found soothing. Even though he made sure to turn the pedals off once he finished playing, someone had once told him that he looked like he was tap dancing during the minister’s eulogy.
And it was at funerals and weddings in particular that Nathan had to watch his feet because he seldom used the bass pedals for such performances. And if his feet didn’t get an ample dose of bass pedals during a performance, they got restless. The unenlightened, most of the population as far as Nathan was concerned, misconstrued pipe organ bass. They heard it as gloomy, depressive, foreboding. No, all they wanted to hear were the flute, reeds, strings, and diapason registers. If an organ provided chimes, the unenlightened were even more pleased. Naturally, being a lover of the pipe organ’s total range, Nathan appreciated the purity of tone provided in the flute and diapason registers, but the true soul of a pipe organ found its breath, its pulse, in the bass pipes, those eight, ten, twelve, sixteen, twenty-four, and thirty-two foot pipes that could shake the walls like an earthquake, like the creation of the universe. The flute register appealed to the mind. The diapason or middle register appealed to the heart. But the bass—there was the pipe organ’s soul—what made it the king of all the instruments.
Before coming to the funeral, Nathan had spent part of his morning making the CD for Trudy. It was easy enough. Those redundant chord progressions. Some of her choices didn’t surprise him: “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” “Whiskey Lullaby,” “If You’re Reading This.” On the other hand, he was surprised to find “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” and “I Fall to Pieces.” Just for fun, he’d also provided a few variations on Hotel California, Death March of a Marionette, Jambalaya, El Amor Brujo, and Hall of the Mountain King. For his own pleasure, he had thrown in his version of the organ solo in Widor’s Symphony #5, as heavy on the bass as he could go with his speakers, using his synthesizer to provide spectral effects. He intended to warn Trudy that with this selection, she wasn’t really getting the full pipe organ experience since he had to use his Wurlitzer 805 Centura Professional—a wonderful instrument, but not a pipe organ. Not yet. But the time would come, when all his pipes were built then he would employ the Johannus Hybrid Organ Solutions to transform his Wurlitzer 805 into a pipe organ console.
By working on Trudy’s playlist Saturday afternoon after he returned from his funeral performance, then spending all of Sunday afternoon after he returned from playing for Sunday services at his church, Nathan was able to creep up on her parents’ front porch early Monday morning, a few minutes before five a.m., and stealthily insert the manila envelop containing the flash drive into their mailbox. Nathan was grateful that the floor of their front porch was poured concrete and not a rackety wood construction. Purely out of superstition, Nathan suspected that Trudy had to be a light sleeper and behind her closed eyelids remained alarmingly attuned to all noises that pertained to her schemes.
But it was the indeterminate nature of those schemes that added several extra layers to Nathan’s cautious trespass on her front porch. Of course, he knew that she was flirting. As far back as he could remember, Trudy had been fond of teasing him. When she was a teenager, though, her teasing had been too spiced up with cruelty. From Nathan’s experience, that cruelty hadn’t noticeably distinguished Trudy’s attacks from those of her cousins—or from most of the young women he had known. Even those girls who had grown up with him in the church, while one of their fathers or mothers was complimenting him on his organ playing after a Sunday service or a Christmas service or an Easter service, those girls would huddle together a few pews away and giggle, distracting him from the compliments their elders lavished on his playing. From his experience, flirting and ridiculing echoed each other, like the key of A minor echoed the key of C major. He enjoyed playing in both keys, but A minor, almost every minor key, made him feel a little bit like the Incredible Dr. Phibes crouched over his keyboard.
Once Nathan safely returned to his house and settled in front of his Wurlitzer for his morning two hours of practice, he lowered the volume on his organ’s speakers before beginning a few warm-up arpeggios. He felt reasonably sure that Trudy wouldn’t interrupt him this early in the morning. Besides, she wouldn’t have a reason to come calling—at least not before she had the opportunity to hear what he’d done on her flash drive. What he earnestly hoped was that she’d be so disappointed with his renditions that she’d not impose on him further. She couldn’t possibly connect with the kind of organ experience that his Wurlitzer provided. Maybe she could appreciate one of those little portable cheepers used in some rock and roll bands. But to experience the purest bass, a person had to feel the vibrations given off by the Wannamaker Organ’s Unenclosed Great Sub Principal 32’ pipe or its 64’ Gravissima pipe. Those band boys could talk about “emulation” all they wanted to, but as far as Nathan was concerned, even their Hammond SK1-73 emulated a real organ about as well as a teakettle tweet fart emulated a kettle drum.”
As he drove to work and passed by his church, Nathan felt clutched by an ethereal dread. What if Trudy decided to visit him while he was playing at Sunday worship service? What if, by some mysterious twist in her brain, she liked the music he had translated for her? He had no idea what sort of schedule she worked on. He knew some truck drivers could be on the road for days or weeks at a time. What if he didn’t hear from her for a couple of weeks and started thinking that she didn’t really care for pipe organ music after all. Then out of the blue, she showed up in the front pew just about seven feet from where he sat playing “I Need Thee Every Hour” or “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.” What sort of inappropriate garb would she or could she dig up to mark her entrance? What would be her sabbath version of those red overalls? He thought of all those deacons who would come in from their pre-sermon prayer meeting, expecting that front pew to be empty, sanctified, reserved just for them and the collective weight of their moral support for the success of Preacher Kincaid’s sermon. Who could explain Trudy Clough’s trespass?
Primarily, Nathan’s job at Shaver and Huffman consisted of chip tuning the pianos that were in the process of being assembled. He worked under the supervision of Wesley Overby, who also performed as the guitar player in the Blind Trust Trio. Even though Nathan had worked five years as a chip tuner, he wouldn’t be considered a senior tuning technician until he’d been there ten years. In the next year or two, Nathan expected to also begin training as a hammer voicing technician. For most of each workday, he and Wesley, as chip tuners, worked with the completed soundboards of each piano, before they were installed in the cabinets, the external, furniture component of their pianos.
Even without the cabinet, the soundboard had to be brought into the chip tuning rooms on a special dolly because its three main parts consisted of a backing made of two-by-four bridges which braced the actual soundboard against the vertical pressure of the 220 strings and a thick steel frame that braced the soundboard against their horizontal pressure. Each time Nathan began tightening the strings with his tuning hammer, he couldn’t help but think about all that pressure he was building up in front of his face—somewhere over thirty-thousand pounds. To begin with, he tightened each string for two and a half turns. Only then, was he ready to start strumming each string or set of strings with his tuning pick as he stretched the strings. Ordinarily, except for applying his ear to the preliminary pitches to the strings, Nathan felt a distinct distance from this process. This concern with varying thicknesses of wire never ceased to feel alien to his deepest musical tastes.
Just as far as a piano’s internal appearance went, most people would say that it looked much more romantic than a pipe organ’s internal construction. After all, the piano had all those strings and hammers, quaint levers and comely shanks, whereas the internal parts of an organ’s console were more like a computer than a musical instrument: electrical relays, couplers, diodes, all the soul of integrated circuits, modular circuit boards and microprocessors. The organ’s sound didn’t actually come from the organ itself, but from its pipes which could be installed all over the concert hall whether it was a modest civic auditorium or some grand cathedral. Nathan thought of the tour he’d taken two years ago of the organ at the Fourth Presbyterian Church whose pipes stretched throughout the entire church, with over eight thousand pipes. Nathan couldn’t help feeling a disdain for the strings he stretched all day long.
Of course, what really stood between him and his ability to fully appreciate the piano’s sound system was the ever-present fear he harbored for the intense pressure those strings clinched between their anchoring pins. And today, as he increased the tension on those wires and plucked them with his pick, he couldn’t avoid thinking about how Trudy Clough was increasing the tension on his emotional strands—even though he’d just met with her once. But he counted sneaking up on her front porch as a second point of contact. If she liked the music he recorded for her, she would likely require more work from him. What he really wanted to happen was for his performance to disappoint her. Never before had he hoped for a failed performance. That desire notwithstanding, he thought his translation of her tunes had been quite good, given what he had to work with. Still, he couldn’t imagine how she could truly appreciate what the organ version of those songs brought to her life. What he didn’t want to imagine was how she might express her gratitude if she did approve of his work. He admitted to himself as he started adjusting the strings of the piano a second time. Then he would do a third, fourth, and fifth adjustment before he returned the instrument to a humidity/temperature-controlled room to rest for three weeks. That was what he needed, he decided: a room where he could rest protected from all pressures not related to getting himself and his home prepared for his pipe organ.
But now that he thought about it, his success as an organist also left him exposed. During a normal week, he’d be performing at least twice, for church services. However, funerals, weddings, recitals—any celebration that required an organ—could sometimes subject him to public access four or five times a week, depending on the season. Ordinarily, Nathan took refuge behind a good-sized organ’s console. Even a theater organ’s console wrapped around its musician like a cocoon. Often, the organ sat off, almost hidden, in some corner of a church or auditorium. On some level, everyone at an organ concert knew that the musician wasn’t the main attraction. It was the sound. Even if the performer was someone like David Drury, Brett Leighton, Luc Ponet, Desmond Gaspar, E. Power Biggs, Diane Belcher, Barbara Harback, or even Rosa Rio, what their audience wanted wasn’t to see the performer but to feel their teeth and skulls rattle with the pipes’ vibrations. More than any musician, organists wanted to be submissive, maybe even obsequious, to their instrument. Organists were so unlike pianists. Even when seated in front of a grand piano, the performer was so obvious. As deep as the paint on the outside of piano might appear, eventually the audience’s eyes were drawn to the musician. Too obviously, as far as Nathan was concerned, the pianist was making the music. Not so with an organist. His or her music came from somewhere else, from a distant wall or from a basement or from an upstairs balcony—an ethereal source. Maybe a different dimension.
For lunch break, Nathan and Wesley left the chip tuning room to join Eric Boone and Paul Newland in one of the two much larger final tuning and voicing rooms. These rooms had to be larger with better acoustics and more soundproof because Paul and Eric needed to hear the pianos as they wanted their customers to hear them. Usually, they worked together, with Paul doing the tuning and Eric doing the voicing, a job that involved his poking each felt hammer with a needle until the string was struck with the exact amount of hardness. Back and forth, the two men tuned and pricked, repeating the process until their ears were satisfied.
Usually, Nathan opened up his lunch sack after the other three men had begun eating. When he first started working with them five years ago, he had delayed starting his lunch because he thought the blind men might need his help in some way—opening a zipper sandwich bag or maybe even locating a misplaced thermos jug. But after his first month of eating with Wesley, Eric, and Paul, Nathan had realized that they knew their way around their tuning rooms better than he did. Wesley, who had come to work at Shaver and Huffman several years after Eric and Paul, had been tuning for them nearly twenty years. All three men knew their work areas like the inside of their head. Even after five years on the job, Nathan sometimes still had to ask one of his fellow tuners where he could find a certain tool, even if he had been the last person to use it. “Mindful” was the word that Nathan had come to connect most closely with the blind technicians. They weren’t just aware of what they were doing; it was as if they shared some sort of mental telepathy, not only sharing the location of tools but Nathan’s activities as well.
All three men had been blind from an early age. Nathan had worked in the tuning department for nearly a year before he felt comfortable enough to ask how the blind men had lost their sight. All three of them had laughed at how long Nathan had taken to express his curiosity. Both Eric and Paul had suffered from a brain disorder called cortical/cerebral visual impairment. They’d explained that they didn’t experience darkness. What they saw were billows of intermingling colors. On the other hand, Wesley had suffered from Stargardt Syndrome, a condition similar to macular degeneration and hadn’t become completely blind until he was eleven. What the three men had in common was their conviction that they preferred being blind to being deaf for two reasons: first, when you were deaf, you were impaired by two-thirds of your surroundings, behind you and on both sides of you, whereas if you were blind, you lost only the front end of your perception. Second, if you were deaf, it was a lot harder to make music.
Nathan didn’t open his lunch sack until the other men began eating, even after five years of knowing they never needed his help, because for a few seconds, he could watch them move. Nobody he knew moved as carefully as Wesley, Eric, and Paul. Their mindfulness translated every motion and task into a form of navigation. They performed the smallest act as if working from some internal chart, planned and calibrated as carefully as the pianos they tuned eight hours a day. Habitually, when Nathan observed them at work or at lunch, he found himself humming one of Chopin’s nocturnes. He knew that much of their behavior had been cultivated while they attended the North Carolina School for the Blind, developing that circumspect cognizance to help them move through their dark world with self-sufficiency. And where did the courage come from, Nathan wondered, to find that self-sufficiency. Maybe from their music. Nathan liked to think that his music made him stronger or at least graceful enough to look strong.
“You fellows got any performances coming up that I need to know about?” Nathan had waited until the other men had almost finished their lunches, knowing they didn’t feel up to conversation on empty stomachs. Few people realized the stress that tuning pianos put on a person’s appetite.
Paul tilted his head toward the ceiling. “Couple of weeks from now. We’re going to Wilkes for Merlefest.”
“But we won’t be camping,” Wesley added.
“Won’t bother me none,” Eric raised his arms above his head and indulged in a long stretch. “Give me a Holiday Inn over a tent any old day. Especially if it’s supposed to rain like the extended forecast is calling for.”
“You going to Merlefest, Nathan?” Paul asked.
“Have they ever featured an organ player at that festival?” Nathan folded his lunch sack scornfully.
“Not that I recall,” Paul replied. “But on such an occasion, it might be you could pass yourself off as a keyboard performer.”
“That’s what Eric does all the time.” Wesley rolled back on his elbows, laughing.
“If all I did was cover up your sour notes, I’d still be serving mercy to the audience.” Out of tune, Eric sang, “When time shall come for my leaving / When I bid you adieu / Don’t spend your money for flowers / Just fumigate your shoes.”
“So, Nathan, where are you going to be performing next?” Paul reached out and gave Eric’s shoulder a shove.
“I played a funeral this past Saturday.” Nathan rested his cheek against his palm, a gesture he’d once been told made him look like Jack Benny. But at this moment, he was trying to frame his doubt, attempting to formulate it into a question. “Most of this weekend, though, I worked on scoring some country songs for my organ.”
“That could be a useful exercise.” Paul nodded. “Get in some transposing, interpreting, variation.” He shifted in his seat to aim his next question more directly in Nathan’s direction. “Why’d you want to work on country songs? You know people who favor country tunes don’t usually appreciate the sound of a big organ.”
“Oh, I was doing it as a favor for a...” Nathan hesitated. He realized that he hadn’t clearly identified what sort of relationship he had with Trudy. Or more accurately, he couldn’t identify what sort of relationship she expected. “...a neighbor.”
“I bet this neighbor is a woman.” Wesley rubbed his hands together.
“Yeah.” Eric agreed. “We’d have to be deaf not to hear that soft dip in your voice, Nathan, when you referred to that ‘neighbor.’”
Nathan felt his face flush. “No, no.” He held his hands up defensively. “I had to pause because she used to be my neighbor then she moved away. And then on Saturday, when she invaded my house, I found out that she’d moved back in with her parents.”
“But girls who grow up as neighbors can have special attractions.” Paul tilted his head in Nathan’s direction and smiled.
“Not this girl. Huh-uh.” Nathan shook his head vigorously. He knew the other tuners couldn’t see him, but he suspected they could hear his neck swivel. “She was one of the worst ones in high school to make fun of my organ playing.”
“But if she came to your house, on a Saturday morning, and asked you to shift her country music to organ music, then it sounds to me like she’s come around to your section of the orchestra.” Wesley waved his finger in the air like a conductor.
“Did she sound sincere when she asked you to translate her music to your organ?” Eric asked.
“Sincere?” Nathan closed his eyes for a moment. The word felt like a mirror. “How could I know?” He opened his eyes.
None of the three men looked at him directly. Yet, he knew each one was considering him more closely than most people did. Nathan felt a vague conviction that their hazy view of him, where he was, represented his true position in their discussion much more accurately than where his actual body was situated.
“Well,” Paul suggested, “let’s consider all you know about this girl...what’s her name?”
“Trudy Houck.”
“Trudy sounds trustworthy,” Eric said. “Like ‘truthy.”
“I don’t know about ‘Houck’ though.” Wesley frowned. “Sounds like somebody clearing his throat.”
“Does it make a difference if her last name has probably changed from Houck?” Nathan asked. “She got married. Then divorced. That’s why she moved back in with her parents.”
“What’s her last name?” Wesley shifted in his seat so that he faced Nathan directly.
“Let’s not get off the real subject,” Paul protested. “Names are like Zodiac signs. Most people don’t get to choose.”
“I don’t remember her married name, anyway.” Nathan was surprised by this lapse in his social skills regarding Trudy. Usually, he was very good with names. As a church organist, he depended on being able to address his audience with a certain degree of familiarity.
“So Trudy came back to live with her mama and daddy.” Paul allowed his gaze to drift toward the ceiling. “So she’s left her husband.”
“She told me she’s getting divorced.”
“That narrows it down,” Wesley observed.
“She’s not a widow or a single woman.” Eric clarified, nodding.
“What you have to determine, Nathan,” Paul explained, “is what kind of divorced woman Trudy is.”
“What types are there?” Nathan summoned the impression Trudy made on him. Her dimples, her red overalls, her insistence, her request to hear organ music. But he couldn’t translate her details into a divorce.
“Probably as many as there are divorced women,” Paul replied. “But we need to focus on Trudy.”
“Did she badmouth her husband?” Wesley asked.
“She said something about leaving her husband being the easiest part of the divorce.”
“But she didn’t cast any vindictive aspersions on his person?” Paul asked.
“No, the impression I got, now that I think about it, was mostly how ready Trudy was to move on with her life.” Nathan felt a flicker of admiration for Trudy, but in a moment, it faded to suspicion.
“And you’re worried that she might want to be moving on in your direction?” Eric massaged the back of his ear as if trying to tune in on how Nathan was going to respond.
“I just never had anybody barge into my Saturday morning the way she did. Especially a truck driver.”
“Trudy’s a truck driver?” Paul asked.
“Yeah. She and her husband both. They worked as a team, I think.”
“And now what she wants is to get out of her partnerships?” Eric directed his question more toward Paul than to Nathan.
“But she didn’t wind up asking you out to lunch or supper, did she?” Wesley’s voice sounded flat with a disappointment that struck Nathan as a criticism of him.
“No, all she asked was for me to adapt her country songs to organ.” Then as an afterthought, Nathan added, “But she also offered to help me build the pipes for my organ.”
“Well, you’ve got to admit that’s a unique request.” Paul cleared his throat and took a meditative breath. “I think what you’re dealing with is a Contrary Rebound Divorcee in the Experimental Mode.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Eric said.
Wesley tightened his mouth into a skeptical line. “Sounds like Nathan is in trouble.”
“Maybe not,” Paul countered. “CREM Divorcees can be the most accommodating people in the world—as long as they aren’t asked to accommodate the type of man they just divorced. From what Nathan has said, Trudy doesn’t blame the specific man she was married to. From what I hear, she blames the type...”
“Wait, wait,” Nathan interrupted. Sometimes, during their lunch conversations, he felt that the other tuners forgot that he wasn’t blind and had trouble transposing their thoughts. “What exactly is a Contrary Rebound Divorcee in the Experimental Mode?” Nathan wondered if he needed to mention the depth of Trudy’s dimples, but on second thought, he dismissed mentioning it. He was certain that his three coworkers didn’t base much of their evaluations on physical features, no matter how distracting they might appear.
“Pretty much like how it sounds.” Paul touched the face of his watch and sniffed. “Trudy is likely looking for another relationship. But she’s soured on the type of man she married first—probably that sort of hard-driving-asphalt-eating-diesel-for-brains-heart-honking-honcho.” Paul stretched his arms and arched his back, signaling it was about time to get back to their tuning. “You, Nathan my boy, are about as contrary to that sort of man as anybody I know. It speaks well of Trudy that she’s willing to experiment with a fellow who’s the exact opposite of her first husband. A less intelligent woman wouldn’t be willing to experiment with such an extreme shift in her inclinations.”
“What about my inclinations?”
“She’s offered to listen to your organ renditions of her country songs.” Eric stood up, folding his lunch sack. “That seems like she’s trying to harmonize with your biggest inclination.”
“And she offered to help you build some of your organ pipes.” Wesley finished off his iced tea and screwed the lid onto his thermos. “None of your friends here have offered that kind of support.”
By the end of the week, when Nathan hadn’t been visited by Trudy, he suspected that she had, after all, not cared for his organ versions of her country songs. Underneath his relief over being spared from her attentions, Nathan felt chafed by what he could only construe as her rejection of his talent. Then early Saturday morning, as he practiced his part for the rehearsal of the Presbyterian church’s upcoming Bach Cantata 147, Nathan kept having to tamp down his indignation over Trudy’s imposition, dropping in on him last Saturday morning then wheedling him into wasting his time on her country songs. Then not even bothering to thank him. He should have seen the rejection coming after he hadn’t heard from her by Wednesday. However, he was oddly irritated that he hadn’t fully absorbed her rebuff until this anniversary of a previous visit.
As always, he was able to lose himself and his humiliation in the challenges he had to face while working with the Presbyterian music director who had, in Nathan’s opinion, no more understanding of Bach’s Cantata than a divorced truck driver. Plus, the music aspect of the rehearsal kept being interrupted by the drama coach who kept asking the singers to try different positions on the stage. It was nearly nine-thirty at night when Nathan pulled into his driveway, his fatigue immediately crescendoing into confusion when he saw a large truck pulled halfway up into the far corner of his yard. Although the truck’s lights weren’t lit, as soon as Nathan stood up out of his car, he could hear its diesel engine vibrating under his feet.
The truck door swung open as Nathan approached, and Trudy climbed down, looking diminutive against the massive side of the truck, despite its not being attached to a trailer. She didn’t bother to close her door but twirled around, her dimples visible in the light escaping from the truck’s cab. “I thought I’d have to spend the night parked in your yard.” She met Nathan next to the bulky rear tire of her truck. “What are you doing out so late? This is when you’re supposed to be practicing or making one of your pipes.” She leaned against the tire.
Before answering her, Nathan positioned himself about one tire diameter in front of her. He didn’t want her to dictate their distance the way she did at their first meeting. “Rehearsal for this cantata the Presbyterian Church is putting on went late.” Her next question didn’t surprise him.
“What’s a cantata? Sounds like something you’d order at a Mexican restaurant.”
“It’s like a story done to music with different kinds of performances—solos, choruses, duets—with instrumental accompaniment. This Presbyterian Church has its own orchestra, and they’ve asked me to provide some organ effects.” Nathan wanted to make it clear to Trudy that there were plenty of people in the county who did appreciate his talent. He started to rest his hand on the tire he stood beside, but caught himself. He’d never liked touching tire rubber. And these truck tires looked like they’d been forged in a deep desert pit where all you could hear day and night was the wind blowing across the sand.”
“Well, is it Mexican?” Trudy crossed her arms and cocked her head, but she seemed satisfied with Nathan’s proximity to her.
“No, no,” Nathan replied, taking a step in her direction without meaning to. “It’s German, by Johann Sebastian Bach, and in musical numbers tells the story of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth according to the Gospel of Luke.”
Although Trudy had moved out of the light falling from the cab of her truck, a utility light in the corner of Nathan’s yard couldn’t help but trace a glow along the edge of her left dimple. Nathan felt sure that she was smiling wider and wider with each detail he gave her about the cantata.
“When you going to perform this can Ta Ta?” Trudy laughed at her pronunciation. “Maybe I’ll be able to attend.”
For a moment, Nathan’s nerve endings flickered and his eyes couldn’t synchronize. He’d hoped his cantata lecture would discourage Trudy, blunt her interest in hearing him perform, especially in a church. But now, she was assuming that he was inviting her to come. He didn’t want her to show up at the stately Presbyterian church as it tendered Bach’s Cantata 147 to the most highbrow audience that could be mustered from Hibriten County and its adjacencies.
“Well, don’t mark your calendar just yet. We had our first rehearsal tonight, and I’ll be surprised if we’ll be ready to perform by the July 2nd date which is the official day for the “feast of the Visitation.” Now, he hoped that the uncertainty of the timeline would give Trudy a reasonable excuse to skip the cantata. He couldn’t see her being patient enough or interested enough to invest time in waiting for Bach’s 147 to come ripe for public consumption. He hoped he was running contrary to the needs of a Contrary Rebound Divorcee in the Experimental Mode.
Trudy smoothed a lock of hair curled beside her ear. “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t know if you’re sounding unreliable or just vague.” She studied Nathan’s face for several seconds. “Could be it’s just nervousness. But this week, I’ve been doing some musical rehearsing myself, so I do understand how slippery it can be to get parts to fit together.”
Recovering from his moment of disorientation, Nathan saw an opportunity to move away from the possibility of Trudy’s pulling apart his defensive ambiguity. “What kind of musical rehearsal have you been doing?”
“That’s what I’m doing parked on your lawn.” Catching Nathan completely off guard, Trudy skipped to his side and grabbed his arm. “You have to come with me for a ride. I’ve got something you need to hear.”
Too stunned by the determination of Trudy’s fingers, Nathan allowed himself to be pulled around the back of her truck and guided over to the passenger’s door. Behind the cabin of the truck rose a ten-foot exhaust pipe, maybe twelve inches in diameter, its chrome coating glinting prismatically under the glare of the utility light across the street. He’d never been this close to an eighteen-wheeler in his life. Whenever he passed one on the highway, or more often when one passed him, he either kept his eyes averted or closed them for the duration of the truck’s passing. This was also his method for dealing with hypodermic needles.
Trudy had to release her grasp on Nathan’s arm in order to climb up the cab step and open the door. Something about the array of lights that flickered in the deep darkness of the truck’s interior brought Nathan back to his senses. “Why don’t you just bring what you want me to hear into the house? We don’t need to take a trip to listen...” Nathan paused. “What do you want me to hear?” He rubbed his arm, trying to erase the pressure left over from Trudy’s fingers.
Jumping down from her perch on the tread, Trudy nudged Nathan to ascend. “We have to be in motion; your music needs to be powered by my 380 Cat diesel engine.”
As Nathan lifted his foot up to the metal tread, he looked at Trudy whose face was just inches from his but her attention was focused on giving him a push. “My music?” he asked.
Giving Nathan another push, Trudy replied, “The music you recorded for me last week. It’s all I’ve listened to since you gave it to me. I’ve not played any of my old CDs or even turned on the radio.” Trudy patted Nathan’s leg as he pulled himself up on the second tread. “Now, grab that handhold up there on the edge of the door, and pull yourself on inside.”
As Nathan struggled into the surprisingly plush leather seat, he felt himself unexpectedly comfortable inside the truck’s cab. For a moment, he was confused by this sense of familiarity, but as he examined the expanse of switches and gauges that glowed softly surrounding the driver’s side of the cab, he realized the arrangement reminded him of an organ’s console. Many of the switches looked exactly like the stops on his own Wurlitzer 805. The height of where he sat also reminded him of those elevated pipe organ loft consoles that he’d seen on Diane Bish’s videos. Even some of the organs he’d played around the county, though not really raised above the congregation, gave him the sensation of being perched on eminence. Exalted, that was how he felt playing, or even sitting, at a pipe organ. But until he’d climbed inside Trudy’s truck, he’d never felt this physically lofty.
With a thrust that strained the fabric of the mauve jumpsuit she wore, Trudy plopped into the driver’s seat. “Doesn’t it get your heart thumping just mounting this beast?”
“It does feel a little bit like I’m sitting on the back of an elephant.” Nathan succumbed to a brief sensation of dizzy euphoria. But as soon as Trudy released the clutch and pulled onto the street, the vibration of the engine pulled Nathan back into his situation. Trudy had just fully appropriated him. “What are you up to, Trudy?” He tried to sound less accusatory than he felt.
“Like I said before, I just love the music you made for me.” She gave Nathan a sidelong glance, her dimples catching the light from her dashboard switches. “It was like taking a bath in a hymn, but you know, a hymn about ginger ale and chilled cantaloupes.”
“That’s a response I’ve never heard regarding my organ music.”
“Oh, it really got inside of me, Nathan!” Trudy shook her head vigorously but kept her eyes on the road. “Like no music has ever revved me up.”
“That’s gratifying to hear,” Nathan responded faintly because Trudy’s confession pleased but also embarrassed him and because he noticed that Trudy was driving faster than he thought was necessary.
“All day and all night, I couldn’t think about anything but listening over and over to the mix you made for me.” Trudy gave Nathan another glance. “Then, three days ago, I decided I had to do more than just listen. I had to engage.”
Thinking that the sooner he could break Trudy out of her enthusiasm which she seemed to be expressing through the foot on her accelerator, the sooner he could get her to slow down, Nathan tried to change the subject. “So you’re going to take music lessons? I’d be glad to introduce you to keyboard. Or maybe you’d like to start with guitar. That’s something you could take with you on the road. I know several excellent guitar instructors.”
Nathan saw that they were approaching a stretch of road called Rhodhiss Knoll. It rose slowly to provide a breathtaking view of the town below then dropped down steeply to skirt by the industrial sites. Keeping her eyes on the approaching summit, Trudy slid the flash drive out of the console at her elbow and slipped it into her player just as they began their descent. Rather than one of the country songs Nathan had transcribed for her, what began playing was the Toccata movement of Widor’s Symphony 5.
The hypnotic repetition of those opening evanescent arpeggios in the mid-range never failed to transport Nathan. The version he had recorded for Trudy was based on Diane Bish’s performance at the First Presbyterian Church in Naples, Florida, on the five-manual, 96-rank Julia Thompson Smith Organ. Like Bish’s, his tempo was slightly faster than more traditional interpretations, but tonight, in the elevation of Trudy’s truck, speeding down the Rhodhiss Knoll road, the music perfectly synched with the darkened scenery fleeing toward and away from him outside the cab. The treble notes scattered like stars by the right hand always outlined, for Nathan, the movement of pure joy while the left hand, with the bass chords coordinated his bodily responses to that joy.
Tonight, the vibration of Trudy’s truck harmonized with those left-handed rhythms and sank the music into the deepest parts of Nathan’s involuntary muscles. Then, about thirty seconds, nine measures, into the toccata, fulfilling his expectation, the inevitable foot bass notes emerged like a dragon and crashed against every molecule of Nathan’s sensibilities. However, the usual profundity of his reaction reached more deeply than ever before because a new cavernous quality of the foot bass shook Nathan down to the marrow in his bones then echoed through all the nerves in his teeth. And the sound wasn’t coming from the pipe organ. It was pounding, throbbing, grumbling from the truck itself.
He managed to pull himself from the music and turn to face Trudy. He saw that just before each thunder of those external bass chords, she flipped a switch—labeled engine brake—and lifted her foot from the accelerator. “Where is that booming bass coming from? That’s not me.”
“No. It’s me. And my truck.” Trudy flashed Nathan deep dimples. “What you’re hearing is variations on my Jake Brake.” She turned her attention back to flipping the switch and monitoring her rate of deacceleration.
“Jake Brake?”
“It’s what you use to slow down your truck if you don’t want your regular brakes to catch fire.” Trudy kept her eyes on the road, steering with her left hand, flipping the brake switch with her right hand, and methodically patting her foot on the accelerator. “When I engage the Jake Brake, it opens exhaust valves to the cylinders just at the end of the compression stroke.” She had to shout over the sound of the organ music and the booming ruminations of her exhaust stacks. “The compressed gas in the cylinders gets released, and that lets the engine slow down the truck. That freed gas is the music coming through my exhaust.”
“It sounds like you’re playing with a 64-foot pipe!” Nathan felt compressed by the bass notes coming from Trudy’s performance. “How are you changing the pitch if it’s just truck exhaust?”
“Oh boy.” Trudy shook her head, her dimples pressing deep crescents into the corners of her smile. “I’ve had to practice ALL week to know how much compression I needed to hit just the right notes.”
Nathan reached over and patted Trudy’s shoulder, impressed by the accuracy of her ear and fully confident she could support all of Widor’s arpeggios sparkling like stars under the promising darkness of her exhaust pipes.
Donald Secreast, after twenty-five years of teaching at Radford University, has retired to Bristol, Virginia, where he has spent the first year of his free time traveling in Nevada, California, and Arizona with his painterly wife, Dianne LaForge. At home, he has been learning to garden, catching up on Scandinavian detective series, and working his way to being the writer he always hoped to be. In the back of his mind, he often hears the words of Pablo Neruda: “Cada dia, una muerta pequena.” His third short story collection, The Solar-Powered Southern Belle is available on Amazon.
