Chapter 6 - Songs Both Hopeful and Sad...
“Can anyone tell me? Is no one going to volunteer an answer all morning? The tent might stand in the gymnasium, but we still have work to do.”
Mrs. Wheelan released an exasperated sigh. Her students had hardly moved since taking their seats after first bell. Their eyes did not stray from the chalkboard or their workbooks. Their feet did not kick at classmates across the aisle. They did not giggle at muffled noises lifting from the classroom’s seats. None of them raised a hand.
The tent had returned, and soon - as long as the students did not cause trouble - the hurdy-gurdy melody would fill their classroom and summon them all to story and song.
Mrs. Wheelan frowned at her students’ stiff faces. She preferred spitballs and headlocks to such silence. Then, her students might learn something. Her students would learn nothing on the day the tent rose in the center of the gymnasium.
“We’ll save history for later,” Mrs. Wheelan relented in the face of such terrible odds, “in the meantime, everyone can work on the week’s vocabulary. You can sit and silently study your terms if you’re finished writing out the definitions.”
The silence that returned when the tent stood in their school still amazed Mrs. Wheelan, who casually stood at her desk and listened to the scraping of pencils and pens.
The intercom cackled overhead, and the students held their breath, expecting the hurdy-gurdy melody to spill around them.
“Mrs. Wheelan,” and the classroom grumbled at Principal Maddox’s monotone voice, “please send Hudson Keel to my office.”
Hudson nearly laughed as he jumped from his desk and hustled to the classroom’s door. He felt like a spy. He had kept his private show a secret from his classmates all week. So Amy Zerlinger frowned as she watched Hudson skip out of the room, misunderstanding the source of Hudson’s joy.
“Are you ready?”
Principal Maddox greeted Hudson a step outside of the main office and laughed as Hudson’s shuffle forced him to quicken his pace or be left in his student’s wake. He would have taken no offense should Hudson have broken into a run. Principal Maddox knew when hallway rules could be broken.
The hurdy-gurdy music began the moment Hudson pushed against the gymnasium’s double doors. Hudson gasped as he looked upon the tent. He paused to process the surrounding splendor. The performers had never so decorated the gymnasium. Streamers of silver and pearl fell from the rafters. Balloons covered the floor. Strange machines shuddered in the corners, spitting bubbles that reflected the blinking light of hundreds of golden and bronze bulbs. Cardboard trees with tissue-paper leaves surrounded the tent, filled with paper hawks and owls that floated from fishing wire crisscrossing overhead. All of it came to life when the hurdy-gurdy music played.
“They really dressed the place up this year,” Principal Maddox smiled. “They must be getting ready for one heck of a show, and you’re going to get to see it before anyone else.”
Hudson had never thought the tent had ever loomed so large in the gymnasium. He paused before stepping closer to the entrance. His fortune felt too wonderful.
“It’s a real pleasure to meet you, Mr. Keel.”
The gray-bearded man with the top-hat and red vest tipped his hat as Hudson approached. Hudson timidly waved back and thought he saw the features of the man’s face ripple, as if a heat mirage shimmered between them.
“Thanks for what you’re doing for me.”
The man threw his head back and laughed. “We think we should be thanking you, Hudson. Your pictures have moved us all. In all the places we’ve been, no one’s ever graced us with such incredible landscapes surrounding our humble tent. We appreciate the effort and time you placed into such pictures, and we’re thrilled to have the chance to give you a private show.”
“Do I have to take off my shoes?”
The man’s beard rustled as he grinned. “That’s up to you, Mr. Keel.”
Hudson kicked his sneakers aside and stepped into the tent with socked feet. An electrical sensation tickled his toes upon his first step into the tent.
The tent’s interior felt larger than the outer dimensions suggested. Elaborate carpets covered the gymnasium’s hardwood flooring. Battery-powered lanterns hung from the tent’s supporting poles. Hudson peeked upwards and saw glowing stars, grouped in strange constellations, painted upon the fabric. The curve of the the ceiling carried Hudson’s view up and through an aperture at the tent’s peek, through which Hudson could see the gymnasium’s rafters.
“I hope you don’t mind the liberty we took with your pictures, Hudson,” the gray-bearded man stepped softly into the tent behind Principal Maddox. “Mrs. Ramsey suggested we might showcase them here, and we all thought it was a great idea.”
Hudson’s spirit beamed as he looked upon his landscapes. Each now possessed a simple, elegant frame and rested upon easels which ringed the tent’s inner, circular chamber. Hudson had not until that moment appreciated his effort’s diversity. He had concentrated so intently on each individual picture. He was the creator of each desert, of each tundra, forest, mountain range, jungle and coast. He wondered how many vistas even his imagination could hold.
Hudson’s attention drifted towards the area of the tent directly opposite of the entrance. There, nestled between two of Hudson’s landscapes, stood a wide, bronze gong. The mallet that leaned against the gong’s frame was massive, and Hudson couldn’t avoid imagining the giant assigned to strike the instrument. He wondered why he had not overheard his classmates mention the gong from their earlier visits to the tent. Hudson’s head swooned the longer he looked at the gong, and his toes again tickled before Hudson tore his gaze away as the bearded performer rested a hand upon his shoulder.
“You’re still very young, Mr. Keel, and so my sentiment might be hard for you to understand. We are not so young, and it is not easy for us to find new stories, set in new lands. Sometimes, we feel we tell the same stories over and over again. You’ve helped us think of new stories again by setting our tent in the middle of your wonderful pictures. That is no small thing.”
“The only time people don’t seem to care if my mind drifts is when I work on those pictures,” Hudson smiled at the dozen performers who nodded in understanding.
“Here, we hope you let your mind do exactly that.”
The performer nodded Hudson and Principal Maddox into a pair of bean bags placed in the chamber’s center. Hudson felt very comfortable, but he worried for his principal.
“Don’t look at me like that, Hudson,” laughed Principal Maddox. “This isn’t the first time I’ve sat on the floor during the school day. Territory that comes with the job.”
The performers gathered their instruments and regaled Hudson with song. Hudson considered the music magical for the way the melodies those performers played gave him hope at the same time they made him feel sad. Hudson leaned into the bean bag and closed his eyes to the notes that floated from violin strings and whispered through flutes. Dreams tugged at his mind, and Hudson shook his head to combat the first temptations sleep sent to him. Hudson opened his eyes at the sound of Principal Maddox snoring next to him, and he giggled upon seeing that the performers took no offense at the principal’s sawing slumber.
The song slowed and turned heavier upon the air. The notes sounded darker. Hudson gripped at his bean bag as the anxiety that had ruined his last two efforts to visit the tent again bubbled from his stomach. Why had he not noticed the long shadows that swirled about the tent when he had first entered? Why did the performers choose such sad songs? Why did Principal Maddox not stir when Hudson kicked at his shin?
Hudson shook his head. He gulped. He did all he could to deny it. Yet Hudson felt the monsters lurking over his shoulder.
“Be strong now, son,” the bearded performer knelt to level his face with Hudson’s. “Don’t give in to your fear now that you have the means to find him. Fear is any monster’s sharpest tooth.”
The performers all ceased their melod
y and turned towards Hudson. That strange rippling Hudson felt with his first step into the tent returned. Peeking into the eyes of those performers, Hudson gasped. The rippling in the air expanded and seemed to pull veils off of the faces assembled within that chamber. The gray-bearded man’s facial hair morphed into small, bristling feathers. Eyes narrowed and turned small and black. Hands shifted in shape until talons replaced fingers. Those performers who surrounded Hudson morphed into avian, alien creatures, with their suits turned into robes, with noses suddenly withdrawn into the shape of small, curved beaks.
“You don’t look very frightened,” the performer now with a bird-like face covered in gray feathers seemed to grin.
Hudson shook his head. “You’re not the monsters I feel lurking in the shadows. I don’t know for sure if you’re monsters or not, but you’re not the ones I’ve been feeling.”
The gray-feathered face nodded. “You sensed what we were when you ran away the first time you approached our tent. I suspected you might have sensed something about us then. I grew more suspicious last year when you brought the pocketknife with you. But I couldn’t know for sure. Not until I saw your pictures. Then I knew beyond a doubt you were the one we were hoping to find.”
“For what?”