Pilgrimage

"I would have danced with you."
"With me like this?" He gestured at his clothes.
"Sure. It doesn't matter."
"In front of everyone?"
"If you wanted to. I wouldn't mind."
"Not there," he said. "It's too tight and hard."
"Then here," she said, holding out her hands.
"The music-" But his hands were reaching for hers,
"Your music," she said.
"My mother's music," he corrected.
And the music began, a haunting lilting waltz-time melody. As lightly as the leaves that stirred at their feet the two circled the clearing.
I have the picture yet, but when I return to it my heart is emptied of adjectives because there are none for such enchantment. The music quickened and swelled, softly, richly full-the lost music that a mother bequeathed to her child.
Twyla was so completely engrossed in the magic of the moment that I'm sure she didn't even know when their feet no longer rustled in the fallen leaves. She couldn't have known when the treetops brushed their shoes-when the long turning of the tune brought them back, spiraling down into the clearing. Her scarlet petticoat caught on a branch as they passed, and left a bright shred to trail the wind, but even that did not distract her.
Before my heart completely broke with wonder the music faded softly away and left the two standing on the ragged grass. After a breathless pause Twyla's hand went softly, wonderingly, to Francher's cheek. The kid turned his face slowly and pressed his mouth to her palm. Then they turned and left each other, without a word.
Twyla passed so close to me that her skirts brushed mine. I let her cross the tracks back to the dance before I followed. I got there just in time to catch the whisper on apparently the second round, "… alone out there with the Francher kid!" and the gleefully malicious shock of ". . . and her petticoat is torn…"
It was like pigsty muck clotting an Easter dress.
Anna said, "Hi!" and flung herself into my one armchair. As the front leg collapsed she caught herself with the dexterity of long practice, tilted the chair, reinserted the leg and then eased herself back into its dusty depths.
"From the vagaries of the small town good Lord deliver me!" she moaned.
"What now?" I asked, shifting gears on my crochet hook as I finished another row of my rug.
"You mean you haven't heard the latest scandal?" Her eyes widened in mock horror and her voice sank conspiratorially. "They were out there in the dark-alone-doing nobody knows what. Imagine!" Her voice shook with avid outrage. "With the Francher kid!
"Honestly!" Her voice returned to normal. "You'd think the Francher kid was leprosy or something. What a to-do about a little nocturnal smooching. I'd give you odds that most of the other kids are being shocked to ease their own consciences of the same kind of carryings-on. But just because it's the Francher kid-"
"They weren't alone," I said casually, holding a tight rein on my indignation. "I was there."
"You were?" Anna's eyebrows bumped her crisp bangs. "Well, well. This complexions things different. What did happen? Not," she hastened "that I credit these wild tales about, my golly, Twyla, but what did happen?"
"They danced," I said. "The Francher kid was ashamed of his clothes and wouldn't come in the hall. So they danced down in the clearing."
"Without music ?"
"The Francher kid-hummed," I said, my eyes intent on my work.
There was a brief silence. "Well," Anna said, "that's interesting, especially that vacant spot I feel in there. But you were there?"
"Yes."
"And they just danced?"
"Yes." I apologized mentally for making so pedestrian the magic I had seen. "And Twyla caught her petticoat on a branch and it tore before she knew it."
"Hmmm." Anna was suddenly sober. "You ought to take your rug up to the Sew-Sew Club."
"But I-" I was bewildered.
"They're serving nice heaping portions of Twyla's reputation for refreshments, and Mrs. McVey is contributing the dessert-the unplumbed depravity of foster children."
I stuffed my rug back into its bag. "'Is my face on?" I asked.
Well, I got back to the Somansons' that evening considerably wider of eye than I had left it. Anna took my things from me at the door.
"How did it go?"
"My gorsh!" I said, easing myself into a chair. "If they ever got started on me what would I have left?'"
"Bare bones," Anna said promptly. "With plenty of tooth marks on them. Well, did you get them told?"
"Yes, but they didn't want to believe me. It was too tame. And of course Mrs. McVey didn't like being pushed out on a limb about the Francher kid's clothes. Her delicate hint about the high cost of clothes didn't impress Mrs. Holmes much, not with her six boys. I guess I've got me an enemy for life. She got a good-sized look at herself through my eyes and she didn't like it at all, but I'll bet the Francher kid won't turned up Levied for a dance again."
"Heaven send he'll never do anything worse," Anna intoned piously.
That's what I hoped fervently for a while, but lightning hit Willow Creek anyway, a subtle slow lightning-a calculated, coldly angry lightning. I held my breath as report after report came in. The Turbows' old shed exploded without a sound on the stroke of nine o'clock Tuesday night and scattered itself like kindling wood over the whole barnyard. Of course the Turbows had talked for years of tearing the shaky old thing down but-I began to wonder how you went about bailing a juvenile out of the clink.
Then the last sound timber on the old railroad bridge below the Thurmans' house shuddered and dissolved loudly into sawdust at eleven o'clock Tuesday night. The rails, deprived of their support, trembled briefly, then curled tightly up into two absurd rosettes. The bridge being gone meant an hour's brisk walk to town for the Thurmans instead of a fifteen-minute stroll. It also meant safety for the toddlers too young to understand why the rotting timbers weren't a wonderful kind of jungle gym.
Wednesday evening at five all the water in the Holmeses' pond geysered up and crashed down again, pureeing what few catfish were still left in it and breaking a spillway over into the creek, thereby draining the stagnant old mosquito-bearing spot with a conclusive slurp. As the neighbors had nagged at the Holmeses to do for years-but . . .
I was awestruck at this simple literal translation of my words and searched my memory with wary apprehensiveness. I could almost have relaxed by now if I could have drawn a line through the last two names on my mental roll of the club.
But Thursday night there was a crash and a roar and I huddled in my bed praying a wordless prayer against I didn't know what, and Friday morning I listened to the shrill wide-eyed recitals at the breakfast table.
"… since the devil was an imp and now there it is . . ."
"… right in the middle, big as life and twice as natural…"
"What is?" I asked, braving the battery of eyes that pinned me like a moth in a covey of searchlights.
There was a stir around the table. Everyone was aching to speak, but there's always a certain rough protocol to be observed, even in a boardinghouse.
Ol' Hank cleared his throat, took a huge mouthful of coffee and sloshed it thoughtfully and noisily around his teeth before swallowing it.
"Balance Rock," he choked, spraying his vicinity finely, "came plumb unbalanced last night. Came a-crashing down, bouncing like a dang ping-pong ball an'nen it hopped over half a dozen fences an'nen whammo! it lit on a couple of the Scudders' pigs an'nen tore out a section of the Lelands' stone fence and now it's settin there in the middle of their alfalfa field as big as a house. He'll have a helk of a time mowing that field now." He slurped largely of his coffee.
"Strange things going on around here." Blue Nor's porchy eyebrows rose and felt portentously. "Never heard of a balance rock falling before. And all them other funny things. The devil's walking our land sure enough!"