CHAPTER 38

The Singers

The return of George Carole to Rinton remained an exciting topic of discussion in the town’s social scene for years after his unexpected reappearance. Where had he been, they asked? He seemed so different from the boy they remembered. Had he been, as so many speculated, off gambling and engaging in other even worse types of behavior in the towns up north, and only returned when he’d run out of money? Though this was a very popular theory, it did not seem to be the case, as George soon purchased a very nice home on the outskirts of town, not far from his grandmother. And one would think that a young man who’d gotten up to any wildness would not have been as warmly received as George Carole had been by his grandmother. The whole town had expected to hear her shouts ringing out over the fields the day of his return, but her neighbors had been quite surprised to find the two of them calmly sitting on their porch by the evening. And though Mrs. Carole did appear to be crying, she smiled through her tears.

Perhaps, the town experts said, George Carole had made quite a winning in his games, and had won many enemies as well and been forced to flee. As gripping as this tale was, many admitted they could not imagine it; Mr. Carole seemed a more peaceful and quiet soul than ever before. He was usually seen sitting on his front porch, staring at the sky, and sometimes he would laugh for no apparent reason at all. It was, everyone agreed, as if he saw something in the clouds or the fields or the branches of the forest that no one else could see. Perhaps he’d gone mad, they said, and that was why he’d returned home. Yet when he looked at them with those extraordinarily pale gray eyes they again found their theories refuted. This was not a madman; rather, he seemed terribly, terribly sane.

The new Carole household quickly became one of the strangest and most disreputable ones in all of Rinton’s history. Whole careers of town gossips were made or broken on snatching up the latest news of Mr. Carole and his eventual wife, who was also extremely odd. Apparently she was quite the traveler—she was gone over half the year at times—and though Mr. Carole never said what she did they all assumed it was something in agriculture, as he was once heard mentioning that she was away helping fields in the west. In addition, Mr. Carole’s vegetable garden was curiously productive, always receiving the perfect amount of shade and rain. His produce became regular winners at the county fair, to the envy and dismay of nearly all of the town’s figureheads.

Only once did anyone ever actually broach the subject of his past with George Carole himself. Edwin Crouts approached Mr. Carole on his porch one day to ask if he could possibly fill in as church pianist, as the current pianist had very bad cataracts and could no longer read the music. Mr. Carole did not answer right away; he simply smiled and watched Edwin with those strange gray eyes of his. Edwin rustled up whatever courage he had left and asked Mr. Carole if it was true that in his day he’d been a vaudevillian, and if so then that would easily qualify him to play at the church. It was very easy music, he assured him, something anyone who’d toured the circuits could play. Had he ever played church music? Or did he play anymore? asked Edwin, trying not to sweat under that cool, distant gaze.

Mr. Carole listened carefully to this rush of speech, thought, and simply said, “No.”

Edwin, panicked, asked which statement he was saying no to: was he saying no to the request, no to the rumor that he’d been in vaudeville, or no to whether or not he played anymore?

But Mr. Carole only smiled and shook his head, and again said, “No.” Edwin, red and humiliated, muttered an apology and quickly left.

Everyone tried to understand exactly what Mr. Carole had meant. What had he been saying no to, except possibly everything? They could not say. But one thing was for sure: George Carole, who had played piano so very frequently in his youth, was never heard to touch a piano again. Perhaps, someone suggested, he was all played out.

Some took this idea to heart. There was something very wistful and sad about Mr. Carole, though this became apparent only after the birth of his daughter. When she was born he was naturally ecstatic, like any new father, but his curious melancholy first appeared when it came time to teach her to read. The sight of George Carole with that little blackboard and the piece of chalk, seated before that little girl with the curly black hair, somehow made any onlooker feel as if they were witnessing the saddest thing in the world. And sometimes when he held his child he would reach into his pocket and take out a very old, fat watch, and he would dangle it before her eyes. While she would laugh in delight at this trinket, Mr. Carole’s face was never nearly as happy. Instead he looked painfully solemn, and he smiled only to please the little child.

Perhaps he was a man with his own tragedies, said Eleanor Clay at bridge one evening. And on hearing this everyone nodded and felt willing to give the Carole household a little more sympathy.

In fact, they eventually warmed to Mr. Carole and his little girl, and his often-absent wife with the blond hair. He was odd, they agreed, but perhaps oddness did not immediately render one scandalous. And his squash and pumpkins were very good each year, which did temper their opinions a little.

What they never admitted was that something new had tempered their opinions. Now that his daughter had gotten a bit older, on Sunday mornings Mr. Carole would take her out into the vegetable garden while his wife slept in, and they would both tend to their little crop. And as he worked and she used her little bucket and spade to help, he often smiled and lifted his face up to the sun, and began to sing.

It was the same song every time, but each time was as beautiful as the last, if not more so. It was such a fragile, wonderful song that some people would rearrange their entire mornings just so they could amble by Mr. Carole’s house on the way to church.

Occasionally they would try to tell their friends and loved ones about this beautiful song of Mr. Carole’s, and how it had the queer effect of echoing, somehow, no matter where you heard it. These stories never really found believing ears. But still some people came to Mr. Carole’s house to wander by his porch at a slow pace, waiting to hear that unearthly hymn of his as he tended to his garden. And sometimes, if the day was right, his little girl would set down her spade and bucket, and she would sing too.