Wheat for the Wise

By Margery S. Stewart

(Previous chapter)

Chapter 4

Synopsis: Jennie Starr, whose husband Rex is not a member of the Church, realizes the need for spirituality and religious training for the children. Rex agrees to a trial period of one year for the family to participate in Church activities, and Jennie feels that they are making progress.

On the next Wednesday Jennie fasted. Not for the Primary class alone, but for the whole project. Not having fasted since she was a child, there were times during the day when she was sure she would faint. She made a cake, before lunch, covered it lavishly with chocolate frosting and nuts. She refrained from absently polishing off the frosting spoon. She took the cake to Primary.

The boys, tripping and gouging each other, fell silent when they saw the cake pan. When marching out time came, they followed her with the alacrity of puppies.

Jennie put the cake in the place of honor on the small table.

“When do we get it?”

“Cut it now!” They swarmed out of their places and surrounded the table, their greedy fingers reaching out for a surreptitious swipe.

Jennie said softly, “This cake, like the blessings of the Lord, is for the good ones.”

“You mean we gotta wait till after the lesson!”

Famished herself, Jennie could well appreciate the howl of protest. She ignored it and put out her flannel board and figures. She started with the roll call. “Answer only to your name,” she said firmly.

She gave the lesson with all the vigor she could summon in her present weakness. Eyeing the cake and the boys, she knew to the last pang, the longing of each young stomach.

The long silence was awesome. When she dropped Moses from the flannel board, young Billy leaped to pick the cardboard figure from the floor.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” he said gravely. No one laughed. Not even when he brought the kitten out from its hiding place in his shirt. No one crowded around him. Billy put the kitten back.

Jennie brought the class to an end promptly, after which she cut the cake and passed around the rich, crumbly slices. She did not take one herself, wanting a more fitting end to her fasting. But she had won, even though after the cake was demolished, they began their jostling and boxing. Something was broken. Probably the feeling they had had that no one nor anything could subdue them.

Soon after dismissal, red-haired Billy came slowly back into the room, cradling the kitten. “Sister Starr. . . .”

“Yes, Billy?” She gathered up her visual aids.

He dropped the kitten on the table. “For you . . . on account of you’re a real good teacher.”

Jennie looked down on the mewing white fluff. She was deeply touched. “Thank you, Billy. I will take good care of him.”

Even later, when she learned that his mother had commanded him to dispose of the kitten, she treasured the offering.

Rex came home early to help and was astonished by her radiance. “But how?”

She told him about the cake.

Rex, probing the reason for a recalcitrant vacuum, put down the screwdriver and shouted with laughter. “Somehow,” he said, “I don’t think it’s quite according to Hoyle.” He looked at her with respect. “What made you think of it?”

She said comfortably, “I remembered what my father said about how you can’t pour from an unfilled pitcher. I poured.”

“What was the lesson about?”

“The stranger within our gates . . . you know . . . be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. . . .” She said reluctantly, “I sort of threw that in as a bonus, on account of they are being beastly to a new boy.”

Rex plugged the vacuum in and it responded with a reassuring hum. He wound up the cord. “Speaking of strangers . . . guess whom I saw on Main Street today?”

“Yul Brynner?”

“No . . . Jody Anderson. I guess people call him Joe now . . . but it’s hard to get out of the habit.”

Jennie said absently. “Still on the piano?”

Rex. shrugged. “I guess so. He said he was doing a bit of composing.”

“How did he look?”

“The same as always . . . only more lost. He’s been living back east . . . teaching.”

Jennie had a quick vision of the tall, homely, stooped figure. “Even in high school he was . . . well different. .”

“He was a kook then and he’s a kook now. This is his first trip back home in five years.”

“Married?”

Rex said pityingly, “Who would marry him?”

Jennie was silent.

“Why do they come back?” Rex demanded. “I’ll bet there is no other town in the country where so many return. What is it they come for?”

Jennie had no words to tell him. She felt it might be the thing that urged her to go down to the temple grounds in the morning. It was a leaning down through years to a beginning. It was a search for the roots and the reasons.

She had meant to go very early, but there were so many telephone calls. Lorna called and was impatient.

“What cave are you living in, darling? And how do you like the hermit’s life?”

Jennie laughed and took the curlers out of her hair. She had had to do her own hair for the past two weeks. Just no time to spare for a hairdresser.

“Guess who is in town?”

“Jody Anderson.”

“My dear, have you seen him? You should! Positively scarecrow . . . but really!” Lorna bethought herself of the reason for her call. “It’s the luncheon for Mrs. Martin Elliott. You’ll come of course?”

“When is it?”

“Next Wednesday.”

“Sorry. I’m up to my ears in Church work.”

“Oh,” Lorna hesitated. “Are you sure? I mean . . . they can always get teachers.”

Jennie thought of Sister Phillips. “No they can’t. I’m the teacher.”

“Well . . . all right . . . but come up for air once in a while. We miss you.”

Jennie dressed quickly before the telephone could ring again. She wore her fur hat and the tweed great coat and the fur-lined gloves. She hurried the car down the hill and finally turned the heater on. “Ah.” She relaxed in the snowy morning. Johnny and Lora were being left with a new sitter, a mature and intelligent woman. There was nothing between herself and the free hours ahead.

Even though the day was brisk, there were many visitors to the temple grounds. Jennie joined them, absently listening to the young guide, but inside herself the questions surged. What did she believe? How much did she believe? She listened to the guide tell the story of the seagulls’ flight over the valley and the destruction of the cricket plague. What had they thought, sweating through their fields, fighting the winged devourers? Had they had the sure knowledge that help would come from somewhere? She had launched herself on this year’s quest, blindly believing that if she did her part, all else would fall into place. So had the pioneers launched themselves into the valley, fallen from a cliff, grasping to the shrub of their faith, they had held on. Let me be like them, she prayed. Let me just hold on.

She went into the Tabernacle to listen to the organ recital. “Jesu, Joy of Our Desiring,” she listened to the great notes soaring against the domed ceiling. She saw Jesus in the wheat fields, rubbing the grains in his fingers. Was she, Jennie Starr, wheat or tares? Who knew within himself which he was in the last analysis? If a man did not know himself . . . how could he know his neighbor? She looked stealthily at her own neighbor, sitting so absorbed in the music! It was a man. His eyes were closed. He seemed, by his expression, to be drawing the music in through his pores.

Jody Anderson.

As if she had said his name aloud, the man opened his eyes and looked at her. It was a strange look. It recognized but did not reach. It was glad to see her, but it asked nothing from her.

Jennie felt a tumult of pain. What had the man suffered to force him to such self-abnegation? What had they done to him, to make him unwilling or unable to be glad at sight of an old schoolmate?

“Jody Anderson! Remember me? I was Jennie Bryson.” Her whisper was too loud. People on the benches before them, turned warningly.

“I remember you very well,” said Jody. “It hasn’t been that long . . . and you haven’t changed.”

She moved closer to him and held out her hand. He shook it guardedly. When the recital was over, they fell into step together. They walked down the paths to the monuments of the Prophet Joseph and his brother.

“Rex said he saw you yesterday.”

Jody nodded. “He is very happy. It is easy to see that. You have four children.”

“Would you like to see them?” Jennie asked impulsively.

“Of course.”

She hesitated . . . “But your family has prior claim . . . how long will you be here?”

“I’m going back tomorrow.”

“Would you be free tonight?”

His face made her think of winter. It was a still face . . . as if it had long ago ceased nonsense of spring and laughter, summer and love. But he’s only Rex’s age, Jennie thought. She found herself urging him. “Please come. We have a new Steinway . . . and it has never really known music. . . . Come and make it glad with your playing.”

He said angrily, “I discovered I was no pianist a long time ago.”

“But you are . . . I remember “

“But I was not enough of what I was. . .” he explained. “I was not enough of greatness.”

She was silent before his outburst. She felt his own pain. Once she had dreamed of greatness . . . . wanted it . . . feeling something inside her pressing the wish. But she had not found a talent in her worthy of the struggle.

She said, “If there’s anyone from school you’d like to see, perhaps I could get them to come.

There’s no one,” he said definitely. “No one at all.” Jennie closed her eyes against his voice and the barren vision of his homecoming.

“Please come.”

“All right,” he said, wearily, “I’ll come.”

It was one of those heavenly evenings when the children were quiet and remarkably well-behaved, when Rex was at his most charming, when the dinner could have been served by a French chef.

When the children were excused, the three of them sat before the fire in the living room. Jody gave them small grudging pictures of his life.

“They stopped satisfying me,” he said, “the masters. I could only have peace by trying to bring out of myself, what they had brought out of themselves.”

The great names slipped reverently from his lips, Beethoven, Brahms, Sibelius. “Did you ever stop to think what it must have been like to have a ‘Misa Solemnis’ roaring inside you?”

Jennie marveled. She felt herself stretched in her mind by his comments on their lives and despairs.

“Why did you stop teaching?” Rex wanted to know. “How did you live?”

“It became more and more of my life . . . the music inside me. I never knew when it would come to me . . . the phrase . . .the melody . . . the design, and the impulse. To try to teach with an oratorio blazing inside one . . . is to my mind the ultimate of tortures. I did not know what I had just said . . . I would look up and my class would be convulsed with laughter. I never knew whether I had said something out of turn, or was beating the measures. . . . ”

“Did you ever publish anything?” Rex asked. Jennie stole a quick look at her husband. Rex was struggling to understand a life so barren of results, so motivated from within, rather than by the pressures from without oneself.

Jody Anderson shrugged. “I’ve published . . . but not to loud successes. In fact, I should say the musical world has been remarkably calm about my efforts.”

Rex and Jennie exchanged glances. He was one of the touched, was Joseph Anderson. Jennie shivered, seeing him, in her mind’s eye, going down through the years into a dried-up shell of never-to-be-realized dreams.

He played for them before he left. The music filled the house. They did not understand the music, though they tried. It was a new kind of music, avant garde, way out, different, but it haunted Jennie long after the notes had fallen into silence.

When he stood at the door to go, he smiled at them. It was a brief smile. “This was the reason I came,” he said, and added, “I was hungry and ye fed me . . . . I was naked and ye clothed me

“For a hungry man,” said Jennie, “you certainly didn’t eat very much.”

He paused a moment and then in a burst of words, “Tonight . . . in Philadelphia, they are having the opening of our play. It’s a light play. . . . ‘Dust on the Moon.’ But I wrote the music and the words, and I like them very much.”

He nodded curtly and went away. They watched him walk down the street. Snow had begun to fall, and it circled his tall, ungainly figure.

Jennie and Rex, uncertain and depressed, sat by the dying embers and discussed him.

“He should throw it out,” said Rex harshly, “cut it off from himself. Sell insurance . . . or teach . . . anything.”

Jennie thought of Jody Anderson, sitting in his class, tormented by the wild measures of his songs. “Why?” she demanded. “Does everyone have to have split-level houses and a color television?”

“No,” said Rex. “But the world is too full of people who will not conform.”

Uennie kicked off her shoes and stretched out her toes to the fire. “But there is a difference . . . we would have been a poorer world without Handel, or Van Gogh or Emily Dickinson.”

“But for every Van Gogh,” Rex observed, “there is an army of would-be’s.”

“For every President of the United States,” said Jennie slowly, “there is an army of would-be’s.” She sat up. “Does a man choose to be a maker of music, or is he a maker of music?”

Rex rose and pulled her to her feet. “For such a small woman, you ask awfully big questions.”

But Rex was the one who came running upstairs in the morning, bearing the newspaper that told about “Native Son,” Joseph Anderson’s, smash hit play in Philadelphia.

Lorna called. “Honestly, if you aren’t shot with luck! I just met Rex and he told me about last night.” She sighed. “Think of sitting there with one of the top celebrities. Just sitting there and having him play his own compositions . . . what was it like?”

Jennie did not say, “It was heartbreaking.” She did not say, “I learned the splendor of the undefeated.” She said, “He is a gentle person and very kind.”

Joseph Anderson sent them a note. “. . . It is amusing and interesting to be suddenly accepted. I shall remember always, our meeting, and the evening at your house. It is to the thought of you and Rex and others like you that I cling, for I rather fear that I am one of those who will never be able to separate himself from the place of his beginning.”

Sabra had brought the mail to her and now waited, watching her mother’s face. “Was it a good letter? Your face is undecided.”

Jennie read the note to her. Sabra leaned on her elbows and looked out the window to the orchard, now a garden of snow. “He was nice,” she said. “I stayed awake and listened to him play.” She practiced standing on her toes. “Did you know that I am going to be like him when I grow up?”

Jennie looked up quickly. “Ah, come now . . . how can you say a thing like that?”

Sabra nodded. “I dreamed about it. I was old, about your age, Mother. I had a pocketful of songs. The birds came and took all the songs out of my pocket . . . and the people came and took the songs out of my hands . . . but it was always the songs they wanted . . . but they never wanted me at all.”

Jennie went to her daughter and hugged her fiercely. “No . . . it was only a dream. It was just one of those things . . . forget it.”

Sabra looked up in surprise. “But you don’t understand. Mother! It was so beautiful . . . the way the notes came together inside me. . . . It was such a beautiful thing.”

Jennie held Sabra’s head against her breast. The protest rose like a cry within her . . . no . . . no . . . don’t let it happen to her. Don’t let her be different and strange and rejected . . . no.

(To be continued)