Anne Tyler - If Morning Ever Comes

Ben Joe let go of the railing and tore down the stairs after his mother. His shirt was open, and the tails of it flew out behind him as he ran. He had no shoes on. On one of the steps his stockinged foot slipped and he almost fell, but he caught himself and kept on going. The girls were waiting for him at the bottom, with stunned white faces. Tessie had come out to stand on the landing where Ben Joe had stood a minute ago and now she looked down at the others and began to cry without knowing why. She had poked her head through the bars because she was not yet tall enough to see over the railing. Her mother, holding on to the newel post at the bottom of the stairs while she struggled into a pair of Susannah’s loafers, looked up at Tessie briefly and said, “She’ll have got her head caught in those bars again. Better get her out, somebody.”

Tessie’s head was a tiny yellow circle on the second floor, outlined against the dark cupola that rose above the stairwell. The house seemed enormous, suddenly. The whole world seemed enormous.

“Where are you going?” Ben Joe asked his mother.

“To your father’s friend’s house,” she said, without expression. “I’ll be back. Gram’s asleep now. Don’t wake her. And try and figure some way of getting Tessie’s head free without sawing the bars down again, will you?”

Ben Joe nodded. None of it made sense. Everything was harried and nightmarish and yet the same small practical things were going on at the same time. His mother patted his shoulder and then, abruptly, she was off, out the front door and into the darkness of the moonless, early-autumn night. As she crossed the front porch the eerie, wailing sound from outside became louder; as she descended the steps down to the front walk a soldier came into view playing a bagpipe. He was small and serious, with his eyes fixed only on his instrument, and he walked in a straight line across their front lawn and then around to the other side of the house. He and Ellen crossed paths with only inches between them; neither one of them paused or looked toward the other one.

Jenny, standing with the rest of them on the front porch, said, “It’s a bagpipe.”

From out in the back of the house came the sound of their mother’s car starting, rising above the piercing sound of the bagpipes. A minute later the yellow, dust-filled beams of two headlights backed past them out into the street and then swung sharply around and disappeared.

Susannah stopped staring after the car and turned to Jenny, frowning, trying to sort her thoughts and figure what should be done.

“It’s no bagpipe I ever heard,” she said finally. “Bagpipes make tunes. This is only making one note.”

“Maybe he can’t play,” Jenny said. She was only twelve then, a thin, nervous little girl, and she was shivering and seemed to be trying desperately to get a grasp on herself. “I’m sure that’s it,” she said. “He’ll practice this note for a while and then go to the next, and then go—”

“Not in our yard he won’t,” Susannah said. “Run around the back and stop him, Ben Joe.”

But there was no need to; the soldier had come around the front again. Apparently he liked having an audience. He emerged from the side of the house at a scurrying little run, with his short legs pumping as fast as they could go, and then as soon as he came into the light from the front porch he slowed to a leisurely stroll in order to parade before them for as long as possible. His chest heaved up and down from the running he had done, and the horrible wailing sound was jerky and breathless now.

“Um …” Ben Joe said. He stepped down from the porch and the little soldier stopped. “You think you could do that somewhere else?”

The soldier grinned. He had a small, bony face, with the skin stretched tight and shining across it when he smiled. “No sir,” he said. “No sir. Man said no.”

“What?”

“Your daddy. ‘No,’ he says. No.”

“I don’t—”

“Saw me hitchhiking, your dad did. Told me could I play that thing, I allowed yes I could but not this way, with all but one reed gone so there wasn’t but one sound. He said anyway, anyway, he said, to play it round his house for a joke and not give up till he come back. When he comes he’ll give me a bottle. A free bottle.”

He grinned again and put the mouthpiece to his lips, but Ben Joe reached out and took a gentle hold on his arm. “He won’t be back,” he said. He turned toward Susannah. “Get a bottle of bourbon, Susannah. Bourbon all right with you, friend?”

“Oh yes, oh yes—”

Jenny suddenly came to life. She raced down the front steps and yanked Ben Joe’s hand from the soldier’s arm. “Leave him be,” she said. “You leave him. Let him play.” Her face was white and pinched-looking; Ben Joe thought if she shook any harder she would fall down.

“He’s getting tired of playing,” he told her.

“You leave him.”

Susannah came out of the house again, slamming the screen door behind her. “Here,” she said.

“Why, thank you, ma’am. I am much—”

“You play, you,” said Jenny to the soldier.

Susannah reached over Jenny’s head with the bottle; the soldier held out his hand and Jenny made a grab for the bottle but missed.

“Wait,” she said.

“Wouldn’t change a thing, making him keep playing,” Ben Joe told her gently. “If he played till you had grandchildren, it wouldn’t bring back—”

“You wait, you wait!”

She was rigid now, not shaking any more but with her hands folded into tense fists and her face wet with tears. When Ben Joe put one hand on her shoulder she spun toward him, not actually fighting him but letting her arm stay rigid, so that her fist swung hard into his stomach and knocked all the wind from him. The soldier clicked his tongue, his eyes round. Ben Joe started coughing and bent over, but he kept hold of Jenny, pinning her arms down at her sides and holding her tight while he and Susannah guided her toward the stairs.

“I told you and told you!” she was screaming. “Now you’ve sent him away and he’ll never come back—”

The soldier, mistaking her meaning, smiled cheerfully and waved his bottle at her. “Sure I’ll be back,” he called comfortingly. “Don’t you worry ma’am!”

He set off toward the street, whistling. On the porch, Jane and Lisa took Jenny from Ben Joe while he leaned over the railing and coughed himself hoarse, trying to get his wind again. Susannah whacked him steadily on the back.

“You’ll be all right,” she said over and over. “You’ll be all right. You’ll be all right.”

She did her best, but she couldn’t say it the way Joanne did. And right then he wished for Joanne more than anyone in the world. He thought probably they all did. If she came walking up the steps right now she would fold every single person up close to her and cry, and pat them softly; and they could start crying too and telling her all the secret fears swamping their minds at this minute and then they would realize everything that had happened. If they could only realize something, things could start getting better again.

But Joanne didn’t come up the steps, and when his coughing fit was through, Ben Joe straightened up and followed Susannah into the house again. Up on the second floor, Tessie was crying.

“You get the twins to give Jenny one of Dad’s sleeping pills,” Ben Joe told Susannah. “I’ll try and get Tessie out of the railings.”

Now, six years later, he thought he could still name the two posts where Tessie’s head had been caught. All seven children, from Joanne to Tessie, had been stuck in this railing at least once in their lives. But he thought he knew which posts Tessie had been between that night, because it was still so clear in his mind. He had soothed Tessie, who had been through this before and was not very frightened, and while he was trying to pull her out he thought about the same thing he always thought when he did this: he must put some screening here, to stop all these ridiculous goings-on. Even if Gram did say it would ruin the looks of the railing. Under his hands was the feel of Tessie’s head — the thin, soft hair, the tight little bones of her skull. He had turned her face gently, holding her small ears flat against her head, and worked her out from between the bars and scooped her up to carry her back to bed. It was then, standing there with the weight of her against his shoulder, that the first sorrow hit him — just one deep bruise inside that made him catch his breath. He could remember it still. That, and the little flannel nightgown Tessie wore, and the soft sounds of Jenny crying in the room she shared with Tessie …