A Distant Music Read online

  HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS

  EUGENE, OREGON

  Scripture verses used in the main text are from the King James Version of the Bible. Scripture verses in “What God Says About Hope” are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright© 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

  The verse appearing on p. 226 is taken from the New King James Version. Copyright ©1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in association with the literary agency of Janet Kobobel Grant, Books & Such, 4788 Carissa Avenue, Santa Rosa, California 95405.

  A portion of this novel was previously published as The Penny Whistle.

  Cover photo © Rubberball Productions/Index Stock Imagery; Thinkstock/Index Stock Imagery

  Cover by Koechel Peterson & Associates, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnes

  A DISTANT MUSIC

  Copyright © 2006 by BJ Hoff

  Published by Harvest House Publishers

  Eugene, Oregon 97402

  www.harvesthousepublishers.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hoff, B. J., 1940-

  A distant music / B.J. Hoff.

  p. cm. — (The mountain song legacy ; bk. 1)

  "Portions of this novel previously published as The penny whistle"—T.p. verso.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7369-1404-8 (pbk.)

  ISBN-10: 0-7369-1404-8 (pbk.)

  1. Teacher-student relationships—Fiction. 2. Coal mines and mining—Fiction. 3. Poor families—Fiction. 4. Sick children—Fiction. 5. Mountain life—Fiction. 6. Musicians—Fiction. 7. Kentucky—Fiction. I. Hoff, B. J. 1940- Penny whistle. II. Title. III. Series.

  PS3558.O34395D57 2006

  813'.54—dc22

  2005020466

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Printed in the United States of America

  06 07 08 09 10 11 12 / BC-MS / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue: When the Music Stopped

  One: Jonathan’s Children

  Two: The Collection

  Three: Waiting for Matthew

  Four: A Jar of Wishes

  Five: Maggie and Summer

  Six: Faced with a Painful Decision

  Seven: Disappointment

  Eight: A Heavyhearted Night

  Nine: Maggie and the Angel Touch

  Ten: Predators

  Eleven: An Unlikely Hero

  Twelve: Two Are Better Then One

  Thirteen: Heartsong, Heartache

  Fourteen: Pity the Children

  Fifteen: What Kind of Man?

  Sixteen: When Hope Falters

  Seventeen: A Meeting of the School Board

  Eighteen: An Exchange of Pain

  Nineteen: Kenny’s Quandary

  Twenty: A Reluctant Lie

  Twenty-One: Maggie in Charge

  Twenty-Two: Secret Threats

  Twenty-Three: Going On

  Twenty-Four: In Praise of Good Men

  Twenty-Five: The Beginning of a Plan

  Twenty-Six: Night Wind

  Twenty-Seven: The Cabin

  Twenty-Eight: In the Woods

  Twenty-Nine: A Call for Heroes

  Thirty: A Future and a Hope

  Thirty-One: A Surprise for Mr. Stuart

  Thirty-Two: A New Song

  Epilogue: Homecoming

  What God Says About Hope

  About the Author

  Harvest House Publishers: Fiction for Every Taste and Interest

  For Dana and Jessie,

  who taught me everything I know

  about how young girls think and how young women

  make their mother proud time and time again…

  And for Jim,

  who could teach even Jonathan Stuart

  a few things about what it means to be a good man.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to Nick Harrison, Carolyn McCready, Kim Moore, and all those at Harvest House who played such a vital role in breathing new life into Maggie MacAuley and the lovable inhabitants of Skingle Creek.

  And, as always, with appreciation to Janet Grant, sainted agent and patient friend.

  To My Readers:

  A few years ago I wrote a novella entitled The Penny Whistle. It was a story about two young girls, Maggie MacAuley and Summer Rankin, and their efforts to restore the hope…and the health…of their beloved teacher, Jonathan Stuart. Ever since the publication of The Penny Whistle, I’ve continued to hear from many of you, asking for “the rest of the story.”

  What a gift it is to any writer to realize that readers have come to love the characters in her book so much that they want to know more about them. To my great pleasure, I can now thank you for your patience and respond to your requests for “more.” With this new book, you’re about to renew your acquaintance with Maggie, Summer, Jonathan Stuart, and many others in the small Kentucky mining town of Skingle Creek. And I’m happy to tell you that A Distant Music isn’t so much the “rest of the story” as it is the beginning of the “rest of the story.” I hope you enjoy it…there’s more to come.

  God’s blessing upon you all,

  Prologue

  When the Music Stopped

  The harp that once through Tara’s halls

  The soul of music shed,

  Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls

  As if that soul were fled.

  Thomas Moore

  Northeastern Kentucky

  November 10, 1892

  Maggie MacAuley could pinpoint the exact day when the music stopped in Skingle Creek.

  It was the same day some no-account unknown stole Mr. Stuart’s silver flute. The same day Mr. Stuart seemed to give up. The day he began to change.

  The only schoolteacher who had ever stayed for more than a few months, Jonathan Stuart had arrived fresh from the state university almost six years ago. The town knew little about him, for he never talked much about himself, only that he had grown up in Lexington. How or why he had ended up in a little mining town like Skingle Creek was anyone’s guess, but to everyone’s surprise, he had settled right in and stayed put.

  Maggie had been only six years old when Mr. Stuart came to town, but she could still recollect his first few weeks at the school and how the people of Skingle Creek had wagged their tongues about “that new teacher” and how he was a “different cut,” a “city fellow.” The older students, like Maggie’s sisters, Eva Grace and Nell Frances, claimed to have known right from the start that their new teacher was indeed “different.”

  Of course, Eva Grace and Nell Frances were inclined to think they knew just about everything.

  If truth were told, not a soul in Skingle Creek—child or grown-up alike—had ever come upon a man like Mr. Stuart.

  Maggie figured their teacher must be what was meant by a “gentle man.” His smile was gentle. His voice was gentle too, and words seemed to fall easy from his tongue. His laugh was quick to come but never rowdy. Even his walk was quiet and unhurried. He had a way of making it seem as though whatever he happened to be doing at any particular moment was the most important thing he had to do all day.

  He also had a way of
making all the students in the small one-room schoolhouse feel as though they were the most important people in the world. At least in his world. Maggie had never seen Mr. Stuart in a rush, nor had she ever known him to lose his patience with the slower learners. Although he had himself a fine gold watch, he seldom took it out of his vest pocket, except when it came time to change from one class to another or to ring the dismissal bell. If time was of much importance to him, he seldom showed it.

  He never raised his voice, not even when Lester Monk—who everyone knew was the pokiest boy to ever set his feet to the floor in the morning—lumbered through his sums or went to stuttering when he tried to read more than two or three words in a row. Mr. Stuart would just smile and nod, as if to encourage Lester to keep on trying, that he was doing fine, and that they had all the time in the world.

  Maggie was pretty sure any other teacher would have bawled Lester out something fierce or maybe even smacked his hand with the ruler and made him stand in the “dumb” corner. But not Mr. Stuart. He treated all his students the same, even Lester.

  Eva Grace said he was by far the best teacher they’d ever had. Nell Frances disagreed—she always disagreed with their older sister just because Eva Grace was older. And prettier. A lot prettier than either Nell Frances or Maggie herself. Prettier, even, than their mother, who Da said was the “best-looking woman in Rowan County.”

  One thing Maggie’s two sisters did agree on was that Mr. Stuart was a great storyteller. And just like every other lesson he taught, his stories almost always had a Point, unlike the tall tales of their Great-Uncle Ruff, whose yarns were known to be the most far-fetched throughout the county.

  He was a great one, Mr. Stuart was, for making a Point.

  His stories were also crammed with enough excitement to make a body’s heart hammer and enough adventure to satisfy even the older boys in the schoolroom. Sometimes he told them stories from the Holy Bible, and Maggie had noticed that he never had to read these stories but seemed to know them all by heart. Sometimes the stories were about animals or people who had lived long ago. “Folk tales,” Mr. Stuart called them.

  But no matter what kind of tale he told, there was always a Point. It wasn’t that he would come right out and say what it was. They just knew by the way he would end the story and stand there, watching them with a little smile, that he was looking to see if they had got the Point.

  Many of the teacher’s stories had to do with God and how He loved people and all the creatures He had made—even toads and spiders, which Maggie thought must take an awful lot of love. Oftentimes, Mr. Stuart’s stories seemed to have a Point about being kind to others, even to those who weren’t nice to you. Some stories made a Point about gossip. Others were about envy, and how it was wrong to resent folks who had more money and possessions than others.

  That particular Point wasn’t much of a problem in Skingle Creek. Except for Dr. Woodbridge and Judson Tallman, the mine superintendent, everyone in town was fixed about the same when it came to money: nobody had any.

  Skingle Creek was a company town where everyone took their living from the coal mines. According to Maggie’s mother, it wasn’t much of a living. Ma said that what the company store didn’t get on payday, the tavern did.

  This was just about the only subject to spur a quarrel between her folks. Ma would nag Da to bring his wages home and not stop at the tavern, and Da would in turn call her a terrible scold and say how any man who worked twelve hours a day under the ground ought to be free to lift a glass or two on payday if he felt so inclined. It was his way, he would declare with a fierce scowl, of washing the coal dust from his soul. Maggie thought she understood what he meant by that. Hadn’t she felt the same way those times when Mr. Stuart played his silver flute? Somehow the music seemed to wash the coal dust and all the other dingy thoughts and feelings right out of her soul.

  The music was…a glory. A wondrous thing entirely. Sometimes it was like a graceful bird, winging up and over the clouds. Other times it was more like shiny coins tumbling out of an angel’s knapsack. And sometimes—and to Maggie these were the best times of all—it was like a happy waterfall, pouring down from heaven itself over the town, washing away the ugly black dust that coated the unpainted company houses, the laundry on the clotheslines, and even a body’s hair.

  During these special moments Maggie could almost pretend the whole town and even life itself had been washed clean and made new by the music from Mr. Stuart’s silver flute. But now the flute was gone, stolen by somebody who either didn’t know how important it was to its owner…and his students…or somebody who didn’t care.

  Meanwhile, from the looks of him, Mr. Stuart was getting sicker and weaker by the day. Of late, he seemed to scarcely have the strength to write their assignments on the blackboard.

  For a long time now, Maggie’s mother had insisted that Mr. Stuart was “sickly.” And recently some of the other grown-ups, like their neighbor, Pearl Callaghan, had also taken to remarking how the teacher just kept getting “poorer and poorer,” that there wasn’t “enough of him to stand against a strong wind.”

  It shamed Maggie to admit it, but up until lately, she and the other students hadn’t paid all that much attention to their teacher’s poor health. Mr. Stuart had always been a lean man—thinner than most, she reckoned—but then almost everyone in Skingle Creek was on the lean side. Other than the Woodbridges and the Tallmans, no one in town got enough to eat to make them fleshy.

  Still, even though she couldn’t actually pinpoint the exact day when Mr. Stuart’s health had taken a turn for the worse, Maggie could recall when the light had seemed to go out of him, when he no longer smiled as often or whistled softly to himself, and when instead of walking up and down the aisles to help them with their papers, he had taken to sitting at his desk most of the day.

  He had even stopped telling his stories with a Point. Most of the time now, he merely assigned the class a number of pages to read on their own or a row of sums to figure by the next day.

  The fact was that since the morning he discovered that his silver flute had gone missing, Mr. Stuart hadn’t been the same at all.

  And neither had anything else.

  One

  Jonathan’s Children

  Even the children are old in such a place.

  From the diary of Jonathan Stuart

  Jonathan Stuart watched the faces of the children as they filed into the classroom and slid behind their desks.

  He had always thought of them as his children, as if they were a special gift, temporarily entrusted to him by Providence—and accompanied by an almost frightening responsibility. As his gaze came to rest on first one, then another, he couldn’t quell the bitter question that had nagged at him for days now: Who among them could have done such a thing?

  And why?

  He found it unthinkable that any one of his students might have had so little regard for him or for something that belonged to him. Yet he realized that in all likelihood the one responsible for the theft of the flute was right here, in this classroom.

  He watched Kenny Tallman take his seat—and discounted him almost immediately. The narrow, bespectacled face was that of an unhappy child who, in spite of belonging to one of the few financially comfortable households in town, never seemed quite at ease with the other students—or with himself, for that matter.

  The boy glanced up, giving the uncertain smile that never failed to touch Jonathan’s heart. No, not only did this reticent youth have no reason to steal from his teacher, but of all the children in the room, Kenny was probably one of the very few who wouldn’t have had the daring—nor the motivation—to attempt such an exploit.

  Jonathan had long wondered about the Tallman boy’s home life. Quieter than any other student in the class and possessed of a reserve that gave him a presence much older than his years, Kenny seemed to be liked well enough by the other children, though he was something of an outsider. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that his father, J
udson Tallman, was superintendent of the mines and known to be a hard, uncompromising man. Certainly, he was one of the least popular men in the small community.

  He and his son lived alone at the foot of “the Hill,” as Dredd’s Mountain was called by the miners, in a neat, two-story house. Tallman periodically hosed their home down to rid it of the coal dust that blackened it and every other dwelling in town. Some of the miners were known to joke that Tallman’s frequent hosing of his house was the mine super’s effort to wash away his sins. Others would counter that nothing but a flood would accomplish that feat.

  Kenny’s mother had left Skingle Creek before Jonathan arrived. Although she’d been gone for years, rumors still circulated as to why Charlotte Tallman had abandoned her family.

  Jonathan had heard most of the tales by now, but the one that seemed destined to survive all the others was that Tallman’s wife had fled to escape her husband’s cruelty. Speculation was that Judson Tallman might have ill-treated his wife, perhaps had even been violent with her. But rumors often ballooned into flagrant exaggerations, and Jonathan fervently hoped for Kenny’s sake that such was the case with the stories about his father. A man who would mistreat his wife would almost certainly be capable of the same abuse toward his son.

  Two of the older boys who had been whispering between themselves when Kenny came in now turned their attention his way. Billy Macken, a tall, heavy-shouldered youth who delighted in tormenting the younger children, muttered something to his buddy beside him. Orrin Gaffney, another troublemaker, leaned forward to Kenny, seated in front of him, and thumped him on the shoulder. “Billy wants you,” he said, smirking.

  Kenny looked around.

  “Pick up my pencil, Four-eyes,” the Macken boy ordered.

  Kenny looked at him and then at the floor. “Where? I don’t see any pencil.”