Chapter 33

Johanna's Turn:

According to the stories I heard at my Momma's knee when I was little, I should be looking for leprechauns. This stuff got surreal.

First, there's Dan and Cindy. Cindy could be a pixie. Dan showed up to talk with Stoney about picking up where Stoney left off on an engineering project when he had his accident. So I figured 'another engineer? What could it hurt?' Except this engineer shows up with a fifteen year old redheaded pixie of a wife, and we had a delightful time.

Delightful it was, because where my Stoney plays banjo, Dan Richards plays guitar, and we had fun playing music together. And Cindy's got a beautiful voice. Untrained, but beautiful.

Okay, that in itself wouldn't bump the screen too hard, but then the next week was our December concert and the premier performance in public for one Randall 'Stonewall' Jackson who was on stage with the orchestra and me in our premier (and perhaps ONLY) public performance of Mozart's Concerto for Flute and Harp, with the harp part replaced by my Stoney and his banjo.

I don't think Stoney was aware of the audience when he took his seat on stage, but I was. I have to admit that there's a certain amount of snobbery among the aficionados of classical music, and the appearance of a "OMG! It's a BANJO! Eeeek! Is this Hee-haw?!?" on stage in their nice, civilized concert caused a lot of bemusement and, yes, some frowns.

Doctor Bob has enough self-assurance to do things like this, and when he introduced me and Stoney, things were under control.

I love this piece. Stoney and I have practiced it so much, just the two of us, and then us with various amounts of the orchestra, and with the WHOLE orchestra, so while the orchestra was playing the opening phrases, I was watching Stoney and I was watching the audience.

The Third Movement of that piece has the harp, Whoops!, the BANJO coming in first and then the flute joining in, so I was watching when Stoney's fingers took control. That little curtain of concern over his face, it went away when he started playing. I know what happens. I'm the same way: the music becomes the center of one's being. Stoney was in the zone. That's what I saw with Stoney. What I saw with the audience was transformational. The faces changed. I don't know what they were expecting, but I know what they were hearing, and it was good. No, better than good.

And when my flute came to my lips, I was playing for the orchestra, my extended musical family, and I was playing for Mom and Dad, and when our eyes connected, I was playing for my Stoney, the merging of this music just another one of the many ways we joined. And the audience? They were just along for the ride.

Standing ovation. I've had a few. It was Stoney's first and he's still shaky on that leg after he's been sitting a while, but he stood with me, beside me, my right hand in his left, and we bowed together.

Okay. I was surprised. It was better than I expected. After the orchestra rose and bowed, Key bounced out and hugged me and Stoney.

Following our concert there's a reception where the orchestra gets to mingle with the audience. Or is it the other way around? Anyway, food, punch, lots of smiling, shaking hands, a few hugs and 'thank you' and 'you're very kind' and then you go home, right?

That's the usual thing. This time? Wrong.

For once it seemed like most of the audience was in the receiving line to shake our hands. The crowd was thinning though, when this middle-aged blonde lady and her escort, a guy about Stoney's height and ten years older, caught up with me and Stoney and Key.

That's where we met the Hardestys, Jim and Ann. Well, Key met them first, introducing herself as my SISTER, which she is, you know, and she introduced Stoney as 'my favorite white boy'.

We accepted the effusive compliments graciously. It was getting late and I mentioned our need to go find dinner. I didn't expect total strangers to invite us out, but Jim and Ann did just that.

We ended up at an Italian family restaurant that Stoney and I and Key frequented, got greeted as special guests, had the expected great food and we talked.

I love telling the story of me and Stoney and I spilled a lot of it. That's when there was an eddy in the time-space continuum.

Ann said to Jim, "Look at them. It's like we've got another Dan and Cindy on our hands." She must've read surprise on my face. "They're an unusual couple that we play music with. He's an engineer and she's this crazy smart little redheaded thing."

"W-w-wait!" Stoney said. "Dan and Cindy. Engineer and young redhead?"

"Show 'em the pictures on your phone, baby," Jim said. "She's something. Youngest kid I ever saw graduate from high school. She's running through..."

"Auburn!" I blurted.

Ann showed me her phone. She looked at me. "How do you know..."

"You're talking about Dan and Cindy Richards. We met them a couple of weeks ago. You're right. She's something!"

"I was her middle school guidance counselor," Jim said. "They play music ... played music with us all the time. She sings, sometimes with our daughter. The rest of us play."

"They're coming down next week to fly us to Auburn for the weekend," Stoney said.

Jim smiled at Ann. "We were planning on getting together with them on Saturday that weekend. Sounds like fun."

"He plays guitar. I play banjo. Jo plays flute. What do you play?" Stoney asked.

"I play banjo too," Jim said. "But I never tried what YOU just did."

Stoney laughed. "I never play it like I just did, just so you know. It's Jo's fault."

"I play violin... 'fiddle' when I'm bluegrassin' with everybody." Ann smiled at me. "Jo, I was a solo violinist at one of these concerts. I'm an alumna."

"Really?" I squealed. "Bring your violin next weekend. Please..."

"She hasn't lost her touch," Jim said. "Still has everything she had in college. If she hadn't married a Marine..."

In retrospect, if they hadn't been on so tight a schedule, leaving early the next morning for the long drive back to Alabama, I would have dragged them to the apartment like we did Dan and Cindy.

Instead, we did big happy good-byes in the parking lot of the restaurant.

We were driving Key back to her apartment.

"You people gonna change my mind about white folks," Key chuckled. That's Key's sometimes shtick, that 'black-white' thing. If she's racist, I'm Katherine, Tsarina of All the Russias.

"Be careful, Key," Stoney said. "They're the worst kind. From Alabama."

"I looked," she laughed. "His neck wasn't red at all."

We dropped Key off.

"Stoney, something's awfully twisted in our universe."

"How so?"

"We just met two couples from Alabama two weeks apart and they KNOW each other."

So this is where Johanna Solheim Jackson, World Traveler (courtesy of Dad's Army career) gets her first flight in a light plane because Cindy and Dan are flying in from Alabama to bring us over for the weekend, then flying us back. Cindy's idea. I get the impression that any Idea Cindy has is just fine with her husband.

I mentioned that thought to my dear mate. "I can see how he might be that way. Redheads'll do it to you."

"DO what?"

"Oh, you have to admit, Jo, that you have special powers over me."

I love it when he talks to me like this, like I'm magical. I do it right back, too. We do that whole Valhalla thing and the Irish folklore and he can be my warrior and I can be his faerie princess and we disintegrate into cuddles and kisses and then it gets serious.

It had to be safe, right? Dan had his own private pixie, Cindy, and I know he wouldn't risk anything dangerous with her.

And the phone calls. Cindy saw fit to call me to talk.

"I'm curious, you know," she admitted. "I'm in engineering, but I love music. So what's it like? Majoring in music?"

I explained to her that I'd been 'in music' since I was nine, about the daily (almost) practices, the music tutors that Mom and Dad provided for me a few times. She sounded genuinely interested.

"It's beautiful. I'm a little bit jealous," she said.

"Don't be, Cindy. You have your voice. It's great." She'd sung a couple songs when we shared that evening, me, her, Stoney, Dan. "And you and Dan, you sing together like you're in love."

Giggle. "That's because we ARE in love."

"How's that work? I mean, you and Dan, you're more than twenty years apart."

"You and Stoney are ten years apart," she countered. "Age isn't a problem for US. Other people have a problem with it. And me being fourteen when we married. So many people thought that I was being exploited and Dan was a child molester. I guess some still do. But I'm the least exploited girl on the planet."

"I have a hard time seeing you as exploited," I said.

"Nikki went through it, too. Tina, not so much," Cindy said. She'd called the whole crew in for a Skype session. And Terri. "The universal little sister," Tina said. "My evil stepchild."

Cute bunch. All of them. And quick-witted.

I wasn't surprised as much as Stoney was when that little plane taxied up with Cindy at the controls. She sat in the rear seat with me on the flight back to Alabama and the four of us talked the whole way back to Alabama. That is, we talked while I marveled at the countryside passing a mile below us. It is a lot different than flying commercial at thirty-five thousand feet.

Landing in Alabama, driving over strange roads, ending up at the homes of our new friends, meeting and touching the hands of people who'd before only been faces and voices on a computer screen ... virtual reality, my foot! Kissing somebody on their cheek for real, that's where it's at!

Friday evening was a happy explosion of food and music and new friends that felt like old friends. We found out we had a 'sleeper' in the music venue. Sim Weisman, husband of Beck and father of Rachel, revealed the heretofore unknown ability to play violin. "Bashful," Beck said. "I've told him..."

So we put together an impromptu ensemble with a guitar, a banjo, a flute and a violin and ranged across the music landscape from classical to bluegrass to Celtic to klezmer. And tomorrow the Hardestys are coming in. That's another violin and a second banjo.

And that innocent-looking little blonde child came up to me and Stoney and asked, "Are y'all going to move here with us?" And punctuated the question with big, liquid blue eyes.