Thank You for the Music Read Online Free

apartment in a neighborhood called Swissvale, across from a little bowling alley. I once bowled there in high school with a boy named Sam Stein whose ambition was to be mayor. I remember how at the time it seemed incredible to me that Sam could imagine himself in such a position. My ambition at that time was to somehow survive high school.
    On the old man’s front porch the little bowling alley looks like a dream.
    Upstairs he gets eight glasses and sets them on the table, then pours ice water into them from a jug. We each drink four, smiling now, understanding that neither of us will be the first to speak.
    He shows me to a bed on what used to be called a sleeping porch. The kind of porch you find sometimes at the seashore, in the front of the house, with windows that swing open. In the corner of the sleeping porch is a card table, a deck of cards, and a little lamp. He plugs in a space heater. A statue of Mary is on the windowsill. My mother once had one like it.
    He leaves me alone.
    I sleep well, under a heavy red plaid quilt that smells like earth.
    In the very early morning I hear him in the kitchen.
    Will we talk? Will the family bum persona come back, the one I’d met just last night in the yard? And will I return too, with my voice shot full of yearning?
    He turns and hands me coffee, cocks his head toward the door. Then I’m in my coat, following him down the steps and out into the cold so he can drive me home.
    Before I get out of the car we grip each other’s hands, and for a moment breathe in what feels like perfect unison.
    The morning is cold, clear, a streak of red in the sky. The streak has a sound I could never describe.
    For a moment I hesitate. I almost say, “Will you call me?” or “Can we be quiet again together sometime?” But I know, somehow, this is not to be repeated.
    He lets go of my hands, smiles, and I stand and watch him drive away.
    How lit with grace the world seems now—for these few moments by the curb where the sky shines red through the black arms of a bare tree, on a cold Christmas morning in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the year 2000.
    What happened? What kind of magician was that family bum?
    I get into bed. This life is big.

T HE P ASTOR ’ S B ROTHER
    W ERE YOU A THOUGHTFUL SORT seated with the pastor’s brother at a long table of strangers one evening, he would likely draw your eye, though at sixty-two he was a man who liked to keep his profile low. The years of struggling to make a name for himself as a cabinetmaker were over. It was known that he was the best. He not only worked beautifully with wood, but carved intricate designs that recalled the meticulous beauty of other centuries.
    He was soft-spoken, and his dark eyes were both kind and excessively vigilant. He was one-quarter Cherokee; it showed up in his bone structure, and years ago, in his night-black hair. He dressed in shades of brown or dark green, and had finally cut his ponytail in order to cultivate more privacy. The ponytail had invited too many people to approach him to ask whether he was Willy Nelson, or Willy Nelson’s brother. In the old days he’d played along with this, made up stories about what Willy was like when he was a kid. “He and I would jump trains at night, back when America was more trains and fields than cars and lawyers.”
    The pastor’s brother really had hopped into boxcars long ago, but was now relieved to live a life whose confines he knew well. Despite arthritis he worked with his wood, he taught cabinetmaking at the community college and woodworking at the local arts center, and had mentored young people for decades. He loved his wife, Rachel, and after twenty-six years of marriage was capable of believing that he was loved by her in return.
    His daughter, Maria, lived in Oakland, California. She was an ex–drug addict apocalypse artist who sent him homemade cards revealing a streak of insane humor that scared him. She