Burning Ambition

he day was brimming with sunshine and the promise that

seemed to inhabit Fridays. Jeep's breath came in steady frosty puffs as she skated past the idle mill to work. She'd shoved her fiddle inside the old canvas rucksack she used to transport it, then secured it tightly to her back with bungee cords. Band rehearsal was tonight.

"Excellent day!" she burst out as she entered the noisy classroom. The volume seemed to go up a notch every day that they got closer to the end of the school year.

Arlene Hardy, the other teachers' aide, came in behind her, but the teacher, Dottie Yankel, was, as usual, already there. She was applying the brakes to a little girl's wheelchair. Jeep got busy taking off baseball caps, helping the blind boy find his coat hook, soothing one of the autistic boys. Poor little guy, he was revved up and rocking already. She wasn't at all sure he would make it to a regular classroom.

Her favorite pupil arrived late. Luke's big sister led him by the hand to Arlene, then veered off to a regular classroom at top speed. On the way she cried, "This is my Auntie Marly's magic coat!" She was holding the long, oversized multi-colored cardigan up and out on her arms as if it could give her flight.

"Does your aunt know you have it?" Arlene called after the girl, but got no reply. Arlene muttered to Jeep, "Probably not."

Jeep waved to blond, round-faced Luke, and he grinned, clapping his little hands without sound to some intricate rhythm he seemed to hear ceaselessly. Sometimes she wondered if he didn't talk because the sounds in his head were too loud.

On her break midway through the afternoon she hung with Dottie.

"I could never get into this part of your job. You're always catching up on paperwork."

"You've got to clean up the poop."

She laughed and stretched. "This afternoon is being really intense on cleaning up messes. Hey, how come when someone messes up, you clean up? Shouldn't you clean down, or maybe they should mess down? Anyway, I'll bet this is the most fragrant zone in Waterfall School."

Dottie smiled and nodded, obviously giving her only half an ear as she worked.

"That's okay," Jeep said, talking as much to herself as to Dottie. "I'm never depressed at work. Here I can forget I'm not on the fast track to concert violinist or even first violin in the Lucky City Symphony. Which was not exactly my life goal anyway."

"You've got time to come up with a burning ambition," said Dottie, who wasn't much older than Jeep, but was the most together person, next to Cat, Jeep had ever met. Well, except she was kind of a dumpling and needed to lose the Coke-bottle glasses.

"Tell that to Mom and Dad." She took her harmonica from her pocket and turned it in her fingers as she spoke. She loved the feel of the thing, the cool metal and the wooden holes against her thumb. "Every week I call from the pay phone at the trailer park so they know I didn't do a bunk with some UFO cult. Does it help? No, they say I'm throwing my expensive education and scholarships out the window. My buzz cut embarrasses them. The only thing they like about this job is that I ditched the nose stud and three earrings because the kids got so bumptious with them. Worse, about once a month they ask if, you know, I've changed. Meaning switched to boys. No freakin' way."

Dottie wrote and smiled, shaking her head full of drab, heavy hair as if in sympathy. When she looked up, it was with an appraising eye Jeep hadn't seen since her interview. "Jeep, have you ever considered the field of music therapy?"

"Me? No, I've always been into performing. There was a girl in the dorm who had a double major in music and psych, but I thought she was kind of, like, making up the music therapy thing."

"It's pretty new as a recognized therapy, but it's being taught at a number of schools now, including one a couple of hours north of here. It could be a good skill to have when performing is slow."

"But what is it? I mean music is therapy. That's a given. But do you play? Teach? Do-what does Chick call them-hootenannies?"

Dottie, still filling in forms, smiled at her papers. "I don't know much about it. It's probably all those and more. I've wondered if some of the less verbal pupils could learn to express themselves through instruments or by singing."

"You mean like Luke?"

"Like Luke and all the little Lukes who come through these classes. You know, he's not going to make it into kindergarten if he doesn't start talking here. I couldn't recommend him for that."

"So what then? He repeats preschool? We get him for another term? Breaks my heart."

Dottie put down her pen and gazed out the window. Jeep could see that a deer was helping itself to a meal of new leaves from the lower branches of a young sapling. It's typical of life, isn't it? The more successful we are at our jobs the sooner we lose the pupil." She looked Jeep in the eyes for the first time. "You can't get too attached to them, Jeep. It'll only break your heart when they graduate or-worse-don't make it."

"What happens if they don't?"

"It depends on the reason." Again Dottie's eyes strayed to the window, and Jeep smiled to see two fawns barely old enough to have lost their spots stroll up to their mother. One nuzzled her belly, the other nibbled on a bush. "Some do repeat the class. Some wait out kindergarten or find a church preschool because we don't have funding to support a special-ed kindergarten. They start in special-ed first grade. That's the biggest measure of our success-how many succeed. A few are institutionalized or placed in foster homes because their families either can't or won't care for them adequately. And then, of course, these children are at risk. Some get sick, some die."

"Which children?" She hadn't thought much about her job beyond coping with each day in the classroom and finally getting some money in her wallet. Her sister Jill had mainstreamed, no problem, and she'd assumed most of these guys would eventually. But the thought that Luke-"Who could die?"

"Yancy Dillard. Jennifer Schwane. Little Jaquelle Ruiz. Their problems are not merely developmental."

"Holy shit. And who might get institutionalized? Not Luke? He's not going to die, is he?" Her hands suddenly hot, she blew on them, though this never worked to bring their temperature down.

"I understand his home situation is not the best, Jeep. There's a suspicion of little kids running wild and possibly having access to drugs despite the father's very public law-and-order stance. Luke's older siblings-he's from a huge blended family-have been in trouble. Two were sent to live with their grandparents. They're smart kids. The state intervened, convinced the mom to get them out. Something's wrong there. I think the mom is an old hippie or something. Very vague, hard

to get information from."

"But his sister's okay."

"She was in here for two terms and is barely hanging on in first grade. ADD, hyperactive, and deeply marked by a childish father who seems to tease and taunt her unmercifully. Unless she's making these stories up."

"Aw, Dottie, don't tell me these things. Luke's love on two feet."

"I know, I know. And when I see you interact with him, with all of them, you're real good, Gina-Jeep, sorry. You're Gina Pauline on the paperwork."

"But Dottie, that's, like, too weird. I never thought about going into this work forever."

"Didn't you tell me in your interview that you had an autistic big sister?"

"Jill. But shouldn't that make me want to run in the other direction?"

Dottie peered at her. "Did you love your sister?"

Jeep nodded. She tried not to think about Jill and, after all these years, pretty much succeeded. "Then I hope you'll give the field serious thought. A talented adult can save a life. If not Luke's, then someone else's. I have no idea what the job prospects are for music therapists, but if I had the funding I'd get one in here without hesitation."

"I don't know." Jeep's mind was in overdrive. Rug rats? More student loans? Years of heartbreaks? Jill had been heartache enough for a lifetime. "How about you?" she asked, more to distract herself than to challenge Dottie. "Have you ever thought of making a radical change? Like getting a buzz cut?" She ran her fingers though her own hair. Did the woman know she was queer as a Susan B. Anthony dollar?

"Um-hum."

"Why don't you?"

Dottie looked out at the kids, rubbing her chin with a pen. "I'm not brave enough."

"That's honest."

"I'm supporting my mother and my little brother. He's graduating with honors from Greenhill Community College this weekend. Can't afford to lose this job over a haircut." Dottie looked back down to her paperwork and sighed aloud, as if she could hear Jeep thinking that Dottie was scared of a lot more than a haircut. "Do you have your fiddle

today? The kids might like to hear you play."

"I could get into that, no problemo!"

"I know. It's what makes you a kid magnet. Go get 'em, Pied Piper."

The children watched as she plucked the strings to tune up. She started with a simple bluegrass piece, roaming the classroom. "Go Sara!" she encouraged as the little girl danced in her wheelchair.

Another child sang nonsense words. Grinning, Luke beat the table in perfect syncopation. A kid magnet. I like that, Jeep thought, and then felt a pang so sharp she stopped, swallowed, and took a few deep breaths, before she could put bow to string again. She missed the kids, the three sibs who had come after her and Jill. Her parents had never trusted her with them and had let her stay alone in the room she had shared with Jill while the little ones slept in the other upstairs bedroom together.

She shook her head slightly to bring her eyes back into focus and wondered how Luke would accompany something more complex. She switched to a lively Vivaldi concerto. Luke's mouth became an "o" of astonishment. He watched her every move. The other children grew restless, but Luke lifted his arms and mimicked her, obviously mesmerized. He kept time with both feet. His smile returned, beatific. Jeep got totally choked up, watching Luke's transformation. She was going to miss him all summer, but Dottie had recommended that he come back for a second year since he'd started in January rather than last September. Luke's reprieve.

For the rest of the afternoon Luke held an invisible violin under his chin, playing it with an orange crayon. Jeep was all quivery, like when she fell in love hard.

After school she asked Cat, "What do you think it means?" She tossed her board into the bed of Cat's pickup.

"The kid's a child prodigy? He's a cute little dude." Cat twisted to back out of her parking space. "Want to eat at the A&W?"

"Okay, but I mean it was kind of like a throw-away-your-crutches experience, Cat."

Cat backed out of her parking space in the school lot and gave her a warning look.

"What?" Jeep asked, although the look felt protective.

"Maybe all the stimulation he gets at home is from church and the TV, and here you come playing church music he doesn't have to sit still for."

The burger place was down the street. It always came as a shock to her that this A&W still had carhop service. She leaned over Cat to the teenaged girl in a brown and orange uniform. "Stacy" was stenciled on her pocket. "Can I get a double Velveeta burger and a float with coffee ice cream?"

"You sure can," Stacy answered.

She felt like an old letch, but the girl was cheerleader-pretty, with an adventurous look about her.

The promising smell of burgers grilling and potatoes frying had them both superhungry. Cat was halfway through her first Coney Dog when Jeep brought the subject up again. "Music is awesome, Cat. You know what I'm saying. Listening to it, playing it, feeling the vibrations through my fingers. Until today, though, I never really thought about using its super powers. Healing powers. Luke might never talk, but music does."

"Now you sound like your friend Rattlesnake." Cat's smile was teasing.

"R? My friend? No way!" she protested. "Dottie said to check out music therapy. I'm thinking if I had the moves, what couldn't I do for some kid?"

"Jeep, I know Dottie lives and breathes her work, but I get indigestion mixing school and chocolate milk shakes, especially on a Friday afternoon. Can't we be passionate about something else right now?"

"Whatever. I'm thinking out loud." She slouched into her seat and sucked on her straw, bummed. She had to remember that Cat wasn't Sarah and didn't want to hear every thought in her head. Donny would give her a ride to the county library tomorrow. She'd research music therapy on one of their computers.

Cat crinkled up her hamburger wrapper and said, "I promised one of my old high school friends that I'd stop at her garage sale. Her daughter's one of my all-time favorite kids. We can still make it if you're willing."

"Sure," she said.

Maybe Cat had been right to stomp on her newfound dream. Poor Cat was the one who had to listen to all her enthusiasms. Last week she'd been stoked about med school to cure the kids. The week before, she'd been researching orchestras in Seattle. The truth was that she wanted to do all of it. Was Katie right? Had they been drawn to Waterfall Falls to, like, find their capital-P paths? Life seemed like such a little scrap of time that she wanted to do it right. Why wasn't there someone she could ask what choices to make?

They climbed the hill on the west side of town-Cat's side- turning onto streets she hadn't known were there until they reached a dead end cut from the side of a cliff. She got out of the truck and saw the whole town below her and the maze of streets they'd driven. Cliff Street began as a stately cypress-lined boulevard down where Cat lived. Her place was one of a row of large homes built early in the century by prosperous merchants, bankers, and city fathers. At the next level, where power shovels had begun to dig for new residential land, like some twentieth-century version of the gold rush, a dozen houses crowded together on each street. Here at the crest claimed by the new town gentry there were only four homes, well-insulated by green plots of land that backed onto thickets of a tiny thinned forest of evergreens and manzanita bushes. A water tower was surrounded by barbed wire.

"Zowie," she said as Cat came up behind her. "The town pretty much starts at Natural Woman Foods and crashes to a stop at the casino."

"Waterfall Falls, my personal minitown," said Cat with what sounded like great satisfaction.

"Have you ever considered living somewhere else?"

"Not seriously. I spent four years at Western Washington U in Bellingham, and it never felt like home. I love being able to see the whole town at once by driving up a hill."

"Yeah," Jeep said, shivering a little in a mountain breeze, "it feels good, like it's a place I can wrap my mind around. But it's still the whole world, isn't it?"

"Minus war and natural disasters except for forest fires. Those are nasty."

"Auntie Cat!" cried a plump-cheeked little girl with long dark hair.

"Hi, Gretchen. Hi, Gretchen's mom. This is Auntie Jeep. She teaches at Waterfall School too."

"I get to go there next year," Gretchen told them. And not, Jeep thought, looking from the child to the large new house she was growing up in, not in a special-ed class. Was she way off, or were most of the kids in her class unlikely to live in a place like this?

"We were about to pull everything inside for the night," Gretchen's mom told them. "Haven't had even a looky-loo for over an hour. Do you need anything special or are you visiting?"

Jeep noticed a bass fiddle in the back of the garage. She said she'd take a look around and managed to make herself linger over Christmas decorations, small appliances, and neatly folded sheets that smelled strongly of fabric softener. Cat was looking through the children's books, chatting with Gretchen about which ones to buy when Jeep, making her tone as casual as she could, pointed at the bass and asked, "Do you store this thing out here?"

"I'm afraid so." The woman held out a hand and said, "I'm Myra."

"Jeep."

"Jeep as in the car?"

"Yes, but short for G.P., my initials."

"Oh!" Myra lowered her voice and her eyes sought the child. "Not Gretchen Patricia? That's my little girl's name."

"No," Jeep assured her, thinking, 'Don't worry. Your girl won't grow up to be a dyke with a crew cut. If you're lucky.' Oh yeah, she thought, this upscale little enclave looked down on more than the town.

"My husband's father played in a big band in the forties and fifties. We hauled the bass down from the old place in Greenhill when they moved to Arizona. A lot of this garage sale is my attempt to get rid of their old household items."

With all the critical concern she could muster, hands glowing like coals of embarrassment, Jeep asked all in one breath, "How long has it been here? I hate to think what the damp winters and dry summers do to the wood-not to mention the strings." She sniffed for mustiness. She had a feeling the minute she touched the bridge it would collapse. "May I?" she asked and stepped to the instrument. She plucked a string and it snapped, almost lashing her face. "I'm sorry!" she said.

The bridge listed, but didn't fall. She could fix that with the right tools. She had some of the glue her dad used in his repairs. All those hours spent watching him bring old instruments back to useful lives might pay off yet. He repaired all of the school district's instruments and kept pretty busy with all the musical entertainment in town. His father had done the same thing before him. Her little brother was being prepped to join in the business. She'd kind of thought the sign would one day say Chs. Morgan and Daughter, but then the Jill thing happened. Oh, well.

Cat's friend was exclaiming, "It's not your fault. It needs a good home with someone who'll take proper care of it."

"It does," Jeep said, moving away from it. "We could use it in the band, but I can't keep it in a tiny trailer." She laughed. "Or lug it across town on my skateboard." She was watching herself set up this negotiator stance and was surprised that it came so naturally, although she shouldn't be, given all she'd learned at Sami's shop.

Sami had started leaving her alone in charge of the shop from day three. That was how long restless Sami could stay indoors. She had to see her business connections, she had to score, she had to buy something for the shop; any excuse, and she was gone. Sometimes Jeep wondered if Sami chose all her lovers by how good they'd be in the shop. Gawd. She got disgusted with herself at the thought she'd stayed with Sami a year and a half. The woman was a cokehead and ran a sleazy business, not to mention that she was probably seeing other women half the time when she was out of the shop. Sami sucked in anything that came her way and moved through the world saying mine, mine, mine.

Then, before she beat herself up totally, Jeep remembered the shop. That's what she'd fallen in love with; Sami was a nuisance factor. While there, she'd learned by trial and error what to offer someone selling their sax or bootlegged early Miles Davis collection and what to come down to when a customer made an offer. She'd learned fast how to read faces and how to say no, and more about what was a real problem with a used instrument and what was a minor ding. She'd even learned bookkeeping. Most importantly, she learned what she'd be able to fix herself and what Sami would have to pay an expert to repair.

Slowly, as if an idea was forming in her mind as she spoke, Cat offered, "You could store it at my place. I never use the old dining room except for our rehearsals. I might even learn to play something like that if it's living there. Right now," she told Myra, "I play the harmonica and sticks."

"Well," Jeep said, and silently reviewed her finances, "I have about $25 to my name after the rent, laundry, food, and change to call Mom and Dad, but I could pay $10 a month."

"In the shape that's in I don't think it would take you more than three months to pay it off," Myra told her. "My father-in-law would be pleased that you rescued it."

A bass fiddle for $30? Ka-ching!

"Will you teach me to play?" Cat asked.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. I'll go halves on the bass and store it if you'll teach me. You could come by and play it anytime you wanted."

"Deal!" They paid Myra, who threw in a mildewed bedspread and army blanket to wrap the instrument for the ride downhill. Jeep secured it with her bungee cords and brought the skateboard up front.

"I've never seen you this excited," Cat said as she maneuvered carefully out of the driveway.

"Boy, oh boy. What a deal. A new instrument for peanuts, to fix and to play and to teach and to have in the band. That's like about four Christmases in one."

"And it got your mind off school. And off your little pal."

"Now that you mention Luke-"

"Did I speak too soon?"

"No! I mean yes, you did. It was your bass lessons that got me thinking about how if I could pick up a drum pad, cheap, I could teach Luke to play. Just some practice exercises. He's got a way excellent sense of rhythm."

"Ask the music teacher. The school may have one."

"Du-uh. I never thought of that. And maybe a place to practice? If they don't go for it, I can call it music therapy. Who do I talk to?"

Cat laughed. "Go to the music room at the very end of the blue corridor. Wynn Schneider is the music guru."

"Am I kind of like, nuts, trying to do stuff for this kid? What if the parents object? He'll drive them around the bend banging on anything that makes noise."

Cat pulled into her driveway. Two band members were already seated on her front porch. She looked at Jeep with steely eyes. "These parents may not even notice. It is never nuts to do stuff for a kid, amigo. Not ever."

"Got it. Music lessons. Full speed ahead, Sulu."

As they got out of the truck the mandolin player called, "Need to practice, Cat! Let us in!"

Cat slowly shook her head. "Lesbians. The neighbors are going to worry about property values. Do you need help with the bass?"

Jeep had already gotten out of the car and was attaching the violin to her back. "I'm all over it."

Cat walked backwards, shaking her head again as Jeep mounted the bass on her skateboard and started rolling it toward the steps.

CHAPTER TWENTY