Perhaps at this point I should explain a couple of things. First, I was born in 1865, a month before Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, so my parents named me after him. My father was badly wounded at the Battle of Fox’s Gap in the Civil War and was home trying to tend the garden with only one leg.
Second, while money was in short supply in the early thirties, I had it a little better than most because I’d never trusted banks. When the bank in town folded, many people were left with only the money they had in their pockets or purses or on their dressers. Over the years, I had put most of my post office earnings aside. The money was now stored in boxes under floorboards in my bedroom. Rusty and I were literally sleeping on it. I spent it very carefully, hoping it would last until the end of the Depression. Right then, the only expenditure I had other than for the phone, electricity, and occasional gas for my truck was a half-gallon of milk for Rusty each week, and that was an expense I was happy to pay.
On Sunday I decided to take Rusty to church. We walked to the church at the far end of town. When we arrived outside, I had Rusty sit on a bench as I put his socks and shoes on his little feet.
He held my hand and Bear as we walked inside and down the aisle to a pew near the front. There was a bit of a murmur as we walked. Rusty didn’t seem to be aware of it. He sat and looked around, focusing on the stained-glass windows, which he gazed at in awe. His mouth was open, and his eyes were wide.
When Muriel sat at the organ and began to play a quiet prelude, he watched and listened intently.
Pastor John entered and announced the first hymn. I opened my book, holding it so Rusty could see the hymn we were going to sing. Rusty looked steadily at it as we began. I assumed that he couldn’t follow the printed tune or the words. Nevertheless, he kept looking until we finished and sat down.
The church was called The United Church. It didn’t follow a liturgy, although the pattern of the services stayed pretty much the same.
After the prayers, we sang another hymn, and again Rusty looked at the page, apparently totally absorbed.
During the sermon, Rusty took one of the hymnals and began to look at it. Each page had the melody of the hymn notated at the top with the words underneath.
As the final hymn was announced, Rusty asked me quietly to find it in his hymnal, which I did. When we reached the final verse, I heard him singing “la-la-la” to the melody. He was amazingly accurate, I thought. He appeared to be following the tune at the top of the page, but I knew that wasn’t possible.
At the end of the service, he wanted to go up and look at the organ. We stood there with Rusty holding my hand and Bear as Muriel finished her postlude.
She turned to us and I introduced her as Miss Osborne to the boy. Looking at him she asked, “Was it you I heard singing “la-la-la” to the hymn during the last verse?”
He nodded shyly.
“Can you read the music?” she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. She produced a hymnal, opened it, and asked him if he could sing the tune.
He nodded.
She played the harmony of the hymn quietly and Rusty sang the melody on la. He was note perfect.
“Where did you learn to do that?” she asked.
“Here,” he said, “this morning.”
I was astonished, and I could see that Muriel was too.
She tried him on two more hymns. The only problems he had were with incidental sharps and flats.
Muriel asked if he could return on Monday, and I suggested that he come to the church while I was at the post office. She agreed and we exited the church with Rusty holding my hand and cuddling Bear.
Outside, people were gathered having lemonade and talking. They greeted me and they all wanted to meet Rusty. By the time we left, he had several new friends, all of them adults.
I asked him to sit on the bench again before we left. I removed his socks and shoes and we walked home, hand in hand as he clutched Bear.
On Monday, I walked Rusty and Bear to the church and turned them over to Muriel, telling her she could bring them to me at the post office when they finished. I expected he’d show up in half an hour or so.
They had not showed up when I closed the office at noon. When I returned to the church, Rusty was sitting on the organ bench, playing a tune.
The organ was a two-manual and pedal pipe organ built by Estey, of Brattleboro, Vermont.
Muriel looked at me and said quietly, “Abraham, we have a prodigy.”
She talked with me for a moment as Rusty continued to play, trying different stops as he did so. She said she wanted to keep working with him and asked if I could bring him twice a week and I agreed.
Reluctantly, I said, “Muriel, I can’t pay you much for this.”
She put a hand on my arm and said, “Abe, working with Rusty is sheer pleasure. Don’t worry about money.”
As Rusty and I and Bear walked home, I asked him to tell me about playing the organ.
“It’s wonderful,” he said. “It makes all sorts of different sounds, and you can put them together to make other sounds. Of course, I can’t play the pedals yet because I’m too short, but Muriel told me that in time I could.” I noticed that she had become Muriel to him and not Miss Osborne.
Of course, Rusty hadn’t just turned from a sad boy to a happy one. Several times a day, thoughts and memories of his parents overcame him and he dissolved in tears. The bad dreams he had were a nightly occurrence. Fortunately, if I acted quickly, I could prevent him from peeing in bed. Each night after the dream he needed comforting before he could go back to sleep, always holding Bear. I often looked at him while he was asleep, and I could see the innocence which had probably saved his life.
I had promised him that he could help me in the garden, so Monday afternoon I put on my gardening hat, and we went out together. I did have to tell him that Bear needed to stay at home so he wouldn’t get dirty. Rusty didn’t have a hat, but I figured that it being October, we were late enough in the season that the sun wouldn’t bother him.
As we picked squashes and cucumbers and dug up potatoes, Rusty took off his shirt. By the time we were ready to return to the house, his back was scarlet. He didn’t realize that it hurt until I touched him and he recoiled. He tried to look at his back, but that was a hopeless effort.
In the house, I held him up to the mirror so he could see the sunburn. Then I had him lie face down on the bed while I applied some salve to his back and shoulders. He was tense when I first touched his sunburn, but he relaxed as the ointment began its healing. He was uncomfortable in bed for a few nights, but the burn faded and peeled and soon he was back to normal.
Rusty continued his twice-a-week music lessons. While some of them were on the organ, others were on the piano or devoted to sight- singing. Whether he was using the organ or the piano, Bear always sat on the instrument. On the days he didn’t have lessons Rusty and Bear came with me to the post office and watched me work.
********
Behind my house and beyond the vegetable garden, there was a stream running through woods. Beyond the woods were some not-far-off hills.
One day, Rusty said he wanted to explore the woods. His parents had told him about the stream but had warned him never to go into the woods without one of them.
With Rusty carrying Bear we set off towards the woods on a lovely, early November day. There were no trails, but finding our way was not a problem. At first we followed the sound of the stream. When we arrived at it, Rusty stood watching it and then bent over to put his hands in it. “Cold,” he said, and I nodded. We stepped on some stones to cross the stream, and from there we went straight up to the top of the hill. It wasn’t a long way, but it was far enough to give us some exercise.
The hill was clear at the top, and we could look out over the countryside to larger mountains in the distance.
We sat and ate lunch together-sandwiches and a special treat of apples. Rusty pretended to feed Bear, who he said had told him he was tired from the long walk.
When we finished eating and had rested long enough, we went back down the hill, crossed the stream, trekked through the woods, and soon emerged in our backyard.
I observed when he was getting ready for bed that Rusty had begun to fill out some, and I could barely make out his ribs. His arms and legs had also begun to show some definition.
In December we again headed into the woods. “Where are we going?” asked Rusty.
“To get a Christmas tree,” I replied. He looked puzzled but didn’t say anything.
We looked at several before I found one that satisfied me. I cut it down and we carried it back to the house.
I found a couple of tree stands in the attic and brought one down to the living room. Putting the tree in the stand, I poured in water and stood the tree in a corner of the room. It was the first Christmas tree I 'd had since 1917, and I wept a little as I put it up.
Together we put decorations from the attic on the tree. We had no lights or candles, but it was still quite pretty.
Looking at it, Rusty said, “I like it. But what’s it for?”
“Haven’t you ever had a Christmas tree?” I asked.
“No. What’s Christmas?”
In the attic, I found a children’s book that told the King James version of St. Luke’s Christmas story. I sat Rusty down and he looked at the colorful pictures as I read.
When I finished, he said, “Read it again.”
“Maybe before bed tonight,” I said.
While I was in the kitchen making supper, I heard him talking in the living room. I went in quietly and saw him sitting in my recliner, holding the book, and reading the story. At first I thought he was simply telling the story as he looked at the pictures. Then I realized he was actually reading it. He stumbled briefly over a few unfamiliar words but figured them out and went on.
“How did you learn to read like that?” I asked.
“By watching the words when you read stories or when we we’re singing hymns in church,”
After supper, we again sat snuggled in the chair together, but this time I asked him to read the story to me. He did.
At our Christmas Eve service, Pastor John announced that Rusty would be playing “Silent Night” while the congregation sang. He played flawlessly, while Bear sat on the console.
I wasn’t able to give him much in the way of Christmas presents, but I had bought some new clothes he needed anyway and a book he had seen and wanted.
He asked why we gave presents on Christmas, and I reminded him of the gifts the wise men brought to Jesus.
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By the spring of 1934, Rusty played the organ each Sunday for at least one hymn. Muriel had also discovered that he had a lovely voice, so occasionally he sang a solo, holding Bear as he did so.
“Abe,” he asked one day, “why do people treat me like someone special? Is it because I’m an orphan?”
Now where did he hear that word I wondered.
“No,” I said, “it’s because you have very special talents that most children your age don’t have.”
“So I’m different?”
I nodded.
“What if I don’t want to be different? What if I just want to be like everyone else?”
“But you’re not and being your kind of different is very good. You have a rare talent to make music and to make other people happy with your music.”
That was the end of the conversation for then, but I knew I’d have to be better prepared next time he brought up the subject.
In the spring I began to teach him about numbers. He quickly caught on.
The next week in church, he was able to look at the numbers of the hymns posted on a board at the front and find the three-digit numbers in the hymnal quickly and accurately.
From there we moved to simple addition, but 'simple’ wasn’t good enough for Rusty and he was soon adding and subtracting with carrying and borrowing. I tried to make sure that he understood what he was doing and not just doing it by rote. He did.
His birthday was in April, and he turned six. I bought him some more books, which he read over and over, treasuring them.
Spring blended into early summer, and we planted the garden. My back was beginning to cause me problems, so I was grateful when he took over some of the digging and planting. I made sure he was protected from the sun, and he enjoyed what he was doing while I enjoyed being with him.
The one-room school in town had been closed because of the depression, which resulted in a lack of funding. I wondered what would happen when it reopened, but for the moment I was responsible for his education. In addition to reading and arithmetic, he began trying to write. His hands were not yet strong enough to do much, but he began printing short notes to me.
Most of the notes were questions and I struggled to answer them. One of his questions asked about the plants around us and in the woods.
Fortunately for me, the town library was opened by volunteers for two hours three times a week and I could search for answers there.
When we first went into the library, Rusty gazed around at all the books. I decided to let him explore while I looked for answers to his questions.
At one point I saw him go up to the librarian and tell her there was a book in the wrong place. She asked him to show her. He took her to a shelf and pointed.
“You’re right!” she exclaimed, asking him to put the book in the correct place, which he did. He had figured out the way the books were shelved
I just shook my head.