The Burden of Being a Prodigy

Chapter Four

In the fall of 1941, when Rusty was 13, Miss Herbst informed us that there was really nothing more she could teach him, and she thought he should go to the high school in Springfield.

I called the school and made an appointment for us to meet with the assistant principal. The next day, I got my old Ford truck out of the barn and we drove to the city, which was only about ten miles away. Rusty had ridden in the truck a few times, and he was always excited to makes the journey out of our town.

By 1940, more people were earning money again, and I had to expand my hours at the post office. The gas station in town had opened again, so we gassed up the truck before making the trip.

We found the high school with no problem and went into the office just inside the front door. Rusty was, as usual, holding Bear, although I had tried to convince him not to. The assistant principal met us and took us into his office. I handed him a note from Miss Herbst telling about Rusty’s accomplishments to date. Sitting behind his desk he said rather officiously, “Russell, I’m afraid you’re too young to go to school here. You should be at the junior high.”

“Did you read the note?” I asked him, thinking that he’d probably made that decision before we’d even arrived.

He glanced down at the note, pretending that he’d already read it but then actually doing so. As he read carefully, his expression began to change. At last he said, “Well, we’ll have to give Russell some tests to see just where he would fit in.” He went into the outer office and spoke to his secretary for a moment. When he returned, he had another man with him.

“Russell,” he said, “this is Mr. Hartley. He will be testing you. Go with him and we’ll see how you do.” Rusty looked at me and I nodded, so he and Bear left with Mr. Hartley.

Turning to me, the assistant principal said, “This will take a couple of hours. You might want to leave and come back later.”

I thanked him and left. To pass the time, I did a bit of necessary shopping, mostly for food items as Rusty’s appetite had grown prodigiously.

I returned to the school shortly before dismissal and found Rusty waiting in the outer office.

“How did it go?” I asked.

“Okay,” he responded. “They want to put me in eleventh grade, but I told them I didn’t want to do that.”

When the secretary told the assistant principal that I’d returned, he invited us both into his office. His manner seemed to have changed considerably.

“Well,” he began when we were all seated, “Russell does seem to be very advanced. He would fit well into our eleventh grade, but he told me he’d rather be in a lower grade.” Turning to Rusty he asked, “Can you tell me why?”

Hesitantly, Rusty said, “Because I don’t want to be with kids who are that much older than I am. I was hoping to get into ninth grade. I think I’d fit in better there.”

“But you already know most of that grade’s curriculum. Don’t you think you’d be bored?”

“Perhaps Rusty could begin in ninth grade,” I proposed. ”If he’s bored with the ninth-grade classes, he could always move up. It would be much more difficult to move him down if he began in eleventh grade and that wasn’t a good fit.”

The man sighed and said, “Alright, we’ll put him in ninth grade for now. If that doesn’t work for you, Russell, and you want to move up, please let me know sooner rather than later.” He told us that Rusty would begin classes the next morning. He should come first to the office to get his schedule and locker key.

He stood, we shook hands, and left the office, only to find ourselves in the midst of students heading out the door as they'd just been dismissed.

As we walked, somebody called, "Rusty!"

We turned and saw David Miller heading towards us.

When he reached us he said, "Hi. What are you doing here?"

Rusty looked a little unhappy to see him, but at last asked, “Can we talk for a minute?”

“Sure,” replied David. “Let’s sit on a bench outside.”

When we were seated, Rusty said, “David, I’m going to be in the ninth grade here.”

“Great.”

“But I don’t want kids here to know what I can do, and especially I don’t want them to know about my music.”

“Why not?” David asked.

“Look,” Rusty said. “In ninth grade I’ll be in with kids who are two years older than me. It was hard enough adjusting to that back in our old school, but I really don’t want kids to think I’m too smart and just showing off. David, I simply want to be normal and fit in here.”

David absorbed that and then asked, “Okay, how can I help you?”

“Just don’t tell the kids about me. Of course it’s okay to talk to me and be friends, but I don’t want people knowing how different I am.”

David nodded. “Okay, there are a few other kids here who were in our school, so I’ll tell them tomorrow. Your secret is safe with me, even though I don’t really understand it.”

“Thanks, David,” Rusty said and gave the boy a hug. It was the first time I’d seen him display any affection towards someone nearly his own age.

We went to David’s car, where his father was waiting. I talked with Mr. Miller for a few minutes, and we arranged to carpool. He would drive the two boys in the mornings before his store opened, and I would bring them back in the afternoons, so he didn’t have to take time off from work.

As we rode home, I asked Rusty what Mr. Hartley had asked him to do.

“He began by giving me math problems,” Rusty replied. “He kept giving me harder ones, and I finally pretended that I couldn’t do them because I knew they were way beyond ninth grade. He had me read some passages and answer questions, and basically, I did the same thing. That was really all we did.”

We rode in silence for a while before he asked, “Abe, what do we do if this doesn’t work?”

“I don’t believe you should be thinking that way,” I responded. “You really need to try and make this work and to be patient for a while. Remember your rough start at the local school and then how, in time, it got better. Let’s just see how this goes.”

The next morning, Rusty hugged me as I tried to reassure him before he walked to the Millers’ home for his ride to school. He was apprehensive, but isn’t every child who is entering a new school?

In the afternoon, I picked up the two boys. They sat beside me on the seat, chatting mostly about some of the other students in the ninth grade.

After we dropped David off at his home and were in our house, I asked Rusty how it went.

“Okay,” he said. “The assistant principal was right that I’d be bored, but I made up my mind that it was better than being with kids who were much older than me, so I did the work and made up some music. Now I have to write it down.” He headed towards the kitchen table and began to work.

“Don’t you have homework?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’ll do that after supper. It won’t take me more than a few minutes.”

And that’s what he did. He explained to me that he was making occasional deliberate mistakes so his work wouldn’t be perfect. I had to admire his ingenuity but was sad that he felt he needed to hold back, that he couldn’t be himself.

David had clearly entered puberty. He had grown considerably. His voice had changed, and he was just beginning to show some facial hair. I believed that most likely other boys in the ninth grade had changed in a similar way, and I wondered how that might affect Rusty.

After he had finished his supper and his homework, I sat at the table with him and said, “Rusty, we need to talk about something.” He looked at me and I began, nervously.

“Rusty, we need to talk about… about sex.”

“That’s okay, Abe. I know all about it.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. Some I learned from the older boys in our school here, but a lot I learned from reading at the library.”

I really didn’t know what to do with that information. At last I asked, “Do you know about the changes your body will go through in the next few years?”

“Yeah, I read about that too, and I can see that most of the boys in my grade are already there.”

What else could I say? “Well,” I finally said lamely, “if you have any questions anytime, just ask.”

He agreed and returned to writing his music while I went into the living room and quietly collapsed into my recliner.

Every evening as we ate dinner, Rusty would relate to me what happened at school. It was how I kept up with what was going on there. Occasionally, a classmate would ask why he carried Bear around, and he replied that he did it for good luck.

A few days later, Rusty encountered Mr. Morgan, the high-school music teacher, in the hallway. Rusty told me that the man greeted him warmly and said that he wanted Rusty in his music program. They made an appointment to talk during lunch.

When they met in Mr. Morgan’s office, Rusty told him that he didn’t want the kids in the school to know about him and especially about his musical talent. Mr. Morgan was disappointed and asked if he would at least consider accompanying the chorus as his pianist had graduated the previous year. They talked at length and Rusty eventually agreed, knowing that he could make occasional mistakes doing that just as he had done in his classes. In return he got Mr. Morgan to agree not to mention his composing to anyone. The chorus met during Rusty’s study hall; he didn’t really need that time for homework.

The first time he met the chorus, Rusty said that Mr. Morgan motioned for him to sit at the piano. Then he introduced Rusty to the boys and girls, saying that Rusty had volunteered to accompany the choir.

Rusty shook his head, a wry smile on his face when he told me this. “Volunteered? I didn’t volunteer. I was drafted!”

He told me the music for the choir was generally not difficult, and he had no problems other than the occasional wrong notes he hit on purpose.

At the end of the rehearsal, Mr. Morgan had asked him why he had hit the wrong notes.

“I want to be good enough for you,” Rusty had replied, “but I don’t want to be too perfect because then the kids will suspect something. Don’t worry, when we get to a performance, I won’t mess it up.

“As I left,” he told me, “I heard Mr. Morgan laughing.”

He told me one night that a girl in the chorus asked him where he had learned to play so well. “I told her that I studied with Miss Osborne in my hometown.”

“She must be a pretty good teacher,” the girl had said. “Do you think she’d teach me?”

“Maybe if she has the time,” Rusty had said, and gave the girl Miss Osborne’s phone number, laughing to himself as he did so.

As soon as he got home, I heard him call Muriel and tell her what had happened. Then he asked her not to give away his secret. Rusty later told me that she’d say she didn’t have any more time for students.

Rusty giggled as he hung up, knowing his secret was still safe.

In December of 1941, the United States went to war against both Germany and Japan. President Roosevelt had tried to stay out of the war in Europe, but when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, there was a sudden outcry for the U.S. to enter the fray.

David’s eighteen-year-old brother, Theodore, was soon drafted and following basic training was sent to the Pacific, although he was not allowed to say where.

That left David as the only child in the Miller house. He was 15 and Rusty was 13. David didn’t say much about the war, but I knew he was worried for his brother. Most of the news from the Pacific at that time was not good. The Japanese had seized a number of islands and were defending them ferociously against American attacks.

Soon, the names of local casualties began to appear in the Springfield Times. Each day, David searched the list anxiously and was relieved when he didn’t find his brother’s name.

David talked about his concerns with Rusty and me, but there was little we could say to reassure him.

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