“Like mother, like son.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“But you do, Aaron. I know that you do.”
Mrs. Cutberth had very little to do. Mrs. Francis was offended each time the cook got herself anywhere near the new Hughes Electric Range Oven, though Aaron’s description of his mother’s psychological infirmity gave the older woman to imagine Mrs. Francis putting her head into the oven — not necessarily to asphyxiate herself (it not being a gas appliance) but to burn herself up like an over-crisped roast chicken.
The cook/housekeeper, having kept Mrs. Francis under an eagle eye, finally submitted to the importunity of sleep and laid herself down for a nap as Mrs. Francis was preparing their dinner — a baked ham with pumpkin and cheese. As the house grew quiet (Mrs. Cutberth had been listening to phonograph records — all songs that Mrs. Francis didn’t particularly favor), Aaron’s mother wiped her hands upon her apron and went to her son’s work alcove, which was dominated by his grand piano, its lid closed and supporting a clutter of music notation paper, each page filled with the musical calligraphy of his profession. “Leave it to my boy Aaron to make a ukulele sound gloomy,” she muttered between tuts of parental judgment. The full in-progress score of Concerto for Ukulele and Orchestra, a commission for the Oregon Symphony under the direction of Mr. Carl Denton, by Aaron Francis, Esq. was tidily stacked an inch and a half thick within a box on the piano bench.
Mrs. Francis picked up the box and carried it into the kitchen.
She stared at the oven, wishing in vain that it had an open flame. She went into her son’s library and gazed upon the cold and empty fireplace, not yet engaged for the season. Finally, she went out into the backyard, found a shovel, and buried the concerto in the ground.
When Aaron returned two days later and couldn’t find the manuscript, Mrs. Francis admitted without guilt that she had gotten rid of it, but she wouldn’t say how she did it. “You would have come to your senses eventually and done the deed yourself, dear,” she said. “Just as you destroyed those other manuscripts, each penned by the dark hand that your melancholic mother has passed along to you through the curse of inheritance. For we are so very much alike, you and I. We kill the things we love. We just can’t help ourselves.”
Within hours, Mrs. Francis was gone. Aaron never saw her again.
Upon their trip to Crater Lake the next year, Aaron Francis related to his friend Percy Llewellyn in great detail all of the particulars regarding the loss of the concerto (except how it was that his mother had disposed of it, for she would never tell), and how the loss had brought him to the important decision of ending his career as a composer of serious music — or any music, for that matter. “I therefore pass the baton, willingly, to you, chum.”
“And I take it and will cherish it in my dilettantish hands, but forever will I mourn the end of your famed musical life, doomed as it always seemed.”
“Please don’t weep for me, comrade,” said Aaron, who smiled along with his friend, both men remembering that the word “comrade” was used by German soldiers in the Great War to signal a desire to surrender. Aaron Francis was surrendering to the inevitable. Talent alone cannot assure one of professional success. There are other factors at play — some of which are beyond one’s control. Once Aaron realized this important fact, he was able to accept his fate with equanimity.
And this is the story of Aaron Francis, the most brilliant composer you’ve probably never heard of.
CODA
The above is the rough first draft of a story that I wrote in early 1970. Both Aaron and his friend Percy had been long dead by then, but both men’s diaries were available for me to draw from. I was inspired to tell the tale by a discovery my son made out in our backyard one day. We hadn’t had the Francis house for very long, and Robin, my wife, hadn’t had time to restore the flowerbed, which had reverted to grass and weed after being neglected by its two previous owners. My nine-year-old Stevie had created a moonscape there for Major Matt Mason (Mattel’s NASAish astronaut) and his miniature lunar rover, and in the process of digging out a crater, he’d struck the long-buried box with his trowel, its contents fairly well preserved during all those years of undisturbed entombment.
I took the unfinished music score to the Oregon Symphony. There was little interest in finding someone to complete it so that the concerto might someday be performed. Ukulele Ike, otherwise known as Cliff Edwards (and more familiarly known to me as the voice of Pinocchio’s Jiminy Cricket), having passed away, I tried to contact the only other ukulele player I knew of — Tiny Tim — to see if he might be interested in doing anything with it, but he was preparing for his televised wedding to Miss Vicki on The Tonight Show and didn’t have time (although the idea intrigued him).
It saddened me to think that the work might never be finished, might never be performed — this potential masterpiece by a now largely forgotten American composer. Over the succeeding years, Robin would sometimes catch me staring at the box on the shelf, wondering if there was anything that could be done to honor the memory of the talented Mr. Francis.
“You could do him the biggest favor of all, Steve, by returning the poor thing to its grave. Let it rest in peace. Let him rest in peace.”
This I resolved reluctantly to do.
We had a funeral of sorts — Robin and Stevie and me. Stevie played a plucky dirge on the little Mickey Mouse ukulele we’d given him when he was in kindergarten. Then I put the box back into the ground. As I was about to cover it with dirt, Robin stayed my hand. “I’ve changed my mind, honey,” she said. “I’d like to put a rose bush here. Let’s bury the concerto someplace else.”
It didn’t matter to me. And then, several minutes later, it came to matter quite a bit. Because the place in the backyard that my wife had selected was already occupied. Aaron’s mother was there. She had apparently been buried in the spot by Aaron himself. I pictured Aaron, spade in hand, a smile upon his once melancholic face, making this valediction by the light of the Oregon moon: “You’re right, Mother. We are alike. We do kill the things we love. I’ll leave you now, Mother. I suspect that you’d like some privacy while you decompose.”
1922 CINEASTIC IN ARKANSAS
Abel Adamson never regretted his father’s sense of humor or the fact that his mother hadn’t a veto over the name his father had chosen for him. There was undeniable clerical whimsy in a Methodist minister bestowing upon his second-born the name of Adam’s own, with a convenient reference to Adam himself in the surname. The name was an especially appropriate choice given the fact that the son decided to follow in his father’s ministerial footsteps. At many an annual conference did Abel’s fellow pastors and the district superintendents and even the bishop himself josh him about his name or, more affectionately, draw the obvious respectful comparison between Abel, the Old Testament shepherd, and the Reverend Abel Adamson, shepherd of his own two-legged flock.
Abel took great pleasure in his chosen profession. He enjoyed serving as spiritual leader of the Second Methodist Episcopal Church of Blytheville, Arkansas, a medium-sized church in a medium-sized town. He never worked too hard, nor, contrariwise, did he consider himself slothful in any way. And there was much for a Methodist minister of a medium-sized church to do: deliver sermons on Sunday morning and Sunday night, lead a more informal “prayer meeting” service on Wednesday night, make appearances at meetings of the Epworth League, the Junior Epworth League, and the Ladies Aid Society (each visit pointedly brief so as to not get himself too much in the way). There was the occasional wedding and funeral to officiate, and pastoral calls to make.