I leaned against the doorway so I could watch Ruth do her thing—and so I could block everyone in the hall. We’d be in trouble if they saw Ruth. Interrogating a class of eight-year-olds wasn’t smiled upon anywhere, but especially at church. Ruth and I already knew that. We’d investigated crimes at church before. When you listen to Dragnet on the radio every Tuesday afternoon, you start to see that crimes happen everywhere, even in God’s holy house. And boy, another crime had occurred that morning.
In the hall, the phrases broken organ and pretty penny and such a shame rode on the air. My face warmed and my heart raced. I knew what everyone thought. That I broke the organ. That I was a goof-off and a shame of a boy. Some of those things were true, sure, but not the organ bit.
Which is why Ruth stood before six cowering kids, all seated on their metal folding chairs, her fists resting on her hips and her bony elbows jutting outward. She towered over them. Well, towered in the way only Ruth could. She was twelve like me, but small and bird-boned. Still, something in her flinty gaze and the aggressive way she leaned forward, making them shrink before her.
The teacher hadn’t arrived yet. Ruth and I had maybe a minute to figure out who was guilty, and they all looked guilty of something.
Ruth paced in front of them. “We’re looking for the facts. Just the facts,” she said in her best Joe Friday voice.
Ruth’s Joe Friday was better than mine by miles. She could keep things cool. I got too worked up and—like Dragnet’s brassy music blaring when the criminal was revealed—I couldn’t help but explode.
Bum-bum-buuuuuum!
That’s why I leaned against the doorway, reminding myself to play it cool, but my heart was still thumping too fast and my cheeks were still warm. It would be extra hard this time. This crime had been personal.
“Jessica May,” Ruth said, bending over a blond girl. If anyone was ever born ready to rat, it was Jessica May. And this is why Ruth was in charge of the questioning. She’d think through who to go to first. I was in charge of gathering evidence and making formal accusations.
“You and your family were sitting in the first pew, correct?”
Jessica May nodded.
“Did you see anything unusual?”
She shook her head.
“Didn’t you get up and walk by the organ during Brother Everton’s talk?”
Had she? I didn’t remember, but I wasn’t one to pay much attention.
Jessica May’s eyes got bigger. “I don’t know,” she squeaked. “I don’t think so.”
She sounded guilty to me, and I waited for Ruth to intensify the interrogation, but she moved swiftly to the next person. Jack. The one kid who—though still looking terrified—might defy Ruth’s pretend authority.
“And you, John Holland,” Ruth said, closing the distance between him and her. “You go by Jack, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“Is it not true that you put your hand on the organ today?”
Had he?
Jack’s eyes narrowed and he pushed against his chair until it stood on its two hind legs and propped against the wall. He wasn’t going to answer, but he wasn’t going to look away from Ruth either.
Guilty!
I almost sprang from my position, hollering and brassy, but Sister Stowe’s voice rang behind me.
“Why, Ruth. Ardel. To what do we owe this pleasure?”
I leaped away from the door and gestured for her to enter as politely and innocently as I knew how. She swept into the classroom, her bouffant hair swaying.
Ruth, her Joe Friday not quite disappearing, said in a clipped cadence, “We’re here to uncover the truth, Sister Stowe.”
Ruth started toward me as Sister Stowe replied, “As one does. As one does.”
Ruth grabbed my hand and we were halfway down the hall before Sister Stowe could say anymore. Perhaps she thought we were caught up by the Holy Spirit, seeking truth at church and all, and it wouldn’t take long for her to figure out we weren’t.
We were uncovering truth, but of the criminal kind. We ran down the hall, me talking too loudly about Jack’s guilt, and Ruth hushing me as we skirted past disapproving faces. But I wanted everyone to hear. I wanted everyone to know the truth—to know I wasn’t the guilty one.
She yanked my hand to stop me, just short of our class. “You’ve got to keep it together, Ardel. We don’t have any proof yet, even if Jack looked as guilty as a cat in a birdcage.”
Guilty and unrepentant.
Ruth pulled me into our class and I sat on a cold chair, leaning it back just like Jack. Vengeance would be so sweet.
Ruth sat beside me, planting herself between me and Lyle. Vile Lyle. I only felt the tiniest bit bad thinking of the nickname I’d given him. After all, yesterday had been his grandmother’s funeral, and I’d been the organ’s bellows operator then, too. I’d even watched Lyle cry, though he’d scowled at me when he caught me looking. The rosebud corsage he’d worn at the funeral was still pinned to his lapel. It drooped.
Lyle smiled sweetly at me over Ruth’s head.
“Nice playing today, Ardel,” he said. He always knew how to smile and what to say, and how to tuck an insult inside, like poisoned honey.
“Shut it,” I said, warmth rushing up my neck and into my face once again, my fists balling.
Of course, in walked our teacher, Brother Waters, because these teachers had impeccable timing, materializing right before guilty admissions and thrown punches. He was singing, and pointedly, too.
“Oh say, what is truth? ’Tis the fairest gem.” His bass voice filled the room, and I tried to pretend it wasn’t meant for me.
He came up to each one of us and shook our hands in his huge one, his voice big and his smile big as it always was. The song continued as his hand enveloped mine, and he pulled my arm until my chair plunked all four legs on the ground.
Then he turned to his own chair. It creaked under his weight. It creaked even more when he tilted his back against the wall. I grinned at Brother Waters and pushed my chair back again to that precarious position, because what was church without a little danger?
***
Ten minutes before class was to get out, I raised my hand.
“Brother Dempsey,” Brother Waters said, “what wisdom do you have to share?”
“I gotta go.” I scrunched my face to make it look convincing.
The class giggled. Everyone but Lyle. He looked at me with that blank face—the one a mortal enemy wears only because he’s in church. Lyle had been at the top of my guilty list until Ruth said he’d been sitting on the fourth row, smack dab in the middle. No way he could’ve sabotaged the organ between the sacrament hymn and the closing hymn. I was disappointed things were pointing toward Jack instead. But when you dealt in facts, you had to accept that even the slimiest slimeball could be innocent. I scrunched my face tighter, aiming it at Lyle, while Brother Waters motioned to the door. Away I went—not to the bathroom, but to the chapel.
I walked as innocently as I could, but then realized, as I passed a pair of gabbing women, that I was walking like a robot. One lady narrowed her eyes at me as her mouth moved. Did she just say “broken organ”? I tried to smile. If a robot could smile, I suppose that’s what mine looked like. Stiff and fake. But she went back to gabbing about my guilt. It must’ve worked.
I rounded the corner and, seeing no one in the foyer, slipped through the chapel door, easing it shut behind me. Time to gather evidence. I flipped the switch and the overhead chandelier went dark. Light still shone through the stained glass, casting shapes of greens and blues and yellows across the stand and the first row of pews.
Up to the organ I ran. It’d been installed just after school got out for the summer, and since my mom was the organist, I was the bellows operator. She’d made me practice and practice and practice. I crouched down by the bellows pedals and reached my hand beneath, where the actual bellows sat. I felt around. Nothing but a little dust and the clean, boxy edges of the bellows. I shifted to the second bellows pedal. Once again, nothing.
A soft thumping sounded above me.
I glanced at the stained-glass Jesus hovering just above the organ pipes. Was he knocking, trying to get my attention? I was on a holy mission. To uncover the truth. To put things right. Wasn’t I?
Vengeance.
The word pierced through, shattering my holiness, which was apparently as fragile as this stained glass. But the way that vengeance shivered through me—it felt way better than the hot embarrassment that had almost made me run out of the chapel during the closing hymn. I’d been operating the pedals steadily when the wind coursing through the organ hitched, and an unholy squeak ricocheted through the chapel. Children and adults had giggled. It happened four times during the hymn, on the same note, and my mother had glared at me over her hymn book every time. This had never happened before, and I’d been doing this for months now. I’d be getting a talking-to after church, and who-knew-what sort of awful punishments. Probably hours and hours of bellows practice were in my future.
Naturally, I thought of Lyle first, but then there was Jack. I burned at the injustice of it all—that everyone thought I did it. But Ruth was right. Injustice didn’t matter without facts. At the moment, I had no evidence that anyone had done anything. To the world, I was as guilty as Lyle or Jack. I needed “just the facts.”
Fact: When the bellows are operated well, wind travels through the internal piping in the organ, exiting out the cluster of metal pipes that stick out below the chapel’s stained-glass windows. The air’s passage should be smooth and uninhibited.
Fact: I had operated the bellows well. I hadn’t goofed off. Not once. I’d been focused, standing on one pedal and then, when it had fully depressed, I’d stepped onto the other. Back and forth, steady as a ticking clock.
Thump thump.
There was that thumping noise again. Jesus knocking. I glanced at his face again, which I wished were smiling rather than somber. From there, I crawled alongside the organ, until I could see the foot pedals angling into darkness. Pressing my face close to the ground, I peered beneath them. A shadowy lump sat beneath a pedal, right in the center. It’d be hard to reach. I stretched my arm slowly, but couldn’t get beyond the middle of my forearm. I tried with my other arm. Same result. I crawled to the front of the organ, so I faced the bench and could see the pedals from above. It was too dark to tell what sat beneath them.
Thump thump.
I looked at Jesus again, and then at the light shafts, wishing for one to pierce through the darkness and shine on this evidence.
As if my prayer had been heard, a yellow shaft of light shifted and settled perfectly onto the pedal just above the mysterious object, and then it moved slowly until the thing lit up.
I knew my mission was holy. You couldn’t have people sabotaging the organ and ruining my life, and here was Jesus telling me so. I crawled under the bench to see what it was.
It glowed a warm red. A rose petal.
I burst upward, hitting my head on the underside of the bench, crying out, partly from pain, but also from vindication. I knew it.
Reaching down, between the organ pedals, I pulled out the red, silky petal and stood up, victorious. I looked at the stained glass again. Maybe Jesus was smiling. I guess I could see it there, ready to blossom. It was time to confront Lyle. I ran down the aisle, and that’s when the chapel door opened. Pivoting to my right, I threw myself onto a pew, hoping I hadn’t been seen or heard—and that I hadn’t destroyed the evidence in my fist.
“I figured,” Ruth’s voice said behind me.
I twisted around to grin at her.
“You found something,” she said. Joe Friday cool. But then she scooted into the pew with me and spoke fast. “What? What’d you find?” She was as excited as I was.
I uncurled my hand and showed her the flower petal, crumpled but not destroyed.
“This was under the organ pedals. The foot pedals,” I said, waiting for her to stand up and lead the way to an accusation.
“That’s something,” Ruth said, her shoulders slumping.
Now my shoulders slumped and she shook her head.
“No . . . I mean that really is something, but it’s . . . it’s just not enough to accuse Jack.”
“Jack? Uh-unh. Not Jack. Didn’t you see Lyle wearing that corsage again today?”
“You’re back to Lyle, again? I just don’t see it.” She shrugged. “Besides, Lyle wasn’t the only one with red roses yesterday.”
“Yes, but he’s the only one wearing them today. Him and his family.”
Ruth shook her head. I hated how I didn’t put things together as quickly as Ruth, but she never got mad at me for it. She only got mad when I rushed announcing an accusation, which admittedly happened every time we tried solving a crime. With this crime, though, I hadn’t made that mistake. I’d kept it cool.
“There were red roses everywhere yesterday,” Ruth said. “For the funeral. Jack and his dad placed a vase of them on the organ.”
I didn’t understand how she saw all this and remembered. Now that she said it, though, I remembered too. The vase had made it tricky for me to see my mom, and after the first prelude song, she’d shifted it to the side.
I still didn’t get it. “So it was Jack.”
“That was yesterday. The crime happened today, sometime between the sacrament hymn and the closing hymn. We don’t know if the flower petal came from yesterday or today. I’m sorry, Ardel. We’re going to need more evidence than this.”
“Well, let’s go then,” I said, standing. Puzzling through things wasn’t my strength, but I was decent at looking for clues. You basically didn’t quit until you found enough.
“We’ll have to be quick. Brother Waters sent me to find you, and he’ll come looking if we’re not back soon.”
In a few seconds, we were giving the organ a quick but thorough once-over, Ruth circling around in one direction, and I the other. While we looked, I told Ruth how a pipe organ was really just a complex bunch of whistles. The bellows filled up the wind-chest with air, and when you pressed a key, the valve to the pipe opened and the air escaped. How something had made the air hitch.
When we’d both circled the organ and met on the opposite side, we held out our hands. Ruth held a shred of torn, white paper and a brown hair. The paper was probably from a hymn book, and the hair was long like my mother’s. I held a downy bird feather and some tiny pebbles. Probably things tracked in on the bottom of someone’s shoes. Ruth sighed, and even I knew we didn’t have anything very telling, like a bit of fabric from someone’s clothes.
“Can we look inside the organ?” Ruth asked.
“We can.” I ran my hands along the back panel of the organ, trying to remember how it’d been assembled. My mom had let me stay and watch, then sent me away when I got bored. Even if the memory had been fresh, I wouldn’t’ve recalled it. I just didn’t pay close attention.
“What’re you trying to do,” a voice from the back of the chapel called, “make sure you really broke it?”
Vile Lyle. I didn’t even have to turn to recognize his pompous voice.
“I knew you didn’t go to the bathroom,” he said. “And I know you hate doing bellows. Makes sense to break the organ.”
Suddenly, I saw it. Motive. I mouthed the word to Ruth. Perfect little Lyle was jealous. He had his motive and I had his rose petal. It was a good thing we stood at opposite ends of the chapel, with partitions and pews between us, and an almost-smiling Jesus looking down. My fists were twitching to fly. The best I could do was to throw some words instead.
“How’s it feel to be a rotten dung-heap?” I said, heating up once again. My words felt ridiculous. Fists were way better in these situations. But I was committed. “Wait’ll everyone knows.”
“Ardel,” Ruth said, her voice tinged with anger.
I ignored her. I had enough for an accusation. I could feel it all the way down to my toes. I’d gotten sidetracked by Jack, while Lyle had been guilty all along. It happened to the best of detectives.
I held out the rose petal.
Lyle’s face screwed up. “What’s that?”
Ha. “Like you don’t know,” I said, but Lyle’s expression didn’t change. “A petal,” I said. “A petal under a pedal. Evidence. Facts.”
My feet were moving. I hadn’t noticed. They were taking me away from the organ. Away from smiling Jesus. Lyle was also moving, and though he was going closer to Jesus, that wasn’t his aim. We were two magnets. Two opposing forces that couldn’t help but collide. All the heat in me came boiling over as I moved down the aisle toward him.
I grabbed for the corsage—for the rose smaller than a baby chick. My hand circled around it and yanked. Then I yelped and pulled away. The corsage dangled from my pointer finger, a needle pinning it in place, but I didn’t have time to admire the weirdness or pain of it. I shook my hand and it flew off. Lyle shoved me hard and I fell to the ground. Then his body slammed on top of mine and he began smacking my face.
It hurt, but Lyle clearly didn’t know how to wallop someone. My fist formed. It still stung where the pin had pushed into my skin, but who cared? Lyle needed this.
It wasn’t a great punch by anyone’s standards. When you’re lying on the ground, it’s almost impossible to punch hard, but I caught him just on the jaw and he reeled backwards, falling off of me, holding his face and wailing. Baby. I’d give him something to wail about. I hopped to my feet and stomped over to him, grabbing his jacket with one hand and pulling my other fist back. It was too easy.
Until Ruth yelled, “Stop it!” My eyes only darted toward her for only a second, but it was enough time for Lyle to tackle me. We wrestled on the ground, both of us hollering and grabbing and biting. I’d like to say Lyle was easy to pin down, but he wasn’t. He’d scrabble out from my holds again and again. Ruth kept yelling behind us.
It wasn’t until Brother Waters pulled us apart—one hand holding Lyle by the belt, the other holding me by the back of my shirt—that I realized we’d attracted an audience. A big one. Maybe even the entire congregation. Ruth was in the front, tsking at me. I hadn’t kept it together, after all. And my mother was there, too, wearing a stony expression that should’ve frightened me more than it did. I was still too hot, and still too aware of the many eyes on me. Ruth’s. Mom’s. I even saw Jack in a cluster with the Valiant-eight class, all staring their accusations at me.
“Gentlemen,” Brother Waters said, “I suppose it’s better to fight things out in a church than in a back alleyway.”
Lyle’s mother stepped forward and yanked him away from Brother Waters.
“I should think not,” she said. Her face was stonier than my mom’s. “Besides, Lyle’s not a fighter.” At this, she looked at me, the full context of her words known to all.
I was a fighter. Playground brawls mostly, or sidewalk scuffles on the way to school. Never church, though. At least, not since I was a Sunbeam.
And so I was guilty not just of this moment, but of the seventy-times-seven other instances. My mom didn’t step forward to defend me. She would let the consequences play out, and I didn’t blame her. I was guilty again, and it didn’t matter that it was for a good cause. It didn’t matter that there was truth to uncover. I looked up at Brother Waters, who gazed at me with the only kind eyes in the room. I blinked away the tears forming.
He let go of my shirt and placed a massive arm across my shoulders.
“I think in matters such as these, that we should hear from the boys.”
Lyle’s mom muttered something and shook her head.
I, on the other hand, turned into a statue, unless you count the way my eyes widened at Ruth. I needed her Joe Friday. Words weren’t my way. If I had to talk, I’d lose it, and not by getting angry. My anger was slipping away, replaced by another awful sensation. I was busting to cry in front of the whole congregation. If I could at least hold on to the heat of my anger . . . it was the one way I knew to manage moments like these.
Brother Waters looked at me. An invitation.
But I was a statue, and words refused to form behind my lips.
So Lyle spoke up, gratingly proper and grammatically perfect. Probably. I didn’t really know. But I knew Lyle did everything to perfection, at least on the surface.
“I went to find Ardel,” Lyle said.
How I wanted to punch his earnest, honest-looking face.
“He wasn’t in the bathroom like he said he was, nor was he in the hallway between the bathroom and our class. That’s when I heard something in the chapel. Someone yelled, and when I turned the lights on, I found Ardel. I suspected he was up to no good. I’m not sure what he was doing, but he didn’t like getting caught. He came at me and ripped off my flower.” At this, Lyle’s voice wavered. “The one I wore at Grammy’s funeral yesterday. And then he punched me right here, in the jaw.” Lyle rubbed his face. “I’m lucky nothing broke.”
“Liar!” I yelled, my body lunging forward. Brother Waters had me by the shirt again.
When I’d stopped straining against his grip, he said, “Brother Dempsey, that’s why we need to hear your side.”
I stood still again, mute.
“Perhaps you could tell us why you went to the chapel,” he prodded.
No words formed. There were too many eyes.
Brother Waters’s eyes looked like they were pleading: come on, Brother Dempsey.
My mother looked tired.
Lyle looked smug. He was better at fighting a different sort of fight, and this one he was winning.
I stared hard at everyone. If I looked down or up, the tears would come. They were about to come anyway. My feet tingled with the desire to bolt and push my way through the crowd, but Ruth stumbled up to me. I thought she’d take my hand and run, but she stepped past me and stood right in front of huge Brother Waters, her fists on her hips, elbows angling outward.
Her Joe Friday voice was gone. In its place was her Ruth-enraged voice. “He shouldn’t have to do that. Not with all them watching.” She pointed at the congregation and glared at them. They shrank just like the eight-year-olds. Like Lyle, Ruth fought a different sort of fight.
Brother Waters took a deep breath. “Let’s empty the chapel, please,” he said, his voice booming across the room. “Except for the parties involved. And their parents.”
Ruth turned and glared at Brother Waters.
“I suppose you are one of the parties involved.”
She nodded once.
“Alright then.”
Now I would have to speak.
***
“Lyle sabotaged the organ.” These were my first words, and Ruth was already shaking her head. I wish she could tell me what I was supposed to say.
“I found this rose petal.”
Lyle’s mouth quirked in even greater smugness.
I was bungling this royally. I took a deep breath.
“I was operating the bellows, Mom, just like you’ve made me do over and over again. I’ve never gotten distracted. Not once. And I didn’t get distracted today.”
My mother still hadn’t said anything.
“It wasn’t my fault,” I said lamely.
“So your first thought was that someone sabotaged you?” my mother asked.
Maybe my mom lived in a world without a mortal enemy. Maybe she didn’t know that when you have a mortal enemy, this conclusion always makes sense. She had to know, though. I’d seen the way she looked at Lyle’s mom.
I nodded. My mom sighed. Ruth shook her head. Lyle and his mother wore their smugness like a comfortable sweater.
Thump thump.
I looked up at Jesus. Somber again. A shadow bumped against the glass outside.
Thump thump thump.
A bird. A bird having such a bad day, it was trying to literally pound itself through the heart of Jesus.
I’d heard that thump when I’d been inspecting the organ.
And that’s when I remembered—I’d heard that thump during the closing hymn. I’d seen that shadow dancing along the stained glass, desperate or insane. And I’d stared at it a while, instead of focusing on the bellows, and that’s when the squeaks had sounded.
Oh gosh. My heart hammered and I was hot again.
It hadn’t been Lyle. It had been my fault. I had broken the organ. I wiped my sleeve across my cheeks, brushing away the tears fast so no one would notice.
“Wait,” Ruth said. “Do you hear that?”
Everyone looked toward the stained glass, at the bird’s fluttering against the glass. But Ruth was cocking her ear like there was another sound. I tried to catch it too. There it was. A faint musical note. A brief whistle.
Ruth stared all around. It could be hard to tell where a sound came from in the huge chapel. But I knew. I’d been listening carefully during all my practices.
“It’s coming from the pipes,” I said, shaking off Brother Water’s hand and running back up the aisle toward the pipes under the stained glass.
It sounded again. Not a whistle. Somewhere, between the bird’s thumps above us, a faint chirp echoed. I crouched and put my ear to one pipe. Then another.
“What does this have to do with anything?” Lyle’s mother asked.
Brother Waters shushed her.
I hovered longer over one pipe, just to be sure. “This one,” I said, standing and facing everyone. In my best Joe Friday, I announced, “There’s a bird trapped in here. That’s a fact.”
I grinned at Ruth. Brother Waters strode up to us, and I remembered the words to his song. Oh say, what is truth? ’Tis the fairest gem. A bird in the pipes was a lamer truth than getting to see Lyle go down for being . . . well . . . for being Lyle. It was lamer than imagining a conniving eight-year-old. And it was definitely lamer than any ending of Dragnet I’d ever listened to, but it had the same effect.
Lyle hadn’t sabotaged anything. Neither had Jack. And I hadn’t messed up.
There had been a bird in the pipes.
As rescue efforts took the next half-hour, and as one bird was reunited with another outside the church building, my boiling blood cooled in the fresh air. I spied a group of kids congregating around the tree the birds had taken refuge in. Lyle was among them. I ran up. I was good at fighting, and so I had plenty of experience with apologies.
“Hey Lyle,” I said. He turned and flinched. I had plenty of experience with that reaction, too. “Sorry about today.”
He shrugged. “It is what it is.”
Normally, his smug response would’ve sent me reeling back into anger. Today, though, I laughed. I was innocent and so was he. We’d saved a bird and returned it to its mother and fixed the organ, which wasn’t broken.
I slapped Lyle on the back as I laughed. He stood uncertainly.
All along, I thought the mystery had been about clearing my name. But Jesus had stood over that little bird, as though it was the heart of the story, and me, Ruth, and Lyle were just being directed there.
Ruth came running up. “The facts win again,” she said.
Lyle spoke up. Perhaps he sensed we were done with accusations and fistfights. “How do you suppose that bird got stuck in the pipes in the first place?”
Ruth and I looked at each other. We hadn’t even thought of that mystery. Or maybe it was a crime. Crime happened everywhere, even at church, after all.
Just then, Jack strolled by and gave us his usual side-eye. Ruth and I rolled our eyes. Eight-year-olds. But Lyle called out, “Jack!”
Jack stopped, turning partway to face us.
“You’ve got something on your shirt.” Lyle reached out and plucked something off. He held it up.
A downy bird feather. We stared at the feather. Then at Jack.
Jack’s eyes darted back and forth, from Ruth to me to Lyle.
The puzzle pieces fell into place.
I pointed at Jack, getting ready to holler as he bolted down the street. This was the best part.
Bum-bum-buuuuuuuuum!
— & —
Rachel Lewis lives in Northern California with her family, where she enjoys hiking, playing the piano, and experimenting in the kitchen. She has published a handful of short stories and essays.
