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The search for the musical prodigy Hope had been excitedly telling Reverend J about ended when they walked into the chapel, conversation cut short by loud organ music.
The air reverberated with majestic chords. The copper pipes were alive with sound. And there he was, sitting at the instrument, high up in the gallery.
Apparently, the boy had spent the morning while Hope was at school going through dusty and dog-eared music theory books tucked away on the messy shelf in the piano room, before scribbling down genius-looking compositions on every scrap of paper he could find, all within hours of learning First Grade piano scales.
(Hope didn’t think he was lying when he’d said that morning that he wasn’t familiar with written scales; he didn’t seem like a dishonest person to her at all.)
Reverend J had to speak into Hope’s ear for her to even hear him. “Let’s go upstairs and say hi to him,” he suggested. Hope was relieved that the Reverend was smiling; she didn’t want the boy to get in trouble just ‘cause she told on him for staying overnight in the children’s ministry dorm without asking permission from their daycare supervisor Mrs Coleman.
“Slow down, Hope,” Reverend J laughed as she climbed the fire escape staircase two steps at a time. “He’ll still be there.” But she was just so excited.
She and the Reverend stood by the doorway to the gallery, transfixed and awed, listening to him experiment with stepwise melodies in various scales, always resolving them in three descending chords before changing key. That went on for probably five minutes, before the progression of exalted chords came to its grand conclusion.
The boy stood up from his seat as quietly as possible, making sure not to let the stool’s feet drag on the wooden floor, yet the movement sounded large in the silence left behind. That was when he finally noticed Hope and Reverend J. “Hello,” he said. “Is it...okay for me to be here?”
While he was playing the pipe organ, haloed by the filtered light from the stained glass windows, he looked like a miracle. Now though, standing there in an oversized hoodie, he was back to being the shy boy Hope had locked gazes with last evening, shuffling his quiet steps down the far aisle of the chapel, too polite to interrupt choir rehearsal yet too curious to walk away.
Hope, too, was curious. But she wasn’t so overly-polite as to keep herself from blurting out, “That was the most awesome organ playing I’ve heard in my life.”
He shrugged if off, clearly embarrassed. “Thank you,” he said. His cheeks dimpled when he smiled, something Hope found inexplicably beautiful.
“I’m James,” Reverend J said, stepping forward to introduce himself, hand outstretched.
The boy returned the handshake. “I’m August.”
“Very nice to meet you, August,” Reverend J said. “And yes, it is entirely okay for you to be here playing the organ, so long as the music ministry isn’t using this main chapel for band practice.” He gestured towards the gallery entrance. “There’s a notice board right outside the doorway, where we keep track of all our practice sessions and services.”
“Okay,” August said. He then turned to Hope. “Thank you for teaching me the notes and scales,” he said. “One of the books said that the keyboard of a pipe organ is similar to the piano’s—just a much wider playing range—and there were a bunch of harmonic triads stuck in my head from listening to basketball practice next door, and I just…” he trailed off sheepishly. “I just really wanted to try out the organ.”
Hope just gawked and stared. “I barely had to teach him anything!” She exclaimed when Reverend J gave her an amused look. “I only told him about ‘Every Good Boy Does Fine’ and the rest of the treble and bass clefs before going to school. I don’t know about no ‘triads’, Reverend J.”
Well, Reverend J knew the rest of what had happened, since she’d shown him the piano room earlier, with its whirlwind mess of hastily-scribbled compositions strewn across every surface.
“I think what Hope means to say,” he told August, “is that you’re a very quick learner.”
And just like that, Reverend J was asking August if he played other instruments, and inviting August to join him and Hope in the cafeteria for lunch, and then they were all tucking into ham sandwiches and drinking cream-of-mushroom soup, and August was telling them about how he’d spent the entire spring and most of summer busking in Washington Square Park on the guitar.
He’s a street rat, Hope concluded. Mrs Coleman had taught her that most of the children or teenagers who sought refuge in the church or its affiliated community centre were what people called ‘street rats’, who usually had nowhere else to live, or no families to go home to.
Hope had learned, through what the grownups told her and also what she had observed from them, that the best way to gain the trust of a street rat was to not ask them too many questions, no matter how curious you were.
(“A lot of them have been hurt and lied to by others,” Mrs Coleman had explained, “so we have to treat them with kindness and respect and not be quick to judge. Remember 1 Corinthians, 16:14—Let all that you do be done with love.”)
Music seemed like a safe topic with August. Hope could see before her very eyes how he sat up slightly straighter, looked a little more confident, spoke with less hesitation. That was probably why Reverend J spent the whole of lunchtime talking to August about guitars and pianos, offering information more than asking, to make him feel at home.
August’s recount of his recent months, while missing details and specifics, already told her enough to be awed by his humility. To him, ambient noise was a gift rather than an annoyance; he seemed to find inspiration everywhere, even in the least likely of places—he would hear heavy metal in construction sites, woodwinds in the peak hour subway, brass in the gridlock of Lower Manhattan.
Hope just had literature class earlier that morning, where they’d learnt about character archetypes and ‘the hero’s journey’. She wondered if heroes who didn’t neatly fit a single archetype were allowed stories of their own, too, because August reminded her of both the ‘hardworking hero’ and the ‘outlaw with a heart of gold’, and his story would probably be an epic opera, or symphony.
(Sometimes, the youth ministry leaders would tell the daycare kids stories about the street rats who passed through the community centre. They were ‘troubled’, according to cell group leader Nadia, but also ‘brave’. They were ‘survivors’. Cell group leader Gabriel said you were supposed to befriend them because they might not have many friends, although Hope didn’t need that motivation to want to be August’s friend.)
As they were about to finish their lunch, Reverend J finally broached the subject of school. August said he went to grade school in Walden County, which didn’t surprise Hope because he could clearly read and write—and aren’t prodigies supposed to be super smart, anyway? He suddenly asked the Reverend, “Can you teach me how to compose?”
Reverend J smiled. “Is that your passion, August? Musical composition? Creating songs for all the world to enjoy?”
August returned the smile. “Yeah,” he said. “I want the people I care about to be able to hear my song. And I have so many melodies in my head, inspired by people I’ve met and places I’ve been to...and they’re being played on so many different instruments in my mind, like those grand orchestras that perform at concert theatres.”
He glanced between Hope and Reverend J, took a fortifying breath, and asked, “I was just wondering if someone here could teach me how to write it all down, and lead an orchestra like what conductors do.”
The Reverend hummed thoughtfully to himself. “Hope told me you read a lot of the books from the piano room.”
“Yes, but I put them all back after reading them.”
Reverend J chuckled. “I know that, August,” he reassured. “I just wanted to ask, what were the grades of the books you read?”
“Oh. Um, there were eight textbooks titled Grade 1 to Grade 8, which I read in that order—”
Hope’s jaw dropped.
“—among other books such as The History of Gospel Music and 101 Jazz Standards,” August continued. “There were a couple new words I didn’t know the meanings of, and had to guess based on context. That’s why I wish to find a music teacher, because there’s still so much more to learn.”
Hope didn’t understand how Reverend J could look so calm, like it was no big deal, when this boy they’d both just met had learnt music Grades 1 to 8 and the pipe organ in just one morning! He’d been smiling encouragingly at August, and now said, “Our Sunday school has music lessons, but they go no higher than Grade 5.
“There’s another place that might be able to teach you how to write and conduct symphonies, though,” Reverend J continued. “Have you heard of the Juilliard School?”
Damn, Hope thought, that’s where a couple of their choir’s best singers had taken classes at. That school’s fancy and very famous.
August shook his head.
“It’s not very far from here,” the Reverend explained. “You can take the train from 116 St to 66 St-Lincoln Center to get there. Look, I’ll talk to some of my friends and see if we can make an appointment for you to visit later this week. Their fall semester has just started, but we might still be able to get you enrolled. If you’re interested.”
August beamed. “I’m very interested,” he affirmed. “Thank you so much, Reverend James.”
Reverend J changed the subject to introducing August to the various ministry leaders, and helping him settle in. August only had the clothes on his back and the dollar notes in his pockets—from busking—in his possession, nothing else, so a visit to their donations inventory (as well as actual shopping, much to his embarrassment) was in order.
Three of them rose from their seats to clear their cafeteria trays, and before they parted ways for the afternoon, August asked Hope, “Who composed the song you and the choir were singing yesterday?”
“Well, all choir members can contribute to the lyrics,” she answered. “Mr Davis, who was on the piano, wrote the melody. Reverend J helped arrange everything so it works as a song.”
“It was beautiful,” August said, voice soft with awe. “The lyrics were sad, yet you and the choir made it sound so uplifting.” He looked at Hope like she had just given him the answer to the universe. “That’s how I want the symphony of my life to sound like. Honest about tough times, but ultimately hopeful.”
That night, he got his own bed at the corner of the dorm room, diagonally opposite Hope’s, and she fell asleep with a light and pleasant warmth suffusing her chest.