Part 3 — Who Was In The Back Pew
The man in the back pew was in his fifties, tall, with silver hair and a gentle way of holding the hymnal as though it might wake. He said his daddys name, and I had to hold onto the organ with both hands.
His father was Elijah Brooks, the shy boy I taught piano on Saturday mornings in 1966, in the front room of my mothers house. He could not afford lessons, so I taught him for free, and he paid me with pecans from his grandmothers tree.
Elijah went on to play church music for the rest of his life. He directed choirs in Charlotte and Atlanta, and he taught music to children for forty years. His son, Marcus, told us he had passed that spring and asked to have the hymnal returned to me.
I opened the cover. In a boys careful handwriting were the words, To Miss Hattie, who taught me that the organ is only loud when you are afraid. I wrote this when I was twelve. I never stopped playing because of you.
The whole congregation went quiet. Old Brother Mack wiped his eyes with a handkerchief. Even the young pastor sat down on the edge of the pulpit steps, as if his legs had grown tired.
Marcus said, My father told me you taught him that music is not old or new, it is only honest or dishonest. He said, whatever you do, do not let them take the organ out of that church.
A hymn is not a relic; it is a hand held out across the years from the person who taught you to sing.
After the service the pastor came to me. He took off his glasses and said, Miss Hattie, I was wrong. I wanted to bring in young people and I forgot that they walk in through a door that someone else built. Will you forgive me?
I told him I would, on one condition. He nodded, and I said, You will learn to play a hymn. He laughed, and the next Wednesday he sat beside me on the organ bench for his first lesson.
The church worked out a blend. Two Sundays a month, the organ leads the old hymns. On the others, the drum set joins in, and the youth choir sings with the organ underneath, and the old folks tap their feet.
Marcus donated the money to restore the Hammond, which had wheezed for years. The repair crew replaced the pedals and cleaned out sixty years of dust, and it plays now as warm and low as the day the Hollis family gave it.
The young pastor learned three hymns by Christmas. He plays them badly, and the congregation sings louder to cover him. I sit in the fourth pew and listen, and I smile all the way through.