NC EOG Practice Test 4

What the Mountain Teaches

¹The first time I played for Mrs. Kilby, the fiddle sounded like a cat stepping on a squeaky toy. I knew it, she knew it, and Biscuit, her old hound, knew it too, because he got up from the porch and moved to the far end of the yard.

²That was in March. By June I had learned four tunes, and my bow no longer screeched every time it crossed from one string to another. Mrs. Kilby lived across the gravel road from us, up a hill so steep that Mom called it "the stairs." Every Tuesday and Thursday I climbed it with the fiddle case bumping against my leg, and every Tuesday and Thursday she met me on the porch with two glasses of sweet tea and the same question: "What did the mountain teach you today?"

³I never knew what to say to that. The mountain had not taught me anything. The mountain was just there, green and enormous, behind everything.

⁴Then, one Tuesday, she told me about the Friday jam.

⁵"Down at Linville Hardware," she said, "folks bring their instruments after closing and play on the loading dock. Anybody can join. You'll come this week."

⁶"I'm not ready," I said. My stomach dropped so fast I was surprised my tea didn't slosh.

⁷"Nobody's ever ready," she said. "That's why they call it practice."

⁸All week I practiced "Soldier's Joy" until my fingertips were sore and ridged. Every mistake sounded as loud as thunder. When I played it for my little sister, Hana, she said it sounded "pretty good," but she was six and thought everything was pretty good, including mud.

⁹On Friday, I gripped my fiddle the whole way to the loading dock, as if it might try to escape. The dock was crowded with folding chairs, two guitars, a banjo, and a bass fiddle taller than me. The other players held their instruments loosely, the way you might hold a sandwich. I was sure every one of them was better than me. An old man with a harmonica in his shirt pocket nodded at me and went back to tuning.

¹⁰They started with a song I didn't know. I stood at the edge and pretended to tune. Then the banjo player, a woman with a long gray braid, called out, "Soldier's Joy!" and looked straight at me.

¹¹I don't remember deciding to play. I remember my bow touching the string, and then I was inside the tune, the way you're inside a river once you wade in past your knees. I missed a note in the second part. Then I missed another. The guitars kept going, steady as a heartbeat, carrying me along, and somehow I found my way back in.

¹²When it ended, the man with the harmonica said, "That young fella's got a good bow arm." I looked around to see who he meant. There was nobody else young on the dock.

¹³Walking home, I told Mrs. Kilby about every mistake. I listed them like a grocery list: the missed notes, the squeak at the end of the second part, the moment I lost the beat completely.

¹⁴She let me finish. Then she stopped halfway up "the stairs," breathing hard, and pointed back down toward the valley, where the lights of town were coming on one by one.

¹⁵"Did you hear anybody stop playing when you missed?" she asked.

¹⁶I thought about it. "No."

¹⁷"That's what the mountain teaches," she said. "Everything keeps going. You just climb back on."

¹⁸I still didn't completely understand. But the next Tuesday, when she asked what the mountain had taught me, I had an answer for the first time.