He was an old man and lived alone in a crude cabin deep in the Chugach Mountain Range near a small town. Anyone who has ever lived in remote country would have seen such old men, but no one knows anything about them. No one really cared to know anything about them. This old man would go into town driving his ancient truck with its bald tires with the left rear tire wobbling and he would stop at the little country store first. He would bring in fresh eggs and spruce grouse when in season and trade them at the store. He would get what he needed and then without talking much to anyone he would tip his hat and stroll out to his old truck. Much alike they were, both old and wobbly and in need of repair.

Sometimes he would wander up and down the sidewalk peering into store windows and several times he was seen shaking his head at some modern convenience or another and talking to himself. He would scratch himself in private places in public areas and children would snicker but he paid them no heed. They were young and foolish and he was old and touched in the head and so it didn't matter. They were sick of him anyway. Sick of hearing their parents' gossip about him wondering where he had come from and if he had any people left living. But that didn't stop them from making fun of him when they didn't have anything better to do.

I was just a young girl of thirteen that summer when I got sick with consumption and was sent to spend a year in the clean Alaskan air with my Aunt Bessie and Uncle Henry. It was during my first two weeks that I got a look at the old man in his stained bib coveralls. Aunt Bessie and Uncle Henry lived in a three-story red clapboard house in town. My room was in the attic under the eves where I had a bird eye's view of Main Street. I would be sent to my room after lunch so that I could rest my lungs and body, but whenever I'd see the old man come to town, I would sneak down the back stairs and join the other kids. I was young and didn't know any better.

The old man was nothing really special. He was just one of those hermits who inhabit a little space of the universe and are forgotten as soon as they disappear around a corner. No one actually knew his name and so the townsfolk and kids called him Bum. As summer passed into fall I became like those other kids whenever Bum came to town. I laughed at him behind his back and in front of his face. I too made fun of his big nose and bald head. I mimicked his bent over shuffling walk and swinging of old arms. What did I know about such things? The other kids said they had heard Bum was really rich. That he had money and gold dust buried at his old cabin, since he didn't spend much when he came to town, he probably had lots. We started taunting him and being cruel and calling him names like miser and tightwad. The young can be unforgiving of any adult human frailty. Then, one day, my Uncle came up to my attic room and talked to me about the old man. Uncle Henry told me that Bum had once been married. He told me that bum's wife had been so ugly that people cringed when they saw her because she was a freak. Her features were all distorted and out of place and she had a permanent frozen grimace to her mouth, but Bum loved her all the more for it. But for all her repulsiveness to other people, she had possessed one thing of great beauty: her voice.

"When she sang, the angels wept." He whispered to me in the darkening room. "Nature bowed to her, birds lighted on her shoulder, and butterflies paid court. She was a rainbow encased in ugliness."

Ever after that whenever I saw Bum wandering around town I would think about his wife. About her ugliness and about my weak lungs and after a while I began to believe that her and I weren't so much different. We both had something wrong with us though my ugliness was inside and I couldn't even carry a tune.

"Why doesn't he bring his wife with him to town?" I asked Uncle Henry one day while we were outback feeding the chickens. He stopped and put down the bag of cracked corn and sat on an old tree stump and motioned for me to join him. He pulled out an old handkerchief and after taking off his straw hat, wiped his forehead. He put his hat back on and fixed his wire-rimmed glasses more firmly to his prominent nose. He spoke in gentle tones as he answered.

"She died near to twenty years ago."

I took this bit of information and turned it over in my mind and asked him how did she die. Uncle Henry just sat there on that old stump and thought before he answered me.

"Well now, some folks said the angels took her because they wanted to listen to her sing all the time."

"What did the rest of the folks say?"

He looked down at me and I could see he was trying to make a decision. After a few minutes, with his hat in his hands, he spoke, "The rest of the townsfolk said that Bum killed his wife."

I jumped up and stared at Uncle Henry. "Killed his own wife?"

"Yep.

"No one knows where he is from. Maybe he killed someone else a long time ago and came here to hide."

Uncle Henry sat back down on the stump and hung his head. When he raised his head and looked at me, there was so much sorrow in his ice blue eyes that I almost started crying. Uncle Henry reached down and held my hand and in a quiet tone told me that Bum had confided in him one day. Being the pastor and all plus Bum had been full of hooch.I listened with my ears that day instead of my heart and all I could think of was that I would have something to tell the other kids.

"Where is he from Uncle Henry?"

Uncle Henry looked at me and then stood up and put his hands in his pockets and said real serious so I would get the meaning, "Cassie, I don't break confidences, and neither should you." Just as Uncle Henry was about to say more on the subject, Aunt Bessie came out back and yelled that dinner was set and we better get inside.

No more was said about Bum and as fall passed into winter my lungs got worse and I was confined to bed under piles of quilts and fed chicken broth. My fevers came and went and within the half world of fever and reality I thought I heard the most beautiful voice singing to me. I concentrated on that voice and let it flow over me taking me on a trip through the mazes of illness and near madness. From the corners of my fevered soul shapes moved back and forth and some even stopped long enough to say hello. Some held my hand and one even wiped my brow with a scented lace handkerchief. All the time the voice sang to me and I listened to its sweetness and slowly the pain in my chest lessened until I could draw a breathe without feeling my whole body was coming apart. When I woke, Uncle Henry was asleep in the old stuffed chair covered with the worn blue blanket with the faded yellow daffodils. I had never seen anything so wonderful in my whole life.

Winter came early and it arrived with an attitude. The wind blown snow cut at us like fine grains of glass whenever we went outside. I would sit up in my tower and listen to its long wailing cry as it roared its way through the town and feel the cold through the windowpanes. Aunt Bessie said the cold was the worse in the memory of the town. She said at dinner one night that Ray Guard's pigs had froze to death and that Hannah had lost all of her chickens and the only thing living was that mean spirited rooster of hers.

We were one of the lucky families for we had three woodstoves in the house and a fireplace. We had lots of crocheted throw blankets and down filled comforters and Aunt Bessie had made everyone several pairs of long wool socks, so our feet wouldn't get cold at night. The cold and blizzard kept people home and the town became a ghost town. Few people came out unless it was an emergency so we were surprised when, in the third day of the snow squall, a loud banging over the wind could be heard at the front door. Uncle Henry took down the wool blanket tacked over the door to keep the wind out and pulled it opened. A gust of snow and wind rushed in like a train roaring down a track, and following behind was Mr. James, the town grocer. As he helped Uncle Henry close the door, Mr. Jones was shaking with excitement. I waited as he removed his stocking cap and loosened his thick wool scarf and as soon as his mouth was free he spoke all at once, his words crashing into one another.

"JohnBragfoundBuminthesnowandhe. . . . "

"Slow down George, I can't understand a thing. Come on in and have a hot rich cup of cocoa." Said Uncle Henry as he laid a hand on Mr. James's arm. Mr. James shook his head no but he did take a deep breath and when he spoke we could understand him.

"John Brag found Bum covered in snow lying behind his barn. John had tied one end of a rope to the barn and the other end to his porch so could move back and forth checking on his animals. When he went out this morning he tripped over something and when he dug around he found Bum."

"Is Bum dead?" "Not yet he ain't. But he sure is talking funny about where he come from and all, and Doc don't think he got much time left and sent me to fetch you."

Uncle Henry looked at Mr. Jones and asked. "What else is he saying?"

Mr. Jones stood dripping on the hardwood floor and spoke in a hushed tone, " He said he had killed his wife. He thinks it's twenty year ago." I started as if stung by a bee and got closer to the dripping man. I could feel some of the cold leaving his body where it drifted on the warm air and died, but that wasn't the reason I had got a sudden chill.

"Bum asked for me?"

"Yep. Everyone knows you is the only one Bum ever talked to whenever he came to town. The Doc says to hurry."

Uncle Henry got silent and then nodded to Mr. James. Aunt Bessie fetched him his large woolen coat and scarf and stocking cap. I got his boots for him and within minutes Uncle Henry was ready for anything the storm would throw at him. I watched as they left the house and my heart felt heavy.

I sat up in my room curled under a large down cover and waited. Several hours later I heard Uncle Henry come home and I went downstairs. I just had to know. I waited until Uncle Henry sat in his chair before I asked if Bum was going to make it. Uncle Henry shook his head and I hung mine. Aunt Bessie was the first one to voice the real questions that were in my mind.

"Henry, what did Bum say?" She asked as she handed him a steaming mug of coca.

"Well, since there were five or six men in the room, it'll be all over town anyway, might as well tell you two first before the story changes."

After taking a deep sip of the hot cocoa, Uncle Henry told us how bad off Bum had been when he got to Doc's and that bum was about frozen to death. He told us that how, when Bum saw him, a smile tried to cross that old face, but it was too frost burned even for that. He told us a lot of things about Bum that night before he got to the part about Bum's wife. He told us about Bum and where he had come from and what he used to do. I think Uncle Henry was trying to get me to see the man that Bum used to be and not the man he turned out to be. Aunt Bessie and I sat in silence and listened until Uncle Henry reached the end of what he had been saying. There was no more to say except for one last thing.

"You know Cassie, Bum wasn't a mean man. He lived his life the way he did because he wanted to. He liked being away from people. He said that people were the root of all evil, not money."

I watched as Uncle Henry took out his pipe and filled the worn Meerschaum bowl with tobacco and lit it. Smoke swirled around his head and face and he brushed it away. I waited.

"I am sorry Cassie, but bum said he killed his wife." I sat struck to the heart as Uncle Henry talked in his soft soothing voice that he would use whenever I got sick from my lungs. "Cassie, there is more and I want you to listen with an open heart"

"I am Uncle Henry." But I knew he could hear the tears in my voice. I hung my head, determined not to cry and to hear this thing through to the end.

Uncle Henry cleared his throat and in a voice barely above a whisper continued, "Bum and Mary had been out picking low-bush berries on top of Bowl Mountain when she burst into song. Bum said it was because the day was so beautiful and Mary just couldn't keep all that joy inside of her. When she sang, the birds got quiet and Bum said as he sat on that mountaintop and listened to her he saw angels descend from heaven." Uncle Henry stopped to take a sip of his cocoa. I didn't want him to stop for any reason.

"Uncle Henry, were they real angels do you think?"

Aunt Bessie shushed me and as we sat in the glow from the fireplace and the warmth of the old barrel stove, Uncle Henry continued in his soothing voice.

"Well, Bum thought so. He said there were so many that their wings kept bumping into one another. He could hardly see his wife and by the time he got over to her, she was buried deep in angels and wings. They had all piled on her, drawn to a sound that was pure and free from sin."

I could see in my mind Bum fighting angles as he tried to save his ugly wife. I felt sorry for his Mary. Uncle Henry took a drag off his pipe and continued.

"He fought them like a madman until there was not one left, but it was too late. His Mary was dead. The angels had crushed her trying to get close to her. Her song forever stilled."

"But why did Bum say he had killed her?"

"Well, he had wished that very morning for Mary's voice to be stilled. He wanted her all to himself and didn't like it when people came around to listen to her sing. He loved her and when he looked at her, he saw beauty, not ugliness."

I thought that over and realized that nothing less would have done for me.

"Uncle Henry, do you suppose that Bum will be with his Mary now?"

"I hope so child."

An hour later I was in bed buried under piles of blankets thinking about what had been said. Uncle Henry came in to bid me goodnight. "Uncle Henry, did you believe what Bum told you?"

He sat there in the semi-dark room and I could see he was thinking about what I had asked him. Flickering shadows from the oil lamp cast him as a man alone and I think that for that one moment in time, Uncle Henry was a man alone. When he began to talk, I could hear a sadness that I had not heard before.

"Cassie, I am a pastor. People tell me things they wouldn't tell their best friend. Bum confided in me a long time ago when we were alone, but tonight he said what he had to say in front of others. I believe Cassie, what Bum asked me to believe in, but I do not make the final judgment on a man's soul. And, there are some things best left unsaid."

I laid there in the dark for a long time after Uncle Henry left and thought things over. I agreed with Uncle Henry, there are some things that are best left alone. Winter passed and then spring arrived and the doctor said my lungs were better, but could flare up any time. Mother and father visited and after having met with the doctor, they said I was to stay until next spring. I wanted to stay anyway.

That spring, an old man wandered into town driving an old truck with one bad tire. He stopped at the small store where he carried in some spruce grouse and eggs. I thought it was Bum at first, that maybe he weren't dead after all, but it was just another grizzled sourdough. When he came out of the store and wandered down the sidewalk, the kids followed and made fun of him. I stayed behind and watched because somewhere in the deepest darkest region of my soul, if I listened hard enough, I could hear a song. And like Uncle Henry said, it wasn't up to us to pass judgment.

I stood there just long enough to watch the old man enter the church, and then I went home.