Free Canyons by Gary Paulsen

it is. Exactly. That’s what studying biology—or anything else for that matter—is all about. Just finding things. Do me a favor, will you?”
    By now there was a circle of kids watching and Brennan had never been so embarrassed in his life. He had spent most of his childhood being very shy and trying to not be noticed. And now Homesley had put him right in the middle of things.
    “Every day bring me a different kind of beetle.”
    “What?”
    “Bring me a new beetle each day and we’ll learn about them together.…”
    And a sort of friendship had developed. Brennan had done as Homesley had asked and brought a beetle, a different kind of beetle, each day and they would look it up, study the characteristics, talk about them.
    And Brennan passed biology—Homesley had been as good as his word. But a strange thing had happened. Somehow working with Homesley had bled over into other parts of school. It wasn’t that he enjoyed school—he wouldn’t go that far.
    But he studied. His habits changed and he studied almost by instinct; almost naturally.
    Which just as naturally brought his grades up.
    Which made his mother happy.
    Which made him happy.
    Which made it still easier to live, to study, to learn—all because of Homesley and his beetles.
    But perhaps more important, Homesley had shown him other things as well—other than biology.
    He had invited Brennan to his home one weekend, where he lived with a wife named Tricia who was almost as small as he was large.
    He had taken Brennan into the basement, where Brennan had expected to find jars of bugs, or plants, or fetal pigs floating in preservatives.
    Instead it looked like the interior of a space vehicle. Every corner, every wall was filled with electronic equipment.
    “What …” Brennan stopped just inside the room.
    “Music.”
    “Music?”
    Homesley had nodded. “Trish and I love to listen to music. We can’t watch television—it’s too … slow for us—so we listen to music.”
    “You mean like rock?” Somehow he couldn’t feature Homesley listening to wild music.
    And Homesley had shaken his head.
    “Mostly classical. I like Mahler, and Bach and Beethoven. Trish gets into opera.”
    There was an overstuffed couch in the middle of the room and at each end a floor lamp stood.
    “You mean you just come down here and sit and listen to music?” he asked.
    Homesley had nodded. “Sometimes we read—but usually we just listen.”
    “And all of this is just for music?”
    Another nod. “Of course a lot of it is speakers. Would you like to try it?”
    “I sure would.…”
    “Sit on the couch, in the middle, and lean back. I’ll play Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony for you.”
    Brennan thought of asking for some Pink Floyd or Creedence Clearwater but decided Homesley probably didn’t have them.
    He sat.
    And listened.
    And it was more than just hearing the music. At first the strains of Mahler sounded soft to him, and he thought he would be bored—which was what usually happened when he listened to classical music.
    But the sys
tem
, the speakers made the sound so … so pure somehow, so rich and pure that the music went past just hearing, past listening—the music went into him.
    He sat in stunned silence while the whole of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony, the whole of Mahler’s music, the whole of Mahler’s thinking went into his mind.
    It was incredible.
    When the music was finished he looked around the room expecting something, the whole world, to have changed. Homesley had left as the symphony began and he came in holding a can of soda.
    “Like it?”
    Brennan felt like whispering. “I didn’t know, you know, didn’t have any idea music could be that way.…”
    And so Brennan learned about beetles and about music that year. Through the spring he went several times to the Homesleys’ house and listened to music, talked about music, about biology, about nothing and everything and learned most about himself.
    When summer arrived