Articles and Stories

THE MUSICAL

Of a morning, I always did like to rise early and step out onto the front porch to watch the world open up. Setting there on the dewy stoop, warming my hands around a bowl of coffee and looking out over the fields, I would oftentimes wonder if I wasn’t still back in the bed dreaming. For the world is unearthly quiet in those gray hours before the dawn, and in my mind it is like as if the crickets and the honeybees and all them that buzz and scrape and whirr are still curled up under a leaf, blinking their little eyes against the new light, and the birds biding their time hidden away in the dark mist that hangs deep down over the bottoms, and not even a squirrel nor a rabbit, nor none of the other little busy creatures of the wildwoods up and about yet. Maybe the lonesome moan of a dove every now and then, and that only to make more plain just how quiet it surely is. And before all the brash and careless sounds of mankind’s daylight endeavors have commenced.

So that’s how come I knew it was Jack heading up the road that morning. First, just the dullest little thumps, like a far away partridge beating of its wing that a man might mistake for his own heart, that I knew not by the hearing of it, but by the feel, up from the ground through my feet. Well, long experience told me right off that it was the step of a mule, and I pretty well knew it was Jack’s mule on account of how she dropped her hooves down in a duck footed sort of a way, like as if every step might be her last. Then, by and by, I could hear the squeal and groan of a wagon, and the shake of the harness, and I knew he’d come out of the bottom and up on the ridge where the sound carried unhindered.

Now same as a mule, every wagon speaks its own tongue, maybe where a hub binds on the axle, or a loose plank in the bed moves up and down with the road, and this wagon spoke plainly of Jack, for I’d heard its voice many of a time. So, I went in the house and fetched myself another bowl of coffee, and one for him, too, and set back down to wait on his arrival, which was not long in coming.

Jack was one of these fellows who wears his hat back off of his forehead in a friendly manner, and when he pulled up in the yard, he pushed it back just a little bit more with his thumb, which I knew as a sign that he was in a particular good mood, and I says, “Jack, light down here and set with me, and tell me the news.”

“No,” says he, “I’m in a terrible bad hurry and no time to linger, but I’ve dropped over to let you know that there is to be a musical tonight at the old Carver place down there the yon side of Green River - down below where Tom Mosely runs his ferry. They’ll be looking for a fiddler, and there’s bound to be dancing and most likely a little bit of something to drink. I’ll meet you at the spring below Wilson’s store just before sundown. And there’s no use to argue, you’re a going. Now, I’ve got to hasten along, I’m late as it is.”

With that, he shook the reins and made a wide circle in the yard, and him and his mule and his wagon creaked and groaned and rattled back out the lane, the slowest hurry ever I seen. And me even slower, as I never did gather up a word of reply to give him.

It was over six miles to the Carver place, not to mention the crossing of the river. A long walk for a man divided in his mind about a musical. And I knew we would walk, for as I have said, his mule was an uncommon slow beast. In my younger years, now, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but back then all I ever wanted to do was fiddle, and just the rumor of some get together would have me laying down the plow. Sometimes two or three evenings a week, I’d tie the fiddle in a little canvas poke, and the bow sticking out the top, and sling it over my shoulder, and take off for some neighbor’s porch or fireside to pass the long, quiet night away. Or maybe I’d head to town to see if any of the old fellows had gathered outside the saloons with their fiddles, and maybe I’d go the back way through the five mile wood and come across old man Smith Estes, and him with a fruit jar full of brandy, and I never would make it to town, but we’d lay out a little camp and build a fire and set down on a couple of logs and play Sally Goodin, and the Forked Deer, and Away to the West the Blue Goose Flew. And old Estes, because he seen my interest and approved of it, would tell me tales of the old folks who had settled our country in here from Old Virginia, how they had traveled the long voyage across the waters with their violins wrapped in oilskins against the salt weather, how Ham Patrick had hid his in a hollow poplar coming up through the Cumberland Gap from North Carolina with a band of renegade Shawnee Indians on his tail, and returned for it almost a year later, and it all worked loose in the glue joints and filled with leaves and acorns where some little wood mouse had gnawed through the sound holes and nested. And he would brag on his banjer, an old homemade slick neck banjer that he claimed was the first one ever seen in this country, brought back from the Civil War by his father, who lost a leg after Chickamauga. He told his boy Smith that he’d skinned his own leg and cured the hide of it, and tacked it onto the rim of that banjer with little shoe pegs, which I never truly believed. But it did surely cause the hair to raise on my head when I’d study that skin close up, and see the grain of the leather, and the little black fly speckly looking spots where the hair once used to be.

I don’t know, it seems like in every generation there’s them as just can’t wait for something new to happen, and then there’s others like me who has got to hold on to the past. There’s a comfort in studying over the benefits of what we have and what’s been handed down, and to look at these old boys like Smith Estes and his dry rotten banjer and see in them where it is I come from. A man can’t stop things from changing, nor the passage of time, but he can surely decide in his mind if times is changing for the better or for the worse. That’s how come me to follow after this fiddling, for there surely has been no other music come down the line yet to beat it.

But times will sure enough change, to where a man just never knows what to expect. Like for instance, back in the Spring when I walked into Adamsville for county court day, expecting to meet up with some of those old gentleman loafering around the square and catch a tune or two from them, and see whatever commerce had blown into town for trading. Some of these Burlesons were there, and a great crowd gathered around them, for they were every one of them the finest hand ever was for music, and they were playing some of these fiddle pieces their people had brought in from the Buck Creek country, back when all these hills were nothing but one dark endless forest. But no sooner had they struck a tune, then a roughneck gang of teenage boys set up nearby with with their guitars and commenced to howling and yodeling and sneering at them, and calling them old hillbillies, and those old gentlemen looked around at the T Model Fords lined up on the street stinking the air, and the power poles jobbed into the ground, and the electric wires stretched like great snares, cutting up the view of the sky, and they packed up their fiddles and went on back home, and they never did bring any music to town again after that.

But, there I was down to Risner’s spring along about sundown, and me and Jack took out down the road to the musical. We followed the river bank a good long ways til we reached the ford, and Jack hollered across several times, and by and by that old barefooted, flop hatted, sour faced looking Tom Mosely pushed a leaky looking dugout canoe into the current and eased across to carry us over. Right off, he seen we were carrying our music with us, and he perked up just a little bit and says, “By God, won’t you boys play me a little something on that fiddle and banjer whilst we ferry acrost? I’ll swear I ain’t heared a lick of music since I married, and that’s been five years or more.”

So we took out the instruments, and Jack, thinking himself a clever man, winked over to me and started into “Over the river to get me a drink, over the river to Charlie,” and it just tickled that ferryman half to death. He started in patting his foot, easy at first, so as not to rock the boat, but he commenced to get more and more worked up, what with him being so starved for the pleasures of life, until his whole leg was whomping up and down, to where he like to swamped us in his excitement. Then we played “Build me a boat, I’m a-going down the river,” and by the time we reached the bank of the other side, he was so gratified that he never charged us a nickel for the passage across. So, we bid him a thankful farewell and headed on into the evening, studying about the unexpected blessings of the gift of music. As we headed up out of the river bottom, I took a glance back, and seen him there all hunkered down by the bank, his feet raising clouds of dust as he labored to shuffle out a little hoedown step.

When we come around the last bend in the road to the Carver place, it was pretty well dark, and we could see the lights shining real cosy in the windows from away off, and the smoke rising slow out the chimney, and the muffled sound of voices and feet shuffling, and maybe something like Sourwood Mountains a playing, and I says to myself, “Now this is right and proper, same as when I was a boy, and no different than when my daddy was a boy. An old fashioned moonlight musical here at a quiet country place, the way it had ought to be.”

But, of course, you know how it turned out. I seen my mistake before ever we opened the door. As we approached the front porch, I could tell there was something unnatural about the sound of the fiddle, like as if it was being played inside a great large flour tin, and when we stepped inside the door, not a soul looked up to greet us, on account of they were all pulled up to a radio, and it blasting out the Saturday night Opry. And the music was all set behind the door in the cases, which had not even been cracked, and not even a pretense of rolling back the rugs or moving aside the beds and chairs in case of a dance. And the young people were just going wild listening to some no account fool brought on piece - Boil ‘em Cabbage Down, or some such thing - and picking at the air like they was playing a guitar along with the radio, and little Bobby Carver holding the telephone receiver close up to the speaker so all the neighbors on the line could listen in from the comfort of their homes. And I seen old man Jake Reves setting back in the corner - him whose people had sired four generations of fiddlers on the head of the Licking River - him who was the last man living to play the the grand old tunes that he caught from the famous Civil War veteran Slone Cornett - him who I had hoped to hear play The Forks of the Sandy, and Scott’s Return, and The Last of the Sizemores, and all those ancient tunes of our ancestors - he set there with his fiddle case in his hand hanging down at his side, his face set stiff as rawhide leather, his eyes all bright but empty looking like you’d see in these old tintype photographs, anger and sorrow all tangled up together way back deep inside them. And when the number on the radio come to a close and the announcer commenced to selling biscuit flour or some such thing, I looked over again, and old man Reves was gone.

I cupped my hands around my eyes and put my face to the window, and I seen him at his wagon, untying the horses. Then I looked back to where jack was hugging the radio with the rest of them, and I seen he looked happy as a pup just where he was. So, I went on out the door and caught up to the wagon as it was just starting down the lane and hollered over, “Mr. Jake, I’d be obliged if I could step up and ride with you a little ways.”

He looked over at me, and I could tell he was studying my face to see if I’d come to mock him or not. Then, he made a short nod and I hoisted myself up onto the seat. I could tell right quick that he wasn’t in a talking mood, so I settled back and we rode in silence through the still and peaceful night. Every little bit, a dog would bark out in the distance somewhere, or an owl hoot back off the road in the woods, or a rabbit dash across our path, but they were scattered sounds, and in the still of the night every little noise seemed terrible far away and lonesome. I stayed with him all the way to his home, and he never did look over to question me none about it.

We pulled into the yard and Jake handed the reins over to me and stepped off the wagon. He was turned down so deep in his thoughts that he never said a word, just walked off in the direction of the spring. So, I led the horses down into the barn and unhitched the wagon. I slid off the harness and hung it on pegs in the feed room and turned them out to pasture, and followed where Jake had gone. He was setting on a rock at the spring, looking down into the water where it was pooled up deep enough to get a bucket in. I sat down on my heels next to him, and him still as dumb as a barnyard brute.

By and by, he come out of his study and turned to me and says, “When a feller’s in need of understanding, and he ain’t got religion, then he can’t readily turn to prayer, nor the Bible, and that’s how come I go here to water. You observe there before you now how this branch of water springs out from yonder dark and unknown place in the side if this mountain here, and pours down the hillside, and it just keeps a going and a going, and to look at it, it don’t seem to ever change, no more than it swells with the floods and dwindles with the droughths. And I always understood that to be the way of the world, and in times when I lacked the sense or the understanding of things, water always set me right again. But I seen something this evening that has got me troubled in my mind, and I’m feeling like a fool, because of I seen it coming a many a year ago, and I allowed myself to forget about it, and now I see it has come to pass.

“I’m a thinking, Mr. Jake, that that there radio will be the undoing of many a good evening’s playing for such as us.”

“Yes, you’re right about that, son, but that’s not what I’m talking about. You see, back when you were just a little fellow, I went down to Adamsville town a trading, there being a hog buyer in from Mount Sterling. And a fair size crowd of folks from about the county was there, when around the corner come, a barking and a spitting, an automobile, and the first one it was ever to trespass those streets. Now, I knew folks had heard about such as that, and I knew that they looked forward to seeing something new and different to the same old mules and buggies and slow talking old folks with their crops and their hounds, and their quare ways, but I never seen the like of how they went crazy over that automobile - first struck dumb, then they all of them at once hollered out and went tearing down the street after it like it was the second coming of the Lord Himself. And it come to me then and there, like a vision of old, of everything I ever knowed or cared about rolling away in the dust of that contraption. And I seen myself turned into a shadow or a haint, one, to where I could walk among my fellow man, them as I had known all my days, and them to not see me, and me to talk or play the fiddle, and them to not hear me, but they was blinded and deafened to all but the roar and stink of that mechanical beast.”

And then he fell silent again, and I studied on his words, him speaking like a Testament prophet, only tired and worn out and lacking of the spirit, and I says, “Seems like I don’t altogether follow your meaning, Mr. Jake. It was just an automobile.”

He stirred around in the pool of water with a stick, and heaved a great sigh, and spoke again. It seemed like the effort was just about too much for him.

“When you go out of a morning into the woods and start up one of these game trails into the side of the mountain, you know the forests well, and you know where you are and the way back at the close of the day. But then you might come to a fork in the path, and you think, ‘I’ll just try this here and see where it takes me, maybe find some adventure of a different kind.’ And if you’re a man with any little bit of sense, you’ll study out the signs and the landmarks and the lay of the forest ground so as to insure your safe return home at the close of day. And maybe they’ll be another fork further on, maybe several more that a way, and the first thing you know you look around and there’s nothing familiar to you anymore, and you see you’ve come into some strange country. Now even a child, faced with such a situation as that, will move on with caution, and study about the unexpected cliffs or mires or wild beasts that might be around the next hill. And in that way, you’ll have prepared yourself as best you can for your return to the familiar or to face what unknown business lies ahead. And that, to my mind, is how a grown man finds his way through life. Well, you take something like that automobile. I seen from the way those folks was about it that they would have traded their horses and mules without hesitation for one of those things, and they surely aimed to get themselves one and never look back nor think about what they give up to get it, and that before they knew it, they would come to believe that there is no other way to travel. And one contraption surely leads to another in the name of saving them some labor, as we have just this night witnessed, and by and by, they’ll just forget altogether that a man’s foot was made to get him from place to place, and his hand was made to work the wood and the ground. They’ll forget that there ever was anything else, and them as don’t change with them, they’ll forget about us, too.”

He paused, and I thought at first that maybe he had said what he set out to say. But then he looked me square in the face and went on.

“When that thing come into town, it come as a sign that a new time is at hand, a time that don’t respect nor care nothing about the world I come from. And it surely will put behind it me and all my race of people who come before me, forever. I seen my time coming to a close, and now this radio business proves it out all the more, and you mark me, the world will change, and that with great haste.”

He trailed off again, and his gaze went to the dark tops of the oaks stirring in the late night breeze, and to the pale clouds overhead, and the horn of the moon. Then he shook his head like he was trying to clear his thoughts, and he spit down into the branch and said, “Now, it’s late, and I’ve got to head to the house and to the bed. I’ll lay you out a quilt, and when you come in you can take Zora’s little pallet in the parlor, and in the morning we’ll fry us up a beakfast of eggs and biscuit, and think more about it.”

But I stayed right there at the spring until I heard the screen door slam shut. Then after a little while, I walked home real slow in the moonlight, and made it back just before dawn, another day waiting. And old man Jake Reves put his fiddle under the bed to gather dust, and he never did take it out again as long as he lived.