Lord of the Mountain

by Ronald Kidd

  I watched as the man went around to the other side of the Cadillac and opened the door for his passenger. A woman stepped out, wearing jewelry and a black dress that must have been silk. Her hair was done up in a bob, and her face glowed. She took the man’s arm, and as they walked toward the hotel, she seemed to float.

  When they went inside, the second car pulled up. It was an old Ford. I wondered where the recording machine was, and I figured it wasn’t in the Cadillac. That left the Ford. I noticed that the car’s body was sitting low over the wheels, which meant it might be carrying something heavy.

  Two men climbed out with their sleeves rolled up. The shirts were wrinkled and smudged, as if the men had been working or were expecting to. One man was tall and stern looking. The other was short and pudgy, with a shy smile. He reminded me of Mr. Fowler at church. I wondered if he barked.

  The tall man glanced at the hotel, then looked up and down Front Street. He shook his head and murmured something to the other one, who laughed. When they headed for the lobby, I casually walked over to the Ford and peered inside. In the back seat were several big, boxy shapes that were covered with a blanket.

  “Hey!” someone yelled.

  I looked up and saw the tall man striding toward me.

  “Get away from there!” he said.

  “I was just curious—”

  “Curiosity killed the cat.”

  I’d heard Daddy say the same thing. What cat? What were they talking about?

  “Now scram!” the man told me. He pulled some keys from his pocket, locked the car doors, shot me another look, then went back inside.

  I walked off toward the train station as if I were leaving, then ducked inside and waited. When the couple came back out, I checked to make sure the coast was clear, then approached the man in the suit.

  I had no idea what to say. Finally some words popped out.

  “Welcome to Bristol!”

  The man turned and saw me. The woman did too.

  She chuckled and asked, “Who are you? The chamber of commerce?”

  “I’m Nate Owens,” I said.

  To my surprise, the man offered his hand. I didn’t know what else to do, so I shook it.

  “Pleased to meet you, Nate,” he said. “I’m Ralph Peer, and this is Mrs. Peer.”

  I nodded. “Mr. McLister said you’d be here.”

  The man said, “Cecil McLister? You know him?”

  “Yes, sir. He said you’d be coming from the Victor Talking Machine Company to make some records.”

  “McLister’s a good man. He arranged the sessions for us. We’ll set up this weekend, then start recording on Monday.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  He pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and checked it. “The Taylor-Christian Hat Company, 408 State Street.”

  Just then the lobby door opened, and the two men came out. They spotted me, and the tall one came hurrying up.

  “Hey, I told you to leave!” He turned to the man in the suit. “Sorry, Ralph. I’ll take care of him.”

  “It’s all right,” said Peer. “We were just talking. Gentlemen, this is my friend Nate Owens. Nate, these are our two sound engineers, Edward Crabtree and Fred Holt. The tall one is Crabtree. He keeps a close eye on the equipment.”

  Crabtree shuffled his feet and nodded.

  Peer said, “Nate here knows Cecil. I told him about the sessions.”

  Daddy says ask and it shall be given. I figured I’d give it a try.

  “I was wondering about those sessions,” I said. “You think I could come?”

  The short man, Holt, exchanged looks with Peer. Crabtree frowned.

  “Do you realize how delicate a recording is?” said Crabtree. “The slightest noise can ruin it—a sniffle, a sneeze, a squeaky floorboard. If we let you come, we’ll have to let everybody, and believe me, they’ll ask.”

  Peer thought for a minute. “Sorry, son, but he’s right. We’ve come a long way for this. I’d like to say yes, but we need to do our work.”

  Mrs. Peer eyed me. “Still, you might be able to help.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “That was a long, dusty road. We’d like something to drink.”

  I said, “They have Coca-Colas at Bunting’s Drug Store, up the street. Milkshakes too.”

  “I was thinking of something a little stronger,” she said.

  A voice piped up from behind me. “Try Crystal Caverns.”

  I turned and saw a girl. I wondered how long she’d been standing there and how much she had heard. She was my age—short and thin, with a quick smile; curly, red hair; and bright-green eyes. She wore a simple print dress and boots, as if her body were soft and her feet were tough. In the curls of her hair was a ribbon that was green like her eyes.

  She gazed at me, as if challenging me to say something, then turned back to Mrs. Peer. “There’s a restaurant, but I hear they also have drinks. It’s down Highway 421, a few miles south of town.”

  I had heard Mama and Daddy talk about alcohol, and in church, Daddy called it “the devil’s potion.” It was illegal to buy because of the Prohibition laws, but I’d noticed that Gray’s family kept bottles of it in the cupboard. Mrs. Lane liked to carry a glass of it around the house, and Mr. Lane usually had a sip when he got home from work. Even Gray said he had tried it. Once he had mentioned Crystal Caverns, the place where his parents bought the stuff. He called it a speakeasy.

  I studied the red-haired girl. How did she know about it?

  Mrs. Peer smiled at her husband. “I like this girl.”

  Reaching into his pocket, Peer pulled out a silver dollar.

  “That’s for you,” he told the girl.

  She took the coin. “Thank you, sir.”

  Peer and his wife headed for the Cadillac. I said, “Are you really looking for songs?”

  He paused. “Yes, I am.”

  “I might have one,” I told him.

  “What about singers?” asked the girl. “I’m a singer.”

  Peer said, “Singers, songs—that’s why we’re here.”

  “Come on, Ralph,” said his wife. “I’m thirsty.”

  He shot us a grin, then walked her to the Cadillac and they drove off. Crabtree and Holt pulled their bags from the trunk and went inside. The girl watched them. I watched her.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I saw you in church,” she said. “Mama wanted to go. Somebody told her the preacher puts on a good show.”

  “He’s my father, you know.”

  “That’s what I hear,” she said. “So, what are you going to do? Jump around like he does? Yell about Jesus?”

  “No.”

  “Do you believe all that stuff?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  “That means you don’t.”

  I said, “I believe in science.”

  She nodded. “I’m Sue Dean Baker.”

  “Nate Owens.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “So, what about you? What are you doing here?”

  “It’s a free country.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. I was just curious.”

  Sue Dean shrugged, then glanced up at me. “I work here sometimes. I help clean rooms.”

  She seemed uncomfortable admitting it. I tried to put her at ease. “I do some cleaning. Folding chairs. Communion cups. You know, the family business.”

  “Is that what it is?”

  “Daddy says it’s a holy calling. I say it puts food on the table.”

  Sue Dean glanced at her watch. “That’s what I need to do. Put food on the table. My parents get off work soon.”

  She started off down the street, then turned back. “See you there?”

  “Where?”

  “The Taylor-Christian Hat Company. Monday morning.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Ralph Peer and his friends would be setting up their recording machines that weekend, so I tried to slip away Saturday morning to watch th
em. Daddy caught me though. He put me on a work brigade with Arnie, where our job was to figure out what a new altar might look like. Daddy said it shouldn’t be too fancy, as if we were putting on airs, but it couldn’t be too plain either. After all, it was for the living God. Daddy sent us to the shed behind our house, where he kept some tools along with other odds and ends.

  Arnie thought a soapbox might work. He had heard about people doing all kinds of things with a soapbox, such as slapping wheels on it and racing in it, which he desperately wanted to try. He said an altar might be the closest he’d get to doing that. The altar wouldn’t have wheels, but maybe, if conditions were right and Mr. Fowler started to bark, Jesus would lift it up and fly it to heaven.

  “You really believe that?” I asked him.

  Arnie picked up an old soapbox, brushed it off, and held it out at arm’s length.

  “Sure,” he said, eyeing the box. “Don’t you?”

  I sighed and helped him with the altar. After sanding and a coat of paint, it actually looked pretty good. We took it to show Daddy and heard him rustling around in the bushes outside the tent.

  “Lord Jesus!” we heard him say.

  Arnie and I glanced at each other.

  “Daddy, you okay?” called Arnie.

  He came out from the bushes a minute later holding a snake that must have been four feet long. He gripped it behind the head so it wouldn’t bite him. The snake was a beautiful tan color, with dark-brown markings like coffee stains. It wriggled in his hand.

  “Will you look at this?” exclaimed Daddy. “It’s a timber rattler!”

  “Wow,” breathed Arnie.

  “Be careful!” I said.

  “Careful?” said Daddy. “Was Jesus careful? Did he back off from the lepers? Did he run from those Roman soldiers?”

  “That thing is poisonous,” I said.

  Daddy grinned. “Check your Bible, Son. Mark 16:18. ‘They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.’”

  Daddy made me nervous when he talked like that. When he quoted weird Bible verses, you never knew what would come next.

  “What are you going to do with it?” I asked.

  “Maybe we should name it,” he said.

  The snake gave off an angry rattle, and Daddy grinned. “Beelzebub, how’s that?”

  Arnie perked up. “Isn’t that the devil’s name?”

  “Bingo!” said Daddy. “It’s another name for Satan. I’ll shut Beelzebub in a box, then pray about him. Then maybe some Saturday night, when the spirit is sagging, I’ll pull him out to liven things up.”

  “Would you?” said Arnie. He bit his lip and his eyes danced. I couldn’t tell if he was scared or excited.

  Daddy spent the rest of the morning in the shed, and when he came out, Mama yelled at him. She usually supported Daddy’s projects, but not this one. It brought me up short to hear her talk to him like that. She ordered him to box up that snake and never let it out, then informed Arnie and me that if we went anywhere near it, she’d tan our hides.

  The sun beat down hard that day, and the heat lingered into the night, especially inside the tent. But that didn’t keep the people away. They came like always, looking for miracles or maybe just for something to do.

  That night, Daddy preached like nobody’s business. He once told me he never knew what he’d say till he got up there and looked in people’s eyes. Then he saw what they needed and would dive right in. He cooked up his sermons the way you’d make a casserole for a church supper, using leftovers and pieces of this and that. This week, one of the pieces was Beelzebub.

  He eyed the people, then suddenly exclaimed, “You ever think about snakes?”

  Next to me, Mama tensed up. “Dear Lord,” she breathed.

  Arnie sat up straight. His eyes glowed, and he started breathing hard, a little bit like he’d done at the Strand Theater downtown when we slipped in the back door and saw Flesh and the Devil with Miss Greta Garbo.

  Daddy whipped off his coat and tie. Rolling up his sleeves, he paced back and forth, agitated. “Scientists tell us that snakes are reptiles, just another kind of animal like rabbits and birds. But we know the truth, don’t we? They’re evil. They’re captains of sin, scum of the earth, Satan’s cheerleaders. They crawl on their bellies. Did you know they used to walk? That’s right. Before the Garden, before Adam and Eve, snakes pranced around like you and me.”

  “Show us, Preacher!” somebody shouted.

  Daddy grinned and demonstrated. He jumped, wiggled, and squirmed. Of course, he was careful not to dance, because that would be a sin.

  “Then one day, it all changed,” said Daddy. “A snake tempted Eve. When he was caught, his legs withered up and blew away like dead leaves. Ever since, snakes have slithered around on their bellies.”

  Next to me, Mama wrung her hands. Earlier that day, following her orders, Daddy had shut the snake in a box, then built a cage for it on top of a worktable. Daddy called his cage “the snake pit” and had put Beelzebub inside while she had watched. But I knew, just as sure as the world, that one of these days Daddy would open that cage. I wondered if it would be tonight.

  Daddy pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped off his forehead. He cleared his throat. He clapped his hands the way he did sometimes to get his blood flowing. He looked over at Mama. Then he shouted “Amen!” and moved on from snakes to other signs of the devil, such as music. It appeared we were safe from Beelzebub, at least for another week.

  Later in the service, when it came time for the offering, Daddy stepped up to the new altar. People had no way of knowing that the back of the altar said Ivory Soap.

  “My boy Arnie made this,” Daddy announced. “Arnie, come say hi to the folks.”

  Arnie, sitting beside me on the front row, hopped up and joined Daddy at the altar.

  “What do you say?” Daddy asked him.

  “Give to Jesus!” said Arnie.

  Daddy passed the offering plate. The crowd must have liked Arnie, because the plate was full by the time it reached us.

  Looking down at it, I thought of Sue Dean and wondered what she would think. Maybe this was the family business. Maybe it was just a show. Maybe we really were crazy.

  I passed the plate. The walls closed in.

  CHAPTER 9

  I woke up early Monday morning and lay in bed, thinking. In just a few hours, Ralph Peer and his friends would be working their magic, and I needed it. They would be looking for songs, and I had one. But there was a problem.

  I wanted to be there for all of it, but I couldn’t spend that much time downtown without Daddy noticing and hearing that it involved music.

  So I made up a story. Old Mrs. Rickover was a member of Daddy’s church, and it seemed that she needed my help with spring cleaning. Conveniently, the job would start that day and would take a week or two.

  The great thing about my story was that Mrs. Rickover was forgetful. In fact, forgetful was a mild term for it. She needed directions to find the bathroom, and once a month or so, she would put up Christmas decorations. If Daddy asked her about spring cleaning and she didn’t remember it, he would just shrug and figure she had forgotten.

  When I told Daddy about the job, he said, “She’s not paying you, is she?”

  “Uh, no, sir.”

  He nodded, pleased. “‘Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying; give without pay.’ Matthew 10:8.”

  “Actually,” I said, “we’ll just be cleaning the house.”

  That morning I set out for Mrs. Rickover’s place, then hung a left and headed downtown, where Cecil McLister had rented space in the old Taylor-Christian Hat Company building, on the Tennessee side of State Street, within sight of the train station. The hat store had been closed for years, so the first floor was dark, but I saw lights and activity on in the second floor. I knew Crabtree and Holt must be inside, because the
Ford was parked in front.

  Someone else was parked in front too. It was Sue Dean, sitting on the curb and holding a couple of sweet rolls. She got to her feet and handed me one.

  “I stopped by Hecht’s Bakery, over on Shelby Street.”

  “Is this for me?” I said.

  “You don’t have to eat it. If you’re not interested, I’ll have both of them.”

  “I’m interested.”

  I accepted the sweet roll and took a bite. In my planning, the one thing I’d forgotten was breakfast.

  “I saw them go inside,” she said. “You know, those two sound engineers.”

  “Did they say anything?”

  “‘Out of my way, missy!’”

  I smiled. “That sounds like Crabtree.”

  We heard voices and turned to see Ralph Peer and Cecil McLister approach from the direction of the hotel. Peer looked as elegant as ever, with a starched collar and tie. Mr. McLister, wearing a straw hat, was nibbling on a toothpick. He saw me and grinned.

  “Well, well,” he said. “Ralph told me you were at the hotel last Friday. Back again today?”

  “Yes, sir. I’d like to help.”

  Peer spotted Sue Dean. “You helped us Friday night. Thanks to you, Mrs. Peer and I didn’t go thirsty.”

  “What about today?” I asked. “We’re good workers.”

  Peer shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Recording is a delicate business.”

  “I could sing,” said Sue Dean.

  McLister chuckled. “That’s what they all say.”

  The men swept past us. I watched them go into the building and up the stairs.

  Sue Dean sat back down on the curb, and I took a spot next to her. As we ate our sweet rolls, a thought struck me.

  “You know that book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz?” I asked Sue Dean.

  She nodded. “Mama used to read it to me at bedtime.”

  “I liked the part where they went to see the Wizard,” I said. “They all wanted something different—courage, brains, a heart.”