Lord of the Mountain

by Ronald Kidd

  “Oops,” I said. I broke the roll in two and handed half to Sue Dean.

  The baby let out a howl.

  “That’s little Joe,” Sara told us, taking the baby from the girl and putting him on her shoulder. “He’s still nursing, so we brought him with us. This here’s Gladys, my eight-year-old. She came along to babysit while we sing. Isn’t that right, sugar?”

  Gladys nodded. She was a tiny thing. It was a wonder she was able to hold Joe, who looked as big for his age as she was little.

  “Where are you staying?” asked Sue Dean.

  “A.P.’s sister lives in town. You might know her—Virgie Hobbs? Her husband is Roy.”

  “Sure,” I said. “They come to our church.”

  “So, you two sing?” Sara asked us.

  “Sue Dean does,” I said. “How about you all? Are you singers?”

  She nodded. “I do the melody. Maybelle sings harmony. A.P. chimes in with bass.”

  “We love the old songs,” said Maybelle.

  “Old but new,” said A.P.

  His voice had a tremor, and so did his hands. He shifted restlessly from foot to foot. In all the time I knew him, then and later, I’m not sure he ever got comfortable. He would fidget and squirm, scratch and wheeze. He reminded me of a hound dog, circling round and round, looking for a good place to lie down and never quite finding it.

  He said, “You take an old song, tuck it, trim it, then lay it out flat like a napkin on the table. It’s old but new.”

  Sue Dean noticed the battered cases beside Sara and Maybelle.

  “Are those your instruments?” she asked.

  Sara nodded. “Mine’s an autoharp. But Maybelle’s—that’s the one.”

  “I play the guitar,” said Maybelle.

  “Her brothers got it when she was thirteen,” Sara told us, “and she picked it up quicker than they did. Never took lessons, so she made her own way of playing—chords and melodies all at the same time. Scratch, she calls it. Sounds like two players, not one.”

  I studied the young pregnant woman and didn’t see anything special about her. I guess talent shows up in all kinds of ways.

  “Where do you play?” Sue Dean asked.

  “Schools and churches mostly,” said Sara. “Fifteen cents a head. On a good night, we might make twenty-five dollars. On a bad night, we might cover the cost of gas.”

  A.P.’s hands stabbed the air, and his voice quivered. “Not like this Stoneman fella—one hundred dollars a day, three thousand a year. We could do that. Yes, sir.”

  “We tried out for a record once before,” Sara told us proudly. “It was last year, with the Brunswick Record Company. We auditioned at Kingsport. They turned us down though.”

  “They wanted a fiddler,” declared A.P. “Well, I’m a fiddler, but I told them we were a group. Songs, voices, guitar—that’s what we do.”

  “So we came home,” said Sara. “A.P. went back to his day jobs—working the sawmill, selling fruit trees. It’s a good life.”

  “Not as good as music,” said A.P.

  Sara’s eyes sparkled. “When he proposed, A.P. said he loved me. Personally, I think what he loved was my voice.”

  A.P. ducked his head and hummed, as if somewhere inside his head, he was listening to a song.

  I thought about the song in my head, the one I’d heard in the darkness and had carried with me ever since. It still was there, and I wondered where it came from.

  I asked A.P., “You know lots of songs, right?”

  “A few,” he said.

  Sara snorted. “A few thousand.”

  “I heard a song once,” I told him. “Maybe you know it.”

  I thought of Mama in the kitchen, singing as she baked. I remembered some bits of melody and words, and I sang them as best I could.

  “Keep going,” said A.P., listening intently.

  “That’s all I have.”

  “It’s a good song,” said A.P., “but I don’t know it.”

  Sue Dean squeezed my hand, and the line started moving. We talked some more, and Sue Dean tried holding the baby. The minute she took him, he stopped crying.

  Gladys grinned up at her. “I think he likes you.”

  Sue Dean held Joe for a while longer, then visited with Sara. Maybelle took out her guitar, tuned it, and strummed a few chords. Meanwhile A.P. fidgeted, and I found myself doing the same. After all, this was Oz, and we were about to see the Wizard.

  CHAPTER 12

  The line was like a river, flowing down the stairs, out the door, and around the bend. We moved upstream and finally reached the bottom of the stairs. At the top was a door. I wondered what was inside.

  The building was hot, and I was sweating. The door at the top of the stairs was like a ribbon at the finish line. As we got near, there was a commotion down below.

  “Coming through!” someone said. “Let me through.”

  The voice sounded familiar, and when I turned around I saw why. Gray was pushing his way through the crowd. I was surprised because the week before, when I had asked him to come with me to the building, he had just laughed.

  “It’s hillbilly music,” he had said. “Why would I be interested in that?”

  Now, seeing all the people, he had apparently changed his mind.

  “I hate him,” said Sue Dean.

  Her anger didn’t surprise me. I guess it was why I hadn’t told her I knew Gray. He was in a different part of my life from Sue Dean—separated, like Daddy and Mr. Peer, like church and the wide world. I lived my life in boxes.

  Sue Dean glared as Gray approached. She murmured, “They say his son is stuck up, like no one is good enough for him.”

  I turned away so Gray wouldn’t notice me, but not fast enough.

  “Nate!” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  I glanced at Sue Dean. She was staring at me.

  “Hello,” I said.

  Gray saw Sue Dean, and his expression brightened. Obviously he didn’t notice that she was mad. I guess he wasn’t the most observant guy in town.

  “Who’s your friend?” Gray asked me.

  “Sue Dean Baker,” she said. “My father works at the lumber mill. His name’s Harley Baker.”

  Gray shrugged. “Sorry. Never heard of him.”

  “You will,” she said.

  Gray turned back to me. “Do you sing?”

  “Not really.”

  Sue Dean watched us. “You know each other?”

  “Are you kidding?” said Gray. “He’s my best friend. Right, Nate?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. My boxes were collapsing, breaking apart and bleeding into each other.

  “Why are you here?” I asked finally.

  “The man from Victor sounds important,” said Gray, eyeing Sue Dean. “I thought I should meet him.”

  “Good luck if you don’t sing,” said Sue Dean. “Nate tried all last week and couldn’t get in.”

  Gray chuckled. “All due respect, I might have more luck than Nate.”

  For the first time, I saw Gray through Sue Dean’s eyes. He might be smiling, but suddenly he seemed foolish.

  “Go ahead and try,” I said. “All they can do is throw you out.”

  Gray laughed and chucked me on the arm. “Yeah right. See you later.”

  He nodded to Sue Dean, then headed up the stairs, pushing and elbowing people as he went.

  Sue Dean watched me, disappointed. I hadn’t exactly lied to her, but I hadn’t told her the truth either.

  Gray reached the top of the stairs and barged through the door. I heard voices inside, and Edward Crabtree appeared, gripping Gray by the arm and marching him down. As they went past, Gray said, “You can’t do this! I’ll tell my father!”

  Sue Dean caught my eye and held it. I wondered if things would ever be the same. Then, out of the blue, she started to giggle. I laughed too, and then we were howling. If you can laugh with somebody, maybe things aren’t so bad.

  We got to the top of the stairs, and a
few minutes later they motioned us in.

  I thought of Mama’s song and gulped. “Here goes.”

  It was a big room, taking up most of the second floor. In the days of the hat company, it must have been used for storage, because it had a high ceiling and a bare wooden floor. I was surprised at how dark it was, then realized why. The windows were covered with blankets to keep out noise.

  I squinted in the darkness. In the middle of the room they had set up a table and four chairs, where Ralph Peer and his wife sat. He leaned back with his legs crossed, and she was taking notes on a clipboard. Next to them was Fred Holt, thumbing through a magazine. The empty chair must have been where Crabtree had been sitting. I had to admit I was glad he wasn’t there.

  As I watched, Peer said something to Holt, and Holt nodded. Setting down his magazine, he made his way across the room to an area where blankets had been hung from the ceiling. He ducked behind one of them, and I saw a flash of metal. It was the recording machine. It had to be.

  “Next,” called Peer.

  As we approached the table, he studied me.

  “You,” he said.

  I shrugged. “Welcome to Bristol.”

  Mrs. Peer smiled at Sue Dean. “We went back to Crystal Caverns. That’s some place.”

  “You’re a singer?” Peer asked me. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “Actually, sir, I don’t sing. But my friend does. Her name is Sue Dean Baker.”

  He grinned. “What are you, her agent?”

  I wasn’t sure what an agent was, but it sounded all right to me.

  “I guess so,” I said.

  Peer turned to Sue Dean and looked her over. “Where’s your instrument? Where’s the band?”

  “I sing by myself,” she said.

  Mrs. Peer glanced at her husband, then looked at Sue Dean. “Sweetheart, singing by yourself is fine, but I’m afraid it’s not what Mr. Peer’s looking for.”

  “She’s really good,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” said Mrs. Peer.

  “Next,” her husband called.

  Just like that, our time was up. Our chance was gone. Peer and his wife turned away. There was nothing to do but leave.

  Just then, a loud screech came from the open doorway. Either someone was torturing a chicken, or little Joe was crying again.

  Sara came through the door, holding Joe. His face was red, and he was screaming bloody murder.

  “Great,” muttered Peer.

  Maybelle followed. A.P. tottered along behind, with Gladys holding his hand.

  I started to leave, but Sue Dean had other ideas. She went up to Sara and took the baby, who immediately stopped crying. Sue Dean smiled at Gladys.

  “Mommy and Daddy are going to sing,” she said. “Let’s go over here and listen.”

  Sue Dean led Gladys off to the side, rocking Joe all the while.

  “Well, what do you know,” said Peer.

  The Carters got out their instruments. Sue Dean held the baby. Peer settled back in the chair, and his wife picked up her clipboard.

  Somewhere off in a distant corner of the sky, the sun peeked out from behind a cloud. The tiniest sliver of light fell across the floor, leading away from the table and the singers, toward a part of the room that was hidden by a blanket.

  It was time to look behind the curtain.

  CHAPTER 13

  While Peer watched the Carters, I slipped behind him and made my way to the other side of the room. I glanced around nervously, then took a deep breath and ducked behind the blanket.

  “You’re persistent, aren’t you?”

  I looked up and saw Fred Holt, the other sound engineer. Where Crabtree was tall, Holt was short. Where Crabtree was stern, Holt was soft-spoken and friendly. He was smiling now.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I guess so.”

  I looked past him to a stack of equipment that took up most of the space behind the blanket. I guess I was staring, because Holt chuckled.

  “You like it?”

  I liked shoes. I liked chewing gum. This was way past like. It was a whole new territory, sprung off the pages of Popular Mechanics and into the world.

  I moved toward the equipment, then hesitated.

  “Can I?” I asked.

  He stepped aside and held out his arm like the ringmaster at a circus. I touched one of the machines. Made of metal, it was hard and cold.

  I said, “Are you recording today?”

  “Maybe this afternoon,” he said. “This morning is just auditions. Ralph’s trying to find more singers.”

  I ran my hand along the side of the machine. “How does it work?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked over the equipment with an easy glance, the way I might check my bike before hopping on.

  “It’s an electronic process,” he said. “Recording used to be acoustic. The singers would shout into a big horn to catch the sound, and it didn’t work very well. Then Western Electric developed this.”

  He nodded toward a strange-looking contraption. It was a metal pole shaped something like a hat rack, but instead of hooks at the top, there was a round, metal disk the size of a large biscuit, maybe an inch thick in the middle and tapering to half of that at the edges. It was covered with round holes—a big one circled by a ring of smaller ones—with fabric behind the openings.

  “They call it a microphone,” said Holt. “It changes sound vibrations into an electric current.”

  I gazed at the microphone. It gleamed silver in the dim light, like something mailed from the future.

  Holt motioned toward the machine that rested beside it, the one I’d run my hand along. “That’s the amplifier. It takes the signal from the microphone and boosts the power. Then the signal is fed into the last part of the system, the lathe.”

  He moved to the lathe, a metal box with a round platform on top. It reminded me of the Victrola that Cecil McLister had shown us that day at the store but bulkier and made of solid metal. Jutting out over the platform was a metal arm with a needle on the end. Beneath it, resting on the platform, was a disk that appeared to be made of soft wax.

  “Is that a record?” I asked.

  “It’s a record master, or will be. The signal comes from the amp and goes to this arm. See that needle on the end? It’s called a stylus. It cuts a groove into the wax to create the master. From the master, they make a metal stamper that’s used to press records. The records are identical to the master, except they’re made out of shellac, so they’ll be strong and hard.”

  I looked back at the microphone and imagined people singing into it. Their voices would be converted into an electronic signal, boosted by the amplifier, captured on the master, and pressed onto records, ready to be played by people like Grayson Lane.

  The equipment was like a rocket ship and a time machine all rolled into one. People could sing in one place and be heard halfway around the world, a hundred years from now.

  Holt said, “The old acoustic recorders were big and couldn’t be moved. Electronic equipment is different. The machines are smaller. You can load them into a car and take them anyplace there’s electricity—even Bristol, Tennessee.”

  He paused, grinning. That’s when the angels started to sing.

  My heart is sad and I’m in sorrow,

  for the only one I love

  When shall I see him, oh, no, never,

  till I meet him in heaven above

  Holt looked at me with his head kind of sideways, like he was listening hard. Then he pulled back the blanket.

  It turned out to be one angel, Sara Carter. Next to her, Maybelle stitched the melody with her guitar. A.P. chimed in every so often with a musical grunt.

  The Carters had set up in front of the table, and they were deep into the music. It was just an audition, not a recording session, but there was something about the way they played that made you stop and listen.

  The song was about a woman whose man didn’t love her
anymore. Because of it, she was ready to die and be buried under a weeping willow tree. The words were sad, but the music was sadder. You could hear the woman’s pain in Sara’s voice and Maybelle’s strumming. It was there, in between the notes. But there was something else. It was in everything the Carters sang, then and later—a spirit, a strength, a feeling that, whatever happened, they would carry on and be all right.

  “My goodness,” murmured Holt.

  When the song was over, A.P. turned to Ralph Peer. “Want to hear another one?”

  I noticed that Peer wasn’t leaning back anymore. He was sitting up straight in his chair. Next to him, Mrs. Peer was taking notes like mad.

  “How many do you have?” Peer asked him.

  “How many do you want?” A.P. said.

  Peer said, “Can you come back tonight? I’d like to record a few.”

  A.P.’s lip twitched, which I found out later was as close as he got to a smile.

  “Name a time,” he said.

  Mrs. Peer glanced at her clipboard. “How about six thirty?”

  A.P. nodded, and that was that.

  Sara, her eyes gleaming, hugged Maybelle and then hurried across the room, where she kissed Gladys and pinched the baby’s cheek. A.P. and Maybelle gathered up their things, and I figured it was time to go.

  “Thanks for showing me the equipment,” I told Holt. “You think I could come back?”

  He glanced around the room, as if he was looking for Crabtree.

  “Sure,” he said. “That’d be fine.”

  I shot him a quick grin, then hurried off after the Carters and Sue Dean.

  I caught them at the top of the stairs. Sara had Gladys by the hand, and Sue Dean held Joe, who had fallen asleep. Maybelle was close by. A.P. stood next to her, but he was already far away, probably thinking of more songs.

  “You did it!” I said.

  Sara ducked her head, but there was no covering up that smile. Maybelle looked over at Sue Dean and Joe.

  “How’d you get him to sleep?” Maybelle asked her.

  “It was the music,” said Sue Dean. “When he heard Sara’s voice, he nodded off.”

  “Can you help us again tonight?” asked Sara. “We don’t want a baby crying on our records.”