Lord of the Mountain

by Ronald Kidd

  I turned around and saw a man wearing wrinkled pants with a work shirt and tie. He held out his hand, and I shook it.

  “I’m Pastor Joe.”

  “Nate Owens.”

  He said, “I stumbled across that grave when I first came here three years ago. I was surprised there was no last name. I checked the records but couldn’t find any information. I asked around. No one knew who she was.” He chuckled. “I guess every town needs a mystery, and she’s ours.”

  “She’s mine,” I said.

  “Pardon me?”

  “She was my sister. She died when I was two.”

  He at looked at me, amazed, then wanted to know all about her. Supposedly it was to fill in his records, but I knew that wasn’t the reason. A little bit of our family mystery had spilled over onto him, and he wanted some answers.

  Join the club, I thought.

  I told him what little I knew. He wrote it down, thanked me, and headed back inside. Watching him go made me sad. Daddy was always preaching about Genesis, the beginning of things, when Satan tempted Eve and the world fell into sin. In my family, Deep Gap was our Genesis. Things had happened here—big things, important things, things that had changed our world. And the town had barely noticed.

  CHAPTER 39

  I sat on the steps of the Hello Café, and before long, A.P. and Esley came back.

  “Any luck?” asked Esley, who knew what I’d been doing.

  “They lived in a house trailer by a farm. That’s all I know. It’s all anyone knows. But I did see my sister’s grave.”

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I nodded. To be honest, though, I didn’t know if I was okay or if I was anything.

  “How did you do?” I asked him.

  “Not much better.”

  “Heard a few hymns, none of them new,” said A.P. “Esley sang your song once or twice. Nothing.”

  Esley brightened. “But we did find something. We met a young kid name of Watson, no more than five or six years old. Blind since he was a baby. His folks bought him a Sears Roebuck guitar, and he plays the fire out of that thing.”

  “I taught him one of our songs, ‘When Roses Bloom in Dixieland,’ said A.P. “He picked it right up.”

  We climbed into the car and headed up Highway 421, back toward Poor Valley.

  “You said you heard hymns,” I told A.P. “I didn’t know you wanted those.”

  A.P. grunted. “We take hymns. We take all kind of things.”

  “Old ballads. Sheet music. Blues, definitely blues,” said Esley. “Get ’em, throw ’em in the pot, and stir.”

  “We did a blues song for Mr. Peer in Memphis,” A.P. said. “‘Worried Man Blues.’ He liked it. We should get some more of those.”

  Esley glanced over at him. A.P. nodded, and Esley nodded back.

  “We’re going home to Poor Valley,” said Esley. “But on the way, we’ll make a stop. I was born in North Carolina, but my grandparents raised me in Kingsport. Lotta blues there.”

  It turned out that Kingsport was where A.P. and Esley had met. I had grown up knowing Kingsport as one of Tennessee’s tri-cities, along with Bristol and Johnson City. The three towns formed a triangle and were about twenty-five miles from each other. Kingsport had factories and mills, and workers went there from the hills of Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina. Esley told me there weren’t many jobs these days, especially for Negroes, but the people went there anyway. He explained that when they weren’t looking for jobs, some of the black workers would get together on a porch and play music.

  “They heard blues music by Blind Lemon Jefferson, Barbecue Bob, folks like that,” said Esley, excited at the memory. “Doc met them when he came looking for songs. John Henry Lyons had a good one called ‘Motherless Children Sees a Hard Time.’ When Doc showed up to hear it, I was sitting there with John Henry.”

  A.P. grunted. “Esley played along on a guitar. He sounded like Maybelle, only different.”

  “Nobody plays like Maybelle,” said Esley.

  “Didn’t take the song,” A.P. said. “Took the player.”

  Esley added, “I couldn’t work in the factory because of my leg, so I had time to practice. When Doc heard me, he invited me home.”

  “Just like that?” I asked.

  “Just like that.”

  “Nothin’ else to do,” said A.P.

  Early in the afternoon we crossed the Tennessee border and entered Kingsport. The border didn’t go through the middle of town, like it did in Bristol. It ran along the side, with the town right next to it.

  We came into town on Route 1, which people in Kingsport called Lee Highway. As we did, the engine sputtered and died. Esley guided the car to the side of the road, and I opened the hood. He started it up, and I checked the engine. Finally I spotted the problem, a loose wire. I tightened it, and Esley grinned.

  “Glad you came,” he told me.

  Esley turned off Lee Highway onto Sullivan Street. The road got wider, and the buildings got bigger. Pretty soon we came to a funny kind of intersection—round, with six roads jutting out of it. In between were churches, only churches, all of them with tall steeples.

  Esley glanced over at me and laughed. “Your daddy’s a preacher? He might call this heaven. Around here they call it Church Circle—Methodist, Baptist, Brethren, Presbyterian. Me, I call it White Church Circle.”

  “Where are the black churches?” I asked.

  “I’ll show you,” said Esley.

  We went through Church Circle and veered off to the right, into an area with train tracks and factories.

  “There’s one,” he said, pointing to a broken-down building with a sign in front. On the sign, the words Pawn Shop had been crossed out and new words painted over it: Blessed Jesus AME Zion.

  Thinking about the big, fancy buildings on Church Circle, it made me sad. If there was a God, I thought, he’d find the tents and pawn shops. According to the Bible, Jesus preferred them. I tried to picture Jesus in his sandals and dirty robe, wandering down the aisle of First Presbyterian Church. They’d hustle him out—or maybe just shoot him.

  I watched the buildings go by. The farther we went, the smaller they got, until we turned onto a dead-end street that had just a few broken-down houses. Esley pulled up in front of one, a place that was neatly kept but badly in need of repair.

  Esley elbowed A.P. “Hey, Doc, we’re here.”

  “Play louder,” murmured A.P.

  “Wake up, Doc,” said Esley. “End of the road.”

  A.P. stumbled from the car. Esley turned to me.

  “Can you get the bags? You can leave the sawmill parts.”

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “The Kingsport Hotel,” he said. “Better known as my cousin Caleb’s house.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Caleb turned out to be big and thick and tall, all the things Esley wasn’t. There was a family resemblance though, in his eyes and easy manner.

  “Back for more songs?” he asked, holding open the screen door.

  “Got any?” said Esley.

  “I don’t, but George does. That’s my neighbor, George McGhee. He got a job down at the factory, if you can believe it. He should be off pretty soon.”

  We trooped inside and followed A.P. down the hall to a bedroom. Obviously he had been there before. He flopped down on the bed. With A.P., it seemed that he was either exhausted or lit up like a red-hot coal. I told Esley I’d sleep in the car again, so he claimed a couch next to the bed and put his things there.

  Caleb led us to the main part of the house, a combination kitchen, dining room, and living room. He cut up some cornbread, and he, Esley, and I visited for while at a rickety wooden table. Caleb and Esley caught up on family business, and Esley tried to explain how anybody, let alone three people, could make a living by collecting songs.

  At four o’clock, a distant whistle sounded.

  “Shift’s over at the factory,” said Caleb. “George is coming home.”

&n
bsp; Esley grabbed his guitar and woke A.P., then we headed down the street to the McGhee house. It was a modest place, painted and fixed up possibly when George got his job. There was a porch with steps, and something else too—a ramp to the front door.

  As we approached, the door opened and a cart appeared. In it was a young Negro man who looked a little younger than me. Another young man came into view, pushing the cart. There was a strong family resemblance between them, with just a couple of differences—the one pushing was younger and thinner, and the one in the cart had a leg that was withered and folded under him.

  “Hey, there, Brownie,” called Caleb.

  “Hey, Mr. Caleb,” the one in the cart called back. “Hey, Esley.”

  Caleb said in a low voice, “That’s George’s son Walter. They call him Brownie. He had polio and can’t walk. His little brother, Granville, pushes him everywhere in that wooden cart, so he’s called Sticks.”

  As the brothers reached the bottom of the ramp, a car pulled up and a man got out. He was thin, with muscular arms and close-cropped hair. He wore a brown shirt that had a word stitched above the pocket: Maintenance.

  “Hey there, George,” said Esley.

  The man saw me looking at his shirt and grinned. “Maintenance—funny word for a janitor, ain’t it? Then again, maybe not. That’s what I do. They holler at me, and I maintain.”

  Esley got up from the steps, hobbled over, and gave the man a hug, then turned to me. “Nate, this is George McGhee. Sings a mean blues. You got one for us, George?”

  “Got twenty,” said McGhee. “Which one you want?”

  “The good one,” said Esley.

  McGhee went inside and came out wearing a different shirt—blue, with no words on it. He was carrying a tray that had a pitcher of sweet tea and some glasses. Sticks poured us some tea while his father disappeared again. When he came back, he was holding a guitar.

  McGhee didn’t sit. He just stood and sang like he was on a stage, and maybe he was. I noticed he was facing A.P., who had pulled out some paper and was scribbling on it. Next to A.P., Esley watched McGhee’s fingers and tried to copy the chords.

  McGhee sang us the good one, all right, then sang some more: “Stackolee,” then something called “Frankie.” I had never heard the songs before, but somehow, they sounded familiar. Maybe good songs are like that. Then he spun out some blues he made up on the spot, about women who cheated, men who loved them anyway, and factory jobs that paid the bills and not much else.

  When he finished, we didn’t clap. We didn’t have to. The songs had grabbed us and squeezed. They were painful but also beautiful. After they ended, the sound floated in the air between us, shimmering like silver.

  “Your daddy’s good,” I told Sticks.

  “Yes, he is,” the young man answered.

  McGhee smiled. “Nothin’ to it.”

  “Here’s a song,” said Esley, nodding to me. “We’re trying to track it down.”

  So I sang. The words and music had lived inside my head, and now they were in the world, bobbing around, looking for a place to land.

  McGhee cocked his head and smiled vaguely. “It’s a pretty thing. Sorry though. Never heard it before.”

  “Hey,” said Brownie, “you all want to stay for supper? Sticks and I can make biscuits and gravy.”

  A.P., hands trembling, stuffed the paper into his pocket and got to his feet.

  “Thanks for asking,” he warbled, “but we’d best be going. Gotta work on these songs—that is, with your permission.”

  “Honored,” said McGhee. “Caleb told us about the Carter Family.”

  We walked back to Caleb’s house, where he served us more cornbread and some black-eyed peas. Afterward, A.P. pulled out his paper and pencil to work on the songs.

  “So,” I said to Esley, “we leave in the morning?”

  “Not quite yet. We got one more stop, right here in Kingsport.”

  “Another singer?” I asked.

  Esley smiled. “You might say that. We’re going to church.”

  CHAPTER 41

  I was surprised to find that part of me had missed it—the preaching, the Bible reading, the feeling that, for a few minutes at least, I could just sit and think. I could put down my worries and stop asking questions. I could drink in the feelings all around me. Daddy called it worship, and I suppose it was, even for me.

  We had gotten up early, thanked Caleb for his hospitality, and headed down the road to the church we’d seen earlier, Blessed Jesus AME Zion. The place had caught A.P.’s eye, and he wanted to go inside. I had planned to stay outside, remembering Daddy’s tent and its stifling atmosphere, but then I saw how different this church was and finally agreed to go in.

  It was in an abandoned store, with a display window toward the street and rows of folding chairs inside. The faces of the people were black, not white or mixed. Their brightly colored clothing shimmered in the cheap electric lights. The ladies’ hats had broad brims, flowers, and enough fruit for a produce stand. The men’s hats were small and elegant, some tipped at an angle over slicked-back hair.

  The biggest difference wasn’t anything you could see, but it filled the church to bursting. It was music.

  Up front, wearing robes as blue as the sky, a choir sang and swayed. Some of them played tambourines. Off to one side, a robed man directed the choir with one hand and pounded an upright piano with the other. He wore thick glasses, but I had a feeling he could see everything he needed to without them.

  Everybody sang—the choir, the ushers, the congregation. When the preacher spoke, I realized that he sang too, sometimes with notes and sometimes with words. The choir director answered on the piano, keeping a running conversation, and the people answered: “That’s right.” “Amen.” “Preach it!”

  Next to me, A.P. jotted notes on scraps of paper. Esley rocked with the music, and I could tell his recorder was running.

  Sitting there, surrounded by music, I wondered once again why Daddy had shut it out of his church. If God wasn’t in music, where was he? I’d traveled for weeks, running away but also searching for something. Here in this storefront with a crossed-out sign and a beat-up piano, I thought I might have glimpsed it. I didn’t even know what it was. It was a little like science and a little like a song. It was a question with no answer. It was a feeling you got in your chest. It was big and deep and wide. It wasn’t far away but was right next to you, or maybe inside. It seemed like a place you could stay forever. It felt like a home.

  Esley glanced around the room, then looked over at me. “You like it?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I thought about my favorite singer—not the Carters, but Sue Dean. She wasn’t famous, but she put her heart in the music. You could hear it swelling up in the notes and filling the empty spaces between. It was love that you could hear, that you could count on—or would like to. I wondered if she was at church that morning and decided she probably was, even if it was a church of her own. Here, there was music in the church. For Sue Dean, there was church in the music.

  It was a good thing I enjoyed the service, because it lasted awhile—through the morning and past noon. Finally, about the time my stomach started growling, the choir sang its last amen.

  The preacher greeted us at the door. “God bless.”

  A.P. mumbled an answer and walked off toward the car. Esley and I started to follow, but then I noticed an old man staring at me. I figured it was because I was white. I just smiled and nodded.

  “You look like him,” said the man.

  “Like who?” I asked.

  “Somebody I saw.”

  He gazed past me, looking at someplace far away. “Years ago, a white boy passed through town, singing and playing the banjo. Must have been sixteen, seventeen years old. He came to the church where I was going and played for a picnic. Can you imagine that? White boy playing at a black picnic?”

  Esley, who was listening, grunted and chuckled.

  “Thing is,” said th
e man, “he was good. Not just white good or black good. Any color good. We had a wooden stage, and he climbed up on it. Once he got up there, he owned it. His face shone. His fingers flew across that banjo. And his voice? Lord, you should have heard it. Like a trumpet. God’s own bugle. I never forgot that boy.”

  He looked back at me. “When I saw you in church, I thought he’d come back. I was sure of it. Then I thought, Hold on now, that was more than twenty years ago. Boy would be a man now. So, straighten me out. Who are you?”

  “Nate Owens, sir. I’m just visiting.”

  “Owens, that was it!” said the man.

  “Huh?”

  “That was his name. Willie? William? Wilvur! Wilvur Owens. I wonder whatever happened to that boy.”

  CHAPTER 42

  Oil and water don’t mix. Black and white don’t mix. Wilvur Owens and music don’t mix. But they did.

  If music is a sin, why had Daddy been singing? What had brought him to Kingsport, Tennessee? If he’d really played music, and if he’d been that good, why had he stopped?

  I pictured Daddy preaching, stalking the stage, voice booming. The words turned to notes, and music poured out of him. All of a sudden, what had been unthinkable seemed not just possible but natural, maybe even inevitable.

  But he hated music.

  Dazed, I thanked the old man for the information, and he left. Esley turned to me.

  “You want to tell me what just happened?”

  I told him who Wilvur Owens was. I explained once again about the preacher and the tent and the sermons, and most of all the ironclad rule about music.

  “Well now, that’s strange,” mused Esley.

  We walked to the car, where A.P. was deep into his songs. Climbing in, we headed back to Poor Valley, with Esley behind the wheel again. The highway looped through the countryside, past Weber City and Hiltons. I wondered if my father had sung in those towns and why. No matter how strange or crazy he had seemed at times, his image had always been crystal clear in my mind. When the tent had come down, that picture had blurred. Now I wondered if I’d ever really seen him at all.