by Ronald Kidd
“They say it’s a folk song.”
“It scared me.”
“I think it rose up straight out of the earth. Like a corpse. Like bones when they’ve been picked clean.”
I shivered. I didn’t much remember Sister, but it hurt to think of her lying in the ground.
I took the photo from my wallet and set it on the bench. Sister was with us, or at least her grave was.
“I went there,” I said. “To Deep Gap. To the cemetery. I have the memory. I don’t need the picture anymore.”
Daddy picked up the photo and ran his fingers across it.
“She’s in heaven now,” he said.
“You believe that?”
“With all my heart.”
He had to believe. Maybe I did too. But my idea of heaven was different from his.
“What about me?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“You did all this for Sister. Gave up music. Started the church. What about me?”
He stared at me like I was speaking another language.
“Sister’s gone,” I said. “But she’s not the only one.”
He shook his head. “What do you mean?”
“I left too. I’m leaving again.”
Feelings rolled around inside of me. I tried to put them into words. “You spent all those years thinking about Sister. Feeling guilty. Taking the blame. But you know what? She’s not coming back. I’m sorry to say it, but it’s true.”
He hunched over, hugging himself, like he was in pain.
“There was nothing you could do for her,” I said. “But I’m still here. So is Arnie. Stop thinking about Sister and worry about us.”
Daddy looked up, startled. “Worry?”
“I was miserable. So I left. You ran me out of town. And Arnie? You drove him to that snake. He’s sick. He needs you.”
Daddy gaped at me. For all the times he had talked to God, he had never heard that. He was shocked to hear it, and I guess I was too. A minute before, I had been angry. Now I just felt sad.
“Daddy, I know it’s hard. She was your angel. She was your favorite.”
“That’s not true.”
“You know it is. You showed it every day.”
“I love all my children,” he said.
“Then do something.”
“She was so precious.”
“All of us are. Isn’t that what Jesus said?”
The night settled in around us. Crickets chirped. In science class, Mr. Wafford had told us that crickets chirp by rubbing their wings together. If they could play music, surely we could too.
“So,” I said, “now what do we do?”
“Pray. Preach.”
“Sing,” I said.
CHAPTER 45
Daddy didn’t come to breakfast the next morning. I had wanted to see him, if only to say goodbye.
I knew that in spite of what I’d told him—maybe because of what I’d told him—I needed to leave. It was just too painful.
We got up at sunrise. Mama cooked up some eggs and sausage. I had coffee, which I’d started drinking to keep me awake on the road. No one said much. I think Mama was sad. Arnie had questions but didn’t know how to ask them or whether he was allowed. I don’t know what Sue Dean thought. She ate quietly.
As for me, the room seemed dark and full. Something was in there with us. It hung over the table like a cloud, like a spirit that settles in and won’t go away. I guess it had been there all along, crowding us, shaping us, keeping us down. It pressed against my chest until finally I had to say something.
“I couldn’t sleep last night.”
“Did you open a window?” asked Mama.
“I got up and went outside. Daddy was in the shed.”
Arnie looked up at me. “The shed?”
To him that had one meaning—Beelzebub. I couldn’t tell if he was excited or scared.
“Daddy was singing,” I said.
They stared at me, all but Sue Dean. For her, singing was as natural and inevitable as breathing.
“That’s good, isn’t it?” she said.
“It’s creepy,” said Arnie.
I told them how he had sung about death. Then, because I was sick of the feeling that filled the room and wanted to puncture it and drain it dry, I told them what had happened all those years ago. It was Daddy’s story, but it was ours too. Mama already knew it, of course. For Arnie, it was different. The thought of Daddy roaming the countryside, singing, was like being told that Jesus played ping-pong.
Mama said, “I tried to tell him it wasn’t his fault. Sister took a turn for the worse and suddenly was gone. But he had wanted to be there. He had wanted to hold her hand. He blamed himself and music. Never forgave either one.”
“Music’s a sin, isn’t it?” asked Arnie.
“Your daddy thinks so,” said Mama.
“Then why was he singing last night? What does it mean?”
“I’m not sure, dear.”
Part of me wanted to stay until I could work it all out and explain it to Arnie. But another part was eager to get back on the road, explore the hollers with A.P. and Esley, then return home to Sue Dean and the family I had found.
I turned to Sue Dean. “Ready to go?”
“I think so.” She told Mama, “Thank you for having me.”
Mama looked from Sue Dean to me and back at her again. “You’re a nice girl. You take care.”
Arnie said, “Do you have to go?”
“Yes,” I told him. “But I’ll come back.”
As we started to get up, the kitchen door swung open. Daddy stood there, carrying a battered instrument case. He crossed the room and pushed aside the breakfast dishes. Setting the case on the table, he opened it. Inside, covered with dust, was a banjo.
Suddenly I was back in Daddy’s tent. At the end of the service, he would ask for people to have their things blessed by setting them on the altar, the one that Arnie had made out of a soapbox. People would come forward and set things down—a ring, a family Bible, a pair of glasses. One woman stood there empty-handed, then reached into her mouth and set her dentures on the altar. We would pray over the objects, asking the Lord to bless them and consecrate them to his use.
I looked down at the banjo and wondered if Daddy would pray over it. He didn’t say a word.
Arnie reached out and plucked a string.
“That’s not how you do it,” said Daddy.
He picked up the banjo. At first he handled it like something delicate, crystal maybe, or Mama’s china. Using a napkin, he wiped off the dust ever so gently, then plucked the strings and adjusted the tuning pegs. He strummed a chord. It sounded good. He relaxed, and suddenly the banjo seemed as natural in his hands as one of the tools in his shed.
Daddy looked at me, then closed his eyes. Maybe he was conjuring up the young man who sang at Kingsport. He might be imagining a world, one that somehow had room for both God and music. It was a strain, I could tell. His brow furrowed, and his lips were pursed to one side. He picked out a melody and started to play. He shook his head and sang, haltingly at first, then with more confidence.
Lord of the mountain
Father on high
Bend down and bless me
Please won’t you try
It was Mama’s song. It had lived in our house all those years, like one of the candles she kept by her bed. The wind blows, and you cup your hands around it. It flickers and nearly dies. Then the wind lets up, and the flame leaps. You watch, amazed that what seemed to be snuffed out had been there all along.
Give me a prayer
Give me a plan
Give me an answer
I know you can
When he paused, I said, “That song—where did it come from?”
“I wrote it,” he said. “Sister was sick, and I wanted to make her feel better. Mama and I used to sing it when we sat up with her. I performed it once or twice with my band, but it didn’t feel right.”
I imagined a room late a
t night in Deep Gap, North Carolina. A man and woman sat in the darkness with their little girl. The girl moaned. The mother held her hand. The father wiped her forehead tenderly, humming a tune. In the next room, a toddler slept, not knowing that what was taking place would shape his life.
“We lived in a house trailer,” I said.
“How did you know?” asked Daddy.
“I went there, like I told you. I wanted to find out what happened. I sang the song. I walked the road. I found the grave. I asked if people remembered you. No one did.”
Mama smiled sadly. “We had that trailer, so we moved a lot. We were only in Deep Gap for one year, when Sister was sick. We didn’t go out much. Afterward, we sold the trailer and came to Bristol.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all this?” I asked.
Mama looked at Daddy. “We were trying to forget.”
I said, “The song is beautiful. I bet Sister liked it.”
“I sang it for her when Daddy was gone,” said Mama. “I sang it as she died. It was the last thing she heard.”
Tears rolled down Daddy’s cheeks. Mama told him, “Your song was with her. You sang her to heaven.”
He strummed the banjo and sang again.
I’m feeling weary
Tired to the bone
Show me the path, Lord
I’m going home
His voice was different from the night before. It was rough. It creaked, like something that hadn’t been used in a long time. But there was a sweetness to it. Music floated across the room, brightening it like the sun.
Over the hilltop
Into the blue
Home to the mountain
Resting in you
When he finished, Sue Dean smiled. “Sing it again.”
“I can’t,” he told her.
“I’ll help you,” she said.
Gingerly, he picked the banjo strings. The tune formed. He raised his voice. Sue Dean moved over next to him, put her hand on his shoulder, and joined in.
As they harmonized, my mind drifted back. I remembered the first time I had heard the Carters sing, in the building that used to be a hat company. I’d been looking for answers and had thought I could find them behind the curtain, in the recording machines. I hadn’t known it, but the answers were in front of the curtain, out in the room and in the world. Science asks questions and helps to answer them, but maybe some questions are in the heart and can only be answered there.
I sipped my coffee and listened. As I did, the earth shifted. Pieces fell into place. Two became one—tent and phonograph, science and snakes, dreams and music.
Gazing out the window, I saw the sun rise over the ridge. A mockingbird chattered. The breeze blew. Holston Mountain glowed.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Years ago, when I moved to Nashville, I didn’t care for country music. But as time passed, the music seeped into me, and I came to appreciate its rich history, culture, and storytelling tradition. In particular, I became fascinated with the people who brought their songs with them from the old country, settled in the Appalachian Mountains, and molded the music to fit a new world and a tough, demanding life.
I also became fascinated with the role of religion in their lives and the way music and church so often went together. Could the two ever be separated? Was it even possible?
Out of these musings came the character of Nate Owens, who loves music and deeply resents church, or at least the version of church preached passionately and interminably by his evangelist father. Through Nate, I began to explore my own feelings about music, faith, and how they intersect and overlap in our lives.
Nate, Sue Dean, Gray, their families, and a few minor characters in this story are fictional, but most of the other people and many of the things they do are based on fact. This includes the Carter Family, Lesley Riddle, Ralph Peer, and the events that became known as the Bristol Sessions, the so-called “big bang” of country music. In truth, of course, it wasn’t an explosion; it was more like a river, deep and wide, that flowed from a thousand sources. But after those two weeks in Bristol, a musical tradition that had been pushed to the margins could never again be ignored.
I loved getting to know these people, real and imagined, and traveling with them on the road and over the rails. I’m grateful to those who showed me the way, including the authors who first got me excited about the people and their story: Mark Zwonitzer and Charles Hirshberg in their book Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?: The Carter Family & Their Legacy in American Music; Barry Mazor in Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music; and Ted Olson and the late, great dean of country music historians, Charles K. Wolfe, in The Bristol Sessions: Writings about the Big Bang of Country Music. I learned about teenage hoboes of the 1920s and ’30s from Lexy Lovell and Michael Uys’s fine documentary film Riding the Rails. Thanks to the helpful folks at the Bristol Public Library, Nashville Public Library, Vanderbilt University Library, Tennessee State Archives, Railroad Museum of Virginia, and Birthplace of Country Music Museum.
I’ve reshaped, redirected, and revised this story more times than I care to count, guided by my wonderful editors Jon Westmark and Kristin Zelazko at Albert Whitman & Company and my agent Alec Shane at Writers House. And always, standing at my shoulder to root me on, are my late parents, my family and friends, and my two shining stars, Yvonne and Maggie.
RONALD KIDD is the author of fourteen novels for young readers, including the highly acclaimed Night on Fire. His novels of history, adventure, comedy, and mystery have received the Children’s Choice Award, an Edgar Award nomination, and honors from the American Library Association, the International Reading Association, and the New York Public Library. He is a two-time O’Neill playwright and music fan who lives in Nashville. You can learn more at www.ronaldkidd.com.
