by Jacob Beaver
Then I saw the blue of water. The lake appeared on our left, below us, with a dead tree lying a little way out. The opposite bank wasn’t far, not more than a stone’s throw. A boy stood at the edge, among the trees, holding a fishing pole. He was pulling back on the fishing pole and I was trying to see if he’d got a fish, when Tino sang out.
“Alt! Alt!” he said. “Stop, Steve!”
Steve stopped.
On the hillside above us was a huge sign, the size of a billboard. It was made of bare plywood and was badly weathered, but the words were clear enough. They had been painted in black, very boldly, and looked something like this:
CHURCH OF GOD
ALWAYS OPEN
SIMPLE AS THAT!
Steve edged off the road at the bottom of a steep driveway, and Tino jumped out of the car. By the time I got out, he was nearly up the driveway. Beyond him, on top of the hill, stood a massive barn. It was taller than the tallest houses around here, with a sharply pitched roof, not unlike a church. But it was in bad shape. One corner was collapsing, and the whole roof was red with rust. Even back then, when I knew nothing about tobacco barns, I could tell this building was ancient. It was clad with vertical planks, hundreds of them, and they’d turned the color of driftwood. The total effect was beautiful, a sort of dancing silvery gray. One thing spoiled it, though. In the center of the barn, framed by a section of new timber, was a white door. It was the kind of door you see on suburban homes, with fake leaded glass. It looked like my parents’ door, actually.
Tino knocked on the door. He put his face to the glass, then knocked again. Then he opened the door and disappeared.
I crossed the road and looked down at an old house half hidden by trees. Three pickup trucks sat beside the house on a patch of red dirt. Only one of them had wheels. Beyond the pickups was a concrete ramp that went into the lake. I couldn’t see a boat, and the top of the ramp was covered in weeds. The driveway to the house was weedy too. There were even some weeds on top of the house.
As I turned back, Tino came skipping down the hill. He stopped halfway and looked around, and then he looked at us and gave a big shrug. Right at that moment, there was a gunshot. I mean, it sounded like I imagined a gunshot would sound. I’d never heard a gun go off. I’d never been near a gun, except in video games.
At that time, Steve hadn’t been around guns either, as far as I know. Perhaps this was the moment when he discovered his calling, or perhaps he didn’t think it was a gunshot, but anyhow, he started off down the driveway towards the house. That sound came again, and then again as Steve reached the trees, and then it went quiet and I lost sight of Steve. I looked across the lake, but I couldn’t see the boy with the fishing pole. Behind me, Dave was telling Tino something about acoustics, how the church might be a problem.
I shivered. The light was going and it was starting to get cold.
Now Steve walked out of the trees. He was followed by another man, and the two of them stood talking in front of a rusty truck. The man was a sight. He was shirtless and covered in tattoos from his neck to his belt. I couldn’t tell much more about him, except that he was wearing a red cap, but I did make out the biggest tattoo. It was a rebel flag, right across his back. He gestured towards the lake and that’s when I saw it. As he dropped his arm, the flag rippled.
After a few minutes they shook hands. The man went off under the trees and Steve came up the driveway, panting a bit. As we drove away, I asked him what had happened.
“Well, we found him,” he said. “That was Buckner! He’s going to be fantastic. He lives in the house down there, would you believe it? I can’t wait to get this on film. Right now he’s busy, so—”
“What was that sound we heard?”
“He was chopping wood,” Steve said. “No, sorry. He was splitting wood. That’s what he said. He promised some for somebody, or something. I don’t know. It’s hard to understand him. But he’ll be there tomorrow, and he wants us to come back. Which we will! We’ll come back with bells on, right?”
I didn’t say anything. I was watching the sun set over the treetops. When we reached the motel, there were already some stars. I never saw stars in London. I don’t think I even looked for them. There was always too much going on around me—too many lights, too many passing cars, too many passing thoughts. Here, nothing moved except branches in the wind. A few more cars had appeared, but they were silent, each slotted in front of a room. The air was blue with night, the motel darkening. Only the office was bright, but it looked empty.
An hour later Steve knocked on my door. He wanted a drink, he said, in a hurry. I hurried out, but Steve didn’t knock on the other two doors. He just stood there in the cold and dark, bouncing on the spot. I glanced at the office. It still looked empty.
“You know how great this is?” Steve said. “Do you realize? John-Boy, this is going to make me. It’ll put me on the fucking map.”
“I hope so,” I said. “Shall we get a drink?”
“Absolutely,” he said, but he kept bouncing up and down. “Now remember, we’re still working. We can drink, but we’re on the job. That’s one of the perks of the job. Sometimes you have to go to a pub. Nose around, get information, you know? Tonight the main thing is to find interviewees, and I need your help. Tino’s all over the place, and Dave’s . . . well, Dave is Dave. So it’s down to us. You and me. Okay?”
I don’t remember what I said then, but I remember what Steve said. He went into this big pep talk, all about comfort zones and how you had to get out of them, had to test yourself, whatever that meant to you personally. In my case, it meant talking to people. All I had to do was go up to strangers and say hello, and brilliant things would follow. Talking to people would make stuff happen, would change my outlook, would surprise the hell out of me.
Oh yes, I remember what he said. And I remember his face in the light from the motel, that crazed look Steve gets when he becomes the Terminator. I remember it all, though I never guessed I would. At the time I was just irritated. I liked the idea of a drink. Did I really have to pay for it by hearing a lecture from my idiot brother? But I did my dance, the usual John-Boy routine. I wagged my head thoughtfully and made little thoughtful sounds, and generally pretended to listen to Steve—or that’s how it seemed. Ten years later it seems quite different. Now I would say that I was pretending to myself, not Steve, because I was listening. As it turns out, I was all ears.
And here I have to pause. I have to give thanks again, to Steve and to God. There’s no better way to put it than giving thanks, unless you call it prayer, and there’s no more that I can say, in the end, than thank you, or amen. So I thank you. For that moment together in the dark and the cold, brother to brother, and for many other moments, so much else, all the beauty in my life today, I say thank you, I say amen.
Part 2
Shelby’s Bar & Barbeque is gone now. Shelby died and her son took over, and he drank away the profits. The motel is still open, under the same name, but the building next door is boarded up. I pass it sometimes, and I always think of that night with Steve and Tino and Dave, the four of us shouting drunk, with music playing and people dancing, the room veiled in smoke. It was a night of many firsts. My first American beer. My first taste of barbecue. My first laugh at a southern joke. And more than that, it was the first time I began to understand where I was, began to be in the South.
The very first thing, as soon as we walked through the door, was all the moustaches. There was a bar down one side of the room with men ranged along it, and every one of them had a moustache. Some had beards too. Some had long beards, like Gandalf. It was funny. In London at that time, moustaches were suspiciously gay and beards were for artsy types, photographers and fashion people (unless it was a Gandalf beard, in which case you might have mental problems). These men were neither, not by a long shot. They wore blue jeans and cowboy boots and loud checked shirts, and so did the women. There were lots of women, mostly sitting at tables lined opposite the bar—couples ea
ting and drinking. Between the bar and the tables was a wide wooden floor, with waitresses bobbing around in tight T-shirts, and beyond them, under bright lights, an empty stage.
I left the others at the bar and sat down. Immediately a waitress appeared. She had big boobs and a big red smile. “Welcome to Shelby’s,” she said and handed me a menu. “What you drinking?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “What’s good?”
“Everything’s good, I guess.”
The menu didn’t list beers, and I was scanning the bar for clues when a voice spoke behind me. “’Scuse me, buddy. You from England?”
That was how I met Bob and Doris Looney, an old couple from North Carolina. Bob Looney said he’d once been stationed in some town in Wiltshire. Did I know it? Honestly I didn’t, but I decided to say yes. When I cocked my head to think about it, Bob locked eyes on me as if his life somehow hung in the balance. My answer pleased him no end. He smiled fondly at his wife, and then at me, and recommended that I order a Bud.
“You’re in redneck country now,” Bob said, “and Budweiser is what we drink. That or Miller. Well, any damn thing, long as it’s cold. Can’t stand that hot English beer. Loved the people, hated the beer.”
Bob and Doris lived near the coast, where it was flat as a dollar bill. They had come to the mountains to look at the leaves, which they did every fall, and they always stayed at the Shelby Motel because it was right by this restaurant. It meant that Bob didn’t have to drive after supper, which meant that he could drink. “I’m retired!” he kept saying in explanation, like it amazed him, or maybe confused him.
Doris Looney hushed her husband and told me about barbecue, which was one of those fifty-seven-variety type deals. Basically it was slow-cooked meat, pork or beef, but it was done in different ways in different states, sour in North Carolina and sweet here in Tennessee, and could be served in different ways, pulled apart or as ribs, and also came with different sides, like baked beans or coleslaw or collard greens, and you could add all sorts of things too, like vinegar or hot sauce . . . I chose a pulled pork sandwich and fries. It tasted of sugar and grease and smoke, and went perfectly with the beer, which was thin but very cold, and cut through the barbecue like mouthwash. I ordered another Bud, and then another, and then suddenly I was deep in conversation with a man called Wade Henderson.
I don’t remember how the conversation began. Perhaps Wade asked if he could sit at my table, or perhaps he just sat down and I asked him about Lee Buckner. Whatever. We got talking, and I’m glad we did, because Wade told me many things I do remember. He was an older man, tall and lean, wearing overalls and heavy boots. That’s what farmers often wear, and he might have been a farmer, but I don’t think so. He spoke too well. Wade talked slowly but at length, with a sort of offhand attention to detail, throwing in odd remarks to prove a point or for my amusement. You could tell that he enjoyed the light shed by his own words. Maybe he was some kind of professor, or used to be. He’d certainly read a lot. I hope he reads this one day, if he’s still around, which is doubtful. Wade drank the whole time we talked. Straight whiskey, shot after shot. When he’d finished saying something and his glass was empty, he’d raise one finger and another glass would appear at his elbow, and on we’d go. He drank like people smoke—like punctuation.
Wade didn’t know Lee Buckner, but that’s about all he didn’t know. In answer to some question of mine, probably about the Cherokee, he launched into a history of the region, complete with names and dates, and several long asides on “hillbilly culture,” which made his face soften with pride. I learned that the Appalachian Mountains stretched from Canada down to Georgia, and the Southern Appalachians were the highest. A few Spanish conquistadors made it over them, but the British empire stopped on the eastern flank. Here on the western side, the first pioneers set up their own government, called the Watauga Compact, and they fought like wildcats in the Revolutionary War. These people were Scots-Irish and German and English, some of them gung-ho religious, like the Quakers, and others on the run from who-knows-what. There was an old joke about the first thing a pioneer did. English pioneers built a church, Germans built a barn, and the Scots-Irish built a whiskey still. Whatever they built, they had to defend it from the Cherokee, until Andrew Jackson shuffled the Indians off to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears. Some Cherokee remained, in remote places like the Smoky Mountains, and most people around here had some Cherokee blood. Not much colored blood, though. The slave plantations were in West Tennessee and down in the Deep South. Here it was small farms, lots of tobacco, the only cash crop—not counting moonshine, which really took off during Prohibition. Because of moonshine and what city folk considered “poverty,” the hillbilly image arose. There was a grain of truth in it, back in the day, but mostly it was bullshit. Appalachian people were no more dirty and ignorant than anyone else, and they sure weren’t stupid. There was no brain drain here after the Civil War, because everyone owned a bit of land, unlike the crackers farther south. No, what other Americans once called ignorance, and some still called ignorance—it was their own reflection in the mirror of their tiny minds. They had no idea of the wealth of hillbilly culture, which stood apart from the soul-sucking uniformity of modern America. The United States of emptiness. Those people, they were living in a wasteland and didn’t know it. Here, folks knew where they came from, and who they were, and they hated being told what to do.
“We love God and family and guns,” Wade said. “Maybe not in that order, and maybe not all the time, but the three things are related. That’s what the liberals don’t get, those humanist Yankee liberals, and all the dumbass tree huggers in California.”
Wade raised a finger and glanced around, and that’s when I saw Summer, the girl from the motel. She was at the bar with another girl, a blonde. They both wore tight jeans and skimpy denim jackets—identical jackets, except that the left sleeve of Summer’s hung loose. Steve was talking to Summer, and the other girl was leaning forward to hear. I started to get up, but at that moment the ceiling lights dimmed.
The room quietened.
On the stage stood five men, all in white cowboy hats and all holding stringed instruments. They were clean cut and looked about my age, apart from the man in the middle, with a banjo, who was weather-beaten to an ageless brown. He tipped his hat at the crowd and spoke into a microphone.
“Howdy, folks. We’re the Baileyton Bluegrass Boys, from over in Greene County. Real pleased to be here. I’ve heard good things about your Wednesday night pickin’. In fact, feller here told me the bands always do a great job, and have a big time, and that’s what we’re all looking for on this fine evening. Am I right? Let’s see now. How about “Little Maggie”?
And with that, he plucked a few notes on the banjo and the band jumped in. They hit a slowish, rolling sort of groove, with the guitar player singing and the others bunched around him for the choruses. It was a sad and haunting song, a lament for little Maggie, who’d gone off with another man but didn’t seem pleased about it, and was maybe contemplating some act of violence, though in a way that was curiously happy-go-lucky.
Last time I saw little Maggie
She was sitting on the banks of the sea
With a forty-four around her
And a banjo on her knee
The audience loved it. They whistled and stamped until the banjo player bent towards his mike.
“Why, thank you. That tune’s a dandy, ain’t it? So, how you folks doin’? I like this time of year, don’t you? The cool nights, the fall leaves, geese flying south. Geese. There’s a puzzling creature. Geese always fly in a V, and one side of the V is always longer than the other. Ever noticed that? Ever looked up and wondered why? Well, I’ll tell you. One side of the V is longer than the other because . . . there’s more geese in it!”
Everyone laughed and the band struck up another sad song, and so the evening went, with more jokes followed by more melancholy music, and a lot more drinking. Perhaps it was the effect of so much cold
Bud, but the laughter and the sadness seemed to mingle as the night went on, until I felt a kind of wild joy in this wailing music—ecstasy at the summit of sadness.
Or I was just drunk, as I say.
Anyhow, I remember being strangely moved that night, even though I disliked folk music in England, especially fiddle playing, and even though the songs didn’t always make sense. As the band stepped off stage for a break, Wade explained that the oldest songs were originally ballads from Britain. One of the most famous, “Knoxville Girl,” started out as “The Oxford Girl.” Over time the words got changed and jumbled up, and new instruments were added. The mandolin, the banjo. Did I know that the banjo came from West Africa? Slaves brought it over, along with the basic elements of the blues and . . .
Wade raised a finger.
“Well, I won’t get into country music. It’s a whole mess of things, all stirred together. My point is, the wellspring is right here, in these mountains. You can trace a direct line from those old ballads to Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, even Elvis.”
The waitress brought another shot and I stood up, a bit unsteadily. Summer was still at the bar. Steve was now talking to her blonde friend and Summer was alone, just looking around.
Wade and I shook hands.
“Pleased to meet you, son,” he said. “Thanks for listening. I talk up a storm and I know it. You take care now, and don’t get none on you.”
I didn’t know what that meant—still don’t, actually—but I wasn’t about to ask. I walked towards the bar, with Summer’s green eyes blazing at me.
“I didn’t see you at the motel,” I told her. “Thought you’d gone home.”
“Oh, did you want something?”
“No, no,” I said. “I’m fine. I’m more than fine.”
