"Please stay!" Jesse begged. "We can be frien's all summer long." His bright blue eyes were wide with excitement.
Roe's glance strayed over to Meggie. Her expression was cold, and her blue-gray eyes so chilling that he could almost feel the stab of icicles at two paces. Clearly, she was far from delighted by this turn of events.
"I don't want to make a nuisance of myself," he said somewhat uneasily.
"You can help around to earn your keep," Onery declared. "Lord knows we need another hand around this place."
"I know nothing about farming."
"Ye can learn cain't ye?" the older man asked.
"Well certainly I could, but perhaps . . ." Meggie was glaring at him so frostily he couldn't finish his sentence. Once more Roe pulled his boodle bag out of his trousers. "I can pay."
Onery snorted. "We don't need yer money, boy. We need yer back."
Roe cleared his throat nervously. "I don't believe that I—"
"Don't ye worry. We'll start you out easy and we'll have those city-boy hands toughened up before the summer's half over."
The old man's tone seemed to settle the matter. Roe glanced over at the young man who claimed him as a friend. Jesse would be disappointed if he didn't stay. Onery might well be insulted. He needed them both.
Unwillingly he turned to the remaining person. "Miss Best, I—" he began.
"Oh, don't mind Meggie none," Onery said. "She'll be grateful for the help and I promise you, her cooking is something that you kindy get accustomed to after a while. She don't poison us ever' day." The old man howled with laughter and slapped his thigh.
Meggie's face was pale, her jaw set tight. The deed was done. Her father had invited the man and the only thing to do was to make the best of it.
"You'd need to stay right here," Onery continued. "Why, how else are you two gonna make up your little spat if you ain't around to sweet-talk her some more?"
Meggie thought that Granny Piggott had said it best. "Sweet-talking menfolk is a bit like razorback hogs. A smart woman knows to leave ' em alone.
As Meggie picked up the last of the dinner dishes from the table and emptied the scraps into the feed bucket, she remembered those words. She'd been mistaken. J. Monroe Farley, not a prince at all but some kind of professional man from that Harvard College place, was setting up his Ediphone on the far side of the room. He was the sweetest-talking man that she'd ever seen. And he'd had an openmouthed kiss, a good laugh—and a bad bellyache at her expense. She was determined to leave him alone. She had to, for the sake of her good sense and her heart.
"The Edison phonograph," he was explaining to Jesse, as if her brother could actually understand, "is one of Thomas Edison's inventions. You do know Thomas Edison?"
Jesse's face was completely blank.
"He's not from around here," her father stated.
"No, sir," Roe agreed. He appeared a little nonplussed.
Jesse was seated on the floor next to the machine. He picked up his long-stemmed clay pipe from the tobacco saucer on the hearth and tapped it thoughtfully.
"Don't you dare light that thing in this house!" Meggie's voice was startling and shrill even to herself.
"I'm just holding it, Meggie," her brother insisted. "I ain't done nothing to be scolded about."
Roe and her father were both looking at her curiously. She usually was so even tempered.
"Women, they get their humors in a snit when they's a gentleman in the house," Onery told him.
Meggie turned back to her dirty dishes, determined not to pay attention to any of them. Humors in a snit! Indeed. It was as if her father was trying to bait her.
"Mr. Edison designed a way to capture sound on wax cylinders," Roe began again. He held up one of the objects for the men to examine.
"Looks like a corncob weaving spool," Onery said. "It's made of wax you say?"
"Yes, sir," Farley answered. "It's just regular wax like candles or sealant. But it can catch whatever you say or sing and keep it until you want to hear it again."
"Why would you want to hear yourself again?" Best asked.
Roe didn't have an answer for that. "Why, posterity," he said finally.
Meggie turned back to look at them. Her brother and father were staring at him blankly waiting for him to explain. Instead he began setting up the machine.
"I want to demonstrate how it works for you," he told them. "Once you see how this new machine can accurately represent your own voice, and play it back to you, you'll be very enthusiastic to participate."
"We've already said we are gonna sing fer you," Onery told him. "And we've promised to introduce you around the mountain so folks won't think you're a stranger. I don't know why you'd be needin' us to be enthusiastic about it."
Roe didn't answer, but he did smile and then glanced over toward Meggie.
She blushed furiously. She'd be dad-burned and blasted before she'd show one more iota of interest whatsoever in this sweet-smelling, fancy-dressed city man, his strange machine, or his silly songs. She looked away. Saving their sounds for posterity! That was the biggest pile of foolishness she'd ever heard. Every song on the mountain was known to every soul that lived there. They sang them when they were happy or blue or grieving. They taught them to their children and those children taught them to theirs.
Writing them down! As if folks was likely to forget. It would be like writing down how to wash dishes or slaughter a hog. Everybody already knew how to do it, nobody'd ever want to read about how.
Still, the machine was curious and Roe Farley the finest looking man she'd ever seen. Meggie couldn't quite keep her mind and her attention on her dish basin and her dirty tins.
"This is the horn," Roe said as he attached a large metal piece to the top of the machine.
To Meggie it looked like a tin trumpet only it was black and shiny.
"You sing or play into the horn and the sound is recorded onto the wax cylinders."
"It must be kindy hard to get into that horn to sing." Jesse appeared confused.
"I 'magine it's even tougher to play a fiddle in there," Onery added with a laugh.
"It's not a perfect machine," Roe said, smiling. "But if you put your mouth or your fiddle as close to the horn as possible, and you sing or play loudly, the machine picks up the sound."
Both men appeared curious, but unconvinced. Roe cranked up the Edison phonograph.
"Come on, Jesse, say something into the horn."
The blond young man hesitated. "Ain't got nothing to say to it."
"Just tell it your name, like you did to me this afternoon."
His face screwed up with displeasure at the handsome city man. Meggie knew that look well: her brother was sure to refuse. But Jesse, appearing as if he were about to take a dose of summer tonic, leaned forward toward the big black trumpet.
"My name's Jesse Best. But folks call me Simple Jess," he said.
"Wonderful!" Roe was clearly delighted. "Now wait just a minute."
The entire Best family watched as Roe deftly unscrewed the sharp tip that cut into the wax and replaced it with a rounder, curved piece.
"That round thing won't cut the wax like the other knife did," Onery said.
"It's not really a knife," Roe answered. "It's called a stylus. It's made of sapphire. The sharp tip is used to cut when we're recording. Now we're just going to play it back."
Roe cranked up the machine again and gently set the round-tipped stylus against the turning wax spindle. For a moment there was complete silence in the room. Then the machine gave forth a croaky, gravelly sound.
"My name's Jesse Best. But folks call me Simple Jess."
Meggie gave a little cry of shock and dropped her wet dishrag on her bare foot.
Onery slapped his thigh. "Well, I'll be switched!"
Jesse jumped up and moved away so quickly he knocked his chair to the floor. He was pointing to the machine with disbelief.
"That thing is named Jesse Best, too?" His question was incredulous.
"No, no," Roe calmed him. "The machine is just saying back to you what you said."
"That's some kind of contraption you got there," Onery told him with genuine admiration.
"But it said, 'My name is Jesse Best.'" The young man still looked confused and agitated.
"It said that because that's what you said," Roe told him gently. "It's not named Jesse Best, you are."
Jesse wasn't quite mollified. "Well, what is its name then?"
"It's called an Ediphone."
"Ediphone?" Jess had never heard of such a thing. "What kind of name is that?"
"Well," Roe said thoughtfully. "It's a derivation, I suppose, a name made up of two names."
Jesse sat back down in his chair, but he still watched the Ediphone warily.
"You see the machine is a type of phonograph made by Mr. Edison. Phono means sound in Greek. So, he called it an Ediphone. I guess it's kind of a nickname." Roe caught Meggie's eye and smiled. "It's like your sister's name is Margaret May and you call her Meggie. The Edison phonograph is called an Ediphone."
"It's a pretty strange name," Jesse said.
"It's a pretty strange machine," Onery Best put in.
Roe nodded. "With the Ediphone, I can make faithful reproductions of the actual performance of the folk songs. Performance is a major portion of what makes the songs important. Just writing down the words and the composition is not enough. I want to have the most faithful rendering of these works possible."
"Well, it sounds kindy croaky," Onery said.
"But it listens, Pa," Jesse told him. "It listens to what we sing or say. I'm going to call it a Listening Box."
Onery smiled at Roe and then turned once more to his son. "Jesse, get your fiddle and play a song for that there Listening Box."
The young man hesitated for only a minute. Then from up above the pie safe, he retrieved a fine old fiddle, varnished richly with red oil and polished to a bright sheen.
Meggie noticed Roe looked surprised. Clearly, he hadn't expected such a fine instrument in such a modest home. Jesse's fiddle was beautifully made with its small neck and a fine scroll. But more than that, the instrument had perfect tone. Even when played loudly, it held a purity that was rare in these mountains—as rare as her brother's talent at playing it.
Jesse'd been fiddling for most of his life. The instrument had belonged to Onery, handed down from his own father. Casually the young man now propped the chin piece on his collarbone and held it in place. He closed his eyes. Meggie watched her brother with pride; the smell of pine tar and rosin filled the room, spreading a warm, secure feeling over her. It was hope and home and beauty and love.
Grabbing up the redwood bow, Jesse drew it down slowly across the e-string. A sweet soulful sound filled the room as Jesse adjusted the fine tuner at the base of the bridge. His ear was excellent and his pitch was perfect, and since those were the only gifts heaven had seen fit to give him, the young man wanted for no others. As he continued to tune the other strings, he walked toward the strange, unsightly machine with the big tin trumpet poised upon it.
He looked over at Roe and then at his father. "What do you want me to play?"
"Whatever you want," was Roe's answer.
His father was more thoughtful. "Play 'Barbry Ellen,'" he said. "You play that one mighty nice."
Moving up close to the horn of the Ediphone, Jesse drew the bow across the fiddle strings and began to play an up-tempo version of the sweet sadness of "unworthy Barbara Allen."
Delighted, Roe rifled through his portable desk for pen and paper as Onery began to sing.
"In Scarlet Town where I was born
There was a fair maid dwellin'
Made ever' youth cry well away,
Her name was Barbry Ellen."
Meggie watched as the stranger's fingers literally flew across the paper writing the words as her father sang them. She'd never seen a human move a pen so fast. In fact, she would hardly have thought it possible. Meggie could write. But her sparse, graceful penmanship took much time and effort. Roe's hands moved across the paper with the same quickness and surety with which Jesse's fingers worked the fiddle's fingerboard.
The dishes now completely forgotten, Meggie stood by the kitchen table, listening to the beauty of her brother's fiddling, the deep vibrancy of her father's tenor voice, and watching the most interesting man she had ever seen, the man she'd thought for a while to be her very own prince, writing quick as a minute in the bright yellow glow of the tallow candles as if he belonged there.
"'Farewell,' she said, 'ye virgins all,
And shun the fault I fell in;
Henceforth take warning of the fall
Of unworthy Barbry Ellen.'"
As the last strains of the fiddle died away, Roe sighed in appreciation. "Beautiful."
Onery and Jesse both chuckled. "It's a right pretty tune," Onery agreed. "And there ain't none on the mountain that can fiddle as well as my Jesse."
Roe was smiling and nodded. "He's right, you know, Jesse. I've heard the fiddle played all over the world and I've never heard anyone better than you."
The young man blushed and shrugged. "It ain't nothing."
"Oh, but it is, Jesse," Meggie insisted as she came forward to lay a loving hand on her brother's shoulder. "You've a wonderful talent. You should be proud."
He shook away the compliment. "It ain't like I can read or cipher or something. I just hear the music in my head and it comes out my fingers."
“That's something that a lot of people who can read and cipher can never do," Roe told him.
Jesse was clearly embarrassed by this praise. "You just say that 'cause you're my frien'."
"I am your friend," Roe answered. "And friends always tell each other the truth."
“They do?"
Roe nodded.
Jesse's blue eyes widened and his face beamed with pleasure.
"Let's hear what it sounds like on the machine," Roe suggested.
Meggie didn't even feign disinterest as Farley changed the stylus again. Maybe the stranger was right about the Ediphone. Once the mountain folks had heard the wonderful new machine, maybe they would help him collect the music.
As the stylus moved along the grooves in the wax, the music flowed out of the horn. Her father's singing was almost too faint to hear, but the sweet strains of Jesse's violin sounded almost as good in the reproduction as it had when he'd played it.
"Is that how my fiddle sounds?" Jesse asked curiously.
"Well, you sound better than that," Roe told him. "But it's close."
Jesse shook his head in disbelief. 'This machine is like the magic in one of Meggie's stories."
He turned to smile with pride at his sister.
"Meggie's stories?" Roe asked.
The young man nodded. "Meggie, she reads real good. And she don't just read the Bible, neither. She's got a book of them fairy tales they're called. Sometimes she reads them to me."
Her cheeks were bright red with the stain of embarrassment. Meggie began to move back from the men and toward the dirty dishes she'd left behind.
"They's magic in them fairy tales," Jesse continued. "Things can happen that a feller wouldn't believe could never happen."
"So I understand," Roe agreed.
"And this machine of yours, it's like that. A feller wouldn't never believe that it can listen and then talk and play near as good as me."
"No, Jesse," Roe assured him. "The machine isn't magic. The machine can't talk or play at all. It simply records you and plays what it's heard back. Magic is only in fairy tales."
Chapter Seven
FROM THE JOURNAL OF J. MONROE FARLEY
April 17, 1902 Marrying Stone, Arkansas
The family who have given me shelter are an interesting yet peculiar trio. Their speech and ways are old and curious and I find myself observing them as if they were living fossils. They are a musical family and have agreed to help with my work and to introduce me to other people nearby. The farme
r himself at one time made his living in these hills playing the fiddle. His son is simpleminded, but is a very accomplished fiddler and has in his repertoire a wide range of tunes that he has begun to share with me.
On Friday next we are set to attend what the Bests call "the Literary." This is apparently a local social gathering where music and cultural events take place. I am very anxious to attend, but find much here in this wilderness homestead to draw my interest. It is as if I have stepped back into time.
The typical day begins with breaking fast before dawn. The personal habits of the Best family are difficult for me to accustom myself to. On the first evening I asked of Jesse, the son, directions to the privy. The young man looked momentarily confused and then explained in his simple way that the homestead did not boast a privy.
Subsistence farming in this rough, unbroken stretch of mountain that the Best family calls home proves to be laborious, backbreaking work. Due to the farmer's age and bad leg, the toughest and the dirtiest jobs fall to the younger and stronger son. And, to my dismay, the young man eagerly shares these chores with me.
Although I find the backwoods life interesting in an intellectual context, I can't help but think wistfully of Cambridge and the bustle of eager students and the musty aged smell of the library. I am eager to return to the world that I know.
The family also has a daughter. Her name is Margaret.
Chapter Eight
Roe’s muscles ached and the back of his neck was red and scorched from the sun. He carried the bucket of fresh eggs he had collected from the wily and cantankerous old hens into the cabin.
For three days he'd been living and working like an Ozark farmer. It wasn't a role he had taken up without a bit of protest. He had tried more than once to pay Onery Best for his room and board. Cash money was clearly in short supply. Still, the old farmer had insisted that work was what they needed. So with a willingness that was born of years of fitting in at schools and among strangers, Roe had "put his hand to the plow" both figuratively and literally.
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