Purchase

by Christopher K. Doyle

  Well, it sure was something to stand there and watch this feller try to fidget and move and shuffle his feet about as if the whole Earth was too hot and rolling away for him to stand because that was all we’d ever heard Jimmie did. But then he slapped A.D. on the back and said Jimmie had just been in there. That he’d waved a handful of bills that Mr. Ralph Peer gave him for recording and counted it all out for everyone to see and set it at $100 worth. When A.D. looked down at his own handful and knew it to be $50 worth he smiled to know Mr. Ralph Peer had picked out Jimmie and us over all the others to give the top pay—and this was before they even pressed and played the things, the fellow reminded him.

  Pressed what? A.D. said.

  Well, the records, of course. Didn’t he tell you? Up in Camden, New Jersey. That’s where they make them from the original. At the Victor Talking Machine Company. Pressing into grooves your voices and guitars and everything else as thin as can be. Then he lit another handrolled cigarette in a special way with his lighter, snapping it open against the palm of his hand, because he must have seen Jimmie do that, and leaned up to the bar to grab the bottle he’d bought to pour out another shot for each of us and for any other person who happened to be standing nearby. O he certainly had a way, this young fellow, and if I hadn’t known, I would of said it was Jimmie Rodgers standing there before us, for there was something about this fellow that pulled you into the fire of his life. Something burning away as swift as the smoke he shot up out of his mouth and nostrils, trailing away with the sweetened aroma of whatever he offered around. Till even A.D. slumped against the bar as this young fellow—Burl I believe his name was—turned in his Tennessee boots and smiled at us shaking his head. Radio, was all he said then, and waved a half-empty whiskey bottle in A.D.’s face.

  Radio? A.D. said and scratched his head.

  Sure, Burl said smiling, radio, and his high forehead was grease-stained from where he rubbed it with his corduroy sleeve. Jimmie was talking all about it before he left. Radio radio radio. He said it’s changing everything. Even my granddaddy, old Burlhead Mathers—that’s Eck Burlhead to you, you understand (you might have heard of him)—even he said the same thing the other night when we played. And since he was the one that wrote all the songs I sang, and with Mr. Ralph Peer giving me $15 for the lot of them, I tend to believe him mostly. He swaggered then a bit, teetering before us. My old granddaddy sings sweeter than dandelion wine, he said, if you haven’t heard. But then he got quieter as he thought on his granddaddy and shot back his whiskey, slurping it down with a hitch in the back of his throat. My granddaddy, he said again, as the room sort of spun around him, he just can’t come down the mountain no more. That’s all, and he put a sweaty hand on A.D.’s cheek. Cause of the rheumatism, he said. In his hips, and as he pointed to his waist, I could see the fire burning in him again from the whiskey. That’s why he sent me here to sing. Though he sings better than me by a long shot and anyone else here, and he spun around with his hand in the air, pointing from the chairs to the tables to the wall, before wiping it across the bar in one last grand sweeping gesture.

  You don’t say? A.D. said and stared at him through the blue haze of the room. The boy was tilting from his stool now that he’d finally set down after I think he’d forgotten all about keeping up his Jimmie Rodgers routine. He just swayed now side to side and then slumped forward into one sad heap. His head was down in the crossed pyramid of his arms. His boots dangled from his feet, and I couldn’t hear it, but A.D. was inching closer and then whispering in his ear as the young feller said something that I couldn’t quite make out— something about a blind trace in the larch, and a shed high up on a bluff. But I lost the train of it entire as the bar had just then ratcheted up as the bartender clanged the bell saying it was closing time for everyone and for all of them to Git. Well, this was particular hard to hear as most the folks left were musicians and had been turned down by Mr. Ralph Peer that day or the last. So they’d been drinking since then to wash away the sadness of their anonymity. The anonymity of their art, which was their souls, I suppose, and I think the bartender knew it and had a bit of sympathy left for them after all, for he eased off on the bell and set up another round of drinks all free on the till.

  It was awful kind of him and I had a notion to grab another drink myself even if we didn’t find Jimmie traipsing through town as we’d hoped. I was happy enough anyway with something A.D. had done at the end of our audition, after Mr. Ralph Peer needed to support his body physically in hearing us play. You remember. How he’d reached back to his seat easing himself down, and set still for another full minute taking it all in as his technicians scurried about his feet, turning knobs and switches, reconfiguring something with the recording device before whispering up to Mr. Peer who just touched his thick black glasses as A.D. and I watched. We were swaying there before him, our shoulders touching, the meek light coming in the covered up windows. The motes of dust like rays of sun spidered in the hushed space about us, with the light now rising all golden and glorious and impossibly perfect in our minds for what we’d just accomplished. When, in no uncertain terms, Mr. Peer shifted in his brown leather loafers, cleared his throat, and asked in his high-nasal twang: Well, fellas, what do you call yourselves?

  The Hardy Family, A.D. said and he didn’t even hesitate. It was right there on the tip of his tongue as if all he’d ever wanted the whole time was to say it and confirm it, our presence to the man, of who we were. And I looked on him after that because it was my last name and the last name of my Annie and Lucy girl. A name I hadn’t heard spoken since back in the basement of the Peabody, when I might have mumbled it in my sleep, or when Mr. Vickers come down to reprimand me for something. But hearing it said this time was different. This saying stirred something deeper in me with how sure A.D. was and confident in its proclamation. As of an oath or assurance of some kind. A truth, maybe, to be commended. I can’t say, but whatever it was stirred something in me considerable. Something whole and warmer than I’d felt in years being who I was, and working how I’d worked, and I thought on A.D. then with such dignity and trust, as on no other white man I’d ever encountered, and still feel that way, and you can take that to whoever you want to verify it with, too.

  Well, okay, Mr. Peer said, and the blonde-haired woman beside him was already scribbling in black ink our name across a brown envelope and licking the flap shut with all our precious information tucked inside.

  THE NEXT MORNING MY MIND WAS A FOG. My thoughts were like rusty nails in a glass jar. Or copper pennies. I turned my head and the squelch of it all rattled my eyeballs. When I gathered the nerve to peek from beneath my eyelids, I saw the road rise into the Blue Ridge parting smoky treetop clouds into the heavens. We had wound our way up considerable from Bristol, but when we dropped back in a switchback, crossing down along the ridge, I could see the town laid out far below like a smudge of haze and zigzags and tiny church spires. I turned to A.D. and all I seen was the whiskey bottle in one hand and the steering wheel gripped in the other. His eyes were such a mess of red cracked lines I had to touch the wheel myself to make sure we were still living and breathing.

  It’s alright, A.D. said, not looking at me, his eyes unblinking from the maze of road winding down and up and around and through that blessed ridge. I got it set, he said. I got everything set.

  Well, I knowed right away that was what old Jimmie Rodgers had said to us at the audition and that A.D. had taken it to heart as something meant for him, as of an insult or slander, though I never understood why. But here he was in the early dawn driving into the back country past even the parts I used to know, and still he drove and only looked on occasion at the back label of his whiskey bottle where he’d scribbled some directions that was taking us farther into the blueness.

  But I didn’t mind. Not in the state I was in. I just leaned my head against the seat and looked mournful at the blueness of the air, at how it changed and moved and flowed off those mountains the closer we came in to them. Or, w
hen a random assortment of dales and glens would spring up as if out of nowhere when we turned the next hill. It just went on and on and was perfect, and I remembered how it had all looked like such a vagueness my whole life, how it had hovered as a distillation of some faraway color or spirit. But right up close it was something else entire. Something as a creature that stole through you and set your sights reeling. A creature that could nestle down and turn inside till the color you felt for yourself was washed out and drained away and there was only blue left behind. Only the blue left through and through. For surely it was a lonesome and exalted and perishable thing, all of it, and I had to wipe away the tears to see it as he sped on before finally stopping below the slightest bit of trail-head that poked out from some thick briar. A particular patch must have been worked back over the years by mules or horses or such, for there were strands of the faintest fur hanging in the thorns that swayed in the breeze. Strands that would not shake loose for anything as A.D. pointed and looked intently at the back of his whiskey bottle.

  There, he said and as he got out I hadn’t realized it yet, but he’d slung his guitar over his shoulder as he took another long pull from the bottle.

  There what? I said and slumped out of the car myself. My eyes were splintered and cracked but thankful that the blue mist hung low and wet. I could rub it into my pores and sockets to feel the wetness as a relief for all the dryness the whiskey had left in me.

  That’s where we’ve set ourselves to go, he said and smiled his thin-lipped smile, slapping my shoulder. I had no earthly notion as to what he meant, nodding as he did to the loose-swaying hair on the briar. But I started up after him anyways, and stuffed a few wet fern leaves into my cheeks to keep from feeling that slow watery drip that begins and never stops in your mouth after an all-night drunk like the one we’d just had. But then he was off. Up up up into the fog, and it was as if we strode through a ghostworld then. One I knew and had grown up in but which was now changed by my mind and age and by the light that bent and refracted in that strange mixture of heat and mist.

  Wait, I said, but he didn’t hear and took another step forward and wisps were all there were. Wisps of light and sound. I could hear a thwack thwack thwack echoing up farther, moving away from me, and took a step toward it. But it was gone and when I returned to my starting point it dissolved until I stood lonesome and lost and closed my eyes. For it was just as easy to orient myself with them closed as keeping them open to all that emptiness. A.D.? I said. But there was nothing. A.D.? I repeated, and a breath of that ghostworld arose and caressed my face, and for a moment I saw the trail stretch out before me though I could not tell if it rose or fell. I was buffeted on both sides by fog and could not orient myself otherwise but went on, balancing as if on the precipice of the universe itself. Something formless and hazy felt strung below me, like a ribbon tied between two poles. Stretching out my arms, I may have walked like that for half-an-hour, though truly I cannot say. Time had slowed into something imperceptible that you could not count on nor begin to fathom. It was nothing but the ridge and fog now, the beauty and strength of it, having constructed its own sense entire out there, its own sense of world and power and peace.

  It was only when I heard the voices that I stopped—for it was the only human thing I could hear besides my racing heart. A swinging screen door slapped shut and then A.D.’s boots shuffled along a porch. I was below it but listening to the voices and then the guitar strings brought me in closer to their origin. They started out slow and disjointed and I knew it was A.D. starting on something low, some dark idea or order. But then another brighter hand began and the tune lifted up and tilted over and wove shimmering through the fog as if it had attached itself to my very ears to tug me along, guiding my feet. O it was a racing and silvery sound like rushing water in a mountain stream, and then the voice of the man A.D. played with started low and gravely before rising through a series of twists and pitches to stand outside of the whole harmony, before mounting up against the notes falling and rising as the mist tugged and swirled against my face. He chanted about an ocean the closer I crept, and it was sad to hear him cry out for the waters of the world he would never see. It was a renunciation. Or lament. As if he was renouncing himself and his entire life, even as he cried that much more to be part of a world he could not touch. Nor touch his love. O it was most lonesome and awful to hear, and the tears welled in my eyes to learn of the storm that besieged the boat he sailed upon, sweeping it full of sea wrack and foam as it was dragged into the cold dark depths. O the ocean, I heard and it echoed in my heart and I could not help it. But I looked at the mist-shrouded hands I held up then because I was strumming along in the mist to the song, stringing notes as even A.D. and the man strummed louder and raced off toward their echoing conclusion. Of course it was then that the mist finally lifted, for as I stood below the porch in the front yard, tears streaming down my face, the man who’d sung those heart-pounding lyrics almost fell over from the shock of seeing me there so close and moved as if delivered by the fog.

  Ginny, the old man bellowed and he had to lean against his guitar, setting it on the porch to keep himself upright he was so heavy and his legs like two wooden poles. Ginny! he hollered. There’s a nigger come in the fog. There’s a nigger come to get us.

  XII

  Old Burlhead Mathers ~ Something else entire ~ Me as emissary ~ Their own special calling and language ~ The black hole of his mouth ~ The current of his undertaking ~ Mr. Yancey Jakes ~ The thinking of his eyes and mind ~ Bristol and his scars ~ The names

  WELL A.D. DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TIME to tell the old man (old Burlhead Mathers, A.D. later told me) we was only there to listen and play the songs he’d already written and given to his own grandson. The man was in such a tizzy to see me approach through the fog he shut down his merriment and general demeanor from only moments before. His big white head shook and steamed up red and hot to find himself so exposed to such a one as me. Then as the Missus Ginny Mathers strode out, almost as fat and wobbly as her husband, she handed him a shotgun that the old man cocked and pointed at me, before squinting into the mist that was fractured and brilliant and stunning to see in the warm mountain air.

  Did you bring him? he growled at A.D. He didn’t turn his barrel from me nor his dead unblinking eye, which was as small and pinched as a raisin in the doughy loaf of his face.

  Sir? A.D. said. He’d stretched both hands upright at the first appearance of the shotgun and was shaking now as the sweat started to bead in anxious pellets on his forehead.

  The nigger, old Burlhead said. You brought him to hear one of the songs my own grandson hasn’t even heard, when I thought it was just you and me playing. He spit then, a brown line of juice to the porch from the small pouch he gnawed in the hole of his cheek. You lied to me, son.

  I never, A.D. said. But the gun had swung upon him and A.D. had already backed up as soft and slow as he could, creeping down backwards without ever taking his eyes off the end of that cold black barrel.

  Yeah, you never, old Burlhead said. You never heard nothing, and then he wobbled to his door all the while keeping his squinty black eyes on the two of us as we backed up to the edge of the hill before the bright slapping sound of the screen door banged shut. A.D. turned to say something though I never quite heard the words, but could have easily guessed what he meant to mention.

  Sorry, I said, and stood there a moment longer watching for he had cocked his head already to take in something else entire, something that was just now rising below the property. But it was always like that with him, wasn’t it? You couldn’t slam one door in his face nor threaten him at the end of a gun before another something come into focus like a beacon or signal that only he could understand. Because already he was off before I could even say anything for what just happened with old Burlhead.

  Tumbling down through jimson weed and tamarack, A.D. followed another muddy trail that wound around to a smokehouse or shack where we supposed some convocation or conjuring was occ
urring. The voice inside was just as loud and forceful as a gale wind that would have stripped you raw if you were unfortunate enough to stand before it. Of course A.D. was never afraid of nothing like that and inched closer and rubbed his hands expectant like as he looked through a crack in the weather-bleached clapboard and heard a few wooden blocks scratch out a rhythm as a foot stomped the dirt floor. Then he turned to me with only his hand and thrust me forward. You, he said, and I hadn’t any idea why I was needed at such a moment as that and was about to remind him of old Burlhead up there with his shotgun. But when I inched closer and saw the face of the voice proclaiming some injustice or other with a tune he carried himself—without even the slightest bit of pitchyness or wavering tone—I knew why A.D. had sent me in as emissary: the man was as blind as any I’d ever seen and as black as me and more. His hair was wild and spotted gray and billowed up into all sorts of knotted fits and starts to which he could never hope to see nor tame. And so he just swayed there on top of a turned over milk crate as he sang. O he was a sight to see. With how he seemed to leak out of the seams of his frayed overalls, teetering over the edges of his worn-out cowboy boots as he continued to work while he sang. For he must have set there often tending the fire dug right into the ground. He had kindled it low and steady with wet alder and hickory that sent up a nice smooth smoke for the strung hides of rabbit and coon and trout and whatever else he’d caught and gutted and tied from end to end in the rafters.