If you’ll recall, Circe was the Greek goddess of magic, a sorceress who transformed her enemies into animals and grotesque images. She was the daughter of Helios, the god of the sun, and there was a certain symbolism in my discovering Runnymede’s location when I seen the poster in Spartanburg, South Carolina when we rolled in. Yes, Spartanburg, as Spartan as my existence was then for sure, for Runnymede was playing not far off that night in Asheville, North Carolina, and I just about jumped at the chance to see him. O friends, I knew it was a sign for sure: Asheville—a smoldering name of a place if ever I heard one—appropriate enough for how Runnymede had burned up our lives. Burning up any last chance I had at making a life for myself with my family. And as I talked with a porter I knew there on the line, and who I’d done a favor for years before, he took over for me in no time, and seemed sympathetic to my case. It was easy. I just stayed over after the Crescent pulled out, bought my ticket on the Asheville Special and pulled into the Biltmore Depot no less than an hour later as the old fire inside me about Runnymede’s deceitfulness flared up to boil my resolve anew. And as I started off to see him, I had no earthly idea what I might do.
XXXV
A televised affair ~ Isis ~ A golden ledge in the air ~ Time and chance and order ~ The jacket and the smoke ~ Some new doorway ~ A wand of enchantment ~ In different shades and different times ~ My last purchase ~ Cracks ~ Seams in the grand scheme ~ Like shivered sparks ~ In the ridge
IT WAS A TELEVISED AFFAIR, IF YOU CAN BELIEVE IT. At the Isis Theater, if you can further believe it, for now the symbolism and incidence of the gods stands to swarm my account entire. Isis, if you’ll recall, was an Egyptian patron of nature and magic, a protector of slaves and sinners, and also the goddess of children. Children. No, the significance did not escape me even as the fire inside me burned to see this fiend banished. This fiend I blamed for destroying my greatest chance of bringing the Hardy Family’s name unto the world, of seeing my wife and child returned to me, the child I hoped to protect above any other. And as I bought my ticket and entered the theater, I seen right away how it was outfitted for the musical performance.
A host of television cameras had been set up for a local broadcast and placed like great hulking obelisks in the aisles and balconies. So that as I went up and up to my seat (for I was still colored, after all), I sat in the back row throughout the whole first act and bided my time. I was calm! Patient even, for when the emcee appeared and said his piece about what an amazing headliner they had coming on, I only stood and started down the long spiral staircase, and then the long center aisle, after taking a deep calming breath, as Runnymede McCall and the Piedmont Pipers took the stage.
He was as big and brash as I remembered, smiling all the while, waving to the crowd and grabbing his guitar. He moved as I’d seen him move backstage at the Opry. I looked and it was as if he never touched down. His feet just floated like all those horses at the track. He was as mythical and absolute as ever and seemed not a day older nor an ounce weaker and I shuddered as I moved through the throngs of people standing in the aisles to get a better glimpse of the man, applauding after each number as if their lives depended on it. The excitement and appearance of the cameras, mixed with the great man’s celebrity, seemed to charge the crowd to no end. Runnymede’s prominence had only increased over the years as more albums were put out, as more shrines and tabernacles hosted him, as first the radio and then all the TV screens couldn’t contain him no longer. So that even here, in a movie theater, his image was being broadcast to the four corners for his influence had reached such proportion that only the latest and greatest technology could transmit it.
Moving from row to row as a shadow must (just as my race had throughout the centuries), I reached the front stage where the camera stood stock still and centered on the man as he sung. Then before I knew what I was doing, I had my hands on the side of the lens, even as the cameraman still stared into the back hood of it and concentrated his focus on Runnymede as he sang and pranced about. It would have only taken a moment to step out in front and start the harangue building inside me about the fiendish nature of the man. To tell the world about the duplicity and contempt he carried for those foolish enough to purchase his sound, with his false, tinny voice assaulting and deafening me as he sung and preened and then leveled his wide white chin as if resting it on a golden ledge in the air. O I was there now. The moment had reduced itself to a script that seemed etched into time itself. As if I’d stood on this spot before. That I’d touched and moved through the same air in some lost past or revelation, and that even the next step and the next were all ordained and ordered—so that after all this—I’d come to the one conclusion drawn up for me to complete.
Moving out from the camera, I waded amongst the people standing in the front rows and followed a path to arrive at the edge of the stage. Runnymede reared above me and his shadow from the spotlight was thrown and dazzled and loomed ever closer, until I felt its darkness touch upon me even in the dim theater, for there was a purchase now of time itself upon me. A purchase of years too, of the pattern unfolding again and again, for we were one now—him and me, the pursuer and pursued—as time and chance and order aligned. So that as I looked upon him, I could see the pale white veneer of his skin in the footlights. The sickly shine of him. I could have reached up in an instant for his leg, to pull him down into the pit of the world where he’d left me, where I’d been so disposed and put upon for years. Though as I contemplated it, I wondered if this was perhaps his ultimate irony? Had you purchased me and my enmity with your words, Runnymede? Had you purchased this pattern of loss and commerce and captivity that seemed born in my kind, of finding ourselves forever laden to you and your kind, to a world of moneylenders and moneychangers and usurpers? To those taken and those who took, from those that were made by the rank dealmakers? Well? Well?
I wanted to shout to him but knew there would be no answer, nothing sufficient to my question. I’d already felt taken myself by the pattern unwinding as all those images and ideas swarmed before me, and yet still he smiled and sang and stepped with a lightness and ease of grace that spoke of its own time-honored dance. Something crafted and knowing. Something orchestrated and ancient, and as I watched, my own hands trembled to perform this one last deed, to cross this last threshold, to drag him down finally as he’d dragged me and A.D. down before. And yet, even as I inched closer, I wondered if this was what he’d wanted all along, for me to lash out at him and reveal the grandeur of his own grace when held to my own ugliness and race? But friends, something miraculous happened. Something stopped me cold and took my breath, and I don’t know if it was the silent moment that came over the theater after Runnymede stopped between numbers to dab his forehead with a scarf, or if it was the first strains of the last song he played that brought me from my stupor. But I took the moment to loosen the embossed buttons of my white Pullman Porter jacket, and threw it up on stage.
For I’d seen the footlights, I’d seen them shine on him with a purity anachronous to his making, and I took it upon myself to darken his path. Just as A.D.’s had been darkened by his own boots, kicking out those lights at the Opry. And friends, my aim was true, for it landed at his feet. There it glistened and gleamed and steamed and smoked a bit in the footlights, as if unleashing a spreading, mystic potion—and for the life of him—he couldn’t move to see nor smile his soul-stealing smile. As he kicked and flailed with his boots to remove the smoking jacket, I seen the first faint crease and wrinkle in the clean white edge of his face. O the smoke, friends, the smoke! It wouldn’t leave him! The jacket and smoke made such an effect upon him he seemed changed by the white blanket of it. As if some older force was only now reclaiming him bit by bit, negating his style and swagger, warping his cold bluster, so that as he tried to stomp on the smoking sleeves, he couldn’t snuff it out. And as the brass buttons glared up into his eyes, I like to think the word PORTER embossed upon each circle was all he saw. That I’d finally assisted him through some ne
w doorway of chance, into a greater redemption or rescinding on his part. For as if directed by my own hand, which I raised and moved in the air as if a wand of enchantment, Runnymede and the Piedmont Pipers stopped the song they’d begun and played The Ballad of Clara May instead.
I kid you not.
As sure as I was standing there, the first refrain washed over me and as I stared into the dark unblinking eyes of the man who’d tormented me all those years, I knew I’d beaten him. That though others might rise to follow him, at least he was done if the emotion of these songs—the ones born on the ridge— could course through and guide him, too. He was finished, felled by some darker hand, lost to some true vine or strain of art that had risen, and as I stood there enchanted, I smiled even wider as his encore began and the Misericordia Blues echoed into the rafters. The whole time I couldn’t hear nothing but A.D.’s absent voice in the theater. A.D. singing along with him. A.D. reverberating and hollering in the ether. As the tune ended, and I applauded with the rest, and walked out through the buzzing streets of Asheville, my heart burned to know the music had won out. Even if Runnymede had never said our names by point of record. Even if he’d never attributed the songs to us per se. Because I knew that didn’t matter anymore. Hell, none of it mattered anymore—for there was no voice—and probably never had been.
There was no one to lay claim to the songs in the end. No one could force them or control their course when the land wanted to sing out, when the land wanted to be heard. As I made my way back to the Biltmore Depot, and glided along as I went, not touching down nor stumbling in the least, I couldn’t tell where my own voice started or ended—or where anyone’s did, for that matter— and wondered if that was what A.D.’s confession at the Opry had been about all along? His revelation of sorts, even after he’d tried his whole life to make his voice his own. I couldn’t say. But only knew that authenticity and distinction were just words we said to delude ourselves, to give some false satisfaction to our deeds. We’ve only been writing the same thing all this time, all of us, just in different shades and times, moods and forms. And when I rode back on the Asheville Special, and found my way onto the next Crescent—but riding as a passenger this time, as a particular paying passenger—I knew this ticket was my last purchase, the last. Considering I’d paid my dues. I’d served my time, and was moving into something else now, something new and unknown and unending.
Because I guess I just wanted to see the ridge again, to see that blueness rise into the evening, to make another circuit. Always another circuit. I knew enough porters and had worked enough lines to ride perpetual, to ride free and easy and follow the pattern and give up my purchase on the whole idea of buying and of being bought, of acquiring and of chasing fame, now that my moment with the real and imagined Runnymede had put all of that to rest. There was no doubt in me now, not about Runnymede’s system of commerce, on that grand purchase of deed and time, for you can’t hope to ever beat it working inside it. Shoot, at least not with how they’ve got it set up—by the same ones who profit the most from it. No, the only way to succeed is to be either very rich or very poor because the middle does all the work. The middle ain’t got nowheres to go. But at least there are cracks now and then. Seams in the grand scheme, sending out emotions and songs like shivered sparks along our own weave of sanity and truth. And since the rich have to worry all the time about staying rich, I determined right then and there to be very poor, for the very poor don’t have to worry about nothing, except maybe eating. And as far as I could tell, staying poor was about as easy a thing to do in this land—you just had to give up everything you had. So I gave up my books and position and things, and focused on my memories instead, on the feelings and colors and images. Like those lights at the Opry exploding beneath A.D.’s boots. Or Runnymede standing in the camera’s piercing gaze, his imported leather boots smudged and scuffed by the white smoking potion of my coat, even as the lights blazed on above him. The lights, the lights. Always the lights. With how they flared and sputtered and dimmed only at the end. Because I can still see them there, even as the Cardinal pulls in with a whoosh of air and steam and smoke and Chicago’s lit up like a thousand hovering fireflies above the ridge.
Ah, the ridge, my ridge. Always there no matter what. Always waiting no matter where I wander or roam. Always a memory like a landscape scraped clean of any circumstance or sin. Because it’s too big and true to be at fault for anything: the land, echoing up with a sound of stream and sun and stone. Stretching out with a scope and size to recompose my world no matter where the tracks may lead me—maybe even to California to look for them—who knows?
But always I dip back to the ridge. Always I come back to see the high ranging trees and forgotten valleys. I go back and ride the rails and keep the path. Descending along the shadow of the ridge into Roanoke, transferring on the Southern to tip my cap and haul myself to Bristol. To see it all through the window removes me from it to be watchful like maybe I was never watchful before, to go softly and release all the bitterness in my soul.
For Runnymede once said it wouldn’t matter none if they returned. That love wasn’t enough. That the circuit would still be complete, that the purchase would hold from when I’d sent myself away from them to begin with. And I say okay to that now. I do. For he didn’t figure that just to see them again would be enough. Just to see them and to touch my Lucy’s head, or my Annie’s face, and then to let them go again, would be enough. That even I would abide by the purchase to do that again, that simple thing, to let them go. Because I still wait for them and hope. My girls. I still sing for them and hold my hands together and raise them up to hear the songs like the wind and rain and sky above, and to know that it is all still here, my family. That it is all still true, my life. That everything I’ve ever wanted and waited for is always hovering and sleeping and dreaming in the echoes of my home in the ridge.
At last.
Forever.
Amen.
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank all the wonderful folks at Blank Slate Press and Amphorae Publishing who made this book a reality. In particular, my editor Kristina Blank Makansi who worked tirelessly to help craft a stronger and more compelling version of the manuscript I plopped (bloated and headstrong) on her doorstep. Many thanks as well to Donna Essner, acquisitions editor, who believed in Purchase from the get go and marshalled it on its way.
The Maryland State Arts Council deserves much praise, as well. Without their generous individual artist grants, I would not have been able to carve out as much time as I did for writing, and time is the most valuable variable of all.
A heap of thanks go to my parents for their boundless support over the years. Even though my mother always thought physical therapy was the prudent career choice (and she’s probably still right), I gravitated instead to writing and music, and was lucky or stubborn enough to stick with it.
Thanks also to Lesley Riddle, the real-life inspiration for Isaiah Hardy, a man I only ever read about, but whose influence on the Carter Family cannot be stated in words. It takes everyone to make music move from era to era and ear to ear, and it’s difficult to call anyone out as more important than any other, but Mr. Riddle deserves more accolades than most.
Finally, I’d like to thank the good folks and towns spread out among the Appalachian Mountains. There is no music without the beauty of the land. Ever. Amen.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christopher Kritwise Doyle grew up in Brunswick, Maryland, a small town nestled on the banks of the Potomac River and Blue Ridge Mountains. After receiving his MFA from the University of Baltimore, he has written about the origins of country music, an embattled elementary school principal in urban America, and the C&O Canal. He lives in Baltimore with his wife, daughter, and bluetick coonhound all in a cramped row house.
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