Crack in the Sky tb-3

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Songs?”

  “Any other’ns?”

  “A few I might recall, if’n I heard the tune.”

  “How ’bout this’un?”

  And with that Hatcher immediately slipped into a new melody without lagging a note. After a few moments Bass realized he knew this one too. As he began to sing, Simms and Rowland came over with their cups; then others began to walk up, stopping to listen to Bass’s singing.

  I’m lonesome since I cross’d the hill,

  And o’er the moor and valley;

  Such heavy thoughts my heart do fill,

  Since parting with my Sally.

  How he had come to love this song in that first youthful blush of manhood—if not for the lament expressed by those melancholy words he had come to know by heart so many years ago, then he loved the song because of the delicate way the notes slid up and down the scale, all of them blended this night by the bow Jack Hatcher dragged across those taut gut strings.

  I seek no more the fine and gay,

  For each does but remind me

  How swift the hours did pass away,

  With the girl I’ve left behind me.

  More company men came up now, falling quiet as they came to a stop in a loose ring around Hatcher and Bass, listening intently. From the looks on their hairy, tanned faces, the glistening in their eyes as the firelight danced across them all, it was plain to read that every last one of these men had someone special left far, far behind. Many miles, and perhaps many years, behind.

  Oh, ne’er shall I forget the night,

  The stars were bright above me,

  And gently lent their sil’vry light,

  When first she vow’d she loved me.

  Hardened men, all—softened for only a moment as the wistful notes of the fiddle blended with the plaintive words of one who has left behind a loved one oft remembered in quiet moments around a crackling fire here deep in the heart of the mountains, where only a bold breed dared live.

  But now I’m bound to Brighton camp,

  Kind Heav’n, may favor find me,

  And send me safely back again

  To the girl I’ve left behind me.

  For long moments the last note hung in the still, cool air of that summer eve at the south shore of Sweet Lake, men struck dumb by the sweetness of the song, by its mournful sentiment. Some of the trappers chose to put their cups to their lips, there behind the tins to blink their moist eyes clear; others chose to snort and hack, clearing throats clogged thick with sentiment.

  Nathan Porter pierced the ring formed by others to shove a cup at Hatcher. “Drink, friend!” When Jack took the tin, Porter turned to Bass. “That was fine, the way you singed.”

  Embarrassed, Titus sipped at his liquor.

  Porter asked Hatcher, “You only play the fiddle?”

  “I been knowed to strum my hands across nigh anything with strings.” He handed the empty cup back to Porter. “Why, ye got a song ye want me to play?”

  “No, not no song,” Porter replied. “But we got us this squeezebox belong’t to one of the boys—”

  “Squeezebox?” Hatcher interrupted.

  “That’s right,” Porter stated, biting a lip before he went on. “Fella name of Ryman, went under this past spring to some of Bug’s Boys.”

  Jack’s eyes lit with a merry fever. “He had him a squeezebox?”

  Nathan grinned hugely. “He did.”

  “Elbridge!” Jack bellowed over the heads of the others with a childish glee.

  In a moment Gray emerged through the cordon of trappers knotted around Hatcher. “What you hail me for?”

  “Porter here says he’s got him a squeezebox.”

  “That true?” Gray demanded, wheeling on Nathan.

  “Never thort to try it out,” Porter explained. “Cain’t none of us play it anyway.”

  Gray snagged one hand on Nathan’s collar, fairly screaming in glee, “Get it for me!”

  “Grimes! Get that squeezebox you been packing along!” Then Porter turned back to Gray and Hatcher. “You ain’t bald-facing me, now, are you?”

  “This nigger can play,” Jack testified.

  Porter seemed dubious. “So where’s your own squeezebox if’n it’s the true you can play?”

  “Lost it,” Gray began, his face gone morose. “More’n a year ago now. Damn, but it broke my heart.”

  “Just up and lost it, did you?”

  Hatcher explained, “Didn’t rightly lose it. Elbridge got it crushed a’neath a packhorse when the critter slipped off the trail and took it a slide down the mountainside.”

  “Had to shoot my packhorse,” Gray added morosely. “And then I found that squeezebox smashed like fire kindling when I untied my packs to carry ’em back up the slope.”

  Hatcher leaned forward and whispered, still loud enough that most men could hear. “The man sat right down, then and there, with what was left of his squeezebox broke all apart in his two hands … and took to bawling like he was a babe.”

  “I loved that thing,” Gray defended himself in a squeaky voice, hands fluttering helplessly before him.

  “Here!” Grimes shouted as he burst back onto the scene.

  “Gimme that!” Gray screeched as he lunged to his feet, reaching for the concertina, ripping it from the other man’s hands. “Oh, J-jack—ain’t she ’bout the purtiest sight you’ve ever see’d?” he gushed, running his fingers over the oiled wood of both octagonal end pieces and the wrinkled leather bellows.

  Hatcher turned and winked at Bass. “Damn sight purtier’n that’un ye got smashed under a dead horse what took a tumble long ago.”

  “It is purtier, ain’t it? It is for the truth of God!” Gray shouted in glee as he hitched up his leather britches before stuffing both hands inside the wide leather straps tacked to the wooden ends of the concertina.

  Scratch whispered into Hatcher’s ear, “He really can play?”

  “This boy can play like the devil his own self,” Jack replied. “Eegod! He’s better’n me!”

  Nodding in amazement, Bass turned to watch Elbridge Gray’s merry face as the trapper slid up and down some scales, listening intently to the instrument’s tuning. For the moment Scratch was amazed to find himself in the fastness of these mountains—where he had been put afoot, where he had lost three friends to the savages somewhere downriver, where he had been scalped and left for dead, then resurrected by Jack Hatcher and his buffalo-worshiping Shoshone—out here in the great beyond to find not only did Hatcher have along a fiddle he could play tolerable well … but now he discovered that Elbridge Gray could make all sorts of sweet sounds emerge from that hand-me-down concertina.

  Here in this intractable wilderness, he had found music. Real music. Not just the dimming memories of tunes he carried inside his head, off-key and little used, whistled or hummed in tattered fragments as he went about his icy labors … but real, heart-stirring music.

  “‘Hunters of Kentucky’!” Gray cried above the whooping and clapping of those crowding close.

  “Get back, there—give us some room, dammit!” Hatcher demanded from the gathering as he dragged the bow long across the strings in prelude. Turning to Gray with as big a grin as Jack ever had on his face, he roared, “Do it, ’Bridge!”

  Elbridge yanked the two ends of the concertina apart and began to stomp about in a tight circle, thumping the grassy ground with his floppy moccasins, his eyes squinted shut, fingers flying in a blur as he wheezed life into that instrument, squeezing sweet music from it, pumping the magic of song into the lonely lives of lonely men in a lonely wilderness.

  With the second playing of the chorus, Caleb Wood started to sing at the exact moment Jack Hatcher raised his own croaking voice.

  We are a hardy, free-born race,

  Each man to fear a stranger;

  Whate’er the game we join in chase,

  Despoiling time and danger,

  And if a daring foe annoys,

  Whate’er his strength and forc
es,

  We’ll show him that Kentucky boys

  Are alligator horses!

  Oh, Kentucky—the hunters of Kentucky!

  Oh, Kentucky—the hunters of Kentucky!

  By then two of the company trappers had joined in to sing along with Wood and Hatcher. A few of the words Titus could remember, having learned it during his years in St. Louis following the War of 1812—each time recalling that autumn journey down the Ohio and Mississippi with Ebenezer Zane’s riverboatmen. A stirring frontier ditty that recalled the courageous backwoodsmen who had stood with Andrew Jackson against the British at the mouth of the Mississippi.

  I s’pose you’ve read it in the prints,

  How Packenham attempted

  To make old Hickory Jackson wince,

  But soon his scheme repented;

  For we, with rifles ready cock’d,

  Thought such occasion lucky,

  And soon around the gen’ral flock’d

  The hunters of Kentucky!

  Eventually a few more joined in, accompanied by the trapper beating his taut, willow-strung beaver hide.

  You’ve heard, I s’pose, how New Orleans

  Is fam’d for wealth and beauty,

  There’s girls of ev’ry hue it seems,

  From snowy white to sooty.

  So Packenham he made his brags,

  If he in fight was lucky,

  He’d have their girls and cotton bags,

  In spite of old Kentucky!

  Then Hatcher began to prance and bob right around Gray in a quick, whirling jig of a dance, both of them kicking up dust and bits of flying grass as their feet flew.

  But Jackson he was wide-awake,

  And was not scar’d at trifles,

  For well he knew what aim we take

  With our Kentucky rifles.

  So he led us down to Cypress swamp,

  The ground was low and mucky,

  There stood John Bull in martial pomp

  And here was old Kentucky!

  Back to back the two weaved and swayed, then began to do-si-do around and around one another.

  They found, at last, ’twas vain to fight,

  Where lead was all the booty,

  And so they wisely took to flight,

  And left us all our beauty.

  And now, if danger e’er annoys,

  Remember what our trade is,

  Just send for us Kentucky boys,

  And we’ll protect ye, ladies!

  After two more songs one of the company men hollered, “Meat’s cut. Time for the fire!”

  Night had deepened while a handful of trappers had butchered loose, bloody slabs of venison and elk. The trappers surged forward now that the supper call was raised, knives in hand, waiting for their portion. Jabbed on the end of long, sharpened sticks, the rich red meat sizzled over the flames, juices dripping into the crackling fire. Men grunted and groaned with immense, feral satisfaction until their bellies could hold no more; then once again their thoughts turned to liquor. With pepper-laced alcohol warming their gullets, many of the men brought out pipes of clay or cob or briar burl, filling them with fragrant Kentucky burley, lighting them with twigs at the fireside before settling back against saddles and packs and bedrolls.

  “I ain’t heard a squeezebox played that good since I floated the Mississap,” Scratch declared with pure appreciation as he eased down beside Elbridge Gray, his tin cup in one hand, a second helping of thick tenderloin impaled on the knife he clutched in the other.

  Around a big bite of rare meat, Gray replied, “I’m rusty.”

  “If’n that’s rusty,” Nathan Porter snorted, “I’d sure as hang wanna hear you when you’re oiled!”

  Without benefit of fork, Bass held the slab of meat up, snatched hold of a bite-sized chunk between his teeth, then, holding the meat out from his lips, cut off that bite with the knife. Hardly the best of proper table manners, it was nonetheless an efficient way for a man to wolf down his fill of lean, juicy meat in less time than it would take most men to fill a pipe bowl and light it. While some ate more, and a few ate less, the standard fare in the mountains was two pounds of meat at a sitting.

  Eventually Titus grew stuffed and well satisfied, ready at last for the coffee some of the company trappers had set to boil at the edge of the fires. As he wiped his knife off across the thigh of his buckskin legging, Bass turned to Elbridge. “You’ll play some more for us tonight?”

  Gray asked, “You’re up to it, Jack?”

  Hatcher replied, “Dog, if I ain’t. When ye’re done coffeeing yerself, Elbridge.”

  Minutes later the two were at it again, the potent liquor continuing to flow, both company trappers and the free men frolicking with total abandon: dancing, singing, beating on the bottoms of kettles or banging two sticks together in time to the music They whirled in pairs or stomped about in a wild jig, knees pumping so high, they near grazed a man’s own chin.

  The night had ripened and the moon had risen before Jack shushed them all.

  “Gonna play ye one last song,” he told them as he stood wavering back and forth, clearly feeling his cups.

  “It be a foot stomper?”

  “No,” Hatcher growled with a snap.

  Someone else yelled, “I wanna foot stomper!”

  “Shuddup,” Caleb Wood grumped at the complainer.

  “I allays play it,” Hatcher explained as the group fell quiet. “Allays …”

  Solomon quickly explained to the others, “It’s his song, boys.”

  Quietly, Gray asked, “You want me play with you?”

  Jack nodded. “Sure do. Sounds purtier with ye siding for me, Elbridge.”

  Hatcher led into the tune with a long, melancholy introduction. After a few bars Elbridge joined in, quietly, echoing Jack’s plaintive notes like the answer a man would hear to a jay’s call, the faint reply returning from the distance in those eastern woodlands where they had all been raised.

  Closing his eyes as he dragged bow across strings, the tall, homely trapper began to sing to that hushed, respectful, firelit crowd.

  I’m just a poor, wayfaring stranger,

  Traveling through this world of woe.

  Yet there’s no sickness, no toil, no danger

  In that bright land to which I go.

  I’m going there to see my father,

  Who’s gone before me, no more to roam.

  I’m just going over Jordan.

  I’m only going over home.

  For a moment Titus tore his eyes from Hatcher’s expressive, lean, and melancholy face, glancing quickly about at the others, every last one of them spellbound by the sad, mournful strains of the two instruments, by the plaintive, feral call of Hatcher’s voice as he climbed atop each new note.

  I know dark clouds will gather round me,

  I know my way is rough and steep.

  Yet beautiful fields lie just before me,

  Where God’s redeemed their vigils keep.

  I’m going there to see my mother,

  She said she’d meet me when I come.

  I’m just going over Jordan.

  I’m only going over home.

  One by one the ghostly wisps of people from his past slipped through his mind as Jack and Elbridge weaved their magic spell in that firelit darkness. A father and mother left behind in Kentucky what seemed a lifetime ago. Good men like Ebenezer Zane and Isaac Washburn, dead well before their time. Billy and Silas, and even Bud Tuttle too—those three who had come into Bass’s life, then gone to their downriver deaths.

  Death so sudden in this wilderness. A man’s end come so in the blink of an eye on this unspeakable frontier. Every day was to be savored and cherished and fiercely embraced for all it was worth—a fact that every last one of these few gathered at the fire understood, knowing theirs would not be a Christian burial. No, none of these was the sort of man forever to lie at rest beneath some carved stone marker where family and friends could come to visit. Instead, theirs would be ano
nymous graves, an unheralded passing … their only memorial the glory of their having lived out their roster of days in the utter ecstasy of freedom.

  I’ll soon be free of every trial,

  My body will sleep in the churchyard.

  I’ll drop the cross of self-denial,

  And enter on my great reward.

  I’m going there to see my brothers,

  Who’ve gone before me one by one.

  I’m just going over Jordan.

  I’m only going over home.

  To die Where the winter snows would lie deep in seasons still in the womb of time, their bones gnawed by predators, scattered to bleach below endless suns … to sleep out eternity where only the wind would come to sing in whisper over this place of final rest.

  4

  By the time Jack Hatcher’s bunch began to straggle back to their bowers and bedrolls across the creek from the grove where the company men had raised their camp, a strip of sky along the eastern horizon had begun to relinquish its lampblack, noticeably graying. Dawn was not far behind.

  As he stumbled along, Scratch’s head throbbed, tender as a red welt. Barely able to prop his eyes open any more than snaky slits, his toes groped their way through the grass and brush. Scattered among the outfit’s packs and belongings, he finally located his blankets and lone buffalo robe. Sinking to the ground, Bass rolled onto his side and dragged the old Shoshone rawhide-bound saddle toward him to prop beneath his head. As he lay back upon it, the saddle’s wooden frame momentarily creaked beneath the weight of his shoulders, then suddenly split apart and collapsed—smacking his head against the hard ground and the saddle’s sideboards.