“Ples Haslock,” I called out. “You home, Ples?”
No one answered from the house. I climbed the shaky steps to the porch.
“Who’s there?” Ples called from inside.
“It’s Fred Bennett from Dukedom.”
“Come on in,” Ples called at once. “I haven’t seen you in a coon’s age. How’s your folks?”
Fiddler’s Dram
I went into the one-room house, which was filled with clutter—old clothes, pots, pans, and junk of all sorts. Ples was lying in bed at the far end of the room, under a heap of old quilts, his fiddle beside him. I was shocked at how pale and ill Ples looked. His face had shrunken and was tinged with green, and there were big liver splotches on his face and hands.
“My folks are doing well,” I said. “How are you feeling, Ples?”
“Feelin’ a might poorly,” Ples said, his long fingers plucking gently at the strings of his fiddle. “I don’t reckon I know what I’d do if it weren’t for my kind neighbors. The women bring me things to eat three times a day and sit talking with me. The menfolk check up on me at night to make sure I ain’t fell out of bed or be ailin’ and need help. Between visits, I just lay here and play my fiddle.”
“I heard you were ailing,” I said, dropping into a chair beside him.
“That’s a fact,” said Ples. “The heart dropsy runs in the Haslock family. I’ve been having a bit of a rough time, but I aim to be up and about soon.”
“That’s good news, Ples,” I said, wondering if I should tell him about the fiddle contest. I decided it couldn’t hurt anything, so I told him all about the jail wall falling in, making a story of it like he used to tell me stories when I was small. When I got to the part about the fiddle contest, Ples perked up.
“I’ll be there for sure!” Ples was pleased as punch. “When that roll is called up yonder in Dukedom, I’ll be there for certain!”
I visited with Ples for quite a while, and reluctantly took leave of him. He looked so ill that I wasn’t sure if I would ever see him again. But I said lightly, “We’ll be looking for you at the benefit, Ples.”
“Get that Fiddler’s Dram ready,” said Ples with a tired grin. “I’m aiming to win it!”
The night of the benefit, nearly everyone in Dukedom turned out in their Sunday best. The contest was being held at the schoolhouse and everyone hurried in to get a good seat. I sat with my girl near the front, since I was one of the sponsors. The room was filled with the typical sort of frolicking that goes with such a big event: old folks gossiping, boys and girls running about, young men talking loudly and showing off for the girls, who sneaked glances at them and giggled. I sat next to my girl and tried to look nonchalant, even though my little sister kept turning around to stick her tongue out at us.
When folks started getting restless, Judge Huley Dunlap hurried out on the stage and announced that the contest was about to start. Everyone settled down. Into the relative silence, the judge read the names of the seven fiddlers who would compete. Ples Haslock’s name was not among them.
Everyone started yelling: “What about Ples? Where’s Ples?”
“Well,” Judge Dunlap said. “We’ve been hoping he’d make it here tonight, but he’s been feeling poorly and it’s a long way. I reckon he couldn’t stand up to the trip. If anybody wants their admission fee back, they can get it at the door.”
There was quite a bit of grumbling, but everyone stayed in their seats. The seven fiddlers came out on the stage and took their seats. Everyone in the crowd knew that the first five fiddlers didn’t stand a chance. They were just run-of-the-mill types who sat around and sawed at the strings. No, with Ples Haslock out of the running, the contest was between Coot Kersey and Old Rob Reddin.
Well, the first five fiddlers played and no one paid them any special attention. They were as average as could be. Then came Coot’s turn. Now Coot looked more like an old turkey than anything else. His head bobbed when he walked, his nose was hooked like a beak, and his hair flopped about. He was greeted with shouts and laughter as he stood up and took a bow.
But Coot was a serious fiddler. He got his fiddle set just right before he started playing a rousing rendition of “Leather Britches.” He sawed and fiddled and played stunts on the strings until sweat poured off of him. When he finished, the crowd gave him a rousing hand-clap.
Then Old Rob Reddin waddled forward. If Coot resembled a turkey, Old Rob looked like a round red ball with a small bobble of a head on top. Old Rob was the funniest man in town. Not a word could he say without making someone laugh. The crowd grinned just to see him, and my girl muffled giggles in her hands. When Old Rob played the fiddle, it was as much acting as playing. He winked at his wife, who was sitting near the front and said, “Hold on to your hats, folks! I aim to drive wild!”
The crowd cheered. Then Old Rob started fiddling “Hell Turned Loose in Georgia.” It was quite a performance. Old Rob bent low with the low notes, lifted his eyebrows to the ceiling when the fiddle played high, and every once in a while he’d throw his bow right up into the air and catch it again. As he caught his bow, he’d shout out phrases like, “Ladies, where was your husband Saturday night?”
The crowd was shouting and stomping and whistling when Old Rob finished. Old Rob had won hands down.
The entire audience was watching Old Rob caper about, which was why no one saw Ples Haslock until he had already played a few lines of “Poor Wayfaring Stranger.” All heads turned to look at the stage as the sweet sounds filled the hall. We were astonished to see Ples, sitting in the fiddler’s chair, tapping his foot softly, his head nodding in time to the tune. Ples looked all pale and sickly, but he had made it just in time to play in the contest. The room rustled as everyone settled quietly into their seats. No one wanted to miss a note of the haunting song.
It was nine o’clock when Ples started playing. He played for over an hour, straight fiddle playing from the heart, with none of the stunts and shouts of Coot and Old Rob. Ples Haslock could make people laugh and weep when he played, but for those of us who heard him play that night, it was more like entering into a dream. Ples’s music made me feel like there was something beautiful just beyond my grasp. My girl, seated beside me, told me later that she felt like she heard the voice of her dead mother telling her that heaven was a beautiful place, and that her mother would be there someday to welcome her home. I guess everyone heard something different that night.
Ples played “The Two Sisters,” “The Elfin Knight,” and about a dozen more songs. When he stopped, the crowd came out of its trance, and everyone surged to their feet. They stomped and whooped, hollered, screamed, whistled, and hammered on the desks. It looked like the crowd was going to tear the schoolhouse down, so great was the excitement.
The crowd kept up its cheering while Judge Dunlap handed Ples the jug of whiskey and made a speech no one heard over the noise. Old Rob won the second place jug, which we’d provided just in case Ples made it to the contest. But no one noticed Old Rob. The crowd was still whistling and shouting and watching Ples, as he hooked a finger into the handle of the whiskey jug. Ples heisted the jug over his shoulder, jerked the corncob out of the mouth of the jug with his teeth, and took a long pull of whiskey—his Fiddler’s Dram. Everyone cheered loudly.
And then Ples, the whiskey jug, and the fiddle all crashed to the floor. There was instant, stunned silence before everyone rushed to the stage. Judge Huley Dunlap made them stand back, shouting, “Get a doctor! I can’t feel a heartbeat.”
My girl gave a sob and clung to my arm. We all stared at Ples lying on the stage. None of us had noticed, while Ples was playing, that his clothes were covered with clay. Ples looked like he had walked through a swamp, and he was pale as death.
“Think of it,” Mrs. Reddin said to Old Rob, “he came all the way to Dukedom to win the contest with his last breath.”
“And it was the best I ever heard him play,” said Old Rob. There was no envy in Old Rob. He liked Ples as much as the rest of us.
The doctor hurried in and knelt down to examine Ples.
“How did he get in here?” the doctor asked the judge.
“He walked in,” said the judge, puzzled by the question. “He fiddled for a piece, and then keeled over dead before our eyes, poor man.”
“Keeled over, my sainted granny!” the doctor exclaimed. “This man’s been dead for at least forty-eight hours. And from the state of his clothes, I’d say he was buried too.”
19
The Dead Chief
Hiawassee, Georgia
He knew it was wrong. Of course it was. He was desecrating an ancient grave on the bluff beside the river; a morally bankrupt idea by any people’s standards. But Tom didn’t care. The old Native warrior had been dead for more than a hundred years. He wouldn’t miss a few relicts. Tom paused in his digging to brush sweat off his forehead and frowned when he heard the howl of a dog above the wind roaring down the river.
Tom had gotten this mad idea when some archaeologists came to town to dig in the forest. They were looking for Native American relicts to study, but so far they’d just come up with a few arrowheads. Tom was pretty sure they’d pay a lot of money for some real Native artifacts. And he knew where to get them. His Uncle Henry, who’d brought Tom up after his parents died, told the story of the finding of the bones each year on All Hallows’ Eve.
Many years ago, so the tale went, his uncle was walking the farm fence line near the river when he saw a skeleton partially buried in the bluff. The rain had washed the dirt away from the head and upper torso, and the hollow-eyed skull stared straight at Uncle Henry as if it recognized him. Uncle Henry was spooked by the staring skeleton, but he still went to investigate his find. He uncovered enough of the skeleton to see that the corpse was wrapped with the fancy necklaces, arm bands, and jewelry of a Native chief. Uncle Henry fingered the relicts for a few minutes; then he decided to do the right thing and rebury the corpse with all the jewelry intact.
Shortly after he returned home, a fierce storm almost blew Uncle Henry’s tiny cabin to pieces. He could distinctly hear native drums beating over the roar of the wind and rain. Uncle Henry knew that he’d stirred up the ghost of the chief with his disrespectful handling of the bones. Not knowing how else to placate the ghost, Uncle Henry went to the place on the bluff where the chief was buried and begged for forgiveness over and over until the storm dissipated into the night.
It was a great story to tell on All Hallows’ Eve, but Tom discounted the part about the ghost. He figured Uncle Henry was just trying to scare him so he wouldn’t go looking for the warrior’s skeleton. And this tactic had worked just fine when he was a little kid. But he turned fourteen on his last birthday, and he didn’t believe in haunts no more. Tom pushed his shovel into the bluff and kept digging as the wind roared and the lone dog howled again in the fading afternoon light.
A moment later, Tom’s shovel struck the first of the bones, and within five minutes he was staring into the knowing gaze of the chief’s skull. Tom shivered, not liking the way that the skull seemed to follow his every move with the eyes it didn’t have. Hastily, he stripped the skeleton of its arm bands and necklaces and amulets and other relicts. The archaeologists would pay real well for this booty, Tom thought, pushing away his discomfort.
As he stripped a beaded decoration off a leg bone, Tom noticed that part of the skeleton’s right foot was missing. So the chief had been crippled in life. Given the rich decorations with which he’d been buried, the injury obviously hadn’t stopped him from achieving greatness.
Perhaps it was in overcoming his injury that he achieved greatness, a little voice murmured at the back of Tom’s brain as the chief’s skull eyed him knowingly.
Tom dropped the leg bone abruptly at the thought and stepped back from the corpse, goose bumps prickling over his neck and arms. He shouldn’t be doing this. This was wrong.
Somewhere behind the trees, the dog howled a third time; a mournful sound. Tom thrust the remaining jewelry into his bag and then quickly reburied the bones, starting with the smirking skull.
“I don’t believe in haunts,” Tom said aloud, shouldering the bag. A sudden wind barreled down the river, bending the tops of trees and knocking Tom sideways. He shuddered and raced for the old cabin he shared with Uncle Henry.
Tom left the bag of jewelry behind the woodpile where his uncle was unlikely to find it. He was certain that Uncle Henry would be angry with him for desecrating the chief’s grave and was determined that his uncle would never know about this day’s work.
By the time Tom had washed off the dirt from his digging at the outside pump, thick clouds had rolled in. He barely reached the front door before heavy rain lashed the roof of the cabin.
“Ooo-eee, what a storm,” Uncle Henry called, looking up from the frying pan where onions and potatoes sizzled. Tom sniffed the enticing smell, his mouth watering. He had worked up a mighty appetite with all that digging. “It reminds me of the night after I dug up that old chief’s corpse,” Uncle Henry continued, as if reading Tom’s mind. “That storm nearly washed this old cabin away, it was so fierce.”
Tom started guiltily. Why had Uncle Henry chosen tonight of all nights to mention the chief’s skeleton?
The old man added some sausages to the skillet and stirred reminiscently. “I swear I saw the old chief out this very window,” he gestured with the spoon. “He was standing there with his dog, waiting for me to apologize.”
“His dog,” asked Tom uneasily, a chill running up his spine as he remembered the dog that had howled three times while he dug up the skeleton.
Tom grabbed plates from the sideboard and started setting the table, avoiding his uncle’s sharp eye. He was sure there was guilt plastered all over his face. “You never told me about a dog.”
“I didn’t? It was buried right beside the chief, guarding his master’s crippled right foot,” Uncle Henry said, beckoning for the plates. As he poured the contents of the frying pan into the dishes, he continued: “That’s when I realized I had to rebury the chief, when I saw his faithful dog lying next to him in death as it must have done in life. It weren’t right for me to disturb the pair.”
“Oh,” said Tom faintly as Uncle Henry took his place at the head of the table and said the blessing. Tom applied himself to eating so he could avoid his uncle’s gaze as the storm slammed the cabin with mighty gusts of wind, and the rain pounded so hard against the roof that it was a miracle it didn’t pour through.
“Howdy man! Somebody’s disturbed the elements tonight,” Uncle Henry said, swallowing a last piece of sausage. “We’d best stay on our toes, boy. We may have to pack up quick and move to higher ground if this keeps up all night.”
“Yes, Uncle,” Tom said, grabbing up the dishes and taking them to the sink. He poured warm water from the kettle on the stove into a pan and then did up the dishes while his uncle smoked a pipe before bed. Finally, Uncle Henry knocked the ashes out of his pipe and bade Tom goodnight.
When his uncle was safe inside the cabin’s only bedroom, Tom sighed with relief. He’d be glad when the relicts were sold and he was done with this whole rotten business. Uncle Henry would be so pleased with the extra money he wouldn’t be sore about the Native chief’s bones.
Pleased with this thought, Tom grabbed a candle and headed toward the ladder leading up to his bed in the loft. As he passed the window, he glanced out into the rain-lashed night and yipped in fright. Standing at the edge of the yard was the tall glowing figure of a Native American chief with a translucent dog at his side. Tom climbed up the ladder lickety-split, nearly dropping the candle and setting the cabin on fire. He blew out the candle and ducked under the bedclothes, praying the haunt would go away and leave him alone.
Tom’s fear intensified with the darkness
. Over and under and around the howl of the wind and the lash of the rain, he could hear drums beating. Tom stuffed the pillow over his head, but the steady thump-thump-thumping vibrated through the walls and shook the bed.
“Go away, go away,” he moaned into the mattress. But the drums didn’t stop and the storm grew worse. The rain thundered so hard against the old cabin that it tore away a section of the roof and water hurled down on Tom’s bed, soaking his blanket. An eerie glow filled the loft, as if the chief were gazing down at him through the gap in the roof.
Tom sat up with a scream of panic and tore off his blankets. “I’ll give it back! I’ll give it back right now!” He slid down the ladder without using the rungs and raced toward the door in his nightclothes. Uncle Henry appeared in the main room as Tom dragged on his boots and flung open the front door.
“Boy, don’t go out in that storm! You’ll be killed,” he cried in alarm, fumbling to light the lantern.
“I gotta take it back and say I’m sorry,” Tom wailed over the drum beats. He could hear the dog howling and knew the chief was right outside.
Ignoring his uncle’s panicked shout, he raced into the storm, stumbling as the icy rain struck his skin and mud sucked at his heavy boots. Tom staggered to the wood pile, grabbed the bag of jewelry and ran into the forest, heading for the river. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the glowing figure limping after him, a translucent dog at its heels. He stumbled several times, nearly dropping the bag. Tree roots tripped him; his face was lashed by wind-blown branches; and blood poured from a cut over his left eye. He ran on, his feet keeping time to the beating of native drums. And always, the dead chief stalked a few yards behind him.
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