Lord of the Mountain

by Ronald Kidd

  “What about the WSM Barn Dance? You know, from Nashville.”

  Gray said, “I’ve listened once or twice, because WSM has the strongest signal. I don’t much like it.”

  I heard a car, and Gray perked up.

  “Dad’s home,” he told me. “Come on.”

  I followed him from the sitting room, back down the hall, and out the front door. It was a long way. If you’d gone that far at my house, you’d be standing in the middle of the street.

  At one end of the circular driveway, in front of the garage, was a gleaming, green car with a long, low body and headlights shaped like drums. A man got out wearing a perfect, black suit and a fedora tilted at an angle. He had the same dark hair, big ears, and pointed nose that Gray had, or maybe it was the other way around. He pulled a leather briefcase from the car and shut the door.

  “Hi, Dad,” said Gray.

  Mr. Lane looked up. “Oh, hello.” Seeing me, he said, “Who’s this?”

  “He’s my friend Nate,” said Gray. I wasn’t used to being called a friend, and it made me feel good. In town, people were more likely to giggle and whisper behind my back.

  Mr. Lane held out his hand, and I shook it. His skin was soft, but his grip was hard. His fingernails were trimmed and polished.

  “How’s the car?” asked Gray. I noticed that he acted different with his father than with me. He seemed small and eager, like Mrs. Mim’s toy poodle.

  “Runs like a top,” said Mr. Lane. He smiled the way Gray had smiled when he told me about the radio.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  “It’s a Packard 343,” said Mr. Lane proudly. “Leather seats and trim, double windshield, holds seven passengers.”

  On the front of the hood, over the grill, was the silvery figure of a woman. She had wings and was holding a wheel in front of her.

  Mr. Lane saw me looking. “They call her the Goddess of Speed,” he said.

  I liked the sound of that.

  Gray said, “We bought this car last weekend, right off the showroom floor.”

  “I like machines,” I said.

  The words just popped out—I’m not sure why. Daddy didn’t like machines, so I’d never allowed myself to think much about them. But seeing the Packard up close, I could feel its power. It shrank miles and brought people closer together. It was made for a purpose, like me. I don’t mean a religious purpose, like going to heaven. I mean a purpose right here in the world, one that makes you roll up your sleeves and sweat.

  “Want to see the engine?” Mr. Lane asked me.

  “Could I?”

  He swung open the hood, which folded back. There was a heavy metal block inside, with pipes running off of it.

  “It’s a straight eight,” said Mr. Lane. “Three-eighty-five cubic inches. Hundred and six horsepower. Drives like a bat out of hell.”

  We heard a lot about hell at my house, but it was always bad. This seemed good. It seemed right and natural. I thought that if I studied Mr. Lane’s car for a while and maybe laid hands on it, like Daddy did to those in his congregation, I could figure out the way it was made.

  Mr. Lane closed the hood, then reached over and opened the door on the driver’s side.

  “Climb in,” he told me.

  “Really?”

  “Don’t ask, boy. Just do it. You may not get another chance.”

  I put my foot on the running board and slid behind the wheel. The leather seats swished softly. Gray opened the door on the other side and got in.

  Mr. Lane pushed a button, and the engine hummed to life. In my mind, I engaged the gears and sped out the driveway, down the street, past the Bristol sign, and into the wide world.

  Daddy wanted to escape the world, but I wanted to see it. When I did, I would be riding a machine like this.

  Mr. Lane shut off the engine, and we followed him into the house. Gray took me up to his room. It was triple the size of mine, and the floor was a foot deep in clutter.

  “Sorry about the trash,” said Gray, though it didn’t seem to bother him. He tromped through it like Daniel Boone in the woods.

  Of course, what Gray called trash wasn’t really. It was what you might get if you picked up a toy store in one hand, a five-and-dime in the other, and shook them to see what would come out. I could have spent weeks in that room. Gray, meanwhile, showed me his latest finds, which I was sure would end up on the floor in a few days.

  He pulled out a baseball bat, a yo-yo, a board for Chinese checkers, and a stuffed bear that turned somersaults. What interested me the most, though, wasn’t a toy but a picture. Sticking out from some books on Gray’s desk, it showed a man floating high above the trees, carried by a big, white balloon. In the distance was another man and balloon, as if traveling that way was as common as sailing a boat.

  I pulled out the picture and discovered it was a magazine cover. At the top, in big, red letters, were the words Popular Mechanics.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  Gray shrugged. “It has articles about science, inventions, stuff like that.”

  I flipped through it. There were ads in the front:

  Chemistry—Learn at Home

  Boys! Electricity is Fun

  and Pays Big Money

  Following the ads were dozens of articles:

  Girl Invents Airplane Motor

  for Russian Government

  Can Inaudible Sounds Kill?

  American Inventor’s Death Ray

  May Spell Doom for Submarine Crews

  World a Ball of Stardust, Geologist Believes

  Popular Mechanics—why hadn’t I heard of it before? It seemed to have been written for me.

  “Could I borrow this?” I asked.

  “Sure,” said Gray.

  He moved some things on his desk, and underneath were more of the magazines. There must have been a dozen. He organized them into a pile and plopped them into my arms.

  “Don’t you want these?” I asked.

  “I get a new one every month,” he said. “I can’t keep up. Anyway, think of it as a public service. You’re helping to clean my room.”

  A few minutes later, I headed home for supper with a stack of magazines tucked under my arm. The hills around town were turning orange and pink. The tree branches crisscrossed above me, like highways on a map.

  Two nights before, I had heard sounds through a window. Now, in the pages of a magazine, the window had become a door. On the other side were the outlines of something big and new. It could have been science or escape or maybe hope—hope for a world that made sense, where if you had a problem, you could fix it instead of pray about it. That world had radios and cars and balloons. The door was open. Somehow, in spite of Daddy, I was going to step through.

  CHAPTER 6

  I saw Gray the next day. I saw a lot of him that summer. Looking back on it, I realize we always went to his house. I knew his parents, but he didn’t know mine. Every once in a while, he’d make a joke about the tent and the preacher. I might agree with what he said, but I didn’t like him saying it.

  At Gray’s house, we would listen to his radio. At the end of the day, Gray’s father would pull into the driveway in his Packard. One day in late June, when he got out of the car, he went straight to the hood and opened it. He leaned in and studied the engine. We were watching from the house and decided to investigate.

  When we approached, he told us, “The engine’s missing.”

  Gray said, “But…it’s right here.”

  Mr. Lane glanced at me, and I smiled.

  “He means one of the cylinders isn’t firing,” I explained. “There’s an ignition problem, because a cylinder isn’t getting fuel or it’s lost compression.”

  “How did you know that?” asked Mr. Lane.

  “Popular Mechanics. I read it all the time.”

  “Do you know how to fix it?”

  I leaned down and checked the engine. “Well, sir, one article had some suggestions. Could you start the engine, please?�
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  Gray stared at me the way you’d watch some strange animal at the zoo—maybe a wombat or a three-toed sloth. For a minute, Mr. Lane stared too. Then he got in and switched on the ignition. The big engine fired up, but the sound was rough.

  There were eight cylinders, and as I went down the row, I disconnected the spark plug wires one at a time, the way the article had suggested. Most of them caused the engine to sound worse, but when I got near the end of the row, the sound didn’t change.

  “This is the one,” I said.

  “How do you know?” asked Gray.

  “This cylinder was already misfiring. That’s why there was no change.”

  I connected the spark plug wire, and this time I wiggled it to make sure it was in place. The engine smoothed out and sounded like I’d heard it that very first day.

  Mr. Gray revved the engine, then turned it off and climbed out of the car.

  “What did you say your name was?” he asked.

  “Nate, sir. Nate Owens.”

  Mr. Lane turned to his son. “This boy’s smart.”

  “Uh, yes, sir,” answered Gray, like he was surprised to say it.

  “Nate,” said Mr. Lane, “can I come to you if there are more problems?”

  “Sure, if you think I can help,” I said. “I’m new at this. But I could try.”

  From then on, when Mr. Lane came home, he would always call me by name. If he had questions about his car, he’d ask me. Most of the time I was able to help. If I didn’t know the answer, I’d go to Popular Mechanics or the library and find out. Of course, when he had real problems he got them fixed in town, but he seemed to like getting help from me. Maybe it was because my advice was free.

  ***

  Gray could be a jerk sometimes, but I enjoyed going to his house. If you liked science, there wasn’t a better place in town. Mr. Lane wanted all the latest things, and he had the money to buy them.

  There was the radio, of course, and the car. Besides those, the house was filled with gadgets, all of which Gray was happy to demonstrate. A contraption called a vacuum cleaner sucked dirt from the carpets. Instead of an icebox, they had an electric refrigerator. There was a special lightweight iron that I’d never seen Mrs. Lane use.

  Best of all was the toaster. You put in two slices of bread, and a minute later, they’d pop up, ready to butter. Gray and I felt it was important to test various kinds of bread. We didn’t eat them all, but the toaster worked just fine.

  One afternoon in July when I went to see him, Gray met me at the front door, waving our local newspaper, the Herald Courier.

  “Look at this!” he said, tapping the paper with his finger.

  He had folded the paper back to an ad in the first section. It showed a picture of a woman listening to something that looked like a radio but wasn’t.

  Don’t deny

  yourself the sheer joy of

  Orthophonic music

  A SMALL down payment puts this great musical instrument in your home. Here is a source of entertainment for yourself and friends without end. You may have it now for a little cash and nominal monthly payments.

  Clark-Jones-Sheeley Co.

  Victrolas—Records—Sheet Music

  621 State St. Bristol, Va.

  The New Orthophonic

  Victrola

  I studied the ad. “Victrolas—I’ve heard of those.”

  I had just read an article about them in Popular Mechanics. They played music on black shellac disks called records. But Victrolas had seemed like something from the future. Now they were in Bristol, at a furniture store downtown.

  “Let’s go,” said Gray. “If it looks good, maybe my father will buy one.”

  We headed downtown with a purpose, walking west on State Street under the Bristol sign and past the train station, the Wood-Nickels Department Store, the barber shop, and Woolworth’s Five-and-Dime.

  The Clark-Jones-Sheeley Company, one of the oldest furniture stores in Bristol, was between Sixth and Seventh. Clark, Jones, and Sheeley might have been old-fashioned, but Cecil McLister wasn’t. Whenever Mama and I passed by, he tried to pull us in and show us the latest products. He had sold a lot of radios, and now it looked like he was pushing Victrolas.

  When Gray and I went inside, he came hurrying up to us.

  “Welcome, boys,” he said, beaming. “So, Gray, how do you like your radio?”

  “Just fine, sir,” said Gray. He dug out the newspaper and pointed to the ad. “Can we see that Victrola?”

  “Absolutely. Amazing machine, and a beautiful piece of furniture. It’s made by the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey.”

  He led us to a display at the front of the store where three of the machines were lined up.

  “Technically these are gramophones,” he said, “but Victor calls theirs the Victrola. Here’s the one you want.”

  He pointed to the biggest of the three. It was a wooden cabinet that came up to my chest, with doors on the front that had carved designs. On the right side was a handle, like you might find on an ice-cream maker.

  Mr. McLister noticed Gray eyeing the handle and said, “Go ahead, son. Give it a crank.”

  Gray cranked, and a man’s voice sang out:

  Ain’t she sweet? See her walking

  down that street.

  Yes, I ask you very confidentially,

  ain’t she sweet?

  Mr. McLister turned to me. “Brand-new record. Just got it in. What do you think?”

  I heard Daddy’s voice in my head, railing about music. “I like it,” I said.

  Gray examined the Victrola. “Is this like a radio?”

  Mr. McLister chuckled. “Not even close.”

  He opened a door on the front of the cabinet. Inside was a round platform about a foot wide, and turning on top of it was the black disk they called a record. A metal arm went out over the record. Mr. McLister lifted the arm and showed us a needle at the end.

  “See this needle? When the record goes around, it follows the grooves and vibrates, and then the vibrations are amplified electronically into sounds.”

  I said, “The sounds are carved into the record? In those grooves?”

  Mr. McLister nodded. “Technology—don’t you love it?”

  “Can I see the record?” I asked him.

  “You bet.”

  Mr. McLister set down the metal arm, stopped the record, lifted it out of the cabinet, and handed it to me. In the middle of the record was a hole, and around that was a printed label with a picture of a dog listening to a gramophone.

  Victor

  “Ain’t She Sweet”

  Gene Austin

  With Nat Shilkret and His Orchestra

  “Victor makes records too?” I asked him.

  “You bet. It helps them sell Victrolas. They do popular music, symphonies, operas. Just recently they hired a new man, Ralph Peer, who thinks they can sell records to everyday folks—blues, polkas, even mountain music like we have around here.”

  I held the record up to the light so I could see the grooves. It looked like there were hundreds of them, carved in perfect circles. Then I realized something and laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Gray.

  “You see all these grooves? It looks like there’s a lot of them, right?”

  “So?”

  “It’s really just one,” I told him.

  He studied the record. “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t you see? It’s a single groove, starting at the outside and going around and around until it reaches the middle.”

  Mr. McLister took the record back, smiling. “He’s right, Gray. It’s one long, long groove.”

  “And the music is carved into it,” I said.

  Somehow Gene Austin, Nat Shilkret, and everyone in the orchestra were in that groove. It was science, but it also seemed like magic.

  Gray stepped back and admired the Victrola. “I like this one. I’ll ask my father if we can get it.”

>   Mr. McLister nodded. “Tell him to call me, and I’ll have it delivered.”

  I was still thinking about that long, long groove.

  “Do you have some of those other records?” I asked.

  “Sure.” He opened the side of the cabinet and showed us a stack of records, each in a white paper sleeve. “I usually throw in a few of these with every purchase of a Victrola. If Gray and his father buy one, they can pick out some records to take home.”

  Gray lifted out the stack. I gazed over his shoulder as he flipped through the records: “Stardust,” “Me and My Shadow,” “My Blue Heaven.”

  Looking at the records, I had a sudden thought. “This Victrola plays the records. But how do they make them?”

  “You can find out for yourself,” he said. “Ralph Peer is coming to town on Friday. He’s looking for songs to put on records, and he thinks our mountain folks might have some.”

  I thought of Mama’s song. “He’ll be here?” I asked.

  Mr. McLister smiled. “He’s bringing some machines and equipment. And you can bet he’ll be carving some grooves.”

  CHAPTER 7

  It was a car Mr. Lane would have been proud to drive.

  I found out later it was a Cadillac Series 314-A, but all I knew then was that it was beautiful. It was two-toned, with a maroon body and a black roof. There was a long hood, and running boards swooped over the wheels. Like the Packard, it had a silvery hood ornament, but instead of the Goddess of Speed, this one had wings and a temperature gauge to tell you if the car was overheating.

  I had checked around and found out that the people from Victor would be staying at the Palace Hotel, on Front Street across from the train station. It was an impressive place, with a barber shop, billiard room, and restaurant.

  On Friday I hung around in front, and sure enough, late that afternoon, two cars approached, and one of them was the Cadillac. I knew it was them because the cars had New Jersey license plates.

  The Cadillac parked in front and out stepped a man as fancy as the car. He was big, with a broad chest and an expression on his face that was all business. He wore a pinstriped suit and tie, with a vest and shiny gold cuff links. His hair was slicked back, and the crease on his pants was sharp as a knife. He was rich, I could tell, but not like Mr. Lane. This man had more than money. The difference was hard to describe. Maybe it was style or the way he carried himself.