by Steve Turner
Each colonist began by clearing the land and preparing it for planting. Having never been cultivated, the land, though full of useful nutrients, was also choked with trees and thick undergrowth. Ray and thirteen-year-old Roy started by chopping trees and tearing up the undergrowth. By the end of the year they'd managed to clear and plant three of their twenty acres. They cleared more during 1936, but early in 1937 heavy rains flooded the Tyronza River and one of the main drainage ditches, putting the whole area under water. Carrie and the young children evacuated to Kingsland. Ray and Roy stayed at the house, but after a week they also had to leave. Only one family held out. Armed deputies in boats patrolled the area to prevent looting while radio broadcasts from Memphis kept the now-scattered residents informed of the water levels. For a while it seemed that the whole dream of a new life would literally be washed out.
When the Cashes returned home on February 16, they found the inside of the house covered in silt and their land dotted with driftwood. All things considered, they'd gotten off lightly. The worst things they faced were the snakes who'd taken refuge in the barn and the hens who'd laid eggs on the living room sofa. Ray reckoned that the deluge had made the soil even better for cotton, and he was soon harvesting two bales per acre as well as soybeans and corn.
By the time he was six years old, J. R., when not at school, was helping out in the cotton field. He started as the water boy, but when he got older he carried his own six-foot-long canvas sack to fill with cotton. The work was tiring and tedious. The increasing weight of the sack hurt his back, and the sharp spikes on the cotton heads cut his hands. Yet, when he looked back on his cotton-picking days, he didn't remember the pain, but only the love he learned for the land and respect for diligence.
Music provided both a relief from the hardship of work and an escape to places beyond the limited horizons of this perfectly designed community. Farmers sang hymns in the fields to pass the time and take their minds off their aching backs and bleeding hands. Inside, music on the radio brought a magical world from down the railroad, where the lights were brighter and the buildings were taller. "Nothing in the world was as important to me as hearing those songs on that radio," Cash remembered. "The music carried me up above the mud, the work, and the hot sun."
If correct, Cash's reminiscences reveal that, from an early age, he had almost a mystical connection with music. He realized that music did things to him, that it could create states of consciousness like nothing else. When he thought of beauty, the most beautiful thing he could picture was a song like "Vacation in Heaven." When he thought of God he thought of songs like "I'll Fly Away," which, to him, were prayers. "These songs carried me away," he once wrote. "They gave me a taste of heavenly things."
The first song Cash recalled hearing on the radio was "Hobo Bill's Last Ride," a ballad that told the sad tale of a railroad bum who dies of neglect. It contained many of the elements that would characterize Cash's future: storytelling, the railroad, loneliness, poverty, a marginalized character, and death. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his favorite book at the time was a 1918 Western titled Lone Bull's Mistake by James Willard Schultz.
Ray Cash thought his son was wasting time by listening to the Grand Ole Opry on WSM from Nashville or the Wheeling Jamboree on WWVA from Wheeling, West Virginia. He took the view that popular music kept people's minds off what was important and filled their heads with escapist rubbish. It wasn't a view that Carrie shared. She played piano at church and sang to her children in the evenings, and she wondered if her son might follow in the footsteps of her singing-instructor father.
By 1939 Roy Cash was playing in an amateur band with four classmates. They called themselves the Delta Rhythm Ramblers. The fact that his brother performed and had been on KCLN in Blythesville made a deep impression on the seven-year-old J. R. Cash. Though they never made any recordings, the Dyess Eagle in April 1939 reported that they won first place in a local talent contest held in Portia and would consequently be competing in a statewide contest in Little Rock on May 15. Unfortunately, the band broke up when World War II drafted all the members. Only two survived the war.
Meanwhile, the births of Joanne in 1938 and Tommy in 1940 completed the Cash family. With Roy away in the navy, Jack became J. R.'s biggest influence. Named after the former World Heavyweight Champion boxer Jack Dempsey, Jack Cash was tall, strong, cheerful, hardworking, and passionate about his faith. He read his Bible assiduously at home, tried to base all actions on Christian principles, and wasn't afraid to defend his beliefs in front of others. To J. R. he was everything a boy should be.
The Baptist church stood on the corner of Ash Street and Third. A three-story white building with a pitched roof rather than a steeple, it could seat up to four hundred people. It was here that Cash first heard the Bible stories that would exercise a hold on his imagination for the rest of his life, where he fell in love with the words and music of hymns, and where he first felt challenged by the message of the gospel. Although his understanding and appreciation deepened over the years, the lessons that he learned at First Baptist and the example of the simple Christian cotton farmers and their wives remained a constant reference point for Cash.
Two of his closest friends while growing up in Dyess were A. J. Henson and J. E. Huff. "We were like the Three Musketeers," says J. E. "We were three distinctly different personalities, but we never had an argument." A. J.'s father was Baptist and his mother was a member of the Church of Christ, so he had a choice of where to worship on a Sunday. Mostly he would go to the Church of Christ, because the altar calls at the Baptist church scared him. J. E. though would go with Cash, not only to both Sunday services but to the Wednesday night Bible study. He reckons that from the age of eight onward they went seven straight years without missing a single meeting.
With that kind of record, it seemed almost inevitable that Cash would respond to an altar call one Sunday. Being "saved" was a cultural rite of passage in rural Southern communities of the period. If someone hadn't "made a decision" by their early teenage years, the adults would wonder why. There were no open atheists in Dyess—only good Christians and backsliders. The pressure to conform made it difficult to differentiate between those who claimed conversion simply because it was expected of them and those who'd made a genuine commitment.
At age twelve, Cash answered the call during a revival in 1944. This was the age that many Southern Baptists regarded as the "age of accountability," when children were considered morally developed enough to choose or refuse. This was the age, according to the Gospel of Luke, that Jesus went to Jerusalem with his parents for the Passover and, with a clear sense of his divinity, debated with the rabbis in the temple.
If Cash remembered who preached the night of his conversion he never mentioned it. It's unlikely that he heard anything that he hadn't heard before. It was just the right night. He'd always known that someday he would have to choose one way or another, and he'd tried to put it off, but this night, for a reason he couldn't explain, he felt that postponing the decision would, in itself, be a decision. How many times could a person put off salvation? If Jesus Christ was "the way, the truth and the life," what possible benefits were there in keeping him waiting?
Cash believed in the reality of heaven. He also believed in the reality of hell. Heaven was like the sound of sweet music working on your soul at the end of a hard day's work. Hell was like the red glow of burning fields in the still of an Arkansas night. The fear of hell was one of the instruments God used to make us hunger after heaven. When the preacher called for those who wanted their sins forgiven to make their way to the front, Cash got out of his seat as the congregation sang "Just as I Am":
Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou biddest me come to Thee,
0 Lamb of God, I come, I come! 2
Cash would never regret or renounce this decision. And though he would go through long periods of disobedience, he never lost the conviction that Ch
rist had accepted him, just as he was, and that nothing could reverse that acceptance. The church's thirty-five-year-old pastor, Hal Gallop, baptized him soon afterward in the Blue Hole, a large pond used by all the local churches. J. E. Huff experienced a similar call around the same time. "When I was saved I didn't want to come down because I felt so light," he says. "I'm sure J. R. felt the same."
Cash's conversion made him feel even closer to Jack. They'd always been brothers by blood; now they were spiritual brothers too. They were on the same road and headed for the same destination. Jack had even told those close to him that he wanted to become a preacher. Then, in May 1944, when Jack was fourteen, he was killed. Jack's death, more than any other single event, would shape Cash's life.
Many times Cash would tell the story of how Jack went off one Saturday to cut fence poles on the circular saw in the school's agricultural building, and how he tried to persuade Jack to go fishing instead, but Jack declined because he needed the money. Cash would then recount how later, when coming back from the river, he met his father carrying Jack's blood-soaked clothes and learned that there'd been an accident and that Jack might not make it. Seven days later, with his family around the hospital bed, Jack passed away.
What Cash never said in interviews or in his books, but confided to close friends and some of his children, was that his father had blamed him for Jack's death. This contributed to Cash's lifelong feeling that he didn't deserve the happiness and success that came his way. Ray told him bluntly that he should have died rather than his faithful brother, that he had no business going fishing while Jack was out working for the family.
It's impossible to imagine what these accusations did to Cash's tender psyche. To lose the brother he idolized and loved, only to then be blamed for the death, had to be almost too much to bear. It perhaps explains why, in 1995, he told journalist Nick Tosches that while he had always referred to Jack's death as an accident, he actually believed something more sinister. "There was a neighbor that went down to the shop with him that day and disappeared after the accident. We couldn't prove anything, but I always thought of it as murder. My mother and daddy didn't. They never mentioned that boy. Nothin' was ever done about it."
Many believe the neighbor in question was Everett Strawn, who as a twelve-year-old, happened to meet Jack on his way into the school and asked to join him in his morning activity. He stood to the side as Jack cut the fence posts on the machine. He was watching when the circular blade suddenly lurched toward Jack. "It was one of those saws that you pull toward you," he recalls. "It hit a snag or something. It jumped and came on out and got him." [A rumor also emerged that a wrangler passing through the colony had somehow been responsible for the death, but no evidence has ever emerged to prove that anyone but Strawn was present at the time or that the death was anything but a terrible accident.]
The majority of fatal accidents involving circular saws occur when the guard is not in place, causing the wood to jump, or when the machinist reaches over the saw to clear away waste and comes into contact with the revolving teeth. In Jack's case, the blade ripped through his clothing and into his stomach. Blood splashed onto the sawdust on the floor, yet Strawn remembers that Jack didn't fall down. He walked calmly out of the building and lay down beneath a tree, holding his stomach to prevent his intestines from falling out. "I saw it happen," Strawn says. "But there wasn't much I could do except to raise the alarm."
He ran to the home of the school custodian, Mr. Matlock, who called an ambulance. Dr Hollingsworth, the community's all-purpose physician, operated but couldn't repair the extensive damage and didn't expect Jack to last the night. With the pain controlled by morphine, Jack clung to life. On May 17, the midweek Bible study at First Baptist turned into a prayer meeting for Jack Cash, and the next day he seemed to rally. He read letters and spoke to his mother. When he began hallucinating the next day, Dr. Hollingsworth, realizing his patient was near death, suggested that the whole family spend the night at the hospital.
On the morning of May 20, J. R. came to see his brother—ashen and swollen with gangrene—for the last time. He brought his cheek down next to Jack's and told him good-bye. Jack began to ramble. What he actually said has varied depending on the teller and the passage of time, but the consistent memory has been that he asked his mother whether she could hear the angels singing. Jack said that he could hear them and that was where he was going. Then, with all his family gathered around him, Jack Cash passed away.
The next day the body lay in an open coffin in the living room of the Cash home while those who knew Jack came by to pay their respects. Joy Gower was fourteen at the time and went with her mother. "The adults would talk to the family and offer their condolences. I can particularly remember Tommy, who was only just four years old at the time, pulling himself up to the coffin and looking in. He was obviously wondering why his big brother was laying in a box like that."
After a funeral at First Baptist, Jack was buried in the cemetery twelve miles away in Bassett. A group of his fellow Boy Scouts filled in the grave after the coffin had been lowered. A marble headstone later erected bore the Boy Scout crest, "Jack D. Cash 1929-44," and the question "Will You Meet Me in Heaven?" Unsure whether his father was truly a Christian, Jack may well have asked him this question in the hospital. "His dad didn't go to church at the time," remembers Joy Gower. "The rest of the family was real strong, but his dad wouldn't go. I was told that either the day before he died or a few hours before he died Jack told his dad that he felt he could go on if he knew for sure that he [his dad] was a Christian. That played a great part in the family's life."
The question apparently had a dramatic effect on Ray Cash. "I think that's why God allowed Jack to last those few days," says Joanne, who saw her brother die. "Daddy got down on his knees and gave his heart to the Lord." He started attending church more often, tried to control his drinking, and apparently stopped his violence. But it was always a struggle for Ray. His addictive personality and his sometimes brutal tongue would frequently hamper his progress.
The memory of Jack inspired and guided Cash. In his adult imagination Jack grew old with him and when faced with a moral dilemma Cash would ask himself what Jack would do in such a situation. "He was a very devout Christian who studied his Bible every day," he said in 1988. "He was a very wise person. He gave me advice on a lot of things. We were very close. When he died I felt a really great loss, but his memory has always been an inspiration to me."
Jack's death and the ensuing guilt made Cash more introspective. Although he enjoyed his fun, he also had a reputation for being quiet and thoughtful. He avoided competitive sports. In class photographs he always wore the slightly worried face while all those around him looked blissfully cheerful. It can be no coincidence that he always marked the age of twelve as the start of his creative life, the age at which he began writing stories and poems, the age at which he first learned the rudiments of guitar playing.
"It's when I really started writing," he later said. "I was trying to put down what I was feeling . . . I'd never known death either in the family or among friends, and suddenly I realized that I wasn't immortal, that I too could die someday. The poems and songs reflected the despair and grief of Jack being killed. I guess it told me a whole lot about life early on."
His mother had bought a guitar from the Sears & Roebuck catalog, but around the time of Jack's death it disappeared without mention. Years later Cash realized that they must have sold it to get the family through some hard times. So when he wanted to learn guitar, he visited a boy named Jesse Barnhill, who was a year ahead of him at school. Despite a withered right hand—the result of childhood polio—Barnhill impressed Cash with his ability to create chords on his Gibson flat top with his left hand and beat a rhythm on the strings with his right hand. He would play songs by Hank Snow, Ernest Tubb, and Jimmie Rodgers while they both sang along. Years later, writing of his guitar technique, Cash referenced that early influence: "Sometimes it's magic and I just believe
that when it all comes together it's the right way for me to do it. Like Jesse Barnhill did it. Like Mama did it."
Although his grades in English didn't show it (he regularly got Cs and Ds), Cash began to build a reputation as a writer. Cohen Cox, who graduated three years ahead of Cash, can remember him reciting one of his poems in front of the whole school. "It was like a talk given in rhyme," he said. "I thought it was really unusual for a guy like him to be doing at his age. I can't recall what it was about, but I do remember him doing a real good job."
Both A. J. and J. E. remember Cash as the one people would turn to if they were stuck with creative writing assignments or book reports. Once the class had to write a poem on a western theme and A. J. was stumped. Cash ended up writing it for him. A. J. can still remember eight lines of it:
The top hand mounted his trusty steed
And rode across the plain.
He said, "I'll ride until setting sun
Unless I lose my rein."
The horse gave a jump and then a jerk
And Bob drew up the slack.
He rode his trail until setting sun
Then rode a freight train back.
The young Cash was always moderate in his way of life. The church's teachings and the model of his mother profoundly influenced him, and his father's pre-conversion behavior only made him appreciate peace and sobriety all the more. He had no intention of following his father's example, and he pitied his mother for having to put up with him. When a boy who drank started to hang around with his gang, Cash informed him that he wouldn't be welcome until he quit drinking. "He was dreamy," says A. J. "He was kind of off on another planet, but not in a bad way. He always seemed to have some view of where he was going, but I don't think at that time he would have envisaged a musical career."