Authors: Pamela Morsi
ROE COULDN'T REMEMBER when he'd had a better time. After the "debate" on the beneficial qualities of fire versus water, which Mr. Trace, the opposition speaker, won handily, the Broody twins, Ned and Jed, called a kangaroo court.
At their direction Tom McNees "arrested" Granny Piggott.
"What's the charge?" McNees asked as he escorted the old woman to the front of the crowd.
"Failure to bring any huckleberry pie to the feed," announced young Ned loudly.
The fiesty old woman who was related by either blood or marriage to nearly every soul on the mountain shook a bony finger at the scampish young teens.
"I ain't got no sense of fun about this kindy nonsense," she warned the group testily. The plain clay pipe she held between her teeth was fired up with home-cured tobacco and the scent of it wafted through the crowd.
"If you ain't done nothin', Granny," Jed assured her with a teasing grin, "then you got not a thing to worry about."
Granny was skeptical. "I seen enough of these courts in my time to know that the victim has always got something to worry about."
The twins laughed heartily and the crowd joined in. "You're not the victim, Granny," Ned told her. "You're the criminal."
The old woman's eyes narrowed. "If I ain't 'acquitted' in one dang big hurry, you two scamps won't never taste another pie of mine ever."
Not willing to be intimidated, the twins added bribery and threats to the charges and called their Uncle Pigg up to sit as judge.
Pigg ambled up to the schoolhouse porch with no particular hurry and sat down on the top step gazing down at Granny Piggott, who was actually his aunt rather than his grandmother, as if he'd never seen her before.
"This is a big lot of foolishness," she proclaimed loudly. "I'm an old woman. I can't be expected to stand here at one of these kangaroo courts like I was just another young fool!"
Pigg nodded and spit a big wad of tobacco off to the side, expertly hitting the south pole on the hitching rail. "Bring yer granny a chair, boys," he ordered.
Within minutes Granny Piggott, still fussing like a wet hen, was seated before her accusers and Pigg Broody was calling up a jury.
He picked Pastor Jay to be the jury foreman. The confused cleric couldn't quite grasp what was happening, but went to stand at the left of the steps as the judge directed. He began frantically thumbing through his Bible as if he thought he was being called upon to read.
Also selected for the jury was Sidney Pease, a sleepy toddler who was sucking his thumb. Sidney's mother didn't like the idea at all, but his father thought it a great joke and stood the little boy next to the preacher.
Pigg's cranky mule Job was called next. The hoots and hollers of the crowd were enough to disturb the stubborn old son of a jackass who was very unwilling to take its place among the jury men. With a lot of prodding and pulling the stubborn animal was finally brought up to be tied to a sapling near the judge. Sidney Pease's mother warned the youngster nervously to keep his distance from the ill-tempered beast.
Last, the judge called Jesse Best, who laughed delightedly at being included in the game. He hurried to the jury stand with an eagerness more reminiscent of a child's skip than a farmer's lumberous gait.
Pigg ordered him to stand between the mule and young Sidney. "If that old mule were to go and kick Jesse in the head, it might do him some good," Pigg proclaimed.
The crowd laughed heartily in agreement and Jesse grinned broadly at the joke he didn't quite understand.
The trial, while quite stylized and pseudoserious, didn't last long. The evidence that the Broody boys supplied was to have every man, woman, and child present open his mouth and stick out his tongue. When not one blue-stained tongue could be found, the Broodys rested their case.
Granny huffed and puffed and complained, but didn't even bother to put up a defense. It took the jury only a couple of minutes to find her guilty.
Pigg Broody cleared his throat loudly. "I'd like to thank these jurors," he said. "And commend them for their clear and clever thinking."
The crowd hooted with laughter at the "clear thinking" of poor Pastor Jay, little Sidney, the cranky mule, and Simple Jess.
When the noise subsided, Pigg formally addressed Granny. "Mistress Piggott, you have been found guilty by the kangaroo court. Do you have anything to say before I pronounce sentence upon you?"
Granny huffed grandly. "You just better watch yourself, Piggott Dunderwaulf Broody," she said. "I won't be agreeing to any chicken house cleaning or outhouse liming!"
Pigg flinched slightly at the use of his middle name, but heeded the old woman's warning.
"I believe that the punishment should fit the crime," he proclaimed. "Granny, you are sentenced by this court to bringing
two
pies to next month's Literary. One for these boys here who've taken you to court and one, of course, for the judge."
The crowd cheered loudly at the decision, but Jesse Best interrupted them. "The jury should get pie, too!" he told Pigg.
The judge looked toward Granny and she shrugged. Slapping his hand against his knee, Pigg added that to the sentence. "But that mule of mine ain't getting a bite," he said. "Huckleberries give that creature the runs so bad, I have to tie him in the creek all night long."
Roe laughed with some embarrassment at that story and glanced around at the blushing young girls, many of which were looking his way.
It was unusual that he felt so comfortable and at ease with these people. They were so very different from him. Strangely, they didn't even seem to notice.
His attention was drawn back to the schoolhouse porch when Onery stepped up there. He took only a minute to pat his son on the back proudly and speak a private word with him before turning to the crowd and raising his hands to hush them for his announcement.
"We've got us a stranger here with us tonight," the old man began.
Roe felt a momentary surprise. He felt so comfortable it seemed curious to be considered a stranger. Smiling, what he hoped was companionably, he made his way to the schoolhouse porch. He was met by Jesse who was toting the Ediphone with infinite care. He smiled at Roe as he set the machine on the top step and gently removed the cover.
"Now Farley here," Best began, "is a gentleman and a scholar, folks. He's a-staying up to my place. He says he's taking a liking to my Jesse." Onery grinned slyly. "Or maybe it's my little Meggie that he's taking a liking to."
The crowd chuckled with delight and Roe stood a little straighter. It might be okay for Onery to tease him about his daughter around the cabin, but in front of all these people was more than awkward. Unwillingly Roe's eyes searched the crowd for Meggie; gratefully, he didn't see her.
"Now Roe here," Onery continued. "He's got himself a real yearning for good old music."
Roe watched the eyes of the crowd peruse him with speculation.
"Now I ain't talking about the shaped notes and the do-re-mes we've all heard from them music professors passing through."
A relieved silence settled upon the crowd.
"Roe, he likes the kind of music that we all have sung and played on this mountain since our folks run the Injuns out."
Roe looked hopefully at the group once more.
"They don't have much music up where he's from," Onery explained. "And so they keep it on these little wax spindles so it don't never go away."
As Onery held up one of the blue wax spindles for them to see, everyone laughed heartily. Keeping music on spindles like spun flax was a good joke.
"I'm serious now," Onery insisted. He turned to the young man beside him. "Roe, show these folks how this here Listening Box of yours works. It listens to what you sing or play and it keeps it and plays it back to you."
Roe's hands trembled; he was slightly ill at ease as he attached the horn to the Ediphone. For the very first time since receiving his fellowship, Roe worried whether he would succeed. He counted on his technology to mesmerize his crowd of backwoods Ozark farmers and convince them to help him with his mission. But perhaps the wonders of the modern world might not be enough. These plainspoken people were not easily impressed by the wonders of science or the prospects of progress. They had their own sense of what was important: Food, family, friends. Roe feared that his own rather limited scope of study might hold no appeal against such basics.
He slipped the cylinder that contained Jesse's rendition of "Barbara Allen" onto the roller. With three rhythmic turns of the crank the Ediphone picked up speed and he adjusted the pace. Carefully Roe set the round stylus gently against the grooves in the dark blue wax.
The squeaky noise that came out of the machine was unrecognizable and Roe hastily adjusted the shiny metal lever that controlled the rotating speed. Jesse's perfect-pitched fiddle playing could suddenly be heard floating out from the shiny tin horn.
There was a gasp of shock from the crowd, followed by a hushed, awed silence.
"That's me," Jesse announced proudly. "That's me there playing. I know it sounds like the machine is playing but it's not, it just listens and that there fiddle playing is me. It's me."
Onery quieted his son and the crowd listened in near reverence to the complete performance of the old familiar tune.
When the last note faded away, there was complete stillness on the side of the mountain for one very long moment. Roe felt the sweat trickling down the back of his neck.
Then Beulah Winsloe began to clap. When she did, her brother, Tom McNees, immediately joined in. Her husband and son followed suit and in another moment a rousing round of applause emerged from the crowd.
Roe let out a long breath. He hadn't realized that he'd been holding it. They loved music. He knew it. Now all they had to do was trust him enough to share theirs with him.
"What I'd like to do this summer," he said, "is to visit with each of you for a few evenings and record what songs that you remember how to sing or play. I'll write down the words that you remember to the old songs and the Ediphone will make recordings of you singing and playing them. I'd be happy to record any of your old songs, but I'm especially interested in the oldest. The ones that came across the sea with your ancestors."
"My ancestors dain't come across the sea," Orv Winsloe commented. "They come from Tennessee."
"But before that, Mr. Winsloe, they came from the British Isles," Roe told him.
"And before that they come from the Garden of Eden," Granny Piggott observed, initiating a good laugh.
"It is my premise," he explained, "that many of the songs that you sing here and now have their origin in the Scotch-Irish tradition of the Middle Ages. All of that music and its history has been lost through time. But your ancestors brought that music to the New World and because of the isolation of your communities it still exists."
The only sound in the audience was one fussing baby. The expression on their faces was polite boredom. Roe tried harder.
"Naturally, because of the lapse in time and distance there will be changes in the way the songs are performed. That is an accepted phenomenon called communal re-creation. But I do think that we will be able to recognize them by their strophic structure and I believe that perhaps I can find in these hills examples of all seven of the dominant tune families of Scotland."
"Who is this Tune family?" Roe heard a young wife ask her husband. "Are they from the Bay State, too?"
Roe laughed and then wanted to strike himself in the head. The people were all staring at him as if he'd told some joke that they couldn't understand.
A sinking feeling settled inside him. For all his study, his practice, his attempts in Cambridge drawing rooms, he was still more comfortable with books than people. And now with this crowd of people, a group that was essential to him for the evidence of his study, he had proved to be as awkward as in his gangly youth.
When Buell Phillips cleared his throat loudly, his words came as no surprise to Roe. "This is all well and good, Farley," he said. "But the summer is a very busy time for most of us, young man," he said. "We just cain't take off time from our work in the middle of the day to sit around singing."
Murmurs of agreement flittered through the crowd as most of those gathered seemed to share Phillips's concern, once he'd voiced it.
"Perhaps I could come to see you in the evenings," Roe said hastily.
Granny Piggott shook her head. "Working folks is tired of an evening," she said.
"Never knew you to be too tired to sing us a tune, Granny," Jesse piped in.
The old woman gave him an evil-eyed squint. "You just keep yourself hushed, Simple Jess. I ain't forgot that foolishness about the pie yet."
The crowd chuckled good-naturedly again.
"Perhaps," Roe interrupted. "Perhaps I could help out at your farms. I could work for you equal to the time you spend recording and reminiscing for me. An extra hand could make up for the time lost."
As the community began to mull that thought over, Onery stepped forward.
"How about I sweeten the pot a little, folks," the gray-bearded man said. "My boy Jesse is thicker than thieves with Farley here. And you all know what a hard worker and a strong back the boy is. Now he'd be pleased to get his own work done early and go along with our young scholar here to show him the way and help him out. You'll get two a-working for the price of one. Ain't that what you call a fine good deal, Buell Phillips? Wish I could buy cartridges for my Winchester at your store that way."
The people laughed at Phillips's expense. Phillips, who was as tight with the penny as if it was blood kin, was not known for having any "fine good deals" in his store. Wisely the storekeeper let the subject go.
"Nope," Granny Piggott announced, speaking for the entire gathering as if she had the right. "It's a whole lot of foolishness this gathering up old songs and we're not having none of it."
"I don't think it's foolishness," Onery said, hands on his hips, primed and ready to dispute the old woman's words.