Something Rich and Strange: Selected Stories (36 page)

“Of course, aside from my gratitude, I have leave to pay a fair wage for assistance in locating such ballads.”

The old man spat again.

“How much?”

“Three dollars a day.”

“I’ll scratch you up some tunes for that,” the rustic answered, and nodded at the wagon, “but not cheer. We’ll have to hove it a ways.”

“And when might we set out?” Wilson asked.

“Come noon tomorrow. You baddin at the inn?”

“Badding?”

“Yes, baddin,” the old man said. “Sleepin.”

“I am.”

“I’ll pick you up thar then,” the rustic said, and resumed hitching his horse.

“May I ask your name, sir,” Wilson said. “Mine is James Wilson.”

“I a go ba rafe,” the old man answered.

They left Sylva at twelve the next day, Wilson’s valise settled in the wagon bed, he himself on the buckboard beside Iago Barafe. They passed handsome farms with fine houses, but as they ventured farther into the mountains, the dwellings became smaller, sometimes aslant and often unpainted. To Wilson’s delight, he saw his first cabin, then several more. They turned off the “pike,” as Barafe called it, and onto a wayfare of trampled weeds and dirt. As the elevation rose, the October air cooled. The mountains leaned closer and granite outcrops broke through stands of trees.

The remoteness evoked an older era, and Wilson supposed that it was as much the landscape as the inhabitants that allowed Albion’s music to survive here. He thought again of his university dons, each monotoned lecture like a Lethean submerging from which he retained just enough to earn his degree. Now, however, he, James Wilson, would show them that history was more than their ossified blather. It was outside libraries and lecture halls and alive in the world, passed down one tongue to another by the humble folk. Why even his guide, obviously illiterate, had a name retained from Elizabethan drama.

A red-and-black serpent slithered across the path, disappeared into a rocky crevice.

“Poisonous, I assume,” Wilson said.

“Naw,” Barafe answered, “nothin but a meek snake.”

Soon after, they splashed across a brook.

“We’re on McDawnell land now,” the older man said.

“McDowell?” Wilson asked.

“I reckon you kin say it that way,” Barafe answered.

“The family is from Scotland, I presume,” Wilson said, “but long ago.”

“They been up here many a yar,” the old man said, “and it’s a passel of them. The ones we’re going to see, they got their great-granny yet alive. She’s nigh a century old but got a mind sharp as a new-hone axe. She’ll know yer tunes and anything else you want. But they can be a techy lot, if they taken a dislikin to you.”

“If my being from England makes them uncomfortable,” Wilson proclaimed, “that is easily rectified. My father is indeed English and I have lived in England all my life, but my mother was born in Scotland.”

Barafe nodded and shook the reins.

“It ain’t far to the glen now,” he said.

The wagon crested a last hill and Wilson saw not a dilapidated cabin but a white farmhouse with glass windows and a roof shiny as fresh-minted sterling. Yet within the seemingly modern dwelling, he reminded himself, a near centenarian awaited. A fallow field lay to the left of the house, and a barn on the right. Deeper in the glen, cattle and horses wandered an open pasture, their sides branded with an M. A man who looked to be in his fifties came out on the porch and watched them approach. He wore overalls and a chambray shirt but no sidearm.

“That’s Luther,” Barafe said.

“I presumed we might be greeted with a show of weaponry.”

“They’d not do that less you given them particular cause,” Barafe answered. “They keep the old ways and we’re their guests.”

When they were in the yard, Barafe secured the brake and they climbed off the buckboard and ascended the steps. The two rustics greeted each other familiarly, though their host addressed his elder as “Rafe.” Wilson stepped forward.

“James Wilson,” he said, extending his hand.

“Good to meet you, James,” the other replied. “Call me Luther.”

Their host took Wilson’s valise and opened the door, then stood back so the guests might enter first and warm themselves in front of the corbelled hearth. The parlor slowly revealed itself. A carriage clock was on the mantel, beside it a row of books that included the expected family bible but also a thick tome entitled
Clans of Scotland
.

More of the room emerged. A framed daguerreotype of a white-bearded patriarch dominated one wall, on the opposite, a red-and-black tartan, its bottom edge singed. Two ladder-back chairs were on one side of the hearth and on the other a large Windsor chair plushly lined in red velvet.

“Please sit down,” their host said. “I saw you coming from a ways off so stoked the fire for you.”

A middle-aged woman entered the parlor with a silver platter. On it were bread and jelly and coffee, silverware and saucers, two cloth napkins. Luther placed a footstool between his guests, and the woman set the platter down.

“This is Molly,” their host said, “my wife.”

The woman blushed slightly.

“We just finished our noon dinner,” she said. “If we’d known you were coming, we’d have waited.”

Like Barafe, Luther and his wife had prominent accents, yet both spoke with a formality that acknowledged “d’s” and “g’s” on word endings. Barafe sat down and tucked his napkin under his chin with an almost comic flair. Wilson sat as well, only then saw that the Windsor chair was occupied.

The beldame’s face possessed the color and creases of a walnut hull. A black shawl draped over her shoulders, obscuring a body shrunken to a child’s stature. The old woman appeared more engulfed than seated, head and body pressed into the soft padding, shoe tips not touching the floor. And yet, the effect was not so much of a small woman as of a large chair, which, like the velvet lining, gave an appearance of regal authority.

“Granny,” Molly said. “We have guests.”

Wilson stood.

“I am pleased to make your acquaintance, madam,” he said, and gave a slight bow.

“This here is James Wilson,” Barafe said, suddenly impelled to use surnames. “He come all the way from England to learn old tunes.”

The matriarch blinked twice and then stared fixedly at Wilson. Her eyes were of the lightest blue, as if time had rinsed away most of the color, but there was liveliness inside them. Wilson sat back down.

“He’s gonna learn ’em and haul ’em back to England,” Barafe added, all but waving a Union Jack over Wilson’s head.

“I do indeed come from England, madam,” Wilson said, “but my mother is a proud Scot and I too proudly claim the heritage of thistle and bagpipe.”

The proclamation was a bit disingenuous. Wilson’s mother, though born in Scotland, had moved to London at sixteen and rarely spoken of her Scots roots. Nor had she encouraged her son to think of himself as anything but English. The sole acknowledgment was a blue-and-black tartan that hung, rather forlornly, on an attic wall. The old woman made no reply, and Wilson, wondering if he should summon forth other lore worthy of a loyal scion of Scotland, decided on a more direct tack.

“And of course I will gladly pay you for your trouble,” Wilson added.

“If Granny learns you some songs, you’ll pay no money for them,” Luther said, “but it’s her notion to do or not do.”

At first it appeared that the matriarch might not deign to respond. Then the sunken mouth slowly unsealed, revealing a single nubbed tooth.

“I can sing a one,” the old woman said, “but I’ll need a sup of water first.”

Wilson opened his valise and took out the fountain pen and ink-bottle, a calfskin ledger. He set the ink bottle by his chair, opened the ledger, and wrote Jackson County, North Carolina, United States, October 1922.

“If you could give me the title of the ballad first, that would be helpful,” Wilson said with proper deference.

“It’s called ‘The Betrothed Knight,’” the old woman answered.

Her voice was low but surprisingly melodic. Wilson wrote rapidly as the matriarch sang of a deceived maiden. Several words were pleasingly archaic, but even better for his purposes, the mention of a knight supported England as the ballad’s place of origin. Dipping the pen into the ink during the refrain, Wilson set down all the words in one listening.

“That’s a bully one,” Barafe said.

“Yes,” Wilson agreed. “Most excellent indeed. Do you know more, madam?” The old woman appeared reluctant, so Wilson tried another approach. “Your name will appear on the page with the ballad,” he noted, “so you will be properly honored.”

The appeal to vanity had the opposite effect intended. The old woman asked why she should get “notioned” for something that wasn’t hers. She pulled the shawl tight around her neck and chin as if to muffle any further word or song. Luther went to the hearth and picked up the poker, stabbed at the fire until the slumbering flame sparked back to life. As their host leaned the poker by the hearth, Wilson saw that, by accident or design, the poker’s prod was shaped like an M. Wilson nodded toward the bookshelf and its tome.

“Of course sharing your ballads does Scotland a great service as well,” Wilson noted. “You are preserving a vital part of your ancestors’ and descendants’ history.”

The old woman did not speak but her eyes were now attentive.

“And part of mine as well,” Wilson reminded her.

He racked his brain for something beyond the Merry Olde England perspective of Scotland as a mere barnacle on England’s ship of empire. Macbeth and a joke about bagpipes and testicles emerged first, then, wedged between William the Bruce and Bonnie Prince Charlie, a muddle of dates-feuds-clans and, finally, tam-o-shanters and tartans. Tartans. Wilson left the chair and walked over to the red-and-black tartan, let a thumb and finger rub the cloth. He nodded favorably, hoping to impart a Scotsman’s familiarity with weave and wool.

“Our tartan hangs on a wall as well, blue and black it is, the proud tartan of Clan Campbell, and no doubt ancient as yours, though better preserved, which is to be expected, since ours has not traveled such distances.”

“And not burned,” the old woman said grimly.

Luther and Molly glared at Wilson, and despite the fire, a gust of cold air seemed to fill the room.

“Your tartan,” Luther asked, “an azure blue?”

“Well, yes,” Wilson answered.

“Argyle,” the beldame hissed.

Wilson removed his finger and thumb from the tartan.

“Pardon me,” he said. “I’m certain the tartan has been as well cared for as possible. It has just endured a longer journey than ours, across an ocean. And my touching it, I meant no disrespect.”

Barafe looked up from his plate, finally aware that some drama was unfolding around him.

“What did you say to vex Granny McDonald?” Barafe asked.

For a few moments the only sound was the ticking of the clock. A disquieting thought nudged Wilson, some connection between English Kings and Argyle Campbells and, thanks to Iago Barafe’s sudden gift of enunciation, Clan McDonald.

“Perhaps we should go,” Wilson said, stepping over to pack up his valise. “I’m sure we have taken up enough of your time.”

“Not till I sing one more song,” Granny McDonald said.

Luther latched the front door before crossing the room to the fireplace. He lifted the poker but, instead of poking the fire, nested the prod in the flames.

“You go on out and get your horse some water from the spring, Rafe,” Luther McDonald said.

Wilson watched as Barafe hesitated, then gave his erstwhile charge a shrug and stood. Molly unlatched the door, locking it back after the old man passed through.

“This song,” the old woman said, “it’s called ‘The Snows of Glencoe.’ Be it one you know?”

“I do not, madam,” Wilson stammered.

Wilson did, however, know about the Glencoe massacre. He had been roused from his usual classroom stupor when his don mentioned Clan Campbell’s involvement. That had sparked enough interest in Wilson to ask his mother about the event. It’s all in the past, his mother had told him, and refused to say more.

“The previous ballad really will suffice,” Wilson said. “I have another appointment and must be going.”

“Sit down and listen,” Luther McDonald said.

Wilson did as he was told and the beldame began to sing.

They came in a blizzard and we offered them heat

A roof o’er their heads and dry shoes for their feet

We wined them and dined them they ate of our meat

And slept in the house of McDonald.

Some died in their beds in the grasp of their foe

Some fled in the night and were lost in the snow

Some lived to accuse them who struck the first blow

That slaughtered the house of McDonald.

They came from Fort Henry with murder in mind.

The Campbells had orders Prince William had signed

Put all to the swords these words were underlined

And leave none alive named McDonald.

The old woman’s lips tightened into a mirthless smile. For a few moments no one moved. Then Luther retrieved the poker from the fire, placed his free hand close enough to gauge the heat. Wilson withdrew a wallet from his back pocket.

“I wish to make payment for the songs as well as your hospitality,” he said, and rapidly began pulling out bills.

“We’ll take no money,” his host answered. “No man, not even a king, can buy off a McDonald.”

When his ship docked in London harbor six weeks later, Wilson’s tongue had not fully healed. Months passed before he was able to convey his thoughts aloud, and during those mute months he showed little desire to do so with pen and paper. Nevertheless, the previously unknown ballad Wilson brought back caused a sensation, in part because its purveyor had placed himself in such peril to acquire it. One London newspaper proclaimed James Wilson worthy of mention with Sir Walter Raleigh and Captain John Smith, those earlier adventurers who also left their civilized isle to venture among the New World’s Calibans.

I
t’s almost twelve thirty when I’m done sweeping the front steps, so I go inside to stash the broom and dustpan and lock the closet. In the foyer, there’s a crisis hotline flyer and a sign-up sheet beneath. Professor Wardlaw has volunteered for Friday, her usual night. I walk out of Cromer Hall and into a November day warmer and sunnier than you usually get in these mountains. The clock tower bell rings. In my mind I move the heavy metal hands ahead ten and a half hours. Kerrie is already in bed. Over at the ATM, students pull out bank cards like winning lottery tickets. Probably not one of them ever thinks that while they’re sitting in a classroom or watching a basketball game kids their own age are getting blown up by IEDs. I think again about how we wouldn’t be in Afghanistan if there was still a draft. You can bet it’d be a lot different if everyone’s kids could end up over there. Just a bunch of stupid hillbillies fighting a stupid war, that’s what some jerk on TV said, like Kerrie and the rest don’t matter. There’s times I want to grab a student by the collar and say you don’t know how good you got it, or I tell myself I’ve given my daughter more than my parents gave me. That’s easier than thinking how if I’d had more ambition years back and gotten a welding certificate or degree at Blue Ridge Tech, made more money, Kerrie wouldn’t be over there.