Marrying Stone (8 page)

Writing them down! As if folks was likely to forget. It would be like writing down how to wash dishes or slaughter a hog. Everybody already knew how to do it, nobody'd ever want to read about how.

Still, the machine was curious and Roe Farley the finest looking man she'd ever seen. Meggie couldn't quite keep her mind and her attention on her dish basin and her dirty tins.

"This is the horn," Roe said as he attached a large metal piece to the top of the machine.

To Meggie it looked like a tin trumpet only it was black and shiny.

"You sing or play into the horn and the sound is recorded onto the wax cylinders."

"It must be kindy hard to get into that horn to sing." Jesse appeared confused.

"I 'magine it's even tougher to play a fiddle in there," Onery added with a laugh.

"It's not a perfect machine," Roe said, smiling. "But if you put your mouth or your fiddle as close to the horn as possible, and you sing or play loudly, the machine picks up the sound."

Both men appeared curious, but unconvinced. Roe cranked up the Edison phonograph.

"Come on, Jesse, say something into the horn."

The blond young man hesitated. "Ain't got nothing to say to it."

"Just tell it your name, like you did to me this afternoon."

His face screwed up with displeasure at the handsome city man. Meggie knew that look well: her brother was sure to refuse. But Jesse, appearing as if he were about to take a dose of summer tonic, leaned forward toward the big black trumpet.

"My name's Jesse Best. But folks call me Simple Jess," he said.

"Wonderful!" Roe was clearly delighted. "Now wait just a minute."

The entire Best family watched as Roe deftly unscrewed the sharp tip that cut into the wax and replaced it with a rounder, curved piece.

"That round thing won't cut the wax like the other knife did," Onery said.

"It's not really a knife," Roe answered. "It's called a stylus. It's made of sapphire. The sharp tip is used to cut when we're recording. Now we're just going to play it back."

Roe cranked up the machine again and gently set the round-tipped stylus against the turning wax spindle. For a moment there was complete silence in the room. Then the machine gave forth a croaky, gravelly sound.

"My name's Jesse Best. But folks call me Simple Jess."

Meggie gave a little cry of shock and dropped her wet dishrag on her bare foot.

Onery slapped his thigh. "Well, I'll be switched!"

Jesse jumped up and moved away so quickly he knocked his chair to the floor. He was pointing to the machine with disbelief.

"That thing is named Jesse Best, too?" His question was incredulous.

"No, no," Roe calmed him. "The machine is just saying back to you what
you
said."

"That's some kind of contraption you got there," Onery told him with genuine admiration.

"But it said, 'My name is Jesse Best.'" The young man still looked confused and agitated.

"It said that because that's what you said," Roe told him gently. "It's not named Jesse Best, you are."

Jesse wasn't quite mollified. "Well, what
is
its name then?"

"It's called an Ediphone."

"Ediphone?" Jess had never heard of such a thing. "What kind of name is that?"

"Well," Roe said thoughtfully. "It's a derivation, I suppose, a name made up of two names."

Jesse sat back down in his chair, but he still watched the Ediphone warily.

"You see the machine is a type of
phonograph
made by Mr.
Edison
. Phono means sound in Greek. So, he called it an
Ediphone
. I guess it's kind of a nickname." Roe caught Meggie's eye and smiled. "It's like your sister's name is Margaret May and you call her Meggie. The Edison phonograph is called an Ediphone."

"It's a pretty strange name," Jesse said.

"It's a pretty strange machine," Onery Best put in.

Roe nodded. "With the Ediphone, I can make faithful reproductions of the actual performance of the folk songs. Performance is a major portion of what makes the songs important. Just writing down the words and the composition is not enough. I want to have the most faithful rendering of these works possible."

"Well, it sounds kindy croaky," Onery said.

"But it listens, Pa," Jesse told him. "It listens to what we sing or say. I'm going to call it a Listening Box."

Onery smiled at Roe and then turned once more to his son. "Jesse, get your fiddle and play a song for that there Listening Box."

The young man hesitated for only a minute. Then from up above the pie safe, he retrieved a fine old fiddle, varnished richly with red oil and polished to a bright sheen.

Meggie noticed Roe looked surprised. Clearly, he hadn't expected such a fine instrument in such a modest home. Jesse's fiddle was beautifully made with its small neck and a fine scroll, But more than that, the instrument had perfect tone. Even when played loudly, it held a purity that was rare in these mountains—as rare as her brother's talent at playing it.

Jesse'd been fiddling for most of his life. The instrument had belonged to Onery, handed down from his own father. Casually the young man now propped the chin piece on his collarbone and held it in place. He closed his eyes. Meggie watched her brother with pride; the smell of pine tar and rosin filled the room, spreading a warm, secure feeling over her. It was hope and home and beauty and love.

Grabbing up the redwood bow, Jesse drew it down slowly across the e-string. A sweet soulful sound filled the room as Jesse adjusted the fine tuner at the base of the bridge. His ear was excellent and his pitch was perfect, and since those were the only gifts heaven had seen fit to give him, the young man wanted for no others. As he continued to tune the other strings, he walked toward the strange, unsightly machine with the big tin trumpet poised upon it.

He looked over at Roe and then at his father. "What do you want me to play?"

"Whatever you want," was Roe's answer.

His father was more thoughtful. "Play 'Barbry Ellen,'" he said. "You play that one mighty nice."

Moving up close to the horn of the Ediphone, Jesse drew the bow across the fiddle strings and began to play an up-tempo version of the sweet sadness of "unworthy Barbara Allen."

Delighted, Roe rifled through his portable desk for pen and paper as Onery began to sing.

"In Scarlet Town where I was born

There was a fair maid dwellin'

Made ever' youth cry well away,

Her name was Barbry Ellen."

Meggie watched as the stranger's fingers literally flew across the paper writing the words as her father sang them. She'd never seen a human move a pen so fast. In fact, she would hardly have thought it possible. Meggie could write. But her sparse, graceful penmanship took much time and effort. Roe's hands moved across the paper with the same quickness and surity with which Jesse's fingers worked the fiddle's fingerboard.

The dishes now completely forgotten, Meggie stood by the kitchen table, listening to the beauty of her brother's fiddling, the deep vibrancy of her father's tenor voice, and watching the most interesting man she had ever seen, the man she'd thought for a while to be her very own prince, writing quick as a minute in the bright yellow glow of the tallow candles as if he belonged there.

" 'Farewell,' she said, 'ye virgins all,

And shun the fault I fell in;

Henceforth take warning of the fall

Of unworthy Barbry Ellen.'"

As the last strains of the fiddle died away, Roe sighed in appreciation. "Beautiful."

Onery and Jesse both chuckled. "It's a right pretty tune," Onery agreed. "And there ain't none on the mountain that can fiddle as well as my Jesse."

Roe was smiling and nodded. "He's right, you know,Jesse. I've heard the fiddle played all over the world and I've never heard anyone better than you."

The young man blushed and shrugged. "It ain't nothing."

"Oh, but it is, Jesse," Meggie insisted as she came forward to lay a loving hand on her brother's shoulder. "You've a wonderful talent. You should be proud."

He shook away the compliment. "It ain't like I can read or cipher or something. I just hear the music in my head and it comes out my fingers."

'That's something that a lot of people who can read and cipher can never do," Roe told him.

Jesse was clearly embarrassed by this praise. "You just say that 'cause you're my frien'."

"I
am
your friend," Roe answered. "And friends always tell each other the truth."

'They do?"

Roe nodded.

Jesse's blue eyes widened and his face beamed with pleasure.

"Let's hear what it sounds like on the machine," Roe suggested.

Meggie didn't even feign disinterest as Farley changed the stylus again. Maybe the stranger was right about the Ediphone. Once the mountain folks had heard the wonderful new machine, maybe they would help him collect the music.

As the stylus moved along the grooves in the wax, the music flowed out of the horn. Her father's singing was almost too faint to hear, but the sweet strains of Jesse's violin sounded almost as good in the reproduction as it had when he'd played it.

"Is that how my fiddle sounds?" Jesse asked curiously.

"Well, you sound better than that," Roe told him. "But it's close."

Jesse shook his head in disbelief. "This machine is like the magic in one of Meggie's stories."

He turned to smile with pride at his sister.

"Meggie's stories?" Roe asked.

The young man nodded. "Meggie, she reads real good. And she don't just read the Bible, neither. She's got a book of them fairy tales they're called. Sometimes she reads them to me."

Her cheeks were bright red with the stain of embarrassment. Meggie began to move back from the men and toward the dirty dishes she'd left behind.

"They's magic in them fairy tales," Jesse continued. "Things can happen that a feller wouldn't believe could never happen."

"So I understand," Roe agreed.

"And this machine of yours, it's like that. A feller wouldn't never believe that it can listen and then talk and play near as good as me."

"No, Jesse," Roe assured him. "The machine isn't magic. The machine can't talk or play at all. It simply records you and plays what it's heard back. Magic is only in fairy tales."

FROM THE JOURNAL OF

J. MONROE FARLEY

April 17, 1902

Marrying Stone, Arkansas

The family who have given me shelter are an interesting yet peculiar trio. Their speech and ways are old and curious and I find myself observing them as if they were living fossils. They are a musical family and have agreed to help with my work and to introduce me to other people nearby. The farmer himself at one time made his living in these hills playing the fiddle. His son is simpleminded, but is a very accomplished fiddler and has in his repertoire a wide range of tunes that he has begun to share with me.

On Friday next we are set to attend what the Bests call "the Literary." This is apparently a local social gathering where music and cultural events take place. I am very anxious to attend, but find much here in this wilderness homestead to draw my interest. It is as if I have stepped back into time.

The typical day begins with breaking fast before dawn. The personal habits of the Best family are difficult for me to accustom myself to. On the first evening I asked of Jesse, the son, directions to the privy. The young man looked momentarily confused and then explained in his simple way that the homestead did not boast a privy.

Subsistence farming in this rough, unbroken stretch of mountain that the Best family calls home proves to be laborious, backbreaking work. Due to the farmer's age and bad leg, the toughest and the dirtiest jobs fall to the younger and stronger son. And, to my dismay, the young man eagerly shares these chores with me.

Although I find the backwoods life interesting in an intellectual context, I can't help but think wistfully of Cambridge and the bustle of eager students and the musty aged smell of the library. I am eager to return to the world that I know.

The family also has a daughter. Her name is Margaret.