Appalachian Song

by Patrick Holmes

Mr. Sharp is in ill health again, owing I think to our proximity to civilization. I use the term as advisedly as he. Our rooms are small and drab, the food tastes mostly of grease, and the town appears as disheveled as its citizens. We remind ourselves that inconvenience is a feature of all great adventures and endeavor not to complain; but when Mr. Sharp is in ill health he is oftentimes in ill humor, so to my duties as secretary and companion I add the responsibilities of nurse and consoler.

I bring his tea and wait with the proffered cup beside the bed while he labors to hoist himself upright. I position the pillow for his comfort. “Maud,” he says, elongating my name as he does when he’s weary, “you do too much.” His voice is raspy still; his eyes, watery, banked by dark circles of sleeplessness. For a moment, his gaze rests on the floor, on that space by the bed where I had spent the night, urging his breaths. “I am,” he says, pausing to take in air, “I am in danger of becoming spoiled.”

“You are already spoiled, Mr. Sharp.” My smile, too eager and toothy, I know, reflects dimly in his face. “It is your fate. You are a man, a man with a wife and daughters at home to spoil you.”

“We are many miles from home, aren’t we, Maud?” He breathes. “At this moment, I feel a great distance from everything. Every day I am here, I am not collecting.”

I take his hand. I stand at the boundary of our familiarity, alone in his room, he in his nightshirt prone upon an iron bed that reminds me of hospital, and I the patient nurse, my true affection antiseptically rendered. From the street, the call of teamsters and the heavy trod of horses pulling weighted wagons and the thin puttering of a motor car flow up and through the open window, the steam of commerce rising on the heat of a day we have done our utmost to disregard. Somewhere in these thin walls the bleating of a radio reverberates, just now a modern tune, a bouncing rhythm, jingling and frivolous.

“This is a vulgar place,” he says.

I squeeze his fingers, lay the back of my hand to his forehead. “I do believe you are better today. We shall leave as soon as you are ready.”

“Make the arrangements. There are no songs here.”

Odd to think, for two people who speak so often about the comforts of Hampstead, who have been in motion so much these past two years, that we find such pleasure in traveling by rail through these mountains. They are glorious and, as slowly as our brave locomotives labor over them, they are all of the world that we know. Mr. Sharp is not yet himself, which is to say he is quiet and still, his dancer’s grace hobbled by soreness and the vibrancy that so distinguishes him dimmed by fatigue; but these wild Appalachians will be his tonic. He sits erect as always, his countenance serene, enhanced by the slightest smile. Such a noble face. Eyes closed, I could easily trace its strong lines—the slope of a generous forehead to the heavy brow that hoods the kindest eyes, the high ridge of his cheeks, the prominent nose and the deep ravines that extend from it to the full measure of chin. His head inclines toward the open window as, gathering speed, our train dives into an ocean of green, meadows flowing to forest-covered slopes that rise like the ripples of the great peaks beyond. We began to climb again and, his thin hair ruffled by the wind, Mr. Sharp leans forward and fixes on the distant view. I know his mind. He is thinking of the families who inhabit that wildness in blessed isolation, people as English as we are, as Mr. Sharp likes to say, men and women whom we know by their songs.

We enter a tunnel, into that thrilling roar and darkness, and when we emerge, Mr. Sharp says, “Where shall we begin?”

“Mrs. Campbell is to meet us at the Grove Park tomorrow. Perhaps there will be another letter from Mrs. Gentry.”

“Yes, we will go where the path leads us. Do you have your notes?”

I take the pages from the case at my feet and pass all but a few to Mr. Sharp. Those that I keep I employ, discreetly, as a fan. It is still intolerably warm. On days such as this, I feel encased in my suit and more than a little envious of those mountain women who have unashamedly dispensed with undergarments. This is not an unusual accommodation, particularly with the women of Laurel Country. Mr. Sharp rarely remarks on it now. It is to him a trait of the class, but I am not sure the term “peasant” applies here. For all its beauty, this is a harsh place, and yet our acquaintances inhabit it freely and proudly. I am especially struck by the spirit of the women, by their self-respect and by the bravery in their forbearance. If they choose to dismiss our conventions, it is a mark of their independence, not an indication of class resentment. I suspect they save their resentment for private matters.

‘Make the arrangements. There are no songs here.’

“I am thinking of Mrs. Patrick.”

Submerged beneath the rattling of the train, Mr. Sharp does not respond. I reach for the papers, and he releases them with an ease that suggests relief. “After all this time,” he says, “I still cannot decipher your handwriting.”

“Nor I your moods.” He knows I jest. “I travel with a typewriter. Your moods don’t linger. We make accommodations.”

“Allowances, I think.”

“Interesting,” I say. “I make accommodations. You make allowances. Is that because I am a woman and you are a man?” I make a point of smiling more broadly.

“Please, Maud, you are not helping my headache.”

“I have the aspirin.”

“I need my tea.”

“I will make tea as soon as we arrive.”

It is a promise and it satisfies him. I leaf through the papers and let him rest. We are strong-willed people, he and I, but I am aware that I yield more readily and I know the many reasons why this is so. Manipulation is not among them—I must not be clever enough to be calculating—but a telling aspect of our relationship is this: when I retreat, he often follows. I sit quietly, reading, until I feel his gaze upon me.

“A moment ago Mrs. Patrick came to mind,” I say.

“The Clay County woman? Why is that?”

“I’m not sure. Her stories, I suppose.”

“I remember. Three husbands.”

“Not concurrently.”

My heart lifts to hear him laugh. “No, consecutively. What was that she said about the last one?”

“She said, ‘I finally got shed of him,’ and then she spat. It caused me to wonder how she did that.”

“What?”

“Got shed of him.”

I fancy he is enjoying our memories of this indomitable woman sitting outside her cabin, smoking her pipe and recalling the travails of her married life in racy language. A glint of playfulness lights his eyes and, in a soft baritone still serrated by illness, Mr. Sharp begins to sing:

He opened her bosom all whiter than snow,

He pierced her heart and the blood it did flow

And into the grave her fair body did throw

He covered her up and away did go

“I would prefer they did not call them love songs,” I say.

“It is queer, but you know, dear Maudie, these are not subtle people. Dead is dead, love is love. Isn’t obsessive love, sad and tragic as it may be, a kind of love?”

I could ask, isn’t unrequited love? Instead I nod my agreement and watch the sky disappear as our train traverses a blank cliff face. I cannot say to Mr. Sharp something I hesitate to admit to myself.

In the end, a most enjoyable afternoon will be noted in plain words typed on ruled paper:

The True Lover’s Farewell. Sung by Mrs. Golda Bennett at Balsam, Jackson County, N.C.  July 1917.

Mrs. Bennett omitted the fifth stanza. It is taken from a Virginia version of the same song.

Tonight, in my diary, alongside the record of an evening devoted to darning my stockings and preparing Mr. Sharp’s correspondence, I will provide such details as the location of the Bennett cabin in a high cove at the end of rutted cart path, the large vegetable patch in the most exposed area of the clearing, the four children, all barefooted, their being rendered mute for a time by shyness at the sudden appearance of two strangers, and how, in characteristic fashion, Mrs. Bennett and her husband, a seemingly much older man always referred to as Mr. Bennett, allowed their surprise to bloom into the warmest welcome.

Mr. Sharp calls it prospecting, but I enjoy thinking of our work as a treasure hunt, the distinction being in how we are guided to the “gold” by accumulating intelligence, one piece connecting to another as if our informants were dots on a map leading us to the spot we seek. The ballads we unearth lay whole and unspoiled beneath the regard of modern culture, hidden in the most remote situations, and would soon be lost to memory altogether were it not for the passion and expertise of Mr. Sharp. Still, we must acknowledge the contribution of these Highlanders, who, by their open and helpful nature, keep us on the trail, as well as the good fortune we have had in finding them.

Our two days since leaving Hot Springs had not been fruitful. The man we had hoped to call on had died in the spring. His brother-in-law directed us to the home of two elderly sisters. We took down a song of fair quality from one, but nothing from the other. They told us they had not thought of the old songs in years and that they are not taught to the children. Where teachers, religious or secular, have established a presence, where the insidious influence of the radio has reached, we contend with a type of sophistication that smothers the traditional arts. A selective amnesia had settled on Balsam. We had determined to move on to Sylva when the kindly gentleman who manages our hotel, a Mr. Mitchell, perhaps noticing the disappointment that descends upon Mr. Sharp whenever we encounter a rough patch, proved to be our salvation. He directed us toward Shadow Cove, and we set out this morning on a journey that eventually proved too difficult for the hired motor or our driver. Mr. Sharp and I walked the last few miles, mainly up hill and in intense heat. Our path took us through thickets dense and dark green in the fullness of summer, tangles of rhododendron and honeysuckle and, where the elevation and woodlands cooperated, onto a perch that offered a beautiful, clear vista; but I was unable to give the scenery sufficient appreciation because of concern for the toll this tramp would take on Mr. Sharp. His breathing was ragged. I asked to carry the camera knowing he would refuse. At last, relief appeared with level ground and, not long after, with the clearing of the Bennett farm, noticeably cooler in the shadow of the forested slopes that enclosed it.

Mr. Sharp has a smile and gentle demeanor that seems to dispel wariness, and if there is a trace of suspicion in Mrs. Bennett as she meets us, or in Mr. Bennett when he soon appears, it is pushed aside by Mr. Sharp’s practiced way of making acquaintance. He introduces us and asks our hosts if we could trouble them for a drink of water. Soon, we are sitting in the shade of the cabin, in the embrace of their hospitality, drinking from a dented metal dipper as Mr. Sharp patiently explains our mission.

“She’s all the time a-singin’.” Mr. Bennett appears eager to keep our attention on his wife. He remains some behind us, standing at the corner of the cabin, while the three of us sit, Mrs. Bennett on the low plank steps and Mr. Sharp and I on chairs removed from the house. For the moment, Mrs. Bennett resists her husband’s encouragement. Birds in variety chirp from the tree line like an orchestra limbering up, a succession of flourishes interposed with the percussive clamor of the children at play. Mr. Sharp allows for a full measure of rest. We are in no hurry. In such lulls, I am often confronted, in the sin of comparison, with the fundamental nature of all that I see. There is nothing here that is not essential. These rough chairs. A bare window. A garden swept down to dirt and unadorned. Our hosts, rapier thin, work hardened, their leathered faces lined by the rigors of necessity. Her apron. His sweat-stained hat. Its flopped brim shades his eyes, but below he is a cast of discomfort, tight of jaw, thin lips twisted by a twinge of anxiety poorly disguised as amusement, as if Mr. Bennett regretted his complicity in this spell of silence with which we coax his wife. Golda Bennett stares at the scuffed toes of her boots, her long legs gathered nearly to her chin beneath a checked dress soiled at the hem. The faces of these women in contemplation to me often look sad.

The ballads we unearth lay whole and unspoiled beneath the regard of modern culture, hidden in the most remote situations, and would soon be lost to memory altogether were it not for the passion and expertise of Mr. Sharp.

“As I said, we”—here Mr. Sharp includes me with a generous sweep of his hand—“are here with a purpose. We have had the pleasure of calling on so many families in these hills and learning about the music they learned from their elders. We are hopeful of learning about the music you remember.”

“Weren’t no music to speak of.” Mrs. Bennett does not regard him.

Mr. Sharp shifts in his chair. “You don’t remember?”

She straightens. Blue eyes spark from nests of papery lines. “Weren’t none to remember.”

“But your husband said you sing. What do you sing?”

“What pleases me.”

In his lap, Mr. Sharp rests a clinched fist in an open hand, a habit of his during moments of exasperation and his way, I believe, of exerting weight against a rising mood. I do not know how to help and hesitate in my desire to do so until Mr. Sharp says, perhaps more emphatically than intended, “This is confounding.”

Mrs. Bennett is blank-faced. “The songs you sing,” I say to her, “are they yours?”

“Mine? Lord, no, they’re everbody’s. I know plenty of them songs, but they ain’t no music.”

Suddenly, Mr. Bennett is among us, his nasal tenor inserted like a knight’s shield between our interrogatives and his wife. “She’s a-sayin’ they ain’t written down. She learn’d ’em by listening.”

The fog clears, the mood lifts and that perceptible expansion of atmosphere draws from Mr. Sharp as hardy a laugh as I had heard from him in weeks. His relief warms me. “Yes, of course. The mistake is ours,” he says to the Bennetts. “I am oftentimes too literal. I hear the words without taking their meaning. Am I right in thinking you learned some of the old songs from your family?”

“My mama sang and her mama, and I reckon I learn’d from them. Where they learn’d  ’em I couldn’t rightly say.”

“Do you have a favorite?”

“I am partial to an ol’ love song about a man making a sad farewell.”

“Would it please you to sing it?”

She is a contralto, her voice rich and firm and unencumbered by emotion, the song rendered in the impersonal manner of these people, as if their woeful stories are recalled across the vast distance afforded by tradition. In this sad ballad I hear constancy.

Mrs. Bennett absorbs our compliments with the simplest acknowledgement, a satisfied nod, a bit of a smile, and as wordlessly agrees to sing the song again. Mr. Sharp transcribes the tune, and I record the lyrics. When she ends, we show our notebooks to her and her husband in turn. “There,” Mr. Sharp says. “Now it is music.”

Notwithstanding the difficult tramps, the days of fruitless searching, and the sundry other disappointments that prick our resolve, I do not deem our work true labor, not in the way the Bennetts must labor for bare subsistence, not less in the anonymous labor of the women who cook our meals or the shopkeepers who rise early and stand ready at market. Still, Mr. Sharp and I are as keen to recognize a successful result as any artisan; and it is in the pleasance of our small triumphs when he and I are truly entwined, the most synchronous of partners. That is enough because there is no more. The few other songs Mrs. Bennett volunteers are not rare. She begins “Barbara Allen,” and Mr. Sharp soon joins in support and, at his subtle direction, I add my voice. We sing “George Rilley,” a tune known to Mr. Bennett. His voice his thin, but the ardor he brings to those lines of love unrelenting sparks my delight. The conviviality of our little choir has drawn the oldest child, a spindling girl with thin blond hair and familiar bright blue eyes, to come sit by her mother, mute but observant. The three boys linger at a short distance, an absence of harmony that Mr. Sharp, when in such high spirits, cannot ignore. Coming to his feet, he calls for a dance. We teach the children a simple reel; and, with he and I at the head and Mr. and Mrs. Bennett at the foot, we form the arches while the children race down the aisle. Predictably enough, they soon race away, and the men trail after them, off to walk the farm. Mrs. Bennett invites me into the dense green of her vegetable patch.

Trellises of rough-cut stakes laced with twine support a thick wall of vines – pole beans, Mrs. Bennett calls them – and nasturtiums form orbs of orange and yellow at the ends of rows. Wedged into the corners of the plot, zinnias grow in great shoots, their domed heads of lilac and red and white summoning single-minded butterflies and bees recalled to industry as the day begins to dim. Mrs. Bennett is the most restrained of tour guides, naming without elaboration plants she assumes a woman of foreign origin and upbringing would not know; but her sparse, clipped speech does not disguise her pride as a provider, and this further evidence of her maternal nature touches me. We walk through close ranks of maize, disappearing into stalks taller than I and crowned with toast-brown tassels. A cooling breeze brushes my face and with it comes a waft of serenity startling to recognize. The tassels click in the breeze like the heels of country dancers.

‘You get what you get. You can’t dream up another life.’

“He your husband?”

We have been mistaken for land dealers and for German spies by the most suspicious of the Highlanders, but never has anyone taken Mr. Sharp and me for husband and wife. I am so flummoxed by the question that I can barely utter the word “no.”

“Your brother then?”

“No, not husband nor brother. Strictly speaking, he is my employer.”

“Your boss?”

“I work with him. We are compiling a book of the songs we are collecting.”

“Mine?”

“I imagine so. It was a fine song. Mr. Sharp will want to take your picture.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“Come now. It would be a fine picture, you and the children and Mr. Bennett—a family portrait.”

“We’ll see.”

“Yes, we will. Mr. Sharp likes to get his way.”

“What man don’t?” Her eyes make a joke of this insubordination. “Sure you two ain’t wed or kin?”

“We spend a great deal of time together.” 

“You tend to him, don’t you?”

“I help. To do otherwise would be selfish.”

“Plenty of that,” Mrs. Bennett says. “That’s the sadness in them love songs you and him are studyin’.”

“Selfishness?”

“Folks puttin’ the gettin’ ahead of the givin’.”

“I think the sadness is in the wanting, wanting what you cannot have.”

“You get what you get. You can’t dream up another life.”

The pail-full of vegetables Mrs. Bennett brings back from the garden will merit a mention in Mr. Sharp’s diary, along with his regret at having to refuse her offer of the best of the harvest. I will not record the unusual emptiness that comes over me as Mr. Sharp arranges his subjects for the family portrait, how the air stilled and cooled and our fine day deflated. The children sit on the steps, and Mr. and Mrs. Bennett stand erect in the doorway, her left hand resting on his near shoulder. The children looked perplexed, and the adults, severe—a result I owe to the strangeness of the occasion. This atmosphere of awkwardness endures as we make ready to depart. I take Mrs. Bennett aside and give her three dollars, the usual consideration, which she makes no pretense of refusing; and Mr. Sharp and I set off downhill.

The wheel is off the wagon, and the driver insists we take the mule. “We are more accustomed to walking,” Mr. Sharp says, gathering our belongings. He gives up the camera without protest. We are ten or more miles from Harlan, on a washboard road crowded between the rounded, tree-stubbled rises of Black Mountain, our way certain only as far as the bend ahead. In Kentucky coal country, I confuse what is in these hills with all that is above them – the dank air and dull light and the dark and constricted attitude of our acquaintances and, I must admit, with ourselves too much. We have little to show for our work here but illness. The cool, damp nights and hot days have fed Mr. Sharp’s asthma. The effects of dysentery linger, and he walks with a stride shortened by weakness, so slowly that I have to hold back in order to stay abreast. He will not voice it, but I see the doubt on his face as plain as the perspiration. How much farther? How much longer? He yields to the gentle pressure of my hand on his arm. I dab with a handkerchief at his brow. His pallor belies a soldierly attempt to cheer me.

“We’ve done well in America, haven’t we, Maudie?”

My arm twined around his, I lead him along the bending road. “Yes, Cecil,” I say, “it is our labor of love.”

There will be no parting, yet an absence looms. On a date not yet determined, but before the weather turns and before I am disposed to go, we will board a northbound train to a city where a steamer waits to transport us across the “big pond,” as the Highlanders sometimes say. It will be my duty to make the arrangements, and I see the order of our homeward journey as clearly as stanzas written in my own hand. It is a song of sad farewell and of what is left behind.

O don’t you see yon little turtle dove

A-skipping from vine to vine

A-mourning the loss of its own true love

Just as I mourn for mine