Marrying Stone (22 page)

Startled at the interruption, Meggie and Roe turned to the doorway where Granny Piggott stood dressed in her "visitin' gown" and adorned with a new cotton homespun slat bonnet.

"Granny, what a surprise," Meggie said, swallowing her anger and forcing a welcoming smile to her face. She glanced back nervously at Roe, warning him to take a light touch with the old lady. "Won't you have a seat."

The elderly woman looked around the cabin in distaste. "I can't see no sense in sitting inside when the weather is neither cold enough to see yer breath nor hot enough to melt your starch." She glanced over at Roe. "Bring me a chair out here in the yard, young man."

As she turned away she glanced down at the Ediphone on the floor. "And bring along this Listening Box of yourn, I'm thinking to sing ye a tune or two."

Roe and Meggie exchanged puzzled looks behind the old woman's back, but followed her outside.

"You want I should bring you some tea, Granny?" Meggie asked.

"Tea? Lord Almighty, child, I ain't got no use for the stuff in the spring and summertime at all. A cup of cool water will suit me fine."

Following her outside, Roe and Meggie were surprised to find Jesse helping Oather Phillips unload a piece of furniture from the back of a skid cart.

"You no-account boys be careful with that, now," Granny called out to them. Turning, she spoke again to Meggie and Roe. "Brought you two a little weddin' present."

The two glanced at each other, puzzled, as Roe set the cane-bottomed chair in the shade near the house for the old woman.

"It's a bedstead and cording," she said. "I figured Onery weren't about to give you his, and a young couple shouldn't have to get to knowing each other on a floor tick pallet."

Meggie's face flushed fiery red and she couldn't meet Roe's eyes.

"Though my man and me spent more than a few months that way when we was newly wed." The old woman seated herself heavily and moaned slightly as if the relief of taking rest was almost more comfort than she could stand. From the depths of her skirt pocket she drew out her old clay pipe. It was slate-blue with a long, curved stem to cool and sweeten the home-cured tobacco mixings she carried in a little coarsely woven pouch. The old woman carefully packed the pipe bowl and tapped it down with her fingernail.

"Bring me a bit of fire, Meggie," she said casually. As the young woman hurried into the cabin, Granny turned her attention to the new bridegroom who watched her curiously from the porch. She motioned him to sit down and he did.

"My man Piggott," she continued, "he brung me up this way on a flat boat. There weren't no one living up here, just come here for weddings in them days." She smiled. "I was as green as grass back then. But, Piggott, he was, too. Me, I hadn't seen fifteen years yet, and he weren't but a few months older. But he had his own rifle, a muzzle-loader that he'd traded a year's work for, a couple of hunting dogs that he'd trained hisself, and a half-growed sow. So he thought he was old enough to wed. And he thought I was mighty pretty in them days, so I was thinking I was old enough, myself."

She chuckled lightly. Meggie came out of the cabin carrying a half-green hickory twig that was glowing orange with fire on one end. The old woman took it with thanks and held it up to the bowl of the clay pipe. With a strong sucking pull on the stem, the twig flamed up brightly and lit the tobacco in the bowl. Granny made several long pulls that brought great billows of smoke out of the pipe to assure herself that her smoke was well and truly lit. Then she stuck the cold end of the hickory twig into the ground, saving the fire to relight the pipe later if it went out.

After a long, self-satisfied draw of tobacco, Granny continued her story, this time with both the young people as her audience.

"After we jumped the Stone, we built us up a little four-by-four joiner down in the far holler before the bad weather came. That first winter it was him and me, that sow, and them two hunting hounds sharing a cabin." She laughed gleefully as she looked up at the young couple before her. "We was right happy. Suspect we was too ignorant to know no better."

Again the old woman laughed. Her humor was contagious and Roe and Meggie found themselves smiling also. Though when they glanced at each other, the joy faded slightly.

"But, I'm thinking," Granny continued, "that the two of you are older and a good deal smarter than we was. I just hope that you'll be as happy. And I want to do what I can to help you get yourselves a good start in life."

Meggie was silent.

Roe nervously cleared his throat. "That's very kind of you, Mrs. Piggott. Meggie and
I—"

"Now, I tole you, son, to call me Granny. 'Specially now that we's kin and all."

Roe swallowed and looked ill at ease.

"Oather!" she called out to her young companion. "You and Jesse treat that piece of cherry wood with some respect, now. Your Uncle Elvy carved them pieces hisself more than twenty year ago."

They watched the two young men clumsily carry the bed fixings up to the porch where they leaned them against the side of the cabin.

"Don't know where you'll have space inside to set it up. Course, sleeping outside ain't no hardship in summertime. If you get busy, young man, you can have another room added to this place afore winter sets in good."

"I don't know, Granny, I—"

"So where's that Listening Box of yourn?" she interrupted. "Now mind you," she said, shaking her finger at him. "I still think this is one fool way for a fellow to be a-trying to make his livin'. But since you are family and all, now, well, I'm going to be willin' to help as I can. And I'll see that my kith and kin sing fer ye, too. But I'm telling ye, son, sure as the world, you'd best get another string fer yer bow. This collecting old songs on spools of wax, it ain't no kind of work to be counting upon. If you can't take to farming or trading, they's still meat aplenty in these woods. The big bears is mostly gone of course, and deer is scarcer than bathwater in the time of drought, but they's good eatin' critters enough that's welcome to the man who's a-willin' to hunt or trap 'em."

Roe accepted the old woman's advice with a silent nod. Oather and Jesse took seats on the edge of the porch, anxious to watch the workings of the Listening Box and to hear Granny sing.

Roe began setting it up out under the tree. He placed it upon an upended barrel, so that the old woman would have to neither stand nor stoop to be able to sing into it.

"Now what do ye think I oughter sing fer ye?" she asked.

"Whatever you'd like, Granny," Roe answered as he anxiously cranked up the machine and adjusted the speed. He set the sharp cutting stylus against the whirling wax cylinder and adjusted the tin horn conveniently for the old woman.

"Just put your mouth as close to the horn as is comfortable and sing whatever you'd like," he said.

Granny was thoughtful for a long moment. "I remember this one," she said. "It's real sad and sweetlike, for a young couple in love." She leaned forward slightly and with a high-pitched twangy tenor, she began to sing.

"Her form was like the dove,

So slender and so neat,

Her long brown chestnut curl

Hung to her tiny feet,

Her voice it was like music

Or the murmur of the breeze

And she whispered that she loved me

As we strolled among the trees."

As the old woman sang the sweet old love song, Roe's expression was pensive. The song was familiar to him and was not old enough to help with his work, but the old woman who sang it knew it well. And he suspected there were many more that her mother or grandmother had sung to her that could be excellent evidence for his thesis. A thrill of excitement spread through him. Suddenly he was not so eager to leave this mountain.

He glanced over at Meggie. She was listening to the old woman sing. Her eyes had turned dreamy again and he actually had to fight the urge to smile. Meggie Best was not one to allow her worries to concern her long. Even now, as
the people of Marrying Stone were saying that they were married and as he was packing his things to leave her sight forever, the explanations to be all hers, still, the sweetness of a romantic ballad could set her thoughts into fancy.

"But if you e'er see a lass

With long, brown chestnut curl

Just think of me, Jack Haggerty,

And my own Flat River girl."

Roe applauded politely and the others joined in as the old woman finished.

"I ain't much for singing," Granny Piggott declared. "But I do know a song or two."

"I'm sure you do, Granny," Roe answered. "And 'Flat River Girl' is a beautiful song."

"That the kind that yer collectin'?"

"Yes, but I really care for the older ones."

"Older ones?" Granny looked puzzled. "How can ye tell how old they are?"

"By the words they use and the way the song is written. Songs with the same line twice, for instance, are quite an old style. Like 'What will you do with your pretty little babe? Dear son, come tell to me. I'll leave it all alone with you to dandle on your knee, knee, knee. To dandle on your knee."

The old lady's blue eyes brightened. "My mam used to sing me that tune," she said. "Lor-a-Lor, I ain't thought of such in years."

"I'd love to hear some of the songs that your mother sang to you," Roe told her.

Granny smiled thoughtfully for a moment.

"Here is one fer ye," she said finally.

"Come go with me, my pretty fine miss,

Come go with me, my honey,

Come go with me, my pretty fine miss,

And ye'll ne'er want for money.

Ye'll ne'er want for money."

As the old woman sang eight complete verses of the tune she called "Gypsy Davy," Roe listened with interest. If Granny Piggott would sing her songs for him, and she would get her friends and family to do the same, his prospects on Marrying Stone Mountain had suddenly greatly improved. He glanced over at Meggie. Personally, it might make good sense to go ahead and leave. But listening, at last, to the nineteenth-century Ozark version of a sixteenth-century English ballad made the idea of leaving no longer greatly appealing.

"Just a few weeks," Roe said to Meggie as they sat alone in the silence after Granny had left. He'd managed to record a half-dozen songs that he'd never heard before, two or three that had all the earmarks of Celtic origin. "If I could have just a few weeks to either confirm or deny." He hesitated slightly and then finally spoke the words that were on his mind. "What if we don't tell folks we aren't married, we just don't say anything at all."

Meggie was silent, thoughtful. In the back of her mind she could still hear Granny's voice as she told the sweet, funny story of her marriage to old Grandpa Piggott. She imagined them, young and in love, and carving out a place of their own, side by side, in this isolated wilderness.

"I know that it is not entirely honest," Roe continued. "But it is such a wonderful opportunity. It's a gold mine here, Meggie. A gold mine of history and music."

Meggie didn't care much for gold mines, historical or otherwise, but the fantasy of pretending herself married to Roe Farley was an enticing one.

"The period in history that we are saving in these bits and pieces is one of the most glowing and important in the history of the English language. It is like the crossroads
between an old tribal world of superstition and isolation and the enlightenment of universal Anglo-Christian values. And it can only be saved here, Meggie. Here in these dark, backwoods homesteads, among these special, separate people that you know as family and friends. These families have unknowingly been the preservation of these long-gone days. But now, modern machinery is here to keep safe for all time what you have managed to sustain."

Roe stood to pace the ground before her.

"It would mean so much to my work. And my work is so important. Just think about the gift we'd be giving, you and I, to future generations of English-speaking people. Saving these songs is not bringing our ancestors back from the dead, but it is, in a way, making them live in us again. It's like putting water on the last dying flowers of spring or cutting a swatch of baby hair on a child you are sending off to school."

He sat down beside her, his bright brown eyes were wide with sincerity and anticipation. "If we don't do it now, Meggie, if we don't save it here, while we can, we may never get the opportunity again. It's important that it be done and it's paramount that we do it now. And you, Meggie Best, you can be a part of that."

Meggie wasn't thinking about saving the last flowers of spring, swatches of baby hair, or the music of a time long gone. Meggie's thoughts centered on the clean, masculine smell of the man who sat so warm and close beside her. And die sweet, sweet fantasy of working alongside that man if only for the summer. As Granny had helped carve a homestead in the mountains, Meggie saw herself working alongside Monroe Farley, a scholarly, princely man whose work came out of an Ediphone Listening Box and who needed her help, if not her life, as a helpmate.

His songs were like her fairy tales. They were a way to touch dreams that could never be lived. He touched her dreams. She wanted to touch his.

"All right," Meggie said quietly. "I'll do it."

Roe was momentarily stunned. He'd never expected her to give in so easily. Her quick capitulation made him think more deeply and consider more wisely.

"Maybe we shouldn't," he suggested. "Once we start a lie like this, it will be very hard to get untangled from it."

"No, no. We'll do it. We won't really have to lie at all. We'll just let people think whatever they want. But we'll have to tell Pa the truth," Meggie stated firmly. "I have to insist on that. Pa must know everything."

"Of course he will," Roe agreed.

"Living here and all, he'll see the truth anyway and it would just be best if he were in on this from the start."

Roe nodded in agreement. "We'll tell your family the truth. That is the only thing to do."

Meggie glanced up. "Just Pa. If we tell Jesse he won't understand and he'll be confused."