CHAPTER ELEVEN

Laurel and Bess

ama’s going to kill us,” Bess said as the sisters started across the pasture. She carried her banjo case with an easy familiarity to its weight.

“Only if she catches us,” Laurel said. “I figure we’ve got two or three hours, maybe longer if she stops in to see Mrs. Runion.”

Bess smiled. Mrs. Runion was a sweet old woman who lived on the edge of town and could talk your ear off if you gave her half the chance. Granny Burrell used to say that she’d been born talking, but Mama never seemed to mind. Mama was like Janey, in that she enjoyed visiting with old folks, saying, “All our history lives in those who’ve been around as long as Mrs. Runion. When we lose them, we lose a piece of our history, unless we take the time to listen to what they’ve got to tell us.”

Bess supposed she half understood. She and Laurel felt the same about music and, while they weren’t much for sitting around chatting with someone like Mrs. Runion, they saw nothing odd about making a two-mile hike up some bush road to spend the afternoon and evening listening to some old fellow scratch out tunes on his fiddle, or maybe rasp his way through one of the old ballads.

Music was something that needed to be passed along, too. Or at least the old songs and tunes did.

“She hasn’t seen Mrs. Runion for a couple of weeks,” Bess said, “so it’s a good bet she’ll stop in today.”

Laurel nodded. “Will you listen to that fiddler play.”

“I haven’t heard a tune I know yet,” Bess said.

“I just can’t imagine who it would be, out in our woods like this.”

Bess laughed. “Maybe it’s one of Aunt Lillian’s fairy people.”

“You’d think Janey would have grown out of those stories by now.”

“You’d think, but you’d be wrong.”

They reached the woods and followed a deer trail that wound back and forth up the side of the hill. With each step they took, the fiddling grew louder, and they marveled at the player’s skill. The bass strings resonated, rich and full. The notes drawn from the high strings skirled up among the turning leaves into the autumn sky. There was so much rhythm in the playing that adding a guitar or a banjo wasn’t even necessary.

Grinning at each other, they hurried forward. Finally they knew they were almost upon the fiddler and they vibrated with anticipation. The trail they followed took them into a clearing, and there in the middle, where this path crossed another, stood the oddest little man.

He was maybe three feet tall and looked like a walking shrub, a bark and leafy man playing a fiddle almost half the size of himself. They couldn’t tell where the wood of his instrument ended and his limbs began. He seemed to have moss and leaves for hair, gnarly twigs for fingers—but oh, how they pulled the tune from his fiddle.