I’m Nathan Owens. My friends, the few that I made outside the tent flaps, called me Nate. The year was 1927. I was thirteen years old, and I was growing up in pieces. I had big feet, skinny arms, a puny little chest, and a good-sized Adam’s apple. My nose was large, and I had squinty, little eyes, or so Arnie told me. He was eight and thought he was thirty.
People said I looked like Daddy, and I guess I did on the outside. The inside was another matter. Maybe inside I was like Mama. Or maybe I was like nobody, an impostor in the family, a stranger in my own body.
This is my story. I’m telling it to knit the parts of me together. I’m not sure where my story came from, but I know it’s important, not just because it has the Carter Family in it. I’m in there too. Nate Owens. Living, breathing, breaking free, doing things because I want to, not because I’m told.
Daddy had a story, but it was different from mine. It started in life and flew up to include Jesus and his daddy, then down to my family and most especially to my sister, Sister, rest her soul, then even farther down to the devil, who Daddy had strong feelings about.
“His name is Satan,” Daddy told Arnie and me. “A name is a sign of respect, and you need to respect Satan. Be on the lookout, boys.”
Daddy’s story, the one he built his church on, was a strange stew of Jesus and Satan, fishes and loaves, cornbread and Coca-Cola. It started with Bible verses and slithered through the vilest mayhem you could ever think about, like a slug through garbage. Sin was a big part of it. It’s a part of us all, claimed Daddy. He said there was glory too, like when you turned from sin and came forward for baptism in Beaver Creek. Daddy would dunk you for all he was worth. There’d be a splash, and if the sun was just right, Daddy said you could look up at the clouds and see a dove. I’d seen a buzzard, a vulture, maybe a few pigeons, but never a dove.
Daddy’s religion was a do-it-yourself affair. He took the parts that suited him and ignored the others, like he was shopping for clothes at J. C. Penney. Adam and Eve? Sure. Resurrection? Bring it on. Sin? Oh my, yes. Forgiveness? Not so fast. Free will? We’ll get back to you on that. Science? The purest hogwash.
Music?
That was the strangest and most maddening of all. David had a harp. Gideon had a trumpet. The psalmist had songs. But Daddy’s religion had no music.
Music, he told us, was Satan’s tune. Don’t think it. Don’t imagine it. And certainly don’t do it. Every once in a while, old Mr. Beckham in the third row back would get wound up on Jesus and start whistling weird melodies, sounding halfway between a songbird and a teapot. Daddy would hurry over, grip Mr. Fowler’s head like a grapefruit, and squeeze. That usually stopped him.
Daddy hated music. He refused to discuss it and couldn’t abide hearing it. When I asked him why, he got a crazy look in his eye. He ranted and raved, and he turned bright red. Then he blinked and his face went slack.
The more he ranted about music, the more I was drawn irresistibly to it. His sermons, combined with Mama’s song, pulled me to music like ants to honey. It was sweet. It was forbidden. It contained secrets that I could only imagine and did—endlessly.
One day in the kitchen, I asked Mama why Daddy hated music, and she shook her head. “You know we don’t talk about that.”
I must have been feeling either brave or stupid, because I said, “You sang. I heard you.”
She shot me a look so hot that it burned, like the time I used sunlight and a magnifying glass to kill a bug. I stepped away, scorched, but I didn’t forget.
Daddy and I were searching for something, but in different places. He looked in the tent, in the people who were drawn there by color and confusion and certainty. I didn’t like it there. Sometimes, when the place was packed and the night was hot, I couldn’t breathe. Mama noticed. She’d put her arm around my shoulders, and I’d be okay for a little while.
Mama was always there. She loved Daddy, even if sometimes she had to drag him to places for his own good. She figured that if he wanted to put up a tent and preach, so be it. She greeted people at the door and baked apple pie for fellowship hour. She tried to help Daddy, no matter how odd his plans might seem. His plans were her plans. That’s what she told us. Jesus said you can build on rock or sand, and Mama was the rock. I guess I was sand.
We liked Bristol—a town like me. Bristol was divided, smack on the border between Tennessee and Virginia. The border ran down the middle of State Street, so when you crossed the street, you were passing from one state to another, the way I passed from Daddy’s world to the real world and back again.
Sometime in the 1800s, an argument had started between the two halves of town. It seemed that the police from one side refused to chase a murderer across the border to the other side, and he got away. It made people bitter for a while, but then the two halves patched things up and had gotten along ever since.
When electric lights came to Bristol, a sign was erected over State Street that was made of metal and light bulbs. At first it said Push—That’s Bristol, but no one knew what it meant. So they ran a contest for a new slogan and changed the sign.
Bristol was known for that sign and for other things too. One year, gasoline spilled into Beaver Creek, and the creek caught fire. I guess even water can burn. For some people, I suppose Bristol was also known for Daddy’s preaching and for that big tent—flapping in the wind, yellow as an old bruise.
From the beginning, Daddy held services on Saturday night, not Sunday. He said Saturday was the Sabbath, and besides, that was the time he could go toe-to-toe with Satan. He would stand in the pulpit, which he had built out of a wheelbarrow and an orange crate, and tell the people why.
“Saturday night is Satan’s time,” Daddy bellowed, pointing his finger like a gun. “People drink, dance, play music. They curse and say, ‘Go to hell.’ I say yes, by God. Every Saturday night we’ll go to hell and bring Jesus with us. He’s stronger than whiskey and hotter than flames. Satan will feel the heat and take off running. He’ll hop and skitter and jump, like he was dancing on coals. Meanwhile here’s ol’ Jesus, just glowing.”
The world was having fun on Saturday night, but we were in Daddy’s tent, battling the devil. Daddy loved it. Arnie loved it. Mama put up with it.
Me? I just wanted to get out of there.