The highway looped through the countryside, then up toward the hills, where there were endless creeks and hollers, all of which A.P. seemed to know. We would pass a holler, and he’d call out the name of a song he had heard there. Esley would hum it, and we’d pull in to see if they had any more. We slept in the car, and the folks we visited gave us enough food to get by. The food was important to Esley and me, but A.P. didn’t much care. As far as I could tell, he ran on music.
We met pickers and singers, housewives and carpenters, farmers and weavers and hoboes, and every one of them had a song. For mountain people, it seemed that a song was as important as their name, and they were proud to share both. Afterward, I would share the verse of Mama’s song, but no one seemed to recognize it.
Sometime, weeks later, we entered a town called Blowing Rock. A.P. knew a fiddler there who collected songs the way some people collect butterflies or stamps. Boone was next, where Esley met some people at the teachers college who let us stay with them. Leaving Boone, A.P. said it was time circle back toward home.
“I’d like to try one more place,” Esley told him, glancing at me. “Ever been to Deep Gap?”
A.P. furrowed his brow. “Can’t say as I have.”
“It’s Nate’s home place. He said they have good music.”
I had said no such thing but wasn’t about to contradict him. My heart was suspended in my chest, split between Tennessee and North Carolina, forward and back, Daddy’s tent and the picture in my wallet.
“I checked the map,” said Esley. “It’s ten miles up the road.”
A.P. shrugged. “Let’s go.”
Deep Gap was just a few streets and buildings, what some people might call a “wide place in the road.” Glancing around, I wondered what had brought Mama and Daddy there. I imagined them walking the streets, holding Sister’s hand, pushing me in a baby carriage.
We parked in front of something called the Hello Café. A.P. and Esley set out searching for songs, while I went inside to do some searching of my own.
Behind the cash register stood a stout woman wearing an apron. I asked if she remembered Wilvur and Etta May Owens. She didn’t, which surprised me in a town that small.
The woman asked, “When were they here?”
“They left in 1916. So maybe twelve years ago.”
She turned to an older couple at a nearby table. “Wilvur and Etta May Owens—ever hear of ’em?”
The man looked at his companion, then shook his head. “Sorry.”
“That’s the mayor,” the woman told me. “He knows everybody.”
I asked her about the library, and she directed me to a small, cinder block building on the next street, where I was greeted by an elderly man with wire-rimmed glasses and a quick smile.
“Welcome! I love to see young people reading.”
“Actually, I was looking for a city directory—1916? Maybe before?”
He led me to the reference section, which amounted to a couple of packing crates stacked sideways. I flipped through the books and hit pay dirt in a shabby 1915 directory. Wilvur and Etta May Owens were listed, along with an address. The strange thing was that there was no number, just a street: Callahan Road. The man pulled out a town map and showed me where it was.
“What kind of neighborhood is it?” I asked, excited.
He scratched his chin. “Not sure I’d call it a neighborhood. Go on over there—you’ll see.”
Deep Gap was tiny, so you could walk pretty much anyplace in town. But I didn’t walk; I ran. I’d been digging, and my shovel had struck something hard. I was eager to pull it out and look at it.
I found Callahan Road. I stopped and stared. It wasn’t much more than a dirt path with a street sign. There were no houses—in fact, no buildings at all. Empty fields stretched to the horizon.
In the distance was a barn with a farmhouse next to it. Determined to learn something, I made my way across a field and up a gravel driveway, passing chickens and a few cows on the way. Reaching the front door of the house, I knocked. The door opened, and a sandy-haired man peered out at me. He was gaunt, with a face like leather, and his bib overalls hung loose over a wrinkled shirt. He appeared to be middle-aged, but when I looked closer, I realized he was no older than thirty-five.
“Help you?” he grunted.
What could I say? I’m searching for my past. I’m hunting my dreams. I’m a blank, and I want to be filled in.
I told him, “My family lived here when I was little, in 1916. Maybe you’ve heard of my parents, Wilvur and Etta May Owens?”
The man shook his head. “Can’t say as I have.”
“The address said Callahan Road, but there are no houses.”
“Never were,” he said.
I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t.
“Then where did they live?” I asked. My family seemed like a they, even though I had been part of it.
He gazed down the driveway to the road. “Back then, the place belonged to old Mr. Callahan. Got sick and had to sell it. He’s gone now. Told me a family came and parked an old house trailer on that road. Called ’em squatters.”
“Squatters?”
The man frowned. “He let ’em stay for a while if they helped with chores. Don’t believe I’d have done that.”
“Was their name Owens?” I asked.
“Didn’t say.”
I asked a few more questions, but that was all he knew. I wandered around the area, spotting a few people and asking them, then went back to town and did the same. No one had heard of them.
I was about to give up when I remembered the grave. It had been raining that night, and Daddy had gone to be with Sister. I hurried back inside the Hello Café, where the woman was cleaning off some tables.
“Is there a town cemetery?” I asked.
“By Brown’s Chapel, up the old highway,” she said, pointing.
The chapel was neatly kept and newly painted. Next to it, sure enough, was a small cemetery with rows of tombstones. I hurried up and down the rows, getting a glimpse of Deep Gap history. Some of the oldest graves went back to the late 1800s. Finally I found it, off on its own in a far corner. It was a simple stone marker. I took out the photo and held it up next to the marker.
She had only been six years old and always would be, a little thing for all the commotion she had caused, changing the course of three lives at the time and another one yet to come. At first it seemed odd that the marker showed no last name, but then I decided it was fitting. She was Sister, just Sister.
I looked up at the sky. Rain had fallen. Daddy had hugged the grave and, so they said, tried to climb in. What makes a person that sad and desperate?
“You seem to have found what you’re looking for.”
I turned around and saw a man wearing wrinkled pants with a work shirt and tie. He held out his hand, and I shook it.
“I’m Pastor Joe.”
“Nate Owens.”
He said, “I stumbled across that grave when I first came here three years ago. I was surprised there was no last name. I checked the records but couldn’t find any information. I asked around. No one knew who she was.” He chuckled. “I guess every town needs a mystery, and she’s ours.”
“She’s mine,” I said.
“Pardon me?”
“She was my sister. She died when I was two.”
He at looked at me, amazed, then wanted to know all about her. Supposedly it was to fill in his records, but I knew that wasn’t the reason. A little bit of our family mystery had spilled over onto him, and he wanted some answers.
Join the club, I thought.
I told him what little I knew. He wrote it down, thanked me, and headed back inside. Watching him go made me sad. Daddy was always preaching about Genesis, the beginning of things, when Satan tempted Eve and the world fell into sin. In my family, Deep Gap was our Genesis. Things had happened here—big things, important things, things that had changed our world. And the town had barely noticed.