Harvestman Lodge Page 14

  “Is this where David grew up?” he asked.

  “All the Brecht kids grew up here. It’s a beautiful house. Built by one of the Sadlers back in 1903. It came down through Miz Deb’s side of the family.”

  “Is that where we’re going? The house?”

  “We’re going up behind it. To a place Mr. Carl built around 1960 to host family get-togethers and meetings and cocktail parties and so on. He calls it the Brecht Family Clubhouse. His own little family country club.”

  The weather was slightly overcast, just enough to cut the sun’s glare, and the temperature was pleasant. Lundy parked beside some other vehicles near the clubhouse, which was a rectangular, broad building with huge windows and several sliding doors that opened onto a sturdy wood porch made of heavy redwood boards. The porch completely surrounded the building.

  “My gosh!” Eli said as he stepped down from the truck. “Have they got a party going? I hear a band playing.”

  The sound of a banjo being “flailed” in the old clawhammer style, backed by guitars, fiddles, a mandolin, and a standup bass carried clearly through the morning, seemingly coming from the porch on the opposite side of the clubhouse.

  “Not really a party,” Lundy said. “Just some folks who get together up here and pick on Tuesday mornings. That’s the surprise I was talking about. That’s my uncle Bufe on the clawhammer banjo, by the way.”

  Eli paused, listening. “He’s pretty good. That’s a well-done old-style rendition of ‘Soldier’s Joy.’”

  “Yeah, but there’s somebody else who out-picks Bufe in these little Tuesday hoedowns. It makes him jealous as all get-out, even though he denies it.”

  A male voice, obviously Bufe’s, laid itself atop the string music, singing: “’I am my mother’s darling boy, I am my mother’s darling boy, I am my mother’s darling boy, I sing a little tune called the Soldier’s Joy!’’

  “Now listen,” Lundy said.

  Just then, a second banjo joined in, spilling out a waterfall of sparking, clear notes in a perfectly timed musical run, playing an intricate variation on the simple old tune. It was so well performed it stopped Eli in his tracks as he climbed the stairs up to the porch.

  “Nothing like that Scruggs style, huh?” Lundy said, a big grin on his face. “Uncle Bufe can’t do it worth a hoot. That’s why he can get so jealous of other pickers who can play that Scruggs stuff.”

  “Jake, that isn’t a hundred percent Scruggs style. That’s a step or two beyond it. They call that chromatic, or melodic, picking, and it’s about as good as any I’ve ever heard.” Eli paused, listening with an experienced ear. “Okay, now that little lick there between those runs was in Scruggs style, and now it’s jumping back into melodic. That’s the beauty of melodic style: you can mix it in pretty much seamlessly with Scruggs three-finger picking, and even with the older clawhammer stuff. It’s brought banjo styling to a whole new level. And whoever is playing right now is a professional-level melodic picker.”

  “That ‘whoever’ is your employer, Eli. That’s Mr. Carl.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “You heard me. That’s the surprise part. Come on, let’s go around.”

  The band was comprised of seven men. Two played rhythm guitar while a third guitarist picked lead and fill-in runs Clarence White style on an expensive, gleaming Martin. A young mandolin player who was trying with limited success to grow a beard played with in tentative, choppy style that marked him as a relative beginner. There was an aging fiddler with a surprisingly jazzy, Vassar Clements quality to his playing, and on banjo, Bufe Fellers and a man who had to be Mr. Carl Brecht, because he was the one playing melodic style. Apart from a similarity of facial structure about the jawline, Mr. Carl looked little like David, and certainly nothing like the Citizen Kane publisher figure Eli had expected.

  Mr. Carl looked twenty years younger than his age, was lanky and dressed in jeans and a faded yellow shirt. His hair was something between brown and red, and worn shaggy, as if he had gotten stuck, hairstyle-wise, somewhere around 1978. It didn’t appear he had shaved for two or three days. He was propped back against a porch rail and hunched over a Gibson banjo that showed, in the worn finish of its fretboard, evidence of frequent use. Mr. Carl’s fingers were in endless motion, crawling up and down the neck of the instrument while his right hand fingers and thumb moved in intricate patterns. He picked alternate strings to make a steady line of melodic notes that overlapped one another, then shifted for a few measures into the standard three-fingered roll pioneered by Earl Scruggs. His right foot tapped out perfect time to his playing. He wore running shoes.

  All in all, Mr. Carl looked nothing like Eli’s conception of a typical newspaper publisher. Where was the coat and tie? The neatly barbered hair? The clean-shaven face? The gleaming black leather dress shoes?

  The tune, an old-time music standard since the 1800s, came to an end with a Doc Watsonesque guitar run from the lead flatpicker. Mr. Carl looked up, face beaming in the afterglow of a song well-performed, and greeted Lundy, who promptly introduced Eli. The banjo stayed in place as Mr. Carl reached out his right hand, metal finger picks and plastic thumb pick still on, and shook the hand of his newest employee.

  “Looking forward to seeing what you do with our bicentennial publication,” Mr. Carl said. “David’s pretty high on you.”

  “Glad to hear it, sir. I’m pleased to be working for you, and I’m very impressed by your picking.”

  Mr. Carl gave a curt nod of thanks, looked around at his fellow players, and said, “A little bit of Dixie Hoedown, boys.” He looked at Eli and said, “John McEuen taught me this one after a concert in Knoxville back about ‘79. It’s one of the earlier instrumentals to include some of the kind of picking I like best.”

  “Melodic,” Eli said. “Like Bobbie Thompson.”

  “You know your banjo, son!” the publisher said. “We’ll have some things to talk about, you and me.”

  And without a pause, the song began, a chattering spill of sixteenth-note runs that rolled downward, then up again. Mr. Carl played a couple of verses, throwing in some creative variations, then nodded at the lead guitarist, who picked up the basic melody, twisted it about fluidly and skillfully, then threw it back to Mr. Carl again, who played the melody with an accompanying note-for-note harmony from the guitar.

  Bufe Fellers, meanwhile, was mostly just serving as part of the rhythm backing for the song, one less adaptable to clawhammer playing than the prior tune. The mandolin player was struggling mightily, his skill level not up to the challenge. “Want to take a break on it, Brian?” Mr. Carl called to the youth, who declined with a vigorous shake of the head.

  “Eli here is a mandolin picker,” Lundy declared in the midst of the music, and Brian the overwhelmed mandolinist immediately, and seemingly gratefully, divested himself of his instrument and shoved it toward Eli. Eli initially waved it off out of politeness, but Brian was insistent. Eli shrugged, took the instrument and pick, and slipped the strap over his right shoulder.

  “Take it, son!” Mr. Carl called.

  Eli did. Despite being on a mandolin that was not his own familiar one, and being somewhat out-of-practice besides, he jumped in and played a couple of breaks he’d worked out for this particular tune years before while attending a bluegrass festival in North Georgia. Mental and muscle memory worked together to get him through it nearly flawlessly. Some of that Eli credited to the instrument, an old f-style that probably dated to the ’30s and showed its age in the scratches and finish erosions on the front and sides of the body. The rear of the mandolin was nearly devoid of finish from having rubbed against the torso of all who had played it over the years.

  When the song was through, Brian looked sheepishly at Eli. “I’ll never be that good,” he said.

  “I’m just a hack,” Eli replied. “All I’ve done is practice. You keep at it and you’ll leave me in the dust. Good instrument, by the way.”

  “Gibson F-5,” Brian said proudly. “L
ike Bill Monroe’s. It was handed down to me from my grandfather. I could never dream of affording one that good if I had to buy it.”

  “It’s a real treasure,” Eli replied. “I hope you have a good case for it.”

  “I do. Solid as stone, good lining. Got the case for Christmas last year.”

  Mr. Carl spoke. “Eli, son, I wish everybody who worked for me could pick like you do! ’Cept I’d never get anything done. I’d spend all my time back in the corner of the press room, making music with the staff, with David chewing my ear off for it. I already devote a chunk of Tuesday to picking with the boys here. Any more time than that and the wife might run me off.”

  “You’ve got that melodic banjo style well in hand,” Eli said. “I’m surprised. Somehow I never would have guessed the publisher of my paper would turn out to be a great banjo man.”

  “Not great, son, just diligent. This is my main hobby, the thing that keeps me sane … at least partly sane, anyway, right Jake Lundy?”

  “If you say so, Mr. Carl. I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Well, sir,” said Eli, “I was already glad to have come to work with the Clarion. Knowing that my boss likes some of the same things I do just makes it that much better.”

  “Welcome aboard, Eli!” the jovial publisher said, beaming. “And welcome to the pickin’ porch!”

  “Very glad to be here, sir.”

  “No need for ‘sir’ unless we’re in some setting where we need to put on airs, son. Just call me Mr. Carl. Everybody else does, including my wife, Deb. You haven’t met her yet either, I bet.”

  “I haven’t, Mr. Carl. I’ll look forward to it.”

  “Just hang around here a few more minutes and she’ll be out with sandwiches and lemonade.”

  “Pick another one, Carl?” Bufe asked.

  “Let’s do it! Blackberry Blossom feels about right to me. You kick it off, Bufe.”

  This happened to be a tune Brian had practiced on extensively, so his mandolin work was much better this time around. With no mandolin of his own, Eli was left to sit on one of the several Adirondack chairs on the porch, with Lundy in another, and just listen. Knowing that Mr. Carl and “the boys” got together every Tuesday at this time to play music, and wondered if he might sometimes get to be part of that.

  Probably not. David would want him to be working for his pay, not playing music, even on the publisher’s own porch. Oh well. That would be only right. But for today, he’d enjoy the picking.

  MIZ DEB MATCHED ELI’S EXPECTATIONS more closely than her husband had. She carried an air of small-town upper crust refinement. Miz Deb came out of the house and around to the “picking porch” wearing an obviously expensive dress, one that displayed not so much fanciness as quality: a garment far above the cheap discount store dresses Eli’s mother had usually worn.

  Miz Deb was pure cordiality and grace as she personally served her guests, and her welcome to Eli was of particular warmth. David had obviously talked about his new hire to his mother. She knew all about the plans for the magazine and Eli’s key role in it, and expressed her excitement about seeing how well the newspaper could manage such a project, magazines not being part of their normal activities.

  “I have every reason to think we will do a good job,” Eli said. “David has given Jake and me time this week to get out and around the county, partly to help familiarize me with Kincheloe County, but also to let us talk over ideas for the kinds of stories we should include in the bicentennial magazine.”

  “I’m so glad to hear it! Those are the decisions that are crucial to making that effort be properly designed. My late father, Matthias Sadler, used to often say, ‘Work done well is of little value if it is the wrong work.’ Don’t you agree, Mr. Scudder?”

  “Please, ma’am, feel free to call me Eli. And yes, I can’t find anything wrong with that statement.”

  “Excellent, excellent,” she said. “I’ll go and fetch my list for you, then.”

  List?

  She refreshed a couple of glasses of lemonade and scurried back toward the house. Lundy leaned closer to Eli and spoke in a near whisper. “You know what’s happening right now, don’t you?”

  “I have a sinking feeling she’s gone in to fetch a list telling what she wants the magazine to contain.”

  “Your sinking feeling is almost certainly right on the money, my friend.”

  “Will David expect his mother’s list to be followed? Because I don’t know that I want the content to be dictated by – “

  “Quiet, Eli. Mr. Carl ain’t far away and I swear that man can hear a flea break wind. And let me ease your mind. She’ll give that same list to Davy Carl, and while she’s with him he’ll handle it like it was sent down from heaven on stone tablets.”

  “How is that supposed to ease my mind? He’ll go along with every part of it, whether it’s the right choice or not.”

  “Wrong, son. Davy Carl knows the perception is that he’s too much under his mama’s thumb, and he doesn’t like it. When she gives him the same list she’ll give you, he’ll take it and study it hard, but in the end, when she’s not leaning over his shoulder, he’ll pare it down, and what’s left will be stories that really do need to be in the magazine. Miz Deb, when it comes down to it, has good sense. And Davy Carl takes his responsibilities serious as can be. In the end it will all be good stuff. Just relax and let it roll like it rolls.”

  Eli nodded and felt better. He was growing quite fond of, and grateful for, the perspective provided by Jake Lundy. Eli made the deliberate decision at that moment to avoid growing anxious regarding problems that might never actually arise.

  Miz Deb swept back onto the scene with two papers in hand. She gave one to Jake, one to Eli.

  “I think you’ll find these suggestions helpful,” she said.

  Suggestions. Not dictates. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  The music soon resumed and for a time Eli forgot his stresses over the magazine and Miz Deb’s list and everything else. He admired Mr. Carl’s chromatic improvisations on the classics “Shucking the Corn” and “Bugle Call Rag,” and before he knew it mid-afternoon had come.

  “We’d best get going, Eli,” said Jake. “I want to show you around the metropolis of Perkins Creek this afternoon.”

  ON THE WAY OUT OF TOWN, Eli had Jake drop him off for a few minutes at his office so he could check mail and phone messages. Lundy parked and went in with him. There was no mail in the box, but the light on his phone was flashing.

  “Something for you, Eli,” David Brecht’s recorded voice said. “The city and county have put together a Bicentennial Planning Committee, and asked us to provide someone to represent the newspaper as a member. I gave them your name. The first meeting is Thursday evening at the Tylerville Light and Power building meeting room. That’s over beside Francis Asbury Memorial Methodist. Eight o’clock. Please be there, and be prepared to tell them about our magazine project, and to write a story about the meeting for the next day’s paper. Pick up a camera here and shoot some meeting pictures as well. Look, I know this violates my promise to keep you away from routine assignments this week, but this committee thing was something none of us knew about until today. And it fits well with your magazine focus.”

  When he’d told Lundy the content of the message, Lundy rolled his eyes and cast his arms up in a gesture of hopelessness.

  “Meeting pictures! Davy Carl and his dag-nab meeting pictures!” he declared. “Talk about your waste of film! How many photographs of the same old faces jawing at each other around the same old table are really needed? Davy Carl has the notion those are ‘news pictures.’ They ain’t. I’ve tried to tell him: the news is whatever happens as a result of those folks sitting around the table and jawing. And three-quarters of the time that proves to be something we’d be better off without.”

  “Well, it’s all the same rotten deal to me,” Eli said. “I’d thought about going to Knoxville Thursday evening – there’s a John Hartford concert at the Bijo
u I wouldn’t mind seeing – but I guess I’ll be sitting around one of those tables Thursday night.”

  “Tough break, son. The first of many you’ll get in this business.” Lundy paused, thinking. “One good thing, though: think who else might be on that committee.”

  Eli had no idea what Lundy was getting at. “Think about it, Eli. She’s assigned to run a bureau to keep up with what’s going on for the Kincheloe County Bicentennial so it can get its share of television coverage. You think they won’t have her on that committee too? Davy Carl might have just given you more time to spend with a gal who’s worth spending time with.”

  Eli broke into a smile. He glanced down at the phone, still blinking red from the not-yet-erased message. Thanks, Davy Carl. I’m grateful.

  Chapter Eleven

  THE POORLY OPERATING VENDING machine outside of Eli’s office was the next recipient of Eli’s gratitude. Typing at his desk, putting onto a floppy the first draft of a story assignment list he and Lundy had cobbled together huddled over morning coffee in the office lounge down the hall, he heard the familiar thumps and rattles that typically resulted from efforts to make the recalcitrant machine work.

  “Get over it,” he muttered softly. “You’re screwed and you might as well make peace with it. That machine never cooperates.”

  In Eli’s only two attempts to buy a Butterfinger bar from the vending machine, the machine had, of its own seeming free will, opted to dispense to him Mounds bars instead, adding insult to injury for a coconut-hater such as he. The first time it happened he grimaced, laid the unwanted bar on top of the machine for anyone who might want it, and returned to his office quietly. The second time he kicked the machine hard enough to leave a dent, and to almost break his toe.

  A tentative knock at his door. Eli opened it to encounter the utterly surprising but delightful sight of the beautiful girl from the television station bureau down the hall. She had a Butterfinger bar in her hand.