For the next two years, all their families got were postcards. Gaudy souvenir cards from tourists spots all over the South- places Danny and Dixie never visited because instead of seeing the sights, they were doing the roadhouse circuit, playing one-nighters. Mostly the new stuff called Rockabilly, but also bluegrass standards, and gospel hymns when the audience was open to that, which was almost never.
Making petty cash but it was more than Dixie ’s dad had paid them for working the cornfields, which was nothing because they were supposed to be content with room and board. Top of that, they were doing what they loved and getting paid for it. Meeting people, all kinds of people, having all kinds of eye-opening experiences that no way would’ve happened back in Newport.
Christmas, they sent store-bought toys to Baker, along with sweet notes in Dixie ’s hand. The baby became a quiet, determined toddler, unlikely to give up whatever he was working at, unless forced to.
When he was three, his parents showed up at the corn farm, wearing fancy clothes and driving a five-year-old Ford van full of instruments and music and costume changes and talking about meeting Carl Perkins and Ralph Stanley, all those other famous people in “our world.” Talking about colored singers doing that rhythm and blues, sometimes you could be safe in those colored clubs and it was worth listening.
Dixie ’s father scowling at that. Spooning his soup and saying, “I won’t hold it against you, running off like that, and leaving your problem with us.” Meaning the little boy, sitting right there. Talking about him like he didn’t understand. “Be up tomorrow at five to atone. We got a whole edge of the north field to do by hand.”
Danny fingered his leather string tie with the piece of quartz up near the collar, then smiled and stood and laid down a fat wad of bills on the table.
“What’s that?” said his father-in-law.
“Payment.”
“For what?”
“Babysitting, back rent, whatever.” Winking at his wife.
She hesitated, avoided her family’s eyes. Then quaking so hard she thought she’d fall apart, she scooped up Baker and followed her husband out to the van.
As the Ford drove off, Dixie ’s mother said, “Figures. They never took their gear out the back.”
Baker Southerby grew up on the roadhouse circuit, learning to read and write and do arithmetic from his mother. He picked things up quickly, making her job easy. She hugged and kissed him a lot and he seemed to like that. No one ever talked about the time that she and Danny had gone and left him.
She told him to call her Dixie because everyone did and, “Sweetie, you and me both know I’m your mama.”
Years later, Baker figured it out. She’d been all of seventeen, wanted to see herself as that pretty girl with the lightning fingers up on stage, not some housewife.
When he was five, he asked to play her Gibson F-5 mandolin.
“Honey, that’s a real precious thing.”
“I’ll be careful.”
Dixie hesitated. Baker stared at her, with those serious eyes.
She ran her hand over his blond crew cut. He kept staring.
“All right, then, but I’m sitting right next to you. Want me to show you some chords?”
Grave nod.
An hour after he started, he was playing C, G and F. By the end of the day, he was coaxing forth a respectable version of “Blackberry Blossom.” Not at full speed, but his tone was clear, his right hand nice and smooth.
“Dan, come listen to this.” Listening to him, watching how careful he was, Dixie was comfortable letting him play the mandolin without her hovering.
Danny came in from the porch of the motel, where he’d been smoking and strumming and writing songs.
“What?”
“Just listen- go ahead, sweetie-pie little man.”
Baker played.
“Huh…,” Danny said. Then: “I got an idea.”
They bought him his own mandolin. Nothing high-priced, a forties A-50 they picked up in a Savannah pawnshop, but it had decent tone. By age six, Baker had a trunk full of stage-duds and a thirties F-4 almost as shiny as Dixie ’s F-5 and he was a full-time headliner. The new act was officially The Southerby Family Band: Danny, Dixie and Little Baker the Amazing Smoky Mountain Kid.
Mostly there wasn’t room for all that on any marquee so it was just The Southerbys.
Baker’s chord repertoire ran all the way down the fretboard, encompassed the majors, minors, sevenths, sixths, ninths, elevenths, and thirteenths, along with diminished, augmented, and a whole bunch of interesting extensions he came upon himself that could be called jazz, even though the closest they got to jazz was a few Texas swing songs that always ended up sounding bluegrassy.
By the time he was nine, he played cleaner and faster than his mother and to her credit, she reacted with nothing but pride.
Homeschooling- though that concept hadn’t been invented- continued and Baker was smart enough to get a year ahead of his age group. At least according to the intelligence test Dixie had clipped out of Parents magazine.
Baker grew up on fast food, tobacco smoke and applause. Nothing seemed to alter his quiet personality. When he was twelve, a smooth-talking man who’d heard them play at a honky-tonk outside of Natchez told Danny he’d give all three of them a recording contract, make them the new Carter Family.
They went into the studio, laid down five old standards, never heard back from the guy, tried calling a few times, then gave up and went back on the road.
When Baker was twelve, he announced that he wanted to go to a real school.
Danny said, “Just like that? You give it all up?”
Baker didn’t answer.
“Wish you’d talk more, son. Kind of hard to know what’s going on behind those eyes.”
“I just told you.”
“Giving it all up.”
Silence.
Dixie said, “That’s what he wants, maybe it’s not such a bad idea.”
Danny looked over her. “Yeah, I been feeling that’s coming.”
“What has?”
“Itching to settle down.”
“Could’ve done it years ago,” said Dixie. “I was waiting.”
“For what?”
She shrugged. “Something.”