At five we started singing: “If the river was whiskey, and I was a divin’ duck. I would dive to the bottom; I never would come up.”
That always got them laughing. Then Arnie would begin with the banjo jokes, and I’d shuffle forward, looking stupid, which truth be known, wasn’t a stretch. They’d laugh louder, and we’d slide into “Pig Ankle Strut.” By tune three, “Rooster Crowing Blues,” the folks was usually ripe, and that was when Billy, the jug blower, would jump down from the trailer and start scatting through the crowd. Billy blew a small jug so he could hold it one-handed, and with his other, he’d whip off his hat and start collecting. Billy wasn’t bashful; he’d shake that hat right in your chest until you was embarrassed enough to drop something in. And if it wasn’t enough-say all you’d loosed was some pennies or a nickel, he’d keep shaking that hat, all the while blowing his brown jug right under your ear, until he tapped a quarter out of you. Up on the trailer, playing, the rest of us watched his hat like hunters tracking dinner, which we were.
If it was a good-time crowd, Billy would be down off the trailer a half-dozen times. Even in Christian towns, we almost always got enough for a sandwich dinner and a quart of the local ferment, if they was selling any, and gas enough to get us to the next burg.
But Tadesville was like nothing we’d ever seen.
The previous town, fifty miles west of Detroit, had been a four-tuner, our name for any place with two churches visible from the main square. Their police chief had hawk’s eyes, and he’d kept them on us closer than stink on skunk. “Divin’ Duck” was a thud, so we went right to singing down the gospel. That didn’t work either; those folks was saving their money for the next life, and Billy only shook out two dimes. We were packed and rolling by 5:30, hoping it was still early enough to hit a new town.
After an hour, though, all we’d seen was trees, lining the road so thick they choked the daylight from the sky.
“We don’t want to be running out of gas on these roads after dark,” Arnie said. Like me, he’d been watching the gas needle burrow toward the E.
I pulled over. Though we hadn’t eaten since lunch, and had only the two quarts of homemade that Whiffer, the washboard man, pinched off the back shelf in a dry goods store in Detroit -nobody groused. It wasn’t natural that there’d been no towns along the dark road, and the prospect of calming ourselves with a sip or two, even unfed, sounded fine enough for that particular moment. We stayed up late, drinking rot and telling lies, then slept as best we could, being hungry.
Late the next morning, when Arnie’s eyes cleared well enough to drive, we got going again. From the get-go, nobody spoke, and I supposed the nervousness to be testament that we was still driving through dark trees. I had no firsthand knowledge of the conditions along the road, of course, slumped as I was in the backseat, cradling my pickled head in my balled-up suit jacket, wanting only smoother roads.
After a time, Arnie slowed the car as Billy laughed with what was surely relief. I opened one eye to the white fire of the midday sun.
Tadesville looked like any other one-block bump in the road: a dinky grocery, a feed store, and a long building without a sign, all of it squatting parched on brown dirt. It didn’t have a gas station. Hell, it didn’t have cars. I closed my eye.
“Amish, Arnie,” Billy opined from the front seat. “Everybody else has cars.”
“Amish in the middle of Michigan?”
“Four-tuner,” Whiffer said from beside me.
“Better not be,” Arnie said, pulling to a stop. “We need gas.”
I turned on the seat, trying to burrow my head into the mohair upholstery.
“Look,” Whiffer said beside me, the smell of sour mash coming out of his mouth hot, like bus exhaust. “Jimcrack’s heart started up again.”
Henry Olton is my name, but with the banjo, given names get flushed quicker than beer-joint toilets. I’ve been Huskweed, Bobby Barn, Twangin’ Tom, and too many others. Jimcrack, as in Jimmy Crack Corn, was just the latest.
Arnie cut the engine. The pounding in my head pulsed louder in the quiet.
“There’s no people,” Whiffer said, after a bit.
“Amish,” Billy said from up front.
“Just working people, too busy to be laying about on an afternoon,” Arnie said. Getting out, he sent my side of the car up a hundred feet. Then he slammed the damned door, firing a red thunderbolt into my skull.
I kept my eyes shut tight and swore I’d never touch another drop. “For sure there must be people here,” Billy whispered quick to Whiffer and me in the back, but he sounded more like he was wishing than saying. “It isn’t right, not seeing towns for miles, then coming to one that’s deserted.”
Arnie’s shoes padded around slow in the dust outside the car. He was checking things out. His shoes came closer. “Got to be people here,” his voice said through the open window. “Best we just relax in the car until four thirty.”
Whiffer exhaled slowly beside me. Arnie opened the driver’s door and got back in. Mercifully, he latched it gentle.
We dozed in the afternoon heat. I been to some dead places, but Tadesville had them beat to hell. No cars, no horses pulling wagons, no people walking by. Not even the air moved.
Ordinarily, that kind of quiet made me itchy. Not that afternoon. Trying to muffle the oil derrick slamming in my head, I was appreciative.
“Four thirty,” Arnie shouted. He probably did no such thing, probably hadn’t even raised his voice, but I had not as yet healed.
The three of them scrambled out, rocking the Plymouth like a rowboat in a squall. I hugged the seat and held on.
“Jimcrack!” Arnie yelled through the window. “Showtime!”
My door got yanked open. They was going to make me die standing up.
There was no choice. Ever so gentle, I eased onto my knees and backed out of the car, presenting myself ass-first to the bright of the world. After some confusion, my feet found the dirt, and I hugged the side of the Plymouth until it, the ground, and I were all moving in concordance.
Someone set my banjo case against my leg. “Strap on, Jimcrack,” Arnie said. “Time to yodel.”
Steadying myself with the door handle, I opened my eyes just enough to ease down vertical and hoist out the banjo. Banjos have lots of metal to make them ring loud, and even in sure hands, they weigh like lead. That afternoon, I was strapping on a battleship anchor, and it took both Billy and Whiffer to pull me up onto the trailer. With my eyes again blessedly shut, I began tightening the tuners, riffing into a few simple rolls I could do in my sleep.
“If the river was whiskey, and I was a divin’ duck,” they started singing, with me croaking the base harmony, “I would dive to the bottom; I never would come up.”
Like I said, in most towns those lines were surefire to bring folks nodding and laughing. But not that afternoon. Not in Tadesville.
I opened my least painful eye to the quiet. There was nobody there but us.
“This could be a one-tune town.” Whiffer’s brushing hand fell from his washboard. “First ever.”
“Can’t happen.” Arnie eyed the empty street. “We need gas.”
He started picking “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” on his guitar and we picked it up. Plenty of towns, gospel was all that worked. We played “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” then “Amazing Grace” with a ripping banjo break by yours truly, especially considering each of my fingers was trembling at a different speed. Bedrock religious stuff, we played it loud enough to raise corpses. Billy even did his jig, jumping down and shaking around like he was summoning rain onto a drought, but we might as well have been playing in a cave. Nobody came.
Arnie set down his guitar. “We’ll have to browse.”