They walked into the small, bright studio the other men had vacated. Jimmy the disc jockey came through on the two-way to finalize things. This confused the hell out of Chicky, who was starting to wonder about the whole deal. How you want me to introduce you? Chicky and Johnnie just dont ring right. the booming voice said. Chicky ducked like it might land on them somehow.
Johnnie answered. How bout Two Niggers and a Woodsman?
How bout something else?
Were the West Virginia Shine Guzzlers, Chicky said. He pulled out his harmonica and blew it a little. He and Willie took their spots under the central microphone, Johnnie took his at the beat-up baby grand.
If you say so, Jimmy came back. And I have you all down as country, gospel, and blues? I dont know what that means, but Willie slapped his bass, turned the pegs. Bout thirty seconds now. Song title?
Thats just how it goes, Johnnie said. He let his fingers hover over the chipped keys, eyes shut tight. He lit another cigarette.
When greasy Jimmy introduced them and gave the signal a few seconds later, Willie dropped in a slow, low, catchy bass line. Johnnie came in second, smooth and easy. Chicky waited, then let rip a reed-splitter. They had it down. Johnnie kept his eyes shut as he started to sing:
Well, Ill drown a glass a water
And Ill hang a rope
The devil he done come to me
Took away my hope
Well, Ill put that stick a dynamite
Right on under your nose
Cause I done seen the worst a man can see
Thats just how it goes
The voice, the whole sound, was smoke-shot vocal chords and sticky-floor toe-tapping, holes in the soles. Chicky played part of the song with his nose. It was holy hell blues all right, and the only country or gospel to be heard was not a brand greasy Jimmy the disc jockey had ever encountered. This was sin music if hed ever heard it, and though he let them play it out, his palms sweated through their grip against his rayon slacks. He mumbled a nervous outro to commercial, flipped the switch and strung together a sadly ineffective string of curse words, ending with, Now get the hell out of here.
This all took place in front of the on-deck act, a country group from Mingo County. They had liked what they heard and said so as they crossed paths with the West Virginia Shine Guzzlers, who smiled a smile only possible when real music gets made. Only Willie was hesitant. After all, the music theyd made over the airwaves was outlaw music, and Willie was a family man.
This all took place in front of the on-deck act, a country group from Mingo County. They had liked what they heard and said so as they crossed paths with the West Virginia Shine Guzzlers, who smiled a smile only possible when real music gets made. Only Willie was hesitant. After all, the music theyd made over the airwaves was outlaw music, and Willie was a family man.
That was real good. Real different, the young lady said to them. She wore a daisy flower behind each ear. She had her eye on Chicky, who saw something in the brunette beauty that set his core to rumbling. Her band called themselves The Mingo Four. She was vocals, with fiddle, dulcimer, and banjo backup. All men, all older.
In the hallway outside the control room, Willie, Johnnie, and Chicky laughed and patted each others backs and smoked their Chesterfields. They could hear Jimmy, frustrated, giving his instructions to The Mingo Four, but they couldnt make out the song title or the specifics. Soon, the band struck up and out there in the sparse-lit hallway, the acoustics were just right. The muffled fiddle squeal, the quiet dulcimer, the old five-string, they were just discernable enough to calm the excitement. And when the young womans voice broke through, it was beautiful. Church solo beautiful. They could make out her words.
Well, boys, youve heard that tale
About a Mingo dead-eye shot
Who on that 1920 day couldnt fail
To give Al Felts what he got
The boy was full of rotten teeth
But his eye was keen and sure
He held the miners deep belief
That their lives were surely pure
Out on the hallway stairwell, Chickys sight went red. Everything blurred. The howling in his ears commenced and his knees gave. He dropped like a man in the midst of a stroke.
Johnnie and Willie kneeled to him, slapped his face a little. They listened for his breath, found it, and carried him out, just as greasy Jimmy said to the radio-listening public, And that was The Mingo Four with The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart.
NINETEEN. A Piker Had No Home
The lead singer of The Mingo Four was Miss Louise Dallara, daughter of Fred and Clarissa Dallara. She was born to the couple, a quiet housewife and her Mingo County sherriff husband, in 1928, before the Depression hit and the unions fire burnt out completely and the coal companies reigned again. Fred Dallara had risen almost to the top of one of those companies, White Star Mining, before stepping out of the way of the Crews brothers to take a position in law enforcement. Such a post would allow him a different kind of power, one that included the right to protect his citizens and his family from any who might ever shake foundations again. Fred was cold if not civil to his wife and children. Hed remained close with Mose and Warren Crews, men whod seen to it that Arly Scott Jr stayed locked up in Moundsville for the rest of his days, an example to those who might question the strength of their dead daddys business.
Fred didnt speak to his youngest daughter Louise any longer, not since shed graduated high school and moved out on her own to be a musician. Her interest in music, in his estimation, was nearly as ill-advised as her admiration for unions and socialists and forgotten local heroes in the struggle.
Folks spoke little on that long past fight. The Scotts, Arly Sr and his wife, had moved back home to Georgia. Bill Blizzard went less fiery. And in the schools, no one taught a stitch on the Matewan shootout or the Battle of Blair Mountain.
The Urias Hotel stayed in business, as did Chambers Hardware. Matewan, Logan, and Welch had remained fairly quiet, while in Keystone, whores continued to service men from all walks. Ewart Smith did so, until she became pregnant with her third child and finally left for Tennessee. No one knew if she made it.
In Bluefield, the man whod shot Sid Hatfield dead, Charles Lively, lived and prospered in various business ventures. His children bore children and he was a proud grandfather, semi-retired and comfortable.
Up Warm Hollow, the tilted pioneer house of cat-and-clay and clapboard construction still stood. And inside, the Widow Dorsett still lived. But only barely. She was seventy-seven years old. Clarissa had begged her to come live in town with herself and Fred. There was plenty of room with the kids grown. But the Widow refused. Ill be just fine, she said.
Laying flat on the ridge above her house, the house hed grown up in, Chicky Gold knew none of this. He didnt know whod killed Sid Hatfield, or what had become of his friends Arly or Ewart or his enemies the Crews brothers. He didnt know if his mother was alive or dead. In Bluefield, folks werent concerned with their small-town Mingo neighbors. Before hed left Bluefield to find things out for himself, hed not asked enough questions to get people wondering about him.
After his brain had shut down in the halls of WHIS, hed come to in Willies shed with The Mingo Fours lyrics still in his mind. Hed said to Willies wife, Maam, Ill leave here and not bother you again if youll allow me the use of your kitchen shears and your washtub. She obliged, and Chicky emerged from the steam-filled bathroom with a respectable, three-inch beard and short hair. He almost looked handsome.
Willie didnt think much about his departure, but Johnnie nearly shot him again. Johnnie was set on traveling to Philadelphia and Detroit and New York City, putting together some gigs and building their song catalog. You aint nothin but a woodhick anyhow, he told Chicky, his back turned, as the gold-toothed smile closed up and the shakes of whiskey withdrawal set in. Standing in his newly purchased Bostonian shoes and gray felt Fedora, Chicky Gold said to his piano man, Be good, Johnnie.
On his way out of Bluefield, hed stopped in at WHIS and learned from greasy Jimmy the name of the young singer, Louise Dallara. When it was spoken aloud, hed nearly dropped to the floor again.
Hed been on the ridge above the cabin of unhewn logs for two days since. He slept in short intervals. Hed not seen any movement inside. The outhouse still stood, though it looked to be unused. The tomato garden was gone. The little barn in shambles.
Up there looking down, Chicky Gold cried and sipped just enough whiskey to hold off the worst of the shakes.
Clarissa came on a Thursday morning. As soon as shed stepped inside the door, Chicky came down the hill.
He opened the door without knocking.
Clarissa was leaning over the Widow, who lay on her side in a double bed where the kitchen table used to be. Clarissa straightened and looked at him. Time had been kind to her; skin, eyes, hair and all. She met his gaze with her own and frowned.
Clarissa, Chicky said, taking off his hat and nodding.
The Widow had not yet looked up. Fred come along to dance on my grave? she said. Her voice had gone higher and a little shaky.
No one answered her. She raised her head up and looked at her boy. Then she laid it back down again. Well, she said. I know I done lost my mind now.
Clarissa sat down on the bed and brushed through her mothers hair with her fingers. Something the size of a plum had caught in her throat and she thought she might pass out for lack of air or throw it up, one or the other. Speaking was beyond her.
Those straps I see across your arms? That old Civil War pack still hangin on? The Widows eyes were still sharp.
Those straps I see across your arms? That old Civil War pack still hangin on? The Widows eyes were still sharp.
Yes maam, Chicky managed.
What do you call yourself?
Chicky Gold.
Let me see you smile, the old woman said, and she lifted her head again.
He did what she told him to. Clarissa began to cry. The Widow laughed and said, Old Dr Warble can fix up a set a teeth, cant he? She put her head back down on the pillow and sighed like she might be as overcome as Clarissa had been. Instead, she patted her girls hands with her own, thin-skinned and rippling with veins that were night-crawler thick and purple. I knew God was hangin me on for this, she said. Knew it was for somethin like this. She waved him over and he put the backpack on the floor, sat down on the bed opposite Clarissa, the Widow in between. You know Ill be goin right quick now that youre here.