Dwight always wants to tell me how unhealthy they
are, but I just point to Aunt Sister, who’s over eighty
and still going strong. Daddy was there next to her and
allowed as how he wouldn’t mind a taste either, so I
moved on down the table to be closer to them.
After supper, the instruments came out. Daddy and
Haywood both play the fiddle, Isabel has a banjo and
Aunt Sister plays a dulcimer. Zach’s Emma and Andrew’s
Ruth spell each other on the piano and Herman’s son
Reese is good with the harmonica. The rest of us, in-
cluding Steve Paulie, play guitar and those that don’t
play tap their toes and sing.
There were at least a dozen of us, and soon the place
was rocking. From rousing gospel hymns to country
ballads and back again. Mother used to say that she fell
in love with Daddy for his fiddle-playing and he was in
good form tonight, his fingers moving nimbly up and
down the neck as he bowed the strings of his mellow
old fiddle. Aunt Sister’s daughter Beverly was there and
she, Annie Sue, Emma, and Ruth blended their voices
into such sweet cousinly harmony on one of the hymns
that I got chill bumps.
Cal kept his eyes glued on Reese, fascinated by the
way my nephew used his harmonica to counterpoint the
melody line or make musical jokes. I glanced over at
Dwight and he winked at me.
The music lifted me up and for a time, washed away
both the sadness I had felt for Fred Mitchiner’s grand-
son and the ugliness of Buck Harris’s death. Shortly after
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nine though, I noticed that Cal was yawning. “Time we
were calling it a night,” I said.
Aunt Sister looked at Daddy and without a word,
both began to play an old familiar tune. Annie Sue’s
clear soprano voice joined in softly before they’d played
two bars and the rest of us picked it up until it floated
over us in gentle benediction:
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33
% I had just loaded the last breakfast plate in the dish-
