Crack in the Sky

Sweet William on his deathbed lay,

For the love of Barb’ra Allen.

“I ain’t never see’d a man stand so good having him only one good leg,” Titus whispered to Matthew Kinkead.

“Peg-Leg Tom?”

Scratch nodded. “How he come by it?”

Isaac Simms answered, “Cut it off hisself, Scratch.”

“The hell you say!” Scratch replied in amazement, staring at the crude whittled peg.

He sent his servant to the town,

The place where she was dwellin,

Cried, “Master bids you come to him,

If your name be Barb’ra Allen.”

Well, slowly, slowly got she up,

And slowly went she nigh him;

But all she said as she passed his bed,

“Young man, I think you’re dying.”

“Isaac speaks the bald-face truth,” Caleb Wood stated with one bob of his jutting chin.

“Injun’s rifle ball broke both bones in the leg, right here,” Kinkead declared as he bent over and tapped his own leg just below the knee.

Simms snorted, “Figger on how much that’d pain a man!”

She walked out in the green, green fields,

She heard his death bells knellin’,

And every stroke they seemed to say,

“Hard-hearted Barb’ra Allen.”

“Oh, father, father, dig my grave,

Go dig it deep and narrow.

Sweet William died for me today;

I’ll die for him tomorrow.”

“Lookit the man just sitting there easylike, tapping the end of that ol’ peg on the ground like it was his foot,” Solomon said.

Scratch prodded, “So tell me who really cut it off him.”

“Isaac tol’cha: Smith done it his own self!” Kinkead declared. “Well, most of it anyways. First off he got good and drunk afore starting down through the meat with his own scalping knife.”

“Shit,” Bass whispered with a shudder.

“Passed out by the time it was to cut on bone,” Simms took up the story. “Two other’ns had to finish the job for him. They burned the end of that stump with a red-hot fire iron to stop the bleeding, then went off and buried the leg far ’nough away that Smith could never go lookin’ for it.”

“Go looking for it?” Scratch repeated.

“Damn, if that ain’t what I seen happen with ever’ man lost a arm or leg,” Solomon Fish stated. “Like something pulling, an’ yanking ’em to find that missing part of themselves.”

They buried her in the old churchyard,

Sweet William’s grave was nigh her,

And from his heart grew a red, red rose,

And from her heart a briar.

They grew and grew up the old church wall,

’Til they could grow no higher,

Until they tied a true lover’s knot,

The red rose and the briar.

“Most ever’ man I know of in the mountains calls Tom by the name Peg-Leg Smith now,” Caleb said.

“Never have I seen a man get around so good on a peg,” Bass observed with fascination.

As Hatcher and Gray finished the song, Smith clapped and hooted, then asked, “How ’bout something a man can get up an’ stomp to, Jack!”

Hatcher thought a moment, then suggested, “Say, Tom—how ’bout a tune writ special for all of us bachelors?”

Smith asked, “Bachelors? What the hell’s that?”

“What we are, ye stupid nigger!” Hatcher roared. “Any man ain’t married, he’s a bachelor!”

“Then sing it, by God!” Smith cried merrily as he struggled to rise, clambering clumsily onto his leg and peg, clapping and hobbling about in exuberance. “Sing it for all us happy bachelors!”

Come all you sporting bachelors,

Who wish to get good wives,

And never be deceived as I am,

For I married me a wife makes me weary

of my life,

Let me strive and do all that I can, can, can;

Let me strive and do all that I can.

She dresses me in rags,

In the very worst of rags,

While she dresses like a queen so fine;

She goes to the town by day and by night,