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part 2 of the story
Wind and Rain

Carl Parsons

    And so, Ash did sing it again, after he took a moment or two to reset himself to do it using his uncle’s instructions. As he prepared himself, he thought about the sisters across the sea and a train rolling through the night, as though that train were traveling across the centuries from the Scottish stream that washed down to the miller’s pond bearing the dead sister’s body, right on down through time until the mill stream became the little river that divided their town, just yards away from their houses, with the railroad tracks beside it. And that train, travelling through the centuries, carried as its freight the drowned sister’s corpse, and as it went, its whistle sang out the miller boy’s grief, the only pall across his beloved’s coffin, the train bearing both the corpse and the grief across the ocean of time to Parkeston and then on down the Ohio River valley to God knows where and to what other time and what other people still waiting and standing in their own troubles. But as the whistle announced this ghostly procession and the train and the corpse passed by him, Ash took hold of them for just a little while and with his voice held them still.
    “Oh, that’s better. So much better!” his uncle said when Ash finished with his guitar flourishes. “Now practice it some more, over and over again until it’s in you for good and comes out seamless as silk, just like your guitar playing does. Keep thinking about what the song says and how the story rises up from the dead girl’s ghost and from the evil sister’s spirit, gone all green with jealousy at first and then black with murder. And the poor miller boy finding his true love afloat on the mill pond, turned grey with death. And make sure your guitar breaks create the same feelings the song does, not something fancy just for its own sake, as I’ve heard you do at times. All the parts have to be one.
    “And most of all, make the people who come to hear you feel what the song’s about. That’s what you’ve got to do. But first you got to feel it yourself, and you do that by putting yourself in the song and the song in you. After you manage that, you can go on to learn another song the same way, and then another one and another one. They all tell stories worth hearing, especially these old traditional songs, I agree with you on that. But if we don’t make those stories come alive for our audiences, nothing else we do will matter. No picking technique can make up for lack of feeling in the song. Most in our audiences can tell that right away. You know, some of them are fairly good pickers themselves. Now, think you can do all I just told you?”
    “Believe I can, Uncle Ethan,” Ash replied. The angels were beaming in his face, anxious to try. “Yes, I believe I can.”
    “Good. Then tell you what. Next time we perform, this Friday in fact, we’ll surprise everyone. We’ll put you right in the middle of us and you’ll sing out this old song and wow them all with your voice and your guitar playing.” Uncle Ethan was laughing now as though he’d just opened a treasure chest filled with gold coins. Then he added, “And before you know it, between the wailing and the twanging, you’ll be famous.” He stopped at that point and put one hand on Ash’s shoulder, looked at him earnestly and said, “I really believe you will. Now, let me hear you sing it again, just once more.”
    Friday night Ash took a turn at center stage. About eighty people were in the little theater that night when he sang and played for them “O the Wind and the Rain” and made it the saddest song they’d ever heard. The song’s feelings seemed impossible coming from such a young boy, but there they were, undeniably so. And for those who still tried to doubt what they heard, the deftness of his guitar playing between the verses made them believe despite themselves. After that night, the audiences who came to hear Ethan’s Bluegrass Gang at the Broadway Cinema filled the theater again and again.
    O the wind and rain.

6. Murder

    Before dawn on a Saturday morning, when Ash was fifteen and his fame still growing locally, his father came home with another poker prize—a twenty-two caliber snub-nosed revolver with three bullets still in its cylinder. He’d won it with three kings he’d tossed triumphantly onto Walter Pratt’s kitchen table, trouncing Walter’s deuces and jacks. And this time John Evans remembered his prize. The revolver was in his jacket pocket as he crept into the house a little after 3:00 AM. Ella was up, worried, and waiting for him. The rent was past due. The landlord had come, left a notice: “Pay now or be evicted next Friday.” His written note was still on the kitchen table. Ella hadn’t slept at all, worried as she was about what they would do. Now she broke forth into a flood of trepidation that descended on her husband. She had to let him know. What else could she do?
    “All right, let’s go see the old bastard’s note!” John shouted as though he didn’t believe her. He snatched Ella by the hair and dragged her screaming and crying behind him, past Ash’s bedroom, into the kitchen. There he snapped on the light and flung Ella onto the floor. A yellow note with black Gothic-like scribbling stared at him from the table.
    “Did you win tonight?” Ella pleaded, looking up at him after getting onto her knees but afraid to stand up. “Did you win enough money to pay the rent?” she asked like a supplicant. “You said you’d have the money, John. You promised Mr. Kiser. I heard you say it. Do you have it now?”
    “No, but I got this.” John reached into his pocket and revealed the pistol. Held it in the flat of his hand for her to see. “He can damn sure have some of this if he wants! If he comes in here again, I’ll evict his damn brains, that’s what I’ll do to the old bastard!”
    Ella sank down with her hips now on her heels. “That won’t do us any good, John. Mr. Kiser wants his money. He was so angry when he left he shook the whole house slamming the front door. He wants his money, John. What are we going to do? We’ll have nowhere to go!”
    “He’ll get his money when I got it. And if he slams the door on me, the son-of-a-bitch, he’ll get a bullet from this gun in his damn head instead of money in his grubby hand, that’s what he’ll get!” John’s anger was soaring as he waved his new possession in the air to illustrate his resolve before adding, “And so, by God, will you if you don’t shut up that cryin’! I’ve heard enough of it! Since I’ve known you that’s all you’ve done, cry and complain!”
    But Ella was so consumed by fear and despair that she couldn’t stop. With her hands pressed to her face, all doubled over on the floor, as though bowing to an implacable fate, she continued to wail.
    “Get up here,” John commanded and grabbed her by the hair again. He pulled her upright, trying to pull her up to his own level of resolve.
    Still in his bed, Ash had clamped his pillow to his ears as he had done many times before during his father’s midnight rages. But this time two new sounds penetrated the pillow. The first, a piteous scream of shock and fear from his mother, unlike anything he’d heard from her before, and then a loud sharp crack. Tossing the pillow aside, Ash rushed to the kitchen.
    His father was standing over his mother’s motionless body, no more now than a heap of flesh on the floor. Blood was gushing from her chest, soaking her pale green nightgown and creeping onto the floor around her. Her eyes were wide with fear, frozen now and forever more. His father, the revolver still in his right hand and the hand just hanging loose at his side, stared at her, as though even he couldn’t believe what he saw. Then with a sudden motion he threw the revolver across the room. It skittered along the linoleum floor and slammed hard into the baseboard below the kitchen sink. Ash turned and ran outside, still in his pajamas and slippers.
    A light was on in the Lassiters’ house next door. Mr. Lassiter was standing on the porch in the dark, looking in Ash’s direction. “What’s goin’ on over there, Ash?” Mr. Lassiter called out to him. “What happened? You need some help?”
    “Call the police, son!” Ash responded as he scrambled onto the Lassiters’ porch. “And an ambulance, quick! My mom’s been shot!”
    “Done called the police.” Then, going back to his front door and opening it, Mr. Lassiter said to his wife, “Mary, call for an ambulance too. Ash says Ella’s hurt. Been shot.” Turning back to Ash, Mr. Lassiter said, “Was your old jaybird of a father that done it, wasn’t it?”
    Ash just nodded.
    By the time the police came to arrest John Evans, he had sobered up quite a bit. He was kneeling beside Ella’s body when they entered the kitchen. The blood that had pooled around Ella was beginning to cool and thicken against her side, her arms, and her shoulders. Blood had even reached her hair. The revolver was still on the other side of the kitchen where John had flung it. As for himself, John was holding Ella’s hand, had been for some time, feeling it grow colder and colder in his. He was still clinging to it when the two police officers pulled him away from her body, roughly bent him over the kitchen table, and handcuffed him. A third officer stood outside with Ash and Mr. Lassiter. All three of them were now in front of the Evans’ house. They watched as the two officers pulled John Evans out of the house and pushed him into one of their police cars then quickly drove away. John never looked at his son.
    The remaining officer asked Ash, “Will you be all right here? Do I need to take you somewhere? We can get you into a foster home, tomorrow if necessary.”
    “No,” Ash replied between sobs, for he realized now that his mother was not going to rise from the kitchen floor and come outside to comfort him, nor could he comfort her. “No, I got an uncle and an aunt close by. Guess I’ll go there.”
    “I’ll see that he gets there safe,” Mr. Lassiter offered. “He’ll be okay once he’s there. His uncle is Ethan Vaughan, a real good man. I know him well from work, known him for years.”
    “That’s all right,” the officer replied. “Appreciate your offer, but I’ll take him myself. The boy’s my responsibility right now.”
    But Ash wouldn’t leave until the ambulance arrived to take his mother’s body away, removing it to the city morgue. He wanted to rush to her, touch her one last time, but she was covered from head to toe with a white sheet, and the ambulance crew moved her as fast as they could past him, faster even than the police officers had taken his father. After she was gone, with the police officer’s help, Ash gathered some clothes from inside the house, stuffed them in a brown grocery bag, and locked up the house. Then they drove the three blocks to the Vaughans’ with the police car’s roof light flashing but the siren silent in the damp early morning air. Ash knocked at the door.
    Ethan nearly collapsed when the police officer told him about the murder. His little sister, dead, and still so young! He sank into the nearest chair, thinking how he had warned Ella yet now she was dead. Rachel had gotten up from her sick bed to stand by her husband when Ethan told her that a police car was in their driveway. By then, she could see its blue light chasing around the room. The whole family had gathered now in the living room—Rachel in a pale green robe standing by Ethan with her arm about his shoulder, her hand stroking his hair as he stared at the floor. Eddie and Ash sat together on the sofa, saying nothing. Even the family cat and dog paced about anxiously in the living room doorway, looking at the police officer, bewildered by all this middle-of-the-night activity.
    After a few minutes Ethan looked up, looked at Ash, and realized what he had to do.
    “You brought some clothes with you, Ash?”
    “Yes, a few things.” Ash held up the paper grocery bag containing his clothes. “Hoped I could stay tonight at least. Don’t want to go back in that house, Uncle Ethan, not ever again!”
    “You won’t have to, Ash. You can stay here a lot longer than tonight,” Ethan told him.
    “Yes, you certainly can,” Rachel added quickly as she sat down beside Ash and hugged him.
    Ethan now looked up at the police officer. “He can stay as long as he needs to, Officer, or wants to. Rest assured of that. We’ll look after him.”
    “Yes, we will,” Rachel added again.
    “And you two are his next of kin, do I have that right?” the officer asked while writing their names and address on a notepad.
    “We are,” they replied, in unison before Ethan added, “He has no one else.”
    “Then I guess it’ll be all right. But call us or the county office if you need help, okay? And we’ll be checking with you in any case. Most likely sometime tomorrow. May need to have the boy testify to what he saw tonight. Hope not, but he might.”
    “Well, he’ll be right here if you need to talk to him,” Ethan assured the officer as he and Rachel saw him to the door.
    O the dreadful wind and rain!

7. Home

    Ash became a member of the Vaughan household that night. Two days later, when the police allowed, his uncle and cousin gathered the rest of Ash’s possessions from the house, including his guitar. By that time, a broken John Evans had confessed before a judge to killing his wife and was promptly sentenced to the state prison for the rest of his life, sparing the need for Ash’s testimony with which the county prosecutor had threatened him.
    Ash slept on the Vaughans’ living room sofa for the first few weeks until he and Eddie could get an attic storage area converted to a bedroom. Ethan said it was their project. First, they found an old bed with a tolerable mattress and springs. They shortened the legs on the head and foot boards so they could place the bed below the attic’s slanted ceiling with enough clearance to keep Ash from bumping his head when he sat up. The shortened legs also allowed the bed to fit under the attic’s only window. Next, they bought an old chest-of-drawers at a nearby used furniture shop and refinished it a bit to minimize the gashes and scars it had accumulated over the years. After that, they made an armoire out of a wooden shipping carton Ethan hauled home from the textile mill in the back of his pickup truck. Once they finished adding small feet, a hanging rod, and a bottom compartment for shoes, they sanded and varnished the armoire until it nearly matched the chest-of-drawers. But it was so tall it could only stand in the highest part of the room, by the door. Finally, with Rachel’s guidance, they unrolled and cleaned up an old hoop rug already stored in the attic. The rug nearly covered the remainder of the floor once the bed and furniture were in place. With all that done, they added a bank of storage shelves to one wall and placed Ash’s guitar in the remaining empty corner they had reserved for it. Then Ash moved in. Once again he had a bedroom of his own, but he soon shared it with the Vaughans’ other orphans.
    The family’s cat and dog had come from the local animal shelter—a black and grey striped tabby named Gretchen and a medium-sized brown short-haired mongrel named Wag. Before Ash’s arrival, both had been living in thick corrugated boxes, placed side by side, along one of the kitchen walls. Gretchen’s box had just a hole in the side for her to jump in and out of and was lined on the bottom with a thick towel, Wag’s was completely open at the top and covered on the bottom with a folded blanket. But once the two animals discovered Ash’s low set bed in the attic, they abandoned their boxes for a place next to him. Gretchen mostly slept atop Ash’s head, sharing his pillow. Wag slept with his back pressed against Ash’s side or back. All three found new comfort in this arrangement. Indeed, for the first time in his life, Ash slept in complete peace, without fear of a storm breaking in the middle of the night, for in this house dwelt the patient, calming spirit of his Uncle Ethan, soothing the physical agonies of his wife, the growing pains of his son, the simple needs of the family pets, and now the lingering terrors of his nephew.
    O the wind and rain.

8. Success

    Milt Barrow was thrilled and told Ethan so. In the thirty years he had owned and operated the Broadway Cinema, it had never hosted a sellout, except once for Gone with the Wind. But never for any other movie and certainly not for any of the live performances on Friday and Saturday nights. Not for any country or bluegrass act. Not for any blues or honky-tonk or gospel performers, either. Not for anybody, in fact, until Ash became the featured performer for Ethan’s Bluegrass Gang.
    From that time forward, success for Ash came quickly. Since Mr. Barrow was also a co-owner of the WSPR radio station next door to the theater, he made sure that the station promoted the group’s performances, touting Ash as a blossoming bluegrass star. The station began broadcasting the performances live, running promos in which the station interviewed audience members who praised Ash’s singing and guitar skills. The station also ran contests connected with the shows—usually ticket drawings for a free meal at the diner on the other side of the theater. A resourceful man, Mr. Barrow owned the diner also.
    On top of all that, Everett McCall, the WSPR station manager, who had himself become an enthusiastic fan of Ash’s playing and singing, knew a booking agent in Cincinnati who in turn knew a record company executive in Nashville who was interested in signing up new bluegrass performers. Everett, with Ash’s permission, made a phone call and sent the record executive the tape of a recent sellout performance at the theater, complete with whooping crowd noise.
    Soon, Ethan was putting Ash and his guitar on a Greyhound bus bound for Nashville. There Ash began making recordings with a studio band, for Ethan and the rest of the Bluegrass Gang couldn’t afford to leave their jobs long enough for the vague promise of rewards from making records.
    O the dreadful wind and rain.

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