A Kind of Dream: Stories

Prologue: On Familiar Terms

3 Prologue: On Familiar Terms Fore­ bears n., de­ scrip­ tive, usu­ ally with di­ rect ob­ jects. At the turn of the twen­ ti­ eth cen­ tury, Hat­ tie Lit­ tle mar­ ried a quiet, po­ lite, ­ hard-working Yan­ kee who’d come south to find work, which he did, as a saw­ yer for a lum­ ber mill, and also found her, a small woman with ­ waist-length au­ burn hair, a spot­ less ­ record of at­ ten­ dance at the Pres­ by­ ter­ ian ­ Church, and a love of danc­ ing par­ ties. They mar­ ried and had three daugh­ ters (and two still­ born sons whose head­ stones were in the back­ yard). The first daugh­ ter be­ came a li­ brar­ ian and mar­ ried a man with ­ orange ­ groves in Flor­ ida. The sec­ ond was a bit of a flap­ per, flir­ ta­ tious and par­ tial to the Charles­ ton, and she ­ eloped. The young­ est, El­ eanor, asked for vi­ o­ lin les­ sons. She had ­ learned to read music by copy­ ing the notes from her eld­ est ­ sister’s piano étude books. ­ Eleanor’s ­ father, the Yan­ kee saw­ yer and a fine car­ pen­ ter, gave her an old fid­ dle that had be­ longed to his­ father. It was ­ enough to learn on, but the sound was ter­ rible. The New Or­ leans ­ Times-Picayune ran a ­ weekly essay con­ test; she won it ­ weekly until she had fifty dol­ lars and could order from the Mont­ gom­ ery Ward cat­ a­ logue a new vi­ o­ lin, with case, bow, and a cake of real rosin. The sound ­ wasn’t alto­ gether ter­ rible but it was ­ fairly awful. Until then, she had ­ scraped sap, dry and hard­ ened, from pine bark. Her ­ father was him­ self a se­ ri­ ous afi­ ci­ o­ nado of clas­ si­ cal music, and be­ cause of that was con­ sid­ ered a lit­ tle ­ strange, but Hat­ tie was so well liked that 4 Prologue: On Familiar Terms the neigh­ bors put up with the music. This was in Loui­ siana—bayou coun­ try—and then Mis­ sis­ sippi. In South Car­ o­ lina, a law­ yer who loved Shake­ speare, fre­ quently re­ read­ ing the plays in his of­fi ce when he was sup­ posed to be work­ ing, mar­ ried a woman seven­ teen years ­ younger than he. She was slen­ der and ­ dark-haired, with pierc­ ing eyes; he was red­ headed, going gray, and even­ tu­ ally went white. She ­ taught drama and math­ e­ mat­ ics. She was her­ self dra­ matic and told out­ ra­ geous sto­ ries. She would have been a prin­ cess, she said, if an an­ ces­ tor had not ­ thrown away her crown to marry a Por­ tu­ guese com­ moner. She told her chil­ dren they were de­ scended from John Mar­ shall, ­ signer of the Dec­ lar­ a­ tion of In­ de­ pen­ dence. Hu­ gue­ not an­ ces­ tors had fled from Swit­ zer­ land to Ire­ land. She began to be­ lieve her sto­ ries. The law­ yer and the drama­ teacher had two boys and two girls. (The ­ younger girl, dis­ cov­ er­ ing that their cat had had a lit­ ter of kit­ tens in the rain, ­ brought the kit­ tens in­ doors and tried to dry them out by put­ ting them in the oven. She­ turned it on so they ­ wouldn’t catch a chill.) The town held the law­ yer in high es­ teem—“Judge,” they ­ called him—but he would work only for the de­ fense and, sadly, Rock Hill had few peo­ ple who ­ needed de­ fend­ ing. When his chief ­ client—his ­ brother (!)—died, the Judge went broke. Very broke. As broke as a ­ rusted bike with no ­ wheels, no bas­ ket, and no seat. No han­ dles, ei­ ther. Their young­ est child, a boy, heard a vi­ o­ lin being ­ played, was rav­ ished by the sound of it, and made one from a cigar box fol­ low­ ing di­ rec­ tions from The Book of Knowl­ edge. He’d ­ thought a vi­ o­ lin made the most beau­ ti­ ful sound he ever heard, but the vi­ o­ lin he’d made for him­ self did not, quite. The sound was so dis­ ap­ point­ ing that he im...