Harvestman Lodge (18 page)

“Jake, that’s the most attention-grabbing thing you’ve told me yet, and now you’re clamming up on me.”

“Suffice it to say that there’s no point in trying to put the Harvestmen in that magazine in any fashion or form, because Davy Carl, believe me, won’t let it happen. Nor will Mr. Carl, and sure not Miz Deb. It all goes back to that sacred cow business we talked about.”

“The Sadlers.”

“Mooooo.”

“So whatever bad happened with the Harvestman Lodge had to do with the Sadlers?”

“Let’s just say there were stories going around. All kinds of them, all bad. I don’t know that anybody ever got to the bottom of it all, what the full truth was or what part the Sadlers had in it.”

“Jake, speaking of Sadlers, there’s a name I’ve heard mentioned several times since I came to Tylerville. Benton Sadler. I saw his law office downtown and I’ve heard his name spoken, and seen it in old papers I’ve looked through. And I feel like I even heard that name some when I was still living in Knox County.”

“Oh yes, Benton Sadler. In case you haven’t picked up on it yet, he’s the golden boy of the Sadler family and all your ‘traditional family values’ conservative types across the state, not to mention being the pride and joy of all Tylerville. He’s a fellow who is going places, and it’s the conventional wisdom in Nashville that he’s on a fast track to be governor before he’s done. He’s already served two terms in the state senate, though he declined to run for reelection in the last race because his wife had suffered some big health problems. She’s fine now. I happen to know our own Miz Deb is one of them who is counting on Benton, who is her kin, making it to the governor’s mansion. He’s in his early sixties now, so he’ll have to get to it soon, if he’s going to do it at all.”

“What kind of man is he?”

“Good lawyer and good citizen. Active in the community, successful in his work, generous in his giving, busy in three or four civic clubs and also a staunch Presbyterian. Not your PCAs or Cumberlands. The old Blue-Stocking USA variety of Presbyterian. Like my buddy the Right Reverend Touchy Feely. He’s a member of Touchy’s church, in fact.”

“From what little I’ve heard of Benton Sadler, he’s a down-to-earth fellow.”

“I guess. Though with your political types of Benton’s style, it’s hard to know what part is real what what part is play-acting. Benton Sadler, you see, is a man known for being humble and unpretentious. The reason he’s known for it is that he goes about being humble and unpretentious in the most un-humble and pretentious ways he can. Benton Sadler will break his neck running across a room to open the door for somebody else, preferably somebody of humble standing so he can emphasize the contrast, and he’ll open that door and step back and wave them through with the biggest flourish you ever saw, so that nobody in the room misses seeing him do it. He takes great pride in showing off his lack of pride, you see.”

“Are you being fair, Jake? Maybe he’s just a decent guy.”

“Here’s a little truth of life for you Eli, and call me a cynic if you want to. Here it is: He who insists on always being the one to condescend to help those below him has to first believe they are below him. In short, the man who always makes sure he’s the one holding the door or paying the tab at the restaurant, that fellow may not be as humble as he wants you to think. He may be just be making sure nobody fails to notice he’s the top dog in the kennel.”

Eli shook his head. “‘Call me a cynic,’ you said. Okay, Jake. I’ll call you a cynic. Because that’s about as cynical an attitude as I’ve ever encountered.”

“I know, I know. Cynical, but accurate in some cases.”

“You’ve got some hang-ups, don’t you, Jake?”

“Plenty. Way more than my share.”

“Does Benton Sadler, humble or otherwise, really have a serious shot at being governor one day?”

“Better than anybody else in the state, or so all the big boys say. I’ll be surprised if he don’t make it, honest truth. There’s been only one governor from this county in the state’s history. Way, way on back. And he was a Sadler, too. Heyward Sadler. The one they named the highway after.”

Lundy glanced at his watch. “Hey, Eli, I’m going to turn around now and head back to town. We got to get to Mr. Carl’s.”

“You’ve got me puzzled about that surprise you say you’ve got for me today.”

The fake
Kung Fu
accent returned. “You’ll be enlightened soon enough, grasshopper. Patience, patience.”

Lundy whipped the truck into the parking lot of a tiny churchhouse with the daunting name of Tabernacle of the Lord Jesus Christ the Only King, painted crudely on a big sheet of exterior-grade plywood nailed to the wall above the front door. Smaller letters declared the pastor to be one Parnell Lloyd Shanks. Lundy wheeled around in the gravel lot and pulled back onto the road to head down the way they’d come.

As they passed the foot of Harvestman Lodge Road again, Eli looked up it and saw nothing but the rutted, washed-out gravel road itself, climbing the ridge and passing over the top of it. “Is the Lodge building still up there?” he asked.

“It was the last time I saw it – that’s been three, four years back. But like I said, forget that place. There’s nothing there you’ll be writing about.”

“Maybe not in the magazine … but maybe there’s something there I can build a novel around.”

“I thought you wrote frontier stuff … flintlocks and forts and coonskin caps and Cherokees and all that.”

“I do. But I want to try my hand at other kinds of stories, too. That whole fraternal lodge thing sounds like something that might have some legs, something that could lead to a good piece of fiction. And the Harvestman name is evocative. Intriguing. At least to my ear.”

“You remind me of my buddy Touchy. He got all wrapped up in the Harvestman Lodge thing for a while, just burning up with curiosity about it. He started poking around, asking questions, interviewing old-timers and so on … then as far as I know he pretty much gave up on it. He’s a strange bird, Touchy is. But I like the man, even if he is too dang liberal.”

“I like him, too. I may have to ask him what good information he found out about the Harvestman Lodge stuff.

“There’s nothing good about Harvestman Lodge, my friend. Just put it out of your mind, especially as long as you’re part of Kincheloe County and the
Clarion.
”

Eli shrugged and said no more. But he planned to learn what he could about Harvestman Lodge, whatever Jake Lundy, David, the Sadlers, or anyone else thought about it. Being told he should forget about it guaranteed he’d do anything but.

Chapter Ten

THE HOME OF MR. CARL and Miz Deb Brecht was not a mansion, but it was big, well-kept, beautiful, Edwardian, and stood proudly atop a round hilltop on the northeastern edge of Tylerville. Eli had driven past the place several times in his still-new residency in this town, without knowing whose house it was he was passing. As Lundy’s truck climbed the driveway, Eli admired the huge oaks and maples in the expansive, well-managed lawn. Well-managed, no doubt, thanks to the regular labors of Jimbo Bailey.

“Is this where David grew up?” he asked.

“All the Brecht kids grew up here. It’s a beautiful house. Built by one of the Sadlers back in 1903. It came down through Miz Deb’s side of the family.”

“Is that where we’re going? The house?”

“We’re going up behind it. To a place Mr. Carl built around 1960 to host family get-togethers and meetings and cocktail parties and so on. He calls it the Brecht Family Clubhouse. His own little family country club.”

The weather was slightly overcast, just enough to cut the sun’s glare, and the temperature was pleasant. Lundy parked beside some other vehicles near the clubhouse, which was a rectangular, broad building with huge windows and several sliding doors that opened onto a sturdy wood porch made of heavy redwood boards. The porch completely surrounded the building.

“My gosh!” Eli said as he stepped down from the truck. “Have they got a party going? I hear a band playing.”

The sound of a banjo being “flailed” in the old clawhammer style, backed by guitars, fiddles, a mandolin, and a standup bass carried clearly through the morning, seemingly coming from the porch on the opposite side of the clubhouse.

“Not really a party,” Lundy said. “Just some folks who get together up here and pick on Tuesday mornings. That’s the surprise I was talking about. That’s my uncle Bufe on the clawhammer banjo, by the way.”

Eli paused, listening. “He’s pretty good. That’s a well-done old-style rendition of ‘Soldier’s Joy.’”

“Yeah, but there’s somebody else who out-picks Bufe in these little Tuesday hoedowns. It makes him jealous as all get-out, even though he denies it.”

A male voice, obviously Bufe’s, laid itself atop the string music, singing: “’I am my mother’s darling boy, I am my mother’s darling boy, I am my mother’s darling boy, I sing a little tune called the Soldier’s Joy!’’

“Now listen,” Lundy said.

Just then, a second banjo joined in, spilling out a waterfall of sparking, clear notes in a perfectly timed musical run, playing an intricate variation on the simple old tune. It was so well performed it stopped Eli in his tracks as he climbed the stairs up to the porch.

“Nothing like that Scruggs style, huh?” Lundy said, a big grin on his face. “Uncle Bufe can’t do it worth a hoot. That’s why he can get so jealous of other pickers who can play that Scruggs stuff.”

“Jake, that isn’t a hundred percent Scruggs style. That’s a step or two beyond it. They call that chromatic, or melodic, picking, and it’s about as good as any I’ve ever heard.” Eli paused, listening with an experienced ear. “Okay, now that little lick there between those runs was in Scruggs style, and now it’s jumping back into melodic. That’s the beauty of melodic style: you can mix it in pretty much seamlessly with Scruggs three-finger picking, and even with the older clawhammer stuff. It’s brought banjo styling to a whole new level. And whoever is playing right now is a professional-level melodic picker.”

“That ‘whoever’ is your employer, Eli. That’s Mr. Carl.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“You heard me. That’s the surprise part. Come on, let’s go around.”

The band was comprised of seven men. Two played rhythm guitar while a third guitarist picked lead and fill-in runs Clarence White style on an expensive, gleaming Martin. A young mandolin player who was trying with limited success to grow a beard played with in tentative, choppy style that marked him as a relative beginner. There was an aging fiddler with a surprisingly jazzy, Vassar Clements quality to his playing, and on banjo, Bufe Fellers and a man who had to be Mr. Carl Brecht, because he was the one playing melodic style. Apart from a similarity of facial structure about the jawline, Mr. Carl looked little like David, and certainly nothing like the Citizen Kane publisher figure Eli had expected.

Mr. Carl looked twenty years younger than his age, was lanky and dressed in jeans and a faded yellow shirt. His hair was something between brown and red, and worn shaggy, as if he had gotten stuck, hairstyle-wise, somewhere around 1978. It didn’t appear he had shaved for two or three days. He was propped back against a porch rail and hunched over a Gibson banjo that showed, in the worn finish of its fretboard, evidence of frequent use. Mr. Carl’s fingers were in endless motion, crawling up and down the neck of the instrument while his right hand fingers and thumb moved in intricate patterns. He picked alternate strings to make a steady line of melodic notes that overlapped one another, then shifted for a few measures into the standard three-fingered roll pioneered by Earl Scruggs. His right foot tapped out perfect time to his playing. He wore running shoes.

All in all, Mr. Carl looked nothing like Eli’s conception of a typical newspaper publisher. Where was the coat and tie? The neatly barbered hair? The clean-shaven face? The gleaming black leather dress shoes?

The tune, an old-time music standard since the 1800s, came to an end with a Doc Watsonesque guitar run from the lead flatpicker. Mr. Carl looked up, face beaming in the afterglow of a song well-performed, and greeted Lundy, who promptly introduced Eli. The banjo stayed in place as Mr. Carl reached out his right hand, metal finger picks and plastic thumb pick still on, and shook the hand of his newest employee.

“Looking forward to seeing what you do with our bicentennial publication,” Mr. Carl said. “David’s pretty high on you.”

“Glad to hear it, sir. I’m pleased to be working for you, and I’m very impressed by your picking.”

Mr. Carl gave a curt nod of thanks, looked around at his fellow players, and said, “A little bit of Dixie Hoedown, boys.” He looked at Eli and said, “John McEuen taught me this one after a concert in Knoxville back about ‘79. It’s one of the earlier instrumentals to include some of the kind of picking I like best.”

“Melodic,” Eli said. “Like Bobbie Thompson.”

“You know your banjo, son!” the publisher said. “We’ll have some things to talk about, you and me.”

And without a pause, the song began, a chattering spill of sixteenth-note runs that rolled downward, then up again. Mr. Carl played a couple of verses, throwing in some creative variations, then nodded at the lead guitarist, who picked up the basic melody, twisted it about fluidly and skillfully, then threw it back to Mr. Carl again, who played the melody with an accompanying note-for-note harmony from the guitar.