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Chapter 3

Luther

Willson’s Cove, North Carolina, October 1921

Music was practically what Willson’s Cove was all about. It was almost like an enclave of the Willson family; the clan had been there for several generations and were all kinfolk. There was probably no one, even in the extended family, who was not musical. Pickin’, singin’, and cloggin’. They did it all. Luther Willson was not only well-known for his great singing voice and picking the banjo—“banjer,” he called it—but his musical instruments were renowned as far away as Georgia and Florida for his superb handcrafted quality. He was a luthier extraordinaire.

*****

Luther picked up the small grip with the few clothes Susanna, “Zanny,” had fixed up for him. She was a good seamstress, and he could proudly wear anything she made for him. He would wear his suit and his snazzy derby hat.

He had crated up the instruments; six banjos and two fiddles were in a wheelbarrow that two of his children, Rancie and Harvey, took turns pushing.

As they walked along, Luther didn’t have much to say, but Zanny did.

“I’ll miss ye, Luther, this winter more’n ever.”

Zanny was beginning to show. She was carrying their ninth child, and it would be due before he returned in April.

“Too, the church is ’thout a preacher, and who’ll fill in the preaching each Sunday with ye gone? Who’ll be a-visitin’ the homebound, prayin’ with the sick? But the money ye kin make in Florida.” She understood that both with the sale of his instruments and the money he got from singing in restaurants and churches, they could not afford to do without. “Ye gotta go, Luther. I know it. It’s jes harder ever’ year.”

Luther looked straight ahead, and he put his hand over his heart. He readily told Zanny every day how much he loved her. She was a sweet, trusting soul. Seeing him leave was torture for her. Yet he knew that she would see to it that life would go on.

Getting to Luther’s destination was torture, too. The narrow-gauge railroad to Johnson City, Tennessee, then to points south: Chattanooga, Atlanta, Jacksonville, and on to Tampa and St. Petersburg. It was an agonizing trip, but he would make some money on his musical instruments; enough to send money back to Zanny and the children and have some left for his time in the sun. With his “weak” lungs, he would benefit from warmer weather of Florida. He wouldn’t need to hire a room. There were “friends,” he told Zanny. (But none he would introduce to his family.)

When Zanny tearfully, but without complaint, voiced her disappointment that he needed to be in Florida for six months, he shared his reasoning. “Why, Zanny, all them rich folks from the north winter in Florida. Half of the population in St. Petersburg are people with money to spend from their businesses up north. If I don’t take advantage of their desire for somethin’ new—they love mountain music—I’d be amiss. In the long run, it’ll mean more for you and the young’un. And another big reason, and I hate to admit it, I need the warmer weather for my health. This cold weather in these here mountains gonna kill me if I stay another year!”

Now he had to leave.

Five of the eight children still lived at home, and they went to the station with him, along with Luther’s dog, Dook II. They all formed a circle with their mother around Papa. He prayed with them, kissed the children, pulled Zanny as close as her pregnant belly would allow, and gave her that kiss that always welcomed him back, even if she had suspected his philandering. He boarded the train.

As the train pulled away, Luther saw Zanny scratch behind Dook’s ears as she watched the train. Little Delphy was in the empty wheelbarrow, and Harvey had already started to push her toward home. Not Zanny. She’ll watch until the train disappeared around the mountain heading down to Tennessee. He knew she would refuse to cry and hold her head high. He visualized her following the wheelbarrow and leading the other children on foot the three miles back to Willson’s Cove.

As they walked, she would point out different trees and quiz them on what they were. They would pick up the pretty leaves to keep so they could show Papa when he came home in the spring. They would dip them in hot “parry-fene” wax to preserve the color. They would stop by the spring house and pick up milk to take to the house, and when they got inside, she would give them milk and cornbread.

He could see her at night, every night that he was gone and after the children had gone to bed, reading her Bible and praying. Zanny’s not a good reader. I taught her to read and write, but she doesn’t always understand what she reads. Sticks to the Psalms, the book of Proverbs, and the Gospels. If Luther were to look in her Bible, he would see where teardrops had fallen on the pages of her well-worn King James Bible.

Zanny loved her family and her god. Luther knew that prayer came easily, more easily than reading. He had heard her prayers; they were the same night after night, praying aloud beside their bed. She would pray for each of her children, beginning with the youngest and on through to the oldest, telling God her hopes for the child, and asking God to lead the child the right way, help them be all they should be, and show her how to be a good mother to them. If one or more of them was sick, she would claim God’s promises to heal them. Particularly, she prayed for strength for eleven-year-old Coliah because she was sickly. Then she prayed for her two older sons, that they wouldn’t get mixed up with some of the riffraff around the mountains, like moonshiners and bad girls. He was confident that she would pray long prayers for him, too. Sometimes these prayers would go for a long time; so long that sometimes Luther would wake up and she had fallen asleep on her knees.

Luther knew that although her reading skills were limited, she would look forward to his letters. Back before the war, I’d send one letter while I was away, and one time, I got home before the letter got there. Dad-ratted slow and far-scattered post offices in these mountains! He fingered the case in his coat pocket that held his fountain pen. Now that I’m staying all winter and into the spring in Florida, I’ll write more often.

I wonder what she thinks about me being in St. Petersburg. I know how she likes to speculate. She doesn’t have time during the day, but when the young’un are a-bed, I bet she thinks I’ll be playing in some church by the end of the week. I told her about Tampa Bay and folks that stroll alongside. She knows I play for them. She’ll woolgather till she falls asleep.

After several days aboard trains going south and changes in Chattanooga, Atlanta, and Jacksonville, Luther finally arrived at the station in St. Petersburg.

So in October 1916, Luther began his routine of six months in Florida and six months in North Carolina. And now in 1921, five years later, he was on the southbound train. Luther’s destination was St. Petersburg, Florida, but once there, he billed himself not as Luther Willson, but Luke Harvey. He claimed that he was in Florida to sell banjos from a famous mountain luthier. Luke had met Martha Lindsay in January of 1916. She was a well-off widow who was raising her teenage daughter, Maggie. Martha was fascinated by his music and by the man himself. She made it a point to find out where he would be playing, and she would be there, leaving her daughter with the servants for an evening. What speakeasy? Which bayfront café?

Martha Lindsay had been widowed when Maggie’s daddy, Paul Lindsey, had disappeared in 1914. He had been sailing solo in the gulf beyond Tampa Bay. A storm blew up; not as violent as a tropical storm or hurricane, but it was enough to capsize his ketch. His body had never been found. Maggie was only nine. The late husband had come from money, leaving the widow with a guaranteed income.

One evening, an attractive, well-dressed lady came into the speakeasy and sat alone at a table near the stage. Luke noticed her right away. She looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties. The first thing that Luke noticed after he eyed her face and form was her choice of beverage: lemonade. Well, I’ll be. Must be here to listen to me!

More than that, Luke Harvey determined to meet her. He zeroed in on the fact that she was a well-off widow. It must have been a stroke of luck that led him to her. Who wouldn’t want a handsome young widow with money, a big house a couple of blocks from Tampa Bay, and servants, Jesse and Georgie? Yes, the widow Lindsay would be well worth courting, not because of the amenities, but because she evidently liked what she saw in Luke Harvey; and he ate it up like candy.

The first time he visited her, Georgie served them tea and little cakes.

“You have a maid?”

“Oh, I don’t consider Georgie a maid. She’s part of the family, Mr. Harvey. Why, Georgie’s family has been with mine since before the Civil War. They have stayed through the generations. Now Georgie and her husband, Jesse, their own children grown and living elsewhere, they live in that cottage out back of my house.”

Luke wooed Martha with little effort. Well enough that she was swept off her feet. After a courtship of letter writing after he had returned to North Carolina, when he got off the train in October of 1916, they went directly to a “preacher” Martha had introduced him to on his last trip and got “married.” Did the thirty-year-old bride wonder if it was a real marriage? Did she suspect that he had another family in the mountains? Luther told her he was a widower with grown children back in the mountains. Martha told Luther that the few months each year that they were together was the happiest she had ever known.

“Luther, even when Paul was living, it wasn’t as sweet as being with you. He tended to drink a bit much, and we often argued. I like it that you don’t drink,” Martha had told him.

The closer he got to St. Petersburg, the less he thought about Zanny and the more he thought about Martha. She was a great lover and companion for a man away from home. Did he love her? He didn’t want to think about it. Their relationship just was.

He thought about Maggie, too, her daughter. I’ll bet Maggie will be just as anxious to see me as Martha.

Indeed, Maggie was with her mother at the train station awaiting the 4:15 in from Jacksonville. “Momma, I sure am glad it’s time for Papa to come home. I was thinking about him last evening as the sun was setting. I remember when we walked along the water and he told me of colors in the sunset I never knew existed. I love it when he plays his music and sings, but when he recites poetry, I just swoon!”

“Swoon, is it? Maggie Lindsey, where do you get such words? It’s time. I miss him, too. But since he isn’t able to tolerate the heat of summer, we only get to enjoy his company when it is cold up in the mountains.”

“I wish he could stay here year-round. I love him so.” Maggie swooned again. At sixteen, she and her girlfriends always talked about swooning over someone, particularly Rudolph Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks.

“Maggie, you swoon over everything. What would Papa Luke say if he heard such nonsense?”

And there he was. Luke’s flamboyance made him bigger than life. The great shock of white hair beneath a derby hat, penetrating blue eyes, trim mustache, immaculate black suit, and hand-carved cane made of mountain ash, and he was standing tall and erect. As always, Martha’s heart melted, and the agonizing months of his absence melted away with her heart.

After a tender embrace, he noticed Maggie and broke into song.

“Little Maggie sittin’ in her cabin door, combin’ back her raven black hair.”

The song was his version of an ancient ballad. He had so many ballads, and his people had reworded and retuned them to fit in with their mountain image.

Maggie giggled as he tickled her under her chin. “My, but you’ve grown into a real lady, Ms. Maggie, since last April. I’ll swan! I think you are plumb grown-up. D’ye have a feller come a-courtin’?”

“No, Papa. I’m saving my love for someone just like you.”

He gave her an extra hug and pretended he was going to bite her neck, but as he did so, he noted the pallor on Martha’s face. Releasing the girl, he asked Martha, “Are you well, my dear? You seem a bit wan.”

“Oh, I am fine. Just tired, I suppose. Shall we move along and get out of this heat? I have a cab waiting.” And she knew it was more than “just tired,” not just tired but fear. There was a lump in her breast, and she hoped he wouldn’t notice. He will. She took a deep breath and shook off her fears. For now.

“Georgie has your favorite St. Petersburg cooking ready for dinner.”

“Ah, shrimp and grits!”

Luke settled back into the routine of living by the bay and playing his music, not in churches and restaurants as Zanny supposed, but nightclubs or speakeasies where his derby would be filled each night. During the day, he would peddle his musical instruments.