Old Bluebird records by the Carter Family, Victor records by Jimmie Rodgers, the Singing Brakeman. “Evening Sun Yodel,” “Away Out on the Mountain.” He could remember hearing these songs in his youth, singing them himself, he and Ellen playing these selfsame records on the Victrola. Jimmie Rodgers was a blues singer and he remembered that Ellen hadn’t been too high on him but she had been fond of the Carter Family. Jimmie Rodgers, dead of TB and still a young man after all these years and even turning a dollar or two off that: and that graveyard sure is a lonesome place, they lay you on your back and throw the dirt down in your face.

Well why the hell not, he thought. He moved stacks of folded quilts, old newspapers off the Victrola and wiped the dust off. The machinery creaked when he cranked it and he doubted it would work.

It did though. The needle hissed on the record and there was Rodgers’ distinctive guitar lick then a dead voice out of a dead time still holding the same smoky sardonic lilt: She’s long, she’s tall, she’s six feet from the ground.

The old man was lost in the song and didn’t hear the girl until she was in the room. He turned and she was crossing the threshold. She had a plate in one hand and a tumbler of iced tea in the other. Jimmie Rodgers was singing: I hate to see that evenin sun go down, cause it makes me think I’m on my last go-around.

He arose and lifted the tonearm off the record.

Mama sent this.

He hadn’t anticipated anything approaching human kindness out of the Choat family and he didn’t quite know how to handle it.

She said she bet you was hungry and hot as it was you needed somethin cold to drink.

He took the plate awkwardly and cleared a spot for it on the coffee table. She set the tea beside it.

Well. You tell her Fm much obliged. What’d Lonzo have to say about it?

He was down at the barn. What’s that you’re listenin to?

That’s Jimmie Rodgers, the Singin Brakeman. Evenin Sun Yodel.

What is that, country? Sure is some weird-soundin shit. Where’s he out of, Nashville?

Hell if he’s out of anywhere. He’s been dead and gone from here over fifty years.

Oh. Well, how do you know he’s in hell?

If drinkin whiskey and runnin other folks’ women’ll put you there then that’s where he’s at. Anyway he’s in the ground with the dirt throwed in his face. That sounds a right smart like hell to me.

Lord you’d cheer a person up. Are you always in this good a mood?

Just when I get rooted away from the trough, the old man said. He was studying the plate. He was of two minds about it. He mistrusted Ludie Choat’s cooking and figured her none too clean in her personal habits but then you didn’t know what was in Vienna sausage, either. All he had was the Viennas and besides there was okra rolled in meal and fried. It had been a long time since he had eaten fried okra. The plate also held garden tomatoes peeled and sliced and he figured if everything else proved inedible he could always eat the tomatoes.

What are you doin, movin in here?

Yes I am. I’ll have it right homey before I’m through. Curtains on the windows, bouquets of flowers to smell the place up. I may get me a dog.

Daddy won’t allow a dog on the place.