they headed for the woods without being asked.
The scratching lasted about a week, and then to his Grandfather and Sammy Sue’s surprise they heard a melody: not pure but recognizable. The old violin was all one might expect for five dollars, but somehow Ailey coaxed music from it.
Life now had other markers to define and measure the passage of time. He broke strings. These were the catastrophes that ruined the harmony of his childish existence. Then he had to wait for his grandfather to go to Elkins, the nearest town with a music store.
There were other children on the farms nearby, but he’d become so used to living with Granpa Joe and Sammy Sue he didn’t walk the mile or two to meet and play with them. If he’d had a mother and father living at home they might have seen that he had a more normal childhood. But it wasn’t to be.
His father, Little Joe Barkwood, had been killed in a sawmill accident when Ailey was one, and his mother ran off to California with a soldier when he was two. He didn’t remember his father, or his mother.
He had Sammy Sue and Granpa Joe, and he had his violin. That was enough.
PADUA, ITALY, JANUARY 1770
You weren’t my first choice, Monsieur La Houssaye, though I admire your playing as much as any violinist I’ve heard in many years. I fear the French love themselves first and their music second.” Tartini paused, “You were a good student, I’ll give you that.”
Giuseppe Tartini looked down at his gnarled hands, twisted with arthritis.
La Houssaye, elegant and vain, waited for Tartini to go on. He resented the Italian perception of Frenchmen, and that a great violinist like Tartini shared this perception, hurt doubly.
“Please do not be offended by what I say. This is, as they say, a moment of truth. Whether I am wrong or right, it will soon not matter. As you can see, time has given me the greatest punishment. I hear perfectly, yet I cannot play.”
They sat across from each other in Tartini’s drawing room. Between them on a small round table of walnut a violin case lay open. In it, the Hercules reflected the amber glow of candles spread around the room.
“Not so long ago Count Domenici Paisello gave me this instrument. He charged me to select the next man to have it with great care. He further instructed me to find not just the greatest virtuoso of my time, but a man of equal character; one who would preserve it and pass it on to another equally worthy when the time came.
“That time will come, Monsieur. It comes to us all, as these wretched claws have come to me.” He looked at his hands with profound loathing.
“I will not try to extract a promise to uphold the count’s wishes. I will hope for that, but I will not ask for the promise. It is yours and I freely give it. Let as many hear it as possible for it truly has a majestic voice.”
La Houssaye bowed solemnly to the older man.
“I am French, Tartini, that is true. I am also consumed by my music. To that I plead guilty. I do know the value you place on this beautiful thing and I shall carry out your wishes.”
“Good, that is enough.”
Tartini reached out and touched the strings gently. A look of deep sadness crossed his face. “I wish that I might hear it again, for I think God has touched this thing, and I would hear his voice before I meet him in person.”
“My dear, Tartini--” La Houssaye’s voice broke. “I am not God, but I would be delighted to play whatever you would like to hear.”
“You would do that? Ah, that is good. Play me something of yours, I have heard too much of my own.”
La Houssaye smiled. He stood, took the Hercules from the case and rapidly checked the tune.
“Let me hear an Adagio. I am too old for the pyrotechnical. Something sweet, the long bow, the cantilena...”
La Houssaye put bow to strings and Tartini closed his eyes.
Tartini’s last thought before La Houssaye gave himself to the music was a comfort. “There can be no doubt of it, he is the best I have heard, and they say he is an honorable man...”
Chapter 9
Miss Iris Bentley taught Elementary school in Luthersville. Every summer around the first of August she went over the county lists and wrote down the names of children ready for the first grade. She made it a point to go to the home of every family on the list and make certain the parents sent their children at the appointed time.
Sitting as erect as a soldier, her hands squarely at the three-quarter points on the steering wheel of a 1963 ford station wagon, she drove through the ripening fields of corn, tobacco and beans to the Barkwood farm.
When she arrived, Ailey was in the barn practicing. Granpa Joe Barkwood had gone to Elkins to buy feed, which left only Sammy Sue.
Miss Bentley sat on the porch with Sammy Sue and drank lemonade. Sammy Sue wore her Sunday dress. In the hills the older people still had great respect for a teacher.
“Who’s that playin the fiddle?” Miss Iris asked.
Sammy Sue smiled. “Oh, that be little Ailey, Ma’am. Ain’t he somethin’? Ole Joe, that’s Ailey’s Granpa, give him that fiddle on his fourth birthday, him wantin’ one so bad ‘n all.”
“Who’s his teacher?” Miss Iris asked.
Sammy Sue laughed. “Sakes alive, Miss Iris, he don’t have no teacher. We’s poor folks, ma’am. He done taught himself. Ever Sunday he listen to that WNEW from New York, then he go to the barn and try to play everthing he hear.”
“That’s amazing. Do you suppose you could ask him to come over here, I’d like to meet him.”
“Uh, Miss Iris, ah cain’t do that. He won’t come. When he like that, he won’t come till he done, and that could be three, four hours.” Sammy Sue was apologetic.
“I see. Well, you see that he is ready for school come September, Sammy Sue.” She gave Sammy Sue a list of what Ailey was to bring with him. “Maybe someday he’ll be a great violinist, but he can’t do that unless he learns to read and write.”
On the first of September, Ailey stood by the road to Luthersville with his Granpa and waited for the bus. His clothes were worn, but clean. He carried a cigar box with two pieces of chicken, an apple, and a wedge of sweet potato pie. He had one new yellow pencil and lined notebook. He was frightened and he didn’t want anything to do with school.
On the bus the little girls giggled at his clothes and the boys teased him. He didn’t say a word. Sammy Sue said into each life a little rain must fall, which he understood very well. School, however, was a thunderstorm.
Ailey was a poor student. He understood what school was. Torture. He learned right and wrong from Sammy Sue and Granpa Joe. Sammy Sue was shoutin’ Baptist with a real colorful idea of heaven and hell. Granpa Joe had a more quiet view of things, but even so he had a pretty severe picture of the punishment awaiting man
