The Inheritance

"We got us a piano!"

It was late one afternoon in mid-May that Father, in an especially fine frame of mind, burst through the back door waving an important looking envelope from some lawyer in Atlanta. Flushed and smelling strongly of licorice, he had clearly stopped by Doc Griggs’ drugstore to celebrate the windfall with his friends and “The Elixir”

Mother's usual annoyance at Father’s visits to the back room of Doc Griggs’ with  his miscreant friends  was quickly overcome by this news. She bore Father’s weakness with loud sighs and the firm conviction she would have to spend eternity without his company. She would often ominously remark that he had best develop a tolerance for heat. Along with all the ladies at Massnahut Evangelical United Brethren, she was Temperance.  Somehow, the fermented fruit compote she kept in a large crock on the cellar stairs escaped her moral outrage.

She would regularly sample the progress of its heady sweet liquid by carefully tasting seven or eight tablespoons of it every time she added more fruit. When this occurred, she would go about her chores loudly whistling “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Mother thought the only music in the world that did not come directly from the putrid bowels of Hell was contained between the covers of the Methodist Hymnal and the marches of John Phillip Sousa.

"A piano?" Mother looked at him narrowly. She was not sure, given Father's condition, if she should believe such news. "Who died?"

"Great Aunt Matilda Stoat, down there in Georgia, You remember?" He handed her the letter.

The Stoats were well known eccentrics which, combined with a feverish Calvinism, led them to do such things as move to the old Confederacy. There, Great Uncle Burt believed, by some arcane scriptural parsing, their deliverance would be assured. Due to an inaccurate predication of the end of the world by some misguided divine, the whole bunch had set out in a cornfield on the day appointed in white choir robes watching the sky until it got too dark to see. They would have stayed longer but they were hungry and it had started to rain. Disappointed, they promptly went back to the business of living in a sinful world. 

Mother read the letter twice, her eyes widening. I could see her mind working as she looked from the letter to me with a sight smile. She was already making plans. My future, the coming summer, looked bleak.

This would mean only one thing, piano lessons. Not just piano lessons, no, piano lessons with Miss Lucrecia Gout, the much older sister of Elmer Gout who owned the Emporium. She was a tall, gaunt, sharp-shinned, sinister and cadaverous woman without a laugh in her. Her parched, sour expression was set off with protruding, fish like eyes enhanced by powerful glasses. She was Director of Music and played at both services on Sunday at the Massnahut Evangelical and United Brethren Church.

"Face like a gravediggers spade." Father shuddered.

During dinner, Father described his youthful visits to the Stoats before they had gone off the deep end and left Maine.  He described Aunt Matilda as a sweet- faced woman who used to play the thumping hymns favored by their obscure sect-The Brethren of Divine Retribution- on her old upright that was now ours.

Uncle Burt Stoat he recalled as an angular, steely eyed, square faced Yankee with a hawkish nose, a patriarchal beard, and highly developed jaw muscles that would ripple and twitch as he clenched his teeth in righteous indignation. As a lad Father had been fascinated by those muscles. He quickly discovered how an innocent, childlike question could bring forth a virtuoso display.  Mother forestalled any further descriptions with a look.

Later, out of Mother’s hearing, Father told me about the two Stoat boys, Israel and Judah. They were amateur explosive technicians who produced an inventive and dangerous array of homemade fireworks from their father’s enormous supply of black powder that he kept against the forthcoming battle with the Godless. Uncle Burt, his mind otherwise engaged with Leviticus, The Book of Revelation, and the gleeful anticipation of impending doom had not noticed his dwindling supply.

A number of old Walter Crockett’s privies became smoking, messy holes as a result of the brother’s experiments. Uncle Burt never suspected his sons of this and since the privies in question had belonged to some noted apostates, he considered these incidents nothing less than divine justice. It had surprised no one except Israel and Judah that they would meet a sudden and explosive end trying to remove a stubborn tree stump with nitroglycerin.

Uncle Burt had succumbed to a fit of apoplexy brought on when those heathen Southern Baptists absorbed and diluted the theology of the Brethren.

Shipment of the dreaded piano was by rail from Atlanta via Bangor to the Massnahut siding. The transfer would take place in a week and was the cause of much comment and anticipation. There had not been this much excitement in Massnahut since Father’s brother-my Uncle Bub-the town idiot, had run off with the circus the year before.

Mother had cleared a space in the parlor and had, as feared, engaged Miss Gout in advance. Lessons would commence; I was informed, Mondays and Fridays after the new instrument was properly settled and tuned.  The idea of spending a half hour twice a week with that woman-not to mention the subsequent practice- into the foreseeable future put me in a blue funk.

Father and I had always had an understanding regarding Mother’s ideas. He was well aware of my feelings at the pending installation of an instrument of torture in the parlor. His joy to receive anything as valuable as a piano without any major outlay of cash on his part was tempered by my distress.

Over several rounds of root beer at Elmer Gout’s Emporium he tried to ease my dread.

“I’ll make a bargain with you boy.” He said “ You been itchin’ to go a duck huntin’ with me and Ted Stillfellow now for a couple years. You bend your efforts to those lessons and I’ll see to it you get to blaze away at those critters come the season.”

“Deal?” He held out his hand.

If Father offered his hand in a deal, it was done. 

“Deal!”

Father and Ted Stillfellow, the undertaker, were generally acknowledged as the best duck hunters in town if not the county. To share a blind with them and learn the great secrets of the hunt was nothing less than a right of passage. When my friends, the Dinkins twins, found out they allowed as how they would gladly trade places with me for the privilege.

The piano was transported from the Massnahut siding on a truck donated by Zeke Pinion who owned the sawmill and was humped into the parlor by four of his beefy workers. Miss Gout was in attendance with a birdlike little fellow named Gringe who tuned the beast to her satisfaction. She then sat down and pounded out several hymns with a look that might have been called blissful on a less disturbing countenance. Mother laid on a lunch for all concerned and, for most, the afternoon ended in high spirits.

So there it sat, gleaming in the late afternoon light. Huge, red-black mahogany with carved pillars, curly-cues and gee-gaws setting off those eighty-eight ivory teeth grinning defiance at me. It was an intimidating sight.

Lessons, as threatened, began.  I kept at it under the bulging eye and looming presence of Miss Gout. Visions of scores of ducks passing overhead filled my mind as I soldiered away at what can only be described as tedium.

May passed into June and then July. No one was as surprised as I when, suddenly one day, something clicked. It all made sense!

The chicken scratch marks on the sheets in front of me became music under my fingers. According to Miss Gout, I had an “aptitude.” It was something.  I could play anything in the hymnbook and all of Mother’s favorite Sousa marches.

She was moved to tears when she heard me breeze through "Amazing Grace" and
"The Old Rugged Cross". Among Mother's people, it was a source of some status to have a church musician in the family. In her view of the Order of Things, this gift was to offset Father's lamentable weakness for low company and the "elixir." None of this was lost on the scheming Miss Gout who saw her chance to sleep in on Sundays. She laid plans to have me playing at the first service. Soon, busy tongues were wondering aloud why such a talented boy was not giving glory through music.

One afternoon, just after school started in September, Father told me we were to meet Ted Stillfellow at the parlor. I had, like all the kids, a certain creepy fascination with the place. I had never been inside but the thought of meeting my new hunting companion overshadowed any apprehension.

Inside the fancy doors it was dim, somber and cool with a sort of flowery smell about the place. Mr. Ted was in direct contrast to the mood of the parlor. He was a stout, powerful, jolly man in his shirtsleeves grinning from ear to ear. His father liked Greek names and inflicted his son with Thanotagenes.  His first grade teacher, old Mrs.Clucky, took pity on him and just called him Ted.

He motioned us back into his office. The place was decorated with fancy looking framed documents, hunting prints and stuffed ducks. He produced some cups and a flask of coffee and we helped ourselves.

I was having coffee with the boys, talking about the coming duck season.  It was wonderful. I felt that I had been admitted to some inner sanctum of manhood.

On the way out, I saw a piano in a side room and Mr. Ted noticed my interest.

“I hear you play pretty well. Care to try it out?”

I sat down and played “Amazing Grace” while Ted and Father beamed.

“See what you think of this. It’s called ‘Ragtime’” Mr.Ted sat down and played a tune he called “The Maple Leaf Rag” by someone named Scott Joplin.

It was amazing. I had no idea such music existed. I know this sounds strange but radios were rare and music halls as scarce as saloons in rural Maine in the earlies. All the way home that tune played in my head and I could hardly wait to try to work it out by ear. Father could see this and said I should be pretty careful about letting Mother hear me play this sort of thing.

Every time Mother was away from the house at a circle meeting or at the market, I played ragtime. One day Father came back from Doc Grigg’s with some sheet music Mr. Ted had sent my way. After playing this at every chance, I began to make up my own tunes. I would hum them on the way to and from school and in the bathtub.

One Saturday just a week before duck season, I was pumping out the Maple Leaf and failed to see Mother coming up the walk.  She heard the music before she got to the door. Oh my, the look on her face! I was damned for sure.

“This is all your Father’s doing!” Warming to the subject, she turned up the guilt.

” How can I ever hold up my head again knowing my own sweet boy is polluting his God given talent with this, this, lowbrow, dirty music!”

Father came home shortly after this with a longish parcel under his arm that he quickly put out of sight. With new vigor, Mother tearfully lit into him with both barrels.

“What do you think you’re doing by encouraging this in your only son? What next, Doc Griggs and the‘elixir’?”

“Now what’s so wrong with it?” Father’s voice was low and calming,” Just cuzz it ain’t church music don’t make it bad. Anyway, the boy has a talent for it. He’s been makin’ up his own songs too. Why don’t you just sit here and listen. Go on boy, play some. ”

Mother listened to the Maple Leaf again and then a piece I had made up I called “The Down East Rag.” By the time supper was over and Mother had a chance to digest some, she allowed as how it might be all right as long as we kept this between us.

Two good things came of it; no more lessons with Miss Gout and no playing in church.

“Lucrecia, the boy is just too young to be subjected to that sort of pressure.” Mother had told her. She did not want to risk my coming unhinged in front of the congregation by deciding the Doxology would sound better in ragtime. 

From behind the door, it was easy enough to imagine Miss Gout’s expression. I had seen it too often. Her unsettling features with those goggling, fishy eyes would contort into a frown even more profound than usual. Not only did she lose a paying student that day, but also her plans for sleeping in on Sundays were in ruins.  I remember the sound of a long sigh, an indignant sniff, and the screen door slamming.

After dinner, things had calmed down, Father handed me the forgotten parcel.

“Here boy, this is for you.” In the brown paper was a gleaming Winchester duck gun.

The barrels were deeply blued and the mahogany stock was hand –checkered. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I was at a loss for words.

The next week, Father, Mr. Ted, his retriever Jip and me, sat in the growing light in Mr. Ted’s blind down in the West End Marsh. Over coffee they had told me how to lead the bird when they dropped down to respond to our calls.

“Just take your time. Hold the gun steady and squeeze ‘em off. That’s the style boy!” I got my first duck that day.

We walked on home later in the long shadows and golden light of that splendid October day. We carried our guns broken open over our shoulders with a good bunch of ducks for the smoker.

As we entered the kitchen at the back of the house we heard somebody loudly whistling “The Maple Leaf Rag.”

Father chuckled and said,” Sounds like your Mother has been in the compote again.”