JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 377 из 425Suddenly I understood one of the things that had puzzled me: the generations which didn’t seem to match up. A Sara Tidwell song came to mind as I crouched there on the pallets with my lantern shining down on that old-timey type. It was the ditty that went The oldjlks do it and the youngjlks, too / And the oldjlks show the youngjlksjust what to do…
By the time Sara and the Red-Tops showed up in Castle County and settled on what became known as Tidwell’s Meadow, Jared Devore would have been sixty-seven or — eight. Old but still hale. A veteran of the Civil War.
The sort of older man younger men might look up to. And Sara’s song was right—the old folks show the young folks just what to do.
What exactly had they done?
The clippings about Sara and the Red-Tops didn’t tell. I only skimmed them, anyway, but the overall tone shook me, just the same. I’d describe it as unfailing genial contempt. The Red-Tops were “our Southern blackbirds” and “our rhythmic darkies.” They were “full of dusky good-nature.” Sara herself was “a marvelous figure of a Negro woman with broad nose, full lips, and noble brow” who “fascinated men-folk and women-folk alike with her animal high spirits, flashing smile, and raucous laugh.”
They were, God keep us and save us, reviews. Good ones, if you didn’t mind being called full of dusky good-nature.
I shuffled through them quickly, looking for anything about the circumstances under which “our Southern blackbirds” had left. I found nothing. What I found instead was a clipping from the Call marked July 19th (go down nineteen, I thought), 1933. The headline read WTERA GUIDE, CARETAKER, CANNOT SAVE DAUGHTER. According to the story, Fred Dean had been fighting the wildfires in the eastern part of the TR with two hundred other men when the wind had suddenly changed, menacing the north end of the lake, which had previously been considered safe. At that time a great many local people had kept fishing and hunting camps up there (this much I knew myself). The community had had a general store and an actual name, Halo Bay. Fred’s wife, Hilda, was there with the Dean twins, William and Carla, age three, while her husband was off eating smoke. A good many other wives and kids were in Halo Bay, as well.
The fires had come fast when the wind changed, the paper said’like marching explosions.” They }jumped the only firebreak the men had left in that direction and headed for the far end of the lake. At Halo Bay there were no men to take charge, and apparently no women able or willing to do so.
By the time Sara and the Red-Tops showed up in Castle County and settled on what became known as Tidwell’s Meadow, Jared Devore would have been sixty-seven or — eight. Old but still hale. A veteran of the Civil War.
The sort of older man younger men might look up to. And Sara’s song was right—the old folks show the young folks just what to do.
What exactly had they done?
The clippings about Sara and the Red-Tops didn’t tell. I only skimmed them, anyway, but the overall tone shook me, just the same. I’d describe it as unfailing genial contempt. The Red-Tops were “our Southern blackbirds” and “our rhythmic darkies.” They were “full of dusky good-nature.” Sara herself was “a marvelous figure of a Negro woman with broad nose, full lips, and noble brow” who “fascinated men-folk and women-folk alike with her animal high spirits, flashing smile, and raucous laugh.”
They were, God keep us and save us, reviews. Good ones, if you didn’t mind being called full of dusky good-nature.
I shuffled through them quickly, looking for anything about the circumstances under which “our Southern blackbirds” had left. I found nothing. What I found instead was a clipping from the Call marked July 19th (go down nineteen, I thought), 1933. The headline read WTERA GUIDE, CARETAKER, CANNOT SAVE DAUGHTER. According to the story, Fred Dean had been fighting the wildfires in the eastern part of the TR with two hundred other men when the wind had suddenly changed, menacing the north end of the lake, which had previously been considered safe. At that time a great many local people had kept fishing and hunting camps up there (this much I knew myself). The community had had a general store and an actual name, Halo Bay. Fred’s wife, Hilda, was there with the Dean twins, William and Carla, age three, while her husband was off eating smoke. A good many other wives and kids were in Halo Bay, as well.
The fires had come fast when the wind changed, the paper said’like marching explosions.” They }jumped the only firebreak the men had left in that direction and headed for the far end of the lake. At Halo Bay there were no men to take charge, and apparently no women able or willing to do so.