“Bothers me some to think you might come on one of yer spells out in the forest with no one to look after yuh.”
“Figured it would, Daddy, but I got to do it. I just cain’t stay here no more. I’ll be alright, stay close to the cabin and all. Gonna go to Elkins, get me a new pickup, some tools and such. I’ve got me the money from the medal and my mustering-out out pay. Don’t need much. I’ve got to live simple, not be no trouble to no one.”
Luther raised his hand as his father started to speak. He reached out an took his father’s worn hand.
“I know you don’t figure I’m trouble, but I do, and it makes it harder, a lot harder.”
Luther’s father looked down at his son’s hand, so much like his own. “All right, boy, you do what you want, you’ve the right.”
PADUA, ITALY, 1719
The night was hot, close. The “civilized” world was still tortured by the idea that windows must be kept closed to prevent the night air, source of evil humors and of a multitude of diseases, away from the body.
Against the advice of his wife, Tartini had eaten two game pies. Now he paid the price. He went to bed early. It took a long time getting to sleep.
The dream came slowly, without form, and then there he was, making a pact with the Devil. It went well. He felt no remorse, no Faustian indecision.
The Devil asked if he might play his violin, the Hercules. Tartini gave it to him out of curiosity. Then he was amazed to hear the Devil play a sonata so miraculous and beautiful that it exceeded all imagination.
It enchanted Tartini. His breath stopped and he awoke. He reached for his violin, the Hercules, to reproduce some of the sounds he heard in his dream.
As he told the French violinist, Lalande, years later, “The music I composed at that moment is no doubt the best I ever wrote - and I call it the Devil’s Sonata - but it is a far cry from what I heard in my dreams.”
Chapter 7
The maple log in the fire place settled on the grate with a small exhalation of sparks. The flickering light exposed a large, stone-walled room as Spartan as a monk’s cell.
Luther turned up the gas on the Coleman lantern and sat at the red oak table in the middle of the room. On the table, a disassembled twelve gauge shot gun, gun oil, brushes and rags had been pushed aside. Beyond the gun was a stack of worn books.
The woman at the library told him there were ten or fifteen books that famous men read: men like Napoleon and General Grant. Privately, Luther didn’t think being a Union General or a French General much recommendation, but he wasn’t of a mind to argue so he took what she gave him.
Adam Smith’s, Wealth of Nations lay open on the top of the stack. Reading was hard, but with a dictionary and patience he began to get the hang of it. Her choice had been good. He liked Montaigne’s Essays, and read some of them three and four times.
But this night he wouldn’t read. A stack of writing paper and three or four yellow pencils lay in front of him waiting. He wrote three words on the first piece of paper.
Dear Miss Pell, He stared at the paper. The pencil, dwarfed by his large hand was forgotten. He’d written the letter a hundred times in his mind. Alone on his mountain in West Virginia, he blushed with shame.
He didn’t write long hand. He printed, and the letters were large and awkward. He started again.
I thought of you often since I got back and wanted to thank you again for being so nice to me. It has been hard. I stayed with my Pa for awhile but after a month couldn’t do that no more. He was real good to me and didn’t mind that I fell off the tractor and lay in the field all day having terrible dreams. So I have come to live on Cole’s Mountain which was my grand daddy’s place. I have a nice house and work in the lumber mill in Elkins now and again. I take the fiddle out most evenings and try to imagine how it got to that farmhouse in Korea. It feels real good to look at it and touch it. I feel sure God meant for me to find it and take care of it. I have been practicing reading most every evening. It is getting easier but I am sorry I write so poorly. I remember you didn’t make fun of me or the way I talk which is why I decided to write. I am not proud of this writing but I am going to get better. I would be real pleased to get a letter from you if you had the time. If you don’t I will understand. I admired the way you got yourself educated. Wouldn’t many men have done as good. I still have them spells from time to time but I think it is getting better. Sometimes it is funny like the time I woke up with a squirrel on my chest making an awful racket. He was madder than all get out cause I fell across his storehouse of nuts. We were both nuts! Ha Ha. Well, I sure hope your feeling good and not having no trouble of any kind.
Your Friend
Martin Luther Cole
The next day Luther took the letter down the mountain and mailed it from the post office in Luthersville. The little children looked at him funny and whispered.
He smiled at them. They think I’m crazy
He didn’t mind, kids were like that.
Luther was amazed to receive a letter ten days later. Missus Ames, the Post Mistress and owner of the Five and Dime, smiled at him and asked if he had a girlfriend all the way across the country in San Francisco. Luther blushed, too embarrassed to answer.
He took the letter back to the mountain and didn’t read it until the end of the day. She said she was real happy to hear from him. She talked of her work at the hospital and life in the city, and said she missed the small town where she was born.
Their letters criss-crossed the country for a year before she sent him a picture of her in uniform. He’d never seen anyone so pretty. He didn’t think about love. That wasn’t permitted. In his own mind he was still crazy.
Then came the letter that she said she was coming to West Virginia. He secretly yearned for just such a visit, but faced with the fact of it, was terrified.
As the day of her arrival drew close, he imagined all kinds of things going wrong. He’d have one of his spells while driving his truck and kill them both. Maybe she would be embarrassed to be seen with a hillbilly like himself.
The day before she arrived, he went to Elkins and got a haircut. He bought a couple pairs of decent pants and shirts. Back on the mountain he spent the afternoon cleaning the truck.
The next day, as he waited for the Trailways bus, he thought of his own arrival back from the war and his father waiting for him. He decided to take her out to the farm. She said she wanted to stay a few days. It’d keep tongues from waggin’ more than usual.
When the bus came to a stop in front of the Texaco station, Luther was sweating and praying he wouldn’t have one of his spells. He didn’t remember her being so small, but then, most of the time he’d seen her he was flat on his back. She wasn’t in her uniform. She wore a neat print dress with a perky hat and shoes with heels. He’d forgotten how blue her eyes were.
She came right to him and took his hand like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Hello, Luther.” She smiled and like to burst his heart on the spot. “I don’t remember you being so tall.”
He smiled and smiled, but said nothing. Luther watched curiously as the driver brought out three large Samsonite bags from the storage bin. But not knowing anything about how women traveled, guessed it must be okay.
He put them in the back of his truck, helped her in and drove toward his father’s farm. He tried to think of something to say.
“You look so pretty, I can’t think to look at the road.” It just burst out and he blushed. She gave back a blush and looked at him steady.
“Now I know I wasn’t foolish to come. I worried you would think I