M.C. Higgins, the Great by Virginia Hamilton Read Free Book Online

said again, “Mama’ll be here by dark.”
    “Can she really sing the way folks like to say?”
    “She can sing,” M.C. said, “like nobody else.” He looked longingly at the tape recorder. Lewis followed his gaze.
    “You want to see it?” he said.
    “Sure,” M.C. said.
    “Well, here then.” Lewis took it off his shoulder. “Just take it out of the case and lay it on your lap. I’ve got some banjo playing that I like to listen to and some group singing on it right now, I think. And you know where I got it?”
    M.C. put the case on the ground and the recorder on his lap. He touched the machine lightly here and there but he said nothing.
    “I got it in Cleveland. Cleveland, of all places,” the dude said. “Some brier hop . . . some hill people just moved there. There are thousands of them have moved up from Kentucky. And you know what?”
    “What?” M.C. said, the word barely out of his mouth when the dude went on anyway and without a pause.
    “They don’t only bring their instruments—the banjos and guitars. They bring all of their hounds, their kettles and boards from their barns. Boards! ” The dude’s eyes lit up suddenly through a film of fatigue.
    “And every weekend, thousands of them just pile into these cars without windshield wipers or without hardly enough gas—
    “—Oh, I don’t mean to say some of them don’t have new second-hand cars. But the majority, thousands of them, they get on the interstate in anything metal racked-up from Detroit—
    “Am I boring you, son?” Lewis said to M.C.
    “No.” M.C. had time to shape the word before the dude plunged ahead.
    “And they head for home over the border, right across there.” Lewis gestured beyond the Ohio River where distant mountains loomed. “They kind of flow out on Interstate 60. We lose a few there in about sixteen spectacular highway deaths between Friday, 4:30 P.M. , and seven minutes after midnight on Saturday. A portion of them never make it back to that dreamland they loved so much but had to leave—the one they can’t wait to get back to when the plant or mill or factory closes on Friday—because they get caught up in the turn-offs every time,” the dude said. He shrugged. “I don’t know where they end up. But maybe they roam the interstates forever, growing their gardens on the shoulders of the road.”
    He laughed uproariously at the picture. M.C. stared at him, awe-struck for a moment. He had one finger on a gray key of the recorder as his mind attempted to grasp the will of thousands to leave home and go back again and again. But he managed to press the key. Soon, music came, and singing. It sounded distant and muffled, not at all like he had thought.
    After a time M.C. said, “I’ve seen smaller ones. Maybe a little heavier. The stores in Harenton have them.”
    Smiling, James Lewis watched him. Leaning forward, the dude clutched his soiled pant legs at the knees. His face was puffy now with tiredness. He swallowed often.
    “You’ll never get the way my mama sounds with this,” M.C. told him.
    “Just an idea of the voice is what I want,” Lewis was quick to say. “I’ll get that much, if she’ll let me. When I have that, I’ll have something to work with.”
    M.C. smiled from ear to ear.
    Going to sell Mama to a record company, he thought.
    He could see her in a long gown covered with sunflowers, and in a coat of white fur. He felt so good all of a sudden, he wanted to shout loud and long. And he joined in with the music by clapping his hands.
    The dude wasn’t smiling. He stared at M.C., his eyes unreadable. They flicked away from M.C. as his hand came up, shaking, to his throat. A frown spread over his face as he tried to swallow. Pain.
    “Water,” Lewis said, hoarsely. “Could I please have some water right away?”
    M.C. jumped up. He set the tape recorder on the ground and climbed up on the car junk. Before he jumped down, he caught a glimpse of the river and then the cirque with the lake.