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Chapter One

Elizabeth took a deep breath, set her fingers on the strings, and tried again. She promised herself that she would get it right this time and she did. Grandpappy laughed and clapped his hands together. “That was a lot smoother, dear; I’m so proud of you! Let’s try it together now.” She knew she was getting better at it and that it made Grandpappy smile. That was all that mattered to her right now. She could barely contain her giggles as she watched him pick up the fiddle from the bench and raise it to his shoulder. His thick fingers, blackened from years in the coal mine, slid deftly along the length of the instrument. It was as if they belonged there. Just like the two of them, together with the music that connected their hearts, as if the strings of the fiddles binded them as one.

Every evening they sat on the porch and he taught her folk songs that had been old when he was a child. These delicious melodies she sang and danced to until the day Grandpappy came home with a fiddle just for her. That day was the best day of her sixteen-year-old life. She knew it was a fact; she wrote so in her diary, which was something she did every night before going to sleep. Since then, every free moment she had was spent practicing that fiddle. She knew that it made him happy when they played together because it was a respite from the toil of hard work that he had to endure on a daily basis. She made the decision that she would learn the music to comfort him because he was the most important person in her life. She loved her Momma, but she was always trying to teach her to cook and clean, which did not interest her. Elizabeth wanted to be known for her playing and singing because she wanted to make her Grandpappy proud.

She drew a breath as he tapped his bow on her knee before he held it up before himself. They nodded a silent four count together and began the song again. They both started playing. Elizabeth’s fingers seemed to move by themselves along the neck of the fiddle, while her right hand floated back and forth with ease. She didn’t mess up once. When they were done, she jumped up and squealed with delight, wrapping her arms around Granpappy who had a great look of pride on his face.

“That was wonderful, Lizzy!” called her Momma from inside the house. “You are going to be a famous player someday! Now come on inside, you two, because supper is on the table.”

Elizabeth looked at her grandfather and smiled. “Thank you Grandpappy, you are the best man ever! And Momma’s right, someday I will be famous and I will owe it all to you!”
“Aw heck girl, you’re a natural on that fiddle and you have the voice of an angel.” They held hands as they walked into the kitchen where Momma stood in her apron waiting to serve them supper.

Outside, their voices carried across the front lawn easily through midsummer’s air, which was rich with the scent of lilacs. As the crickets took over the song that they had left on the southern Kentucky wind, the whole world seemed to echo with the happiness that emanated from that tiny kitchen.

A single firefly traces along the echoes of the melody through the sweetened dusk. It flits up and down beside the hedges that mark the boundary of the eastern portion of the long grass that is at once a quaint lawn but also a marked territory for the humble family. It is startled by a shadowy figure whose unsteady breathing interrupts the calm of the music that remains in the memory of the surrounding green. The figure’s eyes are fixed on the light coming from the small pitched-roof house where Elizabeth is enjoying a meal with her closest kin. Slowly and silently, the figure moves from cover to cover towards the house where the scent of cooked ham grows stronger and the happy dialogue becomes clearer.