Chapter 19
HOW TO CARVE A WHISTLE OUT OF GREEN WILLOW
I packed my knapsack the next day, tied a sleeping bag to the side of it, and set out for the tree house at four o’clock. Buzzy was already there when I arrived, leaning against the tree smoking a cigarette.
“Got the new Playboy,” he announced proudly. “Found it under Cleo’s mattress.”
“Let’s see.”
He pulled out the thick magazine and we sat against the tree parsing every inch of Miss August as if we were archaeologists and she was a Dead Sea scroll. After a half hour deciphering the secrets of female flesh, we set out for the Telling Cave.
We covered the five miles to the cave in two hours over an abandoned mining road and a well-used hunting trail, stopping occasionally for Buzzy to instruct me in the ways of the woods. We scrambled up the side of Knob Mountain to a small clearing on a shelf near the top. At the end of the clearing, abutting the granite face of the knob, was the car-size opening to the Telling Cave. As I stood just outside it, I could feel the warm air around me convecting into the cave. Inside was dark and exciting.
“This is cool—I’ve never been in a cave before. Looks like people come up here all the time,” I said, gesturing to an old campfire ring riddled with melted bottles, broken glass, and other detritus from previous visitors.
“Teenagers, mostly.”
“How does it work?” I asked, trying to take the legend seriously. “Do we tell the secrets before we go in or after?”
“You tell the secrets inside, an once you’re in you can’t leave without tellin.”
The cave was wet and washcloth cool from the dank air, a menacing smell that shot tingles of excitement through my body. The chamber expanded from the opening to a thirty-foot ceiling glistening with moisture and blackened with soot from the fire ring in the middle. Around the ring were sitting rocks and some tree stumps with seats worn in from years of telling. On a four-foot ledge against the south wall was an old hay mattress and another fire pit.
The walls were smooth in places and covered in years of graffiti that read like a history book of Missiwatchiwie County. Janey Beverage was here 1945. Cleatus and Sharon ’54. Ethna Deal loves Billy Winwell. B.G. Hivey + E. Fink ’62. Sharon + ? in 74. Class of 1984 rocks! Petunia ain’t got no secrets.
Buzzy set up camp inside while I scouted firewood, collecting enough to last a week—if Rebah Deal actually did arrive, I didn’t want to be caught without a flame.
As I arrayed our fuel, Buzzy went off into the woods. He came back ten minutes later dragging a long willow branch with green leaves still attached.
“What did you bring that back for? It’ll never burn.”
“Ain’t for burnin; it’s for carvin.” He took a shiny hatchet from his knapsack and, working on an old stump, cut three eight-inch pieces of willow wood from the straightest part of the branch. He sunk the hatchet in the stump and motioned for me to follow.
We climbed the rocks above the cave to a ledge that jutted out from the summit about a thousand feet above the valley below. We sat on the edge with our feet dangling over the side. The previous evening’s rain had cleared the mid-July haze and the view extended into forever.
“What are we carving?”
“Whistles.”
“I don’t know how to carve a whistle.”
“Bout time you learned, ain’t it?”
He handed me Cleo’s best wood-carving knife, which he had filched from their bedroom, and one of the willow blanks. I followed his lead and carefully stripped the bark from the wood until my piece was like his: clean, wet, and almost perfectly cylindrical.
I watched him as he fashioned the mouthpiece from the green wood; watched as shavings helicoptered to the ground like maple seeds. I copied his technique and soon had a cruder version of his delicately shaped mouthpiece. He examined my work and pronounced it satisfactory—for a beginner. We hollowed the insides, taking care not to make the walls too thin or too thick. Cleo always made his walls too thick, Buzzy informed me, which flattened all the notes.
We punched through the space between the hollowed core and the mouthpiece and cleaned the hole to make a smooth tube. He inspected my work; again it passed his whittler’s eye.
The reed is the most important part of the whistle, he instructed. If it’s not right, it will ruin everything. He showed me how to make a triangular cut for the reed opening and how to fashion the reed from the remaining willow in the hole. He cut the reed hole and shaved the piece to near perfection. He examined it closely, shaved off a ribbon more, cleaned the cut, and blew into the mouthpiece. A perfect whistle came from the willow wood. Still, he wasn’t satisfied and made almost imperceptible adjustments here and there: a hair off the reed, a snub from the core. He tried it again and pronounced it fit.
Now it was my turn. With Buzzy coaching over my shoulder, I made the delicate triangular cut into the willow stick and lifted out the piece of wood. I cleaned out the cut and put the whistle to my lips. A shrill sound, like winter wind, blew out of the willow stick. “You cut it too shallow,” he said. “Take a bit off the top.”
I removed a paper-thin shaving from the reed and tried again. A little better. I rived off another layer and blew. A clear whistle burst from the wood. Warbly and unsure, but a whistle still. “Not a bad effort, Indiana,” he told me with a smile.
Next, we cut four note holes into each whistle stem with the pointed blades of our knives. We doctored the reed and note holes ever so slightly, and when Buzzy was finally satisfied with his work, he blew a clear, strong note that resonated off the rocks around us. His fingers danced on the note holes as he played a slow, mournful song that perfectly scored Mr. Paul’s death and my last three months.
“That was great,” I said when he finished. “What song was that?”
“Warnt no song; I jus made it up.”
“Come on! When? Just now?” I couldn’t believe he could create such beautiful music on the spot.
“Sure, listen,” he said and put the whistle to his lips. He launched into a slow, lilting reel that soared and tumbled and ascended again like a sad foundling bird on first wing. I watched him closely, watched a talent in him I never knew existed. He held the final note in an arcing vibrato, then slowly pulled the mouthpiece from his lips. I was speechless.
“Your turn.”
I laughed and licked my lips. “I’m gonna suck at this.” I blew into the whistle, and out came a shrill, off-key, out-of-time screech as my unsure fingers searched for an agreeable tune. I finished with an atonal salute and looked to Buzzy for assessment.
“I’ve heard better music out the ass of a coonhound,” he said grimly. We dissolved into laughter and spent the next hour on the ledge overlooking the Kentucky hills, inventing songs and discovering the affiliations of the notes. It was the first time since Josh’s death that I felt truly at ease, as each song we wrote erased some of the hurtful past. It gave me a first peek into new way, a bloom of belief that the nightmare of the past three months was finally ending. On the edge of everything, with the wet, cool willow whistle at my lips and the tired sun newly buried in the west, I had little idea how wrong I was.