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There had always been s or wooden crutches I knew that an empty sleeve pinned up inside a suit jacket ia or Tennessee Maybelle’s handyent, had a left eye sewn shut with orange twine The skin around that eye burned to a god-awful dry red that would have scared me if I’d been a child

“That old man behind the bar?” said Abraha to become a professional fiddler”

I shook my head “And now he has no chin to lean his fiddle on,” I said

Abraha smile So did Moody’s and her brother’s “A, Mr Corbett, I was fooling on you Old Jeffrey wasn’t no fiddler He was slingin’ beer back before the war, and he been slingin’ beer ever since”

Moody saw the look on uffaw “Papaw, Mr Corbett ain’t too swift, is he?”

Chapter 37

THE CHINLESS OLD MAN RETURNED, bearing in his good hand a tray with three steaumbo

“Look like we onna have some music too,” Hiram said, and his face lit up in a smile

Two or three men had drifted in, still shiny-sweaty from the field They ordered beers and shot nervous looks in our direction The ht about it, the roes’ place; as I to coed?

At least they had the courtesy to let me sit there, which would certainly not be the case if one of them tried to order a beer in a white barroom

I was delighted to see a grizzledit up while his buddy druutbucket The thin, listless woman between them waited for the banjo player to plink a little chord, and then without any introduction or ritual, she set in to wailing

Lawd, I been blue

Since my man done left this town…

The little hairs on my neck prickled

“You heard the blues before, Mr Corbett?” asked Hiram