It's late August. The dog days. Cicadas hum hypnotically in trees heavy with the green weight of summer. Crops languish in the fields in the haze of late afternoon. Too hot for work. Lay-by time.Otha Turner is up early on this day, as he is on every day. Feed the horses, slop the hogs, feed the chickens and dogs. Otha's friend and drummer Abron Jackson arrives at Otha's farm, looking sleepy, as the sun begins to gain confidence and burn the dew off the sparse grass in Otha's back lot.

"We ain't got a goat killed yet, and it's already gettin' hot, complains Turner as he drags a large black pot into the center of the lot, leaving it by an abandoned pick-up truck that serves as a haven for wasp nests. Otha and Abron walk together down to the barn where the goats have been penned up all night, having arrived the day before from Dickson, TN, courtesy Nashville attorney Bill Ramsey, a friend of Otha's. Otha opens the door and peeps it, shaking his head at what he sees and smells."These damn goats ain't no good," says Turner. "They been jumping up on each other all night and they done got too funky. Kill one now, you can't eat that meat. Won't be fit to eat."

Otha gets in his pickup and leaves, arriving back in a half hour with a small kid goat tied up in the back of the truck that he purchased from a neighbor. Otha lowers the back gate of the truck, laying the goat on the tailgate as Abron holds it's head steady. Otha reaches for his knife and with one deft swipe of the blade, cleanly slits the animal's throat. The death cry is shocking, an arc in the circle of life most of us no longer know, that country people deal with every day.The goat is lowered to the ground, standing on unstable legs. The hound dogs in the nearby pen begin to howl with blood lust. A yard dog barks, growls and snaps at the dying animal. The goat lowers it's head and falls over in a heap. Otha and Abron work quickly, securing a stick between the goat's hind legs and hanging it up. They cut the skin away and remove the head. The insides are given to the dogs.The meat is cut into quarters and washed in a large pan. Soon, Otha's daughter Berniece arrives and begins boiling the meat in the big black pot, along with onions, potatoes and hot peppers for flavor. Later, the goat will be barbecued over hot coals and served up as sandwiches at tonight's picnic along with beer and off-brand sodas. "Can't hardly have a picnic without goat," says Turner. "People don't want that pig meat you get now, got all them chemicals in it. It won't keep. Won't smell good when you cook it, like it used to. Everybody hollerin' goat."

The sun makes it's high arc over the farm, and everything is ready. Friends and neighbors begin arriving in the early afternoon. The men sit drinking whiskey from a fruit jar beneath a make-shift canopy of tin and lumber.Teenagers sit on cars along the road listening to their radios. Otha paces across the gravel driveway, trying to round up his drummers to get ready to play. He wears a stern expression on his face, wipes his forehead with a handkerchief, and admonishes Abron, Chip and R.L. to get the drums on because the people came to hear some music. "We supposed to line this thing up fella and let the folks know what we doing," says Turner. "And when he get ready to leave here, leave something with 'em. I mean that, let's see what you can do." Otha waits and watches, his fife always at the ready in the back pocket of his overalls.
He steps in front of the drummers, pours a taste of whiskey down the barrel of the fife to prime it, and blows a few shrill, wavering notes, smooth as glass. He stops and watches the drummers as Abron and Chip start the beat on the snares. After a few measures, R.L. drops in with the booming bass. If the beat doesn't suit him, Otha makes them stop and start over, alternately cussing and encouraging them until the beats are right. Eventually, Otha is satisfied and turns away from the drummers. He blows a clear and piercing melody that cuts through the air which is thick with humidity and mosquitoes. Slowly, he leads them through a snaking path around the parade ground."When I call this cane, what I'm gonna blow," says Turner, "I blow it 2 or 3 times. And [the drummers] get out there and start pecking, I blow again. I walk off, that's when they coming in there. They got the beats right then." The crowd slowly comes to life. A few shouts of encouragement are heard. A man with a beer dances up to the line, gets in close to Otha and watches him intently as he dances to the drum rhythm. He says something to Otha, challenging him, and Otha bends down into the music even more and raises his hand in the air.
The crowd gathers in tight around the drum line. A woman emerges with her hands on her hips, her pelvis making love to the bass drum as she shouts. R.L. stoops low with the big drum, beating out a double bass pattern. He drops to his knees and leans his tall, lanky body back with the bass drum in the air now. Another woman and a man join in, humping the drum.

"Them damn drums rolling, make you feel good," says Turner. "Them drums get to playing good, I get out there behind and cut a step and feel good at it. That interest the next fella, he gonna jump right out there like me. 'Come on!' We get together. That's an encouragement."

The music and dancing has now taken on a life of it's own. Otha directs an intricate choreography as the line snakes it's way through the crowd. Hannah, a local woman who appears to be in her 70's, bends over forward and rotates her hips in the direction of the drums, then drops down on her hands and knees in the dust, making love to the Earth. She calls out, shouting, happy, her grey hair up in curlers. The line continues to move, the crowd and musicians hypnotized by the power of what they are creating together. Finally, Otha blows out a series of high, declarative notes that tell the drums when to stop. The trance is broken. Shouts and cheers emerge and the musicians are glad-handed all around. Someone throws his arm around Otha's shoulder and says something into his ear as they both laugh loudly. Others wander back over to the picnic stand to buy another beer. In his younger days Otha could play for hours without stopping as dancers kicked up clouds of dust late into the night. Now in his nineties, he allows himself frequent breaks and augments the picnic entertainment with performances by local blues musicians. In the last few years, he's also brought in a DJ to provide music for the younger crowd. But the focus of the picnic is, as it has always been, the drums.

Otha's daughter, Berniece Turner Pratcher, still plays drums for her father and remembers the picnics of her youth. "Back then you could hear fife and drum pretty much whenever you got ready too," says Pratcher. "The picnics died out as the people died out. My daddy is about the only one who still has a picnic."

Annie Faulkner of Abbeville, sister to drummer "Kag" Young, recalls attendingpicnics where her family's fife and drum band played: "The picnics that I went to, it was exciting. People would be kicking up dust. They'd be down on the ground. Kicking that dust, have dust flying. Both feet would be white with dust." Rural blacks heard the drums from miles away and were directed by the sound, arriving by foot or wagon. Annie Faulkner remembers when her father Lonnie Young played:" If [daddy] was playing somewhere close around, like this time of evening [dusk], when he hit that drum we could hear it from our porch from across the river over there, a long ways away."

Drums are still central to the music of the Mississippi hill country. But on this night, all eyes are on Sharde, Otha's precocious 9 year old granddaughter, whom most people in the Gravel Springs community believe is the most likely of Otha's family to carry on the fife playing tradition. Sharde made her musical debut at age 5 and continues to be the highlight of every picnic. "Sharde's gonna be good," beams Otha. "She just needs somebody to keep pushing her, be with her, boost her up."

After a short blues setby R.L. Burnside, R.L. Boyce and Luther Dickinson played on the front porch of Otha's guest house, the drummers prepare themselves to play again, this time led by Sharde. The people crowd around as she hits her first tentative notes on the fife to let the drummers know she is ready. As the snares begin their roll and the bass drum drops in, she leads the drummers with a seriousness and confidence that belies her three-and-a-half-foot frame.

After playing a few phrases on the fife with authority, she breaks down into a dance that causes the crowd to erupt into cheers, laughter and shouts of encouragement . Her grandfather, Otha, stands close by, his hand hovering near her shoulder, a look of utter joy on his usually-stern face for the first time tonight. "Take your time, he calls to her, Blow that thing." She magically coaxes notes from her primitive cane fife that cut through the shouts and drum rhythms into the night air. All eyes are on her, but she is unshaken by the attention. She feels her grandfather's presence and is buoyed by his gentle encouragement."Take your time." When she blows her final notes and raises her fife into the air, counting out the final four beats of the song to end the drums, the crowd exhales a cathartic cheer. Someone emerges and embraces her. Adults laugh loudly and slap each other on the back, "That little girl is something else!"

Otha beams quietly, watching his grand daughter receive her praise with grace, confident in the knowledge that his legacy is in good hands.

©2000 Bill Steber