Florence Peacock was a song girl. She had been ever since she was a child. She was born on a Sunday morning, at the end of the Great Depression in December of 1939. Her father, James loved to describe the events to his friends and family after he returned from one of his many triumphant fishing trips. When all the beer drinking and fillet crunching was over, he would always find a way to tell the story.
“It was a beautiful morning and a beautiful day.”
“I’ve got a wonderful feeling,” sang his brother Eddie in a mock melody. The listeners let out a raucous laugh. Eddie loved to tease him about his love affair with Oklahoma. Sometimes he overdid it. Especially James brought home more fish. In any case, he was right. James always paraphrased his favorite musical when he told the story, especially when good beer and freshly caught and fried trout slept in his gut.
“There was a bright golden haze on the fields and everything was going my way,” he said with emphasis as he glared at Eddie. “Listen here. I received a promotion at the gin that Friday morning. We just closed on our new home later that same day. Words couldn’t describe how so dang happy I was walking into church that Sunday. I was thanking my lucky stars, and the Lord of course.” He said as he stood over the small audience of the other gin employees. “Then Dr. Pruett asked to sing my favorite hymn.”
“It wasn’t your favorite hymn and you know it,” said Eddie trying to hold back a smile.
“What are you talking about? Of course it was,” said James. He was genuinely concerned that his own brother didn’t know this well known personal fact.
“No sir. It wasn’t. I know for a fact that you actually sang another hymn before that one.”
“I did not,” James was really worried about Eddie. He did not know how his own flesh and blood could arrive at this false information.
“Alright, if you’re so knowledgable about this, why don’t you tell them.”
“I’m not going to tell them. You will,” said Eddie as he adjusted his hat and crossed his arms.
“What am I going to tell them?”
“Gooo tell it on the mountain. Go tell it on the mountain,” Eddie sang in his lowest baritone as the noise of the laughter filled the air. “That’s enough uncle Eddie,” said Florence. She knew her uncle was up to his usual pranks. She looked at her father and smiled with encouragement. “Don’t mind Eddie. He was way off pitch anyway. Please go on.”
James smiled, put his arm around his daughter and started to sing.
I love to tell the story
Of unseen things above,
I love to tell the story,
Because I know its true;
I love to tell the story,
Because I know its true;
It satisfies my longings
As nothing else would do.
I love to tell the story,
'Twill be my theme in glory
To tell the old, old story
Of Jesus and His love.
She was in Heaven on Sundays. It was the first day of her measure and her time to sing. Once the sun tuned itself up and signaled it was ready to play she could not rest. She preferred complex time signatures which kept her awake at night. Often she would fall asleep right in the middle of a song. On those nights she would end up sleepwalking. If she had lacked a good Southern Baptist upbringing, the neighbors would have insisted that the incidents stop. Or even worse, they would call the authorities, who would have her evaluated and possibly sent to the West Texas Sanatorium. Her singing voice saved her at night. In the dead of their sleep, no one wanted to interrupt Florence’s voice when she sang. The song would eventually end and she would return to her house. By daybreak, she would rise again and rehearse with the mockers, stretching her chords for range, singing only the parts needed for her vocal flexibility. Her younger brother Lawrence enjoyed her singing but hated her morning rehearsal.
“Why are you always mashing up the songs?” He would sound off at her from his room as he sat up in bed, a bass clef of sleepy hair still standing on his head.
Florence didn’t respond. He was several octaves below her and not worthy of her audience. Besides, she was all keyed up until the hour of the hymn arrived. The moment when she became both song and dance, pen and page, lyric and tune. The moment when she saw herself above the audience and the other members of the choir. When she would forget the words from that cacophonous rhyme about men who make passes. Those were not lyrics. Those words were out of tune. It didn’t matter because she didn’t need her glasses to sing. She just needed them for navigating among the people and the pews, to find her space within the circumambience.
Florence was always in position when the conductor arrived. The notable battle-worn figure of Dr. John Truett would roll in, unsheathe his book of hymns and command the members of the congregation to open their hearts to Jesus and their hymnals to #141. Florence knew most of the songs by heart. The lyrics within her led the singing in spirit. The warmth beating within her core carried the tempo. The dead words danced from her lips as she exhumed their inky tones.
[Switch the songs]
At thirteen, she was one of the younger choir members and still had much to learn, but Florence believed hymns existed before humans, that they had no beginning or end, that their lyrics were simply recycled, their melodies reused and covered by new offspring as they laid their ancestors to rest. She could see the people in the songs and, consequently, she the songs in people. Event those unable to sing, the mute, were orphans abandoned by their lyrical roots. Florence sang their songs to them. She told their story. She sang to her mother, Nora, who was always losing her voice as a school teacher. As a child Florence remembered the moments when her mother was home more often, when she was still studying for her certificate. When she sang tender lullabies to her and Lawrence as they lay in bed. When Daddy was away, managing one of the many cotton gins in the area. It seemed that after bearing children, after she grew diabetic she was always off key or off pitch. She was like a bird without a nest. At times, she would forget the lyrics altogether and start singing a completely different song. Florence and her brother laughed it off, but not without the hidden quizzical glances an one another. However, it was no longer funny when Nora began to switch the lyrics in the middle of service. From the pews, she began to sing a song she would cover over and over, a song she could not bury, a song that would save her life.
Where the sunshine is cheery and nothing in the
world grows dreary
That's my cabin at the end of my river of memories
“Mother.” Lawrence whispered as he elbowed Nora gently in the side. “That’s the wrong song.”
Florence gasped with astonishment as she watched her mother mouth the words. She couldn’t believe her eyes. Was mother really singing the wrong song? It has an Suddenly, she felt an impish tug at back of her dress attempting to interrupt her singing. She ignored it and continued. No one was allowed to barge in while she was the conducting the Opera seria and choreographing the masquerade, she thought. She was sheltering and saving orphaned verses with voice.
Then a note fell to the floor like a loud davul, a hollow thud. It was most likely someone’s hymnal book. She attempted to survey the surface from above, but as she glanced down, her eyeglasses fell off her face and onto the floor. She continued to sing as she knelt down to pick them up.
She was on her knees, fumbling for her glasses, when a callused hand bearing her red horn-rimmed spectacles emerged from above. Florence knew the marks of field hands well as she herself spent many a morning singing with the laborers. They would walk carrying their long white baggage of the dead, the mortal cotton bolls that were torn, ripped, split from the defoliated cotton plant. Their sound was as deep as their sacks. She was a spinto. Her voice could shove it’s way through the congregation and finish the number. However, as she drew her hands closer to Florence, her sound softened and her skin was soothing as she delicately placed them back on Florence’s face.
I love to tell the story,
'Twill be my theme in glory
To tell the old, old story
Of Jesus and His love.
[Time is important here. It's important to tie it to passover and that the congregation be associated with members of the Last Supper as depicted by Leonardo DaVinci.]
Florence heard the rustle of the congregation lowering themselves back down to their seats.
, waiting for the presence of Dr. John Truett [veteran of WWI visited Milan and saw the last supper] as he approached the pulpit, adjusted his gray single breasted suit and laid his worn copy of the King James Version down in front of him. She and Sandra immediately sat down at the His tall A-frame combined with the deep bass of his voice willed the congregation into an attentive silence.
Fellow brothers and sisters, I want to talk about the empty seat at the table. When we sit down to share the wonderful bounty of the Lord, we often see a space that is unoccupied. Perhaps it’s your father’s place and he hasn’t made it home from work. Or perhaps it’s your older sibling place. They cannot come because their away at Texas Technological College. The empty seat concerns me because it shows a weakness in our fellowship. And I do not believe the fine citizens of Lamesa to lack physical strength. This concerns be because it demonstrates inflexibility in our fellowship. And I do not believe the opportunistic farmers of Lamesa to lack versatility. This concerns me because it portrays a sense of incompatibility. And I do not believe the kindred spirits of Lamesa to remain apathetic.
Fellow brothers and sisters. I would like to offer a small lesson in history. We all know that our town was founded near the edge of the caprock, hence the name Lamesa, the Spanish word for the table top. But do we know why the founding ranchers chose an incorrect spelling?
The rumblings of the word “No” bubbled up from the silence of the listeners.
I know what you all are thinking. Why sure, we can go down to the archives of the Texas Historical Foundation and ask why this is the case. But they will simply state that the first town committee preferred the anglicized version over the Spanish La Mesa. This is only half of the story. The other half resided in the mind of the rancher. The rough, weathered individual who, with the Lord’s help, tamed the Llano Estacado. He toiled day in-day out, growing delirious navigating the abandoned expanse of the caprock. Asphyxiation was his companion as he endured the arid droughts. Deafness was his relief as the persistent sand storms flooded the air and stung his skin. Yes sir, the Lord was always by the rancher’s side during this troublesome time. When he returned home to feel the stable wooden floor boards under his feet, he grew to respect the companionship of his fellow man, he also grew to despise the empty seat at the table, the space between the letters. No matter how incorrect, he would ensure the unity of this town right down to its very name, Lamesa.
Sandra [who would she be in the last supper?] gave Florence an endearing look and tapped her on the shoulder, “Do you want to come over to my house after the service?”
Florence tried to focus on Sandra’s face, but for some reason she couldn’t read her. “Sure, but I’ll have to ask my mother first.”
From that moment on the two were clinically inseparable, so much so that their mothers tagged them kindred spirits one August Sunday afternoon as they were sharing quilt patterns over iced tea in the backyard of one of their houses. Florence and Sandra were also sitting on the grass enjoying the late sun as they wrote in their diaries.
Florence’s mother saw the two seated beside each other and immediately said, “Now would you just look at that Nora. Which one do you think is your daughter? They look like mirror images.”
Nora lowered her head so that she could see above her eyeglasses, “I tell you what, those girls sure are kindred spirits. Look at the way they hold their pens. You might think they’re writing the exact same thing.”
The comments would persist, not by their mothers, but by other women, such as Mrs. Stream a teacher and the pastor’s wife. She would route Nora’s words to the other teacher’s of Lamesa Middle School. Once the teacher’s began talking, the message would spread across the table to the other women in the First Baptist Church and the rest of the town. Mrs. Stream relayed the message to the pastor, who was struck by the power of the words and renamed his next sermon, Kindred Spirits for the Work of Christ. The mayor followed suit and branded his pre-harvest speech with a slight modification, Kindred Spirits for the Work of Cotton.
As the cotton bolls matured and the stalks began to defoliate, school started with the usual awkwardness for Florence and Sandra.
Florence and Sandra came from opposite ends of the town, at least that’s how their dry words came out when told the other freshman at Lamesa High School on orientation day.
“My parent’s came in on the 87 from Lubbock.” Florence would proudly say and then give a secret wink to Sandra.
“Mine came in on the 87 from Big Spring.” Sandra would reply and wink twice back at Florence.
Their remarks were received with confused faces, frustrated expressions or the persistent reply “Oh, you’re puttin me on right?”