The Ballad of Dixon Blackburn
The Ballad of Dixon Blackburn
The first thing I noticed about Given was how fast the sun goes down. One minute it’s burning with just a little less power, then everything’s covered in closed-curtain blackness. The people that live here are used to it. But a visitor, somebody like me, gets caught off guard.
I came to town yesterday and rented a hotel room so the three-hour trip from Ohio wouldn’t be as bad. I was able to rest before getting down to business.
I’m driving to this little dive called Given Goodytime Bar and Grill to meet an old man who promised me something interesting. The faces in the cars that pull up next to me at stoplights have their mouths drawn tight, brows furrowed, a longing frozen in their eyes.
It makes sense if you know the story of Given. The town’s claim to fame is theworst school bus accident in the nation’s history. When that’s what your home has to offer the world, it makes sense that everybody seems down.
The reason I’m here is something different. Something forgotten, eclipsed by the bus tragedy. Timeline Quarterly, a southern history journal, sent me to Given to find a story worth telling in the town’s past that doesn’t involve a large yellow vehicle and forty kids plunging into the river. I deal with a lot of this as a freelance writer. It’s a good thing I enjoy talking to people. The ones I deal with on assignments like these always prove to be fascinating. Put me in a room with a unique crowd ready to spill their guts and a grin will bust my face wide open.
This job only becomes a problem when people don’t want to talk. For this one, Ithought I was going to stumble through conversations with gossipers at barber shops, plucking at their memory strings to get any note I could use until my mother told me about this man, a retired college professor, that could give me more than I needed.
“They want a story on Given, down in Kentucky?” Mom asked. “Well, I know a guy that was part of the search party that found Savannah Scarberry’s body. I’m pretty sure that happened there.”
“Mom,” I said. “I don’t have a clue who that is. You’re going to have to sling a few details my way.”
“She was a cheerleader, around fourteen-years-old, I think,” Mom said. “Shevanished after a carnival one night in 1952 and they didn’t find her until a week later, beat to death, down by the river bank.”
“And my interest is piqued,” I said. “Who’s this guy you know?”
“Dixon Blackburn,” she said. “He’s probably in his eighties now. I think he taught music at Given High School back then. I met him at the University of Ohio. He was teaching folk art and music classes. It was my favorite class. Real old blues and folk songs about murder, creepy, but beautiful at the same time. Ask him to show you some of his paintings. They’re amazing.”
“That’s great, Mom, you hippie,” I said. “How can I get up with him?”
“I think he moved back to Given,” she said. “He’s probably listed. I’ll call and get his number if you want me to.”
She did. Then she called Blackburn and talked for almost an hour. She set this whole thing up. Blackburn told her that he lives in a modest apartment near the city limits of Given and said he would be more than happy to talk to me.
Before I headed out to meet Blackburn, I stopped by the library to get some background information on the murder. It was a sad little place, more DVDs than books, so my hopes were minimal. I wanted to check out the microfiche for some news articles on Savannah Scarberry’s murder, but all I found was a series following the trial of one man, John Lowes, accused of killing her. The actual discovery of the body wasn’t turned into ink on paper. This was before we, as a culture, started slobbering about grisly details.
John Lowes was a city council member, so his arrest was a big deal. His indictment was based on the testimony of a local bootlegger’s wife who sold him a fifth of whiskey the night of the carnival. The bootlegger’s wife told police that she noticed a young woman in the passenger seat of Lowes’ sedan, and picked out a picture of Savannah Scarberry from a collection after her third try. This was enough for the grieving city of Given to put Lowes on trial. Lowes was saved by his ailing wife who testified that he was at home the entire night of the carnival to care for her. A jury found him not guilty in less than two hours. No other arrests were made in the case. The article also quoted some citizens who said they’d taken to latching their doors and closing the windows even though the summer heat made nights uncomfortable and strained.
I took a few notes to use in the introduction to the article and left the library. For the kind of story that I’m looking for, Dixon Blackburn is the only person who can tell me what I need to know.
When I walk into Goodtyme, there’s nobody that I can imagine as Blackburn, so I tell the waitress to find a booth in the back corner and I sit down, my laptop beside me.
The inside of this place is dark. The parking lot’s visible out the tinted window closest to me and I wait Blackburn to arrive. I’m on my second Dr Pepper when an old Ford LTD, blue with rust around the bumper, slides in crooked to one of the parking spaces. A man who can only be Dixon Blackburn steps out of it, slowly, holding on to the top of the door to keep his balance like his upper body bears too much weight. His broad chest sits high on a bloated stomach that sticks out in classic beer belly style with long, thin and probably arthritic legs struggling to support the mass. A drooping gray mustache slips from under a broad nose pressed flat against his face. A straw hat with an awkward, ragged brim sits tight on his head.
Blackburn talks to the waitress and she nods in my direction. He takes about fifty slow shuffling steps before finally reaching the booth. I stand up when he gets near the table.
“Paul Tellers,” I say, and extend my hand.
“Dixon Blackburn, as I’m sure you’ve guessed,” he says.
He clutches my hand with a grizzled paw that grows from the cuff of a plaid shirt. His hands are cartoon large and fleshy, soft to the touch at first, but he turns on the pressure shaking hands like most old people make an attempt to do. This vice grip’s supposed to mean they take the concept of greetings seriously.
“So,” he says. “We have lots to talk about. Believe me, I plan on yakking both your ears off. I know how these things work. You want to know a lot about me, almost as much as you want to know about Savannah Scarberry’s murder. You’ll learn plenty about Dixon Blackburn today.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” I say. “Just from what my mother told me, I know you’re one interesting guy.”
“Ah, your mother,” he says. “Betty was one of my favorite students up in Ohio. She had a real interest in folk music and outsider art. She absolutely loved murder ballads, too. One of the classes I taught, a damn popular one, all about the history of murder songs. And, Paul, the Savannah Scarberry story’s nothing if not a murder ballad.”
The waitress stops by, and I order a steak and baked potato. Blackburn orders catfish, corn and a water.
“We’ll do our best talking back at my apartment,” he says. “That’s where I’m most comfortable, and I have all manner of memorabilia and art work to show you. I think it’ll make for some good pictures to go with your story.”
The food arrives and we focus on it for the most part. Blackburn talks a little about his wife who died five years ago.
“It’s a strange thing, losing someone twice,” he says. “I lost her to Alzheimer's the first time, and then to death. Judy was the only person I shared everything with. I had no secrets when it came to her. Just before the Alzheimer's wiped her memory, I told her about Savannah Scarberry. Judy lived in Ohio, so she’d never heard the story. Hell, most people in Kentucky haven’t heard it. It’s like this whole town has Alzheimer's when it comes to the death of that poor strawberry-blonde cheerleader.”
We finish eating and Blackburn suggests something I should’ve thought of.
“We’re about five minutes from where we found her body,” he says. “I’ll show you. That’s another big photo opportunity. After that, we’ll head to my place and get things rolling.”
Blackburn offers to drive, so I get in the passenger seat of the huge LTD and we hit the road. The LTD feels like it’s floating and we’re lost on some asphalt sea. He slips a tape in the deck and fiddles with the volume.
“This is one of my favorite songs,” he says. “It’s by Rawbone Simmons, recorded in 1934. The Ballad of Junior Knuckles. The tale of an old prize fighter knocked in the head too many times. He goes crazy and starts seeing everybody as opponents. Ends up beating a little boy to death and kills himself when he finds out what he’s done.”
The tape starts and I understand why Blackburn is enamored with this music. The whole song is a story, the instrumentation sparse, and the hissing from the primitive recording equipment only adds to the sorrowful atmosphere. Just as the song ends, Blackburn pulls the LTD to the side of the road and below us, the muddy river laps at the bank.
We walk down the hillside and stop at a clearing. Blackburn leans against a thick oak tree.
“This is about as close as we can get. The river’s running high,” he says. “The place where we found her is under about two feet of water.”
With his back against the tree, he raises his hand and points toward a spot about fifteen feet in front of us.
“That’s where she was,” he says. “The leaves get real thick in the summer and you can’t see down here from the road. One of the guys, Randy Thurber, said he smelled something spoiled when we passed by. That’s when we came down the hill and found her. It was daylight then, but turned dark before the police arrived. That’s one of the little quirks about this area that I’m sure you’ve noticed. Night comes damn fast around here.”
I snap a quick picture of Blackburn against the tree and pointing.
“This tree that’s holding me up, right beside it’s where they found the whiskey bottle,” he says. “I’m sure you know this, but that whiskey bottle and the words from the mouth of a bootlegger’s wife came close to stringing John Lowes up by the neck.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I read about that at the library. It’s pretty much all they had on the story. It focused on his trial but never went into any detail about Savannah’s murder.”
“That’s because people around here don’t want to know,” he says. “Fifty years later and they still don’t want to know. You’re lucky I’m still alive and ready to run off at the mouth.”
The ride to Blackburn’s apartment is a quick one. He plays some more great dark folk songs and talks about the songs themselves, the stories, and never goes into detail about the musician.
“That’s what real art is,” he says. “When the artist, whatever they are–painters, musicians, writers–don’t care if their work ever sees the light of day, that’s when it’s real and true. Nowadays everybody wants to be Andy Warhol. They want their names in lights with accolades from critics and adoring fans flying in every direction. None of that is real. All it does is damage the work.”
We stop back at Goodtyme and I get in my car to follow Blackburn to his place.
He drives slow and wavering along the tight streets of Given, the big LTD sending smaller cars to the side of the road to avoid it. When we get to the apartment, I help Blackburn up the small set of steps leading to the door. Inside, I feel like I’m in a museum. Items draw my attention in every corner to the point where I’m almost overwhelmed.
“You like my place?” he asks, and chuckles. “I can tell you’re the kind of person who can really appreciate the kind of art that I collect and enjoy, just like your mother did. I used to bring my classes over to my house when I lived in Ohio. We’d stay up entire days just talking about the records, paintings and books. My collection has doubled since then.”
Blackburn tells me that he moved away from Given and went to Ohio not long after the school bus accident. A friend on the staff at the University of Ohio put in enough good words to get him a job there.
“Here, look at this,” he says. “I painted this not long after that bus dove into theriver. Some tragedies are art in and of themselves, but not that. It was circumstantial. There’s nothing mythical about car accidents unless they involve somebody like James Dean. Now, what happened to the mother of one of those kids is grounds for a ballad. She drowned herself out of grief. Hitched a ride to the river with the man whose car caused the accident. You can’t make something up that is more powerful than her story. But, like I said, for things like a bus wreck, you have to take artistic liberties.”
He pulls a framed painting from one of the crowded corners and hands it to me.
Kids are sitting in the middle of the air, flying toward a thick brown river rushing below. The bus doesn’t exist in the painting. It’s been removed. The children are inside an invisible version of it, their destiny sealed without screeching tires or the rumbling of a diesel engine.
I pull my camera out of the bag and snap a few shots of his apartment.
“I could spend the whole day checking this stuff out,” I say.
He brings me another painting. This one has a beautiful dark haired woman in a flowing gown standing beside a blurry, fading image of slim, mustached man. Through the blur I can tell it’s Blackburn.
“That’s Judy,” he says. “And beside her is what used to be me.”
“I can’t believe you’ve never tried to sell your work,” I say. “This is amazing
stuff.”
He smiles and pulls a thick book from under the coffee table in the center of the room and tosses it to me as I sit down on a musty couch. Over my shoulder is a window obscured by tightly closed shades.
“That’s the best book on outsider art,” he says. “It’s the real deal kind of work I was telling you about. These people, hell, it’s true that most of them were crazy, but the art they created was from deep inside and they never gave a damn if anybody else laid eyes on it. There’s Henry Darger. A janitor, believe it or not, born in 1892 in Chicago. Those details don’t matter, though. When he died, his landlord found a fifteen thousand page fantasy manuscript in his room along with some of the most unique artwork you’ll ever see. All of it involves children, little girls. It may be bizarre, but it’s real and true art.
There are theories that he murdered a little girl who went missing near where he lived. Darger used a newspaper clipping of her picture as a model for many of the little girls that he drew. I don’t think it matters one way or another. It’s the work he produced that will live on, not who he was as a man.”
Some of Darger’s paintings are printed in the book. All of it has a strange, otherworldly quality to it and I find myself reading about his work and coming close to forgetting the real reason I’m sitting in Blackburn’s apartment. How Darger completed so much work, that he just kept doing it without showing anybody, fascinates me.
“I guess it’s time to talk about Savannah,” he says, bringing me back to the path I’d wandered away from.
“Well, let’s start from where I met her,” he says. “She was in my music class when I taught at Given High School. Now, a lot of kids were in my classes, but she was actually interested in what I had to say. Because she was a cheerleader, you might make the mistake of lumping her together with the popular image of girls like that, but she was different. Savannah would stay after class just to listen to my Robert Johnson records. A pretty little cheerleader interested in the pained guitar and sorrowful moans of a guy who sold his soul to the devil for the blues. She was special.”
“Do you know anything about her personal life?” I ask.
“Oh, she had plenty of boyfriends, if that’s what you mean,” he says. “Her porcelain perfect face and light red hair drew boys to her whether they wanted it to or not. I imagine the halls of Given High School still has streaks on the floor where their sneakers slid when they tried to avoid going over to her. She was really one of a kind, a wild rose.”
Blackburn walks over to a rack of records, grabs one, and then sits down for the first time since we arrived at the apartment.
“This one is a compilation,” he says. “It has one common theme: all beauty must die. If somebody had penned a ballad about Savannah and her killer, right here would be the wax to hold it forever.”
He puts the record on and plays a song called Knoxville Girl, an Appalachian murder ballad.
“I don’t think we need to talk about Lowes’ or his trial. He’s insignificant. It’s not who killed Savannah that’s important, it’s the fact that she was killed, the act itself, that’s meaningful. I told my wife the same thing, rest her soul, not long before she died. It seems like a strange thing for me to be talking about with Judy, but I wanted her to know everything that I thought, everything that I believed in.”
“I’m not sure if I can agree with you on that one,” you say. “I mean, the killers have their own reasons for what they do. That’s just as interesting to me.”
“Then, my new friend, I’m afraid you’re part of the problem,” he says, and his eyes lock on mine. “Maybe I can help you see the light, or the dark, perhaps. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.”
Blackburn starts coughing and goes to the kitchen to get a drink. His weak, shuffling walk is gone as his feet hit heavy against the floor. He comes back with whiskey and water, placing it on a coaster whittled down from a block of coal.
“I don’t really know where to go from here,” he says. “So much stuff gets swirled together in my head that I have trouble telling things apart. The whole story is mixed with paintings and songs and fiction. I’m eighty-two and I have to fight to keep things clear. I probably shouldn’t even be allowed behind the wheel of a car, to tell you the truth.”
“You drive fine,” I say. “What do you know about the night of the carnival?”
“Ah, that night,” he says, and takes a drink of whiskey. “I was there, along with most of the town. Savannah left with a few friends, but, according to stories, they wanted to go off drinking. Savannah didn’t want to, so she decided to walk home. Remember, this is back when walking the streets of Given at night was as safe as taking a stroll through your own house. We all know that she never made it.”
He drinks the rest of the whiskey, stands up, and walks over to a shelf that’s filled with enough trinkets to cause the wood to buckle in places.
“I suppose you want to hear about the body,” he says. “That’s what nobody wants to talk about. It’s the thing they don’t want to remember.”
He turns his back to me and faces the shelf. His hands grab at something small near the center.
“She was a mess,” he says. “Hair ripped from the roots, face nothing but a bloody mask. Her head broken open, laid bare, nothing hidden anymore. A branch from the oak tree was close to her. Pieces of skin stuck to the bark, strands of her hair wrapped around it. Three of her front teeth were gone. The police never found them.”
For the first time since he stepped out of the LTD in the Goodtyme parking lot, he takes his hat off. His head is bald and splotched with brown on the scalp. He puts the hat on the top of the shelf and turns back around toward me. In his hand is a small wooden box that looks like it was cut straight from a tree and then shaved a little to smooth the edges. The outside of the box is made from lacquered bark.
“Things get dark around here so fast,” he says.
He flips the top of the box open and drops something into his palm, closing his hand into a fist.
“Tokens, items, bring back memories. I tried that with Judy. It worked for awhile. Pictures of us, paintings I did, buttons from a shirt of mine she always liked, these things brought her to me. Then all of it went away. No hope. Her memory was gone. I never want to forget anything. This town shouldn’t want to forget, but they do. Without memories you might as well be mist and just float across life until you fade away.”
Blackburn turns and opens his hand. Three missing pieces of history, small as pebbles, rest in his palm.
His hand goes back to the box and he closes the lid. He walks over near me, reaches his arm behind the couch, and opens the blinds. The sun’s still glowing over the top of the mountains. He lets the blinds flap together again.
The laptop is lukewarm on my lap and feels heavy. I save my notes and shut it down. The appearance of the items in the box, no matter how he came to possess them, and his shift in mood, make me uneasy. He brushes the top of the couch with his hand and moves back to the door of the apartment.
“You look like you’re ready to go, all perched up on the balls of your feet like that,” he says. “If you leave now, you might make the interstate by dark. I hope you have all you need.”
“You’ve been a great help,” I say.
I stand up, put the laptop under my arm, and step toward him. I reach out my hand and it shakes a little. My camera bag hangs loose from the crook of my arm.
“I’ll tell you what,” he says, his grip tight again, a serious goodbye. “You can tell I’m not in the best of health. Chances are, I won’t see but a couple more years on this world. When I’m gone, you and your wonderful little mother can come in here and take whatever you want. Look around real good. God knows what treasures you might find.”
I thank him and start down the steps, but he wraps his hand around my upper arm.
“There’s so much that people don’t know,” he says. “But some people, they know things that they’d give the whole goddamn world away to forget. I think you’ve crossed the line to the second side.”
He lets go of my arm and walks slowly back up the steps. He doesn’t turn around again.
I get in my car and turn the key. Deep breaths of air-conditioned oxygen fill my lungs. I’d been holding my breath without realizing it the entire time his hand clutched my arm. In the rearview mirror I expect to see the shades parted and Dixon Blackburn looking out at me, the only person in the world that knows about his memories, the things that I already want to forget. The window is dark and nothing moves. I back out of the parking lot and onto the main road. I’m half an hour from the county line. My foot presses the gas pedal hard and I drive to beat the setting sun that drops down through the sky behind me like a half-empty whiskey bottle falling from a blood-slick fist.
