Freewheelin'

Somehow he heard it deeper and it echoed in the well of who he was -- a primal groan of old sadness, a harmonica sweet like a gone lover's scent on a cool pillow or a black and white image blurred of them on wooden steps; Mattie, Bae-bae, and Marvaline, their fine young legs crossed high and a Studebaker in the gravel drive. There is John's or Jimmy's old guitar leaning by the porch swing and something of Patsy's Crazy and Hank's Honky Tonkin' and Elvis and Mama hanging sheets in the heated breeze of lonesome summers and songs that stab at some hard scrabble truth too big to say or even know in tender phrases groaned or growled or howled or yodeled and I still can't communicate what exactly, but I knew it when I heard it.