The Collegian

Issue date: 3/12/09 Section: Arts

Media Credit: Liz Essley The Hilltop Moonshiners perform "Heart Full of Grief," at the Parents Weekend Coffeehouse. The song was written by Chuck Hinkley.

Chuck Hinkley contracted leprosy when he ate a roadkill armadillo while working in a little town called Bonifay in the panhandle of Florida. His struggle with the disease inspired him to write the song "Heart Full of Grief," a ballad about a woman who kills her beau when she learns he has the same sickness.

At least, that's how John Somerville, associate professor of English, explains the genesis of the song the Hilltop Moonshiners played at Coffeehouse last weekend.

Armadillos are the only animals that get leprosy, according to Somerville, who says he has known Chuck for several years.

Their friendship began when Somerville was visiting extended family in the Appalachia region of North Carolina, where he spent part of his childhood. Hinkley, who lives in the town of Old Fort on the opposite side of the mountain from Somerville's family, accidentally dialed the number of the home in which Somerville was staying and struck up a conversation with the professor.

"He doesn't come out in public much," Somerville said, explaining the mysterious figure's need for companionship.

In the song, Hinkley wrote of a terribly misguided love.

"From what he tells me, the speaker is a woman who falls in love with a man named Jonny Clark. She's smitten by him so she walks around saying his name and carving it on trees, what people do," Somerville said.

After Clark tells the woman about his disease, she kills him by hitting him on the head with a wrench. Then she digs out his heart, wraps it in aluminum foil, and carries it with her as she roams through the Appalachian Mountains.

Junior Sean McDermott, a member of the Hilltop Moonshiners, thinks the song is culturally significant.

"In a way, murder ballads are necessary for society. If we had more murder ballads, we'd have less murders because people could put their anger out in these songs instead of killing people. Music is trying to explain these things," he said. "'Why do I have leprosy, this really sucks, what am I going to do?' So he writes a song about it, it's wonderful. If I get a disease, especially leprosy, I now have some place to go to go through that."

McDermott thinks Lazarus would have liked the song.

Somerville said Hinkley asked him to pass the song along to the Hilltop Moonshiners. But despite the band's name, Hinkley wants fans to know that he does not support moonshining.

"He says he's a law-abiding citizen -- probably he just wants to make sure he stays on the straight and narrow," Somerville said.

A brief autobiography of Hinkley, provided by Somerville, recounts another possible explanation for the man's opposition to the illegal production of liquor:

"When I was twelve, my grandpappy was sent to Central Prison in Raleigh for making and selling moonshine. When he come back home, he was a different man; he'd got religion. First thing he did was start hisself a church. He was the preacher, and the rest of us family was the congregation. It's about those times that I wrote my song, 'That Must Be a Serpent. This Must Be a Church.'"

A few lines of the song go as follows:

I was born and raised in a cabin up off Green Stick Branch, near the geyser at Old Fort. When I was a boy, a tree fell on my pappy. After that, he was short and angry. But if he was mean, my mama was meaner yet. She said she whupped me just to keep in shape; she was always trying to trim herself up some. So I stayed away in the woods most days, humming to myself and chasing squirrels. When I was ten, I carved a banjo out of a old stump and began writing songs. The first I remember was called "Gravy in My Hair," about the time my pappy poured some gravy in my hair. Maybe you've heard the refrain (click for the rest)

The song has 16 more verses.

McDermott hopes the band's name will not damage their relationship with Hinkley.

"I would be willing to call myself the Hilltop anything!" he said. "It's his song."

McDermott and some of his friends tried to find Hinkley's home in Appalachia during a road trip over spring break last year.

"We woke up early, drove down into North Carolina and just started winding back and back in these mountains, and it turns out that the address we had on Mapquest ran out 15 miles into the mountains. So we travel farther and farther, get to this old log cabin in the woods -- the car's scraping on the road -- and we go up to the house and ask, 'Hi, is Chuck here?' This was his actual daughter, or it could have been his neighbor. And she said, 'Oh no, he lives up the mountains still. You can't see him.'"

To this day, neither McDermott nor anyone else has encountered Hinkley except through Somerville. Some voice suspicion about Hinkley's existence. McDermott is mostly sad about the man's disease.

"What a chance, that the armadillo he ate was the one carrying leprosy," McDermott said.

Somerville isn't particularly concerned about Hinkley, despite the man's fatal disease.

"Mountain folk are very traditional and old-fashioned. They like to care for their own. They probably take covered-dish dinners to his house," he said.

Hinkley has written several other songs, including "Pappy Was a Leper, Mamma Was Annoyed."

"I think I managed to find that rich vein of humor the subject offers," Hinkley wrote.

Somerville said recently, Hinkley has been writing songs on his bulletin during church.

Somerville hopes the song's popularity will improve Hinkley's quality of life.

"I said, if this goes well, it's my ticket out of here. But I guess royalties should go to Chuck and the leprosarium he's building," Somerville said. "There's an Olympic-size pool and a barbecue pit, or he's hoping there will be."

McDermott worries Somerville will exploit his relationship with Hinkley.

"I think Somerville would probably steal most of the money to retire," he said.

Somerville's 13-year-old niece, Lissie, has talked to Hinkley. He calls her once in a while and invites her to a banjo-rama, since she is learning how to play old-time banjo.

She has not been to a banjo-rama yet and doesn't know what to make of her conversations with him.

"Every time he talks to her, based on what I've heard, she seems very cautious -- uncertain," Somerville said.

Junior Calvin Stockdale, another member of the Hilltop Moonshiners, wrote most of the music for the song. He tried to create a melody that would capture the dark humor of the song. Writing it took about two days.

The music impressed Somerville.

"The music's great," he said. "The lyrics are kind of lame, but the music's unbelievable."

The Moonshiners plan to play the song if they perform at Centralhallapalooza.

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