“Honey, let me be your salty dog.”

This is my third Portis novel, the others being The Dog of the South (see the post below) and True Grit (read many years ago).  This is good honest blue-collar prose, not particularly demanding but consistently amusing. This 1991 novel credits “Salty Dog Blues” by Wiley & Zeke Morris (1946) for  a three-line quote from that song.  Here is a 2001 version by Karl Shiflett, which I recommend heartily (if you like bluegrass). And here is the context, a funeral for a friend named Emmett, which offers a taste of Portis’s laconic style.

Father Mateo, good man that he was, came boldly to the graveside wearing his cassock, in defiance of the anti-clerical laws. He said what words he could over the remains of a non-Catholic. After the prayer, Harold Bolus sang “Let Me Be Your Salty Dog,” a lively bluegrass tune. He stood leaning on his cane in a cream-colored coat and sang:

Let me be your salty dog
Or I won’t be your man at all
Honey, let me be your salty dog …

I don’t know whose idea that was, but it fell flat. At the proper time and place, yes, by all means, let us have a song from Bolus, give us “The Orange Blossom Special” on the harmonica, but here it didn’t work at all. Supposedly it was Emmett’s favorite song, which was news to me, and the idea was that we would make merry in the presence of death, take it lightly in our stride, raffish crowd that we were, in fitting remembrance of our old friend. But it was forced, we couldn’t bring it off, and the appearance was that we were meanly and nervously celebrating our own survival. Bolus admitted as much later. And how could that be anyone’s favorite song, least of all Emmett’s, he who was never known to dance the two-step, or any other step?