Nathan Coulter

  Grandpa never talked about it when she did. Her grief made him ashamed of his own. And he never mentioned the fight in the tobacco patch, because he was ashamed of that too, and embarrassed that he hadn’t been able to stop it. But Brother had been a satisfaction to him, and now and then he’d mention to Uncle Burley or me that Brother promised to have a better head on him than anybody in the family, saying it as if Brother was dead.

  After we finished the tobacco harvest we harrowed the ground and sowed it in grain. Then we cut the fall hay crop and put it in the barn. In a day or two after that the first hard frost came. The good brittle days began. The trees turned brown and red and yellow and dropped their leaves, and wild geese flew over the house at night. Uncle Burley and I went out in the early mornings to hunt squirrels in the woods. If Brother had been there it would have been perfect. Uncle Burley and I talked about him a lot, remembering the other years when we’d hunted together.

  We spent two weeks mending fences and doing other work that had to be done before the weather got cold. And after that we began the corn harvest. There was no letup in the work, and I was glad of it for Daddy’s sake. It kept him from worrying too much about Brother, and as long as he was busy he could take some pleasure in himself. He and Uncle Burley and I worked together, or swapped work with Gander or Big Ellis, watching the season change and planning the winter’s work. The cool weather made us feel good, and it was a pleasant time.

  Winter set in. The first snow fell and melted, then it turned cold again and the ground froze hard and stayed frozen. We scooped the last of the corn into the crib on a Wednesday, and then slacked off work to rest before we started stripping the tobacco and getting it ready for market. And that Saturday, for the first time in a couple of months, Uncle Burley and I cleaned up after dinner and walked into town. It was clear and bright and beginning to thaw a little. We cut across the fields to the road, taking our time and looking at things. It hadn’t been winter long enough for us to be tired of it, and it felt good to be outside with the whole afternoon ahead of us. On the tops of the ridges the wind stung our faces and hummed in our ears, and when we went down into the hollows we could feel the warmth of the sun and it was quiet.

  The grass on the hillside was brown, and the trees in the hollows were bare and black except for a few green patches of cedars. Now and then a rabbit jumped up ahead of us, and we’d find his snug nesting place in a clump of grass.

  “It’ll be Christmas before we know it,” Uncle Burley said.

  All at once I had the feeling I used to have when I was little, enjoying the newness of the winter and waiting for Christmas. Then I thought about Mother being dead and Brother gone away, and I lost the feeling.

  “We’ll have to go coon hunting before long,” Uncle Burley said. “It’s getting about that time.”

  I knew by the way he said it that the notion excited him. He always started hunting at about that time of year, and hunted almost every favorable night from then until the end of the winter. In the mornings when we went to work he’d talk about what a fool a man was to hunt half the night when he had to work the next day, and he’d swear he’d never go on a weeknight again. But by four o’clock in the afternoon he’d have the fever to hunt; and he’d usually go, by himself if the rest of us were too tired to go with him.

  “If this thaw keeps up we’ll have good tracking for the dogs,” he said.

  We walked the rest of the way to the road, planning what night we’d hunt. When we got to the road we saw Jig Pendleton coming up the hill toward us, and we stopped to wait for him.

  Uncle Burley called, “Come on, Jig. We’ll walk in with you.”

  Jig came up and said hello to us, and we went on toward town.

  “You see that hand, Burley?” Jig said. He held his hand out for Uncle Burley to see.

  “I see it, Jig.”

  “It’s putrefied,” Jig said. He flapped along with his head tilted up sideways, as sober and dead serious as an undertaker.

  “Well, it might be, Jig.”

  Jig held out his other hand. “There now, Burley, can’t you tell the difference? That one ain’t. One of them’s good and the other one’s evil. One of them’s blessed and the other one’s damned.”

  “You’re in a fix,” Uncle Burley said. “You tried a poultice on that bad one?”

  “Now Burley, there ain’t but one poultice that’ll heal her. There ain’t but one poultice that’ll draw the corruption out of that hand. And that’s the poultice of the Holy Spirit.”

  He’d stopped in the middle of the road and was beating the palm of the putrefied hand with the fist of the sound one. We saw that he was about to start into a sermon, so Uncle Burley said, “Got any nets in the river, Jig?”

  Jig hushed and caught up with us. “Aw now, Burley, the water ain’t right. The water’s got to be right first.”

  We kept him on fishing for a while, then he asked Uncle Burley how everybody was getting along at our house.

  “All fine. We’re getting ready to start stripping tobacco the first of the week.”

  “Tobacco,” Jig said. “I used to raise tobacco once. But I quit. I was plowing one morning, and the Lord said, ‘Jig, how’d you like for your daughter to smoke?’ And I said, ‘I wouldn’t like it, Lord. It’s a sin for a woman to smoke.’ And I unhitched the mule right there in the middle of the row, and I left.”

  “You say you left?”

  “Left,” Jig said. “I went to fishing then. You know that’s where He called them from. From fishing. One of these mornings He’ll come and stand on the riverbank and He’ll say, ‘Jig.’ And I’ll say, ‘Yes, Lord?’ And He’ll say, ‘Follow me, Jig.’ And I will arise and follow Him. Aw, He ain’t come yet. But He’s coming. He’s got to get my mansion ready first, but He’ll be here.”

  Then Jig told us about Heaven. He said it was a million miles square and a million miles high, and every street was gold and every house was a mansion. And at night every star was brighter than the sun.

  “Do you know why He made the stars?”

  Uncle Burley said he didn’t know.

  “He liked to hear them sing,” Jig said.

  When we got to town Uncle Burley and I went into the poolroom, and Jig went on up the street to the grocery store. Inside the poolroom it was dark, except for the three green tables in a row down the middle of the floor with lights shining on them. We went past the counter and on to the center of the room, where half a dozen men were standing in a circle around the stove. Big Ellis and Gander Loyd were there, and they made room for us between them.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Uncle Burley said. He held his hands over the top of the stove and rubbed them together. “That wind’s kind of brittle around the edges, ain’t she?”

  “We haven’t seen you for a while, Burley,” Gander said. “Where you been keeping yourself?”

  Big Ellis giggled. “We heard you were dead, Burley.”

  “So did I,” Uncle Burley said. “But I knew it was a lie as soon as I heard it.”

  They laughed, and then drifted into a conversation about who had started stripping tobacco and who hadn’t. They talked about what kind of season it promised to be for that work; and from there they went into an argument about the prospects for a good market that year.

  After we got warmed up Uncle Burley and Big Ellis and I played two games of straight pool, and Uncle Burley won both of them. The games lasted a long time. All three of us were out of practice, and we were missing easy shots; but after he won the second game Uncle Burley said he guessed he might as well quit since the competition was so poor.

  We went back to the stove and talked again. You couldn’t remember how the conversation started, or figure out why it should have got to where it was from the last subject you could remember. Now and then somebody buttoned his coat and left. And others came in, letting a cold draft through the door with them, and stood with us at the stove and smoked and talked. The talk shifted from weather to jokes to crops. Th
e wind muffled at the corners of the building. The sound of the fire whipped in the stove like a flag.

  Mushmouth Montgomery came in and stood by himself at the counter, eating cheese and crackers; the conversation slowed and hesitated as we turned to look at him and looked away. Since Chicken Little’s drowning Mushmouth’s face had changed—had turned hollow and blank as if his eyes had given up seeing. And in my memory of him Chicken Little’s face had changed the same way; I couldn’t remember how he’d looked when he was alive. Mushmouth’s face burdened us and quieted us as if we were seeing Chicken Little’s ghost. He didn’t stay in the poolroom long, and when he left the talk hurried again.

  After a while we heard laughter and commotion in the street, and we went out to see what was happening. A crowd of men and boys had gathered at the edge of the sidewalk. They’d caught a stray dog and were tying a roman candle to his tail.

  One of them lit the fuse and they turned him loose. The dog ran up the street with the roman candle fizzing behind him, shooting red and yellow and blue balls of fire under his tail. He stopped two or three times before he was out of sight and tried to catch his tail in his teeth, but then another ball of fire would hit him and send him howling off again. Everybody stood there on the sidewalk and laughed. I hated to think of anything being treated that way, and I was sorry I saw it. But every time one of those colored balls of fire flew out and hit the dog under the tail I had to laugh too. The idea of it was funny, and if it hadn’t hurt the dog it would have been all right.

  As the crowd began to break up and go back into the stores we saw Brother coming across the street.

  “Well, I’ll swear,” Uncle Burley said. “Look who’s here.”

  We shook hands and laughed and clapped each other on the back. Uncle Burley caught Brother in his arms and held him off the ground, hugging him.

  I hadn’t realized until then how much I’d missed him. I couldn’t think of anything glad enough to say.

  Uncle Burley put Brother down. “How’re you doing, old boy?”

  “All right,” Brother said.

  We went into the poolroom and drank a Coke together while Brother told us about himself. Since he left home he’d been working for a man named Whitlow who owned a farm on the other side of the county. He said that Mr. Whitlow and his wife had treated him kindly, and they had fixed a room in their house for him. Mr. Whitlow had hired him to work by day through the fall and winter and had promised a crop of his own for the next year.

  “Well, you’ve got a good place,” Uncle Burley said. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  When we’d finished our Cokes we sat on a bench behind the stove and talked some more. Uncle Burley and I were relieved to have found Brother and to know he was all right. It felt familiar and good to be there with him, and I hated for the afternoon to pass.

  We spoke of Daddy, and Brother didn’t seem to be mad at him anymore; but he said that he didn’t intend to come back to live with us. He wanted to stay on his own. He was saving his money and planning to buy a farm for himself.

  He asked how Grandma and Grandpa were, and we talked about them for a while. And Uncle Burley and I told him how we were getting along in our work.

  Finally Brother said it was time for him to start home. We walked along with him to where Mr. Whitlow’s car was parked. The sun was nearly down and there was more chill to the wind.

  Uncle Burley turned his collar up and looked at the sky. “It’s going to be a coon hunting night,” he said.

  Mr. Whitlow was standing beside his car when we got there; Brother introduced us and we stood around and talked a while with him. He told us that he thought he was lucky to find as good a hand as Brother, and that we’d be welcome at his house any time we wanted to come and visit. We promised we’d be over before long and we made Brother promise to come to see us.

  “Write to your grandma,” Uncle Burley said.

  They got into the car and drove away, and we were sad to see them go.

  On our way home we went around by Daddy’s house to tell him our news. Nobody had mentioned Brother to him since their fight, and I felt embarrassed about it now. I dreaded it a little.

  It was dark when we came into his yard, and a light was on in the kitchen. We went around the house and called to him from the back door. He answered us and we went in. He was sitting at the table with his supper dishes empty in front of him, eating a piece of corn bread. We pulled out chairs and sat down; and Uncle Burley began telling him about Brother, where he was and what he was doing and what his plans were and what kind of people he was living with. Daddy didn’t say anything while Uncle Burley was talking. He sat there looking at his plate and taking a bite off the corn bread now and then.

  When Uncle Burley had finished I said, “He’s not mad at you anymore.”

  And then Daddy cried. He didn’t say that he was glad Brother wasn’t mad at him, or that he was sorry for their fight. He just sat there, looking at his plate and chewing on a bite of corn bread, with tears running down his cheeks.

  I could have cried myself. Brother was gone, and he wouldn’t be back. And things that had been so before never would be so again. We were the way we were; nothing could make us any different, and we suffered because of it. Things happened to us the way they did because we were ourselves. And if we’d been other people it wouldn’t have mattered. If we’d been Mushmouth or Jig Pendleton or that dog with the roman candle tied to his tail, it would have been the same; we’d have had to suffer whatever it was that they suffered because they were themselves. And there was nothing anybody could do but let it happen.

  We left Daddy sitting at the table and started home.

  “It’s bad,” Uncle Burley said. “It’s bad.” After a minute he said, “We’re going to have a fair night. Let’s you and me hunt a while.”

  We hurried through our chores and went to the house. Grandma had supper waiting for us when we came into the kitchen, and Grandpa had already finished eating and turned his chair to the stove. We ate, and Uncle Burley told them we’d seen Brother. They listened while he told them all that Brother had told us.

  When he quit talking Grandma said, “And he’s not coming home?”

  “No,” Uncle Burley said.

  Grandpa got up then and went into the living room. And Grandma filled the dishpan with water and set it on the stove.

  “We thought we’d hunt tonight,” Uncle Burley told her.

  She nodded, keeping her face turned away from us.

  Uncle Burley went upstairs and got his rifle and flashlight and I lit the lantern. We went out the back door and called the dogs. They came, wagging their tails and whining, knowing when they saw the rifle in Uncle Burley’s hands that we were going to hunt. There were two of them—Sawbuck and Joe. Uncle Burley let them rear against him. He rubbed their faces and spoke their names.

  We walked down the hill toward the woods on the river bluff. Behind us the walls of the house were dark; the lighted windows shone as if they were floating and might twist or slant or change places. On the next ridge a light was still burning in Daddy’s house.

  When we came to the brow of the hill and saw the house lights scattered through the river bottoms, it wasn’t the place of daytime or our memories, but only a distance filled up with night where a few lights burned, the woods and the hunt dividing us from them.

  “Well,” Uncle Burley said, “they’ll grieve in this old land until you’d think they were going to live on it forever, then grieve some more because they know damn well they’re not going to live on it forever. And nothing’ll stop them but a six-foot hole.”

  When we went into the woods the dogs trotted off ahead of us, and we walked in the room of light the lantern made, our shadows striding tall against the trunks of the trees. The light was an island, drifting until the dogs would strike a track and give us a direction.

  We walked slowly, stopping now and then to listen, moving along the face of the bluff toward the creek valley. After a while Joe bayed a ti
me or two down near the creek. And then the quietness settled around us again and we heard the wind in the tops of the trees. We climbed higher on the bluff so we could hear better, and went on toward the point where the creek valley came into the valley of the river. We crossed the point and climbed down to the edge of the woods on the other side, then squatted on our heels by the lantern and listened to the dogs.

  First one of them and then the other crossed the trail and bayed, then lost it, and the quiet came down into the valley again.

  Uncle Burley shifted his feet a little, and his hunched shadow swayed against the trees behind him. “They may finally straighten it out.”

  The dogs worked the trail until it got warm, and then they bayed up the hillside across the valley, running fast and mouthing at every jump, their voices hacking through the dark.

  “That sounds more like it,” Uncle Burley said.

  We started down the hill, taking our time and listening. When we got to the creek bottom the dogs had gone almost out of earshot. We stood still for a few minutes, straining to hear them above the sound of our breath.

  “They’re treed, aren’t they?” I said.

  “If they’re not they’re good liars,” Uncle Burley said.

  They’d followed a draw out of the bottom all the way to the top of the bluff; and we went up after them, climbing where the streambed stair-stepped down the hill.

  We found them treed at a thick-trunked old hickory on the side of the draw. Uncle Burley leaned the rifle against a stump and turned the flashlight up into the branches. We walked around the tree, searching until we saw the coon sitting humpbacked in the fork of a long limb, his eyes glowing in the light.

  “There’s plenty of limbs all the way up,” Uncle Burley said. “You can climb up and shake him out, and we’ll let one of the dogs have him.”