Watch With Me

  Old Ant’ny was a provider, and he did provide. He saw to it that twelve hogs were slaughtered for his own use every fall—and twenty-four hams and twenty-four shoulders and twenty-four middlings and twenty-four spareribs and twelve backbones and hard to say how many sacks of sausage were hung in his smokehouse. And his wife, Maw Proudfoot, kept a flock of turkeys and a flock of ducks and geese and a flock of guineas, and her hen house was as populous as a county seat. And long after he was “too old to farm,” Old Ant’ny grew a garden as big as some people’s crop. He picked and dug and fetched, and Maw Proudfoot canned and preserved and pickled and salted as if they had an army to feed—which they more or less did, for there were not only the announced family gatherings but always somebody or some few happening by, and always somebody to give something to.

  The Proudfoot family gatherings were famous. As feasts, as collections and concentrations of good things, they were unequaled. Especially in summer there was nothing like them, for then there would be old ham and fried chicken and gravy, and two or three kinds of fish, and hot biscuits and three kinds of cornbread, and potatoes and beans and roasting ears and carrots and beets and onions, and corn pudding and corn creamed and fried, and cabbage boiled and scalloped, and tomatoes stewed and sliced, and fresh cucumbers soaked in vinegar, and three or four kinds of pickles, and if it was late enough in the summer there would be watermelons and muskmelons, and there would be pies and cakes and cobblers and dumplings, and milk and coffee by the gallon. And there would be, too, half a dozen or so gallon or half-gallon stone jugs making their way from one adult male to another as surreptitious as moles. For in those days the Proudfoot homeplace, with its broad cornfields in the creek bottom, was famous also for the excellence of its whiskey.

  So of course these affairs were numerously attended. When the word went out to family and in-laws it was bound to be overheard, and people came in whose veins Proudfoot blood ran extremely thin, if at all—and some came who were not even speakingly acquainted with so much as a Proudfoot in-law. And there would be babel and uproar all day, for every door stood open, and the old house was not ceiled; the upstairs floorboards were simply nailed to the naked joists, leaving cracks that you could not only hear through but in places see through. Whatever happened anywhere could be heard everywhere.

  The storm of feet and voices would continue unabated from not long after sunup until after sundown when the voice of Old Ant’ny would rise abruptly over the babbling of the multitude: “Well, Maw, turn back the bed. These folks want to be gettin’ on home.” And then, as if at the bidding of some Heavenly sign, the family sorted itself into its branches. Children and shoes and hats were found, identified, and claimed; horses were hitched; and the tribes of the children of Old Ant’ny Proudfoot set out in their various directions in the twilight.

  In himself and in his life, Tol Proudfoot had come a considerable way from the frontier independence and uproariousness of Old Ant’ny’s household. He was a gentler, a more modest, perhaps a smarter man than his grandfather. And he had submitted, at least somewhat, to the quieting and ordering influence of Miss Minnie. But there was something in Tol, in his spirit as well as in his memory, that hung back there in the time of those great family feasts, which had been a godsend to every boy, at least, who ever attended one.

  By the time I came to know him, Tol was well along in years. He had become an elder of the community, and had recognized his memories, the good ones anyhow, as gifts, to himself and to the rest of us. His stories of Old Ant’ny and the high old family times were much in demand, not just because they were good to listen to in their own right, but because certain people enjoyed hearing—and watching—Tol laugh at them. Once he got tickled enough, you could never tell what would happen. He had broken the backs off half a dozen chairs, rearing back in them to laugh. Once, at an ice cream supper, he fell backward onto a table full of cakes.

  My grandparents took me to a picnic one Sunday at the Goforth church where Tol and Miss Minnie went. After the morning service, the women spread the food out on tables under the big old oak trees in the churchyard, and then we gathered around and sang “Blessed Be the Tie That Binds,” and the minister gave thanks for the food, and we ate together, some finding places at the tables, some sitting in the shade of the trees, holding their plates on their laps.

  Afterward the men drew off to themselves, carrying their chairs up to the edge of the graveyard. There was a good breeze there on the higher ground, and fine dark shade under the cedars. They took smokes and chews, and the talk started, first about crops and weather and then about other things. I don’t remember exactly how, but a little merriment started. Then somebody said, “Tol, tell that un about Old Ant’ny and the chamber pot.”

  They were sitting more or less in a circle in the shade of two big cedars, and in the silences you could hear the breeze pulling through the branches. Tol was sitting with his back to the graveyard, his chair tilted back, the gravestones spread out behind him. He had outlived nearly everybody he would tell about, some of whom lay within the sound of his voice, and he was sitting not far from the spot where we would lay him to rest before two more years had passed.

  Below us the women were sitting together near the tables, where they had finished straightening up. You could hear the sound of their voices but not what they said. I remember the colors of their dresses: white and pink and yellow, ginghams and flower prints; the widows all in black, the dresses of the older women reaching to their ankles. And I remember how perfect it all seemed, so still and comfortable. The Second World War had started in Europe, but in my memory it seems that none of us yet knew it.

  Tol’s pipe was lit, and he had picked up a dead cedar branch to whittle. His knife was sharp, and the long, fine, fragrant shavings curled and fell backward over his wrists. He was smiling.

  “Boys,” he said, “I couldn’t tell it all in a day.”

  He laughed a little and said no more. Nobody else said anything either. After a minute he began to tell the story. I wasn’t anything but a boy then. I can’t tell it the way he told it, but this is the way he put it in my mind:

  It was a fine, bright Sunday in October, the year Tol was five years old. The Proudfoots had gathered at Old Ant’ny’s. The family had drawn in its various branches, outposts, in-laws, and acquaintances, as well as the usual sampling of strangers. Old Ant’ny had turned out his own mules and horses to make stall room, and by midmorning the barn was full, and saddled horses and harnessed teams stood tied to fence posts.

  All the wives had brought food and other necessaries to add to the bounty already laid in and prepared by Old Ant’ny and Maw Proudfoot, and the big kitchen and back porch were full of women and the older girls, setting out dishes and pitchers and glasses and bowls on tables spread with white cloths.

  The Proudfoot men were gathered around the hearth in the living room, where Old Ant’ny sat and where in the early morning there had been a fire. Later, as their numbers grew and the day warmed, some of them sat along the edge of the front porch, and others squatted in the open doorway of the barn.

  The girls who were too little to help played or visited quietly enough with each other. They were well acquainted, happy to be together again, and possessed of a certain civility and dignity. There was never much trouble from them.

  The trouble came from the boys, or, more exactly, from the boys between the ages of about five and about eleven, who did not come with any plans or expectations, and who therefore took their entertainment as a matter of adventure, making do with whatever came to hand. There were, Tol said, “a dozen, maybe twenty” of them.

  Before dinner they were kept fairly well under control. They were getting hungry, for one thing, and that held them close to the house. For another thing, the parents were more alert before dinner than they would be afterward. Afterward, they would be full and comfortable and a little sleepy, and most of the men would be a little sleepier and more co
mfortable than the women, for by then they would have tested some stealthily wandering jug of Old Ant’ny’s whiskey.

  That was the way it always worked. During the morning the boys were kept within eyesight of the grown-ups, and pretty well apart from each other. They fretted and jiggled and asked when dinner would be ready, and got corrected and fussed at and threatened. And then after dinner the range of grown-up eyesight shortened, and that was when the boys got together and began to run. This was their time of freedom, and to preserve it they ran. Whenever they were near the house, where they knew they might be seen and called down, they ran. They ran in a pack, the big ones in front, the little ones behind. Tol was the littlest one that year, and the farthest behind, but he kept the rest of them in sight. Most of them were Proudfoots, and they all looked more or less like Proudfoots. And as long as there were so many of them and they were all running, by the time one of them could be recognized and called to, they would be gone.

  They ran up the hill behind the barn and over into a wooded draw where their band raveled out into a game of tag, and then a game of hide-and-go-seek—a great crashing and scuffling in the fallen dry leaves. The biggest boy that year was Tol’s cousin Lester, whose hair, plastered down with water early that morning, now stuck up like the tail of a young rooster, and whose eyes were wide open in expectation.

  Tag and hide-and-go-seek didn’t last long. Lester kept changing the rules until nobody wanted to play. Then Old Ant’ny’s hounds treed a groundhog in a little slippery elm, and Lester climbed up to shake him out. Lester took his jacket off so he could climb better. When he threw it down, the dogs, thinking it was the groundhog, piled on it and tore it up. While they were tearing up Lester’s jacket, the groundhog jumped out of the tree and ran into a hole. The big boys found a couple of sticks and helped the dogs dig until they came to a rock ledge and had to give up.

  All that took a while. They had been missed by then, and Aunt Belle was on the back porch, calling, “Oh, Lester!” So they answered and went back, running, allowing themselves to be seen and forgotten again, and ran on across the cornfield to the creek.

  They played follow-the-leader, which lasted a long time, because Lester was the leader. They went along the rocks at the edge of the creek and then waded a riffle and came back across walking a fallen tree trunk. And then Lester said, “Follow my tracks,” and started taking giant steps across a sand bar. It was a long straddle, and by the time Tol got there the tracks were a foot deep and full of water. He got stuck with his feet apart and fell over sideways.

  “Come here, mud man,” Lester said. “Come here, mud boy.” And he soused Tol, clothes and all, down into the deep cold water and rinsed him off.

  Tol started crying. He said a word he had learned from Uncle O.R. and threw a rock at Lester, and everybody laughed, and then Tol did.

  Aunt Belle was on the front porch now, hollering again. She was a big woman with a strong voice. Lester answered and they all started running back toward the house, leaving Tol behind. He was getting tired, and so he walked on to the house. When he got there the other boys were gone again, out of sight. He went up on the back porch, taking care to avoid notice, and found a plate of biscuits under a cloth on the wash table and took two and went on toward the front door. The women were in the kitchen and in the parlor, talking. Old Ant’ny and Uncle O.R. and Uncle George Washington and Uncle Will and Uncle Fowler and some others were in the living room. A brown and white jug, stoppered with a corncob, was sitting by Uncle Fowler’s chair like a contented cat. They weren’t going to pay any attention to Tol, and he stepped inside the door to eat his biscuits. Uncle Fowler leaned forward in his chair to spit in the fireplace and fell headfirst into the ashes. Old Ant’ny never even looked. The others may have looked or they may not. They never said anything. But Uncle O.R. looked. He was standing on the corner of the hearth, leaning one shoulder against the mantel. He said, “Fowler, you’re putting a right smart effort into your spitting, seems like.”

  Uncle Fowler got himself out of the ashes and into his chair again. “Whoo, Lordy, Lordy!” he said, and fanned himself with his hand, causing a few ashes to float out of his mustache.

  Tol crammed the whole second biscuit into his mouth, and ran back through the house and out the back door, blowing crumbs ahead of him as he ran.

  Lester was up on the roof. He had climbed up on the cellar, and then onto the cellar house roof, and then onto the back porch roof, and then onto the roof of the ell that held the kitchen and dining room, and now he was walking up the slope of the roof over the living room and the bedroom above it toward the chimney. Maw Proudfoot’s yellow tomcat was weaving in and out between Lester’s feet, stroking himself on Lester’s legs. The pack of boys had backed up as Lester climbed, keeping him in sight.

  It was a big rock chimney built against the end of the house. Lester reached into it, and held up a black palm for the others to see. The yellow cat climbed up onto the chimney beside Lester. He walked back and forth along the copestones, rubbing himself against Lester’s shoulder, his tail stuck straight up, with a little crook on the end of it like a walking cane.

  It was past sundown now. The light was going out of the sky, and it was turning cool. Except for the pack of boys, everybody was in the house. Nobody had started home yet. They would get home in the dark and still have the milking to do; maybe the thought of that had quieted them. The old house hovered over them now like a mother hen.

  Lester backed away a step, and he and the yellow cat stood looking at each other, balanced across the foot or so of air that divided them. Some fascination grew upon them. The boys watching down in the yard felt it. And then Lester raised his hand and gave a little push.

  When Lester pushed the cat, he said, “Wup!”

  The cat disappeared, clean out of sight, as if the sky had bitten it off. They heard a fit of scratching inside the chimney, and then it ceased. Lester looked over into the chimney mouth. And then he looked around and down at his cousins. His eyes were as wide open as if he had never batted one of them once in his life.

  “He didn’t go all the way down,” Lester said. “He ain’t going to make it back up.”

  Lester looked down at his cousins, and they looked up at him. Nobody moved or spoke. For maybe as long as a minute, nobody had any idea what would happen next. And then Lester’s eye fell on Toby.

  Several hounds were sitting alongside the pack of boys, watching too, with the same balked expectancy, and Toby was with them. Toby was Old Ant’ny’s feist, white with black ears and a black spot in front of his tail. He was a nervous little dog who had courage instead of brains. He would fight anything, would go unhesitatingly into a hole after a varmint, or anywhere after a cat.

  “Send up old Tobe,” Lester said.

  One of the older boys put Toby in the crook of his arm and carried him up onto the kitchen roof. Lester met him and took the dog. He went back up to the chimney and held Toby so he could look in. He might have intended just to show Toby to the cat so as maybe to scare the cat into going on down. Tol didn’t know. But whatever Lester intended to do turned out to be beside the point. When the cat saw Toby, he spit at him. They could hear it all the way down in the yard. Toby gave a little yelp, in horror of what he saw he was about to do, and jumped out of Lester’s arms onto the lip of the chimney and down onto the cat.

  The boys had already started running before Toby jumped. When they passed the chimney, they heard Toby and the cat inside, falling and fighting.

  They went on around and through the front door and into the living room just in time to see the ashes in the fireplace rise up in a cloud. And then the cat, with Toby behind him, broke out and ran up Uncle Fowler’s leg and up his belly and up over the top of his head and off the back of his chair and through the crowd of boys and out into the hall. Old Ant’ny never looked, never turned his head. He just sat there like some people’s idea of God, as if having set this sti
r in motion, he would let it play itself out on its own, as if he despaired of any other way of stopping it. Uncle Fowler, who had been asleep, woke up, spitting ashes, just as Toby cleared the chair back.

  “Pew!” Uncle Fowler said. He sighed and shut his eyes again in great weariness.

  The only one with enough presence of mind to move at all was Uncle O.R. who started out, running after Toby, only to get tangled up in the crowd of boys standing in the door.

  The cat treed under the chiffonier in the hall, but Toby brought him out of there, and by the time Uncle O.R. got free of the boys, the cat had run into the kitchen and down the middle of the table, with Toby still on his heels, and over Aunt Belle’s shoulder and out the window. They left a black streak down the middle of the cloth.

  Aunt Belle was on her feet now. “Who the hell let that cat in? And that damn dog? Where are you, Lester?”

  Uncle O.R. ran on out through the kitchen. The pack of boys, who had been following Uncle O.R., got to the dining room door just in time to run smack into Aunt Belle, who was coming out. She was red in the face and already puffing; she just bounced them all out of the way and ran on up the hall toward the front door. They fell in behind her, running as dutifully as if they were all still playing follow-the-leader.

  Aunt Belle ran out the front door and across the porch and down the porch steps and out in the yard just as Lester came around the corner of the house with Uncle O.R. gaining on him. Lester’s eyes were wider open than ever, his hair was sticking up stiff and straight.