I Am the Clay

by Chaim Potok

  She rose slowly, feeling the pain and stiffness in the joints of her arms and legs, and found herself in the dimness formed by the walls of quilts, staring at the underside of the cart. Old scarred unpainted pine cut and planed and built years ago by the carpenter.

  For a long moment she could not remember where she was.

  Emerging from the quilt draped over the side of the cart, deep wrinkles of sleep on her face, the woman saw the old man squatting near the cart and gazing across the plain. She started to speak but the words stopped in her throat. She hawked up morning phlegm and spat into the snow.

  He shook his head, an abrupt gesture.

  She followed his eyes across the plain.

  The fire was down to a bed of gray-white ash and a few glowing embers. A morning calm lay upon the plain like the hush of a new beginning, and over the ground a cottony mist through which the orange fires on the American compound glowed dull and diminished. Here and there a figure moved, ghostly in the mist. On the main road, trucks, jeeps, half-tracked vehicles, ambulances: wheels and engines oddly muted in the morning stillness. Large dark birds with outspread wings sailed slowly in wide circles across the milk-white sky.

  The woman stood looking out at the plain. Did the boy wake me or did I dream it? No, he woke me, as he said he would. Strange I cannot remember waking beneath the cart during the night or sitting in the cold. Did I dream that I tended the fire or did I tend the fire and dream the boy in the stars?

  A cold wind blew silkenly across the plain. The mist began to rise.

  Slowly the floor of the plain opened out to her eyes.

  She saw the mounds immediately and then the shanties that crowded the plain. Two low snow-covered mounds: each roughly circular and about fifty feet in diameter; each at opposite ends of the plain. Odd protrusions bare of shanties and people. Directly upon the circumferences of the mounds began the world of the refugees. Remnants of metal and canvas made up the walls and roofs of most of the shanties: parts of trucks, jeeps, tanks, half-tracks: bent hoods, rusted doors, twisted fenders, pieces of armor; burn marks etched into them, narrow gouges, a welter of scrapes and scratches, vague tracings of numbers and words.

  The woman followed the old man’s gaze as it moved across the plain and back to the cart and then to the land behind the cart. She saw they were near the center of the plain at the edge of a huge mound of snow-blanketed ground that rose irregularly to a height of about six feet.

  They were the only ones encamped on the mound.

  The path through the plain briefly touched the rim of the mound and then wound on. Along the other side of the path and from the rim of the mound as far as the eye could see stretched shanties constructed from the wreckage of military vehicles.

  The old man thought to wake the boy and move the cart.

  At the far end of the plain four trucks left the road and began to move toward the American compound. Instantly all up and down the plain the air stirred and there were shouts and cries. Figures emerged from the shanties and hurried toward the compound.

  The old man went over to the cart as the woman woke the boy.

  “We are going for food,” she said. “Stay with the cart.”

  “Hurry, woman,” the old man called.

  The boy came out from beneath the cart, blinking.

  The old man and the woman, carrying bowls and pots, rushed off in the direction of the compound. The boy stood leaning against the cart, staring open-mouthed at frantically moving swarms of people.

  He threw brush onto the dying embers and as the wood caught he turned and saw the rise of the mound behind the cart. Then he looked again across the plain and shivered. After a while he squatted near the cart inside a quilt, trying to make himself very small, and waited for the old man and the woman.

  Before they returned two other families moved onto the mound, not far from the cart.

  The old man thought they should eat first and then search for a new location, and as the woman cooked the rice three new families appeared. They were coming in off the main road from the region of a distant battlefield, hundreds of new refugees, speaking a dialect the boy found difficult to understand. He watched them set down their possessions on the mound. There were children among them, boys and girls about his age.

  The woman called him and the old man to the fire. She offered the food to the ghosts of the mound.

  “I have thought about it,” the old man said. “Here it is less crowded. Why should we move? Did you see what is out there? Worse than the mudflats on the riverbank.”

  He took up his bowl. The woman looked away.

  “This is a time of war, woman, and besides others are here now too.”

  They squatted by the fire, eating, and glancing from time to time at the mounds on the plain.

  The old man was thinking: Many villages of the land may be here soon. Perhaps the boy will come upon someone from his village and go off with them and we will finally be rid of him.

  The woman thought: This is a terrible place. Is it not forbidden us to stay here? And if we stay, can we calm the ghosts?

  And the boy: There are boys and and girls here of my chronological group playing in the snow. There are no dogs here and and why do those birds keep flying in circles overhead?

  All that day new refugees entered the plain and for lack of space settled on the mounds.

  The old man and the boy scoured the plain and found the site where the battle had been fought: an area of about one square mile filled with the debris of shattered vehicles. They made three trips and brought back with them scraps of metal and a strip of filthy canvas pitted with tiny shrapnel holes and they built a shanty around the cart a little more than double its length. A stink of muck and grease and fire clung to the metal. The fourth wall of the shanty had a space in its middle about the width of a man and faced out on the firepit.

  The boy had found a length of frayed rope and he and the old man worked together trying to repair the wheel of the cart. But the rope snapped.

  In the afternoon the boy went off alone and was gone a long time. The woman sat by the fire with the winter sun on her wrinkled face and the man, his pipe in his mouth, squatted near the shanty. When the boy had not returned by sunset, the woman rose and stood silently, watching, and the old man brought a quilt and covered her shoulders and stood next to her, staring out at the plain.

  The boy returned at twilight. They saw him emerge from between two shanties waving over his head a length of thin black wire he had found in the earth amid the wreckage. The old man was surprised at the surge of relief he felt. Together he and the boy repaired the wheel while the woman cooked supper.

  They slept that night in the shanty. The boy woke the woman for her turn at the fire.

  Alone by the fire in the early hours of the morning the woman boiled water and cooked rice and set out the rice in a bowl as an offering to the suffering dead of the plain.

  She bowed her head. No peace ever for the soldiers who lie in these mounds, a kindness to feed them. No roast pig to offer them as we sometimes did at the yearly ghost worship in our village. Only this rice. Let it calm your suffering. I will offer it to you again each night for as long as we are here.

  She sat through her hours of the night.

  The fire burned low. She heaped on brushwood and got to her feet and went to the shanty to wake the old man.

  The old man squatted by the fire and noticed the bowl of rice. He shivered and drew the quilt tight about him.

  Closing his eyes, he listened to the night and was certain he could hear echoes of the battle once fought on the plain.

  He remembered his relief at seeing the boy emerge from between two shanties at twilight and was astonished to discover that he liked his memory of the day spent with the boy building the shanty. Warm in the shanty under the sleeping bag and the quilts. The boy curled close, reaching out in sleep. Wispy touch and weight of his arm, a thin bony arm resting with floating lightness on my chest. A small boy, and clever. Smil
ing and waving the wire over his head. Helping repair the wheel, helping return the cart to life. Good spirits in him.

  The old man squatted by the fire watching the dawn come to the plain.

  6

  Before he woke the woman he ate the rice in the bowl by the fire. Her offering: but by now the ghosts have surely eaten. He chewed slowly the glutinous ball, tasting it on his tongue and feeling it slide down his throat and into his stomach. Gone for a while the stabbing pain of hunger; and strength to collect brushwood for the fire. Two fires, we need another fire to soften the ground in back. The woman and the boy will not go hungry, the food trucks will come again.

  He scratched at his chest and crotch and then, holding the bowl in one hand, reached beneath his cap with the other and searched through his hair. The itching on his scalp grew so intense he thought to bring his head close to the flames. But it subsided under his furious scratching and he sat back on his haunches, eating with pleasure, his scalp and chest faintly tingling.

  A wind began to blow from the north, shaking the flames. He shivered: cold air burrowed through his clothes. Odd wind-borne sounds came to him: cries of children, women wailing, pebbly tire noises from the vehicles on the road. A sudden acute memory of dissimilar morning sounds. In the village the birds would set up a clatter of song and the dogs barked and the cows and oxen lowed. Sometimes the old carpenter would have come back from a night of drinking in the marketplace with his cronies and the old man could hear him moaning and his crippled wife talking to herself and to their pig about the life she might have led had her father agreed to marry her off to the smart young student from the nearby village instead of to this carpenter, the son of her father’s old friend. Good with his hands, the carpenter. Wise about many things. But too often drunk on warm rice wine.

  Through the gelid air a dull-gray light began to inch across the plain. Squatting by the fire, the bowl in his hands nearly empty, the old man thought he heard whispers and snow-crunching footsteps and he looked up and saw the night dead being removed from some of the nearby shanties. Men and women and even children silently carrying their dead wrapped in cloth or canvas. Moving cautiously through the melancholy light. From one an arm dangling. Where do they take them?

  He finished the rice, slipped quietly into the shanty, and put the bowl into the cart. Warmer in here. Let them sleep. The boy like a little child. Not long ago nearly dead. Saved by the dog. Young smooth face, a baby’s face. Maybe a dog might have saved ours. No dogs anywhere on this plain. Maybe the boy’s magic will bring us another dog.

  He took the stone tool from the cart and quietly went with it outside, behind the shanty, where he scraped away the snow and dug a shallow pit. He put wood into the pit and built a fire. Then he returned the stone tool to the cart and woke the woman and the boy.

  Trembling with the pain and fatigue in her arms and legs, the woman went outside and stood still a long moment, gasping for breath in the wind. She walked carefully on the frozen snow to the back of the shanty and squatted down near the new firepit.

  The old man slipped the A-frame over his shoulders and went off with the boy.

  Squatting, the woman saw them moving between fires and shanties toward a distant line of brush and scrub oak along the near foothills bordering the plain. As she watched, two helicopters flew with fearful suddenness low over the main road on the rim of the plain. She could see clearly their large red crosses and she raised her arms in vertical and horizontal motions. To bring on good spirits, Mother said. One this way and one that way. Good spirits of the earth and sky, good spirits of the valleys and plains. Up and down, and then this way and that. Mother learned it from the pale man with the upside-down eyes who ate in the great house of the governor. Many learned it from him. And songs too. Have thine own way Lord have thine own way thou art the potter I am the clay. Mother taught me.

  She stood and went to the fire in front of the shanty and filled a pot with snow. She caught herself humming the song as she put the pot on the fire. Have thine own way Lord have thine own way. The wind blew stiffly across the plain. Low dull-gray clouds threatened snow.

  With their bare hands they shook snow from clumps of brush and tore off branches and piled them on the A-frame, which sat on the snow beneath a low oak. From where they stood they could see much of the plain: its three mounds now mostly covered with shanties, and the American compound with its perimeter of wire fence and fire, and the hills that enclosed the plain in a nearly perfect circle.

  They worked quickly and in silence, shivering in the merciless wind. The way we gathered wood in the forest when we camped in the winters with Badooki, bend the branches back and forth, break them, pull. Pick the ones with lots of shoots, more to burn. Thin fingers like a girl but he works hard and knows what to do. Fat greasy Choo Kun taught me that, he was good for something. Loose tongue and big appetite. Earth on his tongue now. What will we do with him, he is not of our blood? Perhaps ask the carpenter? Yes, another load for the second fire, you remain with it here, I will return for it. See how many are tearing at this brush. Like locusts. All along the foothills. How much wood is there on this plain? And when the brushwood is gone, what then? Perhaps the winter will end before the wood runs out. But if not? What is the boy doing? Ah, clever boy.

  The boy had brought with him the torn pieces of rope, whose ends he had tied together, and the length of wire left over from the repair of the wheel. These he slipped under the second pile of wood and knotted tight, leaving extended ends which he now used to lift the brushwood to his back and loop over his shoulders in a makeshift A-frame. Together they started back across the plain through masses of huddled people and scampering children.

  The woman saw them coming toward her walking slowly beneath their loads. Her heart went out to the boy. Where is his strength from? A few days ago nearly dead and now almost bent double beneath such a load, like the man, but the man has a back of iron, the boy is like grass.

  The old man dropped his load of brushwood near the firepit in front of the shanty; the boy took his inside and placed it next to the cart. Leave it behind the shanty and someone will steal it. His stiffened hands burned. He thrust the numbed reddened flesh under his armpits. The fingers tingled and throbbed and curled. This is a foolish boy, Father said, only a very foolish boy exposes his hand in such a way to snow. Mother gently bathing the hand in warm water. Grandfather said, smiling around his pipe, Now that you know what can happen to you with snow, will you try it also with fire? Shall I tell you what the Master said? The Master said, Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change. Which are you? He is a foolish boy, Father said, and I fear for him.

  The woman was calling him. He went outside and sat with them at the fire. Before they began eating, the woman offered the rice to the ghosts of the mound. The flames roared and smoked and crackled in the wind.

  After they had done eating, the woman cleaned the bowls and the boy went into the shanty and brought out wood for the rear firepit and then scraped a hole in the softened earth. As he squatted he saw a group of boys about his age running past a nearby shanty. One of the boys extended his arm in a blurred shadow of motion and a shirt left to dry on the roof of the shanty was suddenly gone.

  The boy stood up and covered over the hole and went to join the old man and the woman inside the shanty.

  In the late morning the trucks came again and the old man and the woman rushed off toward the American compound.

  They hurried across grimy snow frozen by the wind into ridged sharp-edged hillocks. Swallowed up inside a surging crowd, they felt themselves climbing a distance of ground and then descending: they had traversed one of the mounds. The woman, fearful of being separated from the man, walked behind as if one flesh with him, matching her every step to his. She thought: It is colder here now than it was in the mountains, there is nowhere to hide from this wind. Will the little house be enough for us? The man thought: If we come late and the food is gone I will die and in the morning I will be the one they
will carry away. How they push, like animals at the trough. Do these trucks come every day? See that little boy, eight or nine years old, how he slips his hand into that man’s pocket. He is stealing his spectacles! Vanished into the crowd. Nothing in my pockets. What will a child do with spectacles? Trade them for food?

  A mute shivering mass of people stood near the trucks and edged toward the tailgates, where uniformed Koreans doled out rice from opened sacks. Fifty yards beyond the trucks rose the wire fence of the American compound. Near the gate to the compound stood a small silent crowd of young Korean women.

  The old man and the woman held up their bowls.

  “Only one bowl each person,” shouted the Korean on the truck.

  “We have a boy,” said the old man.

  “One bowl each person, Uncle.”

  “But yesterday three bowls,” the woman said.

  “Not enough today. One bowl each person.”

  They turned away from the truck, holding the bowls tightly to themselves, and started back across the plain. The old man was angry and did not know at whom to direct his anger and that made him angrier still.

  “I will give the boy from my portion,” the woman said.

  “Watch how you walk,” the old man said. “If you fall we will all be eating from one bowl.”

  Far behind them a column of black smoke began to rise from the plain but they did not see it.

  The boy was sitting in the opening of the shanty near the firepit watching three girls about his age playing the rope-skipping game, when the column of smoke appeared. Intent upon the girls, he did not see it.

  The girls were playing outside a shanty about twenty feet from the boy. A middle-aged man and woman squatted near the firepit at the entrance to the shanty. The woman carried a child in a sling on her back. The man, dark hair wild on his bare head, face gaunt and stubbly, kept coughing and wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his winter jacket.