The Hills of Home

by Jory Sherman

"How come you moved out here?" she asked me, as I was taking the fish off the string.

  "There was a gallery over by Eureka Springs that showed my paintings. They told me about the country here. I just wanted a place that was quiet, secluded. So I could paint."

  "Mr. MacGuire said you was a painter. What do you paint?"

  "People. Places."

  "I'd like to see them sometime."

  "Okay." I wanted her to see them right away. I wanted to sit her down in the room I was making into a studio and start sketching her face, searching for that elusive core beneath the surface that would reveal her inner life. I wanted to just look at her and listen to her talk. In her speech I heard music, rippling guitars, dulcimers, keening rivers and the wind whicking over stones and whispering through hay fields, rustling in graceful stands of corn.

  "I have to get back now," she said, getting up. "Mr. MacGuire will want his supper. I'll cook the fish and make berry muffins. I'd ask you over, but it's not my place to offer."

  "I understand," I said. I didn't want her to go. For a moment she stood there and I thought it would be easy to just kiss her. I handed her the sack of fish, pulled the knapsack over my shoulder.

  We said goodbye on the road.

  She waved again when she turned up the lane to her place. She held up the plastic sack of fish for me to see. Impulsively, I blew her a kiss. It seemed to me that she stiffened for a moment, but I could be wrong. It might have been a trick of the light, although I had trained myself to notice such things. I was a fair painter.

  I went back through the Griffin field many times after that. I never saw Hollie picking berries again. I saw only crows, blackbirds, jays. A rabbit or two. Once, a covey of quail burst from the berry thicket and the silence afterwards reminded me of her somehow.

  One evening, I strolled over to see Pat MacGuire. Hollie was standing on the porch, looking down the lane. I watched her for a long time as I unlatched the gate and walked up to the house. Before I got there, however, she went inside. Pat came out and talked to me. He was polite, gruff. His pipe tobacco smelled stale. He never invited me in. He thanked me for the fish I had given Hollie some three months before. He said he'd like to go fishing with me sometime.

  "This is from my garden, Pat." I handed him a sack of zucchini, bell peppers and tomatoes grown from ground he had plowed. He took the sack and thanked me. Debt paid.

  When I got to the gate, I looked back. The porch was deserted.

  I never saw Hollie again. But I always think of her as standing on that porch, waiting for me. Maybe I'm reading it all wrong, but that's what I think. I have already painted her standing on that porch, just before dusk settles on the land. I stare at the painting and wonder if it will come alive. I stare at the images there and see Hollie, standing there, waiting for me.

  She is all alone in the portrait. Just waiting.

  Waiting.

  July's Fire

  THE SUN is a fierce and hostile fireball floating in the noon sky. I should be at the Blue Hole down on Osage Creek, swimming deep in the cool waters, or at White Water in Branson, sloshing in the miniature ocean or tubing down the Lazy River.

  The deer bed down early these hot July days, under cool cedar branches or in thickets down by the lake where the temperature is a few degrees cooler. I hear them move down the creek in the morning dark when the night breeze is still blowing. The air is blessedly chill and the curtains flutter at the open window as if it was still spring.

  That's what we all should be doing: sleeping during the day's swelter, working in the night cool. But we have our civilized clocks and commerce continues its grinding ways even in the dangerous days when the sun scorches the earth with a billion watts of candlepower, taking 8 seconds to travel 97 million miles through space.

  Could it be we have set all our clocks wrong? These summer days should be the short ones. I drive to the office early after rising at 3:00 a.m. or so, and there is a light fog on Taneycomo. The fisherman are shadowy silhouettes on the sandbar and boats stir the mist and disappear beyond the bridge as if swallowed up by smoke. It is still cool and the sky blue, the sun not yet boiling. It's 7 o'clock and if I left the office at 11:00 and napped through the fiery afternoon I still would have worked a full day.

  But most of the phone calls from New York come in the afternoon. I think it must be that the editors are sluggish after those long lunches and use the phone so they won't fall asleep at their desks. I am falling asleep at mine and the phone's ring jars me out of my torpor. My wits left me before noon, however, and I wonder at the cruelty of this inhuman system that allows the deer to sleep and subjects us humans to labor throughout the hottest part of the day.

  There are hotter places than the Ozarks this July, of course. And, we have more attractions to ward off the heat than other, less fortunate places. As long as you move slow, you won't burn up or suffer from heatstroke. These are the good days to float the rivers in a canoe or an innertube, to dawdle under a bluff or overhanging shade tree and splash your feet in the water.

  Fishing at dawn is not a bad idea, either, and if you're lucky you can limit out on trout before the mercury climbs up near the 100 mark. The bass and crappie like the deep murky places too and if you can find a shady spot up on one of the creek arms, you might just find some action with a deepwater lure or worm.

  I have been meeting a friend for tennis on Saturday mornings. We start playing at 6:00 a.m., before the sun is up over the horizon. After a couple of sets, we're ready for the showers. It's good exercise, a fine time to enjoy the relative cool of morning.

  Silver Dollar City is many things, but at heart it's a park, and there's lots of shade to protect you from the sun. The music shows, Shepherd of the Hills, Swiss Villa's outdoor amphitheater, for instance, all present their shows at night when the heat has begun to dissipate.

  So, these Ozarks hills have weapons to combat July's fire. Plenty of shade trees, lots of water, morning and evening breezes, a relatively temperate clime, make this region a better place to be in this month of long hot days than many others I could name.

  So, do not curse the heat, but find the darkness at noon. Drink plenty of cool water and stay in the shade. Early to bed and early to rise.

  Those are my prescriptions to ward off the effects of the fire in July.

  But I still yearn for that long afternoon nap in an air- conditioned room with not a phone ringing--anywhere in the world.

  Widow's Lamp

  THE ROOM WAS still and empty. Marianne Jennings sat alone and listened to the night sounds. A cow moaned in the moon-silvered pasture. In the kitchen, the cooling stove ticked a faint erratic pulse. The neighbor's beagle, Paco, barked four times. The bark shifted to a mournful howl and Marianne thought she could not stand such a sound. Not now.

  Tears boiled to steam in her eyes, spilled over the lower edges of her lids, coursed through the brown mascara, traced rusty streaks on her face. Lamplight flickered over her pale gray-blue eyes, eyes full of wistful shadows as if pain were a gauzy protoplasm, eyes that seemed to form trembling images in a watery developing tray.

  Moments before, she had answered the phone in the front room, listened to the hard, gravelly voice of the highway patrolman.

  "Mrs. Frederick Anthony Jennings?"

  "Yes."

  "This is Sergeant Jim Conley, ma'am, Missouri Highway Patrol..."

  God, she could hear him still, over and over, like a recording on an endless tape. She didn't know if Conley was his name. It could have been Connolly or Conroy or....Was "traffic fatality" a way of entering Fred's death into the statistical pool? She could almost hear the tv newsman in the morning saying "Nine people were killed on Missouri Roads yesterday." The inset icon would come on next to the announcer's cherubic face and people would brace themselves, wondering if they'd hear a friend's name, or a relative's.

  Then, shortly after, the call from the mortuary which she thought surely would awaken Martin. She hadn't realized the telephone was ringing for a
long time. The shock, maybe, the shock from the first call dulling her senses.

  "Bring a favorite suit, preferably dark, Mrs. Jennings, anytime after eight in the morning. Or, if you'd rather he wore..."

  She read the notes she had written down when the calls came, focused the scrawled letters through blurred pupils. Fred Jennings had been transported to the funeral home in Forsyth, the patrolman had told her. Her husband had fallen asleep at the wheel of his pickup truck on the way back from Protem. The man who had called said the vehicle had left the road, rolled. Fred's neck was broken; he had died instantly. He would never come home from his all-night fishing trip on Bull Shoals. Instead, he lay on a mortician's table, still and cold, his blue eyes closed forever, his magic smile....God, what was the name of the man who had called from the funeral parlor? How would they make him look? How would they preserve Fred's smile.

  She had left the lamp on, as she always did, so that he could see it when he drove up the lane. Now, there was no longer any need to leave the light burning. Somewhere between their home in Forsyth and Protem, there were skid marks, perhaps, streaks of rubber like blood on the tire-burned grasses that bordered the twisting, dangerous road.

  Yet the lamp burned like a comforting beacon and she thought of Fred and all the years they had had together. She thought of his quiet smile, the way shadows seemed to flicker on his lips as if he was too shy to smile. When he did smile, she felt it warm her, felt something melt around her heart. She felt his smile now, and it seemed to her that he was there in the room, looking at her with those soft cobalt eyes of his, eyes that told her of his tenderness, of the way he cared for her. Marian began to choke up with the remembering. Inside her throat, a knot swelled out of nothingness, the cords in her neck tautened. Tears welled up unbidden in her eyes. The lamp swam out of focus, the light wavered as if melting behind a scrim of gauzy fog.

  She thought of his hand on hers, warm and loving, freckled with age, delicately veined like marble sculptures, tanned from the sun. That hand of his. That sweet hand.

  What would she do without him? How would she stand the long nights, the endless days? Who would ever know her as Fred had known her? What would she tell their son, Martin, when he woke up? He had wanted to go with his dad, but had to work the late shift at the charcoal plant. He had come home exhausted, face blackened by smoke and charred wood, had eaten a late supper after his shower and gone to bed. She hadn't the heart to wake him just yet. He would take it hard. He worshiped Fred, worshiped him as a boy who had been an only child for seventeen years can worship a father, worshiped him as a friend.

  The sobs shook her again and she tried to stifle them, to keep them from ripping away all her self-control. But she could not stop the flood, could not ease the ache in her heart, could not halt the rush of self-pity that consumed her. What would she ever do without him? How she could face the emptiness in her life? How could she go to bed at night all alone?

  The lamp seemed to flare brightly again. She felt caught in its blatant roar, exposed, all of her thoughts exposed, her feelings illuminated in its harsh, searing light.

  She reached for the switch, pushed it in. The room swam in darkness for a moment. Then, the moon glazed the room with pewter, softened their bed, the bureau, Fred's boots in the corner. The lamp seemed to burn still, but the afterglow was only in her mind, she knew, raging there like some essence of her husband that would not die so quiet and voiceless, so final and quick.

  She stared through the window as if, by an effort of will, she could make Fred materialize, come bumping along the dirt road up to the house in his pickup truck, the headlamps bobbing up and down like phosphorous lanterns.

  One of the boards in the hallway squeaked, startling her. She heard the soft footfall, the click of the hallway light switch, the soft creak of the door on its hinges. She turned, saw the silhouetted form of her son. His shadow filled the doorway, blotting out the hallway glimmer. He came toward her, barefooted, still in his pajamas.

  He reached past her, pushed the switch on the lamp. The light came on and she saw his scrubbed face, the glaze of tears softening his blue eyes.

  "No need to turn it off so soon, Mom," he said, the husk in his voice low and startling, like his father's.

  He put his hand on hers and this startled her too. His hand, so warm, so comforting.

  "I heard it on the radio," he said. "I can't believe it."

  "Oh, Marty," she said and his name was like a sigh rushing out of her, like the coda at the end of a prayer of gratitude.

  He knelt beside her, and wordlessly, they both stared out the window. They could see their faces floating in the flame-threaded pane, tawny holographic images blurred against the velvet, moonshot darkness beyond the glass.

  "Yes," she whispered, "we should leave the lamp on. Dad would want us to leave it on."

  The lamplight glowed on her skin, warming the coldness out of her, warming her inside, warming her like sunshine, like the fresh new morning sun just beyond the darkness at the end of the lane.

  After Quail

  EARLY MORNING. Arkansas. Just south of Alpena. It's quiet, like a battlefield just before the guns open up. Just before the men move into their fighting positions.

  Eerie out there on the road. We come to the barbed wire fence.

  We pull the wire hoop off the post and open the gate. Duke, the German short-haired bird dog, has already crawled under the fence, leaving behind tufts of his hair, like trout flies, gray and brown hackles stuck to the barbs.

  We close the gate together. Then we jack shells into our shotguns. The morning sun spills through the trees, into the field. like running honey.

  My friend Dennis and I put some short yardage between us, stalk toward the gully, flow into it. It is overgrown, thick with cover. Looks good. We talk with our eyes, watch Duke as he sniffs the grass. The dew has been mostly burned off, but underneath, the gouts hold scent. We take hunters' positions. Our shotguns gleam dark blue in the sun. We wear camouflage outfits, shooting vests.

  We might have been Special Forces troops on patrol, sneaking through the jungles of Nam, or wading up a ravine in Korea that looks amazingly like Camp Pendleton, California.

  Shotgun shells weigh down our vests. Duke sniffs the ground ahead, ranges wide, like a wind-up toy, tail high, flickering. Quick as a ferret, he drifts far out, then back in, following invisible lines through the sheared remnants of alfalfa.

  We walk on a path, come to a clump of weeds and denuded berry tangles. Duke goes to point. He hunches forward, lifts his right paw, cocks it backward, nose into the brush.

  On point, Duke is rigid, a tan and white sculpture anchored to the earth. His tail is cocked high, his body slanted forward like some eternal 3-D photograph.

  We circle the brush, shotguns at the ready, safeties eased off. Behind me, the rest of the squad waits with nervous stomachs, M-16s oiled and gleaming. The patrol is fanned out slightly, the men's faces smudged with camo paint, black and olive and green smears that wipe out their identities.

  The thicket produces no birds. We encircle it, infiltrate it, stomp it impatiently. Duke sniffs out a new trail, disappears in the brush. We become ourselves again, just a pair of hunters out to bag some quail during the waning days of the season.

  A few minutes later, Duke goes into a point again. His tail juts high, crooks slightly into the bent arrow of a weather vane. His right foot cocks backward. A classic hunting dog pose. Currier Ives, Field Stream, Outdoor Life.

  Dennis and I step forward, flank the dog.

  "Easy, Duke," says Dennis as the dog begins to lean forward, his coat rippling over bone and muscle.

  Quail burst out of the thicket in a rattle of fluttering wings. They sound like stirred-up rattlesnakes. Dennis' 20-gauge double barrel coughs once. A bird crumples in mid-air. I sweep the 12-gauge pump over a bird's silhouette, spray him out of the air with a squeeze of the trigger. I pump a new shell into the chamber, angle on another bird. Too late, too far, but I fire anyway,
caught up in the thrill of the moment.

  Dennis picks up my bird. He can't find his. Duke points it, but the quail is invisible on the ground. Finally, Dennis reaches down, picks up the dead bird, drops it into a jacket pocket.

  The hills roll on before us. Duke ranges in a circle. We step after him to pick up the singles.

  It is a long morning, full of blood and smoke and feathers. It is a twenty-mile day and my forty-odd years drop from my shoulders like layers of shed skin. My cocker spaniel, Lady Kay, dead for more than twenty-five of those years, barks down the long halls of my memory.

  But that was back in Colorado, and there are no pheasants here in this northwest corner of Arkansas. There are no fields of wheat-stubble stretching to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

  There are just barely audible whispers of these old forgotten things as Duke pauses before another thicket, pointing at birds we cannot see.

  The silence, just before we flush the quail, is full of these whispers, a distance sussurance heard only in the mind.

  The boom of shotguns, feathers flying from shot quail, floating down to earth. This time the quail stay up a long time, the singles scattering wide, zooming clear to the bordering woods.

  We cross the ends of the earth tracking down the singles.

  A young brown face pops up beyond the rusted tangle of concertina wire. I cover his face with the muzzle of my M-1 carbine, take him out with a short squeeze of the trigger. He falls in the Korean ditch like a broken wing, lies there like a doll. Something clawed grabs my stomach. Something tightens around my chest, shutting off my breathing.

  Sweat drips into my eyes. My vision blurs. I see everything through a petroleumed camera lens, everything in soft focus.

  Dennis stops, looks back at me. He looks very young. He is young.

  "You all right?" Soft Arkansas drawl.

  I look around. It's late morning on the Williams farm. Plenty of game cover here. Fence rows. Thick clumps of brush in the gullies. We move in, Dennis and I, at angles.