On Agate Hill

by Lee Smith

  There sat the basket on top of the dresser — red bow ties for the rolling store, string ties for playing music. Three unopened packs of Camel cigarettes, loose change, a buckeye for luck. Too bad he had left it behind. I lay on the bed with the yellow satin shirt against my face.

  “Molly? Molly?” It was Clara and Betsy at the door, then in the kitchen, then I got up and went in and hugged them. Clara had brought me some of her apple stack cake which I love. “Why here now, let me make you some coffee to go with that,” Betsy said, and so she did, and we all sat down and had some, and it was good, but it was not the same. Something had happened while I was in jail, something which nobody had expected or caused or meant to happen. The family had closed up again, the way they did, and I wasn’t in it anymore. I had felt this in court but knew it now, sitting there in that kitchen, though they didn’t know it yet, chattering like jaybirds to fill the time and distance between us. They said that Biddle and Calvin were going to rebuild the store, that Biddle had gotten a bank loan to do it, though Uncle Hat had pitched a fit, as the family had never believed in bank loans. Betsy said that old Hat ought to think about which side his bread was buttered on, in her opinion.

  By the time they left, I was exhausted. I put my forehead down on the cold slick enamel of the kitchen table and kept it there until I knew what I must do.

  I got up and washed my face and put my hair up again and sat down in the big plaid armchair before the fire, Grandaddy Roscoe’s old chair. Here Jacky had sat with Christabel on his knee playing that game she loved so much. “This is the way the lady rides,” he’d start out jiggling her ever so gently, “trit, trot, trit, trot. This is the way the gentleman rides, boogety boogety boo,” a little harder so that she’d start giggling, and harder still until “THIS IS THE WAY THE ROWDY BOY RIDES, GALLOPING, GALLOPING, GALLOP!” with Christabel bouncing high and waving her hands, collapsed in delight.

  “Oh Jacky, that’s too rough,” I always said, and he always said, “Now goddamnit Molly, she loves it” — which she did — as she loved it when he tossed her way up in the air and caught her, a thing I could never stand to watch.

  It seemed to me that I could hear her happy cries yet, up in the dark eaves of the loft. I put some more logs on the fire which blazed up crackling. I remembered how she used to sit on the old rag rug with her little clothespin dolls, walking them to and fro, putting them to bed in their shoe box house.

  Though I had not yet been to bed myself, I felt as wide awake as I have ever been, looking all around my house which was not mine really, any more than it had ever been ours, any more than a person can lay claim to any place, for we are only passing through.

  I sat there to wait for BJ, who was not long in coming. I watched him through the window, limping across the hill, picking his way through all the rubble. Gone was the white shirt, Jacky’s red bowtie, the ill-fitting suit. Here was my own sweet BJ back again in his worn striped overhauls and old blue shirt and woolsey jacket, the same black hat jammed down on his head. First came his dragging step on the porch, then his red face in the wavy window. He saw me and froze. His face looked as I had never seen it, all lit up from within, and hopeful. A momentous thing had occurred. BJ had spoken, and it was clear that he was prepared to speak more.

  I stood up.

  He came in the door and stood there holding his hat, stopped by the look on my face, I guess, for I have never been able to pretend anything. After a minute he looked down, twisting the hat in his hands.

  “Thank you, BJ,” I said. I meant this from the bottom of my heart.

  He nodded, still looking down. “It wasn’t nothing,” he said.

  “It was,” I said. “And I have one more favor to ask you,” for suddenly I saw little Christabel running toward me across the rug, as in life, her plump arms outstretched, her face like a flower with its happy smile. She grabbed my skirt and hugged me so hard that I almost fell.

  It came to me in that moment.

  “BJ,” I said, “I can’t live here anymore, not after all that has happened. So I want you to promise me something. I want you to bring Icy and the children up here, and give them this house, and take care of them, for they are Jacky’s. They are yours. Will you do that for me?”

  He nodded, his Adam’s apple moved up and down. He pulled the hat way down on his head, the way he always wore it, and left, shutting the door softly behind him.

  Henry appeared three days later.

  “Mrs. Jarvis.” He inclined his head when I opened the door.

  “Call me Molly,” I corrected him, putting my hand out. “How are you, Henry?” He had not really changed, only shrunk and hardened somehow, as if carved from wood. He was dressed in a more regular fashion than before, brown pants and a woolen coat, his hair pulled back into a clasp beneath a black hat with a silver band that looked as if it might have belonged to Mister Black.

  “And how is Mister Black?” I asked. It had occurred to me that I might move into his cabin at Gum Branch if I didn’t move down to Jefferson. No one had used that cabin for years.

  “He is not well.” Henry’s accent would be hard to place. He reached into his coat, handed me a plain white sealed envelope, then went to the end of the porch and stood looking out across the gap while I read the short note. Mister Black’s familiar hand had grown crimped and shaky. He said that he had followed my situation with interest, and was pleased that justice had been served, and that he wished me well. He said that he knew it must have been an ordeal. He said he hoped it would not be an unwelcome imposition if he offered me some material assistance at this time, which Henry would be prepared to provide upon my request. The note was signed Your faithful servant, Simon Black, Agate Hill, North Carolina.

  “Agate Hill!” I ran over to Henry. “What does he mean, Agate Hill?”

  He smiled, his pointed teeth now dulled somewhat. Henry has a nice smile, actually, in spite of them. “Mister Black has owned Agate Hill ever since your departure. He purchased it for Mrs. Hall, feeling that your Uncle Junius would not want his wife and his unborn child to be cast out into such an uncertain future.”

  “Selena!” I cried. Everything tipped and whirled around me. “But did she stay on, then? Did she live there, with that — that — Nicky Eck?” I had never said his name before. “We heard that Agate Hill had been sold. Does she live there still?”

  “Oh no. Mrs. Hall had a restless soul, as you may recall.”

  I laughed. “That’s one way of putting it,” I said. “But Mister Black is there now? And he is ill, you said?”

  “Yes.” Henry looked very grave. “He is there now. He took it in mind to come, in fact he insisted on coming, though it is not a place fit for a gentleman such as himself — or indeed, for anybody.”

  I took a deep breath of the cold mountain air — the air up there on Plain View is the best in the world, Jacky always said. “Henry, have you got that money handy?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Jarvis.”

  “Molly,” I said. “Well, where is it?”

  He withdrew a pouch from inside his coat — how well I remembered those pouches of his.

  “I need it all,” I said.

  He took the sling off his neck and handed it to me.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Now come inside and wait while I pack up a few things, because I’m going back with you. I want to see Mister Black, and I want to visit Agate Hill again.”

  Henry’s eyes flickered. “That will not be necessary, Mrs. Jarvis,” he said. “In fact, it would be unwise. It is not a situation for a lady’s visit.”

  I had to laugh. “I am not a lady,” I said, “in spite of everything your master did to turn me into one. And now that I have gone through the fire, I believe I can do whatever I want.”

  This had just occurred to me. I have lived by it ever since.

  “As you wish.”

  I sat Henry down and gave him some coffee and the last of the apple stack cake. I packed some clothes. I put the leather pouch with the money and
a note for BJ in the middle of the kitchen table with a rock on top, so they would notice.

  As we left, I twisted around on the carriage seat to look back just before we disappeared into the trees, for I have always fancied that I could see the whole wide curve of the earth at that moment, stretching across the bald. There it was. It was enough. I thought of my stone babies upon their mountain, and Jacky in his grave. The family would buy a stone for Jacky later, Calvin and Biddle would see to it, I knew, though I doubted that it would keep him put, for he was a traveling man. I had to smile. I remembered how, as a girl, I thought that I could not leave Agate Hill, that I could not leave my ghosts. Now I understood that love does not reside in places, neither in the Capulets’ tomb nor the dales of Arcady nor the Kingdom by the Sea nor in any of those other poems that Mary White and I read so long ago, love lives not in places nor even bodies but in the spaces between them, the long and lovely sweep of air and sky, and in the living heart and memory until that is gone too, and we are all of us wanderers, as we have always been, upon the earth. I was free to go.

  My heart beat like a hammer in my chest as we started up Agate Hill from the river on the last long leg of our journey. It was a cold, sunny late afternoon. I had insisted upon riding up on the seat next to Henry, so I could see better. Everything looked familiar and not familiar — all the fields entirely overgrown now so that the lane ran along through a thick woods like a wall on either side. The cedar grove was enormous, a pointy fairy tale forest like an immense dark pine-scented cathedral inside, with only a few dim rays of sunshine piercing the roof of branches.

  “A person could live in here,” I said to Henry, and he agreed. We had become very companionable during our journey, though as always he kept a certain distance.

  We rode out blinking into the sunlight again. The big barn had fallen in upon itself into a pile of boards. The gin and the sawmill had disappeared entirely into a tangle of briers. The circle was all but overgrown with weeds. To my surprise, the house itself looked much smaller than I remembered, not a grand house at all but an ancient farmstead set upon its windswept ridge in the last of the sun, the brow of the hill rising behind it. My Indian Rock would still be warm from the sun. I was dying to run up there.

  “Now you understand.” Henry turned to me. “Agate Hill is almost gone.”

  “Why did he come, then?”

  Henry smiled. “You will see.”

  No dogs barked, no one ran out as we approached. The urns had toppled and broken. “Are there no servants, then?” I asked, and Henry bared his pointed smile again. “You forget. I am the servant.” He climbed down and tied the horses to the old iron ring.

  I couldn’t wait. I jumped down from the carriage and ran up on the piazza. The door gave inward groaning at my touch. “Mister Black!” I called into the dim and dusty hall, filled with its jumble of boxes and boots and old furniture and God knows what all, its staircase curving into the gloom above. “Mister Black!”

  “Henry?” the low voice came from the middle room, Uncle Junius’s old study.

  I opened the door. Simon Black stood up slowly from the chair closest to the hearth where he had been sitting. His book slipped down to the floor. Despite Henry’s dire predictions, he did not look much changed to me, wearing a loose white gaucho shirt and black trousers and carpet slippers, though I suppose I had never seen him before without those boots. His white hair flowed down to his shoulders, his white brows made a single formidable line across his forehead. He rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. I was filled with a deep, thudding sense of anticipation. Well, I thought. I have been waiting for this. It was the last thing left to happen to me.

  “Alice,” he whispered.

  “No. It is Molly,” I said. “Her daughter.”

  “Of course. Mrs. Jarvis,” he said, holding out his arms in the white flowing shirt, an entirely unexpected gesture. He looked like a saint in a stained-glass window. “Welcome. I had hoped to see you again.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I would have come sooner, if I had known. I don’t believe that I have ever thanked you properly for what you have done for me over the years. For us,” I said, meaning Jacky and everyone up at Plain View.

  “It has been my pleasure,” he said, “as well as my obligation. Fulfilling an obligation is the greatest pleasure a man like myself can take, so it is I who should be thanking you.” This speech seemed to exhaust him, but before I could suggest that he sit back down, an extraordinary little personage darted past me and slipped under Simon Black’s shoulder to support him.

  At first I thought it was a girl, then a boy — then a child — then with a start I realized it was a grown man, though it was very hard to tell. He was quite short in stature, with short arms and stocky legs, like a baby doll or a gingerbread man. He had an unusually large round head covered all over by dark curls, and a round swarthy face with round eyes veiled by a kind of white film, like cotton. His eyes were shocking.

  “Why, who in the world is this?” I cried — and he turned his head toward me, cocking it like a robin, the huge white eyes unblinking. I realized he was blind. Later I would learn that he is not totally blind, for he can see light, and distinguish movement. His hearing is extraordinary. That day, the day of my arrival, he wore muddy boots — the entire floor was muddy — and torn work jeans and Uncle Junius’s old burgundy velvet smoking jacket which hung down to his knees.

  “This is my little man,” Simon Black said, my old fear of him falling away entirely in that instant.

  “But who is he?” I asked.

  “Selena’s son. He has lived on this place all his life. His name is Juney.”

  “For Junius?” I asked.

  “His full name is Solomon Junius Hall,” Simon Black said, and Juney smiled at the sound of his name, a smile of incredible sweetness, like a small child. Now I remembered Selena’s yellow vomit in the snow, how she had said, “You will have one yourself sometime,” and how small her baby was, and how he had cried and cried.

  I stepped closer.

  “Hello Juney,” I said. “I am Molly.”

  “Molly,” he said like a parrot, still smiling, his blank eyes trained upon my face.

  “Molly Petree,” I said.

  “Molly Petree,” he said, then ran his hands quickly all over my face with the lightest skittering touch, like a hummingbird. I found myself closing my eyes, just for a second, giving myself over to it. I swayed and nearly fell. I felt entirely refreshed when I came back to myself.

  “How long will you be with us, then? I am afraid that our accommodations —” Simon Black said, and I saw with a start that tears stood in his eyes. “That is, we have no accommodations. We are here only briefly. But pardon me, you must be exhausted. I am not sure what we have in the way of food, either —”

  “Oh, nevermind.” I took off my cloak. “I am a pretty fair cook myself. Surely we will find something. Henry, take my bag up wherever you can find a bed in one piece. And Juney, you come with me.”

  He turned his sweet radiant face back and forth between us in a question.

  “To the kitchen,” I said. “You will show me,” and Simon Black, now settled again in his chair, gave him a little shove.

  Thus we went out, me with my hand on Juney’s solid shoulder, fingering the soft velvet, through the dark cold passage to a tiny ramshackle kitchen, indescribably filthy and cluttered, which had been built onto the platform at the back of the house. Whatever Henry’s skills might be as a servant, apparently they did not extend to kitchen work. Liddy’s old kitchen house stood abandoned in the back, its door ajar.

  “Wood,” I said to Juney, who showed me the woodbox. I started stuffing sticks into the stove. I pulled open a pantry door at random. “Where is —” I turned to ask Juney, but he had disappeared. I wondered — as I have often wondered since — if I would ever see him again. I found a pan, a pile of china plates, a big wooden bowl, two crystal goblets, and an old tin cup. Then suddenly there was Juney balanc
ing a slab of bacon, a cabbage with the dirt still attached, and an apple pie, grinning his big grin. It was a perfect apple pie. I couldn’t imagine where he had gotten it. It was as if he had produced it out of thin air, by magic. I clapped my hands. “Perfect!” I said. “This is wonderful!”

  Juney put everything down on the table, and clapped his hands too.

  • • •

  May 2, 1927

  That was twenty years ago, Dear Diary.

  Are you surprised, old friend?

  I’m still here, like Aunt Mitty who came to take supper with Mama Marie and never left, and for the same reason. Need is a powerful thing for a woman, maybe the most powerful thing that there is.

  I have waited twenty years to come back into this cubbyhole, years which have passed in the twinkling of an eye, as in the Bible. But now the time has come for me to tell the rest of the story, for it is a love story too, as are all stories, in the end.

  The time has come, and Juney knows it too, though we do not speak of these things.

  The old green dress which hides the entrance to this cubbyhole fell apart at my touch — disintegrated! Oh now it is certainly time. I ducked through the low door feeling that I too might explode. Yet it was not as hard as you might think for I am such a little old woman now. I have shrunk to the size of a child again, I can still sit here in my fairy tale chair, and you may take Willie’s little white chair, which you will remember. I had another friend too once, her name was Mary White, do you recall? But she is gone now, off into the world of light. Oh it was all so long ago. And yet here is that bad girl Molly stuck forever in this notebook, bursting from its pages. I thought I would not know her anymore, and yet I find that I am her, just as wild and full of spite and longing as ever, as I still am. For an old woman is like a child, but more than a child, for I know what I know yet I feel exactly the same in my heart. These young girls don’t know that, do they? It would surprise them. But that thing does not wear out, I could tell them. I could tell those girls a thing or two.