“Yes sir,” Charlie replied. “I want to take a look at that bull.”
“Better be careful. You’ve heard about him, haven’t you?”
“Yes sir, I’ll be careful.”
Later Mr. Dudley said that he had wondered about the wisdom of that trip. He knew all about the army horse’s habits. But Charlie was fourteen and had been riding around alone since he was eight, so Mr. Dudley thought no more about it.
Five o’clock came and people began pulling into the store on the way home. Matthew and Robert were inside getting a Pepsi when Mr. Dudley let out a holler and everyone rushed to the door to see the army horse running wide open on the way home without Charlie. The horse was whinnying in the hysterical way horses do when they think they’re lost because they don’t have a rider and the reins are flapping and the stirrups are banging on their sides. By a miracle the horse made it across the highway without being hit by a car or truck. Mr. Dudley told Matthew and Robert about Charlie going to see the bull, and they were out the door on the way to the Corn House before he stopped talking.
They found him in the middle of the road at its intersection with the lane to the Corn House. He was half awake, leaning on his hands, but sitting up. Blood was running down his face from a scalp wound. He looked up at Matthew and smiled.
“Hi.”
Matthew was so furious he told us that he thought he would explode. He just couldn’t believe that Charlie had done one of his things again. Or that there were any of his things left to do. Matthew used little profanity in his life, but if a count had been kept, a significant part of it would have to be given over to Charlie.
“Charlie, what in the name of God have you done to yourself this time!” Matthew’s words came out in a torrent. There was fear, too. What if the kid had fractured his skull?
Robert was chuckling. “Better move him off the road, Matthew, before someone come along and runs us all over.”
So they picked him up and put him in the backseat of Matthew’s ’36 Ford sedan on some feed sacks. They stopped at the store to tell Mr. Dudley they had found Charlie and that he would probably be all right.
Gretchen arrived at home to see Matthew’s car in the back driveway. She had a sudden premonition and rushed into the house to find Charlie on the couch in the living room on a feed sack to keep from ruining the slipcover. He had stopped bleeding and was wide awake and telling his story. Gretchen didn’t interrupt. She stood in the door and listened. But her face was stark white. The boy was a mess. With blood all over his front from the scalp wound.
Charlie, as was his habit, told the story with his old urgency to Matthew—not his mother. “I opened the gap the man made behind our barn. It was two boards tied to steel posts with bale string. I tied them back pretty low so if I needed to get out of there in a hurry, I wouldn’t have any trouble jumping it. I found the herd right at the top of the hill. Matthew, you would-n’t believe that bull …”
Here Matthew looked as if he were going to interrupt, but seemed to think better of it, and Charlie continued.
“He looks twice as big as one of the cows. And he has tiny eyes. He looked up at me and didn’t move. Like he was expecting me, or something. Then he did that moaning they do and pulled some dirt back with a front foot and flipped it over his back. I tell you that bull scared me.”
Gretchen broke in, “At least you had that much sense!” which was so unusual that Charlie and the two men glanced at her. She was completely cool.
“Well anyway, the horse snorted, and I thought I’d better get out of there right then. But I didn’t gallop, I trotted back toward the gap so the damn horse wouldn’t get away from me. Well, anyway, as soon as I turned the horse, the bull came after me. And by the time we got to the gap, that bull was serious—Matthew, he is huge! So I jumped the gap and looked back over my shoulder to be sure the bull didn’t jump, too. Well, he didn’t, but while I was looking back, the horse got the bit and was gone. I mean, he ran away with me. There wasn’t anything I could do except bail out, and I was scared to do that. So when he got to the hard road I was still with him. He turned sharp left, his feet went out from under him, and down we went. And smacked my head on the road. I guess it knocked me out. The next thing I remember is you and Robert and feeling the blood running down my face—”
That was enough for Gretchen. Matthew said he had never seen her so angry—and flushed now, where she had been pale before. “Go out and get in the car, Charlie. And take that feed sack with you so you don’t bleed all over the seats.”
There was no question about her tone of voice. Charlie went.
“Will you take care of the horse, Matthew? Just catch him and get the tack off and turn him out. I’ll worry about him later.”
So off they went to the emergency room. Charlie had a concussion and would have to stay in bed for two days, but the wound was just a scalp wound. The doctor said it was amazing that Charlie could remember what had happened considering the blow to the head he got. We laughed when we heard that idea, because Charlie would have kept that story in his head come hell or high water—just so he could tell it to Matthew and upset his mother.
Still, even after he recovered from his bull adventure, he looked pretty grim. A little like after the mule died. Or just after the funeral. Like he was grieving. We didn’t know how he acted at school, but around the village, he just looked sad.
Fall passed, and in January there was a hard freeze, the time of wood smoke, and crows calling in the distance. And in spite of Billy’s forebodings, hog killing went on. There were lots of hogs. On the appointed Monday, the steam rose again from the scalding tub, Billy did his dance, and the lights and windpipes were thrown across the wires as always. Monday and Tuesday morning Charlie saw the steam rising. He got on the bus as usual. Tuesday evening, just as it was getting dark, he went to the store for Gretchen. The men had finished for the day and were sitting on stump ends around a fire they had built. They were in a close circle around the fire. Charlie slipped into the circle without a sound and sat down next to Matthew. There was a jug going around and it had stopped with Robert who took a long pull just as Charlie arrived. Then Robert hunched forward as if to ward off the cold, the jug dangling in one hand between his legs, head down.
No one said a word. Then, without lifting his head, he swung it to his left to look at Charlie. The way he swung his head you could tell he was drunk. And suddenly he was off the stump and slumped in front of Charlie, leaning on his arms. His face got closer and closer, until Charlie must have felt the heat of his breath and smelled the whiskey. The circle froze, everyone staring, waiting to see what Robert would do, knowing that the time had finally come. Charlie tried to look toward Matthew, but he was somehow unable to pull his eyes away from Robert, whose face in shadow was featureless and menacing. It was as if everyone had stopped breathing—waiting. Then right into Charlie’s face, but speaking to Matthew, he said, “I done told you for years not to let the little white son of a bitch come around us. But you never would listen … Well, it don’t matter now. He’s gone. He just done growed out of us. Another year we won’t see him no more … He may be sitting here now, but he gone sure enough. Gone at last. At last!” He laughed his choppy laugh and raised his left arm.
Matthew’s huge hand shot out and gripped the skinny arm. In his quiet voice, he said, “No more, Robert. You done said enough.”
And for an instant, silence. And then Robert wob-bled once and slumped forward right into Charlie’s lap. Charlie jumped up, horror on his face, leaving Robert passed out on the ground. Then he turned and started toward the store.
“Charlie!” called Matthew. “Charlie!”
But the boy kept walking. In the iron January night, with a breeze springing up from the north, maybe bringing snow—too cold for hounds to run tonight— walking back toward the store, away from hog killing and the branch where he had been baptized. Walking up the hill, the other way, across the railroad.
And Matthew didn’t call again.
&nb
sp; Coda Circles
I have no memory of why I was in the creek behind our barn that Sunday morning, barefoot. I guess I just found myself there. I do know about the barefoot part, though. I didn’t wear shoes during the summer, except to church, or at least I didn’t until I was fourteen and we had left the Corn House and the farm for good. I was twelve that Sunday morning and it was May. School would be out soon and summer starting, everything blooming, everything alive and chirping, or cooing or buzzing. Even the pony, looking over the fence at me, dozing in the late spring warmth, shone gray and fat after the winter’s red mud and short grass.
So I was in the creek barefoot when I stepped on him. I say “him.” I don’t know which sex, really. But there was one damn sure thing—that snake was not an “it.” He was three circles buried in the mud and water grass of the pool. He was still thin from the long winter. His backbone protruded above his body, and the skin was loose and moving as I pulled my foot away when the circles stirred under my weight—the way a snake does when you step on him. Not in fear exactly. I was startled. That’s all.
I grabbed hold of a willow branch and pulled myself out of the creek and, glancing over my shoulder, went through the back door of the barn. There was an old rusty bucket hanging on the wall with the pitchfork next to it. Finding him a second time turned out to be a job. Finally I just waded around some more until I stepped on him again. Then I carefully slid the fork under the water to pick him up. He came up out of the water ready to travel, flowing over the tines like quicksilver, insubstantial, but there nonetheless. But not for long unless I did something quick. Just as he was about to drop off the fork, I had the bucket ready and in he went. He didn’t try to escape; he coiled up again, making his circles in the bottom of the bucket as I watched. He looked just like any other snake to me. Not black, but almost black. No rattlesnake or copperhead markings. Just an almost-black snake. I hadn’t been taught about pit vipers and diamond-shaped heads. It had just never come up.
But I was interested, so off I went to the house. It must have looked like a Norman Rockwell painting— the spring morning with honeysuckle and multiflora rose coming to bloom, the pony looking over the fence, and the kid in blue jeans, no shoes, and a hand-me-down white shirt, carrying a bucket, which the casual observer would have thought contained worms for a fishing expedition. The Sunday morning voices on the porch—domestic and secure—carried even as far as the creek behind the barn.
The ground-level screened-in porch was at the front of the house, which itself had been built for storing corn from the days when the farm was a real farm. When my father made the arrangement with Professor James to convert the building into a real house, there was no plumbing and no electricity. During the course of the first six months we lived there, my father installed a drain field, piped water from the spring-house, wired the place, painted it, built a bathroom and a kitchen. He decorated the kitchen with drawings in the Pennsylvania Dutch style called Peter Hunt. The resulting cottage was acknowledged by everyone to be a little “gem,” in Gretchen’s phrase.
So we found ourselves dug deep in the central Virginia countryside. Toward the end of her life, Gretchen once asked me if I remembered why we had come to Virginia in the first place. But I couldn’t, and she, typically, got irritated at me for not knowing. How was I to know? I had been six when it happened. I do know that my father was in the worst of the Pacific invasions as a lieutenant on that 150-foot gunboat, was decorated, and only spoke once of what had happened beyond the mere facts. So there we were—two city parents and me, a kid absolutely ready for the whole experience.
My father remains a shadow. As I said, he did the Corn House with his own hands, as he did the remodeling of our second house. He stopped the wild-fire and saved a lot of people from ruin. He liked the countryside, but he never became part of it. He felt compelled to be involved with manufacturing as an executive and that forced him to spend much of his time away from home. There was no manufacturing around us then. After all, our country was Mr. Jefferson’s country. But that was changing, too.
The church was my father’s thing, that and two or three deep friendships—and ideas. He had ideas about the way things should be, which he expressed with vehemence that increased as the amount of drink he had taken in increased. Usually the ideas were perfectly sensible, but his opinionated way of telling them put people off.
At the appropriate time in my life, we fought like mad, but his memory has turned soft and the ideas of his I remember are gentle and understanding. Like the time when I was sixteen, in love and jilted, he took me up to one of the overlooks in the mountains, parked the car, and as we looked at the spectacular view of our home countryside, told me very quietly that he understood my pain. He said that the pain was real and that the soupy popular song that went, “They tried to tell us we’re too young,” was true, that love at sixteen, puppy love, was among the strongest of all human emotions. He said that I would get over it, but for now it just hurt. And even though he was imparting one of his ideas, it is a memory sweet beyond telling.
Now when I look at the age spots on my hands, I see his hands. He was dark. I remember his face in shadow. I have his same hooked nose. He was a church-man. In the early years, many mornings he served at the altar when there were just the angels, the arch -angels, the rector, his housekeeper, and my father in the church.
Of his friends, William Archer, the rector of the Episcopal church in the village, was the closest. Father Will—which is what I called him before I started calling him Uncle Will, much to everyone’s amazement— was from an old New England private school family. His father had been the famous Episcopal priest headmaster of a famous Episcopal boy’s prep school that for generations had pumped out Ivy Leaguers who then became, as used to be said, captains of industry and government, especially foreign affairs. This career, particularly the State Department part, had been decreed for Will from an early age, with becoming a “school man” a distant second. As hardheaded in his way as his father, Will opted for the school part. He got as far as becoming a priest. And then to his father’s great displeasure, after seminary (where he soaked up C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, and the Oxford movement and became an Anglo-Catholic), he ended up as a missionary to the people of the Blue Ridge Mountains. He was remarkably successful in this for one so sophisticated and urbane. One of the reasons was was that the men and boys of each mission became servers. Will was a near genius at making men and boys feel the drama of the Eucharist and that they were playing a vital role in this calling down of God to a specific place and moment. Somehow he got his people to make a leap beyond the preaching tradition they were familiar with, into the world of the Anglican Mass.
Sometimes it took hold in curious ways. There was a sheriff in one of the mountain counties who made the sign of the cross before he ate lunch in the single restaurant in his county seat, much to the horror of the natives, although they would have been hard put to say why the sign of the cross shocked them. But people got used to even this.
After fifteen years on the circuit, the mission church in our village became a parish and Will was called to be rector. He never left. As was his custom, he persuaded the boys and some of the men to become servers.
At some point in Will’s life there had been a great love. I never knew the whole story, just that she had been in one of the girls’ colleges of New England while Will was at Yale. Whatever happened, he remained a bachelor for the rest of his life. He was a tall, skinny man. Really skinny. The first time you saw him, you thought he must be dying of something. If so, it took thirty-eight years from my first memory of him for it to happen. The way he stood, usually with a cigarette in his hand and one hip cocked, exuded irony. Or maybe I mean humor—with a smile, but the kind of smile that overlays sorrow, like the loss of his love or the mornings at the altar when nothing happened and God was so distant you could barely see him, even in your praying eye.
It became his habit to come to our house for a drink after church and so
metimes he stayed for lunch. At the time, the fashion was martinis, which my father mixed with great panache. It makes my stomach shrivel to think of those drinks. Even then they both drank too much.
They were like brothers in the struggle for faith, a struggle that never left either of them and that they passed on to me. Once when Charles and Gretchen were going on a trip, I became Will’s godson by virtue of a paper Gretchen made him sign saying that if anything happened to them Will would raise me and that provisions had been made, etc., etc. The thought of suddenly inheriting a twelve-year-old, let alone me, made Will blanch, and me smile.
So those are the characters and the scene. One more thing, though. For those of you—as I was—not in a sufficient state of grace to know what “cottonmouth” means, it refers to the dramatically white membranes on the inside of the water moccasin’s mouth in contrast to his dark body. The cottonmouth has little holes on the side of his head that are called pits—hence, a pit viper. He is very poisonous but not particularly bad-tempered if let alone.
The screen door had an old-fashioned spring-loaded stop on it that made a clunk as I opened it. The snake made one of his regular strikes at my hand just as the three of them looked up at the sound of the door.
“Where the hell did you get that goddamn snake, Charlie?” yelled—I mean really yelled—my father.
Gretchen screamed and Will jumped up, spilling his fragile martini. By that time Daddy had crossed the intervening fifteen feet, knocked the bucket from my hand, knocking me down in the same motion, fortunately not where the snake fell. The bucket landed on its side, of course, and the next instant we had a three-and-a-half-foot cottonmouth moccasin flowing around the enclosed ten-by-seventeen-foot porch, looking for a way out where there was none, herding the people in front of him. That is, all except my father who had hotfooted it out of there to the out-house, which had been converted to a toolshed, to get some implement to kill—not maim, kill—this creature that had intruded on our tranquil Sunday world.
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