The Madman of Piney Woods

by Christopher Paul Curtis

  Maybe it was the woods telling me, but that was the place.

  Father said, “Is it in thick forest?”

  “No, sir, it’s a clearing.”

  “OK, you go get the horses. I’ll get a couple picks and shovels. How far off is it?”

  “About three miles.”

  “All right,” Father said. “Mr. Mayor, you get home to your family till we come. Me and Benji’s gonna dig the grave. TooToo, you telegraph Chatham and see if Red can be here early tomorrow morn. The sooner we get this done, the better.”

  We hugged again and went our separate ways to do what we needed to help the Madman of Piney Woods, Uncle Cooter, go home the way he wanted.

  Grandmother O’Toole was gone when I woke up.

  The house had been quiet and peaceful in the days since.

  I’m certain neither Father nor I missed the tinkling of the northern Irish cane bell, but after the third day, Father began to worry.

  He’d made some inquiries, and finally Great-Aunt Margaret sent a telegram from Windsor, saying that Grandmother O’Toole was there safe and would be staying for a while.

  I don’t know what prevented me from talking with Father about what happened until the morning of the fourth day. I suppose Father had been waiting for me to bring it up, and I for him.

  I’d made our breakfast and sat at the table.

  I didn’t realize how angry I was at Grandmother O’Toole until I started speaking.

  With no preamble whatsoever, just as a forkful of scrambled eggs was about to disappear in my mouth, I dove into it.

  “Father. It doesn’t make sense. She told me there were things you had to twirl the cat to learn, but she’s twirled the cat over and over again in her life and has learned nothing.

  “She’s twirled the cat about poverty, yet she hates poor people. She’s twirled the cat about being mistreated because of one’s circumstances, yet she hates me because my hair is red and hates anyone whose skin is darker than ours. She’s twirled the cat about being beaten, yet she would club me to death if it weren’t for the cane bell.”

  I slammed my fork on the table.

  “Doesn’t it seem only logical that if a person has been through all of the grief she has, they’d have nothing but compassion for anyone else who’s been through the same? Shouldn’t that make her realize firsthand what a horrible predicament other people are in? Who but an uncaring beast would heap more anguish onto someone else who’s also been downtrodden? Who but a monster would inflict the same unfair pain that they’d been exposed to upon another human being?”

  Father said nothing, but nodded again and again.

  He was allowing me to vent my spleen, and I really wanted to. The fact that he didn’t stop me encouraged me to go on.

  “She should be institutionalized immediately! There’s no need for me to visit which asylum she’ll go to. If you force me to pick, I’ll choose the one that is the absolute worst. None of them could possibly be harsh enough to punish her.”

  I knew exactly what Father’s next four words would be. I’d worked myself up into such a lather, he had almost no choice but to say in a heavy Irish brogue, “Ah, Alvin, me lad –”

  I interrupted, “I must warn you, Father, I shall not easily be talked out of my anger.”

  Father looked very serious. “I have no intention of talking you out of the way you feel, son. If that’s what you’re expecting me to do, we can end the conversation here and chat about the weather. If, however, you and I try to understand together what is behind your grandmother’s deplorable actions and deplorable condition, that we may be able to accomplish.”

  Father knew what I needed. I felt like begging him, Please, let’s do that, but I only nodded.

  “Alvin, I believe it all boils down to fear. Your grandmother is the most frightened person I’ve ever known.”

  “But, Father, what does she have to be afraid of?”

  “Ah, son, I’d have to be much brighter than I am to know that. I only know that fear is a great corrupter. And I’m afraid that given enough time, fear is the great killer of the human spirit.

  “She’s only opened the door a crack and allowed you to see a mere fraction of the horrors she’s lived through. And though we may try, there’s simply no way we’ll ever be able to understand or be able to say we would have responded in a manner any different than she did.”

  Father put his fork down.

  “I never imagined I’d tell you this, Alvin, but right after your dear mother passed away, there was a long conversation about Grandmother O’Toole coming to stay here in Chatham and help raise you. I had serious, serious doubts, son. I know this fear she is infected with is something that fights to keep itself alive; it wants to be passed from mother and father to daughter and son and on and on and on. It lasts for countless generations.”

  Father’s voice cracked. “I loved your mother so much and was horribly lost back then, Alvin, horribly.”

  My heart broke for Father and at the same time a huge wave of shame swept over me. I’d always known how powerful my longing for Mother was, yet I’d never considered that Father was going through the same thing, or, and it seemed impossible knowing the depth of my own feelings of loss, his pain was perhaps even more raw and jagged. He’d loved her longer and knew her much better than I could have in the five years she was with me.

  Father recovered, saying, “I didn’t know if I wanted Mother O’Toole to be anywhere near you. But I did need help. Even though I was destroyed, I reasoned that since your grandmother’s fear hadn’t poisoned your mother, there was an excellent chance it wouldn’t poison you either.

  “You, Alvin, are the proof I was right. You, my beloved son, are the evidence that the human spirit is strong and resilient, that given a chance, without interference from so many of the indignities life pours upon us, our spirits want to soar. Want to love.

  “Yes, for whatever the reasons, sometimes, as in Mother O’Toole’s case, the spirit has cringed in the face of the horrors that have gnawed at it. It has slowly folded in upon itself, waging an unending war, fighting demons real and imagined, turning into exactly what it is that has so horribly scarred it, condensing and strengthening and dishing out the same hatred that it has experienced. These things happen.

  “But some of the time, son, the opposite happens and we end up with Alvin Stockard. We are surprised and gladdened to look up and after thirteen years we have you.

  “Someone who is kind, and loving and gentle.

  “Someone who is proof that, though strong, hatred cannot endure.

  “Someone who is not only my strength, but who is the hope for the future. The hope and the evidence that the Grandmother O’Tooles of the world can be overcome.”

  “Oh, Father.”

  It was childish of me and probably quite embarrassing for Father, but I left my chair and sat in his lap.

  Father wrapped his arms around me, touseled my hair, and kissed the top of my head.

  The beat of his heart comforted me beyond measure.

  “Alvin, I don’t know if she’s coming back. If she does, fine; if she doesn’t, that’s fine as well. But as I’ve told you, we must remember she gave birth to the best part of both of us. For that, we are in her debt.

  “And perhaps you can see her in the way I’ve chosen to. I choose to believe she has grandly taken a bullet, Alvin, not so much for me but for you. I choose to believe that so much pain and fear and hatred have racked her tiny body that perhaps the universe has said, ‘Enough! It ends here,’ and has taken pity and has not exposed her children and her children’s children to quite as much.”

  I love my father a great deal. I know he is a very wise, very intelligent man. However, I choose to believe he didn’t get to be this way on his own. I choose to believe much of what he’s passed on to me were lessons learned from my mother. I choose to believe I have two loving parents wrapped in one.

  * * *

  Later that night, there was a knock at the front
door.

  “Evening, Judge. Telegram.”

  Father took the telegram from Mr. Dones.

  “Oh, dear, Alvin.”

  I read the news.

  “What should I do, Father?”

  “I suppose you should go to the stables to borrow a horse, then get directly to bed so you can leave here by four thirty in the morning.”

  The forest became so thick that me and Father had to tie the horses and, carrying the picks and shovels, walk the final two hundred yards to the spot.

  Father entered the round clearing first. “It is beautiful, son. I don’t know how many times I’ve been near here and never noticed this.”

  “I know, unless you know what you’re looking for, you’d walk right by it. I’m going to ask Red to try to find out why the trees won’t grow in this circle.”

  “So this is where y’all come when you and Spencer run off into the woods.”

  “No, sir, I’ve never brought Spencer or anyone else here. You’re the first person I’ve shown this to.”

  “Well, I’m flattered, Benji, and I bet your Uncle Cooter would approve.”

  “I think he would.”

  Father said, “Should we lay him in the centre or closer to the woods?”

  “I think the centre. There won’t be as many roots.”

  I used the shovel to scrape away some of the carpet of dead leaves in the middle of the clearing.

  Father was still looking up, admiring the trees.

  “It’s like church in here.”

  “Father! Come!”

  As I used the shovel edge to move away the dead leaves, I found a spot where the earth had already been disturbed.

  Father came to me.

  “Look.”

  He said, “Looks like some animal decided this was a good place to bury something too, Benji.”

  “Only raccoons and foxes will bury their food, Father. This area is much too big.”

  Father said, “Well, let’s just move off over here.”

  He pointed a short distance away.

  “Wait, I want to see.”

  I dug into the loose soil. After going down only a foot, the shovel struck something. At first I thought it was a root.

  I dug again. This time a piece of the root broke off. I bent over. It was too dry and too white to be a root. I picked the piece up.

  It was an antler.

  I smiled.

  I shoveled the dirt back over the spot.

  “Father, this is exactly where he’d want to be buried.”

  We began to dig right next to the Old Grandfather of the woods.

  The place Mr. Bixby had chosen to be buried was beautiful. Huge trees ringed a clearing where Benji and his father had dug a deep hole, a pile of dirt and a gray canvas cocoon waiting by the side.

  There were probably twenty of us who had made the journey to pay our last respects. The ages seemed to range from a woman in her nineties, who had been carried from where we’d tied our horses, to a quiet, darling, fat-faced baby. I couldn’t help noticing I was the only white person to come.

  Ropes were used to lower the canvas shroud into the hole.

  Mr. Freeman, the mayor of Buxton, was holding the baby. He said, “Cooter asked that this be short and simple, and it will be. He asked that a few of us say some things to help him over.

  “This is a lesson for me that’s too late for the learning, but for the young ones here, for Patience and Timothy, for Alvin and Benji, for my son, little Levon David Freeman, don’t wait. If your heart is directing you to do a kindness, to reach a hand out, don’t wait.

  “He who hesitates is lost.”

  He scooped up a handful of dirt and held his palm open so the baby could take some as well. He tossed what was left in his hand onto the shroud; the baby did the same.

  The mayor hung his head and said, “Hope.”

  Benji’s mother said, “Uncle Cooter was always kind. Even when storms raged in him that we knew nothing about, his kindness never left him. He’ll be missed.”

  She threw dirt on the shroud and said, “Mrs. Solomon.”

  The woman who had been carried here walked carefully to the grave. Hers were the only dry eyes in the circle.

  For such a frail, elderly woman, her voice was strong.

  “We loved this boy. And he knowed it. It’s time to let him be.”

  Someone handed her some of the earth and she dropped it into the hole.

  Once Benji and his father and the mayor and I filled the hole, all the mourners held hands in a circle around the fresh grave.

  Benji’s mother started the song, her voice a beautiful soprano:

  Down in the valley, the valley so low

  Hang your head over, hear the wind blow

  Hear the wind blow, dear, hear the wind blow

  Hang your head over, hear the wind blow.

  Roses love sunshine, violets love dew

  Angels in Heaven know I love you

  Know I love you, dear, know I love you

  Angels in Heaven know I love you …

  I didn’t know the words, but the tune was familiar. I recognized it as the song the mayor and Benji told me Mother’s “Cradle Song” reminded them of.

  The song echoed eerily through the circle until it sounded as though we were singing a round.

  For seconds after the last chorus, we were bombarded by gently fading music.

  We left Mr. Bixby to his eternal rest.

  A month had passed since we’d buried Uncle Cooter.

  Nothing changed.

  Even though now that school had started and I’d only work there on weekends, Miss Cary kept me running out of her office with “Now, off you go,” Wimpy was still teaching me the strange language of printing, Pay and Stubby were still geniuses with wood and still pains in my buttocks, and Mother and Father were still where they’ve always been, there.

  But I found out two things about myself.

  First, I learned that I needed the woods. After Uncle Cooter died, I’d stayed away. When I first went into them, I missed knowing he might be watching over me. Instead of being reminded of that sadness, I stayed away.

  But the forest called me back. And if I took Spencer with me, I didn’t feel the loneliness quite so much.

  The second thing I learned about myself was that almost as much as I need the forest, I need to write.

  I followed Miss Cary’s suggestion to write every day, and it had become a real habit. But I didn’t follow her suggestion not to throw away anything I’d written. Some of the time, what I wrote was so bad I didn’t want anyone to see it, and some of the time, what I wrote made me feel too sad and I’d toss it.

  I’d tried a million times to write an article about Uncle Cooter, but the words refused to cooperate. I even pretended I had a deadline to see if that might make them come easier, but all it did was make me feel terrible when the deadline went whooshing past.

  Whenever one of the older people tells Mother that bad news always comes in threes, she has an answer for them. She says, “Maybe, but good news rides in on the same horse.”

  And, as usual, she was right.

  The first bit of good news came when Pay and Stubby agreed to take me on as their apprentice. It was kind of humiliating to ask, and I’m not sure why I did, but it always seemed like they had so much fun together.

  The second bit of good news was when, early one Saturday, Spencer knocked ferociously on our front door.

  “Benji! You’ll never guess what happened!”

  Before I could open my mouth, he blurted out, “Hickman Holmely’s father got a job in Memphis, Tennessee!”

  “That’s good, but why are you so excited?”

  “They’re moving to Memphis! The Upper Ontario Forensics Competition is only for folks who live in Ontario!”

  I was thrilled for Spencer! There was no way he wouldn’t be the next champion.

  The third bit of good news was delivered by Mother and Father.

  They burst into
the house, screaming.

  “Benji! Have you seen it? Have you heard?”

  “Seen what?”

  Mother was holding a newspaper. I could tell by the type it was the Chatham Freedman.

  She was so excited, though, that she’d balled the paper up.

  “What is it?”

  Father smoothed the paper on the kitchen table and said, “Look!”

  The headline read THE PASSING OF A LEGEND AND AN ERA.

  Direct under those words, it read, BY BENJAMIN ALSTON AND SARAH CARY.

  I was stunned!

  “But why would she give me credit for this? I didn’t give her an article about Uncle Cooter.”

  Mother said, “You didn’t, but I did!”

  “Mother, how could you put my name on something you wrote?”

  Father said, “No, you silly boy, she dug one n’em articles you threw away out the garbage and thought it was so good, she snuck behind your back and give it to Miss Cary. Miss Cary said she was very pleased but not the least bit surprised.”

  “She didn’t tell you to leave her office and say, ‘Now, off you go’?”

  “She told me, ‘Thank you very much.’ She said I should be very proud!”

  Mother and Father hugged and kissed me and said, “We are, Benji, we are so proud!”

  Good news had brought an extra horse along because the fourth piece of good news was the looks they gave me, looks of stunned disbelief!

  I read my article:

  Miss Cary is a wise woman and has accomplished a great many things in her life. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t make mistakes.

  Major ones.

  Some big enough they’ll last for the ages.

  She got the headline all wrong. It should have read:

  STAR, HUMBLE NEWSPAPER REPORTER OVERJOYED TO DISCOVER THE SPIRIT OF A MADMAN LIVES ON IN HIM.

  Most of my books have been written in libraries, both public and school. Why? I really can’t say. I used to think it was because when I’m sitting in the library, there’s always a wealth of research material only a few steps away, but the Internet and laptop computers have made that a moot point. Now an author can write from anywhere and have all the knowledge of the web literally at his or her fingertips. The library, however, was my spot from day one and remains my go-to place.