The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2

by Donald Harington

  She had not had any “contact” with the in-habit since her return from Stay More, but as she was walking by the cooper’s shed on her daily check-up on the henhouse, she heard a distinct Psst! requiring her attention. And there he was again, wherever he was. She could only hear his voice, They’s a right fine turkey caller my paw made out of rosewood and frictionwood which makes the most wondrous noises just like them wild turkey gobblers and hens, if you’d care to take it to those folks so’s they could get ’em a turkey for their Thanksgiving. Then he led her to the box in the cooper’s shed which contained the pieces of wood and the corncob striker. Thanks so much, Hreapha said, and delivered this gift to the man, and heard herself called “good dog” by him for the first time in her life. She was sorry that Robin made her stay behind when she went off to use the turkey caller and shoot her turkey.

  Hreapha had never eaten turkey before, but the smell of it when it was cooking in the old stove was certainly interesting, even savory. Hreapha understood how she was supposed to participate in this special occasion called Thanksgiving. She had no conception of any deity toward whom thanks should be directed, but she certainly was ready to thank Robin for working so hard in the kitchen to prepare this marvelous dinner, and she had no objection whatsoever when Robin wanted to tie a little napkin around her neck so she could climb up into a chair and sit at the table with the human beings…and with Robert, similarly attired.

  The man was obviously in such bad shape he couldn’t even feed himself, and when Robin tried to feed him he vomited the food all over the table. Hreapha’s heart ached for the way he had ruined Robin’s Thanksgiving. And then he began to shove that piece of paper in her face.

  Hreapha was a very smart dog but of course she was not able to read the letters that humans use to communicate on paper. She knew the basic words of the Ouija Board such as YES, NO, and GOODBYE, but she could not decipher letters as such, and thus she did not know what was printed on the piece of paper which the man insisted on waving back and forth in front of Robin’s face. It was something he was trying to say to her, something that he was trying to get her to do. Hreapha found herself breathing hard and feeling distinctly uneasy when the man got up from the table, fell down, was helped up again by Robin, and hobbled on his crutches in the direction of the outhouse. Robin followed, and so did Hreapha.

  With the door to the outhouse not closed, and the afternoon light still strong enough to illuminate the scene, Hreapha could only watch with great curiosity and no little fear as the man dropped his overalls, took out his manthing, and forced Robin to put it into her mouth. Although in itself this did not strike Hreapha as exceptional (she had licked Yowrfrowr’s genitals, and he hers), it was obvious that Robin hated it. She beat against him with her fists until he had to let her go, and then he collapsed upon the seat of the outhouse. Sobbing, with tears running down her cheeks, Robin brushed past Hreapha and rushed to the house, and Hreapha started to follow, but Robin came back at once, carrying in her hands the instrument she had used to kill the turkey. It had two barrels. Robin pointed the instrument at the man and the instrument fired twice, knocking Robin backward to the ground. Hreapha rushed up to her, but could only lick her face as Robin lay there for a long time crying her heart out.

  Hreapha walked slowly to the outhouse and studied the man, who was sitting there with many holes in his body, through which blood poured. He may have been a bad man, a very bad man, but now he was not a man of any kind any longer. He was a corpse. Some part of Hreapha felt the loss of her master, but the ultimate measure of her smartness was that she understood that the man was now better off. And so were they all.

  Chapter twenty-five

  Readers who have been holding their breath in expectation that Sugrue Alan would cause some great harm to Robin Kerr—or vice versa—can now let out a long sigh. The bastard was terminated, and regardless of whatever mixed feelings were being felt by Robin, by that darling cur Hreapha, and by the devoted reader, I personally was glad, glad, glad, and I was making plans already to move from the barrel factory to the house, not that I preferred the house to the shed (shelter as such had no meaning for me) but I had deliberately stayed away from the house as long as Sog Alan was the occupant of it. And now the only house he occupied was the outhouse, which he would continue to occupy for years, actual years for heaven’s sake, although it would be only his skeleton residing there. Of course his body was too big for poor Robin to move, and I was powerless to give her a hand—I didn’t have a hand to give—and while she doubtless eventually (because of the smell, for one thing) thought of trying to pull the deceased off his throne and drag him to a burying spot, she realized that was simply beyond her strength. So she had to leave him there. She never used that outhouse again herself for the purpose of micturition or defecation, although there was, after all, an unoccupied hole, if she had been able to ignore the macabre. She simply squatted in the yard, as Hreapha did, as Robert did, confident that her privacy was not being invaded, oblivious to the simple fact that I could watch her, if I chose, because while I might not have possessed any of the handicaps of selfhood such as appetite, sleepiness, sensitivity to hot or cold, or the need to micturate or defecate, I did possess a certain sentience which gave me sight and hearing and speech. More about this later, but for now I was thoroughly aware of what was going on, and I did not avert my gaze when the little girl needed to go out, nor when the turkey vultures—or buzzards as we called them—soaring high overhead with their keen eyesight detected the carrion occupying the outhouse and made short work of removing the meat from the bones, so that in a matter of weeks there was not even an odor remaining.

  This is not to say that Sugrue Alan, although his flesh became birdfeed, did not have any sort of funeral. One of my earliest memories of the jerk was when I was in the second grade at Stay More—no, not exactly I but rather my person, the person who went to California at the age of twelve and left me, whatever sentient form I had, to take his place as enchanted habitant of these premises (I like Hreapha’s use of that term, in-habit, but it suggests that there might also be an out-habit), anyway, my person, while still living here and trekking eight miles each schoolday over that terrible terrain poor Hreapha had recently essayed, had been required by Miss Jerram, the teacher, to accompany all the rest of the pupils on a march up into Butter-churn Holler, to conduct a funeral for a mule named Old Jarhead, the work animal of a poor family of kids named Dingletoon, a mule senselessly beaten to death by a pack of punks led by Sog Alan. Miss Jerram forced the gang to dig a grave and bury the mule, and instructed various pupils, including Old Jarhead’s owners as well as her murderers, to speak solemn requiems for the departed. Even Sog himself, miscreant and bully, was required to speak, and began, “I never done nothing in my life that I was sorry for,” but paused and added, “until now.” And spoke a sincere apology, which moved my person, seven-year-old Adam Madewell, to giggle, this causing him to be beaten up later by Sog and his cronies.

  What my person—and I too, now—remembered most about that mule’s funeral was the singing, at Miss Jerram’s request, of a funeral hymn, a traditional dirge known to everyone at Stay More, which consisted of several verses and a chorus at the end of each:

  Farther along we’ll know all about it,

  Farther along we’ll understand why;

  Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine,

  We’ll understand it all by and by.

  The death of Sugrue Alan needed some sort of closure, a funeral or a service of some sort—no one in those days in that part of the world would have understood or appreciated the so-called “memorial service” held nowadays with its gaiety and laughter and jokes and digs amounting almost to a roasting rather than a commemoration of the departed—a ceremony of some sort to solemnize and ritualize the fact of Sugrue’s death. Even I, at the age the “in-habit” was at the time of Sugrue’s death (and still was, forever)—twelve—understood enough of human nature, without even the faintest notion of wh
at psychology meant, to realize that the only way for poor Robin to climb out of her deep distress and grief would be to speak and sing some manner of last offices.

  She was having a terrible time, and more than ever needed her mother and missed her terribly. Neither Hreapha nor Robert could console her; indeed, the very fact that they were animals seemed to highlight her awareness of being the only living human being on the mountain. It was almost as if she were the only person in the world. She certainly was the only person in the world of Madewell Mountain, and the only other person who had occupied that world had died at her hand. She was wracked with the ambivalence of having killed him as an act of mercy at his own request, but having been forced into that killing by his nastiness to her in his last moments. His attempt to make her “go down” on him did not in itself offend her—it wasn’t pleasant but it wasn’t unbearable—so much as his rudeness and desperation in insisting upon it. Was she able to understand that he had made the attempt not because he actually desired it, but because in his reduced condition it was the only thing his poor mind could conceive of which might compel her to do his bidding and shoot him? Probably not, but she knew that he had ceased, in his last moments, being the Sugrue that she had known.

  How did I know these were her thoughts? Well, my goodness, certainly you’ve fathomed that I possessed the ability not only to inhabit the premises but also to inhabit the consciousness of each of its inhabitants. How else could I reveal their thoughts and feelings to the most important, albeit temporary, inhabitant of this place, namely, you, the reader? Is it too much of a stretch for you to believe that I am the real narrator of this book you are inhabiting? Do you need proof? Okay then, I’ll tell you what happened to Leo Spurlock, who you might have been expecting to show up at any moment, brandishing his revolver and ready to kill Sog Alan himself. Leo, you may or may not be happy to learn, got hopelessly lost on the north face of Madewell Mountain, spent a couple of frigid, scary nights in the woods, and like many lost people, moved unconsciously in a circle that brought him back eventually to his stranded vehicle, where a man driving an expensive type of SUV was trying to get around him. He chatted with the man and assured him there was no way he could get on up the mountain, and finally persuaded the man to turn around and head back down the mountain, and even to give Leo a ride. The man was going to Harrison anyhow, where Leo was able to hire a tow truck to rescue his pickup from its miring on the hopeless trail, but he did not attempt any further progress up that vanishing trail. He was still searching other roads and other trails with his topographic survey maps, and still having adventures, albeit none as exciting as his encounter with those hippies and his rescue of that abducted girl. There. Enough of Leo. How would I know all that unless I’m performing for you some of the same services that I was performing for Robin?

  But I had not yet made myself known to her again. She was in great need of me, and, like Hreapha, had come to the conclusion that I only showed up—maybe turned up is the better term—when I was greatly needed. I recalled fondly how she’d been searching for me previously, even inviting me into the house to keep warm, bless her heart, not understanding that I didn’t need to keep warm, and not understanding either why I chose at that particular moment to remain withdrawn from her consciousness. I wasn’t happy that she’d considered me only a figment of her imagination. It is so easy to believe that there isn’t any such thing as us—call us in-habits as Hreapha does for want of a better term—or that we are only the products of a desperate imagination, an overheated need or yearning. We certainly don’t come when we are called, or respond to any attempt to locate us or communicate with us, because we are, after all, intensely idiolectal: nothing could be more private and personal than a part of oneself that one perforce must leave behind when one leaves a place. I was just the residue, as it were, of Adam Madewell, but I possessed something he no longer did: habitation at this homestead.

  The simple fact was that I didn’t know what I could do for Robin, and I felt helpless. My joy at the removal of the bad guy was dampened by my awareness of her sorrow for having killed him. What could I say to her? Gal, you done the right thing? No, because for her to believe that, she’d have to accept it on her own, not because she heard it from a disembodied peer.

  Several days after Sog’s mercy-killing, if it may be called that, when the buzzards (and crows too) were busy at their feast, and I had moved from the shed to the house, Robin abruptly stopped crying and began to sing. The rest of us—Hreapha, Robert, myself—were surprised. She had rarely sung when Sog was alive, perhaps out of self-consciousness about her voice, which was, in fact, a very sweet soprano. What she sang was not important, probably a contemporary popular song—it was something about Hi de ho, hi de hi, gonna get me a piece of the sky—what was important was the sense that the singing was allowing her to vent her emotions, and that the time had come for closure.

  When she finished, I remarked, That’s right perty. I reckon we can start in now to saying our goodbyes to the departed.

  Robin laughed and looked around as if she might be able to see me. “You’re back,” she said. “You only come when I need you real bad.”

  I don’t reckon I come, one way or t’other. To come, you’ve got to’ve been able to’ve went, and I aint went. I’m just here. I just am.

  “Well, I need you, that’s for sure,” she said.

  You needed me real bad yesterday and the day before, I observed, but I didn’t have no notion what I could do for ye.

  “What do you mean, say our goodbyes to the departed? Do you think we should go out there to the outhouse and talk to him?”

  I laughed. Naw, I don’t reckon the buzzards and the crows would let us git close to ’im. But it’d make ye feel a heap better iffen ye could hold some kind of ceremony. Not no funeral, because you aint a-fixing to bury him, but jist speak and sing something solemn, ye know?

  “Like read something from the Bible?” she said. “The trouble is, I don’t have a Bible.”

  Let me see if I caint find ye one, I said. Or if you’ll jist listen careful, I’ll tell ye where one’s hid.

  By voice alone, since I couldn’t point, I directed her to a little door in the ceiling of the kitchen and she was strong enough to raise the wooden ladder to the wall and with her flashlight climb up and push open the door. There was an attic space up there with mostly worthless dusty junk that Adam’s parents had cast off, but in one dark corner, wedged between two ceiling joists and covered with boards, was one of Adam’s mother’s old castoff dresses wrapped around two books, the only books on the premises, which Adam’s mother, blinded by trachoma and no longer able to read and not allowed to read in any case because Adam’s father, Gabe Madewell, prohibited the possession of books for reasons we will later discover, had directed Adam to hide there.

  One of the two books was a not-very-large but complete Holy Bible. The other was titled Farmer’s and Housekeeper’s Cyclopædia, subtitled A Complete Ready Reference Library for Farmers, Gardeners, Fruit Growers, Stockmen and Housekeepers, Containing a Large Fund of Useful Information, Facts, Hints and Suggestions, in the various Departments of Agriculture, Horticulture, Live Stock Raising, Poultry Keeping, Bee Keeping, Dairy Farming, Fertilizers, Rural Architecture, Farm Implements, Household Management, Domestic Affairs, Cookery, Ladies’ Fancy Work, Floriculture, Medical Matters, Etc., Etc. with two hundred and forty-nine illustrations. It was published in 1888 and belonged originally to Adam’s grandmother, Laura Madewell.

  “You really are Adam Madewell, aren’t you?” she said. “Or you wouldn’t have known where these books were hidden.”

  Iffen it makes ye feel some better, I’m all that’s left hereabouts of Adam, but he aint really here, so I caint say as how I’m him.

  Starved for anything to read (the only reading matter in the house was a stack of back issues of Police Gazette which Sog had read and re-read and which Robin had found boring), Robin sat herself down upon the davenport with these two books and proceede
d to forget about me. I didn’t mind. I was happy to see that she had something to take her away from her miseries, and I enjoyed looking over her shoulder, as it were, as she skimmed through both books. The pictures in the latter book, mostly simple black and white wood engravings, were fascinating. And while Robin might never need to construct a spile or post driver or a hay elevating apparatus, she could certainly use such things as the instructions on grafting apple trees and making a simple smoke house out of a barrel, not to mention the many recipes.

  While she pored over the two books, she wasn’t unmindful of her primary objective: to find something suitable to read at the services. The problem with the Bible was that in search of inspirational or devotional readings she kept getting sidetracked into the stories or narratives which arrested her curiosity—Elisha and the bears, Joseph and his brethren, Moses and the princess, the plagues and The Passover, Queen Athaliah, and so forth. She was going to have a lot of fun on cold winter days reading the stories in the Bible.

  “Well, I guess I’m ready,” she finally announced, addressing Hreapha as much as she was me. But then she addressed me, “Adam, do you know any hymns we could sing?”

  So I sang for her, in my own pleasant country countertenor, “Farther Along.” I sang each of the verses, starting with this one:

  Tempted and tried we’re oft made to wonder,

  Why it should be thus all the day long;

  While there are others living about us,

  Never molested though in the wrong.

  Followed by the chorus, with its promise that someday we might be able to make sense out of all this. Several of the six verses implied that we would have to meet Jesus first, when he came in glory and took us to meet our loved ones gone on before us, but the important thing was not so much inhabiting “that bright mansion” where we will meet Him but rather that we will learn answers to all our questions: why the wicked prosper, why the wrong are not molested, why we must leave home, why we must endure toils while others live in comfort, and so forth and so on. It is ultimately a hopeful and a reassuring hymn, and, as it turned out, Robin did learn the chorus if not all the verses, and thus was able to conduct a kind of memorial service for Sog, with three in her audience: Hreapha, Robert and myself.