Also, there were deer everywhere. After two weeks, they lost their fear of us, and whole families of deer would browse right up to the edge of our camp.
We finished the lean-to at just about the same time that the trees began to change color, and that color…. Diana is wrong in suggesting that I ought to be a writer, because I can’t possibly think of any way to describe the autumn color of the foliage in our woods. If you haven’t seen it, you just haven’t seen it. I remember in the tenth or eleventh grade liking this somewhat cornball poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, I forget the exact title, but the first line was “O World I cannot hold thee close enough” and there was this other line about “Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag and all but cry with color!” Well, our woods didn’t just cry with color. They sang.
The seeds of the sugar maple ripen in the fall. I pointed out to Diana that the seeds of the sugar maple come in pairs, and they are winged, and they ripen in the fall.
But enough about us. After all, I’m supposed to be telling the story of this part of Daniel Lyam Montross’s life, those eight years in Five Corners. I’m not sure I can do it. This “assignment” is a tough one, too tough for me I think, but I might as well try. I’ve got limitations, and I’m aware of them: for one thing, most of the time I’m more interested in what’s happening to me and Diana, even if it’s nothing, than in what happened to Daniel Lyam Montross; for another thing, I can’t even begin to compete with that voice of his, and I don’t intend to try. Diana was giving her tape recorder a workout just about every day, and we were steadily accumulating another stack of cassettes. One of the things that we had already discovered, back in Dudleytown, is that I’m able, apparently, while under a trance, not only to “play” verbatim everything that Daniel Lyam Montross ever said, with all its idioms or slang or what not, but also I’m able to “play back” anything that anybody ever said to him. So a lot of these cassettes that we were making in Five Corners were not of that fabulous voice of Daniel Lyam Montross but of other people talking to him, and what I would like to do, as “editor” of this story, is to show (or “play”) some of those other cassettes, occasionally. If Daniel Lyam Montross thinks that I’m doing this just to get his own fabulous voice off the air, he’s probably right.
Well, here goes his story. It was nearly autumn when he first came, too. In 1896. He hadn’t meant to come to Five Corners especially. That summer after leaving Dudleytown, after killing Ferrenzo Allyn or anyway thinking he had killed Ferrenzo Allyn [what does it matter? Allyn must be dead] he just wandered about from one place to some other place, heading generally northward, pretty much along the same route Diana and I had taken, stopping in one place and chopping wood for somebody to get a free meal, stopping in some other place for a week of work, until finally he wound up in this small industrial town south of here, called Ludlow, and looking for a job, at least a temporary job, he discovered that the post office needed a mail carrier to drive the mail wagon each day on the new Rural Route 6, which went up through Tyson, Plymouth Union, Plymouth Notch, then Five Corners and back through Reading and Cavendish. Well of course Daniel knew how to drive a wagon, but the job had a minimum age of eighteen and he was still short of seventeen. So he had to lie about his age. He at least looked eighteen, or older. They gave him the job, which wouldn’t pay a whole lot, but he thought he could get by. The first day, he had to get up at five-thirty in the morning and go to the post office and spend two hours sorting out the mail, and getting it all straight, and then loading the six big leather bags into the wagon, and a couple of paying passengers who wanted to go to Tyson and Plymouth, then he cracked his whip and started off.
When he arrived with his mail wagon at Five Corners he was surprised to find a big welcome celebration waiting for him, because, as it turned out, this was the first day that Five Corners became a rural delivery route. Although it had been a village for many years, all the way back to the 1830’s, people had always had to go to Plymouth Notch or Bridgewater to get their mail but now apparently the post office department thought that the village was important enough to have rural delivery. At any rate, everybody in town had turned out for Daniel Lyam Montross’s arrival, and they had even hung red-white-and-blue bunting across the road, and there in front of the Glen House Hotel were tables covered with white damask and pitchers of cider and all kinds of homemade cakes and cookies and what not, and they introduced Daniel Lyam Montross to everybody, and several big men of the town made speeches, and somebody shot off some fireworks, and the village dogs chased their tails, and you never saw anything like it.
Diana has this bug about psychologizing everything. I think she must have taken a course or two in psychology when she was in college. She had a lot of fun making psychological theories about this episode. Daniel Lyam Montross, she says, had been a complete “nobody” back home in Dudleytown. He had been the last child, the unwanted child, in a large impoverished family. His childhood and adolescence, except for a few sexual escapades, had been dull and lonely. Now, suddenly, with the big welcome that was given to him in Five Corners, even if it was really not him but the U.S. Mail that these people were so happy to see, he began to feel that he was “somebody” instead of “nobody.” Diana calls this one of the first big turning points in his life. She calls it a “happy trauma.”
Anyway, it must have gone to his head, to hear him tell it (or to hear the tape recorder tell what he told me to tell Diana). It took him nearly three hours to get away from the celebration, during which he met several pretty girls, including one, Rachel McLowery, who really turned his head, love at first sight and all that. Rachel was a redhead, the same age as he, although if anybody asked, he said he was eighteen, just to be safe. He told Rachel that as soon as the weekend came and he got off work, he would come and visit her, and she said that he could take her to the contra-dances at the Glen House where they dance on a floor mounted on rubber balls. And he could hardly wait for the weekend. But when he got back to the Ludlow post office, three hours late, they gave him hell for being so late, and even though he explained that he had been held up by the big celebration in Five Corners, they told him he should have had sense enough not to hang around for three hours for any celebration that interfered with the prompt delivery of the United States Mails, and they fired him on the spot.
And so (or this is what Diana says, psychologizing again), being fired from his new job like that so abruptly, he left Ludlow and went at once, on foot, to Five Corners, gravitating (Diana’s word) toward the one place in the world where he had been made to feel welcome, the right place. When he got there (it took him two days to walk the distance) he used his day’s pay that the post office had given him to take a room overnight in the Glen House. The people who ran the hotel were sorry that he had lost his job because of the celebration Five Corners had given him, but apart from that, as Daniel Lyam Montross was rather dismayed to discover, now that he wasn’t the mail carrier any more he wasn’t important to them. He was a nobody again.
Even Rachel McLowery, when she discovered that he wasn’t the mail carrier any more, was cool to him, and although she kept her promise and let him take her to the contra-dances on the rubber-ball-mounted floor of the Glen House, she wasn’t much fun, especially when she discovered that he couldn’t dance well. In fact, he didn’t know the first thing about dancing, and tried to pick it up by eye and ear, with very limited success. Rachel said she was busy when he tried to set up another date with her.
Here it was late August, and he was out of a job, and he liked Five Corners very much even if the people no longer thought he was the most important man in the world. He still wanted to stay. So he began asking around about the possibilities of employment, saying he was eighteen and able-bodied and lost his last job through no fault of his own.
Mrs. Peary, who ran the Glen House, asked him if he had finished his schooling, and he lied and said he had. She told him that the Five Corners Academy across the road from the Glen House hadn’t found a s
choolmaster for this year. He thought he was smart enough to pull it off; even if he hadn’t finished school himself, he knew how to read, and he could read the textbooks and keep a lesson ahead of the pupils. Mrs. Peary told him to go see Judge Braddock, who was the chairman of the school district.
He saw Judge Braddock, who hired him on the spot (apparently for lack of other applicants) and then told him to meet him at the school the following Saturday afternoon at two o’clock for an “auction.”
Now here’s my first example of the cassettes in which it isn’t Daniel Lyam Montross doing the talking (in fact, in this case, he never gets a chance to open his mouth) but somebody else talking to him. This is Judge Braddock, talking to him on the day of the “auction”:
Shall we stand in the shade of this venerable maple whilst we wait? This tree’s got a history as long as my winter underwear, but I won’t bother you with it just now, young man; it’s too long, and I see the first of the folks coming yonder. There’ll be time enough, I suppose. I suppose you’ll be seeing more than enough of me, days to come. I don’t judge any more—Mrs. Peary was only being polite when she called me that—I did judge once, though, and I hanged a man from this very tree—remind me to tell you about that one. No, I don’t judge any more, and I don’t even auctioneer but once or twice a year, but I’m here. You’ll see enough of me, time to time.
Now those two, hitching up by Glen House yonder, that’s Jirah and Livia Allen, they hold a two-hundred acre farmplace up Gold Brook, and enough livestock to keep your table brimming. They’re not grudging with the meat, either. But the problem there is, they’ve got a son, a big boy named Marshall, who’ll be one of your scholars, and he’s the meanest scamp that ever lived, and practically a halfwit, which proves you don’t have to be smart to be mean. No, I don’t think you’d want to live with them. Seeing him in school each day will be enough for you.
Oh, but isn’t it a fair and frisky morning? And see how there’s already a spot of red amongst the maple leaves. You have to relish this season, my boy, when the sun’s still hot: Three or four weeks, and it gets blithering cold up here in these mountains. Which reminds me, I have to get after Jake Claghorn about stocking up the wood for the schoolhouse. Only part of this job I don’t like, being chairman of the school district, is asking Jake Claghorn seven or eight times before he gets around to cutting that wood. Lately he’s been agitating to have it made part of the schoolmaster’s job, but don’t you worry about that. Not as long as I’m still holding the whip.
Now here come the McLowerys, Joel and Melissa. A handsome team and wagon, isn’t it? Befits their circumstances, you could say. They’ve got the biggest herd of sheep in the county. Pure Merinos, a few Cheviots. Can you imagine that absolutely your only problem there would be a surfeit of lamb chops? Ha, ha! But on second thought, they have a daughter, who’ll be one of your scholars, and she—well, you must remind me sometime to tell you about her.
And right behind them there are the Tindalls, that’s Adelphia driving because Aaron fell off the buckboard and broke both wrists. I hate to say it, because they’re my own blood relations—he’s a third cousin and she’s a first—but you don’t want them. Cross your fingers. Aaron is able to put away a half gallon of applejack in a single day…and he often does. I fail to see how he gets any work done…and he often don’t.
Year before last, they had the schoolmaster, and I’ll be switched if he didn’t develop an overpowering taste for the stuff himself. I hope you’re moderate yourself, young man. Not abstemious, I didn’t say. Just moderate. A man can’t get through these winters without a little liquid warmth. But mark me, it’s my experience that you young fellows can too easily succumb to excess, particularly about the end of February or during March. I take it this is your first position, isn’t it? It always is. So just let me say that there’s nothing you can do that will surprise me. I’m not going to be watching you every minute, and I don’t want you to feel that I am, but if you ever get the urge to do something to surprise me, then put it out of your mind, for nothing will. I guess the only thing that would be sure to surprise me would be to find you standing here beside me at this same time next year.
Look the other way there, coming afoot by the Plymouth fork, that’s Matthew and Sophronica Earle. Now there’s a fine family for you. Townspeople, you might almost call ’em, if you want to call this little hamlet a town. Live in that big old white house up the hill yonder. Matt used to be schoolmaster himself, many a year back, that’s how he met Sophronica, who was one of his scholars. He’s the only former schoolmaster who ever stayed. Now he’s a town selectman. Two of their own children will be your scholars, if you wouldn’t mind them underfoot at home. Nice, big, airy room of your own upstairs. I’ve seen it, and it’s got a view. The drawback there is the water isn’t any too good. Well’s too close to the stable, I think.
Here’s Jake Claghorn, dang his bones! YOU, JAKE! WHEN’S THAT WOOD GOING TO BE CUT? HUH? WELL, IT BET? TER BE, IT JUST BETTER BE, YOU LAGGARD! Looks to me like he intends to bid too, but you certainly don’t want him, my boy. He’s a bachelor. Lives in a dirty three-room shack down by the blacksmith’s. Probably make you cook your own victuals. But you just leave it to me. I’ve been manipulating these things for years. Some folks have urged me to go professional, and travel the state. But I don’t like traveling.
I’ve heard rumors that some of the towns down in the valley are giving up their auctions. Well, that’s nice, but nobody has told me what they are doing for a substitute. Has the legislature passed some new laws that we haven’t heard about? We get the county newspaper up here every Thursday, and I read it front to back. I haven’t read anything yet about the legislature passing any new laws. I served a term once myself at the state house, and I can’t conceive of any good substitute. It’s been a tradition in this town all the way back to the day it was founded. Well, maybe not all the way back, but Seth and Hiram Earle established the tradition on the very same day the legislature passed the law that school districts have to pay the board of their teachers.
It’s picking up, it’s picking up. Here come the Johnsons and the Headles, and there come the Spooners, the McIntyres and the Slacks. Good people all. Not a miser in the lot. The Headles especially. Why, they’ll even buy you a new pair of shoes! I see Joel McLowery is looking a bit impatient, so I suppose we had best get started.
Now, you being raised on a Connecticut farm, I guess you know that farm prices have a bad habit of what is called fluctuation. Some years are good, some years are bad, so you can’t ever tell. This year seems to be rather on the bad side, but you can’t ever tell. I just thought I would mention that, because it will probably be reflected in the bidding.
One other thing. I think it would be advisable to let that smile off your mouth. Now hold on! I don’t mean you have to scowl, but, you see, it’s been my experience that if you are standing up here with a smile on your face while I’m crying you, it somehow don’t go over too well with the crowd. I know you just mean to look pleasant and personable, they all do, but for some reason, it seems to annoy the crowd. So my advice is, just look properly solemn and serious.
And finally, I might mention that this auction, under the official auspices of a duly elected school board, is completely fair and square. If you know your auctions, you know about “air bids” and “dumb bids” and “straw bids” and all that. Well, we don’t tolerate that. We don’t have shills or signals or freezes. It’s all a straight Dutch auction, fair and square.
Now, sir, if you’ll just step up on this little box here, so the folks can have a better look.
ALL RIGHT, FOLKS! WILL YOU COME IN CLOSE? GET OUT OF THE HOT SUNSHINE AND GATHER ’ROUND!
Here he is, folks! Most of you’ve met him before when he brought the mail. Poor feller lost his mail job on account of that little festivity we threw. But he’s young and bright and eager! I’ve not read his record, folks, but he looks bright as a whistle, don’t he? If he’s good enough to bring the mail,
he’s good enough to keep the school. And a big fellow like him, you know he can keep the youngsters in line! And swing a stinging ruler! But big as he is, he don’t look like a big eater, now does he? No! I doubt he ever asks for seconds!
So how about it folks and are you all ready? So how about it and let’s get to town! So how about it folks and let’s go! I’m gonna start at three hundred and how about that folks I’m gonna say three hundred and look for a hand do I see a hand do I see a hand at three hundred what’s the matter with you nobody likes the sound of three hundred then how does three-fifty sound to you? Three-fifty three-fifty I’m saying three-fifty and THERE’S A HAND! I’ve got three-fifty now who says three three three, who says three? Come on and let me see a three! and there’s a three! thank you, Joel. Joel’s no skinflint, he can do it for three. Who wants to beat him? Who says two seventy-five? Do I hear a two seventy-five? Aaron says two seventy-five and who’ll top him? Where’s my two fifty? Do I see a two fifty? Come on now, you know you could feed a whole district of schoolteachers on two fifty! There’s my two fifty, and thank you Jirah and who says two twenty-five, and I feel it coming up, that two twenty-five, and sure enough Joel here says two twenty-five, and who’ll top him? Who says two, who says two, two says who, who says who, AND THERE’S MY TWO! Now let’s whack it down, folks, we have to whack it down and down and down and who says one seventy-five, and there’s my one seventy-five but I’m telling you he’s going for one fifty and where do I see that one fifty? Let’s see you again, Joel, you’ve got him for one fifty. Then where’s Jirah now? Let’s see you at one fifty, Jirah. Come on now, boys, let’s see that one fifty. There she is! Headle says one fifty and who’ll top him? Let’s get on down to that one twenty-five. One twenty-five and you can take him home. One twenty-five and he’s all yours. I’ve got one twenty-five spot cash right here in my pocket to give you if you’ll feed him for that, and you know you can, with a little economy. Where’s my one twenty-five? For one fifty you could feed him roast lamb every night. Where’s that one twenty-five? I don’t see it. Are you all done, folks? Knocking down at one fifty? Why, I could feed two of them myself for that. Who says one twenty-five? Nobody? Am I obliged to knock it down at one fifty? Are you all done folks? One fifty? All right, one fifty gong twice, going twice one fifty, one fifty going twice…AND NOW I SEE YOU, JOEL, THAT’S A GOOD SPORT! Joel’s get him for one twenty-five, folks! Joel’s got him unless there’s one of you says a hundred…. Anybody want a hundred? One hundred big fat dollars, who wants one hundred even? Well it looks like Joel has got him, then. One twenty-five going once, going once, one twenty-five going twice, and going thrice, and now it’s g—
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