Seventy-five? What idiot said seventy-five? Jake Claghorn! Why, Jake, you don’t mean that! Have you been drinking? You don’t mean seventy-five, we haven’t been down to a hundred yet. Joel here has bid one twenty-five, that’s low bid right now, and I’m still looking for a hundred. Somebody with a good farm and a good garden could keep him a year for a hundred, but you Jake, for seventy-five you couldn’t buy his flour and salt. So I’m still seeing Joel’s bid at one twenty-five and unless there’s a responsible person who says a hundred….
Now wait a minute, Jake. I know a bid’s a bid. Yes, and I know the rule says low bidder gets him. But you can’t….
Listen to me, folks. Am I right or not? Does any man of you believe that Jake Claghorn could honestly room and board this fine young schoolmaster for the piddling sum of seventy-five dollars a year?
Yes, I know I’m supposed to be saving the school district’s money, but I’ve got principles, dang it!
Well, a rule’s a rule, if that’s the way you feel about it.
So all right then, Jake bids seventy-five and who’ll top him? Who’ll rescue the poor young man? Who says fifty? Do I see a benevolent fifty? Where’s your charity? Who says fifty? Nobody? Then sixty, who says sixty? Who’ll say seventy, just to keep this young man from starving? Don’t I see a seventy anywhere? Seventy, seventy….
You’re breaking my heart, folks, but I’m going to have to say seventy-five once, seventy-five going once, and I’m going to have to say seventy-five twice, this is killing me but seventy-five going twice and won’t somebody please help…but seventy-five twice and seventy-five thrice, and thrice seventy-five…and this is just plain terrible, folks…but it’s seventy-five going thrice…and GONE.
Boarded to Jake Claghorn at seventy-five.
Our diet in Five Corners wasn’t nearly as bad as his, but it certainly wasn’t anything to brag about. One of our first rough quarrels was on the subject of food. Diana began reminiscing about what a good steak tasted like, trying to make my mouth water too (and it did), and then she tried to reason with me, saying that pioneers and primitive woodsmen must have had steak just every once in a while, and couldn’t I possibly bring myself to hike into Bridgewater or some other place where there was a butcher? and buy just a teensy pound or two of sirloin? or even some chuck? No, I didn’t mind the long hike, it was just the principle of the thing; we had to prove that we could live off the land. Well then, she said, why didn’t I just go off and find a stray cow or bull and do the job myself? That would be illegal, I said. That’s when she lost her cool and started yelling. She called me “impossible” and “stubborn” and “stupid” and “thoughtless” and “mean” and “pigheaded” and a bunch of other things. And when she yelled at me like that, I found myself yelling back at her, calling her “soft” and “spoiled” and “unprincipled” and “indulgent” and “greedy” and “pampered” and everything else I could think of. And we didn’t speak or look at each other for the rest of the day. And at bedtime, even though the night was very chilly, she unzipped the combined sleeping bags and separated them and moved hers over into the corner of the lean-to.
Daniel Lyam Montross was lucky to get a sliver of some rancid meat in his beans once a week when he was being fed by that tightfisted Jake Claghorn. So he did pretty much the same thing that I was doing: finding whatever could be eaten from the woods and streams and fields. We had some fine butternut pies. And he learned how to make hard apple cider. And he showed us how.
Alcohol was something else. Of course we didn’t keep stocked up on booze the way we had in Dudleytown, and Diana repined about that too, but whenever I hiked into Bridgewater for staples I usually packed in a couple of six-packs of beer on the way back, because, as I saw it, beer wasn’t something you could find flowing out of springs in the woods (later, Daniel Lyam Montross did show us how to make beer too). I guess we were both dependent on a little bit of alcohol just to loosen us up and to relax with at mealtimes, and although that little bit was never enough for Diana, she learned to make do with it. Another thing: without even thinking about it, she gradually gave up cigarettes. It wasn’t something she had planned, as a conscious effort to kick the habit. It just happened, spontaneously you might say.
She just said to me, one day, “Funny. Do you realize that nearly a week has gone by since my last cigarette? And I haven’t even thought about wanting one.”
If you’re trying to kick the habit, I guess there are worse things you could do than live off in the woods six miles from the nearest dealer.
Here is Daniel Lyam Montross’s “recipe” for making a really wonderful hard apple cider: First you find some wild apples, truly wild apples. There were plenty of these around Five Corners in Daniel Lyam Montross’s day, and there are still plenty now, but you have to be careful to distinguish between the abandoned orchards, the runout tame apples, and the really wild apples. These wild apples are really hard, and you don’t throw away the wormy apples, because a few worms sort of give “body” to the cider. (Diana was just a little squeamish about this, at first.) Then you get your cider pressed at just the right time, right after picking them. Daniel Lyam Montross always took his to the Five Corners cider mill on a cold night when there was a full moon. We used a full moon too, but we had to press the apples by hand with a kind of homemade gizmo that I tacked together myself, and it took all night, until the full moon set. Daniel put his cider into a charred oak cask holding fifty gallons. There aren’t many of those around anymore, but I saw a smaller one, a twenty-galloner, sitting on some person’s porch in West Bridgewater and he sold it to me for five dollars and I carried it half the way home and rolled it the other half. Daniel kept his cider in the cool cellar of Jake Claghorn’s place, a cellar with a dirt floor which is just right for the proper dampness, to age the cider at earth temperature. We didn’t have any cellar, just a cellar hole, which proved to be all right if we kept the barrel shaded from the sun. When you get the cider cask into the cellar, you have to let the cider “work off” in the cask, with the bung hole open, until it stops “boiling.” Then comes the tricky part. You have to take a small tube—Daniel and I fashioned ones from wood but you can use plastic or rubber—and poke it through a hole into the barrel, making a snug fit and then run the tube over into a bucket of water. And then you bung the barrel. This lets the gas get out of the cider without any fresh air getting in—fresh air would make vinegar out of the cider in no time. When it stops bubbling in the water bucket, you wait about another week—Daniel usually waited a month or more, but we couldn’t wait that long—and then it’s ready to drink.
You can’t buy this stuff in stores anywhere, but it’s just about the best alcoholic beverage you ever tasted, and it’s much more potent and satisfying than beer.
As soon as our first run of cider was ready to drink, Diana and I had a “cider bust”—one of our really happiest and wildest times. It was sort of like the ancient Bacchanalia, only with apple wine instead of grape wine. It was one of the warmer, sunshiny autumn days, when the autumn color was at its peak, and after drinking a lot of the stuff, we took off all our clothes and ran around in the woods and leaped and danced and chased each other and had a real time. Then we made love in the falling leaves and went back and drank a lot more of the stuff and then ran around in the woods and made love again—it was one of the few times that we did it more than once in the same day. Then we got real chummy and Diana asked if she could read what I’ve been writing, and I said sure, if she would let me read her diary, and she said sure. And we spent the rest of the day sitting around reading each other’s writings and sipping more of the cider, until we were zonked and had to stop reading and go to bed, where we tried once more to make love, but were just too far gone.
The next day, after our hangovers had partly cleared up, we had another quarrel, a real spitting squabble this time, and I guess it was my fault for starting it, this time. Some of the things she had said about me in her diary had put me in an awful sort of sel
f-pitying mood, I guess, and I was asking her things like Why the hell did she have to go and get herself laid by all those Jesus freaks? and she came back Well, wasn’t I having a great time with Vashti myself? and I yelled Maybe, but that was just one! and she yelled What kinds of things were you doing with Vashti? and I yelled Nothing that you weren’t doing with all three of those guys! and she yelled Oh yeah? and I yelled Yeah and I bet you thought all three of them were better fuckers than me! and she yelled What if they were? and I yelled Then why the hell didn’t you just go off with them? Yeah! she yelled There’s one place you’re wrote in what you right! I mean—(she was so mad she couldn’t talk straight)—I mean there’s one place you’re right in what you wrote! And that’s where you said you think that I’m just your imagination! Because I am! What else could I be??? What would a nice girl like me be doing in a place like this??? No girl in her right mind would get stuck all alone with you way off in these god-forsaken places!! So you had to dream me up! Why don’t you undream me??? Why don’t you let me go out of your mind???
And she carried on like that for a while, until I was feeling perfectly miserable, but she didn’t stop. She accused me of being “devious” with her, by never mentioning the fact that I had been to Dudleytown before. AND WHAT THE HELL DID YOU MEAN BY SAYING THAT YOU “PICKED” FIVE CORNERS???? Oh boy, she was really sore. But the worst was yet to come. After she ran out of things to yell at me about, she started talking about what a lousy writer I am. She said my writing was deliberately stupid, as if I were trying to hide my intelligence. She said that was “devious” too. She said that I was trying to fool the reader into thinking that there was an impossible gap between Daniel Lyam Montross’s “sensitivity” and my own “boorish, pedestrian, weak-imitation-HoldenCaulfield style” and I yelled back at her that I never read Holden Caulfield, goddamn it, and she yelled THAT’S ONE MORE OF YOUR SHITTY LIES, BECAUSE YOU TOLD ME YOU DID, DON’T YOU REMEMBER???? And I yelled WELL LISTEN, KID, THE PROSE IN YOUR DIARY ISN’T EXACTLY THE WORLD’S FINEST!!! And she yelled WELL I DIDN’T MEAN FOR ANYBODY TO READ IT AND I MUST HAVE BEEN OUT OF MY FUCKING MIND TO LET YOU OF ALL PEOPLE READ IT!!! And I yelled MAYBE ONE THING YOU FORGOT, SWEETHEART, IS THAT IT WAS YOUR IDEA THAT WE READ EACH OTHER’S STUFF, AND ANOTHER THING YOU FORGOT IS THAT IT WAS YOUR IDEA THAT I OUGHT TO TRY TO WRITE! PERSONALLY I DON’T GIVE A FUCK FOR WRITING AND IF YOU’RE GOING TO MAKE CRACKS ABOUT MY WRITING THEN I
I don’t mean to intercede in a lover’s quarrel, no. Or any other kind of quarrel for that matter. In fact, I think it’s good for you and Diana to “let it all out” once in a while, and I’m sure you will. But I’ve got to stop you here, Day, and remind you that you’re using up too much space which I feel is rightfully mine. I don’t care about your prose style; getting the story told is the thing. You shouldn’t think I’m being swell-headed, but I honestly believe that the story of my experience in Five Corners is more important than what you and Diana were quarreling about. And at this rate, I’m afraid, you’ll never get it told.
Well, anyway, she stomped off into the woods going one way and I stomped off into the woods going the other way and I spent a lot of time brooding about what she had said, and I decided that I’d make an attempt to “dress up” the prose a little bit when (and if) I ever got back to telling more about Daniel Lyam Montross. One thing Diana accused me of was that the only two adjectives in my vocabulary are “very” and “really,” so I took a vow to watch out for those.
But my writing is comfortable at least, and reasonably easy, and I like to think of it as similar to Vermont speech in a way. I think the native Vermonter deliberately plays down his language, that he deliberately uses unsophisticated words and grammar which he knows are not considered “proper,” as if to show that he’s not of the aristocracy but just good common folk. Diana was right, in a way, in thinking that my use of simple writing was maybe a reflection of my wish to be accepted. If there’s one thing I want, terribly, it’s to be accepted.
We patched it up later, of course. We didn’t see each other again until bedtime, and each of us was determined apparently to wait and let the other be the first to go to bed and go to sleep before the other came in. So we tried to outwait each other, sitting in the woods on opposite sides of the lean-to, shivering in the cold, until after midnight, when her voice called, petulantly, “Aren’t you going to bed?” and I answered sternly, “Not before you do,” and she said, “Well then, you might be up all night,” and I said, “That suits me fine,” and she said, “But it’s cold, damn it!” and the chattering of her teeth came through her words, so I waited a while longer and then I said, “Let’s kiss and make up,” and she said something that sounded like “Blecchh!” so I waited and then
Blast you, boy! Go to bed, so you can get on with my story!
First I have to mention that when we finally did patch up and went to bed, Diana snuggled up and got a little bit affectionate, and she did a funny thing: she took my middle finger and put it into her mouth, and sort of rolled her tongue around it. I don’t know why she enjoyed doing that, and at first it seemed rather infantile to me, but it was kind of sensuous in a way, and it led me to believe she wanted to make love, but when I tried, she wouldn’t let me, and turned over and went to sleep.
Well, Daniel Lyam Montross had a hard time becoming a schoolmaster. It wasn’t the lessons that gave him trouble. He could read well, and every night in the beginning he stayed up late reading the next day’s lessons, until Jake Claghorn gave him hell for using up kerosene in the lantern, so he used candles, but Jake Claghorn gave him hell for using up candles too, so he had to do all of his reading in the late afternoon before it got dark. But he kept up with the lessons, and knew how to parse a poem pretty well, although he had a little trouble with arithmetic because he didn’t know any algebra and some of the more advanced pupils were already well along in algebra. But what really gave him the most trouble, at first, was that he was expected to play the school organ and lead the pupils in song. The school had an old cottage organ, a reed organ that you pump with your feet, which some school committee years before had spent twenty dollars for in a moment of uncharacteristic extravagance.
“I neglected to ask,” Judge Braddock said to him on the first day of school, “but I hope you can play this thing.” Daniel Lyam Montross said that he’d never seen one before, but he would try to learn. So every day when the pupils were sent outside for morning and afternoon recess, Daniel would sit down on the organ stool and fiddle around with the organ, trying to pick out tunes by ear because of course he had never seen a sheet of sheet music before, much less learned to read one.
Daniel Lyam Montross could never learn the different stops; Diapason and Dulciana sounded just alike to him, and the stop marked “Flute Forte” embarrassed him because its name, and its sound, suggested the breaking of wind. He found one stop, Celeste, which seemed to sound a little bit better than the others, so he concentrated on that, and in time he could pick out a kind of off-key largo rendition of “Happy School, Ah, From Thee Never Shall Our Hearts Long Time Be Turning,” his old school song.
But after going to the trouble of mastering a fairly competent and presentable version of this song, and attempting to lead his nine pupils in the singing of it, he discovered that they had never heard it before. He asked them if they didn’t have a school song, and the eldest pupil, who by the way was that same redheaded Rachel McLowery, volunteered to sing for him, in a self-conscious and whispering soprano, her body swaying from side to side in tune to the slow melody, the “Five Corners Academy Song.”
Listen to Rachel singing:
Windows are few, and none of them new
And the roof it may leak in a rain
Benches are hard, no grass in the yard
And using the privy’s a pain.
The other pupils joined her for the chorus:
Down in a dell is a school we love right well
Where five little roads come together
’Tis
not a jewel of a fancy country school
But you’ll never find any better.
And Rachel continued:
Stove gets so het up you burn if you set up
Too close, but too far and it freezes.
Sometimes the master gets mean and naster
And gives us each the bejeezus.
Down in a dell, etc.
Lunches are cold, and the water is old
And tastes like somebody’s fingers
Air is so fusty, whenever we’re musty,
It lingers and lingers and lingers.
Down in a dell, etc.
But this is our schooling, and we say without fooling
Five Corners Academy, we love you!
Our dedication to this eddication
We’ll pass on to our children too.
Down in a dell, etc.
Daniel thanked her, and them, and assured them that he would try his best to learn how to play it on the organ, and then he asked them who had written the song. They said Henry Fox did. He asked them who Henry Fox was, but they just exchanged glances with one another and smirked, as if they knew something he didn’t know. Maybe this gave them a feeling of superiority over him, which is a feeling any pupil would like to have toward a teacher. Children aren’t as easily fooled as adults, sometimes, and Daniel suspected that his pupils knew that he wasn’t all of eighteen years old.
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1 Page 49