In the earlier part of my childhood I knew Grandma Laura well. She was a small woman, as Hreapha was small, and her white hair was the color of Hreapha’s. What I remembered most about Grandma—and this held my audience, who began to drool—were the buttermilk biscuits she made, light as feathers, which practically dissolved just as you sank your teeth into them. Robin wanted to know if she’d got the recipe out of that 1888 Housekeeper’s Cyclopædia, which she’d brought from Boxley to Madewell Mountain as part of her small dowry or trousseau or whatever. No, the secret of those biscuits was something she’d learned from her mother, a Villines, and which she passed on to her daughter-in-law Sarah, my mother, but which my mother could never make as nicely as Grandma Laura could.
In-habits, who retain all their senses, including taste, but possess no need to eat nor any hunger, can only endow with rich memory such an experience as biting into Laura Madewell’s biscuits. Even if Robin discovered, as she was busily investigating recipes all on her own, a way to make perfect biscuits, and assuming her rather crude home-milled flour would permit her, her biscuits could never do for me what Grandma’s did, what Proust’s madeleines did for him.
But remembrance of biscuits past was distracting me from my main point, the tragedy of Laura’s loss of her children, which corresponded to Hreapha’s loss of hers. I would not go into the details of how each of them lost their lives, although the stories had been told me by Grandma herself: the important thing is not that one of your children dies in a waterfall and another one runs away from home but that some vicissitude robs you forever of the pleasure of their company. Farther along we’ll know all about it.
That little narrative and sermon were for the benefit of the whole company (including you), and were delivered in the elegiac accents of a twelve-year-old country boy who had been left behind by that actual part of himself who against his will had been removed from these beloved premises. I was only a simulacrum, no, an eidolon in the classical Greek sense, a presence, and my presence was needed more these days not by Robin but by Hreapha, and I spent countless hours (what is a mere hour to an in-habit?) in the latter’s company, not merely consoling her for her loss but honoring the promise that farther along we’ll know all about it.
I hate it here, Hreapha said to me one day when she was feeling despondent. I wish I were anywhere else.
Is that a fact, now? I rejoined. How can ye be certain that anywheres else would be any better?
I can’t, she said. But it just wouldn’t be here. Here is so dismal.
I reckon I may of felt that way sometimes. Or Adam did, I mean. Until it was time to leave. Until they was a-fixing to take him away. And then he got right mastered by the thought of leaving.
I told Hreapha the story of Adam’s last day on Madewell Mountain, of Gabe loading the wagon with just the bare essentials of their possessions, just what the wagon would hold in addition to the three of them—or the two of them, because at the moment of departure Adam kissed his mother and said, “You’uns have a good time in Californy. I aint a-going.” And ran away into the woods. No, not ran, because with that game leg of his he couldn’t even walk very fast, but it was fast enough to get away from his father, who had been busy loading the wagon, and by the time Sarah told Gabe that their son had gone off into the woods, he was too far behind to catch him. Still, Gabe plunged into the woods in pursuit, yelling over and over again, “AD! AD! AD!”
Adam knew he was being stupid. He didn’t manage to get so far off into the woods that he couldn’t hear in the distance that voice, “AD! ADAM MADEWELL, YOU BETTER JUST STOP AND GIVE A THOUGHT TO WHAT YOU’RE A-DOING!”
But Adam was so determined not to leave Madewell Mountain that he spent the whole night in the woods, cold and hungry. He discovered the unburied corpse of his dog, Hector, whom his father had shot days earlier. (This part of my story moved Hreapha out of her megrims.) Early in the morning he went back to the house to make certain that his parents had in fact departed. He searched the kitchen for something to eat, but his mother had left nothing behind. Days earlier, his father had taken the remaining livestock—the cow, the pigs, the goats, the chickens and geese—to his brother-in-law in Parthenon. Gabe Madewell had planned after reaching Harrison to sell the wagon and the mules for whatever he could get and pay a family in Harrison who were planning to drive a truck to California and would have room for the Madewells. Adam assumed they were already on their way to that Promised Land. Up until the day of the departure he had almost persuaded himself that the only good reason for going to California was that he might find Roseleen there; he had heard that the year before her parents had joined the endless migration of Arkansawyers (or “Arkies” as they were called) to California. But on the day of the departure he had had to choose between Madewell Mountain and California, and he knew that the latter, for all its fabled splendors, was simply no match for the former.
Now, even if he was only twelve (which, after all, Robin herself wouldn’t reach for another year), he planned to live here by himself, fend for himself, make do, subsist, exactly as Robin was doing so many years later. His father had taken the firearms, but Adam had a slingshot he’d left in the cooper’s shed, and he also had some fishing tackle and he could make a spear or two, and catch enough game to cook on the nice old kitchen stove that had been left behind. He didn’t even have the advantages that Robin had, not just of firearms but of a stock of edibles (albeit hers were practically gone now) salted away by Sog Alan, so Adam had to start from scratch in fending for himself. It was a daunting prospect.
But right away he killed a squirrel with his slingshot and fried it on the kitchen stove, having just a little difficulty with the recipe because all the previous times he had killed squirrels with his slingshot his mother had done the cooking. He overcooked the squirrel but it was still edible, and something for his stomach.
“Better piss on that fire, and put it out,” said Gabe Madewell, and Adam wheeled around to see his father standing there. His father was holding his rifle loosely in one hand. Adam was instantly scared, wondering, What’s the rifle for?
“I figured you’uns had done gone,” he said.
“You didn’t figure your maw would let me go off without ye, did ye? Why, I didn’t hardly make it to the foot of the mountain afore she commenced a-bawlin at the top of her lungs.”
“So you’ve made up your mind to stay?” Adam said hopefully.
“Naw, not a chance. The wagon’s still at the foot of the mountain, where we had to camp out last night. I’ve hoofed it back up here to get ye. Now unbutton yore britches and piss on that fire and let’s go.”
Adam would not piss on the fire. “I aint leavin, Paw,” he declared.
“Well, we aint goin nowheres without ye. Yore maw won’t allow it.”
“Then bring the wagon on back up here.”
“Boy, you aint yet learnt why we caint do that? When your grampaw died, this place died with him. This place aint fit for nothing. I caint run the cooperage without your grampaw, and you aint much help, and besides there just aint much of a market no more for homemade barrels, nor even stave bolts. I’ve told ye all that, time and time again.”
“Come and look, Paw,” Adam requested and led his father out to the cooper’s shed where, in one corner, Adam had hidden the cedar churn he’d recently made. “Look at that, Paw,” he said. “I can make anything, and if you’ll just give me time I can make a barrel ever bit as good as you can.”
Gabe Madewell laughed, but he fondled the churn and admired it and allowed as how it was pretty good made. “But nobody uses churns no more,” he observed. “You can buy your butter at the store real easy.” He tossed the churn aside, and Adam heard it crack as it fell. “It’ll be another two or three years afore you’re big enough to make a barrel, and no telling but what there won’t be no market at all for homemade barrels.” He took the boy’s upper arm in a tight grip, the muscular vise-like grip of a cooper, and led him out of the cooperage. “I never should’ve
dragged your maw up here in the first place, but your grampaw needed me, and now he don’t because he’s dead. And now it’s time to make your maw happy and get the hell out of here.”
Adam broke free from his grip. “God damn it, Paw, I’m not leavin. You caint make me.”
His father just studied him for awhile. When he spoke again the coldness of his voice sent shivers through the boy. “Ad, you know I had to put ole Heck away because we couldn’t take him with us. Now I could just as easy put you away too, if we caint take you with us.” He raised the rifle and pointed it at his son.
Adam was shocked as well as scared but he managed to put a little courage into his words, “How you figure to explain that to Maw?”
“I’d just have to tell her I couldn’t find you nowheres. I’d just have to say we’d have to get on. Them folks in Harrison that’s a-taking us to Californy won’t wait for us. We’ve done already put ’em a day behind. Now take your pick, Ad: get yourself down the mountain with me, or there’ll be only your ghost to stay here.”
Adam turned and gazed at the homestead. Would his ghost really be able to stay here? He had spent a number of idle moments pondering the matter of death, especially when his grandfather had died, and he had considered whether or not it is possible to survive death in some way. Is there some part of yourself that can go on after you’re gone?
He knew it was possible that his father didn’t really mean it, that he had no intention of killing him but was just tricking him into leaving by that threat.
“Give me a minute, Paw,” he requested, and walked away from his father, back to the cooper’s shed. He reached down to the earthen floor of the shed and clawed up a handful of dirt and put it into his britches pocket, to take to California. From his other pocket he took his handkerchief and held it to his lips. “Adam Madewell,” he whispered, “be always here. Be always here. Never leave, Adam. Stay more forever.” He spread the handkerchief over the toppled cedar churn, and then he straightened up as his eyes began to fill with tears, and he limped out of the cooper’s shed and rejoined his father, and they walked together as fast as his limp would allow down the mountain to where his mother and the wagon were waiting.
The wagon has halfway to Harrison before he realized that he had never pissed on the fire. He smiled at the thought. Maybe the house would burn down. But maybe the fire would just die out.
“So you left yourself here on purpose?” Robin said. It wasn’t a question so much as a statement of fact. And it was as good a way as any of stating the truth, namely, that Adam Madewell had created me, had made me and bade me become his proxy, to inhabit these beloved premises after he was gone. I looked at Robin, aware that she was almost seeing me, aware that she had been listening to the story along with her dear dog.
“You,” she said, “never did go to California.”
Nope, I never did, nor will I ever.
“Does Adam know you’re here? Do you somehow talk to him?”
Naw, I caint reach him. Nor vicey versy.
“You don’t know what he’s doing in California? Or even if he’s still alive?”
I reckon he must still be alive and kicking, or else I wouldn’t be, myself. But I’m sorry to say I aint got the least notion what-all he’s up to.
The lad in his awkward way had stated an accurate but perplexing fact: I, Adam Madewell, already forty years old, was indeed living and working in Rutherford, California, having endured some experiences about which we’ll at least have a synopsis farther along, but I had no awareness at all that the little ritual I’d performed upon leaving Madewell Mountain had actually had the magic effect I’d intended, of creating not a second self but an ersatz self, free from time and appetite, forever keeping the home fires burning (literally, in view of his showing Robin how to make a fire). It would have been so nice if somehow I could have contacted him from time to time to ask how things were going. Or if he could have followed my progress through life, my fortunes, literally, in California. But we were as two brothers who went their separate ways and never corresponded. I suppose that is simply an inescapable condition of all in-habits everywhere.
How then, you’re wondering, can I, the mature, learned, and even, I hope, occasionally entertaining adult Adam, switch places, or at least first-person pronouns, so readily and glibly with that backwoods hobbledehoy or his lively understandable spirit? Because, as I’ve hinted before, this story, at least for now, is all in the past tense, of which I am master. This does not mean that I could omnisciently witness everything that was happening on Madewell Mountain at the time of the story, but that from this retrospective of the present, now, I can reconstruct all of it for your benefit at least as adroitly as Robin had been reconstructing with her paper dolls the entire history of Stay More.
Alas, she had outgrown the paper dolls. Or lost interest in them. Or found other things to play with. She had not destroyed them, and when I asked her, How come you aint played with them little paper people for some time now? she shrugged and said she had run out of paper.
Which was true. Robin was running out of everything…except determination and resourcefulness, which, with my help, would get her through. She ran out of sugar. She ran out of toothpaste. Sog Alan had stocked up several dozen tubes, but Robin despite a general laxity in her personal grooming liked to brush her teeth at least once a day (which was a good thing because she was not going to get any care at all from a dentist), and the toothpaste was all gone. She vaguely remembered something she’d learned in school about using baking soda as a substitute for toothpaste, and there were enough boxes of baking soda to last her until she was able to devise or invent some other dentifrice (at fourteen, having taking an interest in geology after Hreapha gave her a chunk of crystal quartz for her fourteenth birthday, she would discover a small deposit of chalk on a cliff side, and discover that chalk makes a splendid dentifrice).
But you can live without toothpaste. It’s hard to live without soap, and now that was all gone too. Nothing to bathe with, nothing to wash the dishes with, nothing to clean your clothes with (although she rarely wore clothes, it was nice to keep the bedsheets and pillow-cases laundered). The Cyclopædia had a recipe for hard soap with three ingredients, sal-soda, unslacked lime, and rainwater, only one of which she possessed (although she knew from the Bible that lime could be made from a skeleton), and although I had watched Grandma Laura and my mother making lye soap I had only the vaguest idea of the process or the ingredients, and thus was of no help to Robin. Often I, the in-habit, could only say I was sorry I couldn’t help, or didn’t know what to advise her.
Robin’s body was getting dirty. It was also changing, as I couldn’t help noticing and admiring. She was already as tall as I was, and I in my innocence began to wonder if she would eventually outgrow me entirely. I already knew that she would soon become as old as I was, and thereafter she’d get progressively older than I. As her childish body had grown, it had softened and rounded, especially in the hips as her pelvic area broadened, her waist was more accented and narrow, her arms were rounder—her body was taking on the classical feminine vase shape. She was no longer a child, at all. Most delightfully her nipples were beginning to project, and the area around them was swelling into a conelike projection on her otherwise flat chest, although, curious to young Adam’s ogling in-habit, one breast seemed to be developing more rapidly than the other one.
Having the advantage of invisibility, the in-habit could indulge his desire by gazing upon her ripening body to his heart’s content, and even to his part’s content.
Chapter thirty-five
There was only one mirror in the house, a half-length wall mirror with its edges fading and rotted-looking, but she loved to stand in front of it, even if she badly needed to wash off some of her dirt (if she could only figure out how to make soap), and examine what was happening to her body, how she was not just growing up but filling out. When she went to the mirror, she liked to allow Sheba to wrap herself around her neck and upper
body (she’d measured with the yardstick, and Sheba was nearly six feet long now), which Sheba herself seemed to think was her favorite place in all the world, wrapping around her and gently squeezing. Her blonde hair was a mess. It came down to her waist and she hadn’t been able to shampoo it since the soap ran out a long time back. Studying herself and Sheba in the mirror, although she loved her nakedness, she wished that maybe sometime she could dress up in a really nice fancy dress, but all the dresses Sugrue had bought her were ridiculously small now.
She caught sight of her fawn Dewey watching her. She often let him into the house, and even let him sleep with her, along with Ralgrub, the three of them all snuggled up. Dewey was cute beyond belief, with those big innocent eyes and big ears and his head too big for his little body. But now, as she studied his reflection in the mirror behind her, he seemed to look too fuzzy, and she knew he wasn’t that fuzzy. His speckled coat was smoother than that. She thought at first there was something wrong with the old mirror, but then she backed away from the mirror as far as she could back, and studied her own reflection with Sheba wrapped around her. She looked fuzzy too, or blurry, and maybe it wasn’t the mirror’s fault. She moved to the window and looked out at the yard and the trees all around and the garden and in the distance the blue mountains rolling off to infinity, and all of it was kind of hazy.
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