The Secret Wisdom of the Earth

by Christopher Scotton

  “… I seen the Budget boy settin on the porch with him ever Saturday. Paul helpin him learn to draw is what,” from booth seven.

  And in the bathroom, “… lent me the money with no interest so I could get that backhoe…,” said a man at the urinal to another. It was Andy Teel with Jesper Jensen on their breakfast break from loafing at the back of Hivey’s.

  “Uncommon generous. No better man in town, I say,” Jesper said solemnly.

  Breakfast came steaming on plates, and we gulped it down with two milks. We paid the bill and went out the door just as Petunia Wickle was coming in. She had on a short yellow skirt and a tight-fitting top. She smiled at me and I almost lost breakfast.

  We drove out to the morning calls: first to Mrs. Tainey’s near Knuckle, where we clipped horse hooves, vaccinated sheep for blue tongue, and stitched up her dog’s barbed-wire-cut ear. Word of Mr. Paul’s beating had spread before us like a new tide. “Who would hurt such a gentle man?” Eloise Tainey asked to the morning.

  John Gumm, her foreman, was off under cover of the barn eaves talking to the Garvin brothers. “Pait’s a top hand. I don’t see him messing with that queer bidness, regardless a what Paul says.”

  Ned Garvin agreed. “Fixed the rings on my tractor engine—man that handy round engines can’t be that way. Paul I can see, but not Pait—play poker with him ever Monday, for Christsake.”

  “Paul come out with needfuls last winter. Wouldn’t even take no tip money,” someone else said.

  Similar sentiments were expressed on all of our calls that morning. Headshaking disbelief, speculation on the perpetrators, and vows to help Paul heal.

  When we returned home for a late lunch, Audy Rae was in the kitchen working up cabbage-and-ham soup. “How are we doing?” Pops asked Audy Rae under his breath. “Have we emerged yet?” Each week it seemed Mom would sleep later and later into the day, only to stay up most of the night in her mother’s old wing chair, staring off at a place somewhere in her past.

  “Not a peep. I went up to check and she’s just lying in today.”

  “I’m going to go see her,” I said and trudged upstairs. Up until Mr. Paul’s beating, I had felt the grip of Josh’s death begin to loosen its hold on me. A month and a half in the warm surround of Pops and Audy Rae and my growing friendship with Buzzy Fink had started me on a slow path to healing. I wanted to parcel out some of that to her.

  I was on the landing when the phone rang. Audy Rae answered in the kitchen. After a few seconds she took in a sharp breath. “Oh, Paitsel, I am so very sorry. I am so, so sorry.”

  Pops’ quick footsteps into the kitchen from his den. “What’s the story? Is he gone?”

  “Do you need someone there? Just a second. Dr. Peebles would like to talk with you.”

  “Paitsel, Art here.” Silence. “When was this?” More silence. “What can we do, Pait? Just tell me what we can do.” He listened for another minute, then said, “I understand. We’ll just keep you in our prayers, Pait.” Pops hung up the phone and, without a word to Audy Rae, went into his den and closed the door. I came down the steps.

  Audy Rae’s eyes were red and brimming, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I suppose you heard that Mr. Paul has passed.”

  I nodded.

  “He was one of the finest men I have ever known. I can’t believe he’s gone. I can’t believe someone would do that to him.” She put a hand on the stove to steady herself. I went over and took her other worn hand in mine, then brought her into an enveloping hug. She wrapped her arms around me and sobbed. All of the Josh thoughts that had been easing since my arrival came rushing back. The guilt and the grief and the wishing it all away suddenly became fresh and raw again. “He was such a fine man… such a fine man.” I held her and she cried into my shoulder so deeply that I could feel the sorrow from her soul blending completely and profoundly with my own.

  The afternoon sun, flooding through the Baptist church window, hit off the polished burled-wood casket and created a quadrangle of light on the ceiling that eased to the altar, shifting shape as the casket moved down the center aisle, pushed solemnly by two black-suited men. Folks were levered into every pew, shoulder tight on shoulder, hands folded on laps.

  Pastor Barnes rose when the caisson reached its destination. He brought his hands wide as if to caress the congregation’s collective sorrow. “Friends,” he said, smiling sadly, “we are brought together today in this most tragic of circumstances to say good-bye to one who has touched our hearts and filled up our souls with friendship, love, and kindness.” Pastor spoke on of a merciful but perplexing God who sometimes allowed awful things to happen to wonderful people and how we were to unquestioningly accept his actions and decisions as part of his larger plan. He finished with a few relevant Bible quotes on loss and belief, then moved to an appropriately severe wooden chair at the side of the altar.

  Paitsel rose from the front row and walked slowly past the coffin, up the two stairs, and over to the lectern. He gripped both sides and lowered his head. He looked up with reddened eyes that stood out from his chalked face, opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came. Everyone in the church was silent; there were no cars on the roads, no rustle to the trees; it seemed as though even the birds had taken respectful wing. Breathing itself had stopped. I looked over at Pops, who was staring straight ahead, eyes fixed on a day thirty-six years earlier in the selfsame church when he had tried to articulate a selfsame loss.

  Arthur Bradley Peebles regarded the casket of Sarah Winthorpe Peebles on a swell of memory as fresh as morning. “I will never forget the moment I first saw her,” he began haltingly, holding the sides of the pulpit to counter the draw of his knees to the floor. “Standing in the foyer of her parents’ house in Lexington. She had on this bright blue skirt and a white blouse and a matching wide blue ribbon in her hair. Can’t believe it was ten years ago. Seems like it was just yesterday to me, and yet it also feels like a lifetime ago, we’ve done so much living in between. Sarah was, quite simply, the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. The instant I saw her, I was shot through with an electricity I’d never felt before.” He paused and looked to the left wall. “She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.” He shifted and looked back into the congregation. Jeb and Hersh were there in the front row with their fresh wives, watching their younger brother with recently acquired respect—Arthur’s mother thin between them, her hard hollow years hanging on her like a worn-out dress. In the pew behind, Sarah’s parents, choked with grief and anger at the blunder of their daughter’s mate choice. “But it wasn’t her beauty that won me. It wasn’t her beauty that won me. It was the way she smiled from her eyes. You all know it because you’ve seen it too. The way she smiled from her eyes. It was a warmth and inner beauty that came up from her heart, spilled out from her soul, and touched everybody in its path. That was her gift to all of us.” He looked up as if to find some special understanding of her death Sistine Chapeled on the ceiling. His voice rose to near shout and cracked. “My God… how I love her so.” He looked down again, then locked on the assembled, tears streaming. He gazed over at the church window and on out into the morning. “She lived for days like this, you know. The first nod of spring when she could walk outside in a sleeveless dress and get some color on her arms. She’d start planning her vegetable garden on days like this. Loved her vegetable garden… and she loved me. Lord how she loved me.” He chuckled through tears. “That I never really understood.

  “I used to say to her, back in the early days, back before we were married, ‘Why do you want to be with a backwoods hillbilly when you could have the pick of men in Lexington?’ And she would just laugh and take up my hand and say, ‘There are no men in Lexington.’ Sometimes when she was feeling serious, she would say, ‘Because I love who you are and I believe in who you will become.’ ” He paused and repeated the words slowly. “I believe in who you will become. Good God, if that wasn’t something to live up to.

  “You know, I’ve never told anyone thi
s, but she was the one who said ‘I love you’ first. I fell in love with her almost instantly, but I was too damn chicken to say it. I just could not believe someone so beautiful and smart and refined could love a holler kid like me. We had been courting about three months. I took her that Saturday rowboating on Reservoir Two, and she stands up in the boat with her hands on her hips, steam just about blowing out of her ears, and she says to me, ‘How come you haven’t told me that you love me yet?’ And I started stammering and hawing, and she says, ‘You imbecile, don’t you realize that I am madly in love with you.’ ” Pops laughed through tears, and many in the pews smiled at her brazenness. “So here I am still stuttering some excuse about timing and proper moments and trying to keep the boat from capsizing, and she just says, ‘Oh, shut up,’ and leans down and kisses me for the first time.” More smiles and chuckles from the pews.

  He looked out the window again. “On spring days like this we used to walk down to Chainey Creek and sit on a rock and take turns reading each other poetry. I’d read her something from Robert Browning and she would read me something out of Songs from the Portuguese, which was written by Browning’s wife, Elizabeth Barrett. Her favorite was called ‘Meeting at Night.’ I read it to her so many times, I’ve got it memorized.” He looked up to collect the words, to sequence them properly, then fixed wistfully on the casket and began:

  The gray sea and the long black land;

  And the yellow half-moon large and low;

  And the startled little waves that leap

  In fiery ringlets from their sleep,

  As I gain the cove with pushing prow,

  And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.

  Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;

  Three fields to cross till a farm appears;

  A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch

  And blue spurt of a lighted match,

  And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,

  Than the two hearts beating each to each.

  He went silent, transfixed on the gleaming casket that held the remains of his one true love. He slowly stepped away from the lectern and down to the aisle end where Sarah reposed. He stood for a moment, placed his hand ever so gently on the casket, then leaned down and whispered something to her. Whispered something to her for the ages.

  The round silver pier caps of the catafalque reflected the crisp of blue sky as we stood with clasped hands at the graveside. The green of the overhanging branch melded with the blue, making four discriminant earths that adorned the corners of the casket and seemed a fitting send-off to the heavens.

  Most mourners had drifted away after interment prayers, leaving just Pops, Mom, me, Audy Rae, and Paitsel, who was staring intently out over top the coffin at eighteen years of small joys and boundless treasures, unspoken gifts and finished sentences, shared disappointments and pooled support.

  The Tingley brothers were off to the side, allowing us time with our grief, but after a while the oldest stepped and whispered to Paitsel, who nodded. The brothers took up the lowering straps and on a somber count began feeding him down. As the coffin top came level with the four earths, Billy Tingley faltered, the casket tipped, and Paitsel rushed forward, took the straps, and matched the pace of the lowering. Pops stepped up and took the other straps, and together they lowered him into the cool earth.

  As Paul came to rest on the dark loam and shovelfuls rained down, the earth became his madstone once more, extracting the pain of this last beating, as it had so many times in his youth. Each ladle of dirt drawing out whatever remained from the alley on Green Street and the childhood of pain and loathing until he was cleansed and healed and rendered up pure.

  We walked slowly back to 22 Chisold after the burial. The entire town had come out in grief and guilt, and Paitsel delivered a simple, beautiful eulogy that spoke of their love and respect and the bond that started when they met on the side of Highway 81 and only deepened as Paitsel’s baseball dreams slipped away with every hung curveball.

  Audy Rae put her arm around me and squeezed. Pops and Mom were walking with her arm hooked in his. She had insisted on attending the funeral, against Pops’ strong dissent, and I watched during the eulogy as a single tear gathered at the corner of her eye and rolled slowly down her cheek. We took the porch steps and Audy Rae and Mom went inside to talk in the kitchen. The sun was starting to fall in the west and the trees were quiet. I sat in the wicker chair and Pops went inside to pour himself a glass of sour mash, even though it was only four o’clock in the afternoon. “There are some days, Kevin, that allow for early mash drinking. Today would be one of them,” he said and eased down into the chair next to me.

  “Mr. Paitsel really did love him,” I said. “I didn’t think gay people could be like that.”

  “They just want to love and be loved like the rest of us. Not much difference, really.”

  “I guess… I guess I didn’t really understand it. I always thought of them as something bad. You know… kids call other kids fags and all, and I just thought that they all were bad.”

  “They’re just like the rest of us—some are good, some are bad, but a whole lot are somewhere in the middle. I’ll tell you this: Paitsel and Paul had an uncommon love that was no less worthy than any other.”

  “But why would anyone want to be, you know, gay like that? With all the teasing and meanness they go through.”

  “I don’t think they can choose—I think they just are.”

  We were silent with our individual thoughts for the next hour—me with Josh, Pops with Sarah Winthorpe Peebles. As evening washed over us, he began spinning his sour mash in the low glass with SWP etched into it.

  “I’ll never forget the first time I took your grandmother up to Jukes Hollow. We had been courting for about six months. I was almost shaking I was so nervous for her to see where I came from.”

  “Why did that make you nervous?”

  “Hers was one of the wealthiest families in Lexington, and I was foolish enough to think that mattered to her. But she embraced my family like we were Vanderbilts.”

  “What’s it like, Jukes Hollow?”

  “Kevin, I’ve traveled the world, and it is truly one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. I’m not saying it cause I grew up there. I’m saying it cause it is the bald truth.”

  “When can I see it? I’ve been here a month and a half and you haven’t taken me yet.”

  “Very soon. In two weeks you and I are going on the Tramp. You’ll see it then.”

  “What’s the Tramp?”

  “Every year in August, I hike up into the mountains for a few weeks, deep into Old Blue National Forest, which is on the other side of Bridger Mountain.” He pointed to one of the mountains ringing the town. “About twenty miles into Blue, on a plateau, is the best fishing east of the Mississippi, place called Glaston Lake. That’s where I took your grandmother for our honeymoon. I couldn’t afford a real honeymoon and she couldn’t have cared less… another reason I loved her. Jukes Hollow is at the trailhead that goes up there. So we can spend the morning at Jukes, then head up into Old Blue.”

  “You mean hike up there?”

  “I do. Little walk in the woods never hurt a boy.”

  My camping experience consisted of a pup-tent blanket in the living room and my recent backyard foray. The idea of two weeks in the woods excited and scared me.

  “That’s a lot of food to be bringing up there.”

  “We won’t be bringing much food. Only enough to get us there.”

  “How are we going to eat?”

  “You obviously have never been fishing with me,” he said with a tired smile. “I know all the secret honey holes. We are gonna fish, trap, and live off the land like mountain men. Bout time you learned how to do that, don’t you think?”

  “I guess. It sounds cool, like we’re pioneers or something.” I was still brooding over Paul’s funeral and the thoughts that attended it. Escaping into the mountains was appealing. With
death all around, it seemed like the last, best chance for peace of mind.

  Evening finally came with an uncharacteristic bite to the air. I looked out to the streetlamp and a form materialized. I was expecting Lo or Chester, but the shadow grew with each stride. He stayed at the bottom step watching us as if looking through a window opened on a living room. “I was… I was out walkin an I saw the light from the road.”

  “I’m glad you did. Please come on up and join us.”

  He took the steps and eased himself slowly and silently into a wicker chair. I brought him a straight-up whiskey and a glass of ice. He took the whiskey with both hands, the way a child holds milk in a grown-up glass. He sipped and brought the glass back to the cradle of hands.

  Pops didn’t try to soothe him with words of a life well lived or fill the silence with eulogy platitudes, for he, above all, knew there was simply nothing to say. So there they sat in silence, sipping mash and leaving each to his own memories.

  Pops with Sarah moving into the new Chisold house and trying to push the Lexington-bought mattress up the stairs with little success. They finally collapsed in laughter and spent that first night on the mattress in the living room laid out before a dancing fire.

  Paitsel up a ladder in July scooping gutter sludge and Paul matching him muck for muck, but geared out like he was handling radioactive waste—rubber kitchen gloves to his elbows, head swaddled in a white towel, a surgical mask. Paitsel chuckled, which brought Pops out of his rememberings and back to the porch.

  “He was a fussbudget, warn’t he?”

  Pops laughed. “He was indeed persnickety—but always with a smile. One of his greater charms, I think.”

  Paitsel sipped, held the glass from the bottom. “Took me five years to get the dang coffee makin right. Hadta be fresh ground. Hadta be exactly the right mix a coffee an water.” He shook his head, smiling. “I’m always the early riser, so coffee was one a my jobs. I’d always bring him up a waker.” He went silent and staring, as if another memory had come forward that appropriated all of his faculties. Pops abided. After about five minutes, Paitsel spoke again.