Spencer's Mountain

by Earl Hamner, Jr.

  “Howdy, stranger,” called Clay.

  “How’s the fishing?” the man asked.

  Clay could tell at once if a question of this kind was mere curiosity or if the inquirer honestly wanted to know. He gave the stranger a swift glance of appraisal and decided he was a man who knew a mullet from a mud cat.

  “Biten,” Clay replied.

  The stranger’s face lighted up with an eagerness Clay recognized immediately.

  “I’ve got some tackle in the car. Where’s the closest place I can get some minnows?”

  “Right here,” said Clay and motioned toward his minnow bucket.

  The stranger went back to his car and in a few minutes returned with fishing equipment that Clay noted with approval was well oiled and cared for. Nothing else was said between the two men, but Clay watched as closely as he could without staring directly at the stranger while he made his way quietly down the side of the bank, lifted the minnow bucket just high enough out of the water to select a minnow without injuring the others, closed the clanking tin top with a minimum of noise and plunged the hook through the meaty back of the minnow, then dropped it in the water for a moment so it might recover before he cast it into the deeper water. The minnow swam listlessly for a moment, then with a promising spurt of energy plunged forward and down, making the red-and-white cork bob frantically up and down on the surface. Carefully the stranger lifted the minnow out of the shallow water and cast expertly into a quiet deep-looking pool just beyond the swirling eddy where the water fell over a rock formation. He laid the rod against a fallen log where it would be secure and sat down.

  “The name’s Goodson,” the stranger said and held out his hand to Clay. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

  “Spencer’s mine,” said Clay, “and don’t mention it.”

  A comfortable fisherman’s silence fell between them. Each, absorbed in his own particular bobbing cork, waited patiently and silently for a bite.

  It was Clay who hauled in the first fish, a fierce and outraged six-pound bass that continued to fight even after Clay had taken him from the water and had secured him with a small chain through his gills.

  To celebrate, Clay took a nip from his bottle; Mr. Goodson, elated by Clay’s catch and encouraged by it, joined him.

  ***

  At the Baptist parsonage a group of ladies was busy preparing the house for the arrival of their new minister. The parsonage itself was a white frame house that had been built along a pleasant road about a mile from where the Spencers lived. It contained six square rooms and faced squarely on the highway in much the same manner the Baptists faced their God. The grass of the front lawn was quite green, clipped and proper and kept healthy, if not from God’s good rain at least from frequent baptisms by hose. There were no frivolous zinnias or nasturtiums to mar its green expanse, although some white snowball bushes bloomed on the lawn in early August. In the back were some hollyhocks along the path that went to the henhouse, but that was all the frivolity there was about the house. All told, it was a very Baptist establishment.

  On this particular Saturday afternoon, the Baptist Ladies Aid Society had summoned its members to prepare the parsonage for the new parson’s arrival. If the number of ladies present exceeded the membership of the Ladies Aid Society it could perhaps have been due to the fact that every woman who had a daughter of marriageable age had brought her along, since the one thing they knew for certain about the new minister was that he was not married.

  Mrs. Lucy Godlove, along with her daughter Barbie-Glo, and Mrs. Tillie Witt, along with her daughter Honey-Glo, had drawn the chore of cleaning the kitchen. Neither of the girls had much enthusiasm for their task. It was by no coincidence that both of their minds were on the same thing. They were both thinking about the square dance at Buckingham County Courthouse that was held every Saturday night. Each of them was devising in her mind some way she might sneak away from home and attend the festivities, sneaking away being a necessity since neither of their mothers, being Baptists, condoned the sin of dancing.

  Lucy Godlove talked a great deal, which was unfortunate because half the time she did not say what she thought she was saying. Speaking of Frances Paine, who was taking a course in beauty culture, Rose had reported that Frances was taking a beauty vulture course. The influenza academic had taken Lucy’s father in 1917, and she never let Barbie-Glo go to Charlottesville without warning her not to speak to any of the University of Virginia students because it was a well-known fact that all they thought of was hauling young country girls off to their maternity houses and raping them.

  While the girls devoted their minds to their plans for evading their mothers that night, the two women chatted about the new preacher.

  “Be nice if he was young,” sighed Lucy Godlove.

  “Be nice if he knew some new sermons,” observed Tillie Witt. “That’s all I ask. It had got so with old Preacher Goolsby that I knew what he was goen to say before he could open his mouth.”

  “I didn’t mind Brother Goolsby so bad,” said Lucy Godlove, “except once in a while his stutteren used to get on my nervous. I still can’t say the Lord’s Prayer without stutteren, but I’m hopen that’ll clear up now he’s gone, bless his soul.”

  “I just can’t stand hearen the same old sermon, over and over. I never did do half the things Preacher Goolsby used to preach against anyway, that old adult’ry and idolizing gold. Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever had any gold to idolize,” said Tillie Witt.

  “What I’m hopen this new preacher will do,” said Lucy Godlove, “is put some life back in the church. Church is all I got in my life, God knows.”

  Church indeed was Lucy’s life. Her husband Craig was the night watchman at the mill and since he had left her bed and taken up with a girl named Alabama Sweetzer, Lucy had turned completely to the church. She went to Sunday School, the Sunday Morning Sermon, the Sunday Night Sermon, Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting, the Ladies Aid Society every Thursday afternoon and she even attended the Friday-night meeting of the BYPU, the Baptist Young People’s Union. Every year at the Annual Baptism over at Witt’s Creek she got herself baptized, went down with her eyes screwed tight together and her hands clenched together and came up screaming that she had seen Jesus and sputtering muddy water, her drowned hair in long wet coils down her shoulders. Afterward she would walk around telling everyone that she felt as clean as the day she was born.

  Each year as Christmas approached Lucy would take charge of Christmas Tree Night. This was the program that was presented each Christmas Eve at the Baptist church. On this one night of the year the church lost its chilly barren look and was gaily decorated in pine wreaths tied with gay Christmas red bows and festooned with streamers of crepe paper and creeping cedar. Nervous children dressed as shepherds and angels recited poems that Lucy would make up in her head. Always some little boy forgot the poem he had worked on since Thanksgiving until he found his mother’s face in the audience, mouthing the searched-for word, and then was able to continue. Afterward Mr. Willie Simpson, who sang so loud in the choir, would arrive all dressed up in a Santa Claus suit and there would be presents for everybody.

  One year after Lucy’s Christmas presentation half the congregation stopped speaking to her because she had given all the principal parts in the pageant to her own children, ugly little skinflinty things; they all looked like cats, and since it was the year Barbie-Glo was taking that mail-order course in toe dancing, Lucy had worked in a toe dance for Barbie-Glo who was playing the part of Mary the Mother of Jesus, and her little brother Woodrow, who was supposed to be Joseph but forgot all his lines and turned the whole thing into an awful mess.

  There were even those in the Baptist church who hoped now that a new minister was coming he might appoint someone else, more capable if somewhat less dedicated than Lucy, to conduct the annual celebration which had become such an ordeal.

  In the living room of the parsonage, Ida Italiano and Eunice Crittenbarger were waxing furniture. Eun
ice was a snoop and a gossip and turned every social encounter into an opportunity to find out anything she could about other people’s business. Since prying into other people’s affairs came naturally to Eunice it was inevitable that she become the local correspondent for The Charlottesville Citizen and submit to the newspaper each week an account of what she considered newsworthy in New Dominion, some of which was published and which earned her the sum of three dollars a week. For this sum she would submit from ten to fifteen pages of single-spaced, badly typed copy from which the editors had to delete such items as:

  Hiram Motherwell’s old sow pig, Petunia, had fourteen babies Thursday night. Mother and children all doing just fine except for the one that was eaten.

  Franklin Bibb is laid up with intestinal trouble again. This is the same old trouble Franklin has had for years and his sister, Wanda, died of. Dr. Campbell says Franklin had better do something about himself or he won’t live to tell the tale.

  There was a fight down at The Pool Hall last Friday night but nobody was hurt. This isn’t much news as there is a fight down there most every Friday night. They ought to close it.

  “I wonder what old Preacher Goolsby really did die of,” Eunice remarked to Ida.

  “I think it was just old age,” replied Ida. “He’d been feeble for years and he was way up in his eighties.”

  “I don’t know,” said Eunice. “Once they get sick people over there in that Old University of Virginia Hospital you’re just as good as dead. All they do is let them young students cut people open and study what’s inside ’em.”

  “I’ve heard that,” said Ida, “but they sure were nice to me over there that time I broke my hip. The nurses took real good care of me and never a day went by the doctor didn’t come in and look at me. He was an Episcopalian, that doctor, but he was just as nice as he could be.”

  “Anyway, I’ll bet we never do find out exactly what Preacher Goolsby passed on with. Miss Ida, didn’t you and Preacher Goolsby have a fallen-out one time?”

  “It wasn’t what you would call a fallen-out. No,” said Ida.

  “Seems like I heard y’all had a fuss or somethen.”

  “What you’re thinken about was when Preacher Goolsby married Clay and Livy. But it wasn’t any fuss and never a harsh word passed between us. He come to me the very next day and told me he’d married ’em, said he turned ’em down at first, but they would have found another preacher somewhere, and they would of. But there never was any hard feelens between the preacher and me.”

  “What did you have against Clay Spencer marryen Livy?”

  “Clay was a wild boy. I don’t reckon I would of carried on so if I’d known then how he’d settle down. He’s been a good husband to Livy and I love him now just like one of my own. You won’t find a more good-hearted man than Clay Spencer.

  “I love to hear Clay tell a joke. I’ll be feelen just as blue as I can be, real down in the dumps, and I’ll run into Clay Spencer and he’ll have me laughen in no time.

  “Clay drinks and he takes the Lord’s name in vain, but he’s a good provider for Livy and he’s a good father to them children. Lord, how he loves them children. I reckon you just have to take the good and the bad in this world. We better do some work, Eunice, or that preacher’s goen to walk in here and find us gabben our heads off.”

  ***

  As the late evening sun shifted into the west it cast a pool of light into a particularly fruitful fishing hole on the Rockfish River. It illuminated for a moment an empty whiskey bottle, an enormous string of sizable bass and two drunken men.

  “There was something I stopped here to ask you,” Mr. Goodson said. “I can’t for the life of me remember what it was.” He baited his hook and cast with an elaborate gesture, but the bait fell into the water directly in front of him while he searched with unsteady eyes across the river where the bait should have gone.

  “Maybe you just stopped to do some fishen,” suggested Clay. He lay in the grass squinting up at the falling sun, his hands crossed over his belly. His hook had long since been swept downstream and into an overhanging willow tree where it was hopelessly entangled.

  “I can’t remember why I stopped at all,” said Mr. Goodson, and he started to sit back in the grass. When he was halfway down there came a sudden whirring from his reel, a big fish from the sound of it.

  “Jesus Christ!” shouted Clay.

  “That’s it!” said Mr. Goodson.

  “Grab that fishen pole, man,” shouted Clay. “You have done snagged yourself a sea monster.”

  “That’s what I stopped to ask. Which way is New Dominion?”

  “The hell with New Dominion,” cried Clay. “Bring in that fish, son.”

  The entire length of cord had unwound from the reel and the rod was bent in a taut oval and the line was tearing through the water so fast it made a sizzling sound. There was so much tension on the line that the rod was beginning to slide gradually into the river.

  Mr. Goodson caught up with the reel at the river’s edge. When he held the rod securely he gave a slight jerk to set the hook in the mouth of whatever behemoth had taken his bait. Slowly, torturously, he began to reel in. Beside him, Clay interrupted his prayer only to shout some unintelligible direction for landing the fish.

  Neither of them was ever to know what was at the other end of the line. With a stinging zip the line snapped and the bent rod snapped straight.

  “Great Jumpin’ Jesus!” shouted Clay. “Damn to hell that black-souled fish and Jonah’s black-bellied whale!”

  Mr. Goodson blinked.

  “You shouldn’t talk that way in front of me,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I am a minister of God,” Mr. Goodson said. “I may even be your minister.”

  “I ain’t got no minister except the sun of the sky and the dirt of the earth,” said Clay.

  “I am the new minister of New Dominion,” insisted Mr. Goodson.

  “You’re lyen,” said Clay.

  “No sir,” said Mr. Goodson and hiccoughed.

  Clay began to laugh. Almost immediately his laughter got out of hand and the great gulping wah wah wah sounds that were coming out of him were too strong to take standing up. He fell to the ground in a paroxysm of gleeful suffering, rolling over and over in the weeds, the mud and the pebbles along the side of the river. It was only when he rolled into the river itself, immersing himself completely, that the sound of his spasm of laughter fell still.

  The sheepish grin on the minister’s face turned to a look of concern as Clay disappeared beneath the water. But as quickly as he went down Clay was on the surface again. Making a great splash and cry he paddled about in the river and when he had refreshed himself he headed in to the shore. He crawled out onto the bank and lay there for a moment to catch his breath.

  Mr. Goodson staggered down to where Clay lay inhaling and exhaling vigorously. He bent unsteadily over Clay and inquired, “You didn’t see anything of that fish I lost down there, did you?”

  Clay rose up and threw his soaking wet arm around his new-found friend.

  “Son,” he said, “you’re too good to lose. Come on, I’m goen to escort you to the Baptist parsonage myself.”

  ***

  The parsonage had been spotless since four in the afternoon. Now it was close to six o’clock and the ladies were more than anxious to go home and prepare supper for their men, but not one of them was of a mind to leave without greeting the new preacher when he arrived.

  There were several conjectures about what might have happened to him, but not one of the ladies had the ingenuity to guess that the fault was Clay Spencer’s.

  When the sound of a car approached they would look up eagerly; when one finally stopped in front of the parsonage the entire membership of the Ladies Aid Society rushed up to the window and concealed themselves behind one of the white lacy window curtains they had installed that afternoon.

  The arrival of the new minister would have been dramatic enough
had he merely stepped out of the car and walked up to the front door. But the way in which he was to arrive was to furnish conversation for the next ten to fifteen years. In the first place, the ladies were astonished to see Clay Spencer step out of the car. Walking almost as if he were sober, which he nearly was by this time, Clay made his way around to the other side of the car. He opened the door, eased something out that had been slouched against it and threw it over his shoulder. Unaware that any eyes rested on him, Clay started for the parsonage carrying the inert body of the new Baptist minister. When he opened the front door he found himself staring into a circle of female faces.

  “Good Lord, Clay, what’s happened?” cried Lucy Godlove.

  “He’s all right,” said Clay. “He’s just…” He had started to tell them the preacher’s real condition, but he realized that he must not. “He’s all right,” he said. “He just run into somethen.”

  A chorus of sympathetic voices offered suggestions that somebody go after the doctor, that the preacher be put in bed, and that he ought to be kept warm. As the ladies pressed closer to offer aid they realized that Clay had been drinking.

  “Clay,” said Lucy, “you are in no condition to take care of him. Put him down here and we’ll do for him.”

  “I’ll just take him up to his bed if you’ll show me the way, Miss Lucy,” said Clay, backing away.

  “That preacher is liable to have infernal injuries,” declared Lucy. “You can’t tell what’s broke inside him there and you ought not to be moven him around.”

  “He’ll be all right. All he needs is a little sleep,” insisted Clay, practically dancing around the room to keep the persistent Lucy from detecting the liquor on the preacher’s breath. The activity began to rouse the preacher. He struggled up out of Clay’s arms and assumed an unsteady upright position on the floor. Silence had fallen in the room which was broken only when one of the women sneezed.