Spencer's Mountain

by Earl Hamner, Jr.

  Clay examined the tree carefully, observing weight and slant of branches above and determining which way he wanted the tree to fall.

  “There’s lumber enough in this old honey to build sixteen houses,” he exclaimed to Clay-Boy.

  “It’s sure goen to make a whale of a crash,” said Clay-Boy.

  “I want her to fall out into the clearing,” said Clay. “There’s other trees in there she could knock over and I don’t want to harm none of ’em if I can help it.”

  First Clay chopped out a triangular cut in the trunk in the direction he wanted the tree to fall in. He chopped with the axe in regular joyous strokes, chipping away at the wood—one stroke up and one stroke down—until he had cleared away a quarter of the diameter of the tree. Just as the tree began an almost imperceptible list he called out to the boy to stand aside.

  They waited, but the gigantic thing held. Now the two of them with a double crosscut saw which Clay kept on the mountain approached the side away from the triangular wound and made a fresh cut in the untouched bark. Back and forth they tugged until the blade had sunk four inches into the trunk, making it nearly impossible for them to operate the saw. Clay inserted an iron wedge behind the saw and tapped it gently into the slit the saw had made. The tree groaned, and they began to saw again. The teeth of the saw ate steadily toward the center of the tree, tearing away in seconds rings which had taken a whole year to form until Clay pulled up on the saw and called to Clay-Boy to stop.

  The tree was supported now only by the delicate threads of wood it had been in the first decades of its life. They had pierced now to its core, had sawed through wood and time until the tons of wood and leaves and branches and twigs that stood above them were held almost by a slender thread.

  “She’ll come down now,” said Clay to the boy. “You get back.”

  “All right, Daddy,” the boy said.

  “You go all the way over yonder in the center of the field,” his father said. “I won’t drive the wedge in till you get there.”

  “Yes sir,” the boy said, and ran. When he reached the center of the field he raised his hand and waved. He could not see his father any longer because he was lost in the shade of the tree, but in a moment he heard the pounding of a sledge hammer against the iron wedge. He watched with a mixture of melancholy and awe as the tree began to tremble at the top and then, like the folding of a gigantic fan, lean, then drop and explode with a great crashing sound back to the ground where it had started so long ago as a seed.

  Clay-Boy ran back to the base of the tree. He found his father sitting on the raw stump. He was smoking a cigarette and looking at the tree thoughtfully.

  “I felt it when she hit the ground,” said Clay-Boy, “Way over there in the middle of the field I could feel it when she hit.”

  “A tree is a sorrowful thing to see layen down on the ground that way,” observed Clay.

  The tree had not yet settled against the earth. Even now a strong limb, caught in some awkward strained position, would snap; a branch would straighten itself out and fling its leaves out of the broken mass like a stricken arm trying to pretend that its trunk was not dead. Gradually a stillness came into the mass of broken limbs, no sound or movement came from it, and it was dead.

  All morning Clay and the boy worked over the tree, cutting away each branch from the trunk. Clay examined each branch carefully. Some he designated as firewood, others he placed in a special pile, naming them by use he would make of them.

  “This one will make good two-by-fours,” he would say. “Here’s a prime four-by-four. Put that in a special pile over there.”

  By noon they had stripped nearly half of the tree of its branches. Soon they would be coming to the smaller limbs. Clay had already spotted limbs that he could use only for firewood and by the time they came to the tip of the tree he would be picking out the smaller limbs to be used for beanpoles in the garden.

  At noon they heard voices and looked across the field to see Olivia and the children. The children ran on ahead, but Olivia was carrying the two youngest children and could not keep up with the others.

  Shirley was the first to arrive. She ran to Clay, breathless and full of importance with the news she brought.

  “We got a letter,” she said. “It came in the mail.”

  “Who’s it from?” asked Clay-Boy.

  “Mama didn’t open it yet, but it says on the envelope it’s from Richmond and she thinks it’s from Uncle Virgil.”

  “They sent word from the post office that there was this letter down there,” chimed in Becky, “and that somebody ought to come down and pick it up. Mama let Shirley and me go get it.”

  Olivia arrived, out of breath and tired from the long walk and from having carried two children. She placed Pattie-Cake on the tree stump and handed the baby to Clay-Boy.

  “I think we’ve heard from Virgil,” she said and pulled the letter out of her pocket.

  “Why didn’t you open it and find out what he said,” asked Clay.

  “It’s addressed to you. I thought maybe you’d like to open it,” replied Olivia.

  Clay accepted the letter, opened it solemnly, and read the contents. Olivia and the children waited respectfully until he had finished.

  “What in tarnation is a Jew?” asked Clay when he had finished the letter.

  “It’s some kind of religion. It’s like a Arab or a Greek or somethen. There’s some of them over in Charlottesville, I’ve heard. Why?” asked Olivia.

  “Virgil says he’s comen up here one week end soon and bringen one with him.”

  “One what?”

  “One Jew. A girl Jew.”

  “What’s he bringing her for?”

  “Says he’s thinken about marrying her.”

  “I’m glad Virgil’s finally got a girl,” said Olivia. “but what does he say about taken Clay-Boy in?”

  “Says he’ll talk to us about it when he gets here.”

  “I don’t feel none too good about it if he’s plannen on getten married.”

  “I ain’t even sure I want Clay-Boy down there if he’s goen to be liven in the same house with a Jew. They might be worse than the Baptists.”

  In the days to follow there was much discussion and conjecture about what a Jew might be, but the end result of it was that nobody had ever really seen or known one and there was not a soul in New Dominion who could tell what it was Virgil was bringing home.

  Mrs. Estelle Watts, who happened to drop by selling mail-order products, said that Jews were people who wore little black bonnets and didn’t believe in automobiles and there was no one to say that Mrs. Watts was wrong. Mrs. Frank Holloway stopped in the road one day to talk to Olivia and she said they were a religious group who went to Church on Saturday and were something like Shakers, and nobody disputed her. Mr. Willie Benblood told Clay at work that his son, Bibb, that went off to Washington, D.C., to live, had married a Jew and had even taken it up himself and that all he knew about them was that they didn’t eat meat. Bibb never brought her back to New Dominion so what Clay heard was of no earthly use to anybody.

  Chapter 9

  Claris Coleman had become so much a member of the family that she did everything but sleep at the Spencer house. She would arrive usually as Clay was leaving for work and sit at the table till all the children had finished their breakfast. Sometimes Olivia enjoyed having her, but most of the time her observations made Olivia uncomfortable.

  “Your baby must be nearly fifteen inches long now,” she said one morning, observing Olivia’s swollen stomach.

  “My baby is none of your business, and if you don’t want to wear out your welcome around here, don’t mention it again,” said Olivia.

  “It’s only that I’m so terribly enthralled with human reproduction at the moment. I’ve found a medical book at the house and it shows the development of the foetus from the moment the sperm and the egg unite until…”

  “No more!” said Olivia.

  “All right,” answered
Claris. “I was merely trying to make interesting conversation.”

  “You make interesting conversation about somethen else,” suggested Olivia as she began gathering the breakfast dishes. Claris insisted on helping, and this only added to Olivia’s distress. Usually they left the dishes to Becky and Shirley, who in a manner of speaking washed and dried them while Olivia made the beds. But with Claris there, Olivia was reluctant to leave the room for fear she might return to find Claris giving the girls a lecture on the reproductive process of tropical fish or the merits of Buddhism over Baptism. Now that Claris had become a part of the routine of the house Olivia altered her own routine so she could stay in the same room with her and thus halt or direct Claris’ comments if they became what Olivia considered harmful or too clinical.

  “Some day before I leave,” said Claris, “I’m going to give you and Mr. Spencer a week’s vacation.”

  “That’s somethen I’ve never had,” said Olivia. “That ought to be real interesten.”

  “Yes,” dreamed Claris, “you and Mr. Spencer will just be free as birds for a whole week and I’ll take over here and manage everything. I’ll change the diapers and wash the dishes and make the beds and cook the meals and probably wear myself to bits, but it will be worth it if you and your husband can get off for a moment alone together.”

  “Just where would you recommend we go?” asked Olivia.

  “I know you can’t go very far because of your circumstances. What about Virginia Beach? Have you ever been there?”

  “No,” said Olivia, “I never have.”

  “Then that’s where you should go. It’s not terribly far and it shouldn’t cost too much just for a week end, and there’s dancing and swimming and sun-bathing and it’s very relaxing. Mother and I spent a week end there once and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it immensely.”

  “I’m sure we would too, but I’d call it a vacation if I just got a chance to sit down out there on the porch for ten minutes,” said Olivia, and started for the bed she shared with Clay.

  “I’ll help you make the beds,” offered Claris.

  “No thank you,” said Olivia. “You sit out there on the front porch where Clay-Boy is and rest a while.”

  “Your mother and father are going to Virginia Beach for a second honeymoon,” Claris informed Clay-Boy when she found him sitting on the front porch.

  “You and I are going to be the mother and father while they’re gone and sleep in their bed. What do you think of that?”

  “You’re crazy,” he said.

  “You really must learn to answer people sensibly,” she said, “if you’re going out into the world. I am not in the least crazy. What you really mean is that I am straightforward and that confuses you.”

  “Oh God,” groaned Clay-Boy, “I pity the man that does get you one of these days.”

  “I do, too,” said Claris. “I’m going to be hell on wheels to live with.”

  “Don’t say that!” shushed Clay-Boy.

  “Don’t say what?”

  “Don’t say ‘hell.’ If Mama hears you she’ll send you home.”

  “It seems to me your mother hears worse than that every waking hour of her existence.”

  “Oh, she does,” replied Clay, “but she’s not used to hearing it coming from a girl.”

  Claris cupped her chin in her hands and looked out on the morning. Often in the middle of one of their talks she would become silent and thoughtful. Clay-Boy had learned not to interrupt her thinking periods because they usually produced conversational fodder well worth waiting for, once she had come to a conclusion, if she would share it.

  Finally she said, “If I could be anybody in the world do you know who I would be?”

  “Who?”

  “I would like to be your mother. She is the most fulfilled woman I have ever encountered.”

  “How do you figure that?” asked Clay-Boy.

  “My dear boy, your mother has been delivered of nine children. I only hope that I shall be so lucky.”

  “You’re crazy,” he said.

  “I’m crazy about you, but you’re going to have to cut your hair differently when we’re married. Oh, I shall boss you about terribly. Tell me, what are you going to be when you get out of college? We ought to get that settled.”

  “I’d like to be an archeologist,” he answered. He had read a book about an archeological expedition to Egypt, had memorized the methods its members had used and had been stimulated by the excitement of the accounts of their actually coming upon real relics. Thereafter he had combed the little library for books on archeology and had read everything he could put his hands on on the subject.

  “Maybe I’ll take that up too,” Claris declared with enthusiasm. “We’ll both become famous archeologists and we’ll go to Egypt and dig up old bones and find lost Egyptian kings and get our pictures splashed all over every newspaper in the world. Then we’ll write books together and give lectures and travel all over the world.”

  “Heck,” said Clay-Boy, “you don’t have to go to Egypt to dig up relics. I know a place not so far from here. I’ve been digging in it lots of times.”

  “Where is it?” she asked.

  “It’s an Indian mound,” he said. “A place where they used to bury dead Indians.”

  “I want to see that,” said Claris.

  “It’s too far away for you to go,” he said. “And anyway it’s a secret place that I’m the only one knows about.”

  “If you don’t take me to see it, I’ll go back to Washington and never speak to you again in my whole life.”

  “It’s a long ways from here,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “It’s at the top of Spencer’s Mountain.”

  “Next time you go will you take me?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “I don’t see why you can’t say yes right off. Don’t you want to take me?”

  “I wouldn’t mind, but I never took anybody up there before. It’s a long ways and you’re a girl. I don’t know if you can climb that high.”

  “I can climb any mountain around here. Now you promise to take me or I’ll scream and when your mother comes I’ll tell her you tried to pinch my bottom.”

  “But I didn’t,” he said.

  “Well, you’d like to, so it’s practically the same thing. Now, are you going to promise or am I going to have to scream at the top of my lungs?”

  “You’re going to have to scream,” he said.

  Claris drew in a great breath of air, threw back her head and was about to shatter the morning with her scream when Clay-Boy knew she had defeated him again.

  “Don’t scream,” he said.

  “That’s more like it,” she said as soon as she could breathe again. “Now, when do we go?”

  “One Saturday mornen when I can get away.”

  “Why do you fight me all the time?” she asked. “Why couldn’t you just say yes right away?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I just never ran into any girl like you before.”

  “Of course you didn’t, silly,” she said. “There aren’t any other girls like me.”

  The sun was setting when Claris declared she had to go home. This was early for her to be leaving. Usually she stayed until every one of the children had been bathed and was ready for bed and by that time the night was so dark that either Clay or Clay-Boy had to walk her home. But tonight she was leaving early because her father had promised to drive her to Charlottesville for a movie and supper.

  Clay-Boy walked with her home and when they reached her house she announced, as she had the first day in the library, that she was going to give a party.

  “It’s going to be the weirdest guest list you ever saw. I’m going to invite Miss Parker, Mr. Goodson, Geraldine Boyd, Alabama Sweetzer, Mrs. Lucy Godlove, your parents, and you, of course.”

  “Well, I’m not coming.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because all those people would be uncomfort
able with each other.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. Mother gives very successful parties and she always makes a point of having people who are very different from each other. Wouldn’t you just love to see what a lot of these oddballs would do if they got together?”

  “I think it would be terrible,” said Clay-Boy.

  “Of course the Colonel will try to talk me out of it, but I can be very persuasive when I want to. Don’t you think it sounds like an interesting gathering?”

  “I can hardly wait,” groaned Clay-Boy.

  “Of course I can’t let the Colonel know who I’m inviting or he’ll bust a gut.”

  An item of unusual interest appeared the following Wednesday in Miss Eunice’s column in the Citizen:

  Miss Claris Coleman, daughter of Colonel Coleman, General Manager of the company, has announced a soiree to be held next Friday night at the home of her father. Music will be provided by The Saunders Family that plays for the Square Dance over at Buckingham County every Saturday night. Among the invited guests are Mrs. Lucy Godlove, Miss Laura Parker, Mr. Clyde Goodson, Miss Alabama Sweetzer, Miss Geraldine Boyd, and Clay-Boy Spencer.

  The guests of honor will be Mr. and Mrs. Clay Spencer. Lemon ice cream, beer, cigarettes and after-dinner mints will be served, according to Miss Coleman who is down here from Washington, D.C., visiting her father.

  “What in the name of God is this?” exploded the Colonel when he read the item at breakfast.

  “I don’t know, Daddy,” said Claris. “What are you talking about?”

  “It says here you’re having a party Friday night. Is that true?”

  Claris came around to her father’s place and read the item. Hoping that her mirth sounded convincing, she began to laugh.

  “I don’t find it so amusing,” said the Colonel sternly.

  “Don’t you see? She fell for it hook, line and sinker. She was around snooping and trying to find out things one day so I made up the story on the spot. I’ve done it before. Don’t you remember last year when I gave her that news item about a movie company coming to New Dominion on a talent search. She printed it.”