Spencer's Mountain

by Earl Hamner, Jr.

  “You know how you talk sometime?” Clay asked. “You talk like you own the world. Well, you don’t own me and don’t you ever pull up to me in a car like that and tell me to get in. You are not the boss of me.”

  “If you didn’t talk so corn-poney,” said Claris, “you’d sound exactly like Humphrey Bogart.”

  “If you don’t like the way I talk you can find somebody else to hang around all the time,” said Clay-Boy.

  “You are the most conceited thing I ever laid eyes on,” Claris cried and slapped him hard on the cheek. Stunned, Clay-Boy withdrew just as Claris released the brake and went speeding off down the road.

  He stood for a moment rubbing his cheek and cursing the girl softly. Hundreds of things he wished he had said came to his mind and if there were any satisfaction for him in what had happened it was only that for once he had not given in to her bossiness.

  He swore that he would never see her again, but even before he reached his grandparents’ house he had begun to miss her and he knew that the days ahead would be long and empty without her.

  When he came to his grandparents’ home everyone was asleep, and as quietly as he could he crept to bed. For a long time he tossed and turned but sleep would not come.

  His mind divided itself into two parts; each half kept arguing with the other. One half insisted he might just as well have gone with Claris to the carnival while the other half insisted he had done the right thing, that she was a bossy girl and needed a lesson. Nothing had really resolved itself in his mind when he began to doze and thought he was dreaming that he heard his grandfather’s voice.

  “Clay-Boy, come down here, son.”

  He woke, went to the head of the stairs and looked down. Standing at the foot of the stairs, clad in his long flannel underwear, was his grandfather. Standing beside him, her face streaked with tears, was Claris.

  “This little girl wants to have words with you,” said Homer.

  “I came to tell you I’m sorry,” said Claris when Clay-Boy reached the foot of the stairs.

  “It’s all right,” said Clay-Boy, conscious of his grandfather’s irritation at being roused from his bed. “How did you know I was here?”

  “I only went a little way and turned back to find you. When I couldn’t I went to your house.”

  “Oh no,” said Clay-Boy.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I didn’t misbehave.”

  “Was anything happening?” asked Clay-Boy.

  “It already happened before I got there,” replied Claris. “Twins!”

  “Twins!” thundered Homer.

  “That’s right,” said Claris. “Mr. Spencer came to the door and told me. And guess what they’re going to name them.”

  “Daddy always said he was going to name it Caboose if it was a boy.”

  “The little boy is going to be Franklin Delano and the little girl is going to be Eleanor.”

  “It’s a shame it wasn’t triplets or they could have named the other one after Henry Wallace,” said Homer with a loud yawn. “And now if it’s all right with everybody, I’d like to get some sleep.”

  “Good night, Mr. Italiano. I’m sorry I woke you,” said Claris.

  “Good night, little lady,” said Homer.

  “See you tomorrow, Clay-Boy?” asked Claris.

  “See you tomorrow,” he said happily and watched as she made her way down the hill to the car, and waited until the car was out of sight.

  Chapter 12

  Clay-Boy was sitting at his desk in the library when he heard quick footsteps across the front porch. He was surprised when he looked up to see his mother’s sister, Frances, the postmistress of New Dominion.

  “Look here,” she said, and laid in front of him a letter.

  “Is that it?” he asked. His palms became moist with excitement and his heart was beating double time.

  “Open it up, boy,” said Frances. “Let’s hear the good news.”

  Clay-Boy could only stare at the letter, reading and rereading the return address: University of Richmond, Virginia.

  “Wouldn’t you know it?” said Frances. “Usually there’s half a dozen people passing by if I want to send word to somebody. Today there wasn’t a soul so when I couldn’t get word to you to come to the post office, I just closed it and brought it to you special delivery.”

  “I’m almost scared to open it,” said Clay-Boy.

  “Why?”

  “Suppose they’ve turned my scholarship down?”

  “Well, honey, that wouldn’t be the end of the world—now, would it?”

  “It would for me,” said Clay-Boy, “Even though they’ve accepted me I couldn’t go without the scholarship.”

  “Listen, Clay-Boy,” said Frances. “If you were meant to be a great man in this world you’ll be one no matter whether you get to college or not. They haven’t got all the education in the world locked up down there at the University of Richmond. You can read, can’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “Well,” she said, “if they’ve turned you down you write back to them and ask for the names of the books they teach. I’ll bet between the gang of us we could get hold of those books. It might be a little bit slower than goen down there and taken the courses, but it’s one way. You open that letter and take it like a man, no matter what they say.”

  He smiled and tore open the envelope. His hands trembled as he removed the letter and unfolded it. “The scholarship committee announces the following appointments for the Fall and Winter Semesters,” he read. There followed a list of names, but the name of Clay Spencer, Jr., was not among them.

  Without a word he handed the letter to Frances. She scanned the list and when her eyes met the boy’s he could see that she shared the misery of his rejection.

  “It was kind of like asken for the sun and the moon and the stars, once you think about it. Wasn’t it, honey?” she said.

  He turned away so she could not see the hot tears that were welling in his eyes. The world had become for him a party he would never attend. Somewhere boys with not half the heart and mind and craving to learn and to do something with that learning would be accepted by colleges and they would accept it as their due. For Clay-Boy a window had been briefly opened into a world he had only dared to dream of and all he could see at that moment was that the window had been slammed shut in his face and would never open again.

  “If I had my way, honey,” said his Aunt Frances, “you’d be President of the United States.” She walked around and kissed him on the cheek, and then at the door she turned and said, “I know you won’t believe it now, but tomorrow it won’t hurt so much and it’ll hurt even less the day after tomorrow.” And then she left him and returned to the post office.

  Clay-Boy welcomed the solitude. He wondered why he had failed and he thought of the people who would share his disappointment and his sense of failure.

  Miss Parker had written a quotation in his autograph book in the spring when he had graduated from high school and it returned to haunt him:

  “Heights of great men reached and kept

  Were not attained by sudden flight,

  For they, while their companions slept,

  Were toiling upward in the night.”

  The words had sustained him. Now they were meaningless. The world which had been so bright with its promise of the endless heights to which he could rise seemed now drab and more hopeless than it had ever seemed before. During the time he had waited for the scholarship and counted on it he had lived in a world of imagination. He had had visions of himself walking across a grassy college campus to some ivy-covered hall where he would sit with other hungry young men at the feet of inspired teachers and drink in wisdom which would enable him to help realize the dreams of his younger brothers and sisters, his own dreams, and those of his mother, and to build for his father an even grander house than Clay himself had imagined.

  Now the world he had imagined was only a bitter memory. He had returned to a ridiculous little
village in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a monotonous isolated grouping of dust-covered houses hemmed in by hills. There were no roads out of town, no escape; he was imprisoned forever.

  He walked up and down the little room swearing every curse word he had ever heard his father use, and when he had exhausted his vocabulary he wept.

  ***

  At breakfast the following Saturday morning Clay announced that he was going to Richmond for the day.

  “You lost your mind or somethen?” asked Olivia.

  “I never had no mind to lose, woman,” said Clay.

  “Then what are you goen all the way down to Richmond for?” she asked.

  “I’m goen down there to talk to whoever turned down Clay-Boy for that scholarship to go to college.”

  “They won’t let you inside the fence,” said Olivia. “They’re educated people down there.”

  “Listen to me, woman,” said Clay. “I’ve talked to educated people in my time, and I’ll tell you the truth, some of them make a heap more sense to talk to than these ignorant rattlesnakes around here. Now you get Clay-Boy in his Sunday clothes. I’m aimen to leave here just as soon as he’s ready.”

  “Not with him,” said Olivia. “He’s not goen.”

  “How come?” asked Clay.

  “I won’t have him suffer disappointment all over again. That boy got his hopes up so high he was treaden on the stars and he’s been sick at heart ever since he found out they turned him down. He’s getten over it a little bit now and I’m not goen to have you build his hopes up just so he can have his heart broken all over again.”

  “I never thought of it that way,” said Clay. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “I know I’m right,” said Olivia, “and it wasn’t all his fault. We all got puffed up with pride and sin. We bragged on him and got to feelen we were better than anybody else around here just because we had a smart boy in the family. It got to the point where it wouldn’t surprise me if it wasn’t the Lord himself that stepped in and saw to it that Clay-Boy didn’t get that scholarship.”

  “Now why the tar would He do that?” demanded Clay.

  “To teach us that it’s sinful to crave worldly goods. If the Lord put you on the earth poor, poor you were meant to be. If you were born ignorant He meant you to die ignorant.”

  “Now where in hell did you get that information?” cried Clay in disgust.

  “It’s in the Bible,” said Olivia, “and you stop swearing in front of me.”

  “You show me where it says that in the Bible,” said Clay.

  “I don’t know where it says it exactly,” said Olivia, “but I’ve heard preachers say the same thing many a time and quote the Bible to back them up.”

  “Woman, you’ve been listening to too many preachers. Don’t you know anybody in the world can find somethen written down somewhere to back up everythen they say? Maybe I never been baptized and maybe I’ve never set foot in a church since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, but I’ve got a good acquaintance with Old Master Jesus and the One I say my prayers to ain’t One that would set His foot down on one of my babies betteren himself in the world.”

  In the end Clay agreed that it would be better not to encourage Clay-Boy’s hopes again and he left for Richmond alone. He took the old road that at Scottsville met the James River and follows its curving course down through Columbia, the State Farm, Goochland, Manikin, and finally he came to the outskirts of the city of Richmond.

  When he saw the city limits sign he stopped at a filling station and asked his way to the University. He found himself on Three Chopt Road, riding along past estates so beautiful and past driveways so imposing that he began to think that each one might be the college, for he had no idea what a college might look like. Finally he found a road that led through a series of pleasant hills. Scattered through the rolling hills and surrounded by areas of clipped green lawn were many buildings covered with ivy and because once in a while Clay saw a boy or group of boys carrying books along the paths he reasoned that he had found the University of Richmond.

  Finally Clay spotted a lone boy walking along the road. He pulled up beside him and let the motor idle.

  “Howdy,” called Clay.

  The boy nodded and said, “Good morning.”

  “I reckon this is the college?”

  “Yes sir,” said the boy.

  “I’m looken for the boss or the foreman or whoever runs it.”

  “Runs what?” asked the boy, slightly apprehensive.

  “The college,” answered Clay.

  “Well, the president and the dean and the people like that all have offices at the Administration Building. It’s the one right up the hill there.” The boy pointed.

  “Much obliged,” said Clay and, waving genially, started up the hill in his truck.

  In the Administration Building, Clay opened the first door he came to and approached a woman with beautiful white hair who sat at a desk typing briskly.

  “Good morning,” she said, without looking up or slowing the least bit at her typing.

  “I want to see the head man,” said Clay.

  The woman stopped her typing and turned to look at him. She smiled and said, “I’m Miss Montrose, the registrar. Tell me your business and perhaps I can help you.”

  “I didn’t come eighty-four miles and spend all that money on gas to talk to no woman,” said Clay.

  “I’m sorry,” said Miss Montrose. “You won’t tell me who you want to see or what you want to see him about. I don’t see how I can help you.”

  Clay reached in his pocket and pulled out the letter. “This is what I come about,” he said. “I want to see why my boy’s name isn’t on that list.”

  Miss Montrose scanned the letter. “What is your boy’s name,” she asked.

  “Clay-Boy Spencer,” replied Clay. “Junior,” he added.

  “Please have a seat,” she said. She went into a door behind her and in her absence Clay walked around the small reception room. He looked from one distinguished scholarly old face in the portraits to the other and while they looked smart enough to Clay he could not get rid of the feeling that none of them had ever done a decent day’s work in his life.

  “Mr. Spencer, would you come this way, please?”

  Clay turned and asked, “Where you taken me?”

  “In to see Dean Beck,” said Miss Montrose. “He just happened to be in this morning. He wants to talk to you.”

  Clay followed her into a book-lined room where he half-expected to meet a face similar to those whose pictures lined the walls of the waiting room. He was pleasantly surprised. The man who rose to meet him was a pudgy, round-faced man who extended his hand in a friendly way; after a quick appraising glance at Clay, his face broke into an unexpectedly merry smile.

  “Delighted to meet you, Neighbor Spencer,” said the round little man, who called everybody “neighbor,” from the janitor to the president of the college. “I’m Dean of Men here, and I understand from Miss Montrose you want to discuss your son. Have a seat.”

  Clay sat in a big, old leather chair worn thin by the uncomfortable seats of countless college students. Clay himself had grown somewhat uncomfortable because he did not know quite what to make of Dean Beck.

  “Now sir,” Dean Beck said, “what can I do for you?”

  “Well sir, since you put it that way,” said Clay, “what you can do for me is to give my boy another chance at that scholarship.”

  “Neighbor Spencer, I’m sure you appreciate the fact that only a limited number of scholarships are available here. Each applicant is considered most thoroughly, and the awards must be granted to the young men we feel are best qualified, who have not only the strength of character and the drive and the will and whatever mysterious thing it is that makes for an inquiring mind, but also the preparation, the tools he needs for implementing these things once he begins a course of study.”

  “Yes sir,” said Clay, who understood in a general way what the man was sa
ying.

  “I happen to sit on the Scholarship Committee and I remember your son’s application especially. His scholastic record was impressive. His outside interests were commendable and he seemed on the whole to be a perfect candidate for a scholarship. I assure you he would have been awarded the scholarship except for one insurmountable deficiency. He had no Latin.”

  “I don’t rightly know what that is,” said Clay.

  Dean Beck was shocked, but at the same time he was disarmed by Clay’s frank admission of ignorance.

  “Latin,” he explained, “is one of the ancient languages; the knowledge of Latin is almost totally necessary for any real study of other language. In other words, your son would not have had the necessary background to have made the most of an opportunity to study here.”

  “How long does it take to learn this Latin?” asked Clay.

  “Most of our freshmen have at least one high school semester, or the equivalent in some language.”

  “Like what?” asked Clay.

  “French, German, or Spanish.”

  “Nobody talks that up in New Dominion,” said Clay. “I reckon we’ll just have to make it Latin.”

  “I don’t follow you,” said Dean Beck.

  “What I’m aimen to do is find somebody to teach him up on that Latin. After that, if you could see your way clear to give him a second chance I would be mighty obliged to you.”

  “Friend Spencer,” said Dean Beck, “may I say that if he doesn’t get the scholarship, would you try not to be too disappointed? And may I remind you that some of the greatest men in our country never graduated from college.”

  “You can tell me that, sir,” said Clay, “but I don’t think that it would mean much to tell it to my boy. He’s got his heart set on comen here. Only it’s more than that. It’s somethen I don’t understand. Lord God Almighty, I never went to school more than five or six days myself and I’ve near about broke my back just to keep all of my kids in school. But I never let one of them quit and never will till they graduate from high school. Their mama feels the same way.”