Clay-Boy, half-asleep on the foundation, thought at first his father was calling to him.
“Papa, go back!” were the words he heard, but then as he sat up and looked to where the voice had come from every muscle in his body went rigid with the horror of what he saw. His grandfather stood transfixed, unable to move as he looked up at the tree which slowly and gently had begun to fall toward him. In that same instant Clay-Boy saw his father throw his axe aside and run toward his father, shouting as he ran, but even before Clay reached old Zebulon a splintering groan came from the tree trunk as it separated from its stump and then the crashing mass of green enveloped the old man and Clay.
As Clay-Boy ran toward the fallen tree he cried aloud to God making incoherent promises and impossible bargains that he would keep if only somehow he could find his father and grandfather alive under the mass of green ahead of him.
Reaching the outer edges of the fallen tree, Clay-Boy, wild with fear and dread, tried to claw his way into where he thought his father and his grandfather lay, but the crushed and broken branches were too thick, and even his animal like efforts could carry him no further.
He heard someone screaming “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” and when he recognized his own voice and the hysteria in it he realized he must gain control of himself before he could be of any help to his father and his grandfather if they were not already beyond help.
Slowly, trying to regain reason, he backed out of the entangling leaves and limbs and ran to the base of the tree and inched himself along the trunk through a tunnel of green. The hysteria returned as he called again and again, “Help me, God. Help me, God. Help me, God.”
Suddenly, when he had come midway the length of the tree he saw underneath him his father’s shirt.
“Daddy,” he called, but no answer came. If only the shirt might move or show some sign of life. He waited, fearing to know if life were there or not, for if his father were dead—if all that vitality and strut and swagger and joy could have gone so quickly out of life—then the world might as well be dead. Nothing would have meaning without him. Immediately beneath Clay-Boy was a medium-sized branch of the tree. The boy reached down and slowly pulled the branch toward him and as he did so he revealed gradually the chest and then the throat and finally the face of his father. Clay’s eyes were open, whether in life or in death, Clay-Boy could not tell.
His hand was shaking violently, but when he reached down and touched his father’s chest and felt life there, he began to cry and pull at his father’s body in insane belief that he might extricate him from the tree. Finally he realized that he could not do it alone and the boy clawed his way out of the twisted and broken branches and ran down the mountain toward the village for help.
He had run so hard and fast that he could hardly speak when he came to the house closest to the mountain. It happened to be the Baptist parsonage and as soon as he had sobbed out to Mr. Goodson what had happened, Mr. Goodson sent him off to find more men and the doctor and went roaring off toward the mountain in his car.
Continuing on into the village, Clay-Boy stopped at one house after another until a stream of men and cars was set in motion toward the mountain. Finally he reached the doctor’s house.
Doctor Campbell was writing “Am delivering the Bland baby” on the slate that hung outside his door, but when Clay-Boy told him what had happened, he said, “Estelle Bland has had enough babies to know what to do. Jump in the car, son.”
By the time Doctor Campbell and Clay-Boy reached the mountain the men had removed Clay from the wreckage of the tree. He was stretched out on the ground and he was alive.
“I’m all right except for this leg, Doc,” he said. “Go in there and see if you can do anything for Papa.”
Clay-Boy looked down at his father’s leg and saw with a wave of nausea that below the knee the leg was bent in a way that no leg should be.
Doctor Campbell knelt and looked at the leg, but Clay said, “Dammit, Doc. Take care of Papa.”
Doctor Campbell went to the trunk of the tree and made his way along it to where a group of men were sawing and chopping at limbs and branches in order to get to Zebulon.
“Ain’t this hell, son?” said Clay.
“Is Grandpa dead, Daddy?” asked Clay-Boy.
“I hope to God he ain’t,” said Clay. “I wasn’t halfway through that tree; it didn’t appear anywhere near ready to fall. I heard her give a little and then I looked out there, and God Almighty, there was Papa. I hollered at him, but either he didn’t hear me or he was just froze to the spot.”
After a while the doctor came out of the tree and knelt down beside Clay.
“He’s alive, Clay,” said Doctor Campbell, “but it won’t be for long. He’s broke nearly every bone in his body.” He took a pair of scissors out of his bag and began cutting away at the trousers around Clay’s broken leg.
“Son,” he said to Clay-Boy, “there’s a bottle of whiskey over in the glove compartment in my car. Get it for your daddy. He’s going to need it.”
Incredibly, old Zebulon was still alive when the last branches of the tree were cleared away, and he clung to life while his body was somehow placed on a stretcher and started down the torturous twisting wood trail that led to the foot of the mountain.
Clay-Boy had run on ahead to prepare his mother and grandmother. He found his mother in the kitchen and he forced himself to stop trembling before he entered the door. Nevertheless, Olivia knew.
“Son,” she cried, “what’s happened?”
“Daddy’s all right, Mama,” Clay-Boy said, “he’s all right.”
“Then what’s the matter?” she cried. “You’re white as a sheet.”
“They had a little accident… up on the mountain,” Clay-Boy said, attempting to keep calm.
“Who?”
“Daddy and Grandpa,” answered Clay-Boy.
“Oh God,” screamed Olivia. “What happened?”
“Mama,” said Clay-Boy, “you’ve got to sit down and listen to me. They’re all right. They’re bringen them home now, but they’re all right. It was the tree Daddy was cutten. It fell on Grandpa and Daddy came runnen, and it fell on him too, but he’s just got a broken leg. Grandpa’s a little worse, but the doctor’s with him and he’s doen everythen he can.”
Once more Olivia screamed, “Oh God,” and ran out into the yard, gathered up the children and herded them all into the kitchen where she left them in Clay-Boy’s care. Sensing that some terrible thing had happened they sat in unaccustomed quiet and whispered in fear and apprehension.
And then the sound of unfamiliar voices, hushed and sympathetic, came into the house as the neighbors brought Clay and his father home. They placed Clay, with his leg in a temporary splint, on the sofa in the living room. The old man they carried into his room and without removing him from the stretcher laid him out on his bed.
Doctor Campbell allowed Eliza to stay in the room with him while he worked most of the afternoon on Zebulon. Once he came out and in a quiet conversation with Clay and Olivia suggested that Virgil be sent for. The other sons who lived in the community had already arrived and were sitting quietly on the front porch.
When he had done all he could do for the old man, Doctor Campbell left him alone with Eliza and gave his attention to Clay.
Sitting beside Zebulon’s bed, Eliza suddenly heard him whisper her name. She took his hands in hers and bent to hear what he was trying to say.
“I’m goen over, old woman,” he whispered.
“Rest now,” she said.
“I want my will made out,” he said.
“No need for that. You rest,” she said.
“Get somethen to write on,” he insisted, and Eliza left the room and returned a moment later with a pencil and one of the children’s school tablets.
“Write it like I tell you,” he said, and as Zebulon dictated Eliza wrote down his last will and testament. When it was over he sank back into a coma and was carried farther and farther away from her.
Through his last moments the old woman knelt beside his bed, holding his hand in hers. In the beginning, when she knew that he would die, she had faced the inexorable fact and yet hoped that prayer might return him to her for a few more days at least; she had prayed over and over again:
“Lord Jesus, give him time. Let him stay a little while longer. Lord God, be merciful on his soul.” On and on her plea had sounded until it had become a mumble and the mumble had become a whisper and finally when she knew that not even God could keep the feeble flicker of life going she had composed herself and held his hand.
When life ebbed away, when the blood no longer made its spasmodic voyage through the hand she held, she looked at his face. The fierce old beautiful visage relaxed, and something not quite a smile, but akin to it, took its place, a waxed artificial slack expression that was neither pain nor joy but was simply death.
Something she could not name rose from forgotten wells and the old woman remembered her husband in the vigor of his youth. He had been a man to be proud of and the tears that fell from her old eyes were the tears of a young girl. Her grief spent itself when at last she took her warm hand from the cold dead one and prepared herself to tell those who waited beyond the door.
She opened the door and they knew.
“The old man’s gone,” she said with dignity and suddenly the arms of her sons were around her and they clung to one another and wept.
All that night the house was ablaze with light. The children were sent to their Grandmother Italiano’s and Eliza sat in a chair in the upstairs room used by the girls. The women in the family took turns sitting with her while she sat, not speaking, her eyes set far away on some past, remembered thing. The other women busied themselves in the kitchen while in the living room the men were drinking whiskey and telling stories about the old man.
“I remembered the only time he ever whipped me,” recalled Anse. “I sassed him, and I don’t remember what I said or what it was about but he near-about killed me. Used his strap and I’m here to tell you I never sassed Papa again to this day.”
“Wasn’t much of a hand for getten mad, but if you crossed him the wrong way, Papa was a good man with his fists,” said Rome.
“Best hunter in his time till his eyes went bad on him,” said Clay.
In the afternoon of the following day Clay was driven to the graveyard early and placed in a chair because of his broken leg. He waited there as neighbors and friends of the old man gathered to pay him their final tribute.
Then through the crowd, on their shoulders, his sons bore the body of the old man and lowered the coffin into the grave. They listened quietly while Mr. Goodson spoke the ritual, and when he had finished, Clay, who was the sweetest singer of all the sons, with a voice that was tight and choked began what had been the old man’s favorite hymn.
On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,
The emblem of suffering and shame;
And I love that old cross where the dearest and best
For a world of lost sinners was slain.
But as he sang his voice sweetened to the words and other voices joined his and they sang it so beautifully that no matter how far away, no matter where the old man might be listening, he could not have failed to hear the words:
So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross
Till my trophies at last I lay down
I will cling to the old rugged cross,
And exchange it someday for a crown.
When it was evening the whole clan gathered again in the living room at Clay’s house. Eliza was composed now, and sat with her sons and their wives and told them stories of Zebulon in his young manhood and of their life together in the early days. Finally when it was late and the time had come for rest, she said, “Before everybody goes, we’re goen to read his will.”
“Papa never made out no will, Mama,” said Clay.
“Yes he did, son,” said Eliza. “I got it in yonder in my bureau. Everybody wait here for a second and I’ll go fetch it.”
When the old woman returned from her room she carried the sheet of paper from the children’s school tablet. All noise in the room ceased as she sat down in her chair, put on her glasses and began to read:
“The old woman is writen this for me because I never learned to write myself. When you boys read this I’ll be gone from this world and I hope you won’t think hard of me for taken your hospitality all these many years and never letten you know I had money of my own. I was saven it hopen that when I died it wouldn’t put no burden on nobody to bury me, but now the time is comen when I’ve got to face the Old Master and I want this money to go for somethen good. It’s my heart’s craven all my earthly riches go to my grandson, Clay-Boy Spencer, and for him to use it down at that college to make something of himself, for the good of him and the rest of the family too if they can get any benefit out of it. God bless each and every one of you. Stick to your guns; pay all debts; don’t run with evil; and… and…”
Eliza began to cry and the paper fell out of her hands onto the floor.
Anse picked it up and read the closing words: “And take care of my old woman who has been a joy and a blessing to me all the time we endured together. Good-by from Zebulon Spencer.”
Later that evening Eliza turned over to Clay-Boy the gold watch and the worn old black wallet which had belonged to his grandfather. In it were thirty-seven one-dollar bills.
At first Clay-Boy objected. “You keep it, Grandma,” he said.
“No, boy,” she replied. “It your granddaddy’s way of showen his faith and trust and it wouldn’t be right for you not to take it.”
Clay-Boy placed the money in his mother’s hands for safekeeping. In the days that came he would think about the money and it became a kind of assurance to him. It was only a small fraction of the amount he would need, but it was a beginning.
Chapter 15
Slowly those who lived in the house began to adjust to the loss of the old grandfather. Eliza could not endure to sleep in the room they had shared for so long together and went to visit some of the other sons, spending a week or two with each one before going on to stay for a while with a different set of in-laws and grandchildren.
Clay’s leg was mending, but even so he sat on the front porch and cursed and grumbled at the passing of precious time he might have spent working on the house. When the summer’s heat grew intense the skin beneath the cast began to itch, and every time Doctor Campbell came to inspect the leg Clay would threaten to cut the cast off himself unless the doctor did it. Doctor Campbell was able to persuade Clay to keep the cast on only when he warned that premature removal of the cast might permanently injure Clay’s leg.
One week Clay became obsessed with the notion that his house on the mountain was being stolen board by board, that thieves were carrying off his tools and his power saw and the treasures he had collected there. One morning, to put his father’s mind at rest, Clay-Boy offered to go up on the mountain to check on the house.
Clay-Boy went through the kitchen to tell his mother where he was going.
“You want to go too?” he asked Claris, who was helping his mother bathe the twins.
“Sure,” said Claris. “Just wait till I throw some powder on old Franklin Delano.”
“I’ll take him,” said Olivia, retrieving Franklin Delano from Claris, who handled him as if he were a sack of potatoes.
After Clay-Boy and Claris disappeared down the road Olivia went about her work absent-mindedly. She was sorry she had allowed them to make the expedition. There were snakes on the mountain and all sorts of wild animals. But after a while Olivia admitted to herself that it was not danger from wild things that worried her, but the possibilities open to two young people alone on the mountain with no one to chaperone them.
***
“The best way to go,” said Clay-Boy when they came to the foot of the mountain, “is up the creek bed. We won’t run into so many snakes that way.”
Claris shuddered
. “You didn’t tell me there’d be snakes.”
“There won’t be, except for water snakes, and most of them don’t bite. Come on. Let’s go.”
Clay-Boy led the way. He stepped from one stone to another above the clear shade-dappled water that tumbled peacefully down the mountainside. Through one cool mossy glade after another, over the icy spring-fed water, Claris followed in his steps, agile as a boy. Once Clay-Boy saw a cottonmouth moccasin coiled around the base of a frond of ferns. He knew he should kill it because it was poisonous, but he was impatient to reach the top of the mountain and kept on past the snake, which did not stir.
“That’s trailing arbutus there,” he said, and pointed to a patch of the plant, “and over yonder under that pine tree is some creeping cedar.”
“The arbutus is lovely, but I don’t like anything that creeps,” said Claris. “Where did you find out so much about plants?”
“My Grandma Spencer. She used to take us walken along the road and every time we’d see a plant she’d tell us the name of it. When I was a junior in high school I picked sixty-two different kinds of plant leaves and knew the names of all of them.”
“Botany is not one of my passions,” she said. “I’m more interested in sociology. Give me a hand.”
Clay-Boy turned back and helped her step up a slippery stretch of rock. It occurred to him that she was behaving more like a girl today than she usually did, and the thought made him feel vaguely superior and protective so that he started pointing out places where she should step with care or else he would wait and escort her over a place where she might have fallen or slipped.
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