Spencer's Mountain

by Earl Hamner, Jr.

  “It’s right pretty from the picture,” said Clay.

  “That one looks exactly like what I saw a boy wearen over in Charlottesville one time. I said to myself at the time how nice Clay-Boy would look in a suit like that.” She read the description from the catalogue. “Green herringbone tweed. Comes with vest. Extra pants optional.”

  “How much they asken for it?” demanded Clay.

  “Nineteen dollars and ninety-five cents.”

  “Methuselah’s britches!” exclaimed Clay, “What’s it made out of? Fourteen-carat gold?”

  “It says this herringbone tweed is fifty per cent wool and fifty per cent cotton, long-lasting and keeps its crease. Clay, I know it’s expensive and all, but I think he ought to have it. We could buy it out of that money his granddaddy left him, and he’d still have seventeen dollars in his pocket when he leaves.”

  “Honey, there ain’t a thing wrong with that suit I was plannen to be buried in. I’ll just put off dyen for a while and let him use that.”

  “Oh, he’s goen to use it,” Olivia said. “I’ve already taken in the britches so it fits him just fine, but that’s goen to be his everyday suit. What I’m talken about here is somethen for when he dresses up.”

  “Two suits! Woman, you have lost your mind.”

  “Listen to me, you old hillbilly. I’ll bet you some of them boys he’ll be up against down there will have two or three of everything, and while we’re on the subject I think he ought to have some more shirts.”

  “Give him that white one I was saven to be buried in,” Clay offered again.

  “I was already counten that one, but that still only makes four. I think I’ll get him one more. A green one maybe to go with his new suit.”

  “Woman,” he exploded, “Whatever gave you the notion you married John D. Rockefeller?”

  “I reckon it was the way you talked when you were courten me,” she rejoined.

  “Oh, I was John D. Rockefeller in them days. I had money to burn back then. Why, in them days I’d go out of an evening and spend five or six dollars and never think a thing about it. Then all of a sudden you come along swingen that pretty little tail in front of me and I knew my time was up. Now here I am with eleven kids to take care of, one of ’em goen to college, and nothen to be buried in if I die by accident. All my clothes will be strutten around down yonder at the University of Richmond.”

  They debated long into the night but the discussion ended finally with Olivia making out the order, without the extra trousers, and sending it off in the morning mail. When the suit came she planned to keep it as a surprise for Clay-Boy and not give it to him until the time came for him to leave.

  ***

  Eliza returned home unexpectedly. “Just wanted to get settled before winter time,” she said. “Needed the feel of my own bed again. My own things around me.”

  Some of the pain had gone from her eyes, but the family knew that she would never completely stop grieving for the old man. They contrived to keep her busy. The girls went to her with happily granted requests for lessons in knitting and crocheting. Olivia brought out scraps she had been saving for a patchwork quilt and Eliza fitted them together, using her own Star of David pattern.

  On Friday of the week end he was to leave, Clay-Boy stood in the doorway of the little library for one final look. He had read every book on the shelves and he felt better about leaving them now that he knew they would be left in loving hands—Miss Parker had persuaded the Episcopalian minister and his wife to allow their daughter, Geraldine Boyd, to take Clay-Boy’s place at the library. Clay-Boy locked the door, placed the key under the mat and hurried home.

  Early Sunday morning Clay-Boy sat at the window of the boys’ room and looked out into the crabapple orchard. He had not slept. In a few hours he would be leaving, and every sound that came to his ears filled him with pain and sadness.

  ***

  The routine sounds of the house coming to life seemed more beautiful than he had ever imagined. He heard the clamor of his father’s alarm clock, his father’s long deep yawn and then Clay’s muttered weather forecast for the day: “Goen to be a nice one.” And then he heard the clank of the iron lid as his father filled the cooking range with wood, the whoosh of the fire up the chimney as Clay lighted the kerosene-soaked sticks, the squeak of the loose board in the hall as Clay came to the foot of the stairs to call Olivia—“Sweetheart.” “All right, I’m awake,” her answer came.

  At breakfast everyone was solemn. Olivia’s eyes were swollen and red from weeping and she spoke hardly at all. The plate she served Clay-Boy was laden with ham and eggs and biscuits.

  “Be a long time before you get good home cooken again,” she said. “Eat hearty.”

  Once in a while Clay would think of some parting piece of advice for his son and would interrupt his eating long enough to say, “Don’t get mixed up with bad women if you can help it, boy. They’ll ruin you.”

  Later he said, “Don’t borrow money, play square with everybody and look ’em straight in the eye.”

  Clay-Boy promised gravely to follow his father’s advice and the other children nodded their heads as if they too had heard and taken counsel from their father.

  When everybody had been served, Olivia left the room and went up to the boys’ room. Later when she came down she said, “I’ve laid your clothes out for you on your bed, son.”

  “I reckon it is about time I started getten ready,” he said. He made his way up the stairs slowly. The first thing he saw when he walked into his room was the new green herringbone tweed suit.

  All sound had stopped from down below. They were all waiting for some signal of his surprise, some cry of joy, but when none came everyone looked at each other uncomfortably. Finally Olivia came to the foot of the stairs.

  “Son,” she called.

  When no answer came she called again, “Clay-Boy?”

  “Yes ma’am,” he answered, and his voice was thick with tears.

  “You all right?” she called.

  His footsteps sounded across the floor and when he came to the door of his room he was carrying the suit in his arms.

  “You like it all right?” she asked.

  “Oh Mama,” he said. “I never in my life expected to have anything so pretty.” He went down the stairs in a rush, embracing his mother and father and then was off to show his brothers and sisters, letting them feel it if their hands were clean.

  When he tried the coat on, his father said, “Boy, you’re goen to have to fight the women off when you wear that.”

  “I bet I will too, Daddy,” he said, and then he went back upstairs to finish dressing.

  His mother was waiting for him in the kitchen when he came back down. She was holding the envelope with the money in it that would pay for Clay-Boy’s first semester of college.

  “Can’t I just put it in my wallet, Mama?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, “you’ll lose it.”

  She slipped the envelope in the inner pocket of his suit and fastened it there with a safety pin.

  “I’ve got it pinned there good and tight,” she said. “Don’t unpin it until you’re ready to pay the college.”

  On the front porch, Clay-Boy found his Grandmother Spencer waiting to say good-by. After they had kissed each other she held him at arm’s length and said, “Don’t take up fancy ways, boy. Trust in God and go to church.”

  Clay had borrowed a pickup truck to drive Clay-Boy to Hickory Creek, where he would catch the bus for Richmond. Clay was driving and Olivia, holding Franklin Delano and Eleanor, sat in the front seat. Clay-Boy and the other children rode in the body of the truck.

  As the truck pulled out of the yard, Clay-Boy looked for as long as he could back at the house. He wished for one moment that the truck would turn around and take him back and that he could relive every moment he had known in that house, but then the house was gone in a turning of the road, and only the memory of the warmth and happiness and love he had known there rem
ained in his mind.

  When they reached Hickory Creek the Trailways bus was already lumbering down Route 29. Clay-Boy kissed each of the children good-by, then his mother, while his father flagged down the bus.

  “Be a good boy,” said Olivia.

  “I will,” he promised.

  “Give ’em hell, son,” said Clay.

  “Good-by, Daddy,” he said, and held his father’s strong rough hand in a quick handshake, and then the bus was there and he was on it.

  For a few minutes after he reached his seat his eyes were clouded with tears, but when they were clear again he saw that the bus was nearing the top of a steep mountain road.

  “Goen far, son?” asked an old farmer sitting next to him.

  “Right far,” the boy said, and watched as the bus arrived at the top of the mountain and went on into the beckoning world.