M.C. Higgins, the Great

by Virginia Hamilton

  Ain’t nobody goin’ n’ worry ’bout you dyin’

  By you’self

  Lord, in a field

  Drinkin’ the wine oh wine.

  The way her voice could curve a line of melody sent shivers up M.C.’s back. It didn’t matter that her singing was a show she had to put on for the dude. She had to sing out what came into her head. Her voice could make it music. It could express all that within her she had kept secret and separate from them.

  “Is that what you want?” Banina said to the dude.

  James Lewis sat still, as if he wouldn’t move again, M.C. thought. But he answered with a quaver: “You just go on ahead and sing whatever you feel up to.”

  Looking around at them, she said, “I’m tired, me.” For a moment she rested her hand on her shoulder, staring at it. “But I’ll go ahead on.”

  “Hear her come home singing a yodel,” M.C. said, but nobody seemed to hear.

  His mother began another song. It was a witchy song about an evil called Juba. An old song out of Carolina, she had once told M.C. She let the tiredness she felt drain into it so that the minor cadence became haunted with ghostly melody:

  Juba walk, I say, Juba walk.

  She walk in while you be cookin’,

  Juba catch you while you not even lookin’.

  Chorus:

  Standin’ at the stove,

  Standin’ at the stove.

  Siftin’ in the san’,

  Siftin’ in the san’.

  I seen Juba serve the meal

  (She give me the husk …)

  I seen her serve the buttered bread

  (She give me the crust …)

  Never eat the broth from out of her cookin’

  For Juba boil you

  When you not even lookin’.

  Chorus:

  Standin’ at the stove,

  Standin’ at the stove.

  Siftin’ in the san’,

  Siftin’ in the san’.

  Then came a wondrous song of peace and of quiet:

  Lay me down, down, down

  In the low-land shady

  Low-land shady

  With the sky upon my eyes.

  Sarah’s Mountain to my shoulder

  And my feet in the clover,

  Feet in the clover

  I will dream away the time.

  “Yes. Yes!” the dude said.

  “Sing it more,” Harper said, and so Banina sang of the “Low-land Shady,” never singing it twice the same:

  Years of restin’ on my back,

  The Lord, he lost my track

  So I’ll breathe here forever

  In the low and shady land.

  And the mountain to my shoulder

  And my feet in the water,

  Feet in the water

  I will toil away the time.

  All the while Jones sat with one hand on the jug and the other holding his glass, his face contented and closed. Impenetrable.

  Later, with their mother’s voice rising and falling, the children fell asleep. Lying there on the plush carpet, one by one they had closed their eyes.

  Jones took them one by one to their beds. Banina paused, watching them go. Something went out of her singing after a while, even though she sang on. She let her voice go quiet so as not to waken her children. The dude understood. Still he changed tapes and let them run out.

  They talked, James Lewis and Banina, with M.C. listening, looking from one to the other. The dude asked her how long they’d all been in the hills. M.C. waited to see how much she would tell a stranger.

  “All the children were born here,” Banina told him. “Jones was born here, but he had gone and come back. I come from Washington, but I wasn’t born there. Born farther off near Boone, North Carolina. I left it. I met Jones after World War Two. Now that was a time. Talk about some singing.” She laughed. “We all did some singing then. But jobs were tough for Jones to find. We came back here.”

  M.C. sat quietly, interested in how his mother had altered the truth so effortlessly.

  “Weren’t so tough to find,” Jones said, coming back in to sit down again. “It was that we both knew hills better than anything. So we come on back to them.”

  Know the hills, M.C. thought, you won’t listen to what they say.

  “Goin’ down a hill feelin’ bad,” Banina sang, smiling at Jones, “I walk back to home feelin’ good.”

  “That’s the truth,” Jones said.

  Not the hills no more. You’re seeing a scar, M.C. thought.

  But he stayed silent. He glanced at James K. Lewis. Suddenly he realized Lewis hadn’t said a word to his mother about going to Nashville.

  Lewis was smiling. “I can surely understand how you can love these hills,” he said. “Living on a mountain like this. It must make you feel real fine. I never had nothing like it, you see, living in an apartment in the city until I moved out a ways and got me a little house. But I don’t own it. Just renting.”

  “It’s good when you own,” Banina said softly. “Least the roof is yours, no one can take it.”

  “Do you ever want to farm it?” the dude asked.

  “We’re not farmers, to speak of,” Banina told him. She glanced at Jones.

  “It won’t farm,” Jones said. “Too steep a grade to keep the topsoil.”

  “How far up do you own?” Lewis asked him.

  “Up to this outcropping,” Jones said. “About six acre.”

  All of the time, M.C. had been trying to puzzle out something until finally he said, “Why come she wanted it—I mean, Great-great grandmother—if it wasn’t any good for growing?”

  “Well,” Jones said, “land changes. Way back when, that gully was flat and pure. It caught the run-off from the mountain and the topsoil. She could farm that gully although she didn’t own it. Don’t imagine anybody cared, just a single strip of flat land.” He stopped, unwilling to say more in front of the dude.

  “Who owns on up above you?” the dude asked amiably.

  Jones’s face closed in on itself again. Banina gathered up glasses and took the jug into the kitchen. She came back to stand just in the doorway.

  When no one would answer, M.C. said, “The coal people.”

  “Now that’s the worry,” Lewis said seriously. “You know, I got kind of turned around up here this morning,” he said to Jones. “I was up there and that spoil heap is really something awful.” He looked at Banina, who studied one wrist, probing it with one finger of the other hand. He looked at M.C., who nodded eagerly at him.

  “It’s sliding about a half-inch, inch at a time,” the dude said, “but I’m not telling you nothing you don’t already know.”

  A long time of silence, in which Jones shifted his position, bent and stretched his legs and folded his arms. When he did speak, his voice was matter-of-fact: “I figure it will slide like that until it reaches the yard. There, on the level, it will halt.”

  “Then what?” M.C. said softly.

  “Say?” Jones said.

  “Then what will we do with it?” M.C. spoke eagerly.

  “Well, then,” Jones said, “we chop it up. We wait for the cool days of late fall, winter. We let her harden. Then we take a section at a time, rope it and drag it down into that gully, way off to one side so’s we won’t have to see it.”

  “I didn’t know that!” M.C. grinned, so pleased to find out that Jones had been thinking about the spoil and planning. “So that’s how,” he said.

  “Yes,” Jones said.

  James Lewis raced one hand through his crisp, graying hair, as though his scalp itched. He cleared his throat. “I don’t believe it will slide all the way,” he said cautiously. “The grade of that slope will be too steep.” And then, politely: “I’m afraid there will be a momentum and a pressure that will bring it all crashing down.” And then he folded his hands, looking worriedly at Jones.

  M.C. stared from one to the other. He waited for Jones to tell James K. Lewis he was dead wrong. But Jon
es merely stayed silent, looked stubborn. An uncontrollable feeling of dread spread within M.C. It cleared away all but the truth. Just a moment ago he had believed the spoil heap would inch its way down because Jones had said it would.

  He almost tricked me with it, M.C. thought.

  He had believed Jones was thinking and planning.

  But he only want to make us stay on the mountain.

  After that, M.C. wouldn’t look at Jones or anyone.

  Tension grew and touched each one of them in the room except Jones. He, alone, seemed untroubled by the awkward stillness, until he got to his feet, saying, not to the dude, not to anyone, “We’ll rope it and drag it on out of the way.”

  Crazy. Liar.

  Standing there, Jones forced the dude to stand also. In the act of rising, he had dismissed James Lewis as clearly as if he had said, “Leave my house.”

  Incredulously, the dude peered at Jones, Slowly it dawned on him that Jones meant for him to go.

  M.C. watched his mother pull herself up straight in formal leave-taking. He tried sitting for as long as he could, hoping to keep the dude there a while longer.

  Get him to talk some more, reason with Daddy.

  But he felt himself being dragged to his feet by invisible bonds of formality, learned so long ago he was hardly aware of them.

  Lewis pocketed his tapes. He eased the tape machine back into its case and slung it over his shoulder.

  “Thank you so much,” he said to Banina. “You are truly a performer. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”

  “Was my pleasure,” she said, smiling, but oddly detached.

  “All the same, I took your time,” Lewis said. “Now I have to sort it all out.” He indicated his recording machine. “See what will be the best course to take.” He laughed nervously. “Mizus Higgins, you have swept me off my feet! I don’t know where to go with you, off-hand.” He grinned. “But I will sort it all out. And then I’ll come on back.”

  “All the time you need,” Banina said quietly.

  The dude nodded and spun around. He was not quite able to meet Jones’s cool eyes on him. Stiffly, Jones bowed before the dude could extend his hand. Lewis bowed in return.

  To M.C., he said, “I surely do thank you, son.” A worried expression on his face before it faded in sadness.

  “Wasn’t nothing,” M.C. said, as sharply as he dared. The dude and his father both had pulled him one way and then the other until he no longer knew what was true and what wasn’t. But he was sure the dude would find a way to take his mama’s voice. He wouldn’t dare believe they wouldn’t leave the mountain. But an awful thought swept into his mind.

  We’ll all stay here and die.

  “You pay your respects,” Banina was saying to him.

  “Good night,” he said to the dude.

  “Good night, son,” Lewis said.

  Banina let M.C. pass.

  He headed through the kitchen and on, not stopping until he was in his cave. Without a light, he undressed in a moment and crawled into bed, tired to his bones. His eyes fluttered closed when his head hit the pillow. Vaguely, he could hear the front door open. His mother’s voice, smooth, yet formal; and then the door closing.

  Later Banina came in, hovering above him. He knew she tucked the light blanket around him as though he were a child; yet he couldn’t respond. He was too deeply gone and dreaming darkness.

  I’m running.

  One jump ahead of Jones trying to rope him.

  7

  BANINA WOKE UP M.C. to go swim in the cirque, the way she would do sometimes. It was an hour when the moon was going down. A false dawn of neither night nor day, when gray light seemed to rise from the earth. Birds chirped in clusters of awakening sound, only to fall silent again as false light faded away in dimness and murk of hills.

  In M.C.’s cave, it was night in which his mother was an irritating darkness. And if he hadn’t gone with her the way he really didn’t want to go—he just wanted to sleep on in the coolness—she would have gone swimming by herself. She wouldn’t have awakened Jones or any other one of her children. For she made up her mind that a swim at dawn was something she wanted to do only with her oldest son. Banina was like that. Jones and the kids would join them as soon as they were up.

  M.C. had covered his head with his arms, pulling the blanket clear over his face. He had a hollow feeling, a numbness of too much worry left over from the night before. He supposed it would be with him a long time.

  “Come on now, M.C.,” his mother said, “we’ll miss the sunrise!” Whispering, she was darkness bent over him, pulling at the blanket.

  “Leave me be.” His muffled reply. “What time is it? Is he gone? Leave me alone.”

  “Is who gone? Mr. Lewis? Poor old dude,” she said. “Jones had to lead him most by the hand down the mountain.”

  “Why didn’t he stay ’til morning?” he asked sleepily. But then he remembered.

  “Stayed long enough,” Banina said. “Come on, M.C. Don’t you want a swim in the cool air?”

  Desperately he held out for the dark of his cave. “Act just as silly,” he scolded her. “How’ll they ever grow up when their mama acts like a child.”

  “The kids? Shoot,” she said, in the soft way she had. “Best be a babe for as long as you can. Now come on. I’ll go by myself, I’m telling you. Some old bobcat sure to stalk me by myself. You fixing to let him jump Banina Higgins right there in the piney woods?”

  So M.C. had to go with her. But not without muttering about it first. Secretly he was pleased she had chosen him, although he never let on. Of all the times he was alone with her, he never got used to how pretty she was. When he was much younger, he had worried that she wasn’t his real mother, although he never told anyone.

  “How come I don’t look like you?” he would say to her.

  “You’ve got my mouth,” she had answered. “You look like Jones out of the eyes, but you have my mouth and my walk.”

  Now the two of them moved swiftly the same, up one hill and down another on their way to the cirque. Banina walked slightly ahead of him. She was barefoot and already suited up in an old but still good one-piece bathing suit. She had her shoes and her work-a-day clothes in a shopping bag which M.C. carried for her. He walked to one side of her. In the murk, he could see her and only a short way in front of her on the path. He didn’t much like being in the woods in the heavy shadows before dawn. It was an eerie time in which trees and undergrowth appeared changed and ghostly.

  Probably scared old dude. Run all the way. And the other one. Now I bet she’s out here somewhere.

  Banina stopped on the path. At once M.C. halted, every muscle tense and fearfully ready. He peered ahead and caught sight of the incredible spring of a doe in midair. Always, it seemed a larger animal would see you a split second before you saw it. They had flushed the doe, coming on her blindly. She sprang up amidst the trees like a wind up toy, swift and magical.

  Banina raised her hand as if to touch the deer’s fluid shape and hold her wild motion.

  The doe was gone. “That was a surprise,” Banina said, walking the path again. “I swear. I thought all the deer had gone. Used to be they’d be all around the house in a morning. You remember that, M.C.?”

  “No. Yes, a little. Wish I had me a gun,” he said.

  “You’d kill that pretty thing?”

  “Think of the meat,” he said, sounding like a man.

  “You couldn’t kill anything that big. Not you.”

  “Why not me?” he said, surprised. “What if it is big? Because I never have? Won’t mean I never could.”

  “Could you?” Banina looked to be half smiling at him.

  He thought first to lie. Then he grew uncomfortable, remembering the girl all of a sudden, their knives and how they had fought.

  “No,” he said finally. “Nothing bigger than a rabbit. And him, only for food.”

  “I was thinking not,” Banina said and fell silent.

 
The woods changed misty gray, with birds awakening. But the trees were still heavy with night. M.C. felt a quiver down his spine as he heard rustling sounds in the undergrowth. Small animals scurrying. He calmed himself.

  “It’s so nice out here,” Banina said, as they came out of the trees. Now they could walk easily to the foothills. The hills were actually outcroppings of mountains called Grey and Hall. And as they began to climb the foothills, Grey Mountain and Hall Mountain came into view like swollen, smoky giants. Black with trees, they looked rolling cushion soft and belly full.

  M.C. and his mother turned sharply and began to climb one hundred feet up the hill slope of Hall Mountain. M.C. kept his eyes on his feet. Grey Mountain was behind him. Without looking, he could feel it, immense and misty.

  Banina pulled herself up the slope by grabbing saplings and branches of trees. Where there was nothing else to hold on to, she leaned forward. Knees bent nearly to a crouch, she dug her feet into the rugged hillside and held on to clumps of weed.

  “Mercy!” she whispered, panting.

  M.C. gave her a boost. “We’re almost there,” he told her.

  She stopped to rest a moment, letting him lead. He went ahead and out of sight. By the time Banina reached the top of the slope, she had come exactly the way M.C. had, following a natural turn and round of the mountain. She reached M.C. and fell on her back, breathing hard.

  Hall Mountain loomed over them somewhat to their right. It was dark, brooding with mist, still half a mile away. M.C. was glad they didn’t have to climb it. It seemed to grow as they watched it, as crimson light tinted the sky behind it.

  Banina sat up, hugging her knees. She was covered with goose flesh, for the mountain air was still cold. M.C. moved to give her his sweater, she motioned him never mind. She fixed her gaze on Hall Mountain, unwilling to give up a second of it. Her sweaty face settled into peace. Her panting stopped. She, and M.C., too, sat as still as forms carved from mountain wind and icy rain.

  She broke their silent watching. “Must be what Sunday people call God Almighty,” she said about the mountain. “High enough for heaven and older than anybody ever lived.”

  “Won’t make it God Almighty,” M.C. told her.

  “It does for me,” she said.

  “God Almighty can’t be moved,” he said, “but watch and see if somebody don’t come along and move that mountain.”