The Fool's Progress

by Edward Abbey

  “What’s that mean?”

  She paused. “Now we want to see you gnaw your hand off.”

  VI

  The field corn ripened, the silk at the tip of each ear turned rusty brown. We picked the dried silk and rolled it with pages from the Monkey Ward mail-order catalog into enormous, evil, sickening stogies. We sat high in the shadowy barn, on the square ax-hewn crossbeams above the granary, lit up and smoked ourselves sick. We were hiding from the old man in a bad place to hide: if he ever caught us smoking in the barn there’d be trouble. We heard him too, hollering for Will and me.

  “Will!” he hollered. “Henry! You rascals in there?”

  We grinned at each other, holding our breath. Quietly, Will crushed out his cornsilk stogie with his thumb and forefinger.

  “Will!” Paw bellowed again. “We got corn to cut.”

  Choking back laughter, we froze in silence as he stomped across the planking of the barn floor, heard him swear as he whacked a heavy blade into a post. The corn knife, like a sword, like a machete, swished through the air when he swung it. We heard Paw go out through the hinged door set in the sliding main door and from there down the earthen ramp to the workshop. Then came the rumble of the grindstone gaining speed as he treadled it with one foot, the screech of steel against stone. Sparks would be flying under the drip of water from the cooling can.

  Will stirred uneasily, unable to relax while near a man working. Such a sober serious conscientious fellow, he felt what I seldom felt—the urge to help out. To lend a hand. To grab ahold. “Guess we better go.” He made no move to relight his cigar. “Guess we better go, Henry.”

  “You go, I’m a-stayin’ right here.”

  Will made a threatening gesture, I shrank back, he laughed, stood up and nonchalantly walked the twelve-inch beam to the corner post, dropped down the pegged ladderway to the floor, disappeared. Uncomfortably I watched him leave. I knew I’d be in trouble if I didn’t follow. Not that Will would ever tell on me, any more than he’d tell on anybody. But the old man would growl at him, badger him. Anyhow I needed the wages. Another tough poker game coming up Saturday night.

  They were halfway to the cornfield when I ran to catch up. Paw carried the twelve-gauge and two fresh-sharpened corncutters—one for me. The beagle hounds ranged ahead, quartering left and right, reading the ground. The sun was noon high but low in the south, obscured by a gray scud of overcast. A raw wind blew in from the northwest. I turned down the earflaps on my brand-new corduroy hunting cap. Proud of that cap. The field corn was ripe but the leaves and stalks appeared a rusty green; that’s why we were cutting and stacking it now, husking later.

  The old man wore his usual autumn outfit: the billed cap, the tan canvas hunting coat with last year’s hunting license in celluloid case pinned between the shoulders. Under the coat he wore bib overalls, felt boots buckled tight around the pantlegs.

  We attacked the standing corn. Paw took the outside row next to the rail fence, Will the next, me the third. When we each had an armful Paw took our loads in his big hands, holding the bundle vertical, and mashed it down onto the sharp stubble. The bundle stood upright on its own to become the center of a shock, a tepee, a wigwam of corn.

  Paw set a hard pace. Will kept up with him but I had trouble. My back seemed to hurt; I lacked motivation. Will was big, strong for his age and enjoyed the work—actually thought it important.

  We reached the end of the field, or they did, where the big woods comes down the hill from Frank Gatlin’s place. Paw and Will started their return, passing me going in the opposite direction. My corncutter clashed against Will’s—a flash of sparks—and for a moment we struggled hand to hand, sword against sword, like Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone in Captain Blood.

  “Cut that out,” growls the old man, “afore one of you gets hurt.”

  The beagles burst into yelps of discovery, off and running. They’d jumped a rabbit. Paw set his machete down carefully, didn’t want to nick that fine-honed edge, and picked up the shotgun. He broke it open, loaded two shells into the breech, snapped it shut. Thumb on the safety, he watched the dogs.

  They were coursing up the slope of the field by the edge of the woods. Fifty feet before them ran the rabbit, white tail bobbing through the weeds, the auburn grass, the copper-colored blackberry vines. The rabbit veered to the right, traversing the brown hayfield above the corn. The circle was beginning. None of us moved a step. Soon the rabbit would turn right again and come bounding through the corn toward us, followed by the eager hounds. Would be a tough shot, though, in the standing corn, unless the rabbit was stupid enough to cross the wide swath of six-inch stubble before us.

  “Lemme get it, Paw,” begged Will quietly.

  Joe hesitated, then said, “Come here.”

  Will stepped beside him. Joe placed the heavy, double-barreled gun in Will’s hands. Will hefted it to ready position, leaning way back.

  “Hey,” I whined, “when’s it my turn? Will—”

  “Shush!” growled the old man. “Don’t scare that bunny. He’s a-coming.” To Will he said, “Push the safety.” The beagles were racing down the hill, baying as they crashed through the corn. The rabbit was somewhere close in front of them, running silently for its life. Will raised the shotgun to his shoulder, legs spread wide, leaning back from the waist under the weight.

  “Push hard against your shoulder,” Paw whispered. “It’ll buck. Don’t forget the second trigger.” He stared into the corn toward the cry of the hounds. “Here it comes. Lead him by a foot.”

  Will peered down the sightline between the barrels, cheek pressed against the stock. The rabbit leaped from the thicket of corn fifty feet away and raced across the lane of stubble. Will fired—a violent blast—and seemed to miss.

  “Shoot again.”

  Barrels swinging as he led the rabbit, Will pulled the second trigger. The cottontail somersaulted through the air, thumped backside first against the bottom rail of the fence and came to rest.

  “Good shot,” says the old man.

  “Lucky shot,” I said. “You missed the first time.”

  “Maybe,” Paw said. “Maybe he missed and then again maybe that rabbit was runnin’ so fast he couldn’t stop even though he was already dead. Stop at that speed he’d be wearin’ his asshole for a collar.”

  The beagles began to worry the dead rabbit. “Git!” shouted Paw and they backed off, whimpering, eyes shifting uneasily from Joe to the rabbit and back. “All right Will, you shot your rabbit now clean it. Got your knife?”

  Will nodded, pulled the jackknife from its pocket on the side of his high-top leather boot, flipped the blade out, picked the rabbit up by the ears and opened it with one quick slit from sternum to anus. He pulled out the steaming guts—entrails, stomach, liver and lungs—and tossed them to the dogs. He wiped his knifeblade on the soft fur of his kill and handed the rabbit to Paw. Paw stuffed it into the game pocket inside the back of his coat. “Okay boys, we got our meat, now let’s get this goddamn corn patch cut and shocked.”

  He kept us going into twilight. The old man was doubling on me now, doing two rows to every one of mine—even Will could hardly keep up with him. I longed for the sound of Mother rapping on the bell by the kitchen door: for suppertime.

  The full moon of November—following close upon the setting sun—is the longest moon of the year: the harvest moon, the hunter’s moon. We saw it rising round as a banjo through the mists above the eastern hills when finally we heard the bell.

  “Suppertime!” I cried, dropping my machete in the dirt. My back ached, my hands ached. I jammed my armful of corn into the final shock and bolted for the house.

  “Henry!” yelled the old man. “You come back here. Pick up your corncutter, don’t leave it on the ground to get all rusty from the dew, Jesus jumping blue Christ.”

  Okay, I thought, okay. Minutes later I was in the kitchen. The warm and comforting kitchen: red coals glowed through cracks in the cast-iron cookstove. My mother stood by
the stove under the amber glow of a lamp bracketed to the wall. She was stirring a pot of stew. She looked tired. The two kids and the baby sat at the oilcloth-covered table, rosy faces smeared with food. I smelled potato soup, stew meat, gravy. I started to wash my hands in the tin basin of soapy water on the stand beside the door.

  “Henry,” says Mother, “where’s Will and your father?”

  “They’re a-comin’. Got one more row to cut.”

  “Bring us a pail of water before you wash up?”

  I took the bucket from the nail on the wall, stepped outside to the pump. There was a coffee can on the planks, full of water and drowned insects. I hung the bucket on the lip of the spout, primed the pump and cranked the handle, long as a baseball bat, up and down. The pump gasped and croaked, leather suckers four years old. A column of water rose by imperfect suction to the spout and gushed into my bucket.

  One shoulder sagging, I lugged the water into the kitchen and hoisted it to the washstand.

  Paw and Will came in. Will displayed the dead rabbit to Mother and the kids. They seemed impressed. Will hung the rabbit outside in the cold air, under the porch roof, out of reach of the dogs.

  Sitting at the table finally, we watched as Mother bowed her head and clasped hands together prayerwise. “Dear God…bless this house and all who dwell in it. Bless this food we are about to receive, for which we thank thee. For thy many gifts we are humbly grateful, Lord. Amen.”

  Grace would normally be said by the head of the household. But our father would not pray to anybody.

  Mother raised her head and little Paul, age six, blurted out, “Pass the taters, pass the meat, thank the Lord and let’s eat.”

  Mother looked at him. Paul blushed and lowered his face. Paw smiled. After a brief silence, Mother dished out thick potato soup, filling first Paw’s bowl, then Will’s, then mine and her own. The children had already eaten. Paw sliced four chunks from the round loaf of homemade bread in the middle of the table. We ate fast, Will and me.

  “Take your time, boys,” Mother said. “Elbows off the table, please.”

  “Goin’ to Houser’s,” I said between gulps. We played basketball in Ernie’s barn; he lived in Stump Creek and had electric lights in the barn. Four miles by bicycle.

  Paw looked at Will. “You too?”

  “I figured on it. You settin’ out more traps tonight?”

  Paw pulled the watch from the bib pocket of his overalls, studied it. “Coal train’s comin’ up the grade in about fifty-five minutes.”

  “Joe,” Mother said, “you’re not going down there tonight? Not with the boys. Please.”

  Paw buttered another hunk of bread. “We need the coal, Lorrie. It’s gonna be a long winter.”

  “We could buy it for once.”

  “How?” said our father.

  She was silent for a moment. “You could dig some more out of the old mine on the hill. Like you used to.”

  “You looked in that hole lately? Props are rotten. Roof’s gonna cave in most anytime.”

  “Then you should seal it.”

  “I been meanin’ to do that for a year.” He scooped more stew onto his plate. “But tonight we got to get coal. Full moon’s up, it’s a good night for it.”

  “The brakemen will see you.”

  “You think they care? Good Christ, Lorrie—” Mother hated swearing, especially at table. “God, Lorrie, there’s ten million men out of work these days. Why do you think Roosevelt’s fixin’ to get us into another war?” Angrily he broke his bread. “Ten million!”

  “Joe, promise me this,” Mother said. “Don’t let Will climb on the train.”

  “Oh, Maw,” Will said. “I can do that easy.”

  “Promise me,” she repeated.

  “Sure,” Paw muttered.

  We walked down the road under the maple trees. Paw wore his miner’s helmet with the carbide lamp attached to the front. We each carried a bundle of sooty burlap sacks. The moon sailed high; silver light lay on the dirt road before our feet.

  “But why not, Paw?”

  “Not this time, Will, I promised her.”

  “You could load twice as much.”

  “I know it, son. Don’t I know it? Next time.”

  Will stopped complaining. He knew when it was useless to argue with our old man. We heard a screech owl in the pine trees. A fox barked far up the hill, followed by the howls of our beagles behind us, brokenhearted, tied up under the front porch.

  We came to the railway trestle. We climbed the concrete abutment and walked two hundred yards down the tracks—I walked on a rail—to where the grade began. We could hear the steam locomotive a mile away, whistle wailing as it approached Groft’s crossing. I felt vibrations in the steel rail. Paw strode ahead between the tracks, big boots treading on every other crosstie, his shadow hard-edged in the moonlight.

  We waited near the start of the mile-long hill. Paw took our sacks and draped them over his shoulder. He carried a bunch of short tie strings—binder twine—in his pocket, ends dangling. He repeated the usual instructions:

  “I’ll load and tie and drop the sacks off along the tracks. You boys drag the coal to the bottom. I’ll be with you soon as I can. If either one of you tries to climb aboard this train I’ll tan your hide good.”

  The beam of a headlamp swung across the trees; the engine appeared around the bend, rocking slightly from side to side, belching smoke and sparks from the stack. We backed into the elderberry bushes. The locomotive roared past in thunder, making a race for the grade. We saw the engineer with a pipe in his teeth leaning out his window, studying the tracks ahead, old hogger’s steady hand on the throttle lever. A red glow lit up the interior of the cab as the fireman opened the firebox hatch and shoveled in coal. Then they were gone, followed by the tender with its steel sentry box for a brakeman, followed by the chain of iron gondola cars heaped with blue-black bituminous coal.

  Paw stepped onto the shoulder of the roadbed. The train was slowing. He winked at me and Will, grinned, trotted along beside a gondola, caught the ladder, swung aboard and climbed to the top. As he moved away we saw him pull a sack from his shoulder and commence to stuffing it with coal. He faded into the moonlight.

  The train was moving slower and slower. Will and I looked at each other. “Dare you,” I said. I knew if he did I could. He knew it too. Paw was out of sight. We heard a faint thump ahead as the first sack of coal fell to the cinderbank.

  Will hesitated for about two seconds. “Okay,” he said. “Watch me close. Run with the train. Don’t forget to lean forward when you jump off. Land a-runnin’.” He glanced both ways. The train kept rattling around the curve, car after car. “We’ll get off as soon as we cross the bridge.”

  He turned and jogged, grasped a steel rung and lifted himself from the ground, standing with one foot on the bottom step. I reached for the ladder of the next car, grabbed and hung on. The train jerked me forward but I got my feet on the ladder. I watched Will holding on with one hand, showing off, leaning far out to see ahead to the trestle crossing.

  The train rumbled slowly on. Will’s gondola crossed the bridge; he jumped off and ran forward a few steps, easily keeping his balance. Paw’s first sack of coal, neatly tied, lay on the cinders beside the track. Many more beyond. Will looked up at me as I glided past. “Okay, Henry, jump off.” I grinned and clung to the ladder. “Henry!” he shouted, “you get off there.” I thumbed my nose at him and rode on.

  I was enjoying the ride. Just a little bit farther, I thought, then I’ll jump. Looking back I saw Will drag a sack of coal to the edge of the embankment and roll it down toward the wagon lane in the woods. That reminded me how angry Paw would get if he found out I hadn’t helped.

  I’ll ride to the top of the grade, I thought, then jump off, sneak around the old man and rejoin Will at the lower end. I looked ahead but could not see the engine; it was already in the big cut at the top of the hill.

  A man walked toward me down the shoulder of the railway. I
t was Paw. I shrank against the dark side of the gondola, trying to make myself invisible. He stooped over a loaded sack, checking the tie and pushing it off the bank. He never noticed me.

  Now, I thought, better get off this here train before I get in trouble. I looked down at the cinders and crossties beneath my feet. They were passing faster than before. I braced my nerves to let go, make the jump. But hesitated.

  You got to jump, I told myself. But it was too late; I sensed it in the rattle of the wheels over the joints in the rails, the scream of the whistle, the locomotive highballing down the far grade. An icy wind streamed past my ears. Wait for the next hill, I thought. I crawled into the space under the sloping bulkhead of the car and found protection from the wind. Not much. I pulled down the earflaps of my cap, buttoned the collar of my coat, sat tight and waited.

  The scattered lamps of Stump Creek flashed by. I was already four miles by road from home. We raced through the village of Pine Run—five miles. The next little town would be Sawmill—seven. Close to Sawmill the train slowed suddenly, air brakes hissing. I cracked my frozen limbs into action, found the ladder and jumped to the cinders before the train stopped. Men with lanterns hurried toward me. They seemed to be yelling my name. Railroad bulls, I said to myself. They’re gonna put me in jail. I stumbled across a ditch, climbed a fence and ran into the dark.

  A long train ride but it was a longer walk home. Took me half the night. I followed the highway as far as Stump Creek, dodging into the bushes whenever I saw the lights of a car approaching. This side of the village I took the shortcut over the hill. The moon was low and the Big Dipper heeled over on its handle when I limped up Lightcap Hollow under the tunnel of trees. Two lamps glowed in the windows at our house. I was hoping to sneak in through the cellar door and crawl in bed before anyone knew I was home, but the hounds started yapping. When they recognized my scent it was too late.

  Mother was glad to see me. She cried as she hugged me. Paw looked solemn. He must have caught hell from Mother and that meant I was in trouble with him. Will wasn’t around: in hiding, maybe, or maybe in bed. He would be looking for me too, come morning.