Nathan Coulter

by Wendell Berry

  I was trying to untangle the blanket to pull it over my head when the rain came—a few big drops spattered the roof, and then a sheet of water blew into the door where Uncle Burley was sleeping.

  He rolled over. “Quit,” he said. He wiped the water out of his eyes and scrambled into the room. Jig followed him in and slammed the door.

  Big Ellis sat up and rubbed his eyes. “It’s raining,” he said.

  “You ought to been a prophet,” Uncle Burley said. He sat down at the table again.

  The lightning got worse. Jig stood in the middle of the floor and watched it, as wild-eyed as a ghost.

  “Burley,” he said, “He could strike us down with one of them.”

  “I reckon so,” Uncle Burley said.

  “He could strike you down just like a rabbit.”

  “He can shoot ’em like a rifle,” Uncle Burley said.

  It lightened again; the thunder clapped down, jarring the house.

  “Oh,” Jig said. He fell on the floor with his hands over his face.

  “Bull’s-eye,” Uncle Burley said.

  The thunder bumbled away over the top of the hill.

  “Burley, that one struck something,” Big Ellis said.

  “It must have,” Uncle Burley said.

  We went to the windows and looked out, but it was raining too hard to see anything. Jig was still on the floor hiding his face.

  “Get up, Jig,” Uncle Burley said. “You’re not dead.”

  He and Big Ellis helped Jig onto his feet.

  “He ain’t even wounded,” Big Ellis said.

  Jig sat down on one of the cots and put his hands over his face again. “Burley, He let me live. And He didn’t have to do it. He didn’t have any reason to do it. It was out of his goodness. He don’t have to stand for any such foolishness, Burley.”

  The rain didn’t last long. When it was over we went out on the porch to see if we could tell what the lightning had struck. The stars were shining where the cloud had passed, and everything was cool and fresh-smelling. I felt as wide awake as if I’d slept all night.

  Big Ellis went around the corner of the house, and then we heard him say, “Burley, yonder’s a fire.”

  “Where?” Uncle Burley asked him. He went around the house, and Jig and I hurried after him.

  Big Ellis pointed. “Right up there.”

  We saw the smoke beginning to roll up over the top of the hill, and under it the dim red shimmer of the fire.

  “It’s at our place,” I said.

  “It could be,” Uncle Burley said.

  He started toward the road and Big Ellis went with him. Jig had gone back to the porch to put his boots on, and I ran into the house to get my shoes. Jig waited for me at the door, and then we started after the others. We ran hard and caught up with them a little past Beriah Easterly’s store.

  The trees hid the smoke from us, but by the time we were halfway up the hill we heard a bell ringing.

  “That’s the dinner bell,” Uncle Burley said.

  He broke into a run, and the rest of us strung out behind him. I could hear Jig’s rubber boots bumping and stumbling behind me.

  We were out of breath when we got up on the ridge and we slowed to a walk. But by that time we could see that the fire was in Daddy’s barn, and we only walked a few steps before we started running again.

  When we went past Grandpa’s house Grandma was standing in the yard in her nightgown, ringing the dinner bell. She waved and called something to us.

  Uncle Burley slowed down. “What?”

  “Buckets!” she said. “Get some buckets.”

  We ran to the back porch and got the milk bucket and the slop bucket and the two water buckets. When we ran back into the yard she was ringing the bell again. She called something else to us when we went past her, but we didn’t stop to hear what she said. She was barefooted, the firelight red on her face and gown.

  Daddy’s team had been in the barn, and he and Grandpa had got them out and turned them loose in the lot. The two mules stood together in the farthest corner, their heads up, turning to face the fire, then snorting and whirling away.

  Daddy and Grandpa were dipping water out of the trough at the well and carrying it into the driveway where part of the loft had broken through. The fire had started in the far end of the barn, and the wind seemed to be holding it back a little.

  When we got into the lot Jig stopped and pointed at the fire. “That’s what it’s like,” he said. “The fire of Hell, my brothers in sin.” Then he grabbed the pump handle and began pumping.

  We stood in line to fill our buckets, and carried them into the barn and emptied them. Grandpa and Daddy had set the pace, and we kept it up, running from the well to the fire and back again. The driveway was so full of smoke that we could hardly breathe or see. I held my breath and ran in until I could see the light of the fire, and flung the bucket of water at it and ran out again, coughing and wiping my eyes while I waited in line at the well.

  “It’s got too much of a start,” Uncle Burley said. “We’ll never stop it.”

  I knew he told the truth. It had been hopeless when we got there. But he never stopped or slowed down, and none of the rest of us did either.

  A crowd had gathered at the yard fence. The red light flickered and waved on their faces, and shone on the roofs of the automobiles behind them. Their faces looked calm and strange turned up into the light of the fire, like the faces of people around a lion’s cage, separate from it, only seeing.

  And once when I came back to the well with my empty bucket I saw that Brother was standing in the line ahead of me. Gander Loyd and Beriah Easterly and Mr. Feltner had come to help us too. But it was hopeless. Nothing was there to save, only a thing to look at. Grandma still rang the dinner bell, but we couldn’t hear it now above the sound of the fire. Jig worked at the pump.

  For a few minutes we managed to hold the fire at the back of the driveway. But it was spreading into the loft, and there was nothing we could do about that. Finally the heat drove us outside. The driveway ticked and cracked like an oven, and then the whole barn blazed up at once. Flames shot over the well top and we dropped our buckets and ran. We stood in the center of the lot, watching the fire and getting our breath.

  “You all haven’t got any barn,” Gander said. “You’ve just got a fire.” He turned around and walked toward the crowd at the fence.

  Beriah stood with us for another minute or two, and then shook his head. “It’s gone now.” He followed Gander away.

  Daddy never looked at them, nor at any of us. He watched the fire die down after the first big blaze; and when the wind turned the flames back from the well he moved toward the barn again, without looking back or asking us to go with him, and without any hope, but going anyway. Grandpa started after him, hurrying to catch up. Uncle Burley and Big Ellis and Mr. Feltner and Brother and Jig and I followed them.

  Jig ran past us and splashed water on the pump handle to cool it, and pumped again. We filled our buckets and began dowsing the wall nearest the pump. Daddy wet his clothes so he could get closer to the fire, and we passed our buckets to him. He was furious, throwing water at the fire as if he were trying to bruise it. We worked to keep the fire away from the pump, and to save the crib and the granary and the wagon shed. Cinders dropped on our faces and hands, and scorched our clothes; we brushed them off and kept going. Jig worked the pump with his whole body, rattling the handle up and down as if he were doing some kind of dance.

  Big Ellis yelled, “Look out!” and we ran again.

  We ran to the fence and turned around in time to see the whole barn cave in—loft and roof and walls—like logs in a fireplace. Red ashes spewed around it on the ground; sparks from the hay spiraled and wound into the smoke.

  We went back to the well again. From then on we worked more slowly, but we never stopped. Daddy and Grandpa kept us going. They hated the fire and they had to fight it, and none of us would leave them to fight it alone. We stayed with them, a
nd we saved the outbuildings.

  By morning the fire was out. We left our buckets at the well and went into the lot and sat down. We were too worn out to try to talk. We were blackened and parched and blistered, our eyes bloodshot and stinging from the smoke.

  While daylight came we sat and looked at the black pile of ashes. We hadn’t accepted the fire; we’d been able to fight that as long as it burned. But now, in the daylight, in our tiredness, as if we’d fought all night in a dream, we accepted the ashes.

  It was quiet. The crowd had gone soon after the barn caved in, and Grandma had long ago quit ringing the bell. At the far end of the lot the two mules grazed on the short grass. After a while they walked over to the trough at the well, and Jig got up and pumped water for them.

  “Bless you, God’s creatures,” he said.

  They drank, and then Daddy opened the gate and turned them out on the hillside.

  Uncle Burley found the drinking cup where it had been kicked into the ashes. Jig rinsed it and filled it for each of us and we drank. Daddy was the last to drink; when he finished he turned the cup upside down and set it carefully beside the base of the pump. After that there seemed to be nothing to do.

  After the fire Uncle Burley quit leaving home on the weekends. He could be free with his own troubles but not with Daddy’s. He did his best to be agreeable; and with the loss of the barn to worry about, everybody seemed to have forgotten how he’d misbehaved on the Fourth of July.

  One day he carried the red frog to Big Ellis’s house and asked Annie May to accept it as a gift from a friend. There was nothing she could do but take it and thank him.

  Several weeks went by before we cleaned up the ruins of the barn. The black pile of ruck and cinders was too dismal. Daddy hated the sight of it; and I knew it was hard for him to think of cleaning it up, as if that would only finish what the fire had begun. After the swiftness of the fire I felt the ashes would stay forever.

  But finally one Friday morning all of us went to work and hauled away the leavings. Once we’d got beyond our dread of the job we were anxious to be rid of every trace of the fire.

  Brother stayed mad at me for what I’d said to him in town the night the barn burned. I’d been in the wrong, and he never gave me a chance to forget it.

  On the Saturday night after we’d cleared away the remainders of the old barn Calvin came over to our house. I hadn’t seen him since he’d slipped away from me in town, and I didn’t care if I never saw him again. But when I went out of the house that night, after we’d finished supper and Brother had left for town, Calvin was coming across the yard.

  He grinned at me, sucking on a peppermint stick. “What’re you doing?”

  I didn’t go to meet him. “I’m standing here looking at you,” I said.

  He came on across the yard and sat down. I walked away toward the barn, and he got up again and followed me.

  “Want some candy?” he asked.

  “No thanks.”

  “Let’s do something.”

  He trailed along behind me. I heard him close the sack and put it back in his pocket.

  “I’m walking out to the barn,” I said, “and I don’t need your help.”

  “Let’s go down to the river and talk to Uncle Burley for a while,” he said, mocking the way I’d said it to Brother.

  I turned on him and he dodged. I waited until he looked at me, and then I grinned. “Give me a stick of candy,” I said.

  He held the sack out and I helped myself.

  “Let’s go and see how Brother’s getting along with his courting,” I said.

  He looked away. “We’d better not do that.”

  “Come on,” I told him.

  I started toward the road. He stood there a minute and then hurried after me. When we got to the road he caught up and walked beside me into town.

  Brother and his girl were drinking Cokes at one of the tables in the back of the drugstore. We stood in front and watched them through the window until they got up and started out.

  “We’d better get out of sight,” Calvin said.

  We crossed the street to the churchyard and watched them leave the drugstore. The moon had come up, but the trees around the church made shadow enough to hide us.

  “Let’s follow them,” I said.

  “We oughtn’t to do that.”

  I told him to quit being such a chicken, and he didn’t say any more.

  We let them get a long way off, then followed. They went along the road toward the river, walking slowly with their arms around each other. When we’d got beyond the noise of the town we could hear Brother talking—the rising and falling of his voice, too quiet for us to make out the words. And now and then the girl laughed. Sometimes when she laughed she laid her head on Brother’s shoulder.

  Calvin nudged me in the ribs. “Look at that. Wait till you tell Tom you saw that.” He had another peppermint stick in his mouth.

  We passed the graveyard and I could see the angel on the Coulter monument standing up black over the tops of the trees. Brother and the girl walked close together. The moon threw their shadows behind them on the road.

  They turned off where the road started down to the river and went along a path to a level place on the hillside. We stopped behind a bush at a bend in the path where we could look down on them.

  “God durn if this ain’t some fun,” Calvin said.

  The girl sat down and held her hand out to Brother, and he sat down beside her. She took the scarf off and put it in her purse, then ran her fingers through her hair and let it fall back over her shoulders. She reached and touched Brother’s face. The light on her hair moved when she moved. Brother put his arms around her and kissed her. I looked at Calvin. He was standing there with his mouth open, watching them as if it were happening in a picture show. I jerked his sleeve to tell him to come on, and went up to the road again.

  Before long Calvin came up opening the sack of peppermint sticks. He was grinning. “We’ve sure got a good one on old Tom now. You wait till we tell it on him.”

  “You’d better not,” I said.

  He looked at me. “Why?”

  I caught him by the collar and shoved him backward. The peppermint sticks shook out all over the road.

  “God damn you, go home.”

  I shoved him again, and he ran until he was out of sight over the hill.

  I went on toward home then, and where our lane turned off I stopped and waited. There was nobody on the road. All the houses I’d passed were dark and quiet.

  I heard Brother’s footsteps. And then I could see him. When he saw me he took his hands out of his pockets and walked faster.

  “What’re you doing here?” His voice sounded peaceful and friendly.

  “Just messing around.”

  “Well, let’s go home.” He started into the lane.

  “Tom,” I said. “I saw you.”

  He turned around. “Saw who?”

  “You and that girl. Down there on the hillside.”

  He hit me square in the face and I fell. My head hit the road.

  His footsteps went away and it got quiet again. I felt the blood running out of my mouth.

  Brother never mentioned what had happened that Saturday night, and he was peaceable enough afterwards. But he wasn’t friendly. He kept his distance. We got along better than I’d expected we would. I had to be grateful for the distance. If we’d been any closer, or tried to be brothers the way we’d always been, we’d have had to keep fighting each other. But we’d quit being brothers, and it was my fault.

  When the work let up early in September and Uncle Burley suggested that he and I go fishing for a few days, I was glad of the chance to get away.

  We’d been busier than usual during the last part of the summer, and all of us were tired. The weather had been wet, and Daddy and Grandpa hadn’t been able to plan work more than a day ahead. That had kept them on edge and hurrying, and Grandpa’s patience had worn out.

  When we sat down to
breakfast that morning Grandpa noticed one of the kitchen windows was shut. He told Grandma to open it.

  “It’s stuck,” she said. “The damp weather made it swell.”

  “Get up and open the window,” Grandpa told Brother.

  Brother got up and tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. Grandma came to help him. But it was stuck tight, and they only got in each other’s way.

  Grandpa watched them fumbling at the sash for a minute; and then without saying a word he unhooked his cane from the back of his chair and knocked out the glass.

  Grandma and Brother dodged the splinters, and Brother sat down again. Grandma stood still for a minute looking at Grandpa, her eyes snapping. But he’d turned his back to her and begun eating. She went to the stove then and took the biscuits out of the oven. We ate without talking or looking at each other.

  Grandpa finished in a hurry and went to the barn. Uncle Burley looked at the broken window and the pieces of glass on the floor and began laughing. He looked up at the ceiling and rocked back and forth in his chair, whooping and howling with laughter until Grandpa must have heard it at the barn. He’d stop for a second to get his breath, then he’d look at the window and say “Oh my God” and start laughing again.

  “You’re a fine one to be laughing,” Grandma told him. “It’s no funnier than some of the things you do.”

  He looked at her, still laughing, and said, “Oh my God.”

  She left the room then, and Uncle Burley quit laughing. He looked across the table at me and said, “Let’s go fishing, for God’s sake.”

  I said that suited me but I was afraid Grandpa had work for me to do, and I didn’t want to ask him because of the mood he was in.

  “I’ll take care of that,” Uncle Burley said.

  Grandpa was harnessing his team in the driveway of the barn. He hadn’t told us what he was going to do that day, but nearly always when we had a break in our regular work he’d slip away from us and spend a day or two at odd jobs around the farm—mowing weeds or mending a fence. He liked to work by himself, and he was always resentful if we asked where he was going or offered to help him.

  Uncle Burley went into the barn and squatted in the middle of the driveway so that Grandpa had to walk around him. “What’re you fixing to do?” he asked.