by Robert Hill
For a smudge of a man like Hunko Minton to stand with his drawers down around his boots in snow up to his knees, shivering by his lonesome just for the sake of proving to himself what he can do by his lonesome outdoors on a daily basis, weather come-what-may, takes balsam—the smell of balsam. Trees. The assault on his senses, that blast of earthen fresh is what first makes his nerve endings tingle, and by the time his whole system is infused with the aroma, his resolve stiffens to the daily task at hand, and he is compelled to beat his way through whatever elements arise until on the rocky shores of Grunts Pond he accomplishes what he came for. Balsam is the scent of his earliest recall, it was the scent placed in his infant crate to diffuse the scent of him. It’s the scent that envelops most of the town in a year-round vapor of campfires and sleigh bells, and the scent and the sensation it elicits in him are what Hunko most associates with Kennesaw Belvedere.
Kennesaw was already well accomplished at his own lonesome capabilities down by the rocky shores of Grunts Pond when Hunko was still in short pants loaded with balsam. There was balsam in the air wherever Kennesaw strode and strutted, and on the tail wind of it, Hunko rode like a ribbon. Not so many years exist between them that would make friendship an improbability at that time of their lives, and although they weren’t thick as thieves, they stole a few moments together here and there. A boy barely out of nappies can be just as much company to a stripling learning about his own sap as a chicken can be companion to a wolf, and Hunko would cluck after Kennesaw wherever Kennesaw went until Kennesaw’s feathers got ruffled, whereupon Hunko, if he didn’t act fast enough, he’d learn what it was like to get plucked. Kennesaw made it clear to Hunko that the rocky shores of Grunts Pond were no place for a boy in short pants, and until he was of an age where long pants down around his ankles were still longer than short pants pulled up, he was not to step foot anywhere nearby. It was assumed that Hunko heeded these warnings, for he was not to be seen by Kennesaw when Kennesaw was engaged in what he was capable of when off by his lonesome, yet if Kennesaw wasn’t so engaged in what he was capable of he might have noticed the lad crouched behind a rock all those years on the rocky shore watching his every move and sniffing the air of its balsam while attempting to learn for himself if he himself was capable of anything yet.
It was a considerable stretch of time before Hunko was capable of anything when off by his lonesome, and the day he first discovered what he was capable of, the day he was first capable of it, was also the first day Kennesaw was aware that Hunko was following his every daily move. Hunko had been careful to keep his presence unknown and his sounds unheard, his every sniff of balsam was the slightest whiffle of a breeze, his every little hand friction the ripple of a leaf. The sounds for which the pond was named were sounds he had certainly grown familiar with—they could be heard in a chain of polyphonic eruptions around the full circle of rocky shoreline at all hours of day and night, and after many, many, many outings crouched behind his rock, Hunko grew familiar with each distinct utterance and could tell you which boy in town uttered which particular grunt. Skilled as he became at listening, Hunko didn’t care about the euphoniousness of the other individuals’ grunts per se, his only real affection was for the resonant grunts of one person alone, and that person was Kennesaw, and since the first time he hid behind the rock and peeked, Hunko had looked forward to the day when he could imitate the sounds that came out of Kennesaw when Kennesaw’s capabilities reached their peak. To Hunko’s great surprise, the sound that ultimately debuted out of him on the day he was first capable of anything was a sound unlike any he had heard from anywhere around the shoreline; and to his even greater chagrin, as dissimilar to the sounds out of Kennesaw as morning dewdrops are to a flood. Granted, all grunts come from the same place. How they shoot out of one’s soul when one is off realizing one’s capabilities, the distinct individuality of their tone and propulsion from person to person is something the ancient Greeks must have studied and maybe even etched on a pot. What issued from Hunko’s depths was not so much a grunt as it was a cough, a scratchy hack that was more befitting of clearing one’s throat than of realizing one’s full potential.
Who was more startled? Hunko: because of what came out of him, vocally and otherwise? Or Kennesaw: because he wasn’t alone and hadn’t yet finished? The way Luddy heard it, Hunko barely had time to fasten his snaps before Kennesaw hoisted the little interloper by his balsam and lobbed him into the pond. Jubilee told Petie Soyle that Carnival said that Kennesaw later told him that he was so fully engaged in his lonesome and so taken by surprise that not only had he reached his full potential much sooner than he would have wanted to but that he reached it with a velocity and span that would have required depiction by the ancient Greeks not on a pot but on a very long frieze. Jubilee told Onesie Lope that Carnival then told her that he wasn’t just talking about a span from his nose to his toes, but a length of yards from where he stood to where Hunko hid and it hit the kid in the eye, and that that was the real surprise to them both.
You could have a stick in your hand or a fishing rod, or an ax or a fire-poker or a pistol, and it won’t ever mean you’ve come to grips with yourself the way having yourself in hand makes you who you are. On that day Hunko discovered about himself a longing that was inbred and immutable and it fixated on Kennesaw and it wouldn’t let go. It had been in him in his infancy, it was the tickle in his ribs and the gist of his ism, and it rimmed him in crimson for the rest of his life.
A curiosity is something you sample and set free. Kennesaw saw this as a passing interest that Hunko would get his fill of and forget, and so he indulged his young friend in shoreside sessions of mutual lonesomeness—not every day, but getting close. He felt heroic, Kennesaw; Hunko seemed so taken by his mien and measure that it swelled his intentions and thrilled the performer in him in a way no isolated outing ever did. Kennesaw rose to the occasion out of his own curiosity about curiosity, and in Hunko’s adulation of him, he found that his capability for reaching his full potential was double what it had ever been before. Kennesaw could go either way about curiosity. If he didn’t like a bean, he tasted it and spat it out. If a beaver waddled his way he might give it a damn, he might not. But this curiosity was an entirely different animal, and he couldn’t deny that he was in its cage.
Hunko never has had the ability to see one thing as two things, to see bars as a fence, to see a cage as a trap. What is is what is, and it is without question, and if there are objections to his understanding of it or his embracing of it, he is dumb to them. If Kennesaw had let him, Hunko would have devoted all hours of every day to the care and feeding of his feelings for his idol, he would have run through town leaving a streak of opalescence declaring the day begun with Kennesaw’s first breath and completed with his eyelid’s last bat. If Kennesaw had let him, which he did not, Hunko would have looped a cordon of his own intestines around his heartsake to keep others from nearing, and he would have done this to show the depths of his heart while dumb to the extremes of the act. Days down by the rocky shore Kennesaw indulged and Hunko adored and together their capabilities reached new heights and high as they went Hunko dreamed they’d go higher still. Kennesaw fully expected the fancy to pass, not only from Hunko but from himself, and when it didn’t he was as startled as the day he discovered Hunko hunkered and hacking, and his surprise turned to fear when thoughts of his father’s disapproval clouded his bluer-than-blue-eyed wonder, and as Flummox reared upon Kennesaw, Kennesaw’s fear turned mean upon Hunko, and instead of laying his arm around the lad he stiffened the length of it between them.
Days down by the rocky shore would continue—not every day, not even close, not anymore—and although Kennesaw kept his hand in for a while longer, clearly his heart was someplace else. Hunko didn’t understand how this one thing could be another thing—if he had done something rash, said something wrong, been more vocal, used less friction, shown more capability, surely the lesson would be learned, Kennesaw would teach him bad from better and the
re would be a lifetime of days like the days that came before. But all that came after were fewer days and shorter ones, and on more of those Kennesaw would participate less and less, and one day he stopped coming all together, and Hunko was left to reach his own potential all by his lonesome. It’s been that way ever since. Every day, down on the rocky shore of Grunts Pond. The smell of balsam and Hunko in its thrall, and his heart still bursting with Kennesaw. You’d think an obsession like this would have climaxed long ago.
6: Kennesaw
Flummox Belvedere stepped anywhere he damn well pleased and land knew to bow and water to wave. His arms pumped high and his boots grounded firm and he was locomotive on his way to wherever, and should you come upon him in town or field or wood it was your business to lie down or get out of his way. As stepped the father, such steps were the steps of Kennesaw’s youth and manhood; up until only a decade or so ago his own steps were direct and proud and manifest in their destiny to make the earth tread lightly around him. The change in those steps in his past ten years give shape to his steps this morning of his ninety-ninth, tentative steps, each one needing a breath all its own. It gives him pause that his long limbs can no longer stride the length of town in less time than it takes the day to blink its first—serious pause, since he needs to rest more often than every so.
The mere thought of the walk ahead to True’s and his body so out of oil is enough to make him wish the calendar year had one less day: this. Before there’s the town to no longer stride well across, there’s the woods; and before the woods, the clearing where the Drells were felled; and before the clearing more woods; and before those Saflutises’ fields; and in the shadow of the nearby Tumblers’ Ridge is Grunts Pond, where the boy in him discovered his own manhood and more, then more woods; and one last wood; and on the edge of those the old back road; and before that the unpaved ruts that snake their way to his front fence with its broken gate and the tangle of overgrowth between the fence and the house; before all that there’s the hip-aching business of just stepping out of his front door down and onto the granite mass below it, a mossy slab cold chiseled by hand by his great-grandfather, Congress, and set in place long before there was a house or door to step into. Six inches below the threshold when laid and now more than a foot drop to make that step down, the way things have settled. He’ll grab the doorframe by its jamb and slowly lower one leg to the stone like stepping onto a boat on bobbing waters, then step his other leg down and let go of the doorframe and stand a moment to make sure the craft doesn’t sink. Such a long journey ahead to walk to True’s house for his birthday tea and just the thought of stepping out his front door is exhausting, and he hasn’t even turned the knob.
One arm pumps and then the other. One leg shuffles and then the other. One ache and then another and then another and then another and this is how the aged walk into heaven.
Ache by ache Kennesaw makes his way through the late season milkweeds that make their own forest of his front yard, a chaos his own father would have seen to scything, down the trough of his front path to the broken gate of his front fence that in his dotage is a constant rebuke for his indifference. The sun takes pity on his slow progress and dims behind a surly cloud; it’s a mercy to anyone but a blind man. In its absence, Kennesaw makes out a fuzzy shape beneath the overgrowth and attempts to wrestle upright and free of its binding thistles the sagging half-gate and losing the match mutters the same be damned that he has every other time he’s wrestled it and lost in the last he-doesn’t-know-how-many years. Might as well ask him where the other half-gate went, his brain won’t budge on an answer to that either. Time and again he stubs his toe in the very same spot at the missing gate’s opening and time and again it’s the missing half suffocated under another thatch of weeds he stubs it on, but don’t tell him to step aside, step around, there’s another way through, there’s another way out, this is the way to freedom and he can’t recall any other, be damned!
What he does recall is that together the two gate halves made two halves of a heavenly harp, carved by hand and curved through sweat with slats like strings. Hunko Minton fashioned them with hand tools and found wood from a fallen tree back when making things out of found wood calmed his heart, toted them over, hung them and swung them as a surprise for Kennesaw, and as a surprise for them both, made a matching pair that he hung from the gate to his own home. He did this not long after Flummox Belvedere became nothing but a bad memory in a wooden box in a hole in Nedewen Field.
At the time, Kennesaw was impressed with the artistry and initiative and even said so out loud. Hunko might amount to something after all, he noted to Luddy Upland and Luddy told this to Carnival and Carnival told the rest. Such high praise when it made its way back to Hunko made Hunko puppy happy for more time than the compliment meant. Didn’t last more than sixty years, though, the gates, since they were installed—Hunko must not have cared for Kennesaw all that much, Kennesaw said, or been too fine a carpenter, he added, if shoddy workmanship shows so soon. Good thing, he concluded early on, that Hunko stuck his talents where they wouldn’t show for long: in the business of making boxes for the departed, which was how he put it to Threesie Lope, who couldn’t bite her tongue quick enough when she told it to True in True’s front parlor with the oriel window open and Hunko outside and below it, pressed against the south wall all fallen ears. The broken gate doesn’t budge anymore than the splinter of regret Kennesaw has that he ever spoke such harsh words.
The sun slips out from its hiding and lights a fire under Kennesaw that he’d better make time. As the earth rotates one way, his four limbs sputter the other at the exact same speed, away from the gate and the freedom that brings to mind, and out onto the road, and into a different rut he knows well. With so little between his skin and bones, where there’d be room to store water is anybody’s guess, yet perspiration slicks his brow and mucks under his arms and he can even feel his wattle below getting yeasty. Out of his house and away from his yard and only just beginning, to be this winded already you’d think it was miles and not minutes.
Down the road and down some more and more again; to compare his pace to a snail’s would be slanderous to the snail. But in that shell he might as well be carrying on his back is Flummox Belvedere and his belt, that strip of an unjust god, and the sweaty game of Adam and Abel that he forced Kennesaw to play that Kennesaw couldn’t leave home and run from fast enough. He recalls the first time Flummox was waiting for him in the doorway to the barn, looking both ways to see that no other soul was in presence. Kennesaw couldn’t have been more than a squirt then, still in short pants—that much he’s sure of. Know what happens when I take off this belt? his father would ask him, as he led the boy to a crib behind a stall in the back of the darkening barn; unbuckling, unslinging, unsmiling. The first time it happened Kennesaw didn’t know the meaning, but with frequency he came to. It was not disapproval of his blue-eyed son, Kennesaw discovered, that burned through his father’s body. It was something far more unsettling. Down the road and down some more and more again, as far from his father’s clutches as a smart trout from a barbed hook. The refuge Kennesaw sought at True’s as a boy gives his legs the lift they need to reach her house today.
On his heels as he veers off the back road under the high sun is the man Kennesaw swore he’d always outrun. On the footpath worn to a scrape through the fields once farmed by families he cannot readily bring back to mind, those arms swing high and the boots grind firm and get closer. In the woods he passes the stumps of trees that once were thick enough to hide behind, yet now without their protection he can feel a hot breath on his neck and it distills him like the smell of whiskey on his father’s. The canopy above is cheesecloth for filtering out the sun’s stronger rays, but Kennesaw’s shirt is collared in sweat and his breathing is deep and raspy and his chest is on fire and his sphincter not only stings but itches now and it sends shivers up him. The sun has never been able to warm this kind of chill out of him.
7: Mawz
&nb
sp; If memory serves, the last time True Bliss ever ate her own words was the summer Threesie Lope picked every last jack-in-the-pulpit from here to the end of forever and left them on True’s front porch with a soot-signed note reading “ME.” True was not accustomed to getting either flowers or notes, disdained the folly of both in fact, and viewed the freshly wilting blooms with their bulbous onion roots as not only unsought but unsightly. The note, which said nothing more than “ME” in handwriting that would put a chicken to shame, was no more welcome than the hooded pinks in their greenery, and if she knew who “ME” was, she’d sure give him or her the evil eye.