“From Wales,” said the old lady, “—in a wooden boat. When they die they roll them into the sea.” Her teeth snapped shut on a piece of blue yarn she had put to her lips, forgotten about. “Harry Muncy,” she said, “now where’s that picture?” She craned around slowly, like a turtle.
“What picture’s that?”
“Now you lookee here,” she said, “you know very well there’s just one picture.” She chewed at the yarn, like a piece of spaghetti, working it slowly into her mouth.
Viola came in and said, “It was there last—” and pointed at the wall, just left of the bureau. While we looked at the wall she fished the yarn out of Grandma’s mouth.
“When you moved the piano a good deal was upset,” Clara said.
Viola went into the dining room and said, “Well, here it is, whoever wants it,” and came back with a photograph in a small black frame.
“I want it!” the old lady said, and reached for it. She wiped the glass on her elbow, then held it close to her face, as if she would smell it. She counted aloud, slowly, from one to fourteen.
“I keep tellin’ you,” the old man said, “only twelve of them is Muncys.”
“Lookee here—you think I don’t know?”
“Two them girls—” the old man went on, “the nice plump ones, isn’t Muncys. They was Kuhns. Effie and Elsie Kuhn.”
“Married Dave and Emerson,” Clara said.
“They was Kuhns,” the old man said, “but they was Muncys soon enough. They was together like these Sia-measy twins.” He chuckled. “Them girls was so big all they could do to get four in the buggy.” He gazed off at them. “Come to think, don’t know as they did. Thinks I, more’n a man could do to get a girl like that down from the buckboard. Think they was great sitters—”
“They was to the last,” Viola said.
“I can see ’em all—” said the old man, “just a-sittin’ there.” He looked off, his eyes blinking. “Say on there when that fool thing was?”
“Eighteen ninety-two,” my wife said.
“Bring me that thing!” he said, and my wife got up from the floor, wiped the glass on her skirt, and handed it to him.
“Lord—it’s fadin’!” the old man said.
“Yon wearin’ your glasses?” Clara said, and covered her eye to look at him. He had pushed them back on his head. He let them down on his nose.
“Come to think—” he said, “they never had much as faces. Been thirty years since they had faces.” He moved his glasses up and down his nose, focusing. “No, it’s worse!” he said.
“Most of us dead and gone, think it would be fadin’!” Clara said. “Same as me an’ you are fadin’.”
“Now there—” said the old man, pointing, “there is Mitch.” He put the splayed nail of his first finger on the tall man, beside the table. “Holdin’ the cat,” he said. “Told me he was holdin’ the cat.”
“That’s Mitch?” I said.
“Just died—” he turned on the chair and pointed at the wall, between the window and the table. “Died right over there, just south of Sioux City. Eighty-one.”
“Eighty one. He was set in his ways—till he took to travelin’.”
“A merry-go-round,” said Clara. “You call that travelin’?”
“Up and down on a horse,” the old man said, “used to make him little sick in the tummy.”
“Along toward the last he spun a pinwheel,” said Viola. “Think it was Ivy won a kew-pee.”
“A wee-gee board,” said Mother Cropper. We looked at her and she said, “Told my fortune. Forget what it was.”
“Is she a Muncy?” my wife said, and pointed at the little one, with no face to speak of.
“Your Aunt May,” he said, swinging around like a compass, “over there in the corner. Little west of Falls City.”
“She has three the nicest boys—” Viola tipped her head back, looked up at them.
“All the boys had girls, all the girls had boys. Not a Muncy among them,” the old man said.
“Them boys is Croppers!” the old lady said.
The old man looked back at the picture. “That Thomas?” he said. He dipped his finger into his mouth, then rubbed a small clear spot on the glass. He peered through it. “No—Think it’s Emerson.”
“Out in Cozad—” he went on, hitching around to face the vest. “Last time I saw Emerson he was spry as a kid.”
“Had pictures on the wall he hand painted,” said Clara. “One of a dog—” said the old man, “swear he’d come right down and bite you.”
“And now he’s gone,” said Viola, coming in.
“A-men—” the old lady said.
“Think that’s Martha,” the old man said, “strong as a bull, but, my, she was gentle.” He looked around. “Seems like I forgot where they buried her.”
“Out in Boone County,” Clara said.
The old man wheeled, saw it, nodded.
“Think Maggie May’s out there too,” he said.
“We never really heard—we don’t really know.”
“Anyhow, she’s gone,” said Viola.
“A-men,” the old lady said.
“Is Francena there?” Viola said.
“We’re all here—” the old man said, “but me an’ Roy. We was in Butter County. We was there two, three weeks.” He put the picture in his lap, rubbed his eyes. “Indian country, laid as purty as any land I ever seen. Government said hands off. Said this land belonged to people there first. Sioux nation. We drove up in the school yard where the little fellows was marchin’ around. Manly little folks. Nice an social as you please. Wouldn’t know they was Indians but for them high cheek bones. An’ black hair. All have black hair.”
“An’ now they’re gone—” Viola said.
“They was young,” the old man said. “Them Indians live forever if a man don’t shoot ’em. Heard of an Indian a hunderd an’ thirty years old.”
“Why that’s older than Mother,” Clara said, and we looked at Grandma. She was dozing.
“Got to remember she ain’t dead yet,” the old man said.
“Francena married Clyde Moylan,” Clara said.
“Clyde raised some of the nicest punkins, great big fellows, then he took to raisin’ pigs. Don’t think any of ’em got as big as his punkins did.”
“She never liked it in Franklin,” Clara said, “but that’s where he had his farm. It blows a good deal. The wind is a proposition down there.”
“When it stops blowin’,” the old man said, “your cheeks puff out.” He puffed his cheeks. “Next day it blows ’em right in again.”
“An’ now he’s gone.”
“Both of them gone,” Clara said. We looked at Grandma but her head was lolling, she was asleep.
“The Muncys live hard an’ the Croppers live long,” Viola said.
Awake, her teeth snapping, Grandma said, “Harriet Valentine was no Cropper. A Cable. Broke up housekeeping and went to Pickway. There he had his home. Sara Herman was a Cropper. Matthew Lee was a Cable. Now he comes to me an’ says you tell me an’ I’ll take it down. Had pencil an’ paper. What was my great-great-grandfather he said, a Cropper or a Cable. I said he was a Cable. He said you don’t know. he went away, then at Dayton, Montgomery County, he came in and said now maybe you can tell me if my great-great-grandfather was a Cropper or a Cable. I said Cropper. He said Cable. He had with him the will and your great-great-grandfather willed your great-grandmother the forty acres, the old horse, and three hundred dollars in Confederate money.” She stared at us, the paper flowers on her Sunday bonnet softly blurred, then they stopped vibrating, her head lolled, and she was asleep.
“Libby took that paper money an’ made a hunderd thousand, if he made a cent.”
“An’ a lot of good it did him,” Viola said.
Clara began to rock. She had been fingering her lips, as if they had been speaking, but she put her hands down and smoothed the lap of her apron. “He’d done better with the horse,” she said, “—an
’ the forty acres.”
“All around,” the old man said, “we’rc fertilizin’ all around.”
“We ain’t all—” Viola said.
“We took a lot out, we’re puttin’ it all back in.” He raised his left hand, the cracked palm toward him, the fingers spread. Let’s see now, there was Mitch, there was Martha, there was Dave-”
“John and Adeline—” Clara said.
The old man knocked down the last two fingers, raised his other hand. “Then there was Thomas, Francena, Roy, and Maggie May—”
“There was you—” said Viola. He knocked the finger down, then put it back up.
“There is me,” he said, “I don’t count yet.”
“And there was Verne,” I said.
The old man blinked his eyes. “I can see him just a-paradin’ along, the band rootin’ an’ a-tootin’, just for him.” He wagged his head. “But you know, I can’t see him dead?” He turned slowly on his chair, from one wall to another, shook his head. “No—I can’t see him dead.”
“He was a maverick,” Viola said, “but I reckon he’s dead.”
The old man pushed his glasses up, twanged his nose. After a moment he let them drop, and peered at the picture, absently.
“There was Sylvanus and Lorenzo,” my wife said.
“My, they was a pair for lookin’ alike.” He stared at them. “See how Sylvanus is standin’ with his hand on Lorenzo’s shoulder?” He looked up at us. “That’s how they was. They was like that.” He put up his right hand and tried, for a moment, to cross his fingers. They wouldn’t cross. He put the picture in his lap, used his left hand. “They run a store—” he wheeled around, pointed at the window with the blinds drawn. “Harder to get apart than two these sheets of flypaper.”
“They was apart,” Viola said, “but now they’re together again.”
“A-men—” the old lady sighed, and tapped her cane. Her head rolled but she fought it off, stared like a stuffed bird. Then, like a sick chicken, the blue lids dropped, settled over her eyes.
“Dang—!” the old man said, “I just noticed how little we’re lookin’ alike.” He dropped the picture in his lap, put his hand down for his shoes.
“I got to get Mother home,” said Viola, and began to pick up the scattered afghans. The old man found his shoes, spread the laces, yawned as he slipped in his feet.
“Take that old Bess—” he said, “if I don’t go get her she’ll stay out all night. Makes her so stiff takes her all day to warm up.” He pushed himself out of the chair, slowly. “Guess we’re like as two peas.” I followed him to the porch where he stopped, centered in the doorway, for a drink of water. He took one swallow, left the dipper rocking on the pail. Turning back to the range he readied for his straw, stared absently at the crown, then put it back on the range—took the nautical number, with the bill.
In the front room, to my wife, Clara said, “Now you folks sure you’ve made up your mind?”
“When you’ve got two youngsters,” my wife said, “and a man who thinks he’s got to have it quiet—”
“Well, you know your own mind,” Clara said.
“It’s small for us, but it’s just right for Jenny,” my wife said. “The only thing on our minds is the kids, and if you can just stand them till we find something—”
“Since we’re right across the road,” Jenny said, “I don’t know why it is we can’t have Bobby-”
“To hear you talk,” Clara said, “one would think you’d never seen your father-in-law. You think for love nor money he’d let anybody have his kids?” She laughed—a little high and false—maybe the first time I had ever heard her. “He’s nothing more than an old fool,” she said, “when it comes to kids.”
I heard the porch screen close, quietly, and I saw the old man take three hasty steps, as through a puddle, before settling down to his stride.
I found him on the buggy seat, under the box elder, using the pruning blade of his pocket knife to scrape the dirt, about thirty years of it, from a croquet ball. As I came up he stooped over, fished around between his legs, and under the seat, then pulled out a mallet, the handle warped to a bow.
“You say that’d warped a bit?” he said. He held it out in front of him, raking the grass. “There was wickets here, somewhere, seems I couldn’t cross the yard without trippin’ on ’em.”
“Seems to me,” I said, “any kid worth his salt can make his own wickets.”
“That’s a hard sayin’,” the old man said, and spit in the grass. He pursed his lips, then took them between his thumb and forefinger, gave them a twist, like a cork, then wiped his fingers under his arm.
“He’s a smart enough boy,” I said, “he’s a little small, but I think you’ll find—”
“All the Muncys that way,” the old man said. “We was all small boys. Then you turn your back—see who it was whistled—and we was all big.”
“Peg and me will move on in the morning,” I said. “We’ll pick up the kids on our way home.”
“Where’d that be?” the old man said, and dropped the mallet, pushed himself up.
“Home is where you hang your childhood,” I said, as I knew, even as I said it, he had stopped listening. It had been a question he had put to himself, not to me.
“If I don’t get goin’,” he said, “I’ll never get out there, we’ll both get stiff. Takes me more’n all day to warm up as it is.” He started off. “Boy’ll have to come an’ fetch us both,” he said. That pleased him. He went on— “Well, says I, Sittin’ Bull himself must’ve been the man for that kind of haircut. Well, says, he, an’ who is Sittin’ Bull?” The old man stopped to ask himself that question, wagged his head. He put his left hand in his pocket, where it came upon a coin. He looked at it. In the house Viola said, “Peggy Muncy, for the last time, you put down that cat. You keep on an’ he’ll go sick all over you.”
“A dime,” the old man said. “Where’d I read it was worth four cents?” He looked at the sky, and the hand slipped the dime back into his pants.
Out here you wear out, men and women wear out, the sheds and the houses, the machines wear out, and every ten years you put a new seat in the cane-bottomed chair. Every day it wears out, the nap wears off the top of the Axminster. The carpet wears out, but the life of the carpet, the Figure, wears in. The holy thing, that is, comes naturally. Under the carpet, out here, is the floor. After you have lived your own life, worn it out, you will die your own death and it won’t matter. It will be all right. It will be ripe, like the old man.
Nothing happens to a man overnight but sometimes what has been happening for years, every day of his life, happens suddenly. You open a door, or maybe you close it, and the thing is done. It happens. That’s the important thing. I watched the old man in his nautical hat cross the yard like one of his harrows, the parts unhinged, the joints creaking under a mat of yellow grass. He stopped near the planter to suck on his pipe, tap the bowl on the seat. On the spring handle of the gear was a white cotton glove, with the fingers spread, thrust up in the air like the gloved hand of a traffic cop. The leather palm was gone, worn away, but the crabbed fingers were spread and the reinforced stitching, the bib pattern, was still there. The figure on the front of the carpet had worn through to the back.
NOTE ON PHOTOGRAPHS
The photographs of The Home Place were taken in Nebraska, during May and June, 1947. As reproduced they represent a compromise between the dimensions of the original print and the novel-size format of the book. Atkinson Dymock’s experience and understanding often turned this circumstance to the book’s advantage, and his name belongs on the title page as well as here.
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Home Place Page 11