The squire expanded. Not only would it be satisfactory, he would go further. He would promise not even to show the boy the speech. He would not even let him sleep on it.
Then how, the congressman wanted to know, could the boy learn it?
“I,” the squire said, “will read it to him while he is asleep.”
Thus it was agreed. The next night the boy went to sleep in an easy chair in the living room, first thinking about the lady and asking her, in his mind, to help him. Then, while he slept, the squire read the speech. It took him more than an hour. When he finished and the boy awakened, the test was given. The boy began to recite the speech. He knew it perfectly.
To make certain, the squire repeated his reading of the text the next night, and again the next. On the following night the exercises took place, with the congressman present. It was a hot night. There were other speeches, other declamations; awards were given, diplomas passed out. Then the boy recited his piece. It took him an hour and a half. The congressman and the squire were delighted. Everyone else had the fidgets.
So the summer came, and manhood. He didn’t feel grown up, but he worked all day with the men in the fields, and they treated him as an equal. He ate most of his meals at the big house, and talked to Grandmother a good deal. She was sick; she had taken to her bed the day the tobacco was put in, in May. His mother nursed her, and in the evenings, when his mother went home to look after the girls, he would sit by her bedside and tell her about the day’s work on the farm. Then she would tell him the things she had found in her thoughts during the day.
They were old things, queer things, things about farming and weather, things about the family and its members, funny things that had happened to her when she was young. Fondly she took them out of her mind for him to see, caressing them with the gentle hands of memory.
She told him all about the Cayces. She herself was one of the family. Her mother had been a granddaughter of old Shadrach Cayce, who left Powhatan County to live in Franklin, Tennessee.
“One of Shadrach’s brothers, Archibald, went to South Carolina,” she said. “He founded the town of Cayce in that state. It’s not much of a place now, but there’s a famous Cayce house there, with a desk from Cornwallis’s tent in it, and it was from that place that a young lady named Emily Geiger set out one day on a ride that was a lot more exciting than Paul Revere’s.”
And she told him, while twilight faded and the odor of wisteria came into the room on the night air, of how pretty, eighteen-year-old Emily Geiger in 1781 rode a hundred miles on horseback from Cayce to Camden, carrying a message from General Greene to General Sumter, advising that Lord Rawdon’s forces were divided and could perhaps be defeated if both American armies moved quickly and joined each other for the attack.
General Greene could find no one to take the message, because that hundred miles was through the worst Tory country in the south. When she heard this, Emily Geiger volunteered, and insisted that she be allowed to go. She was familiar with the road, she said, and the British, who were in command of it all the way, would be less likely to stop her than a man.
“She started on a good, strong horse, and everything went well until the afternoon of the second day. Then she was stopped by the British, questioned, and detained for search. While the men were waiting for two Tory women to arrive and conduct the search, Emily, alone in a room, tore the message into bits and ate it. She had committed it to memory of course.
“They had to let her go after searching her and finding nothing, and Lord Rawdon—it was his men who stopped her—gave her an escort to the home of some of her relatives, a few miles away. She would not stay the night, though, fearing pursuit, so after dark she mounted a fresh horse, rode all night and all the next morning, and on the afternoon of the third day reached the territory held by General Sumter. She delivered her message, the Americans got together and won the battle, and if that isn’t better than Paul Revere, you tell me.”
“That’s a grand story. The Cayces have been in history all right, haven’t they?”
“Then there was Pleasant Cayce, my granduncle, one of Shadrach’s sons,” she went on. “He went into Fulton County, Kentucky, and founded the town of Cayce there.
“William came here, of course, but his brother George went out to Illinois.”
She laughed a little, and the great feather mattress trembled on its springs.
“The only word your great-grandfather ever heard from his brother was a letter in which George complained that he was being cheated out of some fence rails and was going to put the law on a fellow named Abraham Lincoln.
“Old William used to laugh over that. He had a great sense of humor, in some ways. I think it was a joke with him to name all his sons after Presidents—George Washington, James Madison, Franklin Pierce, and your grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Cayce. Everyone said it was because he was such a great patriot, but I always had a sneaking suspicion that he wanted to make sure none of his boys would ever be president, so he named them after fellows who already had been elected.”
She sighed and let her smile run back into the lines of her tired face.
“I reckon I shouldn’t be talking that way, when I’m going to meet my Maker so soon. But somehow I can’t be solemn about it. They must have some good laughs for themselves up there. How could they stand it? It won’t be heaven to me or your grandfather, either, if we can’t have a good laugh now and then.”
“You’ll be up and around for the harvest,” he said. “Mother says you’re getting better every day.”
“No, she doesn’t, and you needn’t try to fool me. I’m not a bit afraid to go. Why should I be? I’ve lived a long time. Why, I was an old woman the day you were born.
“I remember the day—March 18, 1877. It was a lovely Sunday. We had all the boys at the dinner table except Edgar and Leslie. They were the only two who were married then. Ella was there. She told us Dr. Doolin had gone over to the house. My goodness, your father was only twenty-three and your mother was barely twenty-one when you were born! Do you realize that?
“We all went over after dinner. The boys stood around on the porch with your father, and I could hear them arguing about crops and politics. It was so warm and sunny we opened some of the windows.
“I heard the first squall you made. It was at three o’clock, exactly. And I gave you your first bath.”
She sighed again. Then the smile came back.
“It’s wonderful what grows from those little things—babies. They’re so little and so ugly and so helpless! And now this one is working on the farm for me: a grown man!”
She reached out and patted his arm.
“It isn’t too hard for you, is it?”
“No, I like it.”
“Tomorrow is the anniversary of your grandfather’s death, the eighth of June, twelve years ago. You know the peach tree he planted in the orchard? The last tree he put there? I’ve shown it to you.”
“Yes, I know it.”
“Bring me a peach from it tomorrow. It’s the last one I’ll ever eat from that tree, I know. Will you bring it?”
“Sure, but you’ll be eating a lot of them yet.”
“Bring me one tomorrow; we’ll see.”
He brought her a peach from the tree the next evening. She ate it slowly, while he sat watching. When it was finished she gave him the pit and told him to plant it.
“Just for my sake,” she said, “and your grandfather’s.”
She settled into her memories again.
“Your grandfather was a very remarkable man, you know. Anything he touched would grow. He had more than a green thumb; it was like magic. All the wells in this neighborhood were dug where he told the men to dig them, and they always found water.
“Many’s the day a neighbor would come and ask him to locate a well for him. Off he’d go, and somewhere along the way he’d cut a hazel
twig, with a good fork. Then he’d walk around the ground on which the farmer wanted the well, until the twig told him where to stop. The little branches on the fork of the twig would twitch. ‘Right here,’ he’d say, and there they’d dig, and there they’d find water.”
“I’ve tried that. I tried it out in the woods behind the little house, and when I dug down a ways I found water.”
“Yes, I believe you can do it. You’re a great deal like your grandfather. It may be that you have the same powers. It may be that you have different ones. Your grandfather could never sleep on a book and wake up knowing what was in it. He fell asleep over many a one, but when he woke up he didn’t know any more than before.
“But he could see things, the way you tell me you can see him in the barns sometimes. ‘Oh, they’re there for everyone to see,’ he would say to me. ‘It just needs a sharp eye.’ But it needs more than that. It takes second sight, whatever that is.
“He could do things, too. He could make tables and chairs move, and brooms dance, without touching them. But he never made a show of it. I don’t believe anyone ever saw him do it but myself. He used to say to me, ‘Everything comes from God. Some men are more intelligent than others, and can make more money. Some can sing divinely, some can write poetry. I can make things grow. The Lord said there is set before each of us good and evil, for us to choose. So if I spend all my time making brooms dance and doing tricks for people’s entertainment, that would be choosing evil.’”
“I reckon Grandpa was right,” he said. “I don’t like to do tricks for people, like that speech I had to recite. I’d like to help people and be a minister.”
“You will, perhaps. But your first duty is to your mother. You’re her only son, and she’s a lovely woman. Sons mean more to a mother than anything else—more than daughters or husbands. Your father is a good man, but he has a large family and his job is a hard one. Sons can do little things for their mothers that husbands don’t know how to do, anyhow. You must always be good to your mother.”
“It’s easy to promise you that. It’s what I like to do best!”
“I hope you always will. Perhaps you’ll be going up to town to live soon. Your father wants to go. Perhaps he should. He can do anything with people—he likes them and they like him. He can’t do a thing with land or animals. It’s strange, when he comes from generations of farmers. But perhaps he should go; perhaps he would do well in business or politics.
“Anyhow, you look after your mother. And don’t be afraid of that power you have, whatever it is. Just don’t misuse it. If you hear voices, compare what they have to say with what Jesus says in the Bible. If you see things, compare them with what you know to be beautiful and good. Compare everything with what your mother does and says and is. Never do anything that will hurt another person. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be proud.”
She talked on quietly, her hand resting lightly on his arm.
“You will be meeting girls, and wanting them. You’ll think they are wonderful creatures, and some of them are. But remember that they’ll be wanting you, too. A man wants to fall in love . . . a woman wants to get married. You shouldn’t be possessed too much. You’re the kind that must keep a certain part free . . . maybe it’s because it belongs to God, and shouldn’t be taken by a woman. She’s only flesh and blood . . . but he never thinks so . . . he wants to give her everything he has . . . even the littlest thoughts he thinks . . .”
She died on the day in August when they began to harvest the tobacco. He was holding her hand when it stopped trembling and turned cold. They buried her next to Grandpa, in the cemetery with all the other Cayces.
That was also the summer he fell in love. He was different from other boys, he knew. He didn’t play baseball, or wrestle; he had never run a race, or spun a top, or picked a fight. He had never cared for girls. But now there was one he worshiped, and whenever he could he went to see her; sometimes he took her for rides in Grandmother’s best buggy; sometimes they went on picnics or hayrides. He tried to act very grown-up for her. He smoked—but he didn’t tell her that it was necessity: the odor of the tobacco in the fields and barns nauseated him so that to protect himself he had taken up the use of a pipe, which somehow cured the trouble. He talked about crops. He told her about the Sunday-school class he was teaching at Old Liberty. But on parties and picnics when the other boys got together and discussed ball games, horse races, county politics, gambling, and cockfights, he had to be silent. He didn’t belong to that world.
One Sunday there was a picnic in the woods behind the little house where he lived. He led her to the bend of the creek at the willows, where he had built his lean-to and read the Bible. He had not been there for many years. The lean-to had fallen in, the well was filled up.
They sat by the creek and talked. He told her of his ambition to become a minister, of his love for her, even of his vision. She was the first to share it besides his mother. He proposed to her.
“I know we’re only youngsters,” he said, “but I’m going to work hard and amount to something.
“Maybe I’ll be the best preacher in the county. We can have a church like Old Liberty, and a farm, with tobacco and all kinds of crops. We’ll have a flower garden, and horses to ride, too.”
She tossed a stone into the water. Suddenly she laughed. “I like you,” she said, giving his arm a squeeze, “but you’re so funny. Only the colored people talk about seeing things that aren’t there.
“Besides”—she looked away from him—“I don’t want to be a preacher’s wife. It isn’t any fun. I like to go to parties, and dances, and things. What’s the use of being stuffy? I want a man—a real man of the world; one who will do manly things instead of just sitting around dreaming all the time.”
She went to the water’s edge.
“Then he’ll come back and take me in his arms and kiss me and force me to love him. You would never do that. You’d rather read the Bible!”
He was shocked. He tried to argue. He told her that he wanted to love her the way she wanted to be loved.
“I don’t believe it,” she said. “And anyway—Pa says you’re not right in the head.”
He stopped arguing when he heard that. Her father was one of the doctors in the neighborhood. He talked with all the farmers. They must think the same thing.
They walked back to the other picnickers. He took her home and said good-bye. Her mother didn’t ask him to stay for Sunday supper. He realized now that she had never been cordial, had never asked him for dinner, or even into the kitchen for a glass of milk.
That night he lay awake, wondering if he were crazy. He thought about the vision of the lady, of sleeping on his lessons, and what they said he had done after being hit by the ball at school. He thought about his love for the Bible. No other boy in the neighborhood cared about it at all.
When he finally fell asleep he dreamed. The next morning he remembered everything about it, and told it to his mother.
He was walking through a grove of small, cone-shaped trees. The ground was blanketed with vines bearing white starflowers. A girl walked by his side, clinging to his arm. Her face was veiled. They were happy, content, in love.
The ground sloped downward to a stream of clear water running over white sand studded with pebbles. Small fish swam in the water. He and the girl crossed to the other side and met a male figure, bronze skinned, naked except for a loincloth, and winged at the feet and shoulders. He carried a cloth of gold. They stopped when they came to him.
“Clasp your right hands,” he said.
Over the joined hands he laid the cloth of gold.
“United you may accomplish anything,” he said. “Alone you will do very little.”
He disappeared.
They walked on and came to a road. It was muddy. While they looked at it, wondering how to cross it without soiling their clothes, the figure appeared again.
&nbs
p; “Use the cloth,” he said. Then he disappeared again.
They waved the cloth. They were on the other side of the road.
They walked on until they came to a cliff. It was smooth, offering no foothold. He found a knife, sharp enough to cut niches in the soft rock. He cut steps, and mounted the face of the cliff by them, drawing his companion up after him. Higher and higher they went, but the top was still out of reach.
There the dream ended.
“What do you think it means?” he asked his mother. She laughed and gave him a pat on the shoulder.
“That one is easy,” she said, “even for me. It’s about your wife-to-be. You see, she’s veiled, because you haven’t met her yet. But she is waiting for you somewhere, and already your souls are in love and happy together. As soon as you meet her you will both know that. It’s what we call falling in love, but it’s just two souls that were destined to be together, recognizing each other.
“You cross the stream of water easily. That’s the proposal, or engagement. It’s so easy, and everything seems clear. Then you are married. The marriage bond is the cloth of gold, and whenever you get into a hard place, the love you have for each other, and your faithfulness to that bond, will see you through. When two people are truly in love and are good and faithful Christians, nothing can stop them.
“And the cliff, of course, is your job of making a living and providing for your wife and family. That’s why you had to do the work of cutting the steps.
“Now, don’t you think that’s a good explanation?”
“Yes, that sounds like the right interpretation. That must be what it meant, all right.”
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