Mr. Miller pointed up to the sky, the firelight exaggerating the wrinkles on his face, and said, “Now look closely. There’s Canis Major, the big dog. See the big star with the head above it, and then there’s the tail and feet? And there’s Canis Minor, the small dog. It don’t look like much, just those two stars there. Over there is Lepus, the rabbit. It looks kind of boxy. See the little box of stars there? It has another smaller box of stars in the right corner; that’s the rabbit’s head. Do you see it?” He had to point out the constellations a few times before Charlie and I could see it.
“That’s really neat,” I said. “You’re the only person I ever heard of that knows about the dogs chasing the rabbit.”
“How did you learn about that?” asked Charlie.
“Oh, my grandfather showed it to me when I was a kid like yourselves.”
“That’s hard to imagine you ever being a kid,” said Charlie.
“You know,” said Mr. Miller, “to make it to this old, you’ve got to start out as a kid.”
“Man, I hope I don’t ever get that old,” said Charlie. I was again embarrassed by his rudeness.
“It’s get old or die,” said Mr. Miller with a quick, short laugh. “I prefer getting old to dying. I guess I’m like most people. I want to go to heaven, but I’m not in any hurry. This cranky old heart of mine is in a bigger hurry to leave this world than I am, been giving me fits here lately.”
Mr. Miller, of course, looked old, but it occurred to me for the first time that he really was very old. I wasn’t sure exactly how old he was and wouldn’t have dared asked. I had learned over my few years of life that it was rude to ask an older person’s, or a woman’s, age. A few times I had noticed him do a little dance like he was getting ready to fall, but he’d always caught himself, and I didn’t think any more of it. Now I wondered if those little dances had been his heart giving him fits. I wondered if one day he might do a little dance and his heart give out completely.
“Anyway,” continued Mr. Miller, “when I was a kid, people used to sit under the stars at night and look up into the sky and talk about things. They got to know each other. People today is too busy staring at the television, what I call the idiot box, to talk about anything. That’s why there are so many divorces these days. People don’t talk. I got sick of it all. Up here there’s no idiot box, just me, these woods, and the stars above.”
“But there’s also no one to talk to,” I said. “Don’t you get lonely up here by yourself?”
“Oh, sometimes I do. But then I think of all the hassles of the life I left behind, all the people that’ll stab you in the back the first chance they get, all the people that only want to see what they can get out of you, all the heartache that comes from love. When I think of that, I realize how much better off I am living up here by myself with nature.”
“Not everyone is like that,” I said.
“No, there’s some good people, a lot of good people, but ever since Sarah died, I haven’t had too much use for anybody else.”
Chapter 13
“Who’s Sarah?” asked Charlie, his face illuminated by the crackling fire.
“Sarah was my one and only wife. After her, I vowed never to marry again. It’s not worth the heartache.”
“What happened to Sarah?” I asked.
“It’s not important.”
“We want to know,” said Charlie.
“I don’t like to talk about it, but I guess it wouldn’t hurt to get it all out. You kids might even learn something from it.
“Sarah was the prettiest thing you ever saw. I still think that, even after how she did me. What I didn’t know, or didn’t want to know, I guess, is that there was something slowly eating away at her sanity. Makes me think of a beautiful old tree that used to be on my parents’ farm when I was growing up. I used to sit on the back porch looking at that tree. It was tall and had a twisted shape to it that made it fascinating to look at. I thought that old tree would be around forever. Isn’t that what old trees do? They stay around for generation after generation to enjoy. I thought that when I grew up and made my fortune, I’d build me a fine home on that farm with a perfect view of that old tree. I’d have to tear down the house I grew up in to get the view I wanted, but it weren’t much to start with, anyway.
“Then one night there came up a big storm. I was woke up in the middle of the night by a terrible loud crackling sound. I knew something must have happened, but I was so tired from working like a dog all the previous day that I just fell right back to sleep. Next day I found that tree lying on its side. I got to looking closely and found that the inside of that tree was rotten. Something had slowly been eating away at it from the inside out, just like Sarah. Finally, when the wind blew too hard, it collapsed, just like Sarah, rotten on the inside.
“I used to be pretty wild in my younger years, but when I met Sarah, she set me straight. I didn’t admit until too late was that her mind wasn’t right. I knew she would get depressed sometimes, but I didn’t think much of it. I didn’t have much patience for nonsense back then. When she’d mope around the house, I’d just tell her to quit dragging her tail and stop worrying about everything. But then it got to where I’d catch her talking to herself. I’d hear her talking in the other room, but when I went to see who it was she was talking to, she’d be the only one there. It was plum spooky sometimes. She’d carry on half of a conversation like there was a ghost in the house or something. And she wasn’t talking on the phone, either. We didn’t have a phone back then. A few city people had phones back then, but we didn’t have one. We didn’t even have electricity, for that matter. What I most often would hear her talk about is something about how it was all her fault. She never did say what was her fault, and I didn’t have the nerve to ask her. I just knew it was something I didn’t want to know about.
“Anyway, I’m getting off topic. One day Sarah told me we needed some things from the store if I expected any supper. She gave me a list, and I headed off to town in my wagon with the little bit of grocery money we had.”
“You had a wagon?” interrupted Charlie, eyes wide with amazement.
“Of course, that’s what most people around here had back then. Didn’t hardly anybody have a car. What cars people did have weren’t nothing but a buggy with a rattletrap motor attached.”
“Wow, you’ve been around forever,” said Charlie. “You’re like talking to Daniel Boone.”
“Yeah, I’m older than Methuselah.”
“I always did want to ride in a wagon,” I said.
“Oh, they’d be so much more fun than riding in a car,” said Charlie.
“Who’s Methuselah?” I asked.
“He’s somebody that lived to be extremely old,” said Mr. Miller. “But I thought I was telling a story here. Y’all done about made me forget where I was.
“Anyway, when I got back home from the store with the groceries, something just didn’t seem right. Everything was just too quiet. I hollered for Sarah, but she didn’t answer. I sat the groceries down in the kitchen and walked outside to the barn. I didn’t check the house at first because I figured she would have answered me if she’d been inside the house. The only life inside the barn was a few chickens pecking around. By this time my stomach was drawing up into knots. I can’t explain it to you, but I knew something was wrong. If you want to know the truth, the real reason I didn’t check the house first is because I was afraid of what I’d find.
“I walked back slowly to the house and opened that squealing screen door, seemed to squeal louder that day, like it was in agony. I could hear my heart beating in my chest as I walked through the house. And then I found her. I found her in the dining room. She was hanging through a hole in the ceiling. She had gone up into the attic and hung herself. The rope was too long, so she busted through the plaster ceiling. I ran up to the attic and did everything I could to save her, but she was gone. She was gone just like that beautiful old tree I used to look at from the back porch, the tree that had
been so rotten on the inside.”
Charlie and I were too stunned by the story to form a response. We just sat with our mouths open.
“You know,” continued Mr. Miller, “to interrupt my story for a split second, it’s hard for me to believe I can even talk to you kids about this tonight. I’ve never told anyone these things before. What surprises me most is that I can even get the words out without crying. Now, I don’t want you boys to think I go around crying all the time because I don’t. But some things in life will make anybody cry. I don’t care if you’re Paul Bunyan.
“I want you boys to learn something from what I’m telling you tonight. I want you to learn that if you don’t keep picking at old wounds, over time they will eventually heal. Oh sure, sometimes they will leave a nasty, jagged scar, but at least it won’t hurt like it did anymore, and if you don’t look at it, sometimes you can almost forget it’s there. Sarah kept picking at some old wound in her mind and eventually it destroyed her. I hope I ain’t getting too far over your heads. I guess getting old has made me philosophical.
“Anyway, back to my story. For while all I could think about is how could she have betrayed me like that. She knew I’d be the one to find her. How could she have been so cruel? She knew I loved her like the sun. Didn’t she love me well enough to want to stay around and be with me forever? After I got through blaming Sarah for what happened, I started to blame myself. Why didn’t I try to get her help? I knew something was wrong with her, but I thought the best thing to do was to ignore it. I thought if I ignored her mental illness it would go away, acknowledging it would have made it a reality. I didn’t want her to see me react when she did something that wasn’t quite right, like talking to herself. I thought getting a reaction from me would only encourage her to do it more, as though she was doing it for kicks. It’s a mistake I’ve carried around all these years, like those buckets of water y’all carried up the hill, like a bucket of water I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, put down.
But do you know what I’m figuring out, now that I’ve wasted so many years carrying around a heavy bucket? Sometimes you may think you’re doing the right thing, but it turns out to be the wrong thing. And you just have to live with it. If I’d known what I know now when I was young, I could have done a lot more right, but I didn’t. That’s the way life is: you figure it out right before you die.
“I tell you what, though, if you’re smart enough to listen to an old man like me, which most kids aren’t, you might avoid a few mistakes and live a better life. You’ll never avoid every mistake. All you can do is try to do your best and live with the consequences. I mean, I don’t know for sure if there was anything I could of done that would have been the right thing. A thousand more choices may all have been wrong. None of us have future’s hindsight in our basket of things to work with. We just have to work with what we got and do the best we can.
“Sarah did leave a note behind. I found it on the dresser in the bedroom we used to share. I never did figure that note out, but I knew it had to do with that same thing she kept talking about when I’d hear her talking to herself.”
“What did the note say?” I asked, almost nervous with anticipation.
“Most importantly, it said she loved me dearly and would love me for eternity. That’s the part I cling to. But the rest of the note I’ve never figured out. It said that she was finally getting what she deserved, that it should have been her in the first place.
“I don’t know; it might have had something to do with her first husband. I didn’t mention this, but Sarah had been married before I met her. Her first husband was killed in a tractor accident. They had a big farm over near Hopkinsville, raised a lot of corn, hemp, and tobacco. I keep thinking that whatever she felt so guilty about had something to do with her first husband. She never talked about him much, but from what I hear, he wasn’t good to her.”
The realization of what he’d just told me didn’t hit me until years later, startling me awake one night.
When he had finished talking, I noticed that his wet eyes glistened in the firelight. He sat quietly staring into the fire, then picked up a stick and poked the burning wood, stirring up a few sparks.
“What about your daughter?” Charlie asked. “You said you had a daughter.”
“Oh, she don’t belong to Sarah. I went wild again for a while after Sarah passed. I met a few women after that, women I never really wanted to know. Love is something I’ve never looked for again after Sarah was gone. I don’t even remember too much about meeting Margaret’s mother. Margaret’s my daughter’s name. I was too drunk, I guess. Then one day she show’s up wanting me to help pay for a daughter I didn’t even know I had. I wouldn’t have minded helping out so much if she’d of let me see my daughter while she was growing up. I’d go over there about once a month and bring some money. Sometimes Margaret would be out in the yard playing when I got there, but she’d always run in the house like I was a demon or something. I don’t know what kind of stories her mother must have told her about me, but I never meant any harm. Now Margaret’s grown, and she’s just like her mother. The only time she shows up is when she wants money. She’s like a vulture waiting for me to die. I guess I’ll leave her everything; it’s in my will. I suppose I owe her that much. I’m not as poor as I use to be, made some money buying and selling land. I’ve gotten pretty rich over the years, as a matter of fact, but I don’t worry much about money anymore. I’m better off up here, just me and nature.”
“I got a question,” I said.
“Yes,” said Mr. Miller.
“If you didn’t marry again after Sarah died, how is it you have a daughter that belongs to this other woman? I thought you had to be married to have kids.”
Mr. Miller laughed and said, “You’ll figure it out when you get a little older.”
“I’ll explain it to him later,” said Charlie. “I know a lot about these things.”
After the fire had started to burn down, Charlie and I went to bed. Before we fell asleep, Charlie explained to me the process by which people had children. I was quite disturbed by it all, shocked that my parents had ever engaged in such activities.
Chapter 14
I was feeling kind of grimy when I woke up the next morning. Unlike many boys my age, I was never one who liked to be dirty for very long. My parents often accused me of taking marathon showers at home and told me I was going to run them broke using so much water. Finding Mr. Miller in the kitchen, I asked him where I could find a shower. I told him my hair was a greasy mess, and I didn’t see a shower or a tub anywhere. My heart sank when Mr. Miller told me I’d have to take a spit bath. He laughed as though he’d told the funniest joke ever.
Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Charlie walked in the room and asked, “What’s so funny?”
“Mr. Miller said we’d have to take a spit bath if we wanted to get cleaned up. That’s the most unfunny thing I’ve ever heard of.”
“I don’t need a bath,” said Charlie. “I have to take baths all the time at home. I’m on vacation now.”
“We’ll turn to dirt and catch all kinds of diseases if we have to stay dirty all the time,” I said. “We’ll never make it like this.”
Mr. Miller laughed louder and said, “I can tell you kids grew up with a silver spoon in your mouth. When I was your age we took a bath once a week on Saturday night, and all of us used the same bath water. The last one to use the tub got to wash off with everybody else’s dirt.”
“That sounds like a nightmare,” I said.
“We didn’t think nothing of it. We also had to share the same drinking water and didn’t think anything about that either. My mother would fill a bucket with water every morning, and we’d drink from it all day long. There was a big dipper in the bucket, and when you got thirsty you’d take the dipper out and get you a sip.”
“Every one used the same dipper?” I asked, horrified.
“Of course. People didn’t think much about it back then. I guess maybe I did think
about it a little, though, because I’d always try to drink from side of the dipper that I thought no one else was drinking from. Maybe that explains why they’re all dead now, and I’m still kicking.” With that he barked a short laugh.
“I don’t think I can deal with being dirty all the time,” I said. “I’m not used to it.”
“I’m just messing with you,” said Mr. Miller. “Y’all can get cleaned up down at the springhouse where you got the water yesterday.”
“That’ll be cool,” said Charlie. “I never had a shower like that before. This place gets better all the time.”
“I guess that’ll work okay,” I said, not so sure about it.
Carrying two buckets, a bar of soap, and bottle of shampoo, Charlie and I made our way down the hill to the springhouse. We played in the water for a while before we took turns washing off in the springhouse. We had a blast. I thought to myself that this must have been how the early pioneers took their baths. Finally, we decided we better get back up the hill before Mr. Miller got angry with us for taking so long. We put on a fresh change of clothes we’d carried in our backpacks, filled the two buckets with water, and headed back to the cabin. Mr. Miller showed us how to wash our clothes with soap and hot water he’d heated over the fire, demonstrating to us how to use a washboard. Afterwards, we hung our clothes on a tree limb to dry. I felt refreshed.
“What’s that?” asked Charlie, suddenly.
“What’s what?” asked Mr. Miller.
“I thought I heard someone hollering.”
“I heard something too,” I said.
Then the sound became clearer. Someone was yelling my and Charlie’s names, and they were getting closer.
“What do we do?” asked Charlie. “They’ll find us.”
My heart was beating fast.
“Quick, hide in the outhouse,” said Mr. Miller.
“That’s disgusting,” said Charlie.
“Okay, run down to the spring house and hide there. That’ll be a better place to hide, anyway. Hurry, they’re getting closer. I’ll have to hide your wet clothes somewhere until they’re gone.”
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