A Place on Earth

by Wendell Berry

  Although he has increased his worries, he has no regret, no feeling that he has done less or more than he had to do. But a few days ago, if he had considered expending time and bother on this land, he would have considered also the possibility that he might later be able to buy it. But now Virgil is missing, and Mat needs no more land for himself. He is too old now to need it-if he ever did. This new work must be done for the sake of the land itself-and for the sake of no one he can foresee, someone who will come later, who will depend then on what is done now

  A Spring Night

  Tuesday and Wednesday it turned cold again. The wind blustered all day both days. But sometime Wednesday night the weather quieted, and Thursday morning the spring seemed to have gained back all it had lost, and more.

  On Tuesday morning Wheeler Catlett phoned and left word for Mat that he had found a man who might do to stay with Roger, and that the two of them would drive up to look at the place and talk wages that afternoon.

  An arrangement was made, and the man-a hearty, loud-talking fellow named Bailey-promised to gather his belongings and return on Friday. Now, Thursday night, supper finished and Roger gone sober to bed for the fourth night in a row, Mat is sitting alone on the well top behind the house, smoking a cigar. Just the pale last minutes of the twilight are left. The sun's heat rises out of the ground, and the air is still and warmsummer air. During the day, taking Roger with him here and there in the truck, he has made the beginnings of his spring work, and he is tired with a familiar tiredness that now, near rest, comforts him. In spite of the bothering with Roger, it has been a good day, and the night is good. Tomorrow night he will be at home.

  Behind him, in the old kitchen, he hears Roger cough and stir. And he becomes aware of a sadness, too, that he has been feeling, staying there those nights. Roger is old with his wasting of himself and with agecoming down to the end of the line, for him, and for the line too. Mat has been thinking of that. Roger is the last remnant of a history of which he is the only admirer. After him, there will be no sign that the Merchants ever existed, except for a diminishment of the earth and of human possibility. They have gone, and are going, leaving nothing behind but thicket growing back over the slopes they destroyed, and a remnant of usable soil on the ridges and in the bottoms that they would have destroyed if they had lived long enough.

  Around Mat, the country throbs with the singing of frogs. Too high in the dusk to be seen, a flock of wild geese passes, a kind of conversation muttering among them. They will go talking and talking that way all night, flying into new daylight far off. That they do not think of him, that they go on, comforts Mat. He thinks of those wild things feeding along weedy lake edges way to the north with a stockman's pleasure in the feeding of anything, and with something more.

  And now Burley Coulter steps over the sagged yard fence without breaking stride and comes on down the slope of the yard through the dead weeds, carrying an unlit lantern in his hand. He comes over to the well and sits down beside Mat and lights a cigarette. They sit smoking for a while.

  Finally Burley says: "Spring night sure enough, ain't it? Frogs singing."

  "Yes."

  `And I heard a flock of geese go over just before I got here."

  "I heard them."

  There is another silence, and again Burley is the one who breaks it: "Well, Mat, since I saw you-when was it I saw you? Day before yesterday evening?"

  "I think so."

  "Well, after we talked I went and talked to Jarrat, and we did some telephoning to various ones about Ida's troubles. If everybody does like he says, we ought to be able to give her all the help she'll need. We went down this afternoon and broke some plant-bed ground on top of the ridge. Some of the others are going down tomorrow to haul wood to burn on the beds when we get them ready. And I reckon that's about the way it's going to go."

  They talk on, considering possibilities, looking ahead through spring and summer and fall, thinking of what will have to be done and how they will manage to do it.

  "Ida says all we need to see to is the heavy work-the plowing and so on," Burley says. "She'll do the rest."

  "Do you think we ought to depend on her to do that?"

  "She'll do it anyhow," Burley says. "So we might as well depend on her."

  Green Coming Strong

  March 25, 1945

  Dear Nathan,

  I laid off to write you last Sunday, but never got around to it, and reckoned you would be on your way across the water anyhow. I expect, if that's so, you'll get this one about as quick as you'd have got the one I didn't write last week. I hope so.

  The flood is over now. It was a bad one, and come at a bad time, and done damage, and has throwed everybody way behind. We got awfully tired of looking at water.

  The worst of it-which we didn't even know about until it was overwas that Gideon and Ida Crop's little girl, Annie, got drowned on the 10th. Gideon, according to what Ida says, watched over the backwater until it went down. And then he went. And hasn't been found either. Mat Feltner has been trying to find him, calling the police and such in different places, but hasn't heard a word of him. It seems a man is about as easy to lose in this world as a pocketknife. I wouldn't have thought it. But there's a lot I never would have thought that has turned out to be so.

  Virgil Feltner, by the way, hasn't been heard from either. Nothing to say about that, I reckon, until Mat says something. Except it's bad.

  I hate to write down these sad troubles. But I can't think of any argument why I oughtn't to tell you. They happened. And I'm in a way obliged to speak of them because they did happen and I know it. Seems to me that when you start home you'll want to know what's here and what's not. And if anybody's going to write it to you, looks like it'll have to be me. I said to your daddy the other day, "Why don't you write to Nathan?" And he said, "God Amighty, Burley, he knows what I'm doing."

  Making tracks is what he's doing. Making that team of black mules realize what he fed them through the winter for. Which I imagine you do know.

  Well, spring is here, finally. And we've had some days of fine weather. This is one, clear and quiet, hardly any air stirring at all, just warm enough to be comfortable in the sun, and the country turning greener all the time. I'm happy today, in spite of everything, glad to see it all come back.

  The old spring comes up in me just like it comes up in everything, and I'm gladder to be alive today than three weeks ago I imagined I'd ever be. The night, say, of the day you left.

  Speaking of time, I was fifty years old on March 12, and clean forgot it. Jarrat was the one finally thought of it. Day before yesterday he says, "Burley, you're fifty. You've been fifty for two weeks." It scared me. And then it made me mad. Which made him laugh, which don't happen every day. And we counted up and fifty's what I am. Half a hundred years I've been alive. And it's a mystery where they've gone. I used to think that when I got to be a man I'd do what I pleased. And what I aimed to please to do was hunt and fish, and breed as far and wide as a tomcat. But there's a great many pretty girls that I've gone by, and a lot of good hunting nights, and a lot of fishing weather. It has happened that that wasn't so much what I was called to as I thought. What it has been, I reckon you would say, is love, forJarrat and you boys. I realize now that if my calling hasn't been that, I haven't had one. When I die there won't be much around here that anybody can point to and say "Burley Coulter done that." There's not any wheeling and dealing of mine that anybody'll remember. But for me, when I think of my life I have to think of it with Jarrat's and yours and Tom's. And even if there is a lot I've let go by, I don't say I ain't blessed.

  Don't pay any attention to what I write, unless you want to. My mind just gets to going. Jarrat and I are so quiet, looks like I don't know what is on my mind until I go to writing to you.

  When the ground dried off enough to let us get on it with the teams, which was last Tuesday morning, Jarrat went at it just like I told you he would. And I've been my usual hundred feet behind him ever since. We'
re both soft from the winter and from being idle so much during the wet weather, and pretty old too for such a pace, but I expect we've left as many tracks behind us in the last week as we ever did in our lives. The sun has been getting up mighty fast and going down mighty slow.

  We've got ourselves behind an awful pile of work-farming on both of these places, and at Mat's. Plus we're trying to help Ida carry on until Gideon turns up, if he does. Plus there's no chance we can see of hiring much help. There's sort of nobody here but children and women and old men. I imagine I'm going to get mighty tired of looking at your daddy's back before October.

  All week we've been burning and sowing plant beds-at Mat's, and then down at Gideon's, and since Friday afternoon up here. Fact is, that's what we're doing right now. Last night when we quit I said to Jarrat, "Let's get a little rest tomorrow." And Jarrat said all right. And we passed it back and forth awhile, saying we'd lay around today and get over some of our soreness and hit it hard again Monday morning. And then this morning early we got to looking over all we've got to do, and piddled around and greased the wheels on Jarrat's wagon and sharpened our axes. And first thing you know we're out here on the ridge, working like it's the last good day. And every time we get a little break I come over here to the wagon and write some on this letter.

  It's on in the afternoon now, and we're just sitting here, resting and watching the last of it burn. I do like this work. There's something about this fire going before the new crop that's cleaning. The thought of it is good. All last year's old mongrel chances burnt out of the ground. And first thing you know we'll have them little tobacco plants speckling up through the ashes.

  Everybody seems to be as behind in his work as we are, going early and late. From the house at night I can see the plant beds burning for miles, and smell them too. And you know people are awake and busy around them. It sort of brings the country together in a way it never is any other time.

  Down in the bottoms they're still waterlogged, just sitting and looking at mud and waiting. Anvil Brant says if it wasn't for fishing he'd try to get in the Army.

  Old Ike just come up and laid down under the wagon. I've heard him treed way down in the hollow nearly all day. And he's finally dug out whatever it was, and eat it. So I reckon I'll have to be the one to eat the leftovers tonight. He wants to know what's the matter with me, I haven't been hunting with him for so long. And I don't know what to tell him. I've been thinking that if you stay around this part of the country after the war, maybe we'll get hold of a good bitch and raise a litter of pups, and start over.

  That's one of my thoughts. Amazing how I've got so I depend on my thoughts. I can take one I like and just about wear the hair off of it between supper and bedtime. I can remember a time when my head wasn't exactly the part of me that I was most interested in. And now there's actually some thoughts that I kind of look forward to getting a chance to think. I've got a pretty good pocketknife and a pretty good dog and three or four good thoughts.

  And a good country to live in, I will have to say. This is about as pretty a time right this minute as you'd ever want to see. Still and clear, and little smokes here and yonder from the plant beds, and that green coming strong. And I'm tired enough that I don't mind to see the sun going down. I wish you was here.

  Lord bless you, old boy, I think about you all the time.

  Your uncle,

  Burley

  Part Three

  9

  Look a Yonder

  From the top of the ladder, among the branches of the apple tree, Mat's horizon is enlarged. Along the crest of the eastward ridge he can see the line of white canvases covering the plant beds that Burley and Jarrat Coulter sowed five days ago. They make a single stroke of whiteness, drawn exactly along the horizon between the blue of the sky and the ridge, which, in the same five days, has become green. Down the gentle fall of the ground behind him is the town, which he turns toward and turns away from again and again as he goes about his work. The roofs are still visible, their angles sharp, among the treetops stippled with buds. Northward he can see the opening of the river valley, the folds of the upland on the far side, woods and fields dear in the sun. Feeling the limb on which the ladder is propped spring against his weight as he moves, Mat prunes the tree. He likes this work-the look of his hands moving and choosing, correcting, among the tangle of the branches. The orchard is one of the works of his life.

  On the ground under the tree Joe Banion is gathering up the cut twigs and branches as Mat lets them fall, loading them onto the wagon. The black clear shadows of the branches tangle over him like a net as he moves. On the edge of the wagon bed, his sheepskin coat buttoned a foot off-center, Old Jack sits watching them, keeping them company. They weren't at work there a quarter of an hour before Joe said, "Well, we going to have help, Mr. Mat. Here come the old boss." Sure enough, there he came up along the row ends of the garden and into the orchard. And until now he has sat there holding the team, driving the few feet to the next tree when Mat and Joe move.

  It's a little past the middle of the morning; the early chill has gone out of the air. The town has become quiet. The children are shut in the school, the men gone to the stores or the fields, the women to the kitchens. The voices of cackling hens in Mat's henhouse and barn come brassy and loud into the quiet, and from beyond the turn of the hill comes the bleating of sheep. From the wagon Old Jack's voice follows the turnings of his mind-sounding both comforted and comfortable, one of the sounds of the place come back into the open.

  The garden gate opens and shuts, and this time it is Hannah they see coming up along the row ends toward the orchard. She walks heavily over the uneven ground, leaning backward a little against the weight of the child. The wind blows her skirt and her hair as she walks.

  She does not come near them, but goes into one of the upper corners of the orchard where late yesterday afternoon Mat pruned a peach tree and left the branches lying. She waves as she goes by, and they wave back. They watch her as she moves through the clutter of branches, gathering the budded shoots. By an awkward stooping and bending she picks them up one at a time, holds them up to look at them, their graceful slendering weighted and knobbed with buds, and lays them into the crook of her arm.

  Old Jack sits studying her. "She's a mighty fine girl."

  "She is," Mat says.

  Old Jack shakes his head. `Ay, Lord!"

  They hear the sound of an engine in the air and, looking up, find a small army plane coming fairly low over the town.

  "Look a yonder!" Old Jack says. "Yonder's one of them flying machines." A second follows, the look and the sound identical to the first. "God Amighty, there's another'n!"

  One after another they come, spaced evenly, a considerable distance apart, their sounds building and fading in steady rhythm. The three men stand looking up, Old Jack braced on his cane like a tripod in the middle of the wagon bed, Joe by the mule's heads where he went to quiet them, Mat on the ladder in the top of the tree. They count. Four, five, six. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twentysix. And when the twenty-sixth one carries its sound away, and none follows, they watch them out of sight.

  The morning goes on. Mat's mind has been drawn away from his work into the uneasiness of the sky, empty of all sound now He thinks of the young men enclosed in that deathly metal, their fates made one with interlocking parts and men and events. He feels a cry toward them grown in him, unreleased. It is a long time before his mind will content itself again to take back the tree and his own hands busy in it. Below he can hear Joe Banion:

  "How'd you like to fly one of them things, Mr. Jack?"

  'Ay, Lord! I wouldn't do it."

  "You and me, boss man. You and me."

  The Bridge

  As he always does when the first outside workbegins in the spring, Ernest felt a little reluctant to give up the orderly enclosure of the shop. And so he was glad enough to spend most of the morning getting ready-lugging his ladders and rope tackle a
nd jacks and tool boxes out of the shop and loading them on the truck; setting the shop to rights, sweeping it out, putting tools away, feeling the place settle around him and grow still.

  When he came up opposite the Crops' house, a few minutes before noon, he eased the truck out across the bottom to what, two weeks and two days ago, had been the outside end of the footbridge. He turned the truck around and killed the engine, and ate the sandwiches he had brought.

  During the fifteen or twenty minutes he spent doing that, and the five minutes he spent smoking a cigarette afterwards, the place began to make its claim on him. It took him only a few seconds to foresee in some detail how he would have to go about the rebuilding of the bridge; after that his mind was free to take in the look of the place. Except for the singing of birds and the steady rippling of the creek, the little valley was quiet. There were no human noises anywhere. For a while he remained half alert for the sound of a voice or a door or an engine-one of the habits of his winter work in town. But he grew used to the peacefulness of the place. He quit expecting anything but the natural sounds. The silted bottoms, he saw, were beginning to show a faint scaling of green, and along the banks of the creek, running clear now over the rocks, the muddied limbs of the willows were putting out new leaves.

  Almost without his realizing it, his thoughts going ahead of him, he has begun his work. The butt of the cigarette still burning in the corner of his mouth, he fishes a pair of rubber boots out from behind the seat. He sits down on the running board and puts them on. He places the crutches under his arms and, moving around the truck, takes a coil of half-inch rope out of one of the tool boxes, and starts up along the creek.