A Place on Earth

by Wendell Berry

  The next one who wants a drink turns out to be him. He rings.

  "By all means," Jayber says.

  Burley drinks, and again feels the warmth sink into him and spread, opening slowly, a lethargic summer blossom.

  After a protracted silence Jayber begins to talk.

  `As I was saying," he says-and Burley will never know whether he was saying it earlier or just thinking it-"drinking is not ordinarily accomplished in circumstances most conducive to its highest development and enjoyment because of the preponderations of conglomerations of commotions commingling with assorted distractions indigenous to those places in which it customarily takes place-which is to say: bars, roadhouses, bootlegging establishments, et cetera, et cetera, all of which encourage the forgathering together of sundry rowdies, roughnecks, spongers, fiddlers, weepers, know-it-alls and big talkers, who create a concoction of meaningless distractions enough to give a sober man the headache, which if he is sober he'll perceive immediately, forthwith, and at once, not to say suddenly, that this is not a satisfactory place even to get drunk in-you got, that is to say, to be drunk to stay in such a place, even though it's no kind of a place to be drunk in, which you'll perhaps understand better if I explain ..."

  Big Ellis rings, and Burley passes the bottle.

  "Believe I'll just have to greet her as she comes by," Jayber says, hardly interrupting himself.

  And he greets her and passes her on, and goes on talking.

  Burley tries dutifully to listen, though it seems to him that he must have begun listening too late and has not caught up yet. He seems to have been delayed by astonishment at such a stream of talk beginning to flow so fully and without warning right there next to him. He does not see that it makes any sense. He thinks it may, if he could just catch up.

  He rings. The bottle is passed. Jayber greets her going by, and continues:

  "... book I've been projecting for some considerable time to be titled The Esthetics of Sin, by which (the sin of the title) I mean not the larger ones invented and propounded and promulgated by Moses, brought down from some mountain whose name I, at the moment, forget-a sign, I suppose, that I'm aging-but those small ones, made sins perhaps only by being so insistently so called by the clergy, so called perhaps only by virtue of the fact that they are so pleasant, or at least so lively, as to threaten distraction from the Protestant thought of Heaven-the aforementioned Heaven being, as is well known, inhabited only by dead people, or perhaps a few missionaries and their wives, a great conjugal conflagration occurring there nightly, I assure you-the sins presently under consideration being, to wit: loving, drinking, thinking, playing or singing or dancing for no pay and only pleasure, being idle when not sick, loving the world both as it is and as it might be-et cetera, et cetera- these having been, though certainly not neglected among us here, certainly not much refined, I intend to include in my book a chapter on each, defining, praising, prescribing, and elaborating upon the whys, whens, whethers, wheres, hows, and who-withs-for have I not seen with mine eyes the half-baked marriage feasts-for is not the abuse of the mortal the abuse as well of the immortal, and the abuse of life the abuse of life everlasting, and the abuse of the earth the abuse of Heaven?-for is it not upon this dust that the word and the law tread and leave their tracks?and is it not upon this little that the great shall be lifted up?-Sinai-Sinai was that mountain's name..."

  He goes on, almost without inflection or pause. There comes a time when this sentence untangles itself out of Burley's mind and goes on, leaving him quiet where he is. He experiences a moment of amazement at it-at the abundance and rapidity and strange force of it. The little sense he has been able to catch from it has seemed to him true and eloquent. But he hears it depart with relief. Listening to it has been a great strain on him. If it had stayed tangled up in his brains much longer it was going to give him the headache.

  He stands propped against the back of the shop in blissful immobility, seemingly without the effort of standing, as though hung by his collar from a hook in the wall. He looks up at the stars. It seems to him there are more now than there were. And into his deep quietness come moments when he parts from the feeling that they are "up there," and he feels himself and the shop and the town to be up there too, the world one of them, among them. Now and then he sees one fall. Now and then he or Big Ellis will ring and the bottle will be passed, and Jayber greets her as she goes by. Sometimes the bottle comes to Burley when he does not remember ringing at all.

  At some point in Jayber's sentence the bottle gets metamorphosed into the maid of the penthouse where they are staying. And every time she passes in the hall Jayber pleads with her to lay down that pile of dirty sheets and come away to a better land. But she will only give him a little kiss on the mouth and go on wherever she was going. And once in his talk Jayber sings, his voice very sweet and quavery as though he is not thinking of the maid at all, but another girl far away:

  Later Burley comes aware that Jayber has fallen quiet, not finished with that sentence surely, but just for the time being washed ashore by it. Later still, seemingly without having intended to, or making any effort at all, they are all three standing in a row at the front corner of the shop, looking out into the street. The crowd is smaller now, but the fire is still burning, the dancers are still dancing, and the musicians play on as before. Uncle Stanley is singing in the same strident voice:

  Standing in the shadow against the wall of the building, Whacker is still swaying ponderously to the music as though the whole festivity is run by a pendulum hidden secretly among its works, and he is it.

  The better part of the remaining crowd having by now come under the influence of Whacker's merchandise, there is a great deal of loud laughter, all conversations are being conducted in shouts, everything moves by plunges and jolts. Dancers, swinging, launch their partners out into the crowd, never to find them again, and continue dancing, alone or with some bystander snatched out of the crowd at random.

  "Gentlemen," Jayber says, "we cannot pursue our high aims amid this tumult."

  And the three of them turn and trot around to their place at the back of the building, feeling they go high at each step, floating and gliding like balloons between kicks at the ground. They ring and drink to celebrate their return, and stand in their old places and watch the stars, and watch the stars fall.

  "You can't remember where they fall from," Burley says.

  "It don't matter," Big Ellis says. "You don't have to put 'em back."

  "Well, it just looks to me like a fellow ought to keep track of something like that. Kind of sad that he don't. He can't, I reckon. But it's sad. A whole star fall spang out of the blooming sky, and not a word in the paper, not a monument, not a plaque, not any kind of a notice at all."

  "Don't matter. Plenty of them up there. Keep track of one that's still hanging."

  "Most of those stars," Jayber says, "are many light-years away-I forget just how many, and a light-year is how far light can travel in a year, and I think that's about a trillion or so miles or so, and ..."

  "Light don't travel," Burley says. "It just shines wherever it's at."

  "It does travel. You just can't see fast enough to see it."

  "If it ever moved I'd see it."

  "Well, where does it go when it goes out?"

  "Hah!" Burley says. "Where? Where does a fire go when it goes out?"

  "That's what I mean! Where does the beam of a flashlight, for instance, go when you turn it off?"

  "That's what I mean! Where does music go when it stops playing?"

  Big Ellis is finally getting uneasy about the tone of the conversation.

  Jayber sure is a mighty smart fellow," he says, "ain't he, Burley?"

  "That's right," Burley says. `All right. I agree. No question about it, light travels. What do you do about it?"

  "Nothing," Jayber says. "Nothing you can do. You just know it because you have to, because you know it travels and you know it goes, and you know it flies about a trillion miles
a year through all that blackness on its way from there to Port William, that is to say right here, where we're at, to wit, and the light of some maybe never has got here yet, and we're looking at the light of some maybe that burnt clean out and black a hundred years ago. And them that we see falling perhaps fell and went out a long time before we saw the light of them falling, for it's farther up there than your eyes will believe ..."

  "Hush, Jayber," Burley says. "Don't talk like that. It's too sad. Don't say no more. Let's just be right here where we are."

  "Right, colleague," Jayber says.

  And then a thought comes to Burley that seems to have been approaching him, and that he seems to have been waiting for, ever since he came. Now that it has come it seems to clarify a great deal, and is a relief to him.

  "What we're celebrating is celebration," he says. That started out to be clear, but did not wind up clear. Somewhere before the end his statement came apart like a flimsy basket and let most of his meaning spill out. "We're not celebrating any happening or anything," he says, `but just celebrating.

  "We're not shellerbrating any thing," he says, "because of how things have of being what they are. They ain't over apt to stay celebrate-able. Because they ain't."

  "Which is to say," Jayber says, "as aforesaid. And to wit."

  "Because," Burley says, "to cellerbreak things ain't hardly barrelable because they won't always stay cellerellable."

  `And the celebration of celebration," Jayber says, "will make celebrities of us all. You really had the cerebral horsepower behind that one, old chap."

  "I thank you," Burley says. "I 'preciate it."

  They fall silent again, and except when one of them rings and the bottle is passed they stay still for a long time.

  And then Jayber, raising his hand toward the stars pontifically as to bless the universe, intones:

  "Et ceterah. Et ceterah."

  And they are quiet for a long time after that.

  After a while they turn up again at the edge of the street. The town is deserted, quiet, and, except for the embers of the fire, dark.

  "I declare," Burley says. "I believe the dance is over."

  `And nobody told us," Jayber says.

  "I be durn," Big Ellis says, saddened and amazed.

  Detached from thought or motive so that they learn what they are doing with surprise, Burley and Jayber are out in the street doing an Indian dance around the fire. They dance silently, staggering, but with great solemnity and pomp. They hear a whoop from Big Ellis, and hurry back over to the shop.

  "Look at this little fellow I found here," Big Ellis says.

  In the dark against the side of the building they make out the hulk of Whacker Spradlin, sitting flat on the ground.

  "Passed out," Burley says. "Passed clean out. Such as never seen before."

  Jayber nudges Whacker with the toe of his shoe. No response. He shoves the big straw-hatted head and it falls forward. He lifts one arm and then the other and lets them fall; they lie where they drop. He kneels on Whacker's stomach and lifts the brim of the straw hat and looks into his face. He draws Whacker's two heavy hands together and laces his fingers over the bib of his overalls, and pushes his head back against the wall and covers his face with the hat.

  Straightening up, swaying forward and back, Jayber peers down at his work, and turns gravely to his associates.

  "He's dead, gentlemen."

  Though Whacker quite audibly and visibly breathes, the longer they look at him the clearer it seems to them that he is dead. There is something about the way he sits with his straw hat stuck over his face, loudly breathing, yet clearly and indisputably dead, that is surely one of the funniest things ever seen in Port William. For several minutes they weave and stagger and laugh, slapping their knees and each other's backs. Jayber then strikes a tragic pose and beckons them to hush. Accompanied by giggles that leak out of Big Ellis as if under high pressure, he declaims:

  A great spluttering giggle bursts out of Big Ellis; as if propelled by the recoil of it he falls backwards and lands sitting up, facing Whacker, still giggling. "He'll stink! Big as he is, he'll stink till New Year's."

  "He's stinking already," Burley says. "You don't have to be no undertaker to tell that."

  Jayber at once stands himself erect at Whacker's shoulder, and pounds on the wall. "Meeting come to order!" And as Big Ellis quiets down he proceeds: "Fellow members of the Port William Sanitation Commission. It has been duly noted, I believe-I believe I speak for you gentlemen as well as myself-et ceterah! -that by the cooperation of the winds of fate and the tide of victory there has been washed upon the shores of our fair city the mortal remains of this erstwhile creature, the nature of which in its previous state remains somewhat -uh- questionable, not to say dubious, if not doubtful. However, gentlemen, having been entrusted by our fellow townsmen with the removal of any and all vagrant corpses as shall occur within the jurisdiction-that is to say, to wit, the say-soof the aforesaid Port William, I move we go forward with the business. For let us be mindful of our mighty motto, for mightier there is none: Keep-Our-City-Clean. Is there a second to the motion?"

  "Second the motion," Burley says.

  "Noted. And you, honorable sir," Jayber says, addressing himself to Big Ellis, "I assume you vote with the majority."

  But Big Ellis is lying on his back, laughing.

  "He does," Burley says solemnly.

  "Then it is unanimous. And, sir, have you not a suitable conveyance close by?"

  "Big Ellis," Burley says, "you know where you left your car?"

  "If it ain't gone, I do," Big Ellis says.

  "The commissioner attests," Jayber says, "that if his conveyance has not strayed, wandered, decamped, fled, flew or absconded from the place he left it, he knows where it is. Let us then adjourn until said commissioner shall seek out, and return with, said conveyance."

  He gavels mightily on the wall, and then helps Burley help Big Ellis get up. As soon as he is up, Big Ellis's feet try to walk away and leave the rest of him hanging there between Burley and Jayber, and they all fall in a heap. They lie as they fell for a considerable time, as though asleep, or resting, or waiting to see what they will do next.

  After a while Burley says, "If I knew which way is up, I'd get up."

  "You see any stars?" Jayber says.

  "No."

  "Well, turn over."

  `Ah!" Burley says. "That's them."

  He gets up, and Jayber gets up, and again they help Big Ellis to his feet.

  "The idea is to keep your feet on the bottom," Burley says, "and your head on top. Watch this." He gives a walking demonstration, first one way, then the other.

  "That's good, Burley," Big Ellis says. "Really good!"

  "You think you got the hang of it now?"

  "Yes-sir-reef" Big Ellis says. "Turn me a-loose! I'm a tomcat! I'm a ringtailed twister!"

  "You know where you going?"

  "Yes I do! To my car."

  "You know where you are?" Jayber says.

  "Yep. Right here."

  "Jayber's shop," Burley says. "Don't get lost."

  "Never was lost in Port William but once in my life," Big Ellis says. `And that was three or four years ago."

  He goes off into the dark; his footsteps fade into the silence.

  Burley and Jayber stand and wait. They lean against the building and wait. They sit down and wait.

  "Well, he's either lost, or gone to sleep, or parked his car clean outside town," Burley says, "-or something."

  The roaring of an engine rises in the darkness not thirty yards up the street. There is a long scream of gears, the engine roars again, and they hear the tires beginning to move over the gravel.

  "Turn on the lights!" Burley shouts.

  As if he was only waiting to be told, Big Ellis turns them on-to reveal that he is backing rather rapidly away from them, heading-as nearly as they can tell-straight for Milton Burgess's store.

  "Whoa!" Burley shouts.

  A
gain, as if grateful for the advice, Big Ellis obeys. The tires slide a little and dust rises into the beams of the headlights.

  "Put her in forward!"

  Big Ellis puts her into something different-high maybe-and brings her back down the street at a canter.

  "Whoa!" Burley says. "Now cut the wheels over this way, and back her easy."

  With the help of much loud instruction and a good deal of trial and error, Big Ellis succeeds finally in backing the car up onto the sidewalk. They open the trunk, and then gather around the still inert and snoring corpse of Whacker.

  `And now, gentlemen," Jayber says, "with deep respect, with reverence, with kind and loving thoughts of the dear departed, let us bear the body to the grave."

  All three of them tugging at Whacker's shoulders and arms, with great heaving and grunting, they manage to turn him away from the wall and drag him perhaps a foot before they have to stop to rest. Letting him lie full length on the ground, they stand swaying over him, getting their breath. He lies in massive repose, like a hill, his belly cresting higher than their knees. They no sooner begin to rest than they begin to anticipate and dread the weight of him, but after many struggles and stops to rest they manage to lift and drag and push him over to the car, and cram him into the trunk.

  "What we going to do with his feet?" Burley asks.

  "The wagon," Jayber says. "Where's his wagon?"

  They find the wagon and unload it and tie it to the bumper and put Whacker's feet in it.

  `And that's a meaningful and moving and beautiful example of the funeral director's art," Jayber says, "if ever I saw one-and I have saw a few