The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

by Wendell Berry

  Those women would always remember the way Tol looked when he came in that night. After all his waiting and anxiety, his clothes were damp and wrinkled, his shirttail was out, there was horse manure on one of his shoes. His hat sat athwart his head as though left there by somebody else. When, recognizing the multiflorous female presence he was in, he snatched his hat off, his hair stuck up and out and every which way. He came in wide-eyed, purposeful, and alarmed. He looked as if only his suspenders were holding him back—­as if, had it not been for that restraint upon his shoulders, he might have charged straight across the room and out through the back wall.

  He had made, he thought, a serious mistake, and he was embarrassed. He was embarrassed, too, to show that he knew he had made a mistake. He did not want to stay, and he could not go. Struck dumb, his head as empty of anything sayable as a clapperless bell, he stood in one place and then another, smiling and blushing, an anxious, unhappy look in his eyes.

  Finally, a voice began to speak in his mind. It was his own voice. It said, “I would give forty dollars to get out of here. I would give forty-five dollars to get out of here.” It consoled him somewhat to rate his misery at so high a price. But he could see nobody to whom he could pay the forty dollars, or the forty-five either. The women had gone back to talking, and the girls to whispering.

  But Tol’s difficulty and his discomfort had not altogether failed of a compassionate witness. His unexpected presence had not failed to cause a small flutter in the bosom of Miss Minnie and a small change in the color of her face. As soon as she decently could, Miss Minnie excused herself from the circle of women with whom she had been talking. She took the bell from her desk and went to the door and rang it.

  Presently the men and boys began to come inside. Tol, though he did not become inconspicuous, began at least to feel inconspicuous, and as his pain decreased, he was able to take intelligent notice of his whereabouts. He saw how prettily the room was done up with streamers and many candles and pictures drawn by the students and bouquets of autumn leaves. And at the head of the room on a large table were the cakes and pies that were to be auctioned off at the end of the evening. In the very center of the table, on a tall stand, was a cake that Tol knew, even before he heard, was the work of Miss Minnie. It was an angel food cake with an icing as white and light and swirly as a summer cloud. It was as white as a bride. The sight of it fairly took his breath—­it was the most delicate and wondrous thing that he had ever seen. It looked so beautiful and vulnerable there all alone among the others that he wanted to defend it with his life. It was lucky, he thought, that nobody said anything bad about it—­and he just wished somebody would. He took a position in a corner in the front of the room as near the cake as he dared to be, and watched over it defensively, angry at the thought of the possibility that somebody might say something bad about it.

  “Children, please take your seats!” Miss Minnie said.

  The students all dutifully sat down at their desks, leaving the grown-ups to sit or stand around the walls. There was some confusion and much shuffling of feet as everybody found a place. And then a silence, variously expectant and nervous, fell upon the room. Miss Minnie stepped to the side of her desk. She stood, her posture very correct, regarding her students and her guests in silence a moment, and then she welcomed them one and all to the annual Harvest Festival of Goforth School. She told the grown-ups how pleased she was to see them there so cherishingly gathered around their children. She gave them her heartfelt thanks for their support. She asked Brother Overhold if he would pronounce the invocation.

  Brother Overhold called down the blessings of Heaven upon each and every one there assembled, and upon every family there represented; upon Goforth School and Miss Minnie, its beloved teacher; upon the neighborhood of Katy’s Branch and Cotman Ridge; upon the town of Port William and all the countryside around it; upon the county, the state, the nation, the world, and the great universe, at the very center of which they were met together that night at Goforth School.

  And then Miss Minnie introduced the pupils of the first grade, who were to read a story in unison. The first grade pupils thereupon sat up straight, giving their brains the full support of their erect spinal columns, held their primers upright in front of them, and intoned loudly together:

  “Once—­there—­were—­three—­bears. The—­big—­bear—­was­—­the—­poppa—­bear. The—­middle—­bear—­was—­the—­mom ma bear. The—­little—­bear—­was—­the—­baby bear”—­and so on to the discovery of Goldilocks and the conclusion, which produced much applause.

  And then, one by one, the older children came forward to stand at the side of the desk, as Miss Minnie had stood, to recite poems or Bible verses or bits of famous oratory.

  A small boy, Billy Braymer, recited from Sir Walter Scott:

  Breathes there the man with soul so dead

  Who never to himself hath said:

  “This is my own, my native land”?

  —­and on for thirteen more lines, and said “Whew!” and sat down to enthusiastic applause. Thelma Settle of the sixth grade, one of the stars of the school, made her way through “Thanatopsis” without fault to the very end. The audience listened to “A Psalm of Life,” the First, the Twenty-third, and the Hundredth Psalms, “The Fool’s Prayer,” “To a Waterfowl,” “To Daffodils,” “Concord Hymn,” “The Choir Invisible,” “Wolsey’s Farewell to His Greatness,” Hamlet’s Soliloquy, “The Epitaph” from Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard,” and other pieces. Hibernia Hopple of the eighth grade declared with a steadily deepening blush and in furious haste that she loved to the depth and breadth and height her soul could reach. Walter Crow said in a squeaky voice and with bold gestures that he was the master of his fate and the captain of his soul. Buster Niblett implored that he be given liberty or death.

  And then Miss Minnie called the name of Burley Coulter, and a large boy stood up in the back of the room and, blushing, made his way to the desk as he would have walked, perhaps, to the gallows. He turned and faced the audience. He shut his eyes tightly, opened them only to find the audience still present, and swallowed. Miss Minnie watched him with her fingers laced at her throat and her eyes moist. He was such a good-looking boy, and—­she had no doubt—­was smart. Against overpowering evidence she had imagined a triumph for him. She had chosen a poem for him that was masculine, robust, locally applicable, seasonally appropriate, high spirited, and amusing. If he recited it well, she would be so pleased! She had the poem in front of her, just in case.

  He stood in silence, as if studying to be as little present as possible, and then announced in an almost inaudible voice, “‘When the Frost Is on the Punkin’ by James Whitcomb Riley.”

  He hung his hands at his sides, and then clasped them behind him, and then clasped them in front of him, and then put them into his pockets. He swallowed a dry-mouthed swallow that in the silence was clearly audible, and began:

  “When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock,

  And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin’ turkey-cock,

  And the clackin’ of the—­of the, uh—­the clackin’ of the—­”

  “Guineys!” Miss Minnie whispered.

  “Aw, yeah, guineys,” he said:

  And the clackin’ of the guineys, and the cluckin’ of the hens,

  And the rooster’s hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence

  —­uh, let’s see—­”

  “Oh, it’s then’s . . .”

  “Oh, it’s then’s the time’s a feller is a-feelin’ at his best,

  With the risin’ sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,

  When he—­uh—­”

  “As he leaves . . .”

  “As he leaves the house, bare-headed, and goes out to feed the stock,

  When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.”

  He looked at his feet, he scratched his head, his lips moved soundlessly.<
br />
  “They’s something . . .”

  “Aw, yeah.

  “They’s something kindo’ harty-like about the atmusfere

  When the heat of summer’s over—uh—kindo’ lonesome- like, but still—­uh—­

  “Well, let’s see. Uh—­

  “Then your apples—­Then your apples all—­”

  Miss Minnie was reading desperately, trying to piece the poem together as he dismembered it, but he had left her behind and now he was stalled. She looked up to see an expression on his face that she knew too well. The blush was gone; he was grinning; the light of inspiration was in his eyes.

  “Well, drot it, folks,” he said, “I forgot her. But I’ll tell you one I heard.”

  Miss Minnie rose, smiling, and said in a tone of utter gratification, “Thank you, Burley! Now you may be seated.”

  She then called upon Kate Helen Branch, who came to the front and sang “In the Gloaming” in a voice that was not strong but was clear and true.

  That brought the recitations to an appropriate conclusion. There was prolonged applause, after which Miss Minnie again arose. “Mr. Willis Bagby,” she said, “will now conduct our auction of pies and cakes.”

  Mr. Bagby took his place behind the table of pies and cakes.

  “Folks,” he said, “this here is for the good of the school, and to help out this little teacher here that’s doing such a good job a-teaching our children. For what would tomorrow be without the young people of today? And what would our young people be without a fine teacher to teach them to figger and read and write, and to make them do all the fine things we seen them do here on this fine occasion this evening? So now, folks, open up your hearts and let out your pocketbooks. What am I bid for this fine cherry pie?” And he tilted the pie toward the crowd so that all could see the lovely crisscrossing of the top crust.

  Tol had stood and watched and listened in a state of anxiety that prevented him from benefiting at all from the program. He had never seen in his life, he thought, such a woman as Miss Minnie—­she was so smart and pretty, and so knowing in how to stand and speak. And when she stopped that Burley Coulter and set him down, Tol felt his heart swerve like a flying swift. She was as quick on her feet, he thought, as a good hind-catcher. And yet the more he looked upon her, the higher above him she shone, and the farther he felt beneath her notice.

  Now there was old Willis Bagby auctioning off the pies and cakes, which were bringing more or less than fifty cents, depending on what they looked like and who had made them. And Tol was sweating and quaking like a man afraid. For what if her cake brought less than fifty cents? What if—­and he felt his heart swerve again—­nobody bid on it? He would bid on it himself—­but how could he dare to? People would think he was trying to show off. Maybe she would think he was trying to show off.

  Tol backed into his corner as far as he could, trying to be small, wishing he had not come. But now Willis Bagby put his hands under the beautiful white cake and lifted it gleaming on its stand.

  “Now look a-here, folks,” he said. “For last, we got this fine cake made by this mighty nice lady, our schoolteacher. What am I bid for it?”

  “One dollar,” said Gilead Hopple, who with his wife, Ag, was standing not far in front of Tol Proudfoot. Gil Hopple was the local magistrate, who now proposed for himself the political gallantry of offering the highest bid for the teacher’s cake. After his bid, he uttered a small cough.

  “Dollar bid! I’ve got a dollar bid,” said Willis Bagby. “Now, anywhere a half?”

  Nobody said anything. Nobody said anything for a time that got longer and longer, while Gil Hopple stood there with his ears sticking out and his white bald head sticking up through its official fringe of red hair.

  And Tol Proudfoot was astonished to hear himself say right out and in a voice far too loud, “Two dollars!”

  Gil Hopple coughed his small cough again and said, his voice slightly higher in pitch than before, “Two and a quarter.”

  It seemed to Tol that Gil Hopple had defiled that priceless cake with his quarter bid. Gil Hopple happened to be Tol’s neighbor, and they had always got along and been friends. But at that moment Tol hated Gil Hopple with a clear, joyful hatred. He said, “Three dollars!”

  Gil Hopple did not wish to turn all the way around, but he looked first to the right and then to the left. His ears stuck out farther, and the top of his head had turned pink. It had been a dry year. He looked as if the room smelled of an insufficient respect for hard cash. “Three and a quarter,” he said in a tone of great weariness.

  Willis Bagby was looking uncomfortable himself now. Things obviously were getting out of hand, but it was not up to him to stop it.

  Tol said, “Four!”

  At that point a revelation came to Miss Minnie. It seemed to her beyond a doubt that Tol Proudfoot, that large, strong man whom she had thought ought to be some woman’s knight and protector, was bidding to be her knight and protector. It made her dizzy. She managed to keep her composure: she did not blush much, the tears hardly showed in her eyes, by great effort she did not breathe much too fast. But her heart was staggering within her like a drunk person, and she was saying over and over to herself, “Oh, you magnificent man!”

  “Four and a quarter,” said Gil Hopple.

  “Five!” said Tol Proudfoot.

  “Five and a quarter,” said Gil Hopple.

  “Ten!” shouted Tol Proudfoot.

  And at that moment another voice—­Ag Hopple’s—­was raised above the murmuring of the crowd: “Good lord, Gil! I’ll make you a cake!”

  Willis Bagby, gratefully seeing his duty, said, “Sold! To Tol Proudfoot yonder in the corner.”

  Tol could no more move than if he had been turned by his audacity into a statue. He stood in his corner with sweat running down his face, unable to lift his hand to wipe it off, frightened to think how he had showed off right there in front of everybody for her to see.

  And then he saw that Miss Minnie was coming to where he was, and his knees shook. She was coming through the crowd, looking straight at him, and smiling. She reached out with her little hand and put it into one of his great ones, which rose of its own accord to receive it. “Mr. Proudfoot,” she said, “that was more than kind.”

  Tol was standing there full in public view, in the midst of a story that Port William would never forget, and as far as he now knew not a soul was present but Miss Minnie and himself.

  “Yes, mam—­uh, mam—­uh, miss—­uh, little lady,” he said. “Excuse me, mam, but I believe it was worth every cent of it, if you don’t mind. And I ain’t trying to act smart or anything, and if I do, excuse me, but might I see you home?”

  “Oh, Mr. Proudfoot!” Miss Minnie said. “Certainly you may!”

  Pray Without Ceasing (1912)

  MAT FELTNER was my grandfather on my mother’s side. Saying it thus, I force myself to reckon again with the strangeness of that verb was. The man of whom I once was pleased to say, “He is my grandfather,” has become the dead man who was my grandfather. He was, and is no more. And this is a part of the great mystery we call time.

  But the past is present also. And this, I think, is a part of the greater mystery we call eternity. Though Mat Feltner has been dead for twenty-five years, and I am now older than he was when I was born and have grandchildren of my own, I know his hands, their way of holding a hammer or a hoe or a set of checklines, as well as I know my own. I know his way of talking, his way of cocking his head when he began a story, the smoking pipe stem held an inch from his lips. I have in my mind, not just as a memory but as a consolation, his welcome to me when I returned home from the university and, later, from jobs in distant cities. When I sat down beside him, his hand would clap lightly onto my leg above the knee; my absence might have lasted many months, but he would say as though we had been together the day before, “Hello, Andy.” The shape of his hand is printed on the flesh of my thigh as vividly as a birthmark. This man who was my grandfather is pres
ent in me, as I felt always his father to be present in him. His father was Ben. My own live knowledge of the Feltners in Port William begins with Ben, whom I know from my grandparents’ stories. That is the known history. The names go back to Ben’s father and grandfather.

  But even the unknown past is present in us, its silence as persistent as a ringing in the ears. When I stand in the road that passes through Port William, I am standing on the strata of my history that go down through the known past into the unknown: the blacktop rests on state gravel, which rests on county gravel, which rests on the creek rock and cinders laid down by the town when it was still mostly beyond the reach of the county; and under the creek rock and cinders is the dirt track of the town’s beginning, the buffalo trace that was the way we came. You work your way into the interior of the present, until finally you come to that beginning in which all things, the world and the light itself, at a Word welled up into being out of their absence. And nothing is here that we are beyond the reach of merely because we do not know about it. It is always the first morning of Creation and always the last day, always the now that is in time and the Now that is not, that has filled time with reminders of Itself.

  When my grandfather was dying, I was not thinking about the past. My grandfather was still a man I knew, but as he subsided day by day he was ceasing to be the man I had known. I was experiencing consciously for the first time that transformation in which the living, by dying, pass into the living, and I was full of grief and love and wonder.