“Hush, Poker,” Tol said.
When the man and boy came up beside the wagon, the boy did not look up. The man glanced quickly up at Tol and looked away.
“Well,” Tol said cheerfully, for he was curious about those people and wanted to hear where they came from and where they were going, “can I give you a lift the rest of the way up the hill?”
The man appeared inclined to go on past without looking at Tol again.
“Give the boy a little rest?” Tol said.
The man stopped and looked at the boy. Tol could tell that the man wanted to let the boy ride, but was afraid or embarrassed or proud, it was hard to tell which. Tol sat smiling down upon them, waiting.
“I reckon,” the man said.
Tol put down his hand and gave the boy a lift up onto the load of corn. The man climbed up behind him.
“We hate to put the burden on your team,” the man said.
Tol said, “Well, it’s all right. All they been doing is putting in the time. Get up, boys.”
“They’re right good ones,” the man said.
Tol knew the man said that to be polite, but it was a pleasing compliment anyhow, for the man spoke as if he knew horses. Tol said, “They do very well.”
And then he said, “You all come far?” hoping the man would tell something about himself.
But the man didn’t. He said, “Tolable.”
Tol glanced back and saw that the man had positioned his son between his spread legs and had opened his own coat to shelter him within it. As soon as he had stopped walking, the boy had begun to shiver. And now Tol saw their shoes. The man had on a pair of street shoes with the heels almost worn off, the boy a pair of brogans, too big for him, that looked as stiff as iron.
“Poor,” Tol thought. Such men were scattered around the country everywhere, he knew—drifting about, wearing their hand-me-downs or grab-me-ups, looking for a little work or a little something to eat. Even in so out-of-the-way a place as Cotman Ridge Tol and Miss Minnie had given a meal or a little work to two or three. But till now they had seen no boy. The boy, Tol thought, was a different matter altogether.
Tol wanted to ask more questions, but the man held himself and the boy apart.
“That wind’s right brisk this morning, ain’t it?” Tol said.
“Tolable so,” the man said.
“I’m Tol Proudfoot,” Tol said.
The man only nodded, as if the fact were obvious.
After that, Tol could think of nothing more to say. But now he had the boy on his mind. The boy couldn’t have been more than nine or ten years old—just a little, skinny, peaked boy, who might not have had much breakfast, by the look of him. And who might, Tol thought, not have much to look forward to in the way of dinner or supper either.
“That’s my place up ahead yonder,” he said to the man. “I imagine Miss Minnie’s got a biscuit or two in the oven. Won’t you come in and eat a bite with us?”
“Thank you, but we’ll be on our way,” the man said.
Tol looked at the boy then; he couldn’t help himself. “Be nice to get that boy up beside the stove where he can get warm,” he said. “And a bean or two and a hot biscuit in his belly wouldn’t hurt him either, I don’t expect.”
He saw the man swallow and look down at the boy. “We’d be mightily obliged,” the man said.
So when they came to his driveway, Tol turned in, and when they came up beside the house he stopped.
“You’ll find Miss Minnie in the kitchen,” Tol said. “Just go around to the back porch and in that way. She’ll be glad to see you. Get that boy up close to the stove, now. Get him warm.”
The man and boy got down and started around the back of the house. Tol spoke to his team and drove on into the barn lot. He positioned the wagon in front of the corncrib, so he could scoop the load off after dinner, and then he unhitched the horses. He watered them, led them to their stalls, and fed them.
“Eat, boys, eat,” he said.
And then he started to the house. As he walked along he opened his hand, and the old dog put his head under it.
The man and boy evidently had done as he had told them, for they were not in sight. Tol already knew how Miss Minnie would have greeted them.
“Well, come on in!” she would have said, opening the door and seeing the little boy. “Looks like we’re having company for dinner! Come in here, honey, and get warm!”
He knew how the sight of that little shivering boy would have called the heart right out of her. Tol and Miss Minnie had married late, and time had gone by, and no child of their own had come. Now they were stricken in age, and it had long ceased to be with Miss Minnie after the manner of women.
He told the old dog to lie down on the porch, opened the kitchen door, and stepped inside. The room was warm, well lit from the two big windows in the opposite wall, and filled with the smells of things cooking. They had killed hogs only a week or so before, and the kitchen was full of the smell of frying sausage. Tol could hear it sizzling in the skillet. He stood just inside the door, unbuttoning his coat and looking around. The boy was sitting close to the stove, a little sleepy looking now in the warmth, some color coming into his face. The man was standing near the boy, looking out the window—feeling himself a stranger, poor fellow, and trying to pretend he was somewhere else.
Tol took off his outdoor clothes and hung them up. He nodded to Miss Minnie, who gave him a smile. She was rolling out the dough for an extra pan of biscuits. Aside from that, the preparations looked about as usual. Miss Minnie ordinarily cooked enough at dinner so that there would be leftovers to warm up or eat cold for supper. There would be plenty. The presence of the two strangers made Tol newly aware of the abundance, fragrance, and warmth of that kitchen.
“Cold out,” Miss Minnie said. “This boy was nearly frozen.”
Tol saw that she had had no luck either in learning who their guests were. “Yes,” he said. “Pretty cold.”
He turned to the little washstand beside the door, dipped water from the bucket into the wash pan, warmed it with water from the teakettle on the stove. He washed his hands, splashed his face, groped for the towel.
As soon as Tol quit looking at his guests, they began to look at him. Only now that they saw him standing up could they have seen how big he was. He was broad and wide and tall. All his movements had about them an air of casualness or indifference as if he were not conscious of his whole strength. He wore his clothes with the same carelessness, evidently not having thought of them since he put them on. And though the little boy had not smiled, at least not where Tol or Miss Minnie could see him, he must at least have wanted to smile at the way Tol’s stiff gray hair stuck out hither and yon after Tol combed it, as indifferent to the comb as if the comb had been merely fingers or a stick. But when Tol turned away from the washstand, the man looked back to the window and the boy looked down at his knee.
“It’s ready,” Miss Minnie said to Tol, as she took a pan of biscuits from the oven and slid another in.
Tol went to the chair at the end of the table farthest from the stove. He gestured to the two chairs on either side of the table. “Make yourself at home, now,” he said to the man and the boy. “Sit down, sit down.”
He sat down himself and the two guests sat down.
“We’re mightily obliged,” the man said.
“Don’t wait on me,” Miss Minnie said. “I’ll be there in just a minute.”
“My boy, reach for that sausage,” Tol said. “Take two and pass ’em.
“Have biscuits,” he said to the man. “Naw, that ain’t enough. Take two or three. There’s plenty of ’em.”
There was plenty of everything: a platter of sausage, and more already in the skillet on the stove; biscuits brown and light, and more in the oven; a big bowl of navy beans, and more in the kettle on the stove, a big bowl of applesauce and one of mashed potatoes. There was a pitcher of milk and one of buttermilk.
Tol heaped his plate, and saw to it t
hat his guests heaped theirs. “Eat till it’s gone,” he said, “and don’t ask for nothing you don’t see.”
Miss Minnie sat down presently, and they all ate. Now and again Tol and Miss Minnie glanced at each other, each wanting to be sure the other saw how their guests applied themselves to the food. For the man and the boy ate hungrily without looking up, as though to avoid acknowledging that others saw how hungry they were. And Tol thought, “No breakfast.” In his concern for the little boy, he forgot his curiosity about where the two had come from and where they were going.
Miss Minnie helped the boy to more sausage and more beans, and she buttered two more biscuits and put them on his plate. Tol saw how her hand hovered above the boy’s shoulder, wanting to touch him. He was a nice-looking little boy, but he never smiled. Tol passed the boy the potatoes and refilled his glass with milk.
“Why, he eats so much it makes him poor to carry it,” Tol said. “That boy can put it away!”
The boy looked up, but he did not smile or say anything. Neither Tol nor Miss Minnie had heard one peep out of him. Tol passed everything to the man, who helped himself and did not look up.
“We surely are obliged,” he said.
Tol said, “Why, I wish you would look. Every time that boy’s elbow bends, his mouth flies open.”
But the boy did not smile. He was a solemn boy, far too solemn for his age.
“Well, we know somebody else whose mouth’s connected to his elbow, don’t we?” Miss Minnie said to the boy, who did not look up and did not smile. “Honey, don’t you want another biscuit?”
The men appeared to be finishing up now. She rose and brought to the table a pitcher of sorghum molasses, and she brought the second pan of biscuits, hot from the oven.
The two men buttered biscuits, and then, when the butter had melted, laid them open on their plates and covered them with molasses. And Miss Minnie did the same for the boy. She longed to see him smile, and so did Tol.
“Now, Miss Minnie,” Tol said, “that boy will want to go easy on them biscuits from here on, for we ain’t got but three or four hundred of ’em left.”
But the boy only ate his biscuits and molasses and did not look at anybody.
And now the meal was ending, and what were they going to do? Tol and Miss Minnie yearned toward that nice, skinny, really pretty little boy, and the old kitchen filled with their yearning, and maybe there was to be no answer. Maybe that man and this little boy would just get up in their silence and say, “Much obliged,” and go away, and leave nothing of themselves at all.
“My boy,” Tol said—he had his glass half-full of buttermilk in his hand, and was holding it up. “My boy, when you drink buttermilk, always remember to drink from the near side of the glass—like this.” Tol tilted his glass and took a sip from the near side. “For drinking from the far side, as you’ll find out, don’t work anything like so well.” And then—and perhaps to his own surprise—he applied the far side of the glass to his lips, turned it up, and poured the rest of the buttermilk right down the front of his shirt. And then he looked at Miss Minnie with an expression of absolute astonishment.
For several seconds nobody made a sound. They all were looking at Tol, and Tol, with his hair asserting itself in all directions and buttermilk on his chin and his shirt and alarm and wonder in his eyes, was looking at Miss Minnie.
And then Miss Minnie said quietly, “Mr. Proudfoot, you are the limit.”
And then they heard the boy. At first it sounded like he had an obstruction in his throat that he worked at with a sort of strangling. And then he laughed.
He laughed with a free, strong laugh that seemed to open his throat as wide as a stovepipe. It was the laugh of a boy who was completely tickled. It transformed everything. Miss Minnie smiled. And then Tol laughed his big hollering laugh. And then Miss Minnie laughed. And then the boy’s father laughed. The man and the boy looked up, they all looked full into one another’s eyes, and they laughed.
They laughed until Miss Minnie had to wipe her eyes with the hem of her apron.
“Lord,” she said, getting up, “what’s next?” She went to get Tol a clean shirt.
“Let’s have some more biscuits,” Tol said. And they all buttered more biscuits and passed the molasses again.
When Miss Minnie brought the clean shirt and handed it to him, Tol just held it in his hand, for he knew that if he stood up to change shirts the meal would end, and he was not ready for it to end yet. The new warmth and easiness of their laughter, the straight way they all had looked at one another, had made the table a lovely place to be. And he liked the boy even better than he had before.
Tol began to talk then. He talked about his place and when he had bought it. He told what kind of year it had been. He spoke of the Proudfoots and their various connections, and wondered if maybe his guests had heard of any of them.
No, the man said, he had never known a Proudfoot until that day. He went so far as to say he knew he had missed something.
Tol then told about marrying Miss Minnie, and said that things had looked up around there on that happy day, which caused Miss Minnie to blush. Miss Minnie had come from a line of folks by the name of Quinch. Had their guests, by any chance, ever run into any Quinches?
But the man said no, there were no Quinches where he came from.
Which brought Tol to the brink of asking the man point-blank where he came from and where he was going. But then the man retrieved his hat from under his chair, and so put an end to all further questions forever, leaving Tol and Miss Minnie to wonder for the rest of their lives.
The man stood up. “We better be on our way,” he said. “We’re much obliged,” he said to Tol. “It was mighty fine,” he said to Miss Minnie.
“But wait!” Miss Minnie said. Suddenly she was all in a flutter. “Wait, wait!” she said. “Don’t go until I come back!”
She hurried away. All three of them stood now, saying nothing, for a kind of embarrassment had come over them. Now that the meal had ended, now that they had eaten and talked and laughed together for a moment, they saw how little there was that held them. They heard Miss Minnie’s footsteps hurry into the front of the house and up the stairs. And then they heard only the wind and the fire crackling quietly in the stove. And then they heard her footsteps coming back.
When she came into the kitchen again, she was carrying over her left arm an old work jacket of Tol’s, and holding open with both hands a winter coat of her own that she had kept for second best. She put it on the boy, who obediently put his arms into the sleeves, as if used to doing as a woman told him.
But when she offered the work jacket to the man, he shook his head. The jacket was much patched, worn and washed until it was nearly white.
“It’s old, but it’s warm,” Miss Minnie said.
“No, mam,” the man said. For himself, he had reached some unshakable limit of taking. “I can’t take the jacket, mam,” he said. “But for the boy, I thank you.”
He started toward the door then. Miss Minnie hurriedly buttoned the boy into the coat. Tol made as if to help her by prodding the coat here and there with his fingers, feeling between the weather and the boy’s skinny back and shoulders the reassuring intervention of so much cloth.
“It’s not a fit exactly, but maybe it’ll keep him warm,” Miss Minnie said as if only to herself. The coat hung nearly to the top of the boy’s shoes. “It’s good and long,” she said.
Her hands darted about nervously, turning the collar up, rolling up the sleeves so that they did not dangle and yet covered the boy’s hands. She tucked the boy into the coat as if she were putting him to bed. She snatched a paper bag from a shelf, dumped the remaining biscuits into it out of the pan, and at the last moment, before letting the boy go, shoved the sack into the right-hand pocket of the coat. “There!” she said.
And then they lifted their hands and allowed the boy to go with his father out the door. They followed. They went with the man and boy around the back of
the house to the driveway.
The man stopped and turned to them. He raised his hand. “We’re mightily obliged,” he said. He turned to Miss Minnie, “We’re mightily obliged, mam.”
“You might as well leave that boy with us,” Tol said. He was joking, and yet he meant it with his whole heart. “We could use a boy like that.”
The man smiled. “He’s a good boy,” he said. “I can’t hardly get along without this boy.”
The two of them turned then and walked away. They went out to the road, through the wind and the gray afternoon and the flying snow, and out of sight.
Tol and Miss Minnie watched them go, and then they went back into the house. Tol put on the clean shirt and his jacket and cap and gloves. Miss Minnie began to clear the table. For the rest of that day, they did not look at each other.
Tol lived nine more years after that, and Miss Minnie twenty more. She was my grandmother’s friend, and one day Granddad left Granny and me at the Proudfoot house to visit while he went someplace else. The war was still going on, and Tol had not been dead a year. I sat and listened as the two women talked of the time and of other times. When they spoke of the Depression, Miss Minnie was reminded of the story of the solemn boy, and she told it again, stopping with Tol’s words, “We could use a boy like that.”
And I remember how she sat, looking down at her apron and smoothing it with her hands. “Mr. Proudfoot always wished we’d had some children,” she said. “He never said so, but I know he did.”
A Jonquil for Mary Penn (1940)
The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry Page 38