The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

by Wendell Berry

  “I can go on now,” she says.

  “All right. Let’s angle around and over the point. That’ll be longer, but not so steep.”

  He goes beside her, giving her his arm to lean on. They go slowly, taking a gradual upward slant along the face of the slope. High up, clear of the trees, the valley lying open again below them, they stop again to rest, standing facing the valley.

  “Oh, I’ve been here before,” Hannah says. “Virgil brought me here once to show me where he’d like to build a house.” She stops, confused, having said that.

  They turn a little away from each other, cautious.

  “Well, ain’t it a nice place for one,” Mat says.

  Around her she can see the stones Virgil laid down that night to mark the corners, scattered out of alignment now, but still there. The fear of great loss comes over her, the great wanting of what may be lost. She turns around and starts up on the slope. Mat catches up and takes her arm. They go on, without talking and without stopping, to the truck. Mat helps her in and gets in himself.

  “How you making it?” he asks her.

  “Better now. Much better.”

  They look at each other now and smile, having made it so, for one time at least.

  SOMETHING IN THE WORLD TO DO

  Old Jack opened the door of the woodshed for the first time on a warm afternoon two weeks ago. And since then he has made it his place. When he first looked into it, it was full of cast-off furniture, scrap lumber, old fruit jars, tin cans, rusty tools, an old mattress, the smell of mildew.

  He spent odd hours of three or four days cleaning it out, burned all that was burnable, stacked the rest neatly in a corner, swept the floor boards and walls, left it open in the warm afternoons to air. The results of his work, he admits, are not very impressive. The old shed is far gone. A man could take a broom handle and knock it down. Still, he finds the neatness he has made in it satisfactory. As in his room in the hotel, there is nothing here to show that he has appropriated it. He has put nothing in it except a little order. Between him and the ramshackle building there is only the pleasure of sitting in it on warm days, looking out at the big pasture behind the town. Sometimes he sleeps there, the sun shining in on him. Mrs. Hendrick has seen him going back there, has even made a little habit of watching his comings and goings from the kitchen window, but he always uses the back door of the woodshed, and so she has no certain idea what he is doing. She will, she supposes, sooner or later go out and see, but she tells herself she will have to wait and do it sometime when he will not see her—­not that it would make a whit of difference to him, even she knows that, but she has a secret little flair for detective work, also plenty of curiosity that she could not satisfy so well in Old Jack’s presence as she can in his absence. She did get alarmed at the smoke he made, but so far she has—­wisely, she thinks, and virtuously—­held her peace.

  Now Old Jack picks up a rusty scythe and, chipping and pecking with the end of the file, begins flaking the rust off the blade. What he is going to get around to today is the weeds. Already in the lot behind the hotel, growing up green among the last summer’s dead stalks, the weeds have begun to come. He whets the edge of the blade with the file, leaving the metal bright.

  It has been a long time since he went to work early in the morning. Though he did not think he had, he has forgot the delicate flavors of the satisfaction he used to get out of that. The best of it, it turns out, is unrecallable. The realization fills him with a sense of loss that would be hard to bear if he did not have the scythe in his hand. He tests the cutting edge with his thumb, and is satisfied. The sun is just getting up into the branches of the old locusts around the woodshed and along the back fence.

  He starts a narrow swath along the crumbling foundation of the hotel, cutting the creeper stems off at the ground as he goes, leaving the weeds, the green and the dead together, lying down behind him.

  He gets tired quicker than he thought he would—­though he has not been working at what you would call an old man’s pace. He goes back and pulls the creepers loose from the weatherboarding. By the time he does that he is short of breath, a little staggery. He goes back to the woodshed and sits down.

  His weakness saddens him. He can remember when a little job like this would just be something to do after supper some night. But he might as well admit it: it is not anymore. And he will have to mend his licks. He will have to get back in that old man’s gait, and stay in it, if he aims to get anything done at all. “Where’s the fire at, old man?” he asks himself.

  He whets his scythe and goes back. He is startled by the change he has made. He has done more than he thought. He can change the look of the world still. A kind of inspiration comes into him, the familiar lifting of the thought of what can be done here by a man. He finishes his first swath, and starts a new one. But now he is working more slowly—­a pace he thinks maybe he can stand for an hour or two.

  He is in the middle of this third swath when the kitchen window opens with a clatter and Mrs. Hendrick puts her head out.

  “Mis-ter Beechum! You’ve got no business to cut them weeds! If I want them weeds cut, I’ll cut them myself!”

  Old Jack accepts the challenge. He stops, and looks at her as if she is farther away than she is.

  “Me and weeds never have lived in the same place together, old woman.”

  He goes back to work, same pace. She goes straight to the telephone and calls Wheeler Catlett. And while Old Jack goes on slowly and happily at his work in the back lot, Wheeler is pleading his case with Mrs. Hendrick in the hotel dining room.

  “Could you see that he was doing any harm, Mrs. Hendrick, by cutting those weeds?”

  “Yessir! He’s doing harm, my opinion, cutting them weeds. Them’s my weeds.”

  “Well, Mrs. Hendrick, it’s good for the old fellow to have something to do. And I’d think it would be to your profit to have those weeds cut.”

  Mrs. Hendrick’s voice becomes tremulous. “He never even asked, is what I mean, Mr. Catlett. That’s what’s so insulting to me. Just went out there and sharpened my scythe and went to cutting them weeds just like he owned the place. Just a cutting and a cutting, and a calling me ‘old woman.’ ” She wipes her eyes with her apron. “Sometimes a widow woman, seems like, just don’t have no place to turn. If he’d asked me, Mr. Catlett, I’d have let him do it.”

  “Well, Mrs. Hendrick, now that he has begun, won’t you be so kind as to let him go on? Don’t you think that would be best?”

  “I reckon so. I just hope there won’t no more trouble come of it, Mr. Catlett.”

  When Wheeler comes around the hotel, Old Jack’s back is turned to him. “Good morning, Uncle Jack.”

  Something’s up, Jack knows right away. Whenever Wheeler comes in the morning, something is up. “Why hello, Wheeler. How are you, honey? I was just cutting a few of these weeds. The damnedest mess of them ever I saw. Just look a here,” he says, gesturing around him, “what that old woman has let grow up right in her door.”

  “Shhh!” Wheeler says. Old Jack always refers to Mrs. Hendrick as “that old woman,” though she is at least twenty years younger than he is. “Uncle Jack,” he says, “don’t call her an old woman—­at least not to her face.”

  Old Jack smiles and lays his hand on Wheeler’s arm. “Don’t you worry about that, honey. Me and her get along.”

  By the evening of the next day—­working a while and sitting a while—­Old Jack has finished the weeds on Mrs. Hendrick’s lot, and has made a good beginning on the weeds behind the store. It looks fairly good, he thinks, a big improvement.

  In the next couple of days the frontier is pushed across Jasper Lathrop’s back lot, and on down behind the doctor’s office and the drugstore. A great litter of old cans and bottles is picked up and piled in an out-of-the-way corner. The burnable trash and the cut weeds are piled on top of the old crates behind Jasper’s store and burnt in a smoky fire that draws all the boys in Port William and a considerable numbe
r of the men.

  Saturday morning after breakfast Old Jack goes out into his clearing and stands and looks. Childish as he suspects it may be, he cannot help feeling a little elated at what he has done. But along with the satisfaction there is growing an uneasiness, a sadness. It is finished, and what will he do now? Having escaped it a little while, he has again knocked square against the realization that there is mighty little left in this world for him to do. And this morning what he has done seems threatened by the possibility that it was done for nothing. What can he do now but sit and look at it? And know that the weeds will come back, and he will go.

  As if in answer to a prayer that he has not even thought of praying, he sees Floyd Mahew’s boy driving a team of mules and sled along the fence, as he has morning and noon and evening all week, only today there is a breaking plow lying on the sled.

  Something to be growing in it: the idea is born full grown into Old Jack’s head. He waves his cane.

  “Oh, son! Whoo! Hello, boy!”

  But the mules are coming at a brisk trot and the boy cannot hear over the rattling of the harness.

  “Deaf and dumb!” Jack says. He waits until the team comes up even with him and calls: “Whoa!”

  The mules stop. The boy falls forward, catching himself against the fore-standard of the sled, and looks around in some confusion until he sees Old Jack coming.

  “Boy,” Old Jack says, “can you run that plow?”

  “Yessir,” the boy says, grinning and nodding. It’s a Mahew grin, a Mahew face. The Mahews have always reminded Jack just a little bit of catfish. He gives the boy a good looking-over, not sure he is telling the truth. He is not a very big boy. “Well,” he says finally, “go on up yonder to the gate and come in here. I’ve got a little piece of work here I want you to help me with.”

  The boy looks doubtful. “Uh, I better go on to work like my daddy told me to.”

  “You’re Floyd Mahew’s boy, ain’t you?”

  “Yessir.” Again the nod and grin.

  “Well, I ain’t worried about him. You just drive up to that gate and I’ll help you get it open.”

  The old gate into the alley along the upper side of the hotel has not been opened in maybe fifteen years. The slats are rotten, some of them broken. The whole thing has been bound together in place with baling wire.

  They do finally get it open. The boy drives the sled into the alley. They unload the plow and hitch to it.

  “I’ll drive, son, and you handle the plow. Can you plow a straight furrow?”

  “Yessir. I’ll try.”

  “What in the hell does that mean? ‘Yessir. I’ll try.’ Well, I’ll drive straight. You just keep your plow running level.”

  “Yessir,” the boy says. “Uh. How long do you think this’ll take?”

  “Ne’ mind! Don’t you worry about your daddy. Gee, boys! Take hold of your plow, honey.”

  The boy takes hold, and they go across and back the long way of Mrs. Hendrick’s lot, leaving a straight, neatly turned backfurrow through the middle. The black earth bursts at the touch of the share and crumbles. Hard telling when it ever was broken, if it ever was. If it is not virgin ground it might as well be. It has been a long time since Old Jack has seen any dirt like it. He is delighted by the look and the smell of it, and by the feel of it when he stops and picks it up and crumbles it in his hands.

  “Lord Amighty!” Old Jack says. “Look what dirt you’re plowing,” he says to the boy. “Did you ever plow any dirt like that before?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Nosir.”

  “Nosir.”

  “That’s what new ground looks like. You’ve never seen any of it on that place of your daddy’s.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ve broke a fair amount of it in my time. You’ll not break but mighty little in yours.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “Nosir.”

  “Because all of it, you might as well say, has been broke, and a lot of it used up. From my day to yours is a long time, and a lot more is used up, and not much to the improvement of the world, far as I can see.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Yessir, what? Yessir, Hell! Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  “Yessir.”

  Old Jack looks down at the boy, studying him, and then snorts. “Until you get enough sense to worry about it, I reckon I’ll have to. Well, look at that ground you’re turning and remember it.”

  They’ve come to the end of a furrow, and they look at each other, each a little perplexed by the other.

  “It’s something you ought to remember. Not many in your generation will ever see it.”

  “Yessir.”

  They begin the next furrow.

  “Did you ever imagine what an improvement it would be to the world if everybody cut his own weeds?”

  “Nosir.”

  “Well, you won’t come to that with a boy’s head. But I’ll tell it to you. It’d be a hell of a big improvement.”

  “Yessir.”

  “What’s the biggest fish you ever caught?”

  “About the size of that mule’s ear,” the boy says. “But I ain’t fished much.”

  There’s a slam behind them, and when they look Mrs. Hendrick is standing on the stoop at the kitchen door, a wet dishrag dripping in her hand. She is red in the face, bent forward as if about to dive off the stoop.

  “Just keep ahold of your plow, honey.”

  “Stop! You all just stop them old mules right there!”

  Jack addresses the mules quietly and gently: “Whoa, boys.” He turns slowly to face her.

  “Mr. Beechum! What’re you plowing up my back yard for?”

  “For the good of the world!”

  Whack! she shuts the screen door. Wham! she shuts the kitchen door.

  “Come up, mules! Gee! Come up!”

  When Wheeler comes this time it is a good while before he can get in a word. Mrs. Hendrick tattles on Old Jack, describes the look on his face, quotes him a number of times so as to make obvious the outrageousness of his tone. She speaks of her own decent life, of her great sympathy for a lonely old man such as Mr. Beechum, and of the hardships and travails of widow women in this world. And Wheeler has to allow her some sympathy. She is having a rough time of it. She oughtn’t to have to put up with insults from Old Jack.

  “Well,” Wheeler says. “I’ll certainly talk to him about the language he uses, Mrs. Hendrick, and I’ll ask him to show you more respect. But I’ll also have to tell you again what I told you the other day. I can’t see why you object to what he’s doing. I can’t see that it won’t be to your advantage to have a garden back there.”

  “A garden?” she snaps. “How’d I know it was going to be a garden? Well, I just hope there won’t no more trouble come out of it, is all I hope.”

  When Wheeler goes out back, the ground-breaking is finished. Floyd Mahew’s boy is gone, and the old gate has been shut and wired up. Old Jack is standing and looking.

  “Hello, Wheeler boy!”

  “What’re you going to plant here, Uncle Jack?”

  “A little bit of a garden. Maybe raise that old woman something she can cook.”

  “That’s fine,” Wheeler says. He had not known any better than Mrs. Hendrick that a garden was what Old Jack intended to raise.

  “These here shirt-tail lawyers looking after my business, I’m liable to have to go back to working for a living, so I reckon I’d better keep my hand in.”

  They laugh.

  “Wheeler, did that old woman call you down here to complain about me?”

  “That’s right.”

  “The damned old thing hasn’t got any sense, Wheeler.”

  “Not much. But you haven’t been giving much consideration to that.”

  “You’re right, son. I haven’t been giving her a thought. And it’s causing you trouble, ain’t it? You reckon I’d better hunt another place to go?” He looks over his garden pa
tch—­not altogether liking that thought. “Or”—­he grins—­“we could buy this place and throw her out. Get us a couple of old women about eighteen years old to come in and keep house.”

  Wheeler laughs. “No, Uncle Jack. I think the best thing to do now is let things be as they are. I just ask you, for my sake, don’t insult her, and try to show some respect for her rights in her own property.”

  Old Jack sees that the crisis is over, and he turns away, wanting to change the subject. Good company is going to waste.

  “I want you to look at that ground,” he says.

  They pick up handfuls of the black moist dirt, letting it crumble through their fingers.

  “It won’t take but mighty little working to get that ground ready to plant.”

  They stand there a few more minutes, talking about the newness and richness of that neglected place.

  And then Wheeler starts ­toward the street. Old Jack watches him go. He is going to have to begin making some kind of peace. He has been mighty unwilling to have that woman on his mind. But now he will let her be there—­for the sake of peace, and for Wheeler’s sake, and his own.

  He looks at his watch. It is three-quarters of an hour until dinnertime. The sun has begun to dry the surface of the turned ground. He paces the length and width of the plot, and then goes into the woodshed. He sits in his chair and takes out his notebook and pencil and figures how much seed he will have to buy.

  A lot, it proves. They will have plenty to eat fresh, and plenty to can, and some to give away. He goes out to the street, his list fluttering in his hand, the ground waiting.

  A PLEASANT PLACE TO SIT

  April 22, 1945

  Dear Nathan,

  Here I’ve let a month go by without writing, in spite of getting two letters from you. We’ve been working mighty hard since I wrote last—­daylight to dark, and seven days a week. Last week we worked right through Sunday, and didn’t know we’d passed it until Tuesday.

  Well, this Sunday morning I decided I couldn’t put off writing any longer, so I slipped out early and walked to town. Thought I’d get where Jarrat can’t find me and I can’t hear him holler, and get this letter written. When it’s done I guess I’ll have to go back and let myself be found. I’m sitting here on the sidewalk in front of Jayber’s door. It’s a quiet fair morning, and a pleasant place to sit. Jayber was just finishing his breakfast when I got here. He came down and hung around and talked until I thought I might as well give up and go home. But he finally went back upstairs.