When he opens his eyes he is looking at the ground between his feet. And then, as often when he wakes up after sleeping in the daytime, he feels go through him the ache of panic, afraid he has slept through something he should have been awake for. He raises his head. The field and the sky dazzle and sway in the brilliant light. A crow is calling loudly in the woods. He cannot at first realize where he is, and when he does his reasons for being there appear strange to him. He feels as though he is falling from a place where he has kept himself dangerously balanced.
And then he sees the team coming toward him a long way up the field, sits forward, and watches attentively, studying the motion of the horses and the harrow, the steady rising and spreading of the dust cloud behind them. And gradually the familiarity of these things comes back to him. The field steadies and grows quiet under the daylight. He begins to hear the small sounds made by the harrow. The band of freshly worked ground along the edges of the field has grown wider.
He is suddenly ashamed of himself for sleeping while right before his eyes a good man is at work. He does not want to be sitting there when that young man comes by, does not want the young man to see that he has waked up and wave to him, cannot stand the thought of himself waving back as though he does not mind being useless. He gets up and with a show of purposeful haste, which he does not feel and which disgusts him by its falseness, goes to the gate and lets himself through.
He finds himself now in the predicament of hurrying off toward the barns without the slightest notion of what he will do when he gets there. He supposes there were several more things he planned to see to, but it is annoying to have to think of them now only to save face, and his annoyance keeps him from being able to think.
But before he has gone much farther, his mind has completely changed its subject. He has left the wheel tracks and begun to wander, though he keeps the same general direction. He goes out through the grove of oaks, down across the small wet-weather stream at the bottom of the swag, and up the opposite slope to the high point of the ridge. Now and again he stops and stands a long time, looking. He is studying his land, the shape of it, the condition of the growth on it, with the interest in it that he has had all his life.
When he gets back to the barn lot he takes another look around, measuring the work there against his new estimate of the workman. There is little that needs doing. Such small evidences of neglect as he can find are attributable to the hurry of the spring work. He finds a loose board in the granary door, and nails it tight. He does a little straightening up in the harness room, though it is not really necessary. He finds a couple of hoes and an axe and a scythe that need sharpening, and he sharpens them. He cuts a few weeds that have begun to grow up along the lot fence. Hearing the ringing of loose trace chains, he looks up and sees the young man coming in with the horses. He looks at his watch and then at the sun. It is dinnertime.
He hurries to put his hoe away, and to open the lot gate ahead of the team. He gets it open just in time and the horses come through without having to stop. The young man is riding the lead horse, the bay one, and leading the others. As he rides by Old Jack he smiles and raises his hand.
“Thank you, sir!”
“That’s all right, son.”
Taking the horses on around to the well in front of the barn, the young man jumps to the ground and begins pumping water into the trough. Old Jack stands in the barn door and watches. Seeing the good team of horses drink after their hard morning’s work makes him happy. They drink a long time, pausing now and then to raise their heads and stand with a far-off gaze in their eyes, mouthing the cool water. When they are finished the young man leads them into the barn and puts them in their stalls.
“Give them plenty of corn,” Old Jack says, not to be bossing, but as a tribute to the horses.
When the young man comes out of the barn, Old Jack is making himself comfortable on an upturned bucket beside the well, his lunch packet on his lap, a can of fresh water on the ground at his feet. He is about to untie the string on the packet when the young man stops him.
“Mr. Beechum, come on to the house, now, and have a bite with us.”
“Naw. I thank you, son. I can make out fine on what I brought.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want you to do that. We were sort of looking for you to eat with us, and I expect there’s plenty fixed.”
Old Jack figures that is not entirely true, but he accepts, glad to escape the baloney. He gets up and puts the packet back on the shelf in the barn.
They go together across the lot and through the yard, where the morning’s wash is drying on the line, and up onto the back porch. The young man opens the screen door, and Old Jack goes ahead of him into the kitchen.
“Hello! Come in! How are you?” the young wife says to him.
“Fine. Fine, thank you,” Old Jack says to her, again bowing and smiling. “And how’re you?” Because she is young and pretty and is kind to him, he speaks to her with the indulgent tenderness with which he would speak to a little girl.
He looks at the table and sees that it is, sure enough, set for three. As he washes and dries his hands, he takes a look around the kitchen, finding it a good deal changed from the way he remembers it—though he has to admit that it looks nice the way it is, better certainly than it did during the years after his wife’s death when he did his own cooking in it, letting the windows and the paint grow dingy and the finish wear off the linoleum. Again, as in the morning—while he stands there pretending to look out the window, and the young man washes—he feels a mixture of pleasure and pain, only this time the pain is different and more intense. Around the barns and in the fields all has been scrupulously kept as it was when he left it, because it had been left in good shape and because he has licensed no changes. But here, clearly, where an old life deteriorated and came to an end, a new strong one has begun. Though he doubts that he will ever have occasion to see for himself, and knows that he does not want to, he imagines this change to have taken place in all the rooms of the house. The thought saddens him and freshens in his mind all his old feelings toward his wife and his daughter. There in the old kitchen in which he has eaten nearly all the meals of his life, he feels the loss of what has gone by and he wishes he had not come.
But now the cheerful voice of the young wife is asking if he wouldn’t like to sit down. The meal is ready.
He and the young man go to the table. The wife finishes bringing the food and sits down with them. They pass the dishes to Old Jack, urging him to take as much as he wants of everything. They are doing all they can to put him at ease, trying to relieve the awkwardness they feel in their understanding that this house is his home, though he has come back to it as its guest. Young as they seem to him, they do put him at ease. Their manner toward him is respectful, but without any of that self-effacing humility which as landlord he has learned to expect, and to distrust.
The meal is ample and well prepared, and Old Jack eats with the keen pleasure that good company and the work of a good cook always give him. He compliments the wife on her cooking, and compliments the husband on his wife, calling the young couple “son” and “honey.” He has racked his brains but he cannot remember their names.
While they eat the young man asks how long it has been since a crop was raised in the field he has been working in during the morning. Telling him, Old Jack is reminded of the last crop grown there—a good one—and he tells about that. Prompted by the young man’s questions and his interest, Old Jack remembers and tells more about his younger days than he has thought of in a long time, in the course of the conversation twice filling and emptying his plate.
During the meal he has not ceased to study both the young man and the wife, and he is more than satisfied with what he sees. Everything about the young man speaks of his decent pride. Though he works for another man, he has the ways of a man who intends one day to work for himself. He has resigned himself to nothing inferior. And the husband’s character, it seems to Old J
ack, is answered in the character of the wife.
His vision of the morning returns to him. He can see this place passing out of his own good keeping into that of the younger man—can see him at work and alive here long after he himself will be dead. He turns to the young man, intending to tell him that he can depend on his goodwill and can trust him—that he will help him to have what he wants. But he cannot speak. He looks out the window, getting hold of himself, and then he says: “Son, you’re a fine boy. And you’ve married a fine girl. I’m going to stick to you.”
After he has eaten, the young man gets up from the table and goes to the barn, leaving Old Jack to eat a second piece of pie. After a little they hear him going out the lot gate with the team.
Old Jack finishes his pie, scraping the last traces of filling off his saucer. Getting up, he thanks the wife, complimenting her again at some length. She tells him she is glad he came, and that he must feel welcome to come any time. Seeing that she is already busy clearing the table, he does not detain her with more talk, but tells her good-bye and starts to the barn. As he crosses the back porch he sees, lying on a shelf beside the milk buckets, the morning’s mail: a newspaper, an advertising circular of some sort, a post card. The post card is addressed to Elton and Mary Penn. As soon as he gets to the barn he takes out his notebook and writes their names in it. He moves the bucket from the well over against the front wall of the barn, then sits down on it, and goes to sleep.
When he wakes up this time he is not confused, but rested. He can see from the lengthening of the barn’s shadow out into the lot that he has slept a long nap. The middle of the afternoon has come.
He gets up and walks to the back of the place to look at his steers that have lately been put out on grass. He finds them and spends an hour watching them graze. They are doing well. There is plenty of grass and plenty of water. It is the kind of sight a man can look at for pleasure. But feeling the day going on, he starts back. He cannot remember now what time Wheeler said he would pick him up, and he does not want to be late.
On the way back he stops on the top of a rise and from that distance watches the young man and the team go the length of the field—a man who needs no boss in order to work well, but will require more of himself than another man will be likely to require of him. By the excellence of the young man they are made free of each other, though that freedom is a bond between them.
It seems to him now that the day is finished, and turning, putting it behind him, he hastens on to the barn. Not finding Wheeler there, he does not stop, but goes on through the lot, past the house, down the long yard to the road, and turns toward town. He is filled with a sense of loss that now gives no pain. The young man at work behind him, his bed at the hotel ahead of him, it seems to him that he knows better than he ever has from how high he is going down.
When Wheeler meets him half an hour or so later he has walked considerably more than a mile.
“Why didn’t you wait?” Wheeler asks, leaning across the seat to open the door for him.
“Why didn’t you come on when you was supposed to?” Old Jack says, guessing from the tone of Wheeler’s voice that he must be late.
Wheeler laughs, but says nothing.
Old Jack gets in and arranges himself and slams the door. The car moves off.
“Aw, Wheeler, I was taking a look at the country. Thought I might see some old woman about eighteen years old smiling at me as I went by.”
They come to a driveway and turn around.
“But none did.”
“Well,” Wheeler says, “what do you think of Elton Penn?”
“I think he’s a good one.”
“Uh-huh,” Wheeler says.
He has held a high opinion of Elton a long time, but Old Jack would not take his word.
They go along in silence for a minute, and then Old Jack says, speaking of his daughter and son-in-law: “Wheeler, as soon as I die they’ll sell that farm.”
Taken by surprise, Wheeler only nods. He thinks so too.
“And when they sell it, I want you to see that that boy gets a chance to buy it, if he wants it. I want you to help him get hold of the money, and stand behind him. Will you do that?”
“I’ll do it,” Wheeler says.
“Maybe I’ll last long enough to help him a little myself.”
A BIRTH
Mat spent the morning at odd jobs and errands, the endless little tasks of management that keep him going back and forth between his own land and Roger Merchant’s as the season and the work advance. After dinner he harnessed a team and spent the second half of the day helping Burley Coulter work the tobacco ground. The Coulters, in spite of long days and seven-day weeks, have fallen behind in their work, and Mat has been giving them odd half days whenever he can. Today, driving the slow rounds of the field, he was glad to have been needed.
When they quit at dusk, because he will be coming to work there again tomorrow, Burley stabled his team at Mat’s. And as often lately when they have been together during the afternoon, Mat asked Burley to supper.
Supper has been over a long time now, and the two of them are sitting in the wicker chairs on the back porch, each smoking one of Mat’s cigars. The dishes washed and put away, the kitchen is dark. The evening is quiet. Only now and then Mat and Burley can hear down in town a shout or an outburst of laughter. They are tired, no longer talking. The only communication between them is the alternate slow glowing and dimming of the cigar ends, the release into the darkness of invisible fragrant smoke. The sky is clear, filled with brilliant stars; against it can be made out the massive, faintly stirring tops of the maples and, nearer, the shape of a hanging flowerpot and the drooping foliage of a begonia. As often after a day’s work, Mat’s left shoulder is hurting; he shifts restlessly in his chair, trying to find a comfortable way to prop his arm. All day he has carried the thought of loss. His body has grown heavy with the desire to sleep, but he dreads going to bed, afraid that once there he will lie awake, afraid of the thoughts that will come then. His discipline now is to think of nothing, to look at the darkness, pleased to be sitting there smoking with Burley.
Footsteps come back through the house; the screen door opens and closes quietly.
“Mat?” Margaret says.
“Here we are,” Mat says.
Burley gets up. “Here’s a chair, Mrs. Feltner.”
“No, thank you Burley. Mat,” she says, “Hannah’s pains have started.”
“Have!” Mat gets up. “Well, call the doctor.”
“I did. He said to take her on down to the hospital. He’ll come as soon as he can.”
“Is she all right?”
“Yes, she’s fine. Get the car.”
“All right,” Mat says. It seems to him there is something else he ought to ask, but he hears the door open and shut, and Margaret’s steps go back through the hall. He starts off the porch toward the shed where he keeps the car, Burley following a step or two behind.
Burley has begun to wish he was on his way home. There may have been a time when he could gracefully have taken his leave, but he does not know when it was. And so he tags along, a friendly stranger, at what he hopes is an obviously respectful distance. If Mat would say something—or, better, give him something to do—that would ease him. But Mat does not say anything, his footsteps hurrying on into the darkness, and Burley subtracts himself by another couple of steps. Keeping distance between them like a stretcher, they cross the barn lot.
Mat throws open the doors of the shed, and feels his way in between the wall and the side of the car. The car is an old black coupe, bearing the marks of use that has been long and casual and hard—not much better fitted to the occasion, he thinks, than the truck. Turning on the lights, he hastily sweeps out the dirt, gathering up odds and ends of paper and clothing and flinging it all into a corner. It seems to him that lately all he has done is make the rounds from one mess to another, always a little late. A sort of guilt creeps into him that he has done so
little to prepare for this arrival. But he sees the uselessness of that.
He backs out, turns, and drives out to the road. It is not until he stops in front of the house that he remembers what it seems he never really saw: Burley standing in the beam of the headlights, holding the gate open for him, his hand raised in what might have been blessing or farewell.
The women are waiting. He picks up Hannah’s suitcase and takes her arm. Behind them, Margaret shuts the door.
As they leave the lights of the town behind them, beginning the descent into the river valley, the two women begin to talk. To Mat, though he does not trust himself to guess what they are feeling, their voices sound unsure. Glancing down into the light of the dashboard, he sees that they are holding hands, and his heart labors suddenly with love for them both.
Coming into Hargrave, they go slowly through the quiet streets, in and out of the pooled light of the streetlamps, and the sound of the car’s engine, resonant in the silence, reaches ahead into the echoes of itself.
At the hospital Mat lets the two women out near the front door and goes on to park the car. When he comes into the lobby Margaret is standing alone beside the admissions desk.
“Where’s Hannah?”
“They’ve already taken her to the labor room.”
That they have hurried her away before he could even tell her good-bye strikes Mat as outrageous. Because he is tired and afraid—or so, later, he will explain it—he is suddenly beside himself with sadness and anger.
“God damn it!” he says. “They run this place like a jail.”
“Mat?” Margaret says, and he stops, sorry.
Margaret smiles and says, “For Heaven’s sake!”
The old nurse sitting there pushes some cards toward him. Her face wears a look of complacent disgust; her worst suspicions have been confirmed many times, and she is used to it.
“There’s a waiting room near the delivery room on the second floor,” she says as if to the general public. “You may like to wait there.”
The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry Page 96