She lifted gnarled hands to grasp both of David’s. “Praise the Lord! You come in time.”
“Why, of course,” David’s resonant voice filled the room. “We came just as soon as Dr. MacNeill told us.”
“Set down, both of you. Pull up that settin’ chair thar for Miz Christy. Law, I’ve been that fearful you wouldn’t git here in time.”
“Why Aunt Polly, you’re indestructible. Dr. MacNeill tells me you’ve fooled the doctors so many times before.”
“Not this time. This is my time to go. Won’t be top-side of earth long. Feel it in my innards. So I’m needin’ you mighty bad, Preacher. Been longin’ to speak with you. Need comfortin’ to my heart.”
She turned her blazing blue eyes on me. “And Miz Christy, I asked for you because I hankered to see yer fresh young face once more and that white neck of your’n holdin’ yer head up so proud-like. For us old folks, it be a treat to rest our eyes on you sprightly young things.”
Before I could say anything, David was remonstrating, “Come on now, Aunt Polly, you’re not about to die.”
“Son, you won’t do a dyin’ old lady ony good with that rattletrap talk. You’re not a-foolin’ yerself and you’re not a-foolin’ me. Now I’ve got this all thought out. First off, Preacher, I want you to read out’n the Good Book. Read me them certain-sure words about the life to come. There ’tis.” She pointed to a big, worn family Bible on the table.
David picked up the Bible and began leafing through it while Aunt Polly waited expectantly. As he turned page after page, then flipped them over again, she thought to help him. “Find that spot where it says ’bout many mansions.”
“Oh yes—the gospel of John, I believe.” His eyes scanned the pages. “Yes, here it is.” There was relief in David’s voice:
“Let not your heart be troubled . . .
In my Father’s house there are many mansions: If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”
“Aye. That’s good. But don’t be stoppin’ there. I be a-thirstin’ for the Word. Read on, son. Read on.”
David’s fingers began riffling pages again. He looked at me appealingly and I cleared my throat, casting about in my mind for something to say during the awkward pause. “Aunt Polly, I was thinking, you’ve had a long life. Why, you were in midlife while Abraham Lincoln was President.”
“Aye, lassie. I’ve been lasty-like.”
But this was no time for small talk, and she turned again expectantly to David. His eyes were still scanning pages. The wrinkled face broke into a gentle smile. “Preacher, you’re not exactly lick-splittin’ through the Book, are ye?”
“Here, this is what I was hunting for:
“And this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life.”
“Now that’s wondrous good. But why don’t you find a spot where you can read straight through? Don’t mean to be cranky or to put you out none, but ye’re a-skitterin’ all over that Book.”
“All right, Aunt Polly,” David answered cheerfully. With that, he settled back in his chair to read the long passage from Nicodemus’ midnight talk with Jesus, ending with those timeless words:
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so, must the Son of man be lifted up:
That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life . . .”
Aunt Polly had her eyes shut, nodding her head. “Aye, satisfies my soul.” She opened her eyes and addressed herself to David. “Now, I want to ask you a question straight out. What’s gonna happen when my heart gives out beatin’? Is my speerit gonna see Him right off?”
David closed the Book. “I guess lots of people have wanted to know that, Aunt Polly. We used to discuss things like that at seminary.”
Please, David, don’t! Not now. Not that way.
“Preacher, I ain’t needin’ to know what you gabbled about when you had time on yer hands. Tell me whatn’all you know for a fact.”
“Well, Aunt Polly, after all, we can’t experience death while we’re still living, so how can we know—the way you mean it? Even Scripture seems a little confusing. Of course, you realize too that the Jews themselves did not believe in immortality until far along in their history.”
My heart was sinking into my shoe-tops. David, David . . . This isn’t the time.
Aunt Polly was silent with her face so expressionless that David looked at her curiously and cleared his throat. “Some think that at physical death we go into a state of unconsciousness, but then are raised up on the last day when this old earth will end in some kind of catastrophic upheaval. Scientists—”
Aunt Polly held up one hand to interrupt him, her eyes snapping fire. “Ye mean that some folks think that when we die, our speerit don’t know nothing and gits kept in a sort of icehouse, all froze up stiff for hundreds or thousands of years till the trump sounds at the last day, and then we git unfroze?”
David smiled. “Well, that’s putting it picturesquely. But yes, something like that.”
“Preacher, is that what you’re believin’?”
“Aunt Polly, these are points I haven’t quite settled with myself.”
“Wal, son, it’s past time you was thrashin’ a few things out with yer Creator. Shorely, you can’t disremember about Jesus tellin’ that rascal of a thief a-dyin’ on the cross beside Him, ‘This day thou shalt be with me in paradise.’ Does that sound like ony icehouse?”
“I really don’t think—well, you see, time in Scripture is not always the same as—”
“Fiddlesticks! those men were in pain. They was a-dyin’! Weren’t no time a-tall for foolin’-around talk. Think ye ‘this day’ and ‘thou shalt be with me’ means onything but just what it says?”
David looked hurt and embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Aunt Polly. It’s just that I try to be intellectually honest.”
She placed a blue-veined hand with its swollen knuckles over his hand and spoke as if to one of her grandchildren. “Poor man-person! You’ve most fractured yer head tryin’ to be wise-witted, ain’t ye?”
She sighed—and shut her eyes. Indeed, they were closed so long that I was beginning to think she had fallen asleep when suddenly, she began to speak again. Her eyes were still closed, but her voice had changed: it was soft, almost caressing, with a smile in it. “Ever-who heerd tell of sech! Me, unthoughtedly fotchin’ on a boy preacher-parson who’s hardly seen thirty summers yit, tongue-larrupin’ him with questions that abody could scarce answer in a lifetime. Didn’t have no call to heave my load onto his young shoulders. Got a little gimp left myself, guess.”
The thin eyelids fluttered open. “I’m a-thinkin’ I’ll tell you a true tale. Be ye listenin’?”
David and I both nodded, not knowing what to expect.
“Nigh onto sixty years ago ’twas, Freeman and I was still young and spry. I was always childing, always with a baby to my breast. We housekept whar Dale and his brood is now. Owned a big scope of land and as the babies came on, Freeman had to keep addin’ on to our cabin. ’Twas pretty, with a big black walnut tree crowdin’ it and honeysuckle a-creepin’ all acrost the porch. The crik and the road was like a necklace round it and the everlastin’ hills closed us in warm and cozy, like in the holler of a cup.
“The work, like the hills, was everlastin’. There was the garden and the chickens to tend; the milkin’ and the churnin’; the bread to bake and the grub to cook to feed twenty hongry mouths regular; water to tote from the crik; always the babies to mind. I’d commence long afore the crack of dawn and still be at it by firelight after all the young’uns and even Freeman was abed.
“Wal, finally my heart give out. It would take spells of beatin’ so hard like it would fly out’n my breast. Went to the nighest doctor. Said I should bed it to rest. If’n I didn’t, I would die sure, least to hear him tell it.
“But sakes alive! There wasn’t a natural blessed thing I could do about restin’, not with a house full of little shavers stacked right up to the loft. So when the spells would come on and I was real bad off, I’d go out and querl right up on the grass under the walnut tree, jest lie thar quiet-like, a-drinkin’ in the strength of the earth till the spell passed, then go back to my job of work again. And I didn’t die like the Doc had said.
“But something worse was ailin’ my heart, only Doc didn’t know about that: it was starvin’ to death. The Cove didn’t have no church-house then and that was long afore Miz Henderson come. Onct in a long while a preacher-person would come ridin’ through, but not often enough to do us no good. “That longin’ inside me burned and ached and cried for something, I didn’t rightly know what. Then one day—seems like ’twas only a week ago—I was goin’ acrost the foot log bridge, along that path windin’ through the thickets and the blackberry brambles. And at one certain spot on that path—I could show you where—why, He met me. Somethin’ happened to me there. It was simple-like, but clear as mornin’ light. I says to Him, ‘Lord,’ I says, ‘I don’t rightly know whether I’m gonna live or die, but it don’t make no differ. From here on, my life belongs to You.’
“And it did too, for a fact. From that day I could feel His love a-feedin’ my starvin’, thirstin’ soul. And the more I tried givin’ His love away to my young’uns and my man and the neighbor-folks, the more love He gave back to me. Reminded me of openin’ up a spring: first, a muddy trickle. Then a leetle stream, gettin’ stronger and clearer with every day that passed.
“Wal, then one spring when the moun-tains was greenin’ and the grass in the pasture was half-a-grab-high, Freeman had a huntin’ acci-dent and went on afore me. And no sooner had he gone from his body than there he was in the room with us’uns. Not that I could see him, but I shorely could feel him. Jest himself, laughin’ easy-like, tellin’ us as clear as ever a body could that everything was all right, not to worry a mite. It was then I knowed for sure that death ain’t nothing to be afeerd of. Thar was other times too—but I’ve spoke enough for now.”
The look she gave us with those blazing blue eyes was a benediction. “I’ve been livin’ with my Lord for over sixty year now. It’s been nippety-tuck to git through this life a-tall, but I’d never of made it without Him. So son, don’t worry yer head no more ’bout us bein’ put to sleep in some old speerit icehouse. The minute I take my leave of this wore-out flesh, that second He’ll be a-waitin’ for me. Rest yer soul on that, son, like this old lady does.
“And now I aim to give you and Miz Christy my blessin’.” She reached up to lay one hand on David and one on me. “May the Lord bless and keep you both—till we meet over there in the glory of His amazin’ love. And I’m that beholden to you for bringin’ yer brightness to take away some of an old lady’s lonesomeness. Thank ye, lassie.”
I reached down to hug Aunt Polly, but I could not speak. The cheek I pressed against hers was moist with tears.
I was seeing more and more of Fairlight Spencer. Our friendship was a natural outgrowth of my teaching her.
What the record time is for learning to read, I do not know, but the prize probably belongs to Fairlight. Three long sessions accomplished it. She “practiced” all the time, read everything imaginable—the old newspapers pasted on the walls of the Spencer cabin, the pieces of a tattered dictionary, the family Bible, even the labels on jars and bottles. Within a few weeks, so far as reading was concerned, she had caught up with most of the pupils in my school and was borrowing books two or three at a time.
I wondered if Fairlight’s family might not suffer; after all, they could not eat books. I need not have feared. The young Spencers’ stomachs were too healthy and clamorous to stand for any neglect.
But Fairlight did invent ingenious ways to do her housework and read at the same time: a book propped on the window sill while she was washing dishes; a book open on a chair at her side while she was churning or spinning or shelling shucky beans or stringing green beans.
In the beginning I had thought of teaching her to read as just another do-good project. (I admit it, to my shame.) But Fairlight soon changed that with the debt in her favor. Her return to me was—all unknowing—such priceless insights into her heart and spirit that in a few short weeks I had begun to love this mountain woman.
For example, she taught me something important about the use of time and how to enjoy life. With a husband and five children to cook, clean, wash, even make clothes for, and with no modern conveniences at all, not even piped-in water, Fairlight might have felt burdened and sorry for herself—but she did not. Often she found time to pause in her dishwashing to let her eyes and her spirit drink in the beauty of a sunset. She would interrupt her work to call the children and revel with them in the grandeur of thunderheads piling up over the mountain peaks, heat lightning flashing behind the clouds like fireworks. “It lifts the heart,” she would say, and that was explanation enough for any interruption.
There was always time for a story in front of the fire with the children snuggled against her; always leisure for the family to gather on the porch “to sing the moon up.”
Fairlight told me how on the first fine spring day, she considered it only right and proper to drop her housework: “The house, it’s already been a-settin’ here for a hundred years. It’ll be right here tomorrow. It’s today I must be livin’ ”—and make her way to one particular spot she knew. There she would kneel and with her long slender fingers brush aside the dead, sodden leaves and gaze wonderingly on the first blossoms of the trailing arbutus. Knowing her as I did, I could picture her fairly crooning over the flowers.
She and I agreed that never had we known such delight at an end to winter, perhaps because it had been a drab one. Yet I was discovering that spring did not come suddenly in the mountains but on tiptoe, stealthily, with retreats and skirmishes, what Fairlight called “sarvice winter” and sometimes “redbud winter.” Still, the mountainsides were burgeoning at last and I was eager to explore them. Since Fairlight knew just where to take me, she and I were often in the woods, sometimes just the two of us, sometimes like a pair of female Pied Pipers with the Spencer children and some of my other pupils trailing along. They would race ahead of us swinging on the limbs of trees or on wild grape vines, “plumb crazy,” as Fairlight would say, “cuttin’ shines. Never did see such a doo-raw.” Obviously my pupils considered all of Teacher’s excursions “jollifications.”
The children would wade the creeks (every stream swollen and tumultuous this time of year), screaming with glee when their feet dipped into the icy water. Or they would select smooth pebbles and skip them across the water, what they called “skeeting the rocks.” Often they would line up and make a game of seeing who could cross from one bank to the other by hopping stone to stone on one foot. But then rocks would “rockle,” bare feet would slip. Dunkings! At first I worried about wet clothes in cold spring winds until I finally learned to take it in stride. These children had been dunked before!
We were out so often that I began to question Fairlight about whether our proposed lessons or walks would interfere with her work. I can only remember twice when there were household tasks which she could not interrupt lest something be spoilt. Her reply was more likely to be, “It’s a fair day. Shorely we’uns can pass the time with one another.” Then more shyly, “Never have been with you enough, Miz Christy, to see my satisfaction yet.”
The highlanders were often accused of being lazy and shiftless. As I got to know them better, my conclusion was: relaxed, yes; shiftless, a few of them; greedy, scarcely ever. Fairlight’s “It’s today I must be livin’ ” summed up their philosophy well—a philosophy that aggressive people would spurn.
Yet which is right? Human life is short. Each of us has a limited number of years. So are we going to go through those so-few years with little time for our family and friends, and unseeing eyes for the beauties around us, concentrating on a
ccumulating money and things when we have to leave them all behind anyway? I began to wonder if the mountain values were not more civilized than civilization’s. At least I found the absence of greed and pushiness as refreshing as a long cool drink of sparkling mountain spring water.
Now I realized why these mountain people were shy wit strangers. They had never learned the citified arts of hiding feelings or of smiling when the heart was cold. Friendship was dangerous to them because they had built up no protection against it. Once they let you in it must be into the deep places of the heart as Fairlight had with me. Though I had known her only four months, already I was far closer to her than members of my own family or girl friends whom I had always known.
She was teaching me about true friendship too. Through Fairlight’s eyes I came to know a quality of friendship which bore little resemblance to the casualness of our relationships back home. The mountain type of friendship was a tie of substance between people with a sort of gallant fealty about it. It had to do with a time in the past when there was no more final bond than a man’s pledged word; when every connection of blood and family was firm and strong, forged in the past, stretching into the future.
And so this kind of friendship was for life—yes, and for eternity too. One would never deceive or defraud a friend, nor allow him to be in need so long as you had one coin, one garment, or one meal to share with him. His sorrow was your sorrow; his joy, your cause for rejoicing too.
Through all of this I began to understand—at least a little—about the feuds. Whenever a member of one’s family or a friend was considered to have been betrayed, the betrayal sunk lower and bit deeper than it would have with those whose relationships are more shallow. Such a betrayal was a difficult matter for the highlander to swallow. To forgive and to forget it seemed to him to cut across the integrity of life itself. All of this Fairlight was teaching me—and much, much more.
Christy Page 23
