A short distance below the dam they found the falls, identified on the map as Marcella Falls, named perhaps for some settler’s daughter or wife, a spectacular cascade of water rushing off a ledge and dropping eight or ten feet into a foaming vortex. Rainwater from the day before had filled the brook and increased the rush of the falls. It was the prettiest spot Diana had seen yet in Dudleytown, even prettier than the glade of mountain laurel; in fact it was the prettiest spot, the freshest spot, she could ever recall having seen.
It would make a fine natural showerbath. Diana, perspiring freely after the hike through the warm woods, wanted to walk right down into the falls, clothes and all if need be, but preferably without. She wished she’d brought one of her bathing suits along on the hike. She stood so long staring at the falls with longing that Day began to fidget; he tossed pebbles into the pool of the falls; then he looked at her and, seeming to read her thoughts, said, “I’m going to go on down the road and look for the place where the charcoal pits were. You could come along later…after…when…if you want to, you know, if you want to take a skinny dip or something, you know, I’ll go on down the road and you could catch up later.”
“How did you know what I was thinking?” she asked.
“Well, I just thought…” he began. “I mean, after all, anybody would, wouldn’t they? It’s a nice watering place.”
For a moment there she was about to attempt to persuade him to join her, but even if his modesty would crumble she wasn’t positive her own would. “Thanks, Gramps,” she said. “I believe I will.” Day turned and continued walking down Dark Entry—or what remained of it, a steeply descending trail spilling over ledges and boulders that not even a jeep could take. She waited until he was out of sight beyond a turning in the road, then she climbed down the bank to the edge of the pool. Waist-high in ferns, she took off her clothes. She tested the water with one toe. It was icy cold. Hugging herself, she waded into the pool, to the depth of her calves, and began shivering. She didn’t think she would be able to brave stepping under the falls. Even its spray, flicking her, chilled her to the bone. She cupped her hands into the pool and raised a few handfuls to spread upon her arms and ribs, and that was all she could stand. She splashed some on her face, then waded out of the pool and stood in a spot of sunshine and breeze for a few moments to dry.
Had the women and girls of Dudleytown ever come here to bathe? Probably not, if Dark Entry had been a public highway then, exposing any bathers to view. No hard-bitten Puritan would have been seen indecent, but only a hard-bitten Puritan could have endured the sting of the icy water.
Diana suddenly had an intuition that she was being watched. She scanned the woods all around for a glimpse of eyes, but saw none. “Who’s there?” she asked, but received no reply. Quickly she dressed, then climbed the bank to the road and went off in search of Day.
It took her a while to find him. He had said he was going to search for the charcoal pits, but she passed these without seeing them, and he was not there. She went on, following Dark Entry almost to the edge of the forest where it begins to rejoin civilization, before she heard a “Hey!” behind her and turned to see him following her.
Catching up, he asked, “Where are you going?”
“Just looking for you,” she said.
“You didn’t stay in the water very long,” he said.
“How do you know I didn’t?”
“Well, I mean, you’re here, aren’t you? You wouldn’t be all the way to here if you were still in the water.”
“Where were you?” she asked.
“I was…just off in the woods…looking at things.”
“See anything that interested you?”
“Just some more cellar holes.”
“Let’s go back to the camp,” she said. “I’m not used to all this walking.” They hiked back up Dark Entry toward home. As they passed Marcella Falls again, Day asked, “How was the water?”
“Cold,” she said. “You must try it some time.”
“I will,” he said.
Back in camp, as the cool of the late afternoon came on, the mosquitoes began biting. They took turns spraying each other with the aerosol can of insect repellent. It smelled like decaying lemons. But it was effective; the mosquitoes hovered over them for a while, then went away. Day began preparing supper. He built a fire, then scooped out a small hole in the ground and put two large potatoes into the hole, then shoveled hot coals on top of the potatoes. “Can I help?” Diana asked. He told her to make the salad if she wanted to. She wanted to. She opened the ice chest and got out the lettuce, tomatoes, pepper and cucumber. While she had the ice chest open she got a can of beer. “Want one?” she asked, and held the can up when he turned to look. He shook his head. Then he turned and walked off into the woods.
She sighed, thinking, Well golly gee I didn’t mean to off end you just by offering you one. She popped the top off the can and took a sip. The poor guy didn’t know what he was missing, a frosty cold beer on a summer afternoon in the woods. Still, she wished she had picked up some Schweppes and a bottle of gin.
Day came back out of the woods with his fists full of weeds. She wondered if he had been out tearing up weeds in his rage or shame or anger or whatever adolescent emotion he was having. He thrust the weeds at her. “Here,” he said. “Put these into the salad. And I changed my mind. I will drink some beer.” He dumped the weeds into her hands and then got himself a can of beer out of the ice chest.
She held the pile of weeds as if it were bug-infested, and made a face and said, “What’s this?”
“Watercress,” he said. “And purslane and wood sorrell and chickweed and a sprig of wild garlic. How do you open these damn things?”
“Just put your finger through the ring and pull,” she said.
He broke the ring off. “Now what?”
“Try another one,” she suggested.
“Hell,” he said, and took his pocketknife out and gouged the rest of the top off. Then he raised his can toward her and said, “Here’s!” then drew the can to his mouth and took a large swallow. He smacked his lips, said, “Good stuff,” then coughed for a while. Then he said, “I saw a lot of mushrooms. Do you like mushrooms?”
“If they’re not poisonous,” she said.
“These aren’t,” he said. “I know.”
“Boy Scout honor?”
“Boy Scout honor.” He raised three fingers.
So they had a supper of potatoes baked in coals, a half-wild salad, and a grilled London broil steak smothered with sautéed mushrooms. It needed a good Burgundy, but they had beer instead. She would remember to pick up a few wines on the next shopping trip.
“This is nice,” she commented, after the first few bites. His mouth full, he only nodded.
After supper they just sat in satiety. “That was awfully nice,” she said.
Birds sang. Frogs croaked in the marsh. A jet airliner passed over, reminding her that there were other people in the world. But the first day had passed without anyone coming into their woods.
They sat, still and quiet. Evening fell. Eventually Day spoke. “Are you bored?” he asked.
“No,” she answered. “Are you?”
“Not at all,” he said. “I just wondered if maybe you were.”
“I haven’t been so unbored in a long time.”
“That’s good. There’s nothing to do.”
“No place to go.”
“Nothing happening. This is where it isn’t at.”
She laughed. “I like the way you put that. ‘This is where it isn’t at.’”
Then after a while she said, “But you’re wrong, you know. This is where it is at.”
“Yes,” he said. “It surely is.”
“Go to sleep, Day.”
First Movement
* * *
Landscape with Two Figures
For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Thou
gh the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?
Job 14:7–10
1
This is where it is at. Where I am born. That I am born, beslimed and puling, onto the straw tick of life, is not a come-off for joy in the faces of those watching. Black looks from my audience are my first sight in this new world. I am to blame. The withy blob of me’s the harvest of my sire’s last fumbling. His hands boggle out what his perkin boggled in. He should learn. But I’m his last. I slither from his grasp, like a fish, like an eel, and bounce on the straw tick, a bouncing babe, clumsily caught on the rebound, upended, clumsily spanked, his hands all thumbs. I squall: whose fault? whose fault?
If I were a dog I would bite him. The woman is crying, but not from any sorry upon my plight. “As much pity,” says the man, “to see a woman weep as a goose go barefoot,” then he fumbles me into her arms. Her catch is good. But her breath is bad, and her vision worse. Every mother thinks her duckling a swan. My mother has not seen a swan. She thinks her duckling a hoary bat. Her first word at me: “Bleach.” My first word at her: WHY?
Before I am put to breast, my nakedness is hid in a white dimity dress. Then I am named. My first for the prophet, he of the den of lions, my second for my mother’s father Lyme. Born in poverty the last of a rowen crop of children, last and unneeded, all I have is this dimity dress and this knit link of my name, the three sounds bonded at two junctions of end and beginning: Daniel-Lyam-Montross. God bless Daddy-pa and Mother for some small jot of mother wit.
Before I am put to breast, the older children are herded in, to peer at baby brother. Ethan, the eldest, stands at the foot of the bed with his hands folded solemn and his face folded solemn as if he were viewing the remains in a coffin. Nathan and Nicholas prod and poke each other, to force the other to look first. Emmeline the older girl has been studying in school a lip exercise for young ladies: to look proper upon entering a room first recite “Papa, prunes and prisms.” Emmeline has been saying over and over to herself, “Papa, prunes and prisms,” and her lips look as if she has been eating prunes. Charity, the younger girl, the baby but for me, does not know any lip exercises; her mouth hangs open. To all of them I cry: why? why?
Before I am put to breast, my father leads us all in prayer. God is thanked that I am whole. We are obliged to Him that my delivery had no hitches. He is enjoined to keep it that way. He is asked to look after me. He is requested to see to it that I do my share of the work. He is called upon to make me strong and lend me a long life. He is told that my personal happiness matters naught, that my life is to do His bidding, and if His bidding be to chasten me, Praise His Name. We are all grateful, amen. Why? I wail.
Before I am put to breast, my father says to the older girl, “Now then, Em, say your pome.” Emmeline opens her schoolbook, whispers to herself, “Papa, prunes and prisms,” then with those pursed lips she recites:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness
And not in utter nakedness
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
My sister reads on and on and on, until my father says, “Shouldn’t wonder but what that’s enough, now, Em,” and she closes her book and prunes and prisms her mouth once more before she leaves the room. It is, in truth, enough. My sister has told me why. But I am not still. I cry, not so much from hunger of the guts as hunger of the soul. Cheer! I cry for. Ease! Peace! Eats! Feed!
Before I am put to breast, my mother sends the other children from the room, and sends my father too, first stopping him to make him promise that he will never lie with her again. He complains, “Wal, where in Halifax will I lie, then?” “You know what I mean,” she says. My parents have a lengthy tow-row, before I’m put to breast.
My father leaves. Now I am given a brown teat, one pap for the other. There is no milk. I am too tired to care.
I am the dead spit of my father. This too comes between the woman and me. It does, for all that she does not know it. She does not know why she does not dote on me, except that I am too many…and perhaps I seem not a swan but a hoary bat. Her name is Hopestill, no fault of her own, a good virtue name her mother gave her. But she does not know what she should still be hoping for. Not me, for sure.
But though I’m the spit of him, the dead spit of him, my father too does not dote on me. He knows more than she, though. He knows why. His name is Clen, is how he’s known by all, a clip nicked off of Clendenin. His grandfather was he who emigrated from England, Glendenning “Mountain Horse” Montross who fought with General Heman Swift at Valley Forge in the War of Independence. Clen Montross has seen no battles but for those of bed and board. Nature herself does not do battle with him. He makes a living from the wood of the woods. He has lived all his life in Dudleytown, as did his father before him. His grandfather was the first. And I am the last.
An itinerant parson, a pedlar of the Word, named Asenath Prenner, came upon Dudleytown by happenstance one day in 1819, having lost the road between Litchfield and Sharon. Mountain Horse told this to his son Murdock who told it to his son Clendenin who will tell it to his son me. Asenath Prenner lodged the night with Eliphalet Rogers and, hearing from his host the chronicle of Dudleytown’s misfortunes and the legendary curse that purported to be upon the village, decided to bide a while, for the town’s pleasure if not its redemption. As well as hawking the Word, Asenath Prenner also hawked books and miscellaneous appurtenances for the home and farm. Also he gave demonstrations of ventriloquism and legerde-main. Also he exhibited the first kaleidoscope seen by any man in these parts, which, he claimed, could reveal the future.
Asenath Prenner played Dudleytown for one week, departing with considerable of the town’s pin money, and leaving behind several newly spiritual-minded folk, a wagonload of books and trifles, and a whole schedule of divers prognostications. One of these, bought by Mountain Horse’s wife Sophronica in a ninepence session with the kaleidoscope, was that if any Montross ever had as many as seven children, the seventh child would be the last. The last Montross of Dudleytown.
Mountain Horse himself did not swallow this, but Sophronica believed it, and stopped at six. Of those, only two, Murdock and Jared, were boys. Jared begat only three children, while Murdock begat five, all sons, three killed during the war against the rebels, two surviving, Uriel, a bachelor, and Clendenin.
Clendenin is not of a superstitious turn, but the old prophecy of Asenath Prenner has survived in the family such a long time that he has respected it enough to keep it in his own confidence. Hopestill has not heard it; for aught she knows, she might not care a straw about it.
The third child of Clendenin and Hopestill, Patience, a girl, died in infancy of thrush. Had she survived, there would be seven of us. I the seventh.
My mark will I learn, this stigma. A babe is the innocent butt of all stigmas, the ready mark of all marks. Mother, your milk is the decoction of all thy bitter draughts, boiled in the fire of thine ire.
Colicky are my wakings, fidgety my sleep. I need each dream to clear up all these puzzles. Gnawing of the bowels, knowing of their scowls. My study is of their faces. In dreams I try to read their meanings. A mean mien in a dream is both scrutable and monstrous. Always I wake crying.
Of those so near around me, my kin, whose face is soft? Aptly she’s named, sweet Charity. She can’t be twenty months my senior, but they let her hold me. They would make her hold me, but she volunteers. Emmeline will hold me too, but briefly, her face no longer soft as Charity’s, her face pruned and prismed. Spittle flecks from her lips and splatters me when she practices her prunes
and prisms.
Charity thinks I’m her dollbaby. There is her one flaw. Charity is feebleminded. Mother and father do not know this, yet, she is too young. I read it writ large as milestones in her eyes. But love needs no mind, nay, wants none.
She admires a live coal in the fire like a jewel and plucks this ruby from the fire to gift me and adorn me. Lover and loved alike are burned, from playing with what charms the heart but needs a mind. Mother banishes her from me. Her bandaged fingers no more will cradle my blistered head.
I did not cry. But I cry when she comes close, comes close, and cannot hold me. She fears me more than the fire.
Alone, I learn to play alone. My ten fingers, lords and ladies, frolic, antic, bow and curtsey, trip and curvet. Things fall into my cradle I clutch: a trinket, playpretties, the arm off a doll, a flower, spray of mountain laurel, moonbeams and stardust and dust motes. All I can touch I can suck.
Or I learn to lie quietly, watching the plaster fall, learning gravity and the weight of me, my body a stuff, a chunk of flesh, this clod: my head bigger than my trunk, my rays four bent spokes with saps surging noisily through, I hear these humors, and the throb of their pump, my brain is bathed, and keen to all these coursings and hummings, these thrummings and ripples, these burbles and dronings, these stirrings and settlings, these quivers and driftings. This tone and tune and time: I live, I draw the breath of life.
I mire my dydees, and wait a long time to be changed. I’ve learned it doesn’t help to cry.
My father, once, holds me to a mirror in the hall. I know I live; I do not need this proof. But I like the eyes. The outlook from my eyes is more solemn than any of theirs. Solemn and silent. Speech is all I lack. But who will look into my eyes?
When weather’s warm, I’m taken out to sun. The laurel burgeons in the yard. I gaze into the sun, and clamp my eyes. I’m blind to swarming gnats and bright green flies. My swisher’s gone up to the well to get a drink. Wings and feelers flick my touchy skin. I am pinked. Aeolus wafts a gust to drive my pests away. The elements care for me. I’ve found my true kindred. I sleep my first true sleep.
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1 Page 34
