The porch of Lara Burns’ store, the Stick Around post office, one hot morning in July: the daily assemblage of townspeople coming to get their mail, exchange gossip, buy little things at the store, and loaf around, out of the heat of the sun. All of the chairs of the porch are occupied, and upended nail kegs do service for extra sitting places. The children and teens sit on the porch rail or stand in the yard, but your traditional, appropriated sitting-place, little Guy, is the porch swing, although this morning you must share it with two women, one of them your Aunt Josie.
Although it is a hot morning, a mild breeze comes down Squires Creek, bearing the faint sound of the machinery in the canning factory, and the acid smell of boiling tomatoes. Old Herman Blackshire is keeping the boiler running; it makes him mad that he has to miss the morning assembly at Lara’s store.
The others take advantage of his absence to tell tales about him. Quent Buchanan tells how old Herman was up at Jessup the other day bragging that he’d drunk whiskey every day for seventy years and never been harmed by it, when one of those temperance fellers up there interrupted him and said, “Yeah, but how old are you?” and when old Herman says he’s eighty-five, that temperance feller said, “Well, if you hadn’t drunk all that liquor, you might be a hundred by this time.” And poor old Herman got kind of bothered, thinking about that, and couldn’t come up with any answer.
Doc Squires, one of the best tellers of tales, knows a better one about old Herman. Doc says he saw old Herman out driving his one-horse wagon the other day when he’d had a little too much to drink. The old mare slipped on a “road-apple” and fell right down in the shafts. Old Herman stood up in the wagon and started cursing the mare, but the mare wouldn’t get up. Old Herman slapped her with the lines and hollered, “You damned old fool! If you don’t get up, I’m gonna drive right over you!”
They run out of stories to tell on old Herman and begin to look around to see if anybody else is missing that they can tell stories on.
Your Aunt Josie says to you, “Show Doc Squires your finger, boy.” And she says to Doc Squires, “Lookee here at this boy’s finger, Doc. They aint no trace left of that there wart what was on it yestiddy.”
Doc Squires examines your finger and says, “Sure ’nough, it’s clean as a whistle.” And then all of them begin to talk about that bearded old feller who’d come here yesterday at this time, and who, when Lara had mentioned to him your wart, which they said you’d got from handling toadfrogs, had borrowed a thaw of tobacco from one of the men, and, after masticating it, had spat a drop onto your wart, and rubbed it in, and said “What I see increase, What I rub decrease,” and pretty soon had gone on his way. You’d seen him once or twice before; his clothes were the same as everybody else’s: blue denim overalls and cotton shirt; but he wore a broad-brimmed black hat that seemed bigger than most people’s hats, and his black and gray hair came nearly to his shoulders, and he had a beard, although the beard wasn’t long and was neatly trimmed. Your wart was gone completely when you woke this morning.
“He aint a warlock or he-witch, I reckon not,” somebody says, “but I’ll swear if he aint the best wart-taker in this county.”
“Many a time I seen him do it. Aint ne’er failed yet.”
“I don’t put no stock by them spells he uses, but I got to admit he must be doin somethin right.”
“Wonder what he does fer a livin. He aint never worked over to the fact’ry, has he?”
“Him? Aw, he jest keeps a few chickens and pigs and a gyarden patch up thar at that fancy yaller house of his’n.”
“Must be eight, nine year since he built that yaller house. Where’d he come from, anyway?”
“He don’t say. He aint one to talk about hisself. I heerd, though, that he come from east Tennessee or Care-liner some’ers.”
“Wal, I heerd rumors he was a ’scaped con-vict, runnin from the law. Some folks say he must a murdered somebody over there.”
“Wal, I also heerd, some time back, that he was a runaway bank embezzler and had a pile of money hidden some’ers.”
“Yeah, that was three, four years ago. Me and some of them Buchanan boys snuck up to that yaller house wunst when he weren’t around, and we turned that place plum upside down, but couldn’t find a danged cent. He aint got no money.”
“Don’t he never buy nuthin hyere at the store?”
“Naw, and he don’t mail no letters neither, and I’ve never knowed him to git a letter from nobody.”
“But he aint what you’d call a real hermit. He don’t avoid folks. I’ve had many a long chitchat with him myself.”
“Me too. But gener’ly he lets me do all the talkin. He don’t say much.”
“You ever seen that gal of his? Annie he calls ’er. Reckon she’s his daughter, aint but about ten year old, but a real pretty-un.”
“She don’t go to the schoolhouse. Ast him wunst about ’er, how come he don’t send ’er to the school, and he claims he’s edjercatin her hisself.”
“Some folks say he must have some kind of peculiar religion, all his own, and maybe he don’t want that gal to git any wrong notions from the rest a the world.”
“You ever heerd him fiddle? Why, that feller could fiddle the cob outen a jug! They tried wunst to git ’im to fiddle fer the squar dances up at Acropolis, but he wouldn’t. Says there’s too many fights gits started at squar dances and he’d done had enough fights to last him the rest a his life. But I’ve known him to play fer a weddin or two.”
“I bet he caint fiddle near so good as he fingers a shootin-arn. I run into him one day up near Butterchurn Holler, shootin squarl, and I declare, I never seen such a shot in all my life. Why, he could hit a squarl from a half a mile off.”
“Fact he aint got a womern makes some folks say he must’ve been disappointed in love. Or else that gal’s maw got killed or died or somethin.”
“Mighty peculiar feller. But I aint heerd nobody say one bad word about him. Nor tell e’er a funny tale on him, neither.”
“Me neither.”
When all of the people have left the store porch, and you are alone with your Lara again, you show her the place on your finger where the wart was and is no more, and you ask her, “Lara, what’s that feller’s name?”
22
You will have wanted your dream to stick around, you will have hoped that that recapturing of the bright unlonely past would stay more, a little while, long enough for you to talk with your beloved firefly Lara again, but that dream, like all dreams, will pass away, and you will be left lying in bed remembering what will seem to have been, even more, a dream: the pressures and touches of Diana’s arms and hands, the wrapping of the back of your neck in the crook of her elbow, the way her fingertips had clutched the small of your back, the clasp of her armpits on your shoulder and ribs, the clench of her clavicle on your throat….
You will spring out of bed, full of zest for the new day (not knowing, I’m sorry, that this will be your last day), and first you will search the wall to reassure yourself that my supreme prescription had not been a dream. Yes, it is still there in the daylight, that old-fashioned hand scrawling that injunction to embrace and cling and touch and hug and enfold and cuddle and squeeze and hold. Then you will notice (why has it taken you so long to notice my walls, old Gimlet-eye?) that all four of the white plaster walls are covered with pencilings: aphorisms, epigrams, sententious graffiti: observations on nature and on human nature, mottoes, reminders, lists: an old man talking to himself on his walls.
I’m not certain you will be quite ready for it, just then, but since it is your last day, you will find my nine beatitudes:
Montross, His Blessings
Happy are they who need no god beyond themselves; for theirs is the kindom of It.
Happy are they who are happy; for there is no one to give them what they haven’t got.
Happy are the unhumble, the openly honestly unmodest; for only they can endure the custody of Earth.
Happy are they who’ve
lost their expectation; for they shall not be disappointed.
Happy are they who tender love to another; for the offering expects no return.
Happy are they who know their hearts aren’t pure; for they shall see their It.
Happy are they who never close themselves to another; for they are the true peacemakers.
Happy are they who never cause another’s guilt; for their Its have made peace with their own.
Happy above all are they who can remove their minds from their body’s business; for their reward is the fullness of feeling.
A pair of hands will come up from behind you and cover your eyes and a voice you can’t hear will say “Guess who?” and you will smile and say “Diana?” and the hands will uncover your eyes and you will turn around and there she will be; her mouth will be moving but you are deaf. You will get your hearing aid and plug yourself in, and hear what she is saying: that you aren’t “ready,” yet, to be reading what comes after these beatitudes. But she will be smiling, and only half-serious, and she will not try to cover your eyes again when you turn back to the wall to read the rest of it. The original Beatitudeanist had stopped with His nine, but I had added nine others:
Montross, His Damnings
Wretched are they who chase after beauty; for the end of the chase is the end of the beauty.
Wretched are they who work for wages; for the one is never equal to the other.
Wretched are the passive; for they who wait shall have only their waiting.
Wretched are they who are dead while living; for the one is never equal to the other.
Wretched are the envious; for equality is impossible.
Wretched are they who think themselves only male or only female; for the one is not equal to the other.
Wretched are they who are wronged, or who think they are; for they have no feeling of right.
Wretched are they who want more than they have; for the one is never equal to the other.
Wretched are they who think themselves wretched; for thought is all they have.
“The old boy got kind of sour in his dotage, didn’t he?” you will remark.
“Sour?” she will say. “I don’t think that’s the right word, at all. There’s nothing cynical or bitter about those writings. Pragmatic, maybe, but not pessimistic. If you think they’re sour, that’s what I meant when I said you aren’t ready for them. Because they’re addressed to you.”
“Oh, I see,” you will say with some sarcasm. “I suppose he knew that I was going to come along some day and see them.”
“Don’t scoff,” she will say. “At least he knew that I was going to come along some day and see them, and they’re addressed to me too.”
“What makes you think that he knew you were going to come along and see them? At the time he wrote them, I mean?”
“At the time he wrote them,” she will tell you, “I was here.”
“What?” You will adjust the volume wheel on your aid.
“I was here,” she will repeat. “I haven’t told you this, G, because I was saving it for later, for our last chapter, after you’ve heard the story of how his daughter Annie left him, and left Stick Around, or, rather, was taken away, or eloped, or—I want you to hear the story soon—but anyway, you see, his daughter Annie, who was my mother, was discovered by Burton Stoving, who was an army captain on maneuvers in the Ozarks during the war, and he, my father, took her away and married her. But Daniel Lyam Montross made her promise—” Diana will shake her head and complain, “Oh, I wish you could hear the whole story, but anyway, what happened was, when I was three years old, Daniel Lyam Montross came to Little Rock and ‘borrowed’ me—kidnapped me is what they called it—he intended to return me when I was grown up, but they didn’t know that—anyway, he brought me here to Stick Around, and I lived with him in this house for a week before they came and—” Diana will make a gesture in imitation of tearing out her hair at the futility of trying to tell it, and then she will sigh and say, “That was why Day is gone, don’t you see? The two weeks he is gone represent the two weeks that Daniel was gone from Stick Around when he went to Little Rock to ‘borrow’ me. He refuses to tell me about that part. Anyway, the point is: these writings on the wall, these blessings and damnings of his, were the last things he wrote. And he told me—I was just three years old, of course, and couldn’t remember, but Day and I have already ‘recaptured’ this particular part—he told me that someday I would come back again and see these writings, and that these writings expressed in a nutshell the kind of life he had wanted me to have, full of that happiness and bare of that wretchedness, and—” You apparently will be staring at her so disbelievingly that she will be unconsciously raising the volume of her voice, as if to get through to you, “Don’t you SEE? HE HAD WANTED, BY KIDNAPPING ME, TO BRING ME UP RIGHT AND KEEP ME FROM GETTING THE HORRIBLE TWISTED PERSONALITY I GOT! HE WANTED ME TO BE HAPPY! HE WANTED TO TEACH ME HOW TO BE UNLIKE OTHER PEOPLE! AND HE COULDN’T! BECAUSE THEY KILLED HIM!”
She will fall against you, then, and you will hold her tightly, and while you hold her, feeling genuine pity and compassion for her, you will begin to see, at last, what you think is “The True Picture,” the “real” justification for all of this long and strange story. There have been times when you, in trying to justify her reasons for inventing me, will have toyed with the theory of Spoiled-Rich-Girlin-Search-of-Kicks, but now, you will realize, it is more serious, and more sad, than that. The money was a factor, but only secondary. Given the kind of parents and environment she had, she might well have grown up wretched, might in fact have grown up more wretched, if they had lived in poverty. Blessed (or damned) with an uncommon intelligence, but lacking any sense of identity (you will remember that beautiful but poignant “Do you think why I am me?”), she had needed to invent her personal saviour: a substitute father, or, in this case, grandfather, a wise and kind old man with much experience, well traveled, whose own sins would make him quick to forgive those she bore with guilt, whose powerful identity would compensate for her lack of one, whose native intellect, mother wit, and acquired intellectuality could come up with such handy, sententious beatitudes to give her something to live by, and for. It is a magnificent creation, a stunning concoction, but you will be sorry to realize that not even you, old Genius, would be able to write the story of it.
And you will know that you must not be too quick to attempt to disabuse her of her strange illusions. You would have to be patient, and play along with her little game, and in time…well, apparently she is already approaching the point of her story where her grandfather gets killed, and then, perhaps, she would allow him to “stay dead,” and would have nobody, then, but you.
I appreciate that, old Goodheart, I really do. I’m glad you will decide not to “de-fabricate” me in her sensitive, delicate mind. You will allow me to stick around, while you concentrate on eliminating that other pathetic delusion of hers, that nineteen-year-old Jersey jerk who’d been unworthy of her, and, being unworthy, had killed himself in despair.
“Shall we go to the post office?” you will gently suggest.
She will shake her head, and hug you tighter.
Gently you will pry her apart from you, and ask, “Don’t you want to see if a ‘letter’ has come for you today?”
Again she will shake her head. “I’m afraid to look,” she will say. “I’m afraid of finding nothing there.”
Understandable. But she must be brave. “You must,” you will say. “You have to face up to realities.”
She will look at you with hesitant, yet beseeching eyes, eyes which seem to ask you to let her hold on to her delusion a little while longer, and yet, at the same time, seem to ask you to speed her away from it. “Come on,” you will say. “It’ll take just a minute. We’ll go in my car.”
She will allow you to lead her, unresisting, out of the house and into your Volvo. But then you can’t find your ignition key. Had you left it in your other trousers? But you are wearing the same pair you ha
d on yesterday. “I can’t find my key,” you’ll tell her. “I’ll go look in my room.”
You will look in your room. You will search the stairs, the whole house. You will come back to the car and search the floor of the car. “Damn,” you will say. “I was going to drive into Jessup today to get some more cigarettes and bourbon.” And also to see if a telegram has ever arrived for you. “You wouldn’t happen to have any cigarettes, would you?” you will ask. She will shake her head. “You wouldn’t happen to have seen my car key, would you?” you will ask. She will shake her head and turn her eyes from you. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to walk. To the post office, I mean. If the key doesn’t show up, I’ll just have to hitchhike or walk into Jessup later on.”
At the post office, she will hold back, still reluctant to face reality. She won’t go into that deserted old building. So you will go in for her. You will notice, first thing, that there still aren’t any footprints in the dust other than yours and her own. But then you will be very unhappy to notice that there is an envelope in her box. How long does she have to continue this self-deceit? You will want to rip open the envelope and confront her with the blankness of the contents. But you have some principles, after all, so you will take it out and give it to her, unopened.
Her face will beam and she will eagerly take the envelope from you with a little squeal of pleasure, and open it, and begin “reading” it to herself, with obvious pleasure. Did I do something wrong? you will be asking yourself. Did I say or do the wrong thing, that she has decided to continue her belief in “him” after being so close to getting over it?
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1 Page 76
