by Sam Halpern
It took me four more years to get my doctorate. Nora made our living doing social work for the city and I added a little money as a teaching assistant. Then I had a bit of luck. Leland-May College, a venerated little Ivy League clone set in an idyllic New Hampshire town, was looking for a junior faculty member with a background in Victorian literature. They were offering a year as an instructor, following which they would decide whether to offer a tenure-track position. A year later I joined the Leland-May faculty with a mediocre salary, one suit, two ties, two pairs of shoes, and a very happy young wife.
It was getting cold in the hotel room. I turned down the air-conditioning and sat on the edge of the bed. I got my wallet off the nightstand and hunted through the pictures until I found one of Nora and me. It had been taken shortly after we moved to New Hampshire. I took a sip of my drink and gazed at the picture, then put my thumb over her image. I felt as though I ceased to exist. I put the wallet back on the nightstand, turned off the light, and tried to sleep.
I couldn’t. The early years at Leland-May rolled through my mind. I’d finish work, change into running shorts, put my teaching materials and clothes into a suitcase, and jog the three miles home. Nora and I would play a set or two of tennis in the summer, make dinner together, eat, and then make love, sweet and gentle or wild and crazy. We were so happy.
Except for once a week. Once a week we would get together with another faculty couple for an evening out. Nora looked forward to these forays, but I didn’t. I tired of hearing about colleagues’ wealthy families and the wonderful universities that multiple generations of their kin had attended. During my recruitment I was required to give my complete biography and it became known that I had been raised on a farm. Also, that I would become the first of Leland-May’s Jewish-sharecropper professors. Negative comments about scholarship students’ backgrounds bothered me, and I heard a lot of them when I ate lunch at the faculty club.
“You know, Samuel, if the O’Brian kid doesn’t make it here, he can always tend bar for his father. There’s something to say for being a Boston Southey.”
I brought my lunch after a few faculty club lunches and ate in my office. I never told those stories to Nora.
And then there was the research my colleagues were publishing. A reworking of previously plowed ground, fodder used to swell their curriculum vitae for advancement purposes. Their work rarely took on difficult issues, which in retrospect was not my affair. Yet I found the self-serving mediocrity intolerable. I said nothing at the time, but I put a lot of effort into making the kids I taught think, instead of just parrot back my ideas.
And the academic backbiting. One of the couples we socialized with most frequently was James Northwich (of the Philadelphia Northwiches) and his wife, Deanna. James was older than I and had just made tenure. All tenured faculty sat on the tenure-track committee, and James immediately began wielding his power to its fullest extent. For example, one of the qualifications for tenure at L-M was punctuality. It was obviously meant by the authors of the document as a means of dealing with chronic offenders. You always knew the candidates James didn’t like because he would comb the file for evidence of noncompliance. If he found anything that could be so construed, he would write a letter to that point and have it incorporated in the applicant’s permanent file—regardless of whether tenure was offered! It quickly became known to the junior faculty that James Northwich was not a man to be crossed if you wanted to make tenure. Nora liked Jim and Deanna, so I said nothing to her about the situation and suffered through our evenings with the couple.
For the most part, I spent as little time with the faculty and administration as possible, choosing instead to concentrate on my teaching and budding research.
Nora, without knowledge of the facts, considered my colleagues to be “normal.” A little arrogant perhaps, but not bad people. “You,” she said, “are too judgmental.” As a consequence of my being “judgmental” we had few real friends, just acquaintances.
Nora knew some of the things that had happened to me and my family the last three years we sharecropped, because Dad would answer her questions about our years in Kentucky (although he did it in his own political fashion to protect me). As a consequence of Dad’s disclosures, Nora wanted me to return to Kentucky and “exorcise my demons,” which she felt were the cause of my solitary ways.
I didn’t think I had any demons. I had put Kentucky behind me and saw no reason to dredge it up. Besides, Nora could never tell me why I should go back, only that she thought “my problems” lay in Kentucky and a return visit would benefit me.
I didn’t think I needed benefiting. What the hell, I didn’t hate my colleagues, I just didn’t think they were all that much. I couldn’t relate to them. They weren’t bad people. They were just . . . different from me. So much so that I felt uncomfortable around them. Somehow our ways of looking at things were not the same, and I had a right to my way of life! I was happy with my work. I was happy with Nora. We had each other and that was all I needed.
Then again, I hadn’t had a real friend since Fred and Lonnie. I missed them, especially Fred. Lonnie and I had been friends but Fred and I had been best friends. At one point, I decided to go back and see him, but a lot of time had gone by and I wasn’t sure he’d be all that happy to see me again. Somehow, I never got around to making the trip.
The clock on my nightstand said it was after three. I swallowed the remainder of the whiskey in my glass and got further under the covers. Nora had been gone over a year now. Somehow, the core of my soul had been buried with my love and what remained was a purposeless shell. Did she know that I would feel this way? Was that the reason she made me promise to return to Kentucky after her death . . . to find a reason for living?
12
I woke up thinking about Fred. There had to be some way to find him other than just checking mailboxes in the area where we once lived. I got an outside line, then dialed information. There was nothing for a Fred Cody Mulligan, or for any of our other neighbors who might have known the Mulligans. How could people just vanish in two generations? To my astonishment, Google was no help. The earth seemed to have swallowed everyone I knew from my childhood! I began getting hunger pangs and went to the hotel restaurant for breakfast.
That breakfast was the kind of feast that, had my daughters been present, would have led them to faint. Four pieces of thick-cut hickory-cured bacon, three eggs sunnyside with plenty of pepper and salt, grits, and two biscuits with heavy butter and lots of honey. Big Southern biscuits, by God, not those skinny little Yankee things. Biscuits that stuck to your ribs, and, of course, coronary vessels, which my nervous physician was vigorously treating with prophylactic drugs. Furthermore, the food was chased with four cups of coffee. What the hell, I was seventy-two years old and I was going to go out with a smile on my face.
While I ate, I people-watched, especially the kids. They were well-scrubbed, well-fed, probably well-educated, and judging from their behavior, spoiled rotten. I wondered if, by age ten, they had ever performed a day of hard physical work. I thought about my comments to Candy and Penny concerning my years in Kentucky. I really had worked as I had described. I was expected to contribute to the family’s quest to make a living. Sharecroppers’ kids never even thought about it, they just started doing. Then again, we had something these kids didn’t—a degree of freedom they never even knew existed. Everything was planned for the modern day kid. I doubted that any of them ever knew the joy of making a slingshot, going barefoot all summer, making their own fishing pole, or being out of sight of their family for days at a time. Free! Free as though floating in warm, breezy air. Even though what we did was often risky.
Ben Begley came to my mind. Had it not been for Ben, someone other than Samuel Zelinsky would have gotten the Johnson-Goldsmith Prize, because I would have been dead. The thoughts of that fall and winter long ago came to my mind . . .
. . . We had a light snow in early December and it got below freezing for the first time
. Everybody was busy stripping tobacco and on the way to school we would see big trucks heaped high with burley all covered with a tarpaulin and going to Lexington to be sold. We were more than three-quarters done with our tobacco stripping and Dad had sold the first half. It weighed out a ton to the acre and averaged fifty cents a pound, which was tops for the market. Every evening, Mom and Dad would sit side by side in the living room going through magazines about farms for sale and talk about what kind of place to buy in Indiana. Dad said that if the second half of our tobacco crop sold as good as the first half, we’d have almost enough money for a big down payment.
That kind of talk really shook me up! I was happy Mom and Dad were going to get what they wanted, but buying in Indiana meant leaving Fred and Lonnie and LD, and I’d never had so many close friends. I didn’t feel bad too long though, because our Christmas school break was coming, which meant three weeks to have a good time. I had some money too. I’d been getting fifty cents a day for doing up all the chores after getting home from school so Mom and Dad could keep stripping tobacco. With that money, I could buy Christmas presents. I wanted a Lash LaRue neckerchief for Fred, things for my family, Lonnie, LD, and something really nice for Ben Begley. I hadn’t seen Ben since that day he kept me from drowning. I liked him too, and felt sheepish about not having gone to see him. I couldn’t figure out what to buy him though. Then one day Dad had to go into Spears where there was a general store and I grabbed my money and went along. Wandering through the store I saw a three-bladed knife behind a glass case. The longest blade was four inches and heavy. There was a three-inch middle blade and a little blade about two inches long that was skinny and come to a point. I had never done any fancy whittling but you could tell the blades were perfect for working wood. It was eight dollars. While Dad took care of his business, I saw other presents I wanted and decided to go ahead and buy now. The storekeeper’s wife kept following me around.
“Do you want somethin’, young man?” she asked finally.
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered. “I’d like this stuff I picked out.”
“Hmm,” she said. “That costs money, y’ know.”
That burned me. She was lookin’ down her nose at me! “I got plenty money,” I said, stacking my presents on the counter. “How much is this?”
“Let’s see your money first,” she said, and I started digging in my pockets and making a pile of dollar bills on the counter. While I was piling, her husband come in and said, “You’re Mr. Zelker’s boy, ain’t you? You buyin’ somethin’?”
“I was thinkin’ ’bout it,” I answered, “but don’t nobody want my business.”
“Huh!” he said, and looked at his wife, who smiled kind of funny.
“Why sure we do,” she said. “I just didn’t know who you was, honey. I thought maybe you was some of them riffraff comes in here,” and that just burned me more.
“I’ll total this right up,” she said, and then did. “Yes, sir. Is they gonna be anything more?”
“I’ll give you five dollars for that three-blade knife in th’ case.”
The woman glanced at her husband, who was frowning. “Uh, well, that’s about an eight-dollar knife, honey,” she said to me. “We can’t sell hit for five.”
I checked her total and saw it would take two and a half dollars more than I had. The store owner stood at the cash register while I looked for something else.
“Tell you what,” the owner said. “It’s Christmastime. Sell it to you for six.”
“Five-fifty,” I said, and, man, I couldn’t believe I said it. Neither could he.
Then he laughed and said, “Okay, hit’s a deal,” and that’s how I got Ben’s knife.
13
I was busting to give those presents to everybody and the week before Christmas, when all the family was together, I gave them out. They were the first presents I had ever given and I felt great saying, “Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah” and Mom said just “Happy Hanukkah” and I said, “Yeah,” and everybody laughed. It was a good time, boy, especially for Dad and Mom who had just shipped the last of the tobacco. We kept hearing on the radio how the tobacco crop was short and how the price was gonna go up. Dad said that with a little luck, this coming year would be our last on somebody else’s place.
The next morning, Fred come over and brought me a birch flute he made and I gave him his neckerchief. He really liked it and it looked fine hanging down over the top of his shirt, cowboy-style. We were out in the front yard where Fred was trying to teach me how to play my flute when up our lane come a hunched-over man. We knew it was Mr. Shackelford from the way he walked. When he got to our front fence he said, “Hello boys, how y’ doin’?” and before we could tell him he said, “Samuel, where’s your pa?”
“In th’ kitchen,” I answered.
Then Mr. Shackelford said, “Would you go inside and get him for me?”
I was about to say he could go on in, but Mr. Shackelford knew all he had to do was knock and his asking me meant he didn’t want the women to hear. When I told Dad, his eyebrows rose, then he stood up. Mom didn’t say anything, but as we went out the kitchen door she and Naomi were heading toward my bedroom window. Fred and me followed Dad to the front yard gate, where he and Mr. Shackelford shook hands.
“How y’ doin’, Ed?” said Dad.
“Pretty good ’til this mornin’,” Mr. Shackelford answered.
“What’s wrong?” and Dad got a worried look on his face.
“Morse, I just found the damned’st thing in my back sheep pasture. One of my bucks was killed.”
“Dogs?”
“Naw, hit wudn’t dogs. No dog ever done nothin’ like this.”
“What?” said Dad, and his thumbs went into the belt of his Levi’s.
“Well, hits neck was broke and th’ hindquarters taken. Carcass was cut with a knife.”
Dad’s eyes kind of squinted, then he said, “Sounds like you got a thief on your hands, Ed. Wonder who it could be. Most folks around here won’t eat mutton.”
“Yeah, I know. Anybody around here was in hard straits, they’d take chickens or hogs or maybe a calf. Nobody’d take a buck.”
“Must be somebody from Lexington.”
Mr. Shackelford glanced at Fred and me and his voice dropped lower. “Morse, that ain’t the strangest part. Hits eyes was gouged out. Hits male organs was taken too.”
Dad stiffened. “What!”
“Swear t’ God. Both eyes gouged plumb out and nuts cut off.”
“Crazy man,” Dad whispered, and him and Mr. Shackelford stared at each other.
So did Fred and me. The Shackelford place wudn’t far from the river and a straight shot to the cave where we found the bones and bloody stick.
“Come see hit, Morse,” said Mr. Shackelford, and they started toward our car.
Fred and me followed, but Dad motioned for us to stay. “Tell Mom I have something to take care of with Mr. Shackelford,” he said. “I’ll be back in a little while. Oh, and Samuel, don’t mention anything about th’ sheep. I’ll tell her, okay?”
“Okay,” I called, and they drove off down the lane.
When they were gone, Fred took a deep breath and blew out slow through his puffed cheeks. “Hun’ney, hit’s a crazy man what was in th’ cave!”
“No it ain’t,” I said. “It’s th’ Devil!”
Fred shook his head. “Can’t figure hit that way. Devil don’t have t’ eat mutton.”
I looked away, not wanting him to see how scared I was. “It’s th’ Devil!”
Fred didn’t say nothing for a while, then asked, “Why you think hit’s th’ Devil?”
I was stuck. I couldn’t tell him Ben told me. “I just know is all,” I said.
Fred didn’t ask again because he knew I’d say if I could. He kind of moved his no-heel around in the grass and waited for me to say something else.
“You figure we ought to let our folks know about th’ cave and th’ dog?” I asked.
“Hit a
in’t up t’ us alone,” he said. “Before we go tellin’ anybody we got t’ talk hit over with LD and Lonnie. ’Specially Lonnie. We’ll get a hiding, but his pa might really give him a beatin’. When Mr. Miller gets drunk, he beats up on everybody. He knifed a man once when he was drunk. My ma won’t let me go t’ their house.”
I could see his point. “I didn’t know it was that bad. Maybe we could leave Lonnie out of it. It happened a while ago and nobody will remember he was with us.”
Fred mulled that over, then scraped his no-heel around. “That’s a good idea, but we still got to get together and talk. LD and Lonnie’ll be in church Sunday and I’ll get a meetin’ time set up for early next week. How’s that?”
“Sounds good t’ me,” I answered, then I thought about Lonnie’s present. “Hey, will you take Lonnie’s present t’ church with you so he’ll have it in time for Christmas?”
“Sure. You got one for LD too?”
“Yeah, but I’m gonna deliver it personal. I hope Lonnie won’t get sore about me not givin’ his th’ same way.”
“Lonnie’ll understand. Don’t nobody go t’ their house less’n they have to.”
After Fred left, I got LD’s present, stuck Ben’s knife in my pocket, and took off, after telling Mom what Dad said and promising to be back to do my chores. She didn’t say much about my leaving, which was odd, because I hadn’t gotten to do much since the trot line thing.
I had never been to LD’s house before but knew where it was from talking to him, so I took a shortcut across the back of Cummings Hill. When I got to the top, I was looking down at the last valley before the Big Bend bottoms. There, in an open field, stood a little white house with a lot of oak trees around it. Smoke was pouring out its chimney. In back of it was an outhouse, a toolshed, a smokehouse, and a stock barn. On the other side of the oak trees I could see their tobacco barn with stalks piled around it from stripping and the bare field where they had cropped. Everything was covered light with snow. I couldn’t see anybody but the Ford was in the yard so they had to be home. I knew dogs were somewhere too, so when I got to the last big tree before the yard with a low limb I could jump up to, I started calling.
