A Far Piece to Canaan

by Sam Halpern

  “There’s our Alfred,” said Mamie.

  Alfred had gained a lot of his weight back, but he still didn’t look good. His face was long and his eyes were sunk back in his head and he didn’t smile.

  Annie Lee bounced off the bed and took him by the arm. “Lie down here, Pa,” she said, and Alfred looked toward WK, who didn’t seem like he wanted to move.

  “Get your ass offn’ th’ goddamn bed and let Daddy lie down,” Annie Lee blazed.

  WK made a face then scooted off the end of the bed. Then he kind of smiled. “I’ll fix th’ pillow for you, Alfred,” he said, and he began fluffing it. When he finished, he turned to Annie Lee and said they ought take a walk and let Alfred get a little air.

  Annie Lee said there was enough air, then Alfred said maybe it was a little close. She glared at WK, then moved toward the kitchen door in a huff with WK following.

  “How you doin’, Mr. Mulligan?” I asked.

  “No good,” he mumbled, lying down. “Sugar’s got me. Gonna die with hit, I reckon.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Dad says if you just stay on your diet, you’ll be okay.”

  Alfred’s face turned darker and he started muttering. “Can’t eat nothin’! Won’t let me eat nothin’ n’more! Shot two groundhogs last Sunday and couldn’t eat more’n a few bites. Ain’t no way for a man to live. Don’t wanta live like this n’more.”

  Everybody started talking then, telling Alfred how good he looked and how well he was going to be, and it began to bother me so I went back into the front bedroom with Fred. We talked about river fishing with Lonnie and catching some big cats instead of little brim like we had in the pond, and how we would cut new poles, and maybe buy some cane poles if we could get some work, and how nice everything was going to be when the Mulligans got a place of their own. Before I left, I gave Fred my arrowhead that Dad turned up in the flint-rock field. We were best friends again, Fred and me, and it was gonna stay that way.

  Going back, it was almost light because of the full moon. It was still warm too and the grass felt like the sun had just gone under a cloud. Wudn’t a drop of dew. Crickets were everywhere and from the pond I could hear bullfrogs bellowing. I leaned my head back until my eyes saw straight up. I felt dizzy and good and staggered like a drunk holding my arms out until I felt like I was wallowing in an ocean of air, then just spun in circles all the way to the barbwire gap. As I was closing the gap I thought I heard something. I held my breath and listened. Nothing but the crickets, so I started walking. Then all of a sudden I heard a man’s voice. My hair stood up and my heart started pumping. The voice come again out of a little clearing on the other side of some hickories, along with a girl’s voice. I circled the thicket and come up behind a big hickory tree. There was WK and Annie Lee. They were about thirty foot away, and she was lying down, leaning on her elbow, and he was next to her drinking from a pint. He took a big swig and offered it to her but she didn’t want any. He took another big swig, then put the top back on, and kissed her hard and put his hand on her tittie.

  “Don’t, WK, I don’t want to,” and she pulled his hand off.

  “Why not?” he grunted, and reached up and got the zipper on the back of her dress and pulled it down and then pulled the top of her dress off one shoulder.

  “WK . . .”

  “What,” and he bit her on the shoulder and pulled some more on the top of her dress until I could see her bra strap, then he shucked the whole top of the dress off and pulled her up against him. She wudn’t helping him, but she wudn’t fighting neither.

  “WK, I don’t want to. Hit’s a bad time, WK. We said we wouldn’t this time of th’ month. You’ll get me with a baby,” but he reached up under her bra and got hold of her tittie with his hand and squeezed it working his hand back and forth, then he pushed up on her bra and pulled her tittie out and put it in his mouth and started sucking while he pulled the rest of her bra off and began playing with the other tittie. Then he switched titties again.

  Annie Lee was kind of half pushing him away, but he kept it up and started kissing her on the neck and pulling on her nipples. Then she put her hand around his neck and he reached down and went under her dress and started working up.

  “WK . . . don’t honey . . . honey, don’t. I don’t want to t’night.”

  But WK kept on and lifted her skirt, until I could see her panties, then he put his hand where her legs come together and started moving it back and forth and grabbing the inside of her leg and digging his fingers into her hard, and she squeezed his neck.

  “Don’t baby . . . baby . . . let’s not t’night.”

  He kept it up and started pulling the elastic around the legs of her panties until I could see something dark, then he dug his hand in again. She squeezed his neck hard, and he reached up and got the top of her panties and pulled them off.

  “WK . . . don’t honey . . . not tonight.”

  WK didn’t stop. He began kissing her hard all over and tried to pull her legs apart. He managed to get his finger against her black place and rubbed her, and she squeezed his neck and swallowed like there was a big lump in her throat. Then all of a sudden she spread her legs and he took down his pants and his tool was as big as a corncob and he rolled over and stuck it up her and started pushing back and forth. She was pushing too and they were thrashing up and down and sideways and then he started going hard and grabbed his hands around her rump and jammed up against her so hard she scooted forward again and again and wrapped her legs around him and he kept shoving and then she kind of tried to get away then shoved back up against his tool and then they just went plumb crazy.

  I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t. I felt something down in me and I didn’t know what except I wished I was WK. Just then, I remembered the time and slipped away.

  It was about 10:30 when I got back, and Mom was pretty sore. The four of us sat in the living room and talked for a while and Dad asked about Alfred and Fred.

  “They’re doin’ okay,” I said. “Mr. Mulligan’s talkin’ funny, though.”

  “How so?” Dad asked.

  “He says he don’t want t’ live like this. He says he can’t live on what they let him eat.”

  Dad nodded. “On a strict diet. I saw Doc Culbert in Spears. He said Alfred oughta be takin’ insulin.” Then Dad turned toward Mom and said, “You know that quack asked me for money. Turns out the organization that paid his bill before doesn’t help but the one time. Wanted me t’ pay th’ Mulligans’ other doctor bills too.”

  Mom’s eyes got big. “What did you tell him?”

  “I said I wasn’t th’ Mulligans’ banker. He got mad and said why did I keep bringin’ him in then, if I knew Alfred couldn’t pay?”

  Mom shook her head. “Some nerve!”

  “I said Alfred would pay him when he got some money set aside. Then we had an argument and he walked off in a huff. T’ hell with him!”

  When Dad cooled off a little I said, “Mr. Mulligan said they’d only let him have a couple of bites of groundhog.”

  Dad laughed. “Not many doctors figure groundhog into a diet.”

  That seemed dumb to me. Maybe they were all quacks.

  That night when I went to bed I could hardly sleep. I kept thinking about WK and Annie, and what they were doing, and how pretty Annie was naked in the moonlight. When I fell asleep I had a dream about Rosemary, and we were in the same little clearing in the moonlight.

  31

  I flipped the remnant of the corncrib back into the grass and started down into the small valley. The tenant house the Cross family had occupied was gone. Above it, the volcano hill rose in green splendor. When I crossed the creek, I angled for the sheep path, which, had it been there, would have risen upward along the base of the volcano hill. The path was gone but I could have made this walk with my eyes closed.

  The base of the volcano hill rose gently from the valley to a point that had allowed a distant view of the Mulligan house, as well as the thicket situated in front
of the pond. Thicket and house were both gone. One landmark still loomed high above everything: Cummings Hill. I walked toward the pond and discovered it had been replaced by bulrushes. I circled the bulrushes and came to the base of Cummings Hill.

  The path from the pond to the Mulligan house was also gone, and getting to where it had set became a matter of exploration. Eventually, I topped a rise and saw the Dry Branch Road. My eyes followed the black ribbon until it dipped toward the Dry Branch Creek. Now I knew exactly where the house had stood. The entrance to the Mulligan yard from the road had been fifty feet before the drop-off. I wandered the area but found no evidence of the house.

  I was getting tired and decided to return to the car by what had been my favorite route, past the hickory and locust grove. I hadn’t gone far when I remembered something and turned back to look at Cummings Hill. I wondered if they were still there, waiting for Fred and me to show up. Then my memories broadened in a rush. The rabbits, the corn-sheller accident, and all the guilt I felt when I learned of Fred’s injury. The evening at his bedside when we each confessed our deceit. All the things that happened that year before my family left Berman’s. Fred was my best friend. The best friend of my life! And I never saw him again after we left Berman’s!

  I choked up. Why hadn’t I contacted him? I couldn’t remember another person in my adult life, other than family, who wanted nothing more from me than friendship, who supported me in the face of adversity. None of my colleagues fit that description. When Dean Simmons received an angry letter from an advisory board member objecting to my unorthodox teaching methods, he called me in and demanded that I give didactic lectures. I told him my pedagogical approach was a matter of academic freedom. This was true, and it was important to the entire faculty, but not one professor in the Leland-May English department stood up for me. When the issue resulted in my being passed over for promotion to full professor, a committee of my colleagues—all of whom knew how important my teaching was to me, and to the issue of academic freedom—advised that I “reassess [my] teaching techniques.”

  The more controversial my stand on teaching became, the more the faculty distanced themselves from me. Tolliver Atwood, a professor with whom I played tennis, found another tennis partner. How many letters had I written for his advancement? If I hadn’t come through for him, he would never have progressed as rapidly in rank.

  Thoughts of Fred had gone through my mind frequently during that particular brouhaha. Fred would never have deserted me in the manner of Atwood, and he was a child when we were together. I was willing to bet he would have called the dean and my faculty peers sonamabitches. I wanted to see Fred, but so much time had passed since he last had tried to contact me and I hadn’t responded. I couldn’t face him. Dad had told me in high school that he had run into Babe MacWerter, and in the course of the conversation, learned that Fred had wanted to see me. I didn’t go, because I was afraid someone at Harlan Jeffords High would find out and new jokes would arise about me being a Kentucky clodhopper and my life would become even more miserable. It was, perhaps, forgivable for me to have erred at that time, because I was a young teenager and desperate to be accepted by my peers. But Fred had tried to contact me again in later years and I never responded. Somehow, I just couldn’t. Fred had meant so much to me; he had come through for me when grown men might have left a friend twisting in the wind.

  I scanned Cummings Hill. It’s been a long time, Fred, I thought, but I’m going to find you. When I do, I’m going to tell you the truth and let you decide if you want to tell me to go to hell, or try to resurrect our friendship.

  I began walking again and was soon in the hickory and locust thicket. I wandered into the interior and tried to get my bearings. Most of the locust was gone, but the hickories were now very large. True to the Kentucky farm folk, they had cut the thorny locust, leaving the hickory trees to produce their sweet nuts to crack and eat on a cold winter night. I sat under a hickory and lay back with my hands under my head and stared at the canopy. The leaves were beautiful, deep green and so thick that I was completely shaded. The wind rustled them and the odor of soil and grass wafted about. A few minutes later a squirrel leaped from one limb to another, then scampered back to the trunk. It was a big fox squirrel, and he turned his head to look at me. Suddenly there were more squirrels, all gamboling about on the tree trunk and peeking at me. I was an intruder. I rose and started walking, then I suddenly realized the significance of this spot. It was here I saw Annie Lee and WK together that night. I chuckled, then continued on to the car, thinking about Fred.

  That was a tough summer for Fred. I did everything I could to help him deal with his injury but I was only partly successful, because some tasks became difficult for him to perform. Perfection was the only goal Fred accepted for himself. Being with him every day, however, strengthened our friendship.

  The problems he would suffer from the loss of his finger became clearer when . . .

  . . . August come around and that meant tobacco housing. Like always, we were short of help so I stayed home after school started. Fred and I were made full-fledged tobacco hands, breaking out suckers, handing sticks of tobacco up from the wagon to the man on the bottom rail and even hanging some burley ourselves when we got to the sheds, where it helped to be short because the barn’s roof sloped and bent a grown-up over. We also learned to cut tobacco. That’s when Fred found out he was going to have big trouble from his hand. He dropped things. And even when he didn’t, he was clumsy. We both learned cutting at the same time and in just a little while I was hacking my stalk of tobacco off with a tomahawk and ramming it over a spear and onto my stick. Fred could cut his plant off okay, but he had trouble hitting the spear. Before I knew it, I’d be ten, fifteen sticks ahead of him. It made me feel bad to be ahead of him, but we had to get the tobacco in the barn so I kept cutting as fast as I could. Fred never mentioned it because he knew that was what I had to do. When we finished housing, he told me that if he couldn’t figure out how to get the job done with three fingers and a thumb, he and his Pa might have trouble on Red Bill’s because he didn’t think Alfred could go hard for a full crop year. It was true about Alfred. He tried, but by mid-afternoon he’d run out of gas.

  The Sunday after I started back to school, I rode my bike to the Mulligans’ for a visit and found Fred awful down about his hand. Alfred was down too, talking about how the goddamn sugars was holding him back and how some days he wudn’t worth a diddly shit. I kept telling Fred he was worrying about his hand for nothing because we had just read in the paper where a fellow lost a whole arm and leg during the war and was running a four-hundred-acre farm with just him and his woman and that Fred was in a lot better shape than that old boy. Fred sighed and said, “Yeah . . . maybe.” When I left the Mulligans that Sunday, I knew something had to be done to cheer Fred up, but I couldn’t think of a thing until it dropped right in my lap.

  It come about when Melvin Langley lost his lunch box at school and I found it. It didn’t surprise me he lost it because Melvin always looked up. He’d talk to you and it was like he was looking at the top of your head. I couldn’t figure how he found anything. Anyway, my finding it made Melvin happy because everybody knew how Miz Langley made her boys walk the straight and narrow and if I hadn’t found it he’d have got a licking. That evening on the bus, he invited me over for a fox hunt. I was surprised because the only person the Langleys ever took with them was their dad’s friend Mr. Rick. Fred had told me once that he would give most anything to go on a fox hunt, so I asked Melvin could I bring him. He said he’d check and the next day he said yes. I thought Fred was going to do cartwheels when I told him.

  I left our house about 7:30 the evening of the fox hunt. The radio said rain, but it was warm and wudn’t a cloud in the sky. It was hard biking to the Dry Branch Road, but after that, it was all downhill to the Mulligans’. When I got there, Fred was antsy.

  “Hun’ney, you better hurry or we’re gonna be late! It’s two, three mile to that bl
uff!”

  “We’ll make it okay,” I puffed and took off pedaling hard.

  We scooted down past where the school bus turned around, then a way further we turned up a gravel lane overhung by hickory and elm. This made it darker and in the early twilight I could hardly see where I was going. It also got steeper. I thought about slowing down but figured if I did Fred would yell so I just let her rip. Pretty soon, we come to the gap Melvin told me about, then pedaled across a field until we come to a big open meadow with just a few trees on top and a thicket at the bottom. We could see four, five people and some dogs.

  “Hit’s them!” yelled Fred.

  Melvin came over to meet us as we pulled up. “Hidey, Samuel, Fred. Y’all just in time. You bring some victuals?”

  “Sure did,” I said, and Fred held our sack up so Melvin could see it.

  “When we startin’?” Fred asked.

  “Just a few minutes,” said Melvin. “Pa and Mr. Rick will take th’ dogs down by th’ thicket so’s they can get a scent. Soon’s they pick one up, him and Mr. Rick will come back up here and we’ll lay around and talk and eat and listen to ’em run.”

  Just then, Mr. Langley got his dogs by their neck chains and started down the hill followed by Mr. Rick with his three. The two men and the dogs faded into outlines against the thicket, the dogs jumping and yelping. One of the yelps got kind of excited, and Melvin grinned.

  “Hit’s Maude,” he said. “She’s on t’ somethin’.”

  I could see Mr. Langley’s form bend down and turn one of the dogs loose, then the other dogs started going wild, rattling their chains and barking. All the dogs were turned loose then, and I watched their ghostly bodies snuffling and twisting and turning. Then one of the dogs began trotting, then loping with all the others following, and the barking changed into a “yaaap, yaaap, yaaap” as they disappeared into the early dark. Mr. Langley and Mr. Rick floated back toward us, then Mr. Rick built a fire.