With a crowbar Clay-Boy opened the first barrel. A shiver ran down his spine as he looked into the barrel and saw that it was jammed full with books. Titles danced before his eyes: The A. B. C. of Poultry Raising, he read. He laid it aside for A Primer of The Occult. The third volume he picked out of the dusty-smelling barrel was even more provocative: Goat Keeping for the Amateur.
Laura in the meantime had opened a more productive box. “Here’s one you’ll like,” she said, and gave him Martin Eden. “This one you simply must read,” she exclaimed, and laid Cyrano de Bergerac over the primer of poultry-raising. And over that she laid a copy of Gulliver’s Travels, and then Ethan Frome, and The Mill on the Floss, and Through the Looking-Glass, and Crime and Punishment, until Clay-Boy was reeling with the prospect of seeing so many books at one time.
The task of placing the books in the shelves was slow. Over each book Clay-Boy hovered as if in a happy dream that might vanish in a second. Each title he repeated again and again to himself as he moved from container to shelf. All the time Miss Parker hummed to herself, pausing once in a while to announce rapturously, “How marvelous of them to send Green Mansions,” or, “Here’s a volume of Walden that will fit right into your pocket. Don’t put it on the shelf. Carry it with you.”
The day after graduation the library was opened for business. The children had been notified at school and their parents had been told of the new asset to the community through notices on the company bulletin board and at the churches.
Clay, who was a little confused as to the function of a librarian, instructed Clay-Boy to “teach them heathens everythen you know” and to “let ’em know who’s boss from the word go and you won’t have a bit of trouble with ’em.”
The hours were twelve to four. On the opening day, Clay-Boy, who had been sitting inside reading, opened the door at twelve o’clock promptly. His first customer was the last person in the village he had expected to see.
There was in the village a family named Sweetzer who named all of their children after Confederate states. Once Mrs. Sweetzer had been tempted to go outside the Confederacy for a name; that was when the twins were born. She had wanted to call them Vermont and Virginia because the two names sounded so pretty, but her husband insisted it would not be patriotic so the twins had become Virginia and Florida.
The Sweetzers did the best they could with their enormous brood, but one of the girls, Alabama, became the village derelict and would attach herself to whatever man would provide her with a place to sleep and enough small change for cigarettes and beer. At the moment that man happened to be the husband of Lucy Godlove, the night watchman at the mill.
Alabama Sweetzer was Clay-Boy’s first customer at the new library.
“I heard all about it,” said Alabama, “and I come right over here to see if you had somethen for Mr. Godlove to read. He’s always carryen on about he don’t have nothen to keep him awake at night so I just decided I’d come over here and put the whole thing in your hands.”
“What kind of books do you think he’d like?” asked Clay-Boy.
“He’s got an old Western magazine down there at the mill he’s read front’ards and back’ards. You got anythen like that?” asked Alabama.
“We’ve got some Zane Grey books,” said Clay-Boy, feeling efficient and proud that he was able to satisfy a request so quickly. He found several Zane Gray novels, selected two and taking the card out of the back cover signed the books out to Alabama.
“Appreciate it, Clay-Boy,” said Alabama graciously.
“Come again,” said Clay-Boy, and she promised that she would.
Clay-Boy read for another hour before his next customer arrived. She was Geraldine Boyd, the tall, nervous daughter of the Episcopalian minister. Geraldine’s mother had not felt that her daughter would receive a proper education at the New Dominion School and had educated the girl at home. Now she was eighteen years old and well educated but ill at ease whenever she left the Episcopal parsonage, which she seldom did in the daytime and never at night. She materialized in the doorway of the library and stood there waiting for Clay-Boy to finish his reading rather than interrupt him. He looked up with a start when he realized that he was not alone.
“Congratulations on your good fortune, Clay-Boy,” said Geraldine primly. “I heard you will attend the University of Richmond.”
“Well, it’s not sure yet,” said Clay-Boy. “We’ve sent the application down there but we haven’t heard from it yet.”
“Waiting must be very tedious.”
“You said it.”
“Of course I wouldn’t know. I never had the opportunity to attend college.”
“Why not?” asked Clay-Boy. “I mean your family could afford to send you, couldn’t they?”
“Yes, but Mother and Daddy feel that once a person has a basic education learning is mostly a matter of reading and applying one’s self. Still, college could provide so much more than learning. There’s the companionship of good friends. One longs to know people one’s own age.”
“I guess I won’t have time for much of that,” said Clay-Boy. “I’m goen to have to find a part-time job and I guess after classes in the morning and work in the afternoon and then studying at night I’ll be living like a hermit most of the time.”
“In that case I think you are making a mistake by leaving home.”
“That’s a funny thing to say,” said Clay-Boy.
“Not at all. If becoming a hermit is all this opportunity provides you then you shouldn’t take it. Could you really be a hermit after all that activity at your house? Every time I go past where you live I walk a little slower so I can watch all those little children playing in the yard and hear your mother telling them not to get hurt, and your father puttering away up there in the back yard. It’s all so noisy and happy and gay, I’ve always wanted to just come inside the gate and be a part of it.”
“I wish you would sometime,” said Clay-Boy. “It’s like Daddy always says, ‘Everybody’s just as welcome as the flowers in May at our house.’”
“I expressed the desire once to Father and…” she broke off and blushed.
“What did he say?”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not very complimentary to your father.”
Clay-Boy grinned at the thought of what the Episcopalian minister must think of his own father.
“Why are you laughing?” asked Geraldine.
“I was just thinken that your Daddy probably objects to the things my Daddy is proudest of being.”
“I’ll tell you what he said if you promise not to tell your father.”
Clay promised.
“Father wouldn’t let me come to your house because he says your father uses bad language.”
“He does,” said Clay-Boy nodding his head and grinning.
“Do all of you children too?” asked Geraldine.
“No,” said Clay-Boy. “Mama won’t let us. Course a couple of the kids said damn for their first word, and Pattie-Cake said hell a couple of weeks ago, but Mama put a stop to it right away.”
“How?” asked Geraldine.
“She washes their mouths out with soap,” explained Clay-Boy. “It puts a stop to it right away.”
“The interesting thing is that my own father uses those very same words himself and right in the pulpit. Life is so mysterious, isn’t it? I really can’t make any order out of it. My goodness, here I am talking your arm off and you are probably studying or something.”
“I enjoy talking to you, Geraldine,” said Clay-Boy sincerely.
“I’ll tell you something,” she said. “You are the only person near my own age I’ve ever been able to talk to. Around most people I’m silent as a clam, but somehow you seem interested, and I find myself talking a blue streak. Now I won’t bother you any longer. Do you have any books by Jane Austen?”
“I don’t remember putting any of them on the shelves, but we can look.�
�� Clay-Boy searched through the A authors and found nothing by Jane Austen. Suddenly he thought of a book he had just finished and went to the shelf and picked it out.
“Hey,” he said, “Here’s one you might like. I just finished it and it’s wonderful.”
“Oliver La Farge,” she said, reading the dust jacket. “I’ve never even heard of him, but as long as you recommend it, I’ll take it. It’s really very dear of you to recommend it.”
At that moment a voice spoke from the door, in a teenage imitation of Tallulah Bankhead, “What’s going on here?”
Geraldine Boyd was so startled she dropped the book she was holding and Clay, recognizing the voice, came around in front of the desk.
“What’s the password?” he said.
“Mountain dew,” the voice said.
“What’s the class song?” he demanded.
“‘You are My Sunshine,’” the new girl answered.
“Eat your words,” he said, and from the doorway the girl sang:
“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,
You make me happy when skies are gray;
You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you.
Please don’t take my sunshine away.”
At the end of the song the girl came running to Clay-Boy and they hugged each other affectionately. The routine was one they had worked out last summer when they had formed a club whose members could enter only after reciting the routine they had just been through.
The girl was Claris Coleman, daughter of the general manager of the New Dominion Stone Company. During the winter months Claris lived in Washington, D.C., with her mother—who was divorced from the Colonel—but as soon as the weather turned warm she would appear in New Dominion.
Colonel Coleman did not understand his daughter, but for the time she visited him each summer he welcomed her and saw to it that the house was put in order for her. It always amazed him that she returned year after year, because on her visits they saw very little of each other. She was far too fascinated with the families of the men who worked in the mill, and she viewed them with the objectivity of a sociologist and with something else he often thought might be envy. It occurred to him that she found in these wild mountain people something he and her mother had never given her, a warm unquestioning acceptance, a sense of belonging to a close-knit group, bound together by love. Often she adopted an entire family, and their conversations, which took place mostly at breakfast and dinner, would consist of her well-informed and quite accurate observations of their folk ways, the stories they told and the way they lived.
On her visit last year she had formed an alliance with Clay Spencer’s family. The Colonel knew Clay to be a decent and honorable man who did his best to raise his children well, so it was almost with relief that he learned that for the summer Claris had chosen the Spencer family to love, to observe, and to belong to. He had noticed, though it had not disturbed him greatly, that if any effect of her adopted family showed in the girl, it was a tendency to use profanity with skill and imagination.
“What did the spook want?” demanded Claris, breaking from Clay-Boy’s embracing arms.
Clay-Boy had forgotten about Geraldine. He looked around, but she had gone. He looked back at Claris and found himself abashed by a maturity that had taken place since he had last seen her.
“You grew,” he said.
“So did you, Spark-Plug,” rejoined Claris. “What’s this about you going to college?”
“They’ve put me in for a scholarship,” he said. “Down at the University of Richmond. We don’t know a thing yet.”
“What are you going to take up there?” asked Claris.
“Just the regular course, I reckon,” he said.
“God, you’re ignorant,” she observed. “There isn’t any such thing as a regular course. You have to major in something.”
“What are you majoring in?”
“I registered for a Phys Ed major, but then Mother found out and made me change it. It’s a snap course but she said I’d end up muscle-bound, so now I’m taking Home Economics.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, you slop around in an apron and bake cakes and learn how to hemstitch. There is one class I liked. Got straight A’s. It’s called Marriage and the Family—and boy-boy-boy, could I tell you a thing or two. Only I’m not going to.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Unh, unh.”
“Why not?”
“You’re so grown up all of a sudden.”
“So are you.”
“My measurements are thirty-two, twenty-two, thirty-two. That’s quite an improvement over last year.”
“It looks nice,” he said.
No more customers came to the library that afternoon so Clay-Boy and Claris chatted raptly until the clock struck four. There was something new in their relationship this year. Last summer they had been buddies, as close as companionable brothers and sisters. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that Claris had spent a year in college. Clay-Boy had matured too, and whatever it was that was new between them, neither of them was able to speak about to the other.
Claris was more conscious of it than Clay-Boy, but he too recognized the difference and was conscious of it from time to time in their talk. Clay-Boy locked the library and they were silent until they walked out from under the dark green canopy formed by the old mulberry tree and were in the bright light of the roadway.
“You’re a funny boy,” said Claris. “What makes you such a funny boy?”
“I don’t know,” said Clay-Boy apologetically. Then he was furious with himself for letting her know he had ever thought of himself as funny.
“Even so,” she said, “I like you.”
“I like you,” he said.
“You can carry my books for me,” Claris said, and handed him the armful of books she had borrowed.
“What makes you such a funny boy?” she teased as they climbed the hill to where her father lived.
“Mama says I read too many books,” he said.
“You don’t read the right kind of books,” she scolded and looked at the several adventure novels he carried to read at home. “I’ll tell you the kind of books you should read. You should read Dickens, and have you read the Bible—as literature, I mean? And there’s Thoreau, Emerson, Milton, Hawthorne. You should have a dictionary too. I’ll give you a good dictionary so you’ll know what the words mean. It’s very important to have a good vocabulary. By the way, did you know that Mrs. Wirt Hazeltine is gravid?”
“No,” he said, “I hadn’t heard anything about it.”
“Of course you haven’t,” she said. “You don’t know what gravid means.”
“I do too,” he insisted.
“It means she’s going to have another baby. I find that most interesting, don’t you?”
Secretly Clay-Boy found it appalling because Mrs. Wirt Hazeltine already had more children than she could take care of, but he hesitated to tell Claris he found it much less fascinating than she did.
“It would seem to me that you would observe such things,” she teased.
“I guess I just don’t pay enough attention,” he said.
“I imagine one day you will try to make me gravid,” she observed casually.
He looked at her in amazement and now he knew what it was that made them different this year from what they had been last summer.
“But of course I won’t let you until we are married,” she declared.
He stuttered something but it didn’t make sense. He hated her because he could never find a reply for her bolder statements.
“You’re crazy about me,” she said. “Aren’t you?”
“You’re the one that’s crazy,” he said.
“Could I have my books, please?” she said and held out her arms. One by one he gave her the books to prolong their parting.
“Some day I’ll give a party,” said Claris with sudden gentleness. “I’ll have lemon ice cream and lots of people. Y
ou’ll come.”
“Thank you,” he said, and placed the last of the books in her arms.
“You’re crazy,” she said, and then she was gone into the house and Clay-Boy was alone and miserable, bewildered and in love.
Chapter 7
The living room was silent. Once in a while a sigh would come from upstairs when one of the children murmured a soft sleepy word. The only sound that came with any regularity was the steady ticking of the clock in the kitchen which showed that the time was five minutes to eleven.
Clay-Boy was reading a book he had brought home from the library and Olivia was holding a two-day-old copy of the Charlottesville Citizen in front of her but she was nodding so with sleep that she hardly saw the words.
Clay-Boy looked up from his book and called quietly to his mother.
Olivia opened her eyes and was wide awake in an instant.
“Why don’t you go on to bed?” he said. “I’ll wait up till Daddy gets here.”
“I sure would like to,” she said. “I’m so tired I can’t see straight.”
“Go on to bed,” urged Clay-Boy.
“No,” said Olivia, “If your daddy has gone off and spent his paycheck in sin and whiskey he’s goen to have to answer to me for it when he walks in that door.”
“Maybe he had to work late, Mama,” said Clay-Boy.
“If he had to work late that’s all the more reason for me to be up. I’ll make him some supper so he won’t go to bed hungry.”
Clay-Boy returned to his book and Olivia resumed her pointless perusal of the daily Citizen. At a quarter to twelve they heard footsteps sound faintly down the road. Clay-Boy laid aside his book and Olivia dropped her newspaper as the footsteps left the road, came up the front walk onto the porch. The door handle turned and Clay walked in.
Something had happened that had made him proud and cocky.
“Boy,” Clay said, grinning at the two of them, “when you get married get yourself a woman like your mama. That woman loves me so much she’d sit up till the rooster crowed if I wasn’t home.”
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