Spencer's Mountain

by Earl Hamner, Jr.

“Well, we weren’t.”

  “Becky, what have you got to say to that?”

  “Mama, they were wrapped up together like two fishen worms,” shrieked Becky.

  “We were not!” shouted Clay-Boy.

  A stricken look crossed his mother’s face, and she drew in her breath sharply. Clay-Boy thought the pain was caused by the idea of what she thought he had done and that he had lied to her.

  “Mama,” he cried, “I didn’t do a thing but kiss her. That’s all we did. I swear before God.”

  “It’s all right, Clay-Boy. I believe you.” She had drawn herself upright on the stool but now she slumped into a more relaxed position. “I want you to run down to the mill and tell your daddy to come straight home from work.”

  “Why, Mama? Is anything wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, but I think you and the children might be goen to spend the night with your grandmother.”

  He realized then what had caused the pain he had seen in his mother’s face. The only time he or any of the other children spent the night away from home they would return the following morning to find their mother in bed and a new baby beside her.

  “I’ll go get Daddy,” he said and ran as fast as he could down the wall and out on the road toward the mill.

  Olivia did not inform the smaller children that they would be spending the night with their grandparents until supper was almost over. Hearing this news, Shirley burst into tears.

  “What’s the matter, honey?” asked her mother.

  “You’re goen to hatch a baby,” cried Shirley. “You always hatch a baby when we go to Grandma’s and stay all night.”

  “That’s right, honey,” said Olivia, “but that’s not a thing to cry about. A new baby is somethen to be happy about.”

  “Where is the baby now, Mama?” asked Luke.

  “Doctor Campbell’s got it and he’s going to bring it over here in that little black bag he carries around,” said Olivia. “Now Clay-Boy, I’m going to get the toothbrushes and pajamas together and you get everybody ready to go.”

  Clay had already left to alert Dr. Campbell that the new baby was expected and when Olivia went out of the room, as the oldest, Clay-Boy took charge.

  He went from one upturned face to the other, smearing it quickly with the same wash cloth, giving it a fast drying dab with a towel. He tried not to show his nervousness for fear of upsetting the younger children. He knew what happened when children were born, could not believe it, did not see how such a mechanically impossible thing could happen; the idea of it clung in his mind, filling him with worry and pity for his mother.

  Becky had been whispering something in Shirley’s ear which caused Shirley to burst into crying.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Clay-Boy demanded.

  “Becky says the baby is in Mama’s stomach and Doctor Campbell’s goen to cut it out with a knife,” sobbed Shirley.

  “Becky’s crazy,” said Clay-Boy.

  Becky stuck out her tongue at him and he slapped her face so that her cries blended with Shirley’s sobs, which continued unabated.

  “You stop that damn crying,” snarled Clay-Boy to Becky.

  Becky stopped long enough to say, “I’m goen to tell Mama you said a bad word,” and began to whimper again. The baby in his high chair began to cry sympathetically. Pattie-Cake had crawled off the bench and onto the table, where she was merrily spearing a boiled potato with her index finger. John leaned against the table, thumb in mouth, regarding the chaos with mild indifference and Mark kept taking one biscuit after another from the bread plate and crumbling them in a neat little pile in front of him, Clay-Boy started for the baby to try to stop his crying, but saw that Pattie-Cake was about to overturn a bowl of gravy. He rescued the gravy, took Pattie-Cake off the table and placed her on the floor—where she began to yell as loud as her small lungs would allow.

  Clay-Boy had an impulse to run out of the house and let the children go right on with their destruction. They seemed to him a wriggling nest of wicked little grasshoppers, each leaping from one destructive act to another. He was tired of his position in the family, of being the oldest, of having to manage the younger children and of having to set a good example always. Then he remembered the pain he had seen on his mother’s face and he did what had to be done. Becky was still whimpering monotonously in her place at the table. He went over and slapped her cheeks sharply. She looked up astonished.

  “Now you listen to me. If I hear another whimper out of you I’m going to tan your fanny. Now, pick up the baby, go to the door and stand there.”

  Stunned, she obeyed. Next he seized Matt, placed him behind Becky and threatened him with death if he dared move. One by one he lined the children up just inside the door, and that is how Olivia found them when she returned with a suitcase.

  “Clay-Boy said a bad word, Mama,” tattled Becky.

  “Did you, Clay-Boy?” Olivia asked.

  “Yes ma’am,” replied Clay-Boy firmly.

  “I’ll tell you somethen, boy,” Olivia said. “Sometimes I feel like sayen them myself, and then I remember God sees everything we do. You remember that and maybe It’ll help you not to say bad things.”

  “I’ll try, Mama,” said Clay-Boy.

  “You all run on over to Mama’s now,” said Olivia. “Be good babies and mind Clay-Boy.”

  She kissed each of them as they filed out of the door.

  “Have a nice baby, Mama,” said Becky, and Olivia promised she would.

  “I hope it’s a baby rabbit,” said Luke.

  “One day I’m goen to catch me a baby,” said Shirley, “and tame it for a pet.”

  With Clay-Boy in the lead carrying the baby and Becky, holding Pattie-Cake by the hand, bringing up the rear, the children walked down to the gate and out onto the road. Olivia watched them to the turning of the road and when they were gone from her sight she turned into the house.

  When she had washed the dishes and straightened up the living room she went to the bedroom and took from a drawer the clothes she had made for the new child, a band to cover its severed cord, a little flannel undershirt, some folded diapers and a long nightshirt. When these were laid out where they always had been for past births she went to the bathroom and bathed herself.

  After she had bathed she dressed in a nightgown and went to the bedroom. The bed had a cast-iron head and footboard. It was painted white and was covered with a crocheted bedspread which had been a wedding present from Eliza. This was the bed on which Olivia had given birth to all of the children and two of the rungs in the headboard were permanently bent forward where her hands had clung during her labor. Once she had thought of asking Clay to straighten them out because they spoiled the symmetry of the headboard, but she decided not to speak to him. How could a woman explain to a man a pain so great that to endure it she would bend a sturdy metal thing and still endure it again? Such things were not for a man’s mind, so the bent rungs remained as they were, evidence of pain that she forgot once it was endured.

  Olivia removed the bedclothes and took a rubber sheet from the bottom of the dresser and placed it on the bed. She covered the rubber sheet with an old cotton sheet, one old enough that it could be thrown away without being missed too much. The crocheted spread she folded and placed in a dresser drawer.

  Now there was nothing more to be done. The pains were gradually increasing in frequency and in intensity and they seemed less severe if she were standing so she walked back and forth in the room. She was glad she was alone, and when the pains were sharpest could relieve herself by moaning aloud.

  ***

  “I declare if here don’t come Cox’s Army,” said Ida as Clay-Boy and the children flocked in the kitchen where she and Homer were finishing their supper.

  “Well, now if this ain’t a treat,” said Homer, sweeping a few of the younger ones up in his arms and hugging them until they could hardly breathe.

  “Y’all had anything to eat?” asked Ida.

  “Yes ma�
��am,” said Clay-Boy, “Mama fed everybody and they’re all washed and ready for bed.”

  “I’m hungry,” said John. “Me too,” chorused several other voices and soon they were all seated around the table, munching Ida’s thin crisp biscuits dripping with butter and peach preserves. Afterward, when she had washed their sticky fingers, Ida took them into the parlor, a room that was almost never used. Ida had furnished it with money she made taking orders for a mail-order house, and the stiff-back chairs and settee upholstered in a black composition material were a source of great pride to her. Homer had built her a little bookcase which sat beneath the window; on the bookcase there stood all year the cards she received at Christmas. From the wall a tinted dimensional likeness of a brown-bearded Jesus looked down with eyes that would follow you no matter where in the room you stood. The children, awed by the grandness and solemnity of the room, sat reverently and quietly while Ida played hymns on the wind-up Victrola.

  All the children were enjoying themselves except Clay-Boy. As he watched the light of day fading outside the window he grew more anxious. Worry over his mother was increased by the fact that Claris had threatened to come to the house if he did not meet her by eight o’clock. If she did go to the house there was no telling what she might do. In his mind Clay-Boy could see her being sent away only to sneak back to stand underneath the bedroom window for anything she might see or overhear. He did not know how he would do it, but he knew he had to keep Claris from going to his home.

  As yet he had devised no way of getting out of his grandparent’s house for the night, but as each child began to nod he would take him upstairs, dress him in his pajamas and put him to bed.

  After many trips upstairs, he returned to the parlor where the Victrola pledged softly that it would cling to the Old Rugged Cross and exchange it someday for a crown. His grandmother sat in a dreamy trance, her eyes fixed on the face of Jesus. His grandfather sat holding Donnie, the baby. Donnie was fast asleep, breathing the soft untroubled sleep of a tired child.

  Ida looked up as Clay-Boy entered the room.

  “Look’s like the party’s over,” she said.

  “I’ll take Donnie on up,” offered Clay-Boy.

  “I’ll take care of him. You look sleepy. Go on to bed.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Clay-Boy said and left the room.

  “Past your bedtime if you’re goen to work tomorrow, Homer,” Ida reminded her husband.

  Homer was looking down at the sleeping baby in his arms.

  “It sure feel good to hold ’em when they’re this size,” he said. “I never for the life of me see how they get so big so quick.”

  “One minute they’re steppen on your feet. The next thing you know they’re steppen on your heart,” said Ida. “Don’t sit there holden him all night. He’ll rest better in bed.”

  Ida rose and went out onto the porch. Across the little valley where the mill and the town square lay she could see the lights where Olivia and Clay lived. She felt she ought to go and see if she could be of any use. Yet she did not really want to go. Witnessing birth, hearing it, being near it brought back the pain and blood with which she had borne her own six. Even now the thought of bringing a child into the world left her trembling and reeling with vertigo.

  Ida walked upstairs, grasping the handrail as she took each step, and then tiptoed across the creaking old wooden floor to the farthest room. At each door she listened to the breathing of the children and when she was satisfied that they were all asleep she went downstairs once more and into the parlor where Homer was half asleep and hunched over the sleeping baby he held in his arms.

  “You better put that baby in the bed before you fall over asleep,” called Ida.

  Homer’s head rose with a start. He gave a half-snore and looked at his wife angrily. “What do you mean scaring me that way?”

  “Put that baby to bed,” she said. “I’m goen over to Livy’s and see if I can be any help.”

  “You’re just goen to be in the way over there,” said Homer. “Why don’t you stay home where you belong?” What he really meant was that the two of them had slept next to each other on the same bed for so long that, no matter how tired or how much he needed sleep, he could not sleep without her beside him.

  “I’ll be back time to fix your breakfast,” she said. She took the gray cardigan sweater from the nail behind the door and slipped it over her shoulders.

  “I’d like to borrow your flashlight if you don’t mind,” she said.

  “And how you expect me to see if one of them babies wakes up in the night? I ain’t got no cat’s eyes like some people I could name.”

  “All right,” she said. “I reckon I can feel my way down the path.” She went out through the screen door, closed it softly behind her; feeling her way along in the semidarkness she made her way down the stairs and onto the path that led down the hill. She had hardly stepped onto the path when a beam of light pierced the darkness, found her and then went down to show her the path.

  In the darkness she smiled. “O’nery old devil,” she thought to herself. “Wonder what he’d do if he didn’t have me?”

  Now safely on the roadway, she made her way toward the oasis of light that surrounded the mill. There was still a stretch of darkness after she had passed the mill but Ida had walked the road so many times to deliver her mail orders that she knew it by heart and had no fear.

  Olivia’s house was strangely quiet as Ida came up the walk. At the door she called and Olivia answered from the bedroom. She found Olivia lying on the bed looking lonely and frightened.

  “I sure am glad to see you, Mama,” said Olivia. “With all the children out of the house and this one gone quiet and still all of a sudden, you know how they’ll do just before they start out, I was getting the jitters.”

  “Where’s Clay?” asked Ida.

  “He went after Doctor Campbell and found out he’s down at Howardsville delivering Ruby Carter. Clay’s borrowed a truck to go after him and he ought to be back any time. Sooner the better would suit me.”

  “You want me to get you anything, Livy?”

  “No ma’am,” Olivia replied. “Just sit and talk.”

  “What you hopen it’s goen to be?” asked Ida.

  “A boy,” said Olivia firmly.

  “Why another boy? What you got against little girls?”

  “Oh, I ain’t got a thing against girls,” said Olivia. “God knows I love mine better than I do myself. It’s just that I feel so sorry for little girls. I reckon maybe it’s because I’m pregnant, but the other night I was washen Pattie-Cake and I looked down at her little body and I started thinken about one day she’d be grown up and a woman and some man would take her and she’d be haven babies of her own. I don’t know what it was, but just all of a sudden I felt so sorry for her I started cryen. I didn’t want her to see me cryen so I went out of the room until it was over. Wasn’t that silly?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ida. “It’s harder on a woman than a man. A man’s got so many things to fill his mind. He’s got his job and his hunten and his fishen and bringen home the firewood to keep the place warm. But he don’t know what it’s like to have a baby, or sit up all night with a sick one, or to be home with them all day long with them runnen wild and then expect you to be just layen there in the bed waiten for him at the end of the day. Men are strange people, I’ll tell you. I listen to their talk sometimes and I think crazy, the whole lot of ’em.”

  “Clay talks, but he’s a man that gets things done too. You take now what’s goen to happen once I’m on my feet again. He’ll be up there worken on that house night and day. He always does that whenever we get a new baby.”

  “It’s a waste of time, if you ask me. Clay Spencer is never goen to get that house up. How many years has he been worken on it now?”

  “I don’t care how long it’s been,” said Olivia. “He has poured too much heart and time and money in that place not to finish it. That house is his life and his dream, and I know
people laugh at him and say he’s foolish in what he’s tryen to do, but if you’ll take notice it’s them of small vision that hold him up for ridicule.”

  “I never poked fun at Clay,” replied Ida. “It just seems to me there’s not a thing wrong with the house he’s got here.”

  “This is a good house,” said Olivia, “but Clay’s proud and the idea of liven and dyen in a house you can’t call your own on land that belongs to somebody else just galls him.”

  She drew in a deep breath and closed her eyes as a spasm of pain rose like a tide in her body.

  “That was a good strong one,” she said as the pain ebbed away. “This baby is liable to get here before Doctor Campbell.”

  Reluctantly Ida went to the kitchen and began gathering the things she might need just in case Olivia should deliver before Clay and the doctor returned. She was afraid and she prayed to Jesus for strength, both for Olivia and for herself.

  ***

  Clay-Boy lay in bed in his grandparents’ house beside his brother Matt. He still wore his clothes and had taken off his shoes, letting each of them drop with exaggerated noise to notify everybody that he had gone to bed.

  He did not know what time it was but guessed that it was close to eight o’clock. He listened while Ida left the house and then crept out onto the second-floor balcony just in time to see his grandfather turn off the beam of light which had seen Ida safely down to the roadway. Clay-Boy waited anxiously for his grandfather’s next move, and when Homer turned back into the house, Clay-Boy, shoes in hand, crept down the stairway, down the hill and onto the road where he put on his shoes and ran toward Claris’ house.

  He could see the headlights of a car winding down the driveway from Colonel Coleman’s house and sprinted to reach it before it arrived at the main road. The car and the boy reached the junction at the same time and an imperious voice called from the car, “Get in.”

  “I’m not going,” said Clay-Boy.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Claris. “Get in the car.”

  Clay-Boy propped his arms on the car door and leaned in the window so he was face-to-face with Claris. The car radio was going quite loudly and a vocalist was proclaiming huskily that she didn’t want to set the world on fire, but just wanted to start a flame in somebody’s heart.