Spencer's Mountain

by Earl Hamner, Jr.

  I love you desperately and think of your funny freckles and your beautiful red hair and the funny way you blush when I am outspoken. Please write me of your love. Please never think of it as an affair, although I suppose it was that too, but please, please, please, never call it that.

  Give my enduring love to all those adorable little brothers and sisters.

  Please don’t worry.

  Yours till the kitchen sinks,

  Claris E. Coleman

  P. S. I met a cute boy on the train but I did not flirt. Be true to me.

  Clay-Boy tore the letter to shreds and threw the pieces away. Later he returned to where he had thrown the pieces, collected as many as he could find and burned them.

  He became a sleepwalker and both day and night went about like a person in a daze. Some nights he would toss and turn in his bed, his whole body flushed with dread of the day her father would come galloping up to the door on his horse. In some of his dreams the Colonel rode right into the kitchen and without even dismounting slashed the air with his riding crop and demanded vengeance.

  Clay-Boy would imagine the disbelief and then the sorrow that would cross his mother’s face when she realized that it had indeed happened. He had ruined the daughter of the manager of the company. He had no idea what the Colonel would demand of him, but it was certain that his father would lose his job at the mill and with no way to make a living in New Dominion they would have to move to some other place.

  Chapter 16

  There came a day when Clay could no longer stand the cast on his leg, so on a Saturday morning he took his fishing rod and reel and hobbled down to Rockfish River. After carefully casting his baited hook out into a productive-looking pool he sat down on the edge of a rock and gently lowered his cast-encased leg into the water.

  Late that afternoon Olivia sat on the front porch to get a breath of fresh air before going into the kitchen to prepare the evening meal. She could see Clay coming up the road, but it was not until he came through the wisteria arch over the front gate that she saw him clearly. He was holding a long string of catfish and as he came toward her Olivia saw for the first time that the leg he had broken was bare from the knee down.

  “Clay,” she cried, “what happened to your cast?”

  “I threw it in the river,” he said happily.

  “You come up here and sit down,” she demanded. “I’m goen to send for the doctor.”

  “Don’t do that, woman,” he said. “I don’t need any doctor to tell me when my flesh is well.”

  “It wasn’t your flesh,” said Olivia. “It was your bone.”

  “Flesh or bone, whatever it was, it’s all well now,” he said and continued on around to the back of the house, where he proceeded to skin the catfish for supper.

  ***

  It was little Shirley who made the comment which was to forecast what the day might bring when at breakfast the following morning she observed, “Daddy don’t look like Daddy.”

  Because Clay was going to Mr. John Pickett’s place that Sunday to borrow the money to send Clay-Boy to college he had dressed in his white shirt, white duck trousers and white oxfords Virgil had given him many summers ago.

  Clay didn’t dress in light colors often. Weekdays he wore blue or gray denim shirts and trousers to match. To church he usually wore his dark blue suit, but no one had ever seen him all in white before.

  “You look nice, Clay,” said Olivia. “You ought to dress in that outfit more often.”

  “Don’t I look like a peacock though!” he replied and came up behind Olivia, who was frying eggs, and kissed her on the back of her neck.

  “Stop that, you old fool. I’m tryen to get these children some breakfast.”

  “You better be careful how you talk to me, woman. With these glad rags on it wouldn’t surprise me if I wasn’t kidnaped by some good-looken woman before the day is over.”

  “She’s welcome to you, you silly old rooster.”

  “Lord, that woman loves me!” said Clay to the children and winked broadly at them. “How are my babies this mornen anyway?” He made the round of the table, kissing and hugging everyone.

  After breakfast Clay took the tin milk pail and went to the barn where Chance, the cow, had been lowing for her breakfast. As usual Chance had taken her position in front of the trough where she was always fed and where Clay usually milked her, and that is where he found her. Following his usual procedure he mixed her feed and went past her head and dumped the mixture in her trough.

  Ordinarily Chance was a peaceful cow. She had never kicked and was by nature so gentle that Clay had seen no reason to have her dehorned, so that from her head sprouted two gracefully curved and quite sharp horns.

  This morning she was fractious and though Clay noticed her erratic behavior he failed to realize that Chance just did not recognize him in his white clothing. When Clay poured the feed into her trough, hungry as she was she lifted her head, refused the food and bolted past him out of the barn and into the pasture. A few yards away she turned and looked back at the barn, peering distrustfully at Clay in his white shirt and trousers and lifting her head up and down in a troubled way.

  “Come back here, you hellion!” shouted Clay as he came out of the barn in pursuit of her. As he advanced toward her Chance backed away. At first she had only appeared to be frightened, but now her eyes grew angry. She was hungry and needed to be milked and had no time for the advancing white-clad stranger.

  But Clay was a stubborn man and the faster she backed away from him the faster he advanced upon her. Finally she stopped and something in her eyes told Clay that he would be wise to advance no farther. He realized too that she had lured him too far out into the pasture for him to run to safety if she should advance on him.

  Chance evidently realized her advantage, for she charged. Coming at Clay with a fury he had not known she possessed, her head down, the horns aimed squarely for him, he realized that his only chance was to try to outrun her.

  Because of the leg he had broken he could not run as fast as he thought he could, but still he was only a few yards from the barn when Chance caught up with him. When she did she caught him full in the seat and, tossing her head up, sent Clay flying through the air. The entire seat was ripped out of his pants and two long red streaks showed on his backside where her horns had made their mark.

  Oblivious to Clay’s curses and with threads of his white trousers still clinging to her horns, Chance trotted calmly into her stall and began to eat her breakfast.

  “Lord God, Clay,” cried Olivia when Clay came to the house and set the bucketful of warm foaming milk on the table, “What happened?”

  “Oh,” said Clay casually, “One of them good-looken women did try to kidnap me. I fought her off, but still she bit me powerful bad.”

  After his wounds were dressed and he had changed into another pair of trousers, Clay escorted his family to church as usual. As soon as the service was over he loaded his family into the pick-up truck he had borrowed for the day and set out for Mr. John Pickett’s farm. Olivia and the twins rode in the front seat with Clay while it was Clay-Boy’s job to ride in the body of the truck and see that the younger children sat down so that they would not fall out.

  Mr. John Pickett lived in a high bluff overlooking Rockfish River twenty miles from New Dominion. According to legend, his home had been designed by Thomas Jefferson; in the early days Mr. John’s family had been people of means and influence. Now there was only Mr. John who lived alone in a house full of Federal antiques and pictures of his relatives. That he was rich was widely known. He even boasted of his money when he was drinking, but when he was sober he pretended to be the poorest man in the county.

  He was sitting on the front porch dozing in the summer sun when he saw the pick-up truck stop at the front gate and a man and a woman and an army of small children start up the walk.

  “How you doen, Mr. John,” the man called heartily.

  “Clay Spencer, ain’t it?” the old ma
n said, peering down at the approaching group. “Who’s that you got with you?”

  “Brought the whole family,” said Clay.

  “Y’all come on up here and find a place to sit,” said Mr. Pickett. “How you, Mrs. Spencer?” he said and shook hands with Olivia. “Sit down there, Clay. I didn’t expect to lay eyes on you till hunten season. Birds is plentiful this year.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, Mr. John,” replied Clay. “Mr. John, I come down here on a matter of business.”

  “Sit down, Clay,” urged Mr. John. “Talk.”

  “Mr. John,” said Clay, “I come down here to borrow a piece of money off you. I wanted you to know that right off the bat. There ain’t a thing I can offer you for collateral but what I stand for. That ain’t much in dollars and cents, but I figure what I’ve got here in this woman and these babies is worth more than a million dollars. You know me and my family before me and I don’t have to tell you we’ve been decent people because Mama and Old Papa brought us up that way. You know Livy there and never a soul wore shoe leather better than her mama and daddy. Well, we’ve got ourselves a passel of babies there and I want you to take a good look at ’em.”

  Mr. John peered willingly at the group of smiling children who were seated quietly on the steps.

  “That biggest boy there is my oldest,” continued Clay. “He’s named after me, and I don’t mean to brag, but he’s just as smart as a pistol. That boy graduated from the high school up at New Dominion last May and he made the highest score anybody ever set up there yet.

  “Next one there is Matt. He ain’t but eleven years old, but that boy can do anythen with his hands. He’s got mechanical ability I’ve never seen in a grown man. That boy is goen to turn out to be a master mechanic one of these days or I’ll eat my words.

  “That little girl sitten next to him is Becky. She’s independent as mud and ain’t scared of the devil. She says she wants to grow up and be a nurse and I’ll be damned if I don’t believe she’ll do it.

  “That one sitten next to her is Shirley. Named her after Shirley Temple, and if I could raise the money I’d send her to Hollywood, California, and get her in the movies. She’s a little prissy, but she’ll get over it in time to come.

  “You got a piano in the house, Mr. John?” asked Clay.

  “I did have once, but some chickens got in there and roosted on it one time when I was off somewhere and it don’t play no more,” said Mr. John.

  “Reason I asked,” said Clay, “is I wish you could hear that Luke there play a piece of music for you. That boy is a master hand at piano-playen. Nobody ever showed him how. It was just born in him to make music and one day he seen a piano, went up to it and started playen. I think that is a right remarkable thing, but it’s the truth as long as I live.

  “Sitten next to him there is Mark. Now that boy is goen into business one of these days. It wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t open his own store or fillen station or somethen. He’s got it in him to make money, and there ain’t a lazy bone in his body.

  “That little feller down on the bottom step is John. We don’t know what he’s goen to be yet, but he’s got a knack for drawen things. You ask him to draw somethen and he’ll make you a picture of it plain as day.

  “That little girl there is Pattie-Cake and it’s too early yet for her to do anything but kissen and huggen and she’s pretty good at both.

  “The baby is Donnie and there’s two more down in the truck. I’ll bring ’em up here for you to take a look at if you want to see ’em.”

  “You got yourself a mighty fine family, Clay,” agreed the old man.

  “Thank you, Mr. John,” said Clay. “If they’re turned out to be a bunch of throwbacks, maybe I wouldn’t care so much, but every one of these babies is thoroughbreds. That’s why I got heart and craven to see ’em amount to somethen in this world and that’s why I’m aimen to send that oldest one there off to college. I figure if he can get a start in life he can help Matt, and Matt can help Becky, and it can work right on down the line. I’ll tell you another thing, Mr. John. It ain’t just for my family I’m tryen to see this thing work. I figure it’ll be a benefit to the whole country because if just one little boy or girl can go on to make somethen of theirselves then that’ll clear a path for the other deserven ones to follow.”

  “I sympathize with you, Clay,” said Mr. John.

  “Well, sir, I hope you sympathize enough to put up a little cash money.”

  “Clay, I don’t lend money to everybody.”

  “I know that, Mr. John.”

  “And I ain’t got as much money as I let on sometimes when I’ve had one or two drinks.”

  “I ain’t asken to borrow a lot, Mr. John.”

  “How much you figuren you’re goen to have to lay out to get that first one educated?”

  “Well, sir,” said Clay, taking a notebook out of his pocket. “Here’s how she adds up. My brother, Virgil, down there in Richmond is given him his food and his board. The boy is goen to find himself a job of work at night so he can take care of his streetcar money and books and supplies like that. That leaves the sum of two hundred and thirty-five dollars that’s got to be paid in cash money to the college on the day he starts. I don’t know what a one of these things is, but there’s a sixty-dollar payment for what they call a College fee, five dollars for a Contingent Fee, twenty dollars for a Student Activities fee, and ten dollars for a Laboratory fee. There’s something else called a Tuition that comes to a hundred and fifty dollars a year, but they’ll take seventy-five dollars now and we’ve got till February to raise the other seventy-five. What I’m asken you to lend me, Mr. John, is the sum of two hundred and thirty-five dollars.”

  Mr. John took off his hat and scratched the rim of gray hair that bordered his bald skull.

  “Dependen on whether I can scratch it together, Clay, how you aimen to pay me back?”

  “Me and the old woman have put considerable thought to that. We’ve worked it out so we can save ten dollars a month. I’ll bring it down to you the first of every month, same as I did when I bought that power saw off you. If I die or anything you’ll still get your money because the company carries a five-hundred dollar life insurance policy on every man that works there and Livy here will see that it’s paid in full out of the insurance.”

  Olivia nodded her agreement and took heart from the expression on Mr. John’s face, for he seemed about to agree to the loan.

  From time to time Clay had been conscious that someone or something had moved behind the curtain that hung over the window facing the long porch. When he had finished his plea to Mr. John Pickett a voice spoke from behind the curtain.

  “Mr. John,” it said. “You come in here. I want to have words with you.”

  Mr. John looked sheepishly at Clay and Olivia. When he did not speak for a moment the voice came again. It was young and it was female and it pouted.

  “You hear what I’m tellen you, Mr. John?”

  “I hear you, Minnie-Cora,” he answered. “You come on out here and meet some nice folks.”

  “I don’t reckon I can do that, Mr. John,” the unseen Minnie-Cora answered, “seein’ that I ain’t got a stitch of clothes on. This hot weather and all I can’t stand nothen to touch my body. You come on in here, Mr. John. I want to see you on some personal business between you and me.”

  Mr. John shook his head and smiled at Clay and Olivia. “I reckon it’s about time I sprung a little surprise on you-all.”

  He caught sight of the shocked expression in Olivia’s eyes and realized that it was well past time for him to spring his little surprise.

  “You see, it get’s kind of lonesome for an old man liven on here in the sticks by hisself. That boy of mine come over here whenever he want money and he don’t do a blessed thing but sit and fidget the whole time he’s here. And you know yourself, Mrs. Spencer, that an old man like me need somebody around to do the cooken and fixen. Why I could of died and laid over here for three or four weeks
and nobody never would of known about it the way I was liven. So I didn’t do nothen but up and get myself a little wife.”

  Clay was the first to recover from the news. “I’m glad to hear it, Mr. John,” he said. “A man wasn’t meant to live alone no matter how many years he’s got on him.”

  “Mr. John, I’m waiten on you.” Minnie-Cora’s voice sounded plaintively from inside the house.

  “It’s what they call one of them May and December weddens,” explained Mr. John in a pleased way.

  “Then there has been a wedden?” asked Olivia and her voice was considerably relieved.

  “Why of course there’s been a wedden,” answered Mr. John. “I’ll tell you how it come about,” he said, but Minnie-Cora’s voice interrupted him.

  “You tell ’em how it come about some other time. My Dr. Pepper’s empty, and if I don’t get a fresh one with some ice in it pretty soon I may just put on a piece or two of clothes and go on back over to my daddy’s house.”

  “You be patient, honey,” the old man said indulgently. “How it come about was like this. One day Percy Cook come down here looken for a bull of his that had got out of the pasture. Percy and me got to talken and I got to tellen him how scared I was that one day I’d pass on and lay over here for a week or more with nobody to go and fetch the undertakers. Percy agreed that it would be right smart of a shame and he claimed he had so many young ones around the place he’d never counted all of them and why didn’t he send one over here to watch out for me. I said I’d be much obliged and the next day that gal in there showed up. Well, it didn’t seem decent for a man and a woman to be liven as close as we was without benefit of preacher so one day we just got ourselves over to the preacher and we been man and wife every since.”