Spencer's Mountain

by Earl Hamner, Jr.

  “We are not goen to be that way long if you don’t haul yourself in here, Mr. John Pickett,” called Minnie-Cora. “I have spoke my piece for the last time, and you can just like it or lump it.”

  “I reckon I better see what the little lady wants,” said Mr. John. Using his cane to raise himself, he came slowly to his feet. “You-all excuse me a minute or two.”

  When he had gone in the house Olivia cast a disapproving look in Clay’s direction, and when he saw it the delighted grin that had covered his face vanished. The children stood stiff and starched on the top step of the porch where Clay had arranged them. Clay called to them and said, “Y’all can go on down in the yard and play if you want to.” But then Olivia said in a tight voice, “Stay where you are. We’ve been put here for collateral and we’ll stay till we get an answer.” The children remained where they were.

  “Mr. Pickett, I’m still waiten in here,” Minnie-Cora’s voice came suddenly.

  Mr. Pickett’s voice floated down the long hall. “I’m on my way, Sugar,” he said. “I heard you say you was out of Dr. Pepper, and I went in there to the kitchen to get you a fresh one.

  “I don’t care nothen about no Dr. Pepper,” said Minnie-Cora, making no effort to keep her voice down. “I just wanted you in here so I could have a word with you.”

  “All right, Sugar,” Mr. John said, “What you want?”

  “Them people are after money, ain’t that it?”

  “They come over here on a matter of business, that’s right.”

  “Well, you tell them to take their business somewheres else.”

  “Sugar, I been thinken about letten Clay Spencer have the money. I knowed his Daddy and I know him and he’s a man of his word. The money will come back to me in time.”

  “I’m tellen you not to let it go, Mr. John.”

  “Sugar,” Mr. John’s voice came floating out on the porch. “You are not the boss of me.”

  “I don’t care about bein’ no boss,” said Minnie-Cora. “All I’m announcen to you is if you let any money out of this house I am setten my sails with it.”

  “Sugar, now you listen to me,” Mr. John said, and then his voice became low and pleading and those on the porch could not hear what he said.

  The next thing they heard was Minnie-Cora shouting, “I don’t care. You said you’d name me in your will so it’s already my money. Let ’em have it and don’t you ever come messen around me again.”

  Olivia bristled. “I reckon that ain’t fit talk for my children to hear,” she said to Clay and rose. “We’re goen back to the truck. You can stay here if you want to.”

  “Honey,” said Clay, “he ain’t said no yet. There’s still a chance for us.”

  “Not much,” said Olivia. “Come on, y’all,” she said to the children. “We’ll wait for your daddy in the truck.” In a procession they marched to the truck and sat down looking back up at the old house.

  Clay rose from his seat, went over and sat down on the porch swing. The creaking of the rusty old chain made a welcome sound, for all had fallen silent in the house. For a long time he waited. Once he heard a loud deliberate giggle come from somewhere in the house.

  After a very long time Mr. John came shuffling past the door and looked out with pretended surprise when he saw Clay still sitting there.

  “I didn’t know you was still there, Clay Spencer,” he said.

  “I’m still waiten for an answer, Mr. John.”

  “Clay, I’d like to help you out, you know that, but I’ve got a little family of my own now that’s got to be looked after.”

  “Mr. John,” pleaded Clay, “you’d get that money back. I’ll even give you interest if you ask for it.”

  Mr. Pickett made a helpless gesture with his hands, and Clay realized he had been given his final answer.

  “Thank you all the same, sir,” he said, and walked down the steps and out into the roadway. He did not speak when he got behind the wheel nor did Olivia. The children, sensing that something grave and disturbing had happened, sat still and quiet. The only sound that came from inside the cab of the truck came from one of the twins, who made an insane commentary of ga-ga, ga-ga, ga-ga. Finally, to end the noise, Olivia fed the child at her breast and they rode a long distance in silence.

  Clay had been deeply hurt, and the hurt had come not entirely from Mr. John’s refusal of the loan, but by his rejection of the collateral he had offered. It was Olivia who broke the silence.

  “It is all the fault of that Minnie-Cora Cook. Oh, them old Cooks is trash and ought to be run out of the country on a pole. She’s got that old man in a spell is what it is.”

  But Clay would not be comforted. As he drove he kept muttering aloud, “The son of a bitch. The mean old son of a bitch.” And for perhaps the first time in their lives together Olivia did not remonstrate with him for his profanity. Indeed, she wished she were a woman who swore. There were several words she would have liked to have used herself.

  ***

  When they reached home Clay parked himself on the front porch and stared moodily off toward Spencer’s Mountain. The children were sent to their rooms to change from their best clothes into clothes they might safely play in without ruining them and Olivia went into the kitchen to prepare the Sunday dinner. It was to have been a festive meal and she had even been extravagant the day before and used precious eggs and butter and sugar to make a chocolate cake. It was just as well she had made it, she reasoned now as she looked at it, proud and pretty there on the kitchen-cabinet shelf. The others would feel a little better for something sweet. It was a small thing, but it might help dispel the gloom that had overtaken the entire family.

  When dinner was ready and on the table she called the children, who began trooping into the kitchen. When they were seated she went to the front porch to call Clay. He was gone.

  She did not even bother to call him. She knew he had gone after whiskey. She knew that he would return, when he returned, crazed and mumbling old-dead hatreds and frustrations. Since it was Sunday and midday at that she knew it would be Tuesday before he could get back to work. He would miss a day from work and the money would be deducted from his paycheck. She blamed herself that he had gone away. He had been so cruelly hurt that she should have known, should have stayed with him until the hurt had ebbed away and he would not have needed to find solace in liquor.

  She stood looking down at the empty road that ran in front of the house. The road led nowhere and everywhere. Was Clay on it now, grinning and joking with anybody who came along who could offer him a ride to Miss Emma and Miss Etta’s? Olivia looked at the little ribbon of road that threaded itself in front of the house and she hated it. It went nowhere. It was endless. All it did was circle back on itself. There was no Richmond, no college, no magic road that led out of New Dominion. Why should she break her heart to send Clay-Boy down among a bunch of strangers and atheists? Why hadn’t she and Clay known from the start that they were asking for too much? How could they have been such fools?

  Clay-Boy had left the table, and when he came to the end of the hall he saw his mother’s figure outlined against the door to the front porch.

  “Mama,” he called.

  She turned and he saw that her face was streaked with tears.

  “What’s the trouble, Mama?” he asked.

  “I’ll tell you what’s the matter,” she said angrily. “Just once we tried to do somethen in this world. Your daddy and me all our lives have been reachen out for somethen better for our children than we ever had for ourselves and what we got was a slap in the face and God forgive me, I can’t find any excuse for it.”

  “Just don’t cry, Mama,” he begged. “Just please don’t cry.

  “I’ll be all right in a minute,” she said and began to dry her eyes.

  She looked past Clay-Boy and saw that all the children had gathered there and that they too were near tears. She knelt down and held out her arms, and she was immediately covered with children and as she held the
m in her arms and felt their small warm bodies pressing against her she regained her strength and led her children back into the kitchen where their meal was waiting.

  ***

  The thought of Miss Emma’s and Miss Etta’s and the cool tin dipper of recipe had indeed crossed Clay’s mind, but it was not where he headed when he left the house.

  A half-formed thought was in his mind, and he had to be alone to work it out. He did not want to see anybody, and he was glad that this was the hour when most people were inside their homes enjoying their Sunday dinner. Earlier the front porches would have been populated by whole families who would sit and watch for someone to pass on the road, someone to talk to, someone to relieve the monotony that blanketed the place on a hot Sunday afternoon.

  He walked down the hill and past the mill, dusty and silent now in the dreary waste of Sunday afternoon. At the mill he turned off the road and walked along the railroad track. This way he would not meet anyone and he could think quietly until he came to his destination. He walked five minutes until he came to Old Number Ten. This was one of the oldest quarries that had been opened, and the stone had been taken from it to a depth of more than three hundred feet. Clay had worked there on his first job with the company. He had been even younger than Clay-Boy was now, in his twelfth year, and his job had been to carry water to the men who were working down below. The quarry had been deserted for years now and had filled with water. Sometimes, if he had caught more fish than would be needed to feed his family, Clay had thrown them in the dark green water of Old Number Ten and they had flourished. As he watched he could see moving through the water the occasional dark shadow of a gigantic bass or carp.

  Clay leaned over and tried to peer down through the dark deep green water and find some landmark his feet had touched as a child. Leaning over he experienced again the sickening feeling he had known when as a boy he had started to descend by ladder to the floor of the quarry. He had instinctively feared heights since birth and when he had taken the job he had been told simply that he was to be a water boy. Only when he reported to work did he find that the water was to be carried down into the quarry, that one hand would hold the bucket while the other hand managed his descent. As he had lowered himself, step by step, there was on each step down one moment when he was supported only by his feet. Remembering it now made Clay involuntarily draw back from the edge of the drop.

  “What’s wrong with a man wanten somethen better for his babies than he had himself?” he asked the sullen empty August sky.

  He walked back to the railroad track and continued on his way. When he came to the foot of Spencer’s Mountain where the tracks turned off to follow the course of the small creek, he left the railroad bed and followed a path he remembered when as a boy he had come down to the creek to fish for minnows.

  It always refreshed him to return to these woods. He had known them all his life and they held memories for him. He found an old tree which once held a great beehive. Often he had climbed up to the hive, his face protected by the mesh of an onion sack, his hands gloved, to smoke the bees out and then taken buckets of honey sweet with the scent of honeysuckle and wild grape and cherry blossom and rosebud. Now the tree had fallen and was rotting away into loam on the forest floor. Clay came to an ancient oak nearly strangled by a grapevine. When he was a boy Clay and his brothers had fashioned a swing of the grapevines and had swung far out over the side of the steep hill, closer to the sky—it seemed to him now—than he was ever to feel again. On his way up the mountain Clay came to the place where Clay-Boy had killed the white deer, and that mystical day returned to Clay’s mind and Clay knew now that what had happened there in the snow on that cold November morning had been an omen and he knew now what the omen had been.

  At the summit of the mountain, in the cleared place where he had worked in those leftover hours, where he had dreamed, had believed, had worked, he came to the place where the skeleton of the house was taking shape. Clay stood for a long time looking at it.

  All around the framework of the house were piles of materials. To the casual observer these would seem to be pieces of junk, but to Clay they were precious pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and each of them had a place in the house he craved with all his heart to build. The neat pile of fieldstone he had lugged up on Sunday afternoons were someday to be the fireplace. The weathered two-by-fours were waiting for just the right place in the frame of the house. The old wagon wheel he was saving for Olivia to plant petunias in. The old automobile tire would be hung by a rope from one of the oak trees nearby and would be a fine swing for the children to play on. A roll of linoleum he had been given in payment for some odd job he had planned to use to cover the kitchen floor for Olivia. Now it lay weather-beaten and cracked with age.

  In the heat of the dead August sun, Clay examined the house that had been his dream. But now for the first time as he looked at it there came in his mind no sounds. No shouts of children disturbed the imaginary lawn. No sound of singing came from the place where the kitchen might have been. No comfortable cluck of chickens or lowing of cows came from the unbuilt barn. There was utter silence on the motionless August air. It was August and everything had died.

  Clay had known it for a long time and he would not tell it to himself, but now he knew with a wrenching wave of knowing, with a terrible sense of loss and bitterness, that the jigsaw puzzle would never be put together. There were too many pieces lost. There would never be time or money enough to get them all together. There never had been. There had only been his insane hope and determination that the house would be built and what he had dreamed had only been a dream.

  He rose and began to destroy that which was already dead. The horrible guttural cries of a man unaccustomed to tears forced their way through his throat, and tears and sweat rolled down his face together as he seized a sledge hammer and splintered each hand-hewn stud of the framework. Each blow he dealt the house fell as if on some living part of himself and Clay cried aloud with the pain.

  When the studs and beams and joists were reduced to chips and splinters he turned to the treasures he had collected. He heaved the rotting linoleum high in the air and it fell into the hole with a dull thud. A roll of tin that was to have been part of the roof shattered the air with a shrill metallic scream. A piece of a cooking stove followed and then a shower of splintering glass as he heaved in some panes through which he had hoped one day to watch the falling snows of winter, the soft creeping green of spring’s returning. When he was done with all that he could find to fill the hole he turned to the pile of fieldstone and with it covered all that remained of the place he had opened in the earth. When it was covered he walked away and did not look back on what he had done.

  At the edge of the clearing he stopped and scooped up a handful of earth and then he went on down the mountain, carrying the earth in his hand.

  Chapter 17

  Halfway down the mountain Clay came out of the deep woods and into an open pasture. There at the edge of the pasture was the old Spencer graveyard. Overhead there was a ceiling of tall old pine trees and underfoot the periwinkle showed its little blue star-flower. Many of the graves were marked by rude fieldstones that had simply been upended, and countless Spencers rested underneath them, but those who had died since the mill had opened had their names and dates neatly chiseled on soapstone markers. And though Clay did not know many of the names of the dead, it was comforting to be among them and know that they were his own people and that someday he would join them under the pine and the periwinkle and the stone.

  When he came to the stone which marked his father’s grave, Clay knelt and tried to bring his father’s face back into his mind. First he reconstructed the long prominent nose and then the white curling handlebar mustache and then the whole face took shape, the eyes with their brown merriment, the curve of his father’s cheek, and the silken white neatly combed hair.

  “How they treaten you down there, Papa?” Clay asked the empty air, “I hope you’re haven yourself a time
up there wherever it is. I reckon if they don’t let no whiskey through the gates you’ll find yourself a place to make some somehow.

  “I reckon wherever you are you can see down here. If you really can see everything, like they say you can after you’re dead, then I don’t have to tell you what’s goen on.

  “Times is changen on this old earth, Papa, and it looks like we’re goen to have to change right along with ’em. I don’t mean me and Livy and Mama, but there’s some kind of world out there waiten for my babies and I aim to see ’em get whatever they can out of it.

  “I reckon you know what’s on my mind before I say it, Papa.” Clay reached out the handful of earth and slowly let it fall through his fingers over his father’s grave. “This is the last of the land. I’m sellen what’s left of the mountain. I know what that land meant to you and only Old Master Jesus knows what it means to me. I tried hard to build that house on it for Livy and the babies, but I just never could get around to it. Somethen always got in the way. First the babies started comen along and the next thing you know I was putten in overtime tryen to make enough money to put food in their stomachs and clothes on their backs.

  “Nights I’d get home from cutten rock all day and there’d be the cow to milk and the wood to split and the pigs to feed and then the old woman would have supper on the table. I’d get up from the supper table and think maybe I’ll go and work on the house for thirty or forty minutes before it got dark, but I’d walk out of the door and find it was dark already. The sun goes down too soon for a poor man, Papa, and you know it yourself. There just ain’t hours in a day to do all a poor man’s got to do.”

  Clay had spoken aloud, but now he fell silent and in silence he communed with his father’s spirit. When he came to himself he realized that the sun had fallen beyond the horizon, the tree frogs had begun their evening chorus, and the chill of the graveyard had crept up out of the earth and through his body. The dappled green shadows in which he had sat earlier were gone and now the world had turned to a silver moonlit dusk and through it Clay walked thoughtfully, wondering how he might sell to the company those last remaining acres of the land of his ancestors.