Spencer's Mountain

by Earl Hamner, Jr.

  While the decision was still fresh in his mind, before there was time for him to change his mind, he went to the one man he knew would buy his land on the mountain and the bargain was made.

  When he came home Clay saw no lights in the children’s rooms and he knew they must be asleep, and for the first time since he had left the house in the morning he had some sense of time. It must be late, he thought as he started up the walk. The only light in the house streamed out of the kitchen window and through it he could see Olivia bent over a washpan full of dishes.

  When Clay opened the door he startled her. She glared at him angrily for a moment and then curiously when she realized that he was sober.

  “Where’ve you been?” she asked, trying to sound cross.

  “Walken around,” Clay answered and sat at his place at the head of the table.

  “You took yourself one long walk,” said Olivia. “It’s near bedtime.”

  The soapstone tub where Olivia washed her clothes, her dishes and the smaller children was old and chipped and worn. The walls of the room had not been painted in years and the white they had originally been had turned to gray in spite of the hard scrubbing Olivia gave them during spring and fall cleaning.

  Olivia was moving from the sink to the kitchen cabinet, putting away the dishes she had washed and dried. Each time she tried to close the kitchen-cabinet door she had to work first with a hinge that had been unscrewed for months before she could make the door meet the latch which fastened it. It was an action she had repeated so often that it had become automatic and it no longer occurred to her to ask Clay to repair it.

  As she pushed the broken hinge into place she was surprised to feel Clay’s hand take hers and gently remove it from the faulty hinge. Then he reached in a drawer where he kept some tools and searched around until he found a screw and a screwdriver.

  Olivia had been watching him in a puzzled way. Now she demanded, “What are you doen, you crazy old man?”

  “I’m goen to fix this place up for you, honey,” declared Clay. “I’m goen to fix this kitchen cabinet and I’m goen to get you a new sink and this time it won’t be one from down at the mill. We’ll go over there to Charlottesville to the Sears and Roebuck and buy one of them white porcelain ones. I’m goen to put some paint on these walls, too, and once I finish that I’m goen to screen in that back porch so we can sit out there of an evenen.”

  Olivia did not look pleased, only puzzled.

  “I think the dog days have made you a little bit crazy,” she said. “You been acten funny ever since you got home.”

  “Home is what this place is goen to be for as long as we got left on this earth, honey. Right here is where we’re goen to live and die for the rest of our days.”

  What he told her Olivia already knew. She could not remember when, but at some point in their marriage, she had known that the house on the mountain would never be built, had only really gone along with his plans because men were foolish creatures and needed someone to believe that they could do the things they said they could. She had expected Clay to go to his grave waiting for that magical day when the money, the time and the materials would appear with which to build the house.

  “This is not a bad house we’re in,” she said. “With a little fixen it could be real comfortable. Didn’t you always say you thought you could build a basement under it?”

  Clay nodded.

  “And with all that lumber up there on the mountain I don’t see why you couldn’t add a couple of rooms onto it so the children can spread out a little bit.”

  “That lumber don’t belong to me no more, honey,” said Clay. “That’s what I’m tryen to tell you.”

  “Clay, what you been up to all day long?”

  “I went up there on the mountain and I thought it all out. Then I went over to see old Colonel Coleman and I sold him my land.”

  “I vow!” exclaimed Olivia.

  “He didn’t want to give me but a hundred and seventy-five dollars at first but I said I wouldn’t let it go for a penny less than two hundred and thirty-five.”

  “Clay, I want him to go to Richmond bad as you do, but it wouldn’t be fair to the other children to sacrifice everything just on Clay-Boy. They’ve got to be thought of too.”

  “I’ve put heart and mind to that already, honey,” said Clay. “And I’ve decided we’ve still got to do it. The way I look at it, there’s fine stuff in my babies. But it’s like a river that’s dammed up. All we’ll ever get to see is what little bit pours over the top of the dam unless somethen comes along that breaks the walls down and let the river flow. Well, somethen has come along. Clay-Boy is goen to college. If he goes down there and makes good then he’s goen to help Matt get a start in life, and Matt will help Becky and right on down the line. All they need is a little start and God knows they might turn out to be doctors and nurses and lawyers and salesmen or even presidents. I used to vision the most we could do for all of ’em was to get ’em through high school. I can see more than that now.”

  “It’s putten a mighty responsibility on Clay-Boy.”

  “The boy will do it. It’s in him. He’s got heart and muscle and it looks like he’s got brains too. All my babies is thoroughbred. There ain’t a throwaway in the bunch.”

  “Lord,” said Olivia, “You must be starved. Haven’t had a thing to eat since breakfast.”

  “I was hungry,” said Clay, “but I’m not any more. Hot in here. Let’s sit on the porch.”

  For a long time they sat together, Olivia in the swing and Clay on the top step of the porch. It was dark but Olivia could see where Clay was from the red glow of his cigarette, and he could tell where she was from the soft creaking of the rusty chains that supported the porch swing.

  A little breeze passed across the porch and carried on it the scent of honeysuckle. Clay rose and, going to the swing, took his wife by the hand.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go to bed.”

  Chapter 18

  The dull and heat-laden days of August, the endless leaden dog days, vanished in a rainstorm and September dawned bright and sparkling and sunny. The foliage began to turn and every hill and valley took on the subtle, delicate shades that by late September would be intense and blazing colors.

  But the beauty of the autumn was wasted on Clay-Boy Spencer. He had become a nervous wreck who lived for two things, the morning and afternoon arrival of the mail at the post office. He would show up there as soon as the mail arrived and stand at the grillwork looking in while his Aunt Frances sorted through each sack.

  If there were a letter she would bring it to him even before the rest of the mail was sorted, which was against the rules; if there were none she would be as despondent as Clay-Boy.

  On the days that a letter did arrive he would slip it casually into his pocket and walk out of the post office with pretended indifference, only to tear open the envelope frantically once he was unobserved and scan quickly through the letter for the awful news he expected; then, not finding anything more than vague hints, he would reread each exasperating word.

  His most recent, and by far the most cryptic, letter from Claris had also been the shortest:

  Dear:

  Tremendous news! I cannot trust myself to write it. Will tell you in person. Meet me Friday afternoon at three o’clock at Friendship Corner.

  Always yours,

  Claris

  He could guess now what the news was. She had never before visited her father twice during the summer and only one thing could prompt her return now. She was pregnant, and was coming to break the news to him.

  Waves of shame and regret roiled in his mind. “Damn her to hell. It was her idea to take our clothes off. All I did was go along with it.” But no matter where he placed the blame he always came back to the realization that it rested squarely on his own shoulders.

  He went through the remaining days like a sleepwalker. He would sit at the table with his family and the things they said to each other and to h
im would flow past him and through him, and he would not hear a word that was spoken.

  Once his mother came to him, placed her hand on his forehead and said, “He’s all flushed and hot. I got a good mind to send for the doctor.”

  And then Clay-Boy would push his mother’s hand away and walk his sleeping walk up the stairs to the boys’ room where he would throw himself on the bed and try to think of some way out of his dilemma and end up trying not to think of anything at all.

  “He’s lovesick,” Clay ventured one night. “Lonesome for that little girl.”

  “It’s worryen about leaven home,” guessed Olivia. “He’s not big enough to go so far from home.”

  “Honey,” Clay reasoned, “all that’s worryen that boy is will he get a letter from that little girl tomorrow or not. I know how a boy feels waiten around for some word from a little old girl. I was just as bad when I was sweet-talken you.”

  “And I hope we’ve seen the last of that one,” observed Olivia. “She’s got gland trouble or something, I figure. Anybody that can’t think about nothen but sex all the time has got somethen wrong with their glands.”

  By Friday, armed with a plan of action, Clay-Boy had emerged from his coma. He was patient now with the children, polite and attentive when his parents spoke to him, courteous, correct, punctual. In a way this new pose was even more exasperating to Olivia. He reminded her of someone who had foreknowledge of his own death and was resigned to it.

  A little bit before three that afternoon he left the house, saying he was going for a walk. Olivia stood looking after him. The strain of going away is too much for his mind, she thought. We’ve all pushed him into something he doesn’t want to do and now it’s too late for him to turn back.

  She wanted to run after him and demand he tell her what was troubling him, but she decided that if he had not been able to unburden himself by now he probably never would.

  ***

  Now the end of the world is coming, Clay-Boy told himself as he walked through the gold-and-russet autumn to meet Claris. He remembered a hundred sermons he had heard at the Baptist church, warning him against doing just what he had done, warning him too of the consequences his evil would bring upon him. He had heard the preacher’s words but in the one important moment there on the mountain he had forgotten them.

  He would marry her. He had made up his mind to that. By marrying her he would be doing the manly thing. The baby would have his name and Claris would be saved from ruin. How he would support them he had no idea. He only knew that it would be in some place far from New Dominion and that they would have to run away to that place soon.

  Friendship Corner was hidden by a massive mulberry tree. It had turned lemon-yellow in the autumn air and it had not yet begun to lose its leaves. It formed a glorious canopy over the old gray gabled building, and as he walked down the path, Clay-Boy wondered how such grim news could wait for him under so beautiful a ceiling.

  Claris was sitting on the railing in such a lady-like pose that at first Clay-Boy hardly recognized her. The long dark braids were gone. Now her hair was parted in the middle and drawn back severely against the side of her head. What it did in the back he could not see. Her eyes, when they met his, seemed even larger than he had remembered, and to Clay-Boy they also seemed older and wiser.

  Gone were the faded dungarees. In their place was a soft rose-colored sweater and a gray tweed skirt. Somehow she looked so much older than he had remembered her. It was the pregnancy, Clay-Boy supposed.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked.

  “You look different,” he said.

  “It’s my hair,” she said. “I didn’t have anything else to do one night so I decided to lop it all off. I had to wear a beanie for a few weeks, but now there’s enough for a French knot. Do you like it?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he said. He glanced down at her stomach and back to her face again.

  “What are you looking at?” she inquired. Her eyes danced with laughter, but her voice sounded reproachful.

  “You,” he said.

  “You seem so nervous,” she said. “I don’t know if I like you this way or not.”

  “I’m not nervous,” he insisted.

  “Guilty, then?” she asked.

  “What have I got to be guilty about?” he demanded.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Unless you’ve been taking other girls up to the top of the mountain.”

  “I haven’t been back up there,” he said angrily. “Alone or with anybody else. Look Claris, I came here prepared to do the right thing.”

  “And what is that?” she asked.

  “I’m going to marry you. We’ll have to find some place to go and we won’t tell anybody where we are until it’s all over. Then we’ll let our people know and put their minds at rest, but we’ll do whatever has to be done.”

  “You are the most confusing boy,” she said. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about those letters you’ve been sending me. I’m talking about the baby.”

  “What baby?” she asked.

  “Aren’t you going to have a baby?”

  “Whatever gave you that idea?” she asked innocently.

  “Every letter you’ve sent me since you left,” he replied.

  “You really do have a guilty conscience, haven’t you?” she said. “If you have such a guilty conscience later why do you take little girls off to the top of the mountain?”

  Angered beyond words, he seized her by the arms and shook her violently.

  “Are you going to have a baby or not?”

  “No,” she cried.

  “That’s all I want to know,” he said. He released her, turned and walked away, but she ran in front of him and stopped him.

  “I’m sorry I teased you. It was only because I had a wonderful surprise and I didn’t want to tell you until I knew for sure.”

  “I’ve had enough of your surprises,” he said and tried to push her aside.

  “Will you just listen to what it is?” she asked.

  He stood silent and waiting.

  “The reason I went back to Washington early this summer was to talk Mother into letting me switch colleges. That was hard enough, but getting into the new school was harder still. But it’s all settled now. I’ve been accepted at Westhampton.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “It’s the girl’s college at the University of Richmond. It’s right across the lake from where you’ll be. That’s all I wanted to tell you.”

  Clay-Boy felt as if he had awakened from a dream in which he had been falling from some great height. The earth and all that surrounded him had been so blurred and distant in his despair returned to focus. He could hear the singing of birds again and see the trees and the earth and the eyes of the girl before him. The nightmare visions of the Colonel coming to confront him, of his father and all the family being turned out of their home, of the shame of betraying his father after he had sacrificed so much, all fell away with one shuddering surge of relief.

  “Aren’t you pleased?” he heard someone say and looked down into Claris’ face. For the first time since he had known her she seemed shy and wordless.

  “It’s wonderful,” he said.

  “We won’t have classes together, or anything like that but we could see each other once in a while.”

  “I won’t have much money for dates,” he said, “but you know that already.”

  “We could walk around the lake.”

  She stood looking up at him. She was not teasing him now. She was waiting for something, and then he realized that it was the same thing he wanted and bent and put his lips to hers. Their arms stole around each other and after a long time they walked out of the golden canopy of the mulberry tree into the brilliant September sun.

  ***

  All during the last summer months Olivia had been gathering a wardrobe for Clay-Boy to wear at college. She had mended every rip and tear in his e
xisting clothing and she had gone through every article of his father’s clothing to see if she could find something Clay-Boy might use.

  Finally she had decided that the one thing he absolutely had to have was a good suit. Those she found at the commissary she decided were wrong. They all looked like something an old man might wear, and she wanted this suit to be exactly right.

  One night after the children were in bed, she and Clay sat in the living room. Clay was lost in his Western story in a Zane Grey book Clay-Boy had brought to him from the library while Olivia studied the pictures of boys’ suits in the Sears, Roebuck catalogue.

  “I want it to be somethen like the rest of them boys will be wearen,” said Olivia. “Somethen collegy.”

  “Honey, he’s goen down there to get an education,” said Clay. “It don’t matter if he wear a burlap sack. It’s what they’re goen to put in his head that’s important.”

  “Still, I don’t want him to look countrified,” she said. “He’s goen to have to get used to so many newfangled things the least we can do is send him off dressed for it.”

  “Honey, it’s goen to be the same as it was with me and that cow. Get all dressed up and your best friends will mistake you for a stranger.”

  “You are the ignorantest thing I ever heard talk,” observed Olivia dryly.

  “Honey,” he said teasingly, “it’s a mighty fine thing for you I never had the chance that boy is getten.”

  “How do you figure that, you crazy old thing?”

  “Well, if I’d of gone to college I would of got myself one of them little college girls and where would you be today?”

  “One thing’s for sure. I wouldn’t be sitten here talken to no fool now.” Olivia returned to her perusal of the Sears, Roebuck catalogue. “Now here’s what I kind of had in mind,” she said and held out the catalogue so that Clay might see. “That one there,” she pointed out.