There Was a Time

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  “Another Life of Christ or Mountain Life or a batch of Gospel Trumpets, I suppose?”

  Wade laughed a little. “No. Six modern novels, and the four latest issues of the Saturday Evening Post, The five latest issues of the New York Times, two Atlantic Monthlies, three Harper’s Magazines, and I don’t know how many copies of the Literary Digest. All up to date. I’ve got them on my mule. Wait, I’ll get them and we’ll take them to the tent.”

  Frank waited, extremely surprised and embarrassed. Wade went back to his tethered mule, swung down a large pack of books and magazines. He gave them to Frank and smiled humorously. “I’d like you to meet my friend,” he said, watching Frank incredulously examine the pack.

  “You mean that one of these hill-billies really reads and buys these things?” Frank regarded him with cold disbelief. “Or maybe he’s a Mormon missionary, too.”

  “No. He’s a Gentile Kentucky mountaineer all right. He lives not far from other friends of mine, who are like him. I want you to meet them. Tomorrow’s Sunday. I’ll bring a good sound mare for you. Is nine o’clock too early?”

  Frank’s sullenness returned. “I don’t like horses. I don’t like the mountains. I despise these people, and their log cabins, and their dirt—”

  Wade retained his good humor. “My friends don’t live in log cabins, and they aren’t dirty, and they haven’t got tuberculosis, syphilis, smallpox or typhoid fever, and they don’t swarm with children and mangy curs. I have a feeling you’ll like them. You might think they are—different.”

  Frank sighed impatiently. “All right. And thanks for the books. I found an old torn copy of one of Lord Lytton’s novels somewhere, and I’ve been reading it over and over because I haven’t anything else and my next shipment of books and magazines isn’t due for two weeks. All right. I’ll go.”

  He turned away, and Wade watched him disappear into the tent.

  CHAPTER 48

  The morning was a newly minted copper penny, hard, clear, and warm. Close coppery hills, their tops sharp and burning, swelled to a sky the color of an aquamarine. The narrow little valleys between them had hidden themselves in wisps of milky mist, so that any individual characteristics were lost, and each valley, each range of hills, was identical. Dried grass scented the dazzling air, and odors of pennyroyal; pungent woods’ herbs and crisp leaves filled the brief gusts of warm wind. Over all lay a shining silence, broken only by the scuttlings of rabbits, squirrels and quail in the brush, and an occasional sweet and piercing note from a bird.

  Frank Clair and Wade O’Leary rode over the hills, Wade on his faithful and whimsical mule, and Frank on the borrowed mare. The mare and the mule were great coy friends, and nuzzled each other when the young men paused on a hilltop to look at the earth waves that rose and fell all about them. Frank’s dark and heavy depression had lifted a little this morning, but was replaced by a strong restlessness almost as hard to bear. As each winding little valley came into view, he felt a curious excitement, as if about to come upon something satisfying and rich and strange, and then when he saw the isolated log cabins perched on the hillsides or huddling in the bottom lands, he experienced a sharp, sick disappointment. When he had been a child, he had ranged all over Bison and its surroundings, and along the Canadian border, looking for a magical spot, a little island of dreams, and though he never found either, the hope had persisted in him that he had only to search a bit farther, or turn that clump of trees, or run across that meadow, and he would come upon enchantment. He had forgotten that childish searching for wonderland, but he had not forgotten the emotion of it, and finding only log cabins, or empty valleys, or dark broken woods, his frustration was, to him, inexplicably poignant.

  However, he tried to conceal this and to be amiable to Wade O’Leary, whom he surlily and secretly loved. All his life he had searched for an ear, he had found and lost it in Paul Hodge, and now here was another man to whom he could speak and by whom he could be understood. It heightened, rather than decreased, his pain that he had found this man in surroundings and in a country that made a mockery of his discovery. The thing was too subtle for any words, and though he longed to tell Wade of it he was afraid that he would not be understood.

  As if he understood, Wade hardly spoke at all. He rode his mule as though riding a majestic charger, lightly springing to the top of each hill, gracefully sitting his saddle at each steep descent. His dark lean face was reflective and quiet, his head held proudly. Tied to his saddle, as always, was his black bag of mercy. He wore his black broadcloth with elegance; dust never seemed to gather on it. Frank envied and admired this impeccable grooming, for his own “Sunday” suit had already gathered a sifting brown patina, and he was sweating profusely.

  They reached another hilltop, and now they found a singing little spring of cold fresh water. They dismounted, and lying flat on the green border, they drank, and were refreshed. They sat down and smoked and rested a little. They saw about them the burnished tops of other mountains; it was cool and dim under these clustering trees. Then Frank said involuntarily: “I keep thinking that each time we reach the top of another hill, we’ll—we’ll—find something—different down below.” Then he colored hotly, and was mortified at this betrayal by his tongue.

  But Wade nodded seriously. “I know. I think, in a way, we all hope that.” He turned on his elbow and regarded Frank with prolonged interest. “Most of us never find it. But I think you will, one of these days.”

  “No,” said Frank. He looked at the cigarette in his hand. “No.”

  He must run away from his own betrayal, and so he said, stammering as he always did when embarrassed or confused: “You have a lot of friends here, haven’t you? You seem to know everybody.” His voice was filled with the sullen sarcasm which concealed his lonely and bitter envy. “I never had any friends.”

  Wade did not smile. He was very serious and thoughtful. “Friends? I? No, I don’t think so; I can’t think of one real friend I have.” Now he smiled when he saw Frank’s incredulity and wary suspicion. “And, come to think of it, I don’t believe any of us has a friend, in the meaning we give to the word. I knew a man in Salt Lake City who always bragged about the many friends he had; he hoarded and gathered them as some people do money, and he counted them over and over. That was his hobby, his joy and his pride. And he didn’t gather these friends just for some advantage, financial or social. He was only an ordinary and ingenuous man, who collected friends as others collect stamps or first editions or antique china or butterflies. And he would parade his friends, gathering them around him as a beggar gathers his rags or a woman pulls her furs around her on a very cold night. And for the same reason, probably.”

  He paused, then continued meditatively: “Yes, he was very pathetic, the poor man.”

  Frank waited, but Wade did not speak again, so Frank said sardonically: “Then he got sick, or lost his business, or his money, and then he found out he didn’t have a friend in the world, after all.”

  Wade shook his head. “No, nothing like that. He just went on collecting ‘friends’ and never found out, to the day of his death, that no one has a friend, and that friendship is an ideal which is rarely or ever attained. Just as the hero ideal, the savior ideal, the love ideal, is hardly, if ever, realized, and because of that becomes part of the heroic fairy tales which men tell themselves to make life more bearable. The friendship ideal is a lovely and glorious one, and it is quite enough if we try to approximate it occasionally, and to pretend, if only for one little hour, that we have found it. But we oughtn’t to deceive ourselves that it’s really attainable. That’s dangerous.”

  “That doesn’t—disgust you, or—or—make you feel wretched, thinking that?” Frank asked sullenly.

  Wade gave him a quick glance of gentle understanding and pity. Then he said, with deep, kind comprehension: “No. Because I was never an idealist. Like you.”

  Thunderstruck and angered, Frank watched Wade rise to his feet, and fastidiously brush blades of dried gra
ss from his clothing. But he did not get up himself. He merely glared at the other man.

  “Me? An idealist?” he spluttered.

  Wade tightened the straps on his mule and looked over his shoulder to smile at Frank. “Oh, yes you are! I knew it the first time I saw you. I think it’s fine. I want you to keep on being an idealist. I don’t suppose you can help it, anyway. And I know you’ve got to let your idealism have its way with you, and not let it get all dirtied up by your contacts with other men. And they can sure dirty it up for you, and that’ll be very bad for you and for those you can help. There’s nothing more dangerous than a potential savior turned realist by getting too close to the world of men.”

  Frank climbed back on his mare, humiliated and insulted, as though Wade had come upon him naked and had made a ribald remark about him.

  They did not ride together now. Frank hung back a little, sullenly. They rode down a hill and came suddenly upon a large log cabin set in a grove of high pines. The grounds of the cabin were neat; rows of well-tended flowers surrounded the stoop, which held several rocking chairs. The hillside below had been farmed in accordance with Wade’s ideals of contour farming, and the curving rows of corn and tobacco were green and gold in the hot sunlight. A great burly man with a beard sat on the stoop, mending harness, and a “hound-dawg” rose up to greet the newcomers with a friendly bark. Behind the house stood a large gray barn and a barnyard full of fowl.

  The bearded man, brown and bare of arm, got up genially and grinned and waved. “Howdy,” he said. He gave Frank a curious look, then, when introduced to the young man, he shook hands heartily. “Shore glad to see you, Parson,” he said to Wade, as the two young men dismounted. “Bin a sight of time since you came ’round this way.”

  “Well, I cover a lot of territory, Eli,” said Wade. “Did you miss me?”

  Eli Gratwick chuckled. “Yep. Seems like I never git to see you ’cept when there’s a funeral.” He turned to Frank. “Parson here buried my ole woman a year come spring. Best damn funeral spiel I ever heard!”

  “So you’re a Mormon too?” said Frank politely if listlessly. He bent and patted the head of the dog.

  “No, Eli’s an unregenerate Gentile,” replied Wade, laughing. He saw Frank’s stare. “We call people who aren’t members of our Church Gentiles,” he explained. He looked at Eli Gratwick, who was a great brown giant of a man, with the peasant’s broad and amiable face and twinkling eyes. “How is Bobby? Bobby’s Eli’s son, away at college,” he added, to Frank.

  Eli’s face brightened, softened, became noble with love and shyness. “Why, the ole sonofabitch’s just fine,” he said. “Comin’ home full of danged new idees, too. Got hisself a job as deputy sheriff, and is goin’ to set hisself up in Paintsville.” He suddenly roared with herculean laughter, so that the hills echoed with it and the dog barked in excitement. “Better not git after these here moonshiners hereabouts!” he cried. “But Bobby’s got sense, like his ole man. I hope. Comin’ home in the spring, he says. Got hisself a gal back in the hills, like I tole you. Ole Saunders’ gal, and though I don’t hold with Ole Saunders’ heathen idees, which ain’t Christian, the gal’s right purty and clever. She got idees too, from Berea.”

  Wade explained to Frank: “Isaac Saunders is one of my friends whom we’re going to see today. His daughter, Betty, is a lovely girl, and I believe she is going to teach in Paintsville this fall, where Bobby is going to work, too.”

  Eli invited them into his bachelor’s cabin. The interior was spacious and very cool, the pine floor was scrubbed to a milky whiteness, the bare table equally pure and smooth, and rush-bottom chairs were set about at neat intervals along the walls, which were freshly papered with the inevitable pages from the Sears, Roebuck catalogues. There was a great, rough stone fireplace against the farther wall, on whose hearth there smoldered chunks of the soft cannel coal of the vicinity. A blackened kettle steamed over it, and above the fire, on the wall, were hung four excellent Winchester rifles. Sunlight gleamed through the well-washed but uncurtained windows, and in one corner of the large room was a newly made “pallet” where Eli slept. Frank saw a shelf of white crockery arranged in symmetrical rows on another wall, and below them were hung several iron pots and skillets.

  He was familiar with the interiors of mountain cabins, but the cleanliness was unfamiliar, and he was pleased. He and Wade accepted Eli’s invitation to “set,” and Eli clumped into a little pantry off the room. He soon appeared with a pitcher of fresh “sweet” milk, a plate of biscuits and a jar of wild-strawberry jam. He laid these down on the table, went into the pantry again, and brought forth a platter of thinly sliced and hickory-smoked pink ham.

  Frank was at first distrustful of this mountain hospitality, but when he saw the gleaming glasses which Eli produced, and the shining aspect of the steel cutlery, he was appeased. He ate with real relish and pleasure, while Wade and Eli renewed their friendship and exchanged mutual jokes which were mysterious to Frank. It was clear that Eli had a tremendous fondness for Wade, which was evidenced by the jovial, profane and obscene epithets which he lavished on him. Once or twice he reached over and rested his mighty brown paw on Wade’s impeccable knee, and beamed at him. Frank, as usual, retired into the background, and appeared to have been forgotten by the two friends.

  Then Wade apparently remembered his companion. He said to Eli: “Show Frank the photograph Bobby sent you from college. I want him to see a fine boy.”

  Blushing, beaming like the sun, Eli got up, lumbered to his pallet, and from somewhere under its blankets he brought out a folder of rough white cardboard which he proudly presented to Frank. “Ain’t much to look at, the old sonofabitch,” he said, his voice rough with love. “Got a face like a sick hawg. But he’s my boy.”

  Frank politely opened the folder, and was surprised. The photograph showed a young man not more than twenty-one years old, and the head was the head of a scholar or a saint, thin, long and finely formed, covered with a silky cap of very fair and faintly waved hair. The features below were delicate yet strongly marked, beautifully clear and sharp, yet bearing too serious an expression, too much intensity, which gave them an almost fanatical look in spite of their great intelligence. Frank saw the eyes of the young man, overly large and light and gleaming, too vulnerable and too piercing. All in all, it was the face of a dedicated martyr ruthless in righteousness, overwhelmingly sensitive and pure, without humor or tolerance or tenderness.

  It was hard to believe that this young man was the son of the burly brown peasant who hovered over Frank with a fatuous expression.

  “Why, it’s—it’s—a fine face,” stammered Frank incredulously.

  Eli took the folder from him, and held it in his giant’s hands. He almost drooled over it. He closed the folder reverently. Ole sonofabitch,” he said, and his voice trembled. He put the folder away in his pallet, and patted the blankets down on it as one pats the covers over an adored child at night.

  “Tell Bobby I want to see him when he comes home,” said Wade, rising. “Maybe he’ll let me marry him and Betty.”

  Eli scowled formidably. “Ain’t no danged parson goin’ to marry ’em but you!” he exclaimed. “Break the ole sonofabitch’s head, if he picks out any danged circuit rider for it!”

  As he and Wade resumed their riding over the hills Frank could not forget the brilliant and fanatical eyes of young Robert Gratwick. He brooded on that face, on the proud and delicate poise of the head. Finally he spoke: “Wade, how did such a face ever get into these mountains? Eli is only an illiterate peasant. His son doesn’t resemble him at all. How did it happen that he had ambition enough, here in the hills, to want an education, or know anything about schools?”

  Wade was silent a few moments, then he said: “Maybe you don’t understand about these mountain folks. Most of them, I admit, were irresponsibles and dullards and incompetents when they lived in the East. They couldn’t cope with life there, or hold their meagre own among more aggressive and ambitious and in
telligent people. They’d heard something about the West, and thought they’d find easy pickings there, where they wouldn’t have to work very much. So they set out. But they didn’t have the energy or imagination to go beyond these mountains. They stayed.

  “Still, a few among them were of good blood and breeding, ne’er-do-wells, probably, and shiftless. Yet men of family, notwithstanding. Then, some of them had wives of superior breeding, who could not leave their husbands, so they settled down and raised broods of children, mixtures of bad blood and good. In time, the bad blood won out, but occasionally, as in the case of Robert Gratwick, the good comes back in another generation.”

  He paused, spurred his mule up a slope, then went on: “I knew Bobby’s mother for a year or two before she died. She looked exactly like Bobby. She was totally illiterate, but still she was a woman of delicacy and refinement. She knew nothing of schools, but she wanted Bobby to have ‘book-learning.’ Eli worshipped her, which is unusual among mountain men. He had a reverence for education, too. Cannel coal was found on his farm, to the east, and so he had a little money. He loved Bobby, just as he loved his wife, and so Bobby went away to school.”

  Frank said: “Bobby has a fanatical face. He looks like a disagreeable customer, narrow-minded and intolerant.”

  Wade sighed. “His mother was what we call a religious fanatic. It isn’t that she was exposed more than any other mountain woman to the ranting circuit riders with their illiterate screamings and their religious frenzies. But she had the kind of mind, too delicate and finely balanced to withstand frenzies and madnesses. Then, about a year ago, she went completely out of her head, said she saw the ‘wrath of God’ on a mountain top one night, and killed herself by throwing herself over a cliff.”

  He went on, more angrily and rapidly than Frank had ever heard him: “More dangerous and more wicked than any so-called ‘atheism’ is a madness about religion, any religion at all! There is something obscene in complete religious dedication and devotion. I’ve travelled all over the South, and have seen the horrible intolerances and hatreds and ugliness which unbridled religious madness can inspire in people. I’ve seen Catholic churches desecrated. Jewish synagogues wrecked, schoolhouses burned, all in the name of ignorant religious dementia. Only education can do anything about it, and it will take generations to dilute the poison. Why don’t the enlightened ministers and priests of other parts of the country come to the South, and work here, in a real vineyard full of snakes and lynchers and disease? Why have they left this beautiful country in the hands of illiterate demagogues and circuit riders and uneducated ‘ministers of the Gospel’? The educated and aristocratic Southerners laugh and call their brothers ‘white trash.’ They think their religious frenzies and shouting revivals are too quaint and amusing. They don’t understand, and the rest of the country doesn’t understand, that here waits half a nation of partially illiterate and heathenish people ripe for any liar or rogue to arouse them to a murdering madness. In the name of the Bible, by God!”