A pain jerked through her leg—a charley horse. She waited for it to subside. She did not know how much time had passed, but the sun was low. She was starting to feel cooler. Her legs were numb. She realized she could be having another stroke. For the first time, it occurred to her that she might really be stranded here and no one would know. No one knew she had come fishing.
She scrambled clumsily at the bank. Now she knew she had to get out. No one was going to come for her. She knew she should have tried earlier, when she had more strength, but she had believed someone would spot her and come to help her. She worked more industriously now, not in panic but with single-minded purpose. She paused to take some deep breaths. Then she began to pull, gripping the mud, holding herself against it. She was panting hard. Little by little, she pulled herself up the mud bank. She crawled out of the water an inch at a time, stopping to rest after each small gain. She did not know if she felt desperation. She was so heavy. Her teeth were chattering from the cold, and she was too weak to rise. Finally she was on the bank, lying on her belly, but her legs remained in the water. She twisted around, trying to raise herself up. She saw a car turn into the driveway. She hollered as loud as she could. Her teeth rattled. After a moment, the car backed up and drove away.
The western sun was still beating down. She lay still and let it dry her. As her clothes dried, she felt warmer. But her legs remained in the water, her shoes like laden satchels. She pulled and pulled and crawled until her legs emerged from the water. She felt the sun drawing the water from her clammy legs. But as the sun sank, she felt cooler. She crawled with the sun—moving with it, grabbing grass.
When she finally uprighted herself, the sun was going down. She stood still, letting her strength gather. Then she placed one foot in front of her, then the other.
She had to get the fish. Stooping, she pulled it onto the grass, but she could not lift it, and she knew she could not pack it to the car. It was dead, though its gills still worked like a bellows, slowly expanding and collapsing. It had let go of the hook. Leaving the fish, she struck out across the soybean field toward the car. No one was at the house. She reached the car. Luckily, the key had not washed out of her pocket while she was in the pond. In the dim light, she couldn’t see how to get it in the ignition. For an interminable time, she fumbled with the key. Then it turned.
Instead of following the path around the edge of the field, she steered the car straight across the beanfield. She stopped before the rise to the pond and got out. As she climbed toward the pond, her feet became tangled in some greenbrier vines and she fell backwards into a clump of high grass. Her head was lower than her feet. She managed to twist herself around so that she was headed up the bank, but she was too weak to stand.
She lay there in the grass for some time, probably half an hour. She dozed, then jarred awake, remembering the fish. Slowly, she eased up the bank and eventually stood. When she reached the fish, it appeared as a silhouette, the day had grown so dark. She dragged the fish to the car and heaved it up through the door, then scooted it onto the floorboard behind the driver’s seat. She paused to catch her breath.
The sun was down now. In the car, she made her way out of the field to the road. Cars were whizzing by. She was not sure her lights were working. They seemed to burn only dimly. She hugged the edge of the narrow road, which had no shoulders, just deep ditches. Cars with blazing headlights roared past. She slowed down. By the time she got into town, the streetlights were on. She could not see where to turn into her street. A car behind her honked. Flustered, she made her turn.
When she got home, the kitchen clock said 7:25. She had been at the pond for seven hours. She opened the back door, and Chester the cat darted in, then skidded to a stop and stared at her, his eyes bugged out. She laughed.
“Chester, you don’t know me! Do I smell like the pond?”
Chester retreated under the kitchen table, where he kept a wary lookout.
“Come here, baby,” she said softly. “Come on.” He backed away from her.
She got into the shower, where she let hot water beat on her. Memories of the afternoon’s ordeal mingled in her mind like dreams, the sensations running together and contorting out of shape. She thought that later she would be angry with herself for not pulling herself out of the pond sooner—she could have ventured into those willow bushes—but now she felt nothing but relief.
After she was clean and warm, she went to the kitchen. Chester reappeared. He rubbed against her legs.
“Chester,” she crooned. “You didn’t know me.” She laughed at him again.
She fed Chester and warmed up some leftovers for her supper. She hadn’t been hungry all those hours, and she was too tired to eat now, but she ate anyway. She ate quickly. Then she went out to the garage and dragged the fish out of the car.
She wrestled it into the kitchen. She couldn’t find her hatchet. But she thought she was too weak to hack its head off now. Using the step stool, she managed, in stages, to get the fish up onto the counter. She located her camera. The flash didn’t work, but she took a picture of the fish anyway, knowing it probably wouldn’t turn out. She didn’t know where her kitchen scales were—lost in the move somewhere. She was too tired to look for them. She found her tape measure in a tool drawer.
The fish was thirty-eight and a half inches long. It was the largest fish she had ever caught.
“Look at that fish, Chester,” she said.
With her butcher knife, she gutted the fish into a bucket. The fish was full—intestines and pondweed and debris and unidentifiable black masses squished out.
She could feel herself grinning. She had not let go of the fish when she was working it, and she had gotten back home with the old big one. She imagined telling Wilburn about the fish. He would be sitting in front of the TV, and she would call him from the kitchen. “Just wait till you see what I reeled in at the pond,” she would say. “Come in here and see. Hurry!” He would know immediately what she had caught. She had a habit of giving away a secret prematurely. Her grinning face—and her laughing voice—gave her away. When she had a surprise for the children, she couldn’t wait to tell them. She wanted to see their faces, the delight over something she had bought them for Christmas or some surprise she had planned. “Wake up, get out of bed. Guess what! Hurry!”
For my mother
And in memory of
my father and
grandparents
Acknowledgments
Portions of this book first appeared in somewhat different form in The New Yorker. I am grateful to my editor and friend there, Roger Angell.
Some material about the Cuba Cubs is drawn from my story “State Champions,” first published in Harper’s. Some small bits about my childhood reading and writing appeared in my book The Girl Sleuth, first published by the Feminist Press, 1975.
The story of Peyton Washam, the hapless pioneer, is from Kentucky: A History of the State by J. H. Battle, W. H. Perrin, and G. C. Kniffin, 1885.
The 1880 map of Clear Springs is from An Atlas of Graves County, Kentucky, published by D. J. Lake & Co., Philadelphia, 1880.
Harriette Simpson Arnow’s imaginative re-creations of life on the Middle Tennessee frontier—Seedtime on the Cumberland and Flowering of the Cumberland—inspired and informed my journey into the past. Through those books, I was able to imagine the trail of most of my ancestors, especially the Masons, who traveled down the Cumberland River to Western Kentucky in the 1820s.
Most of my genealogical research was done at the Kentucky Historical Society and the Graves County Library. I’m especially grateful to Don Simmons for his privately published transcriptions of miles of microfilm of local records and abstracts from Mayfield newspapers. These helped me form a clearer picture of Clear Springs and its inhabitants in earlier days.
As always, I am indebted to Lon Carter Barton, Graves County’s historian, and Thomas D. Clark, Kentucky’s historian laureate, for their profoundly insightful guidance into the past.
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My thanks to Erika Brady, folklorist at Western Kentucky State University, Bowling Green, Kentucky, for her research help, especially for locating the words to the song “Steamboat Bill.”
For reminiscences of Robert Hazel, I am grateful to Wendell Berry, Kyra Hackley, James Baker Hall, John Kuehl, Ed McClanahan, Gurney Norman, and David Polk.
For critical readings of the work in progress, I am grateful to Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, James Baker Hall, Cori Jones, Lauren Lepow, Kate Medina, and Binky Urban. Special thanks to Lila Havens.
The names of a few individuals who play minor roles in this narrative have been changed to assure privacy.
I appreciate the permission from my friends Frank Cantor, James Baker Hall, and Guy Mendes to reproduce photographs they took.
I salute my many Clear Springs cousins, whose heritage I am proud to share. And I am indebted to everyone in my family for their indulgence—especially to my mother, who has always been my chief inspiration.
My husband’s encouragement and confidence in this project were essential.
Also by Bobbie Ann Mason
NONFICTION
The Girl Sleuth
Nabokov’s Garden
FICTION
Shiloh and Other Stories
In Country
Spence + Lila
Love Life
Feather Crowns
Midnight Magic
About the Author
Bobbie Ann Mason is the author of the novels In Country and Feather Crowns. Feather Crowns was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Southern Book Award. Her short-story collection Shiloh and Other Stories won the PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction and was nominated for other major prizes. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere.
Five generations of her family, going back to the 1820s, are rooted in the farming community of Clear Springs. She lives in Kentucky now with her husband and dogs and cats.
Clear Springs Page 36
