And then Jones began the weirdest chant: “O bola,” he sang, “Coo-pa-yani, Si na-ma-gamma, O deh-kah-no.”
M.C. stared at his father. Jones looked embarrassed. “Don’t know how I forgot it this long. Sing it always to the sons. One son to another, down the line.”
“Daddy!” M.C. whispered, awed and excited by the sound of the words. “What does it mean?”
“Well, I had a feeling I knew, once,” Jones said. “But I guess even Great-grandmother Sarah never knew. Just a piece of her language she remembered.”
“Does it mean something pretty?” M.C. asked. They sat, close and still.
“It might just mean something too awful to forget,” Jones said. “We’ll never know.”
M.C. felt awed by the past’s enormous mystery.
“Is there more about Sarah?” he asked.
“Just only two more things,” Jones said. “The one is that there’s an old title I have to this mountain slope. Show it to you sometime. Says deeded fee simple from McKelroy lands to Sarah McHigan, 1854.”
“McHigan?” M.C. said.
“He was the one she married, but he was sold away from her. That was maybe one reason she ran in the first place. McHigan, and then later in Granddaddy’s time, changed to Higgins.”
“Man, I sure don’t remember hearing about that,” M.C. said softly.
“I must of told you,” Jones said, “but you were little.”
“Man,” M.C. said again, and then: “What’s the other thing? You said there were two things.”
He looked at Jones and Jones looked at him. “You can believe it,” Jones began, “or you can misbelieve it. But I know and your mama knows. Times, in the heat of the day. When you not thinking much on nothing. When you are resting quiet. Trees, dusty-still. You can hear Sarah a-laboring up the mountain, the baby, whimpering. She say, ‘Shhh! Shhh!’ like a breeze. But no breeze, no movement. It’s just only Sarah, as of old.”
“I know,” M.C. said, simply.
“You know?” Jones said.
“When I’m all alone,” M.C. told him, “up on my pole, all of a sudden, I know she is coming.”
“Yea, Lord,” Jones said.
“It scare me so,” M.C. said.
“Don’t you be afraid,” Jones said quietly. “For she not show you a vision of her. No ghost. She climbs eternal. Just to remind us that she hold claim to me and to you and each one of us on her mountain.”
They fell silent. Between them now was the feeling Jones had spoken about. M.C. recognized its nameless certainty. Whatever happened would be the same for both of them. For a moment, he believed that. But truth had its way.
How the same, M.C. thought, if he won’t leave the mountain?
Abruptly, he said. “Daddy, sing that song again.”
Jones chanted it again, slapping his knee on the offbeat:
O bola
Coo-pa-yani,
Si na-ma-gama
O deh-kah-no.
When he had finished, Jones turned to M.C. “We’ve always lived here,” he said. “The children can stay put forever if they want. Raise their families, whatever. But you are the one responsible.”
“I know,” M.C. said. He could feel the rope within that bound him to the mountain. It was always there, like a pressure on his mind.
“You figure you will want to leave someday?” Jones asked him.
Never had M.C. thought of going away from his family. He knew only that they all had to leave the mountain.
“Maybe someday,” he managed to say.
“Maybe tomorrow or the next day?” Jones asked him.
“I’ll wait awhile.”
“What you figure you’re waiting for?” Jones said, with a glint of play in his eyes.
“Maybe to see what will happen,” M.C. said, vaguely.
“You’ll be here a long while,” Jones said. He laughed.
“Maybe not so long.”
“You see something then?”
M.C. sighed. “I try to tell you,” he said, “nothing like reading the future.”
“Then what’s it like?”
Sadly, M.C. searched for the words: “See it when something’s to happen. Feel the whole thing in my mind.”
“I say, do you feel something? Do you see it?” Jones asked.
“The spoil heap is going to slide.”
“There you go again, like a broken record,” Jones said.
“You asked me,” M.C. said.
“Now if the spoil fell,” Jones said, “would it have to hit the house?”
“No,” M.C. said slowly, “but it could. It probably would.”
“Since it’s been there, has any bit of it ever fallen?”
“No,” M.C. had to admit.
“You’ll be here a long while,” Jones said, smiling to himself.
“Maybe not,” M.C. said under his breath.
Jones began another tune. At first M.C. thought it was going to be the one with the strange words, but it wasn’t.
There she stands by my side
It’s a cold and clear evening.
Don’t she look just like my bride
On a cold, clear evening?
Hug her and kiss her and call her my own
And she just might marry me.
On a cold. On a cold, cold,
On a cold, clear, even-ing.
He sang the verse over and over. M.C. wished he would stop it. He blurted out, “Better get over there, wait on the road for Mama.”
M.C.’s mother always did catch a ride over the bridge, on the one road that went in and out of Harenton before it veered west.
“You worry too hard,” Jones said. “I haven’t forgot your mama yet.”
“Did you get your day’s pay?” M.C. asked him.
“Now you’re worrying about my pay?” Jones said.
“I’ll keep it for you. Leave it,” M.C. said. There were drinking places in Harenton. Suddenly, he feared Jones would spend the money on something foolish, although he rarely did.
“I could leave it,” Jones said, “and you might cut out of these hills tonight with it while I’m gone.” At once, he looked as if he regretted the words. “Don’t always worry so hard,” he said, by way of apology.
“Wouldn’t want Mama to have to come all that way home by her lonesome,” M.C. said. He fell silent and closed his eyes.
Jones had turned to watch his face, M.C. could tell. And deep within, M.C. could feel darkness like thick trees, and something else that he could not name.
Jones stepped off the porch. “Don’t worry so hard,” he repeated. “I can’t collect my pay until around afternoon tomorrow. Meantime—” He fished around in one of his pockets. His hand appeared again, clutching coins. Jones counted them one by one, whispering over them. “Here’s most of the dollar I promised. Owe you seventeen cents.”
Dollar-dollar. M.C. could feel his throat seem to thicken.
“Take it,” Jones said. He grabbed M.C.’s hand and tried to pour the coins in.
M.C. jerked his hand away. “I’m not going to take your last cent.”
“Take it,” Jones said. “I get me some pay tomorrow.”
“I can’t do nothing with it up here anyway,” M.C. said.
“Take it.”
“No!” he yelled, with a desperate anger, and love for his father welling inside him. “We don’t have even some milk for the kids!”
“Okay, okay,” Jones said quietly. But he stood there a moment, as if searching for proper words to speak. None came to him and he walked away from M.C. without a backward glance.
M.C. sat with his eyes closed. Hugging his legs, he rested his chin on his knees. He listened until he could no longer hear his father moving down through the hot silence that was Sarah’s Mountain at this time of day. Thoughts and sights flitted in and out of his mind. He pictured Great-great-grandmother Sarah running swiftly, carrying something. She tripped and fell. Something splattered bloody on the ground.
M.C. shuddered.
The vision shifted. He saw the spoil, and Jones trapped in it, with mud oozing into his ears. M.C. shook his head rapidly to dislodge the painful sight. He thought about leaving the mountain, where he would go, what he would do. Still he could not imagine leaving without the whole family with him.
Woven through his thoughts was the sound of Jones singing of courting. M.C. tried humming to himself, but he couldn’t get rid of the sound. Nothing, not even his pole, could keep away the sad feeling, the lonesome blues of being grown, the way either his mother or his father could with their singing.
Wistfully he wondered if he’d ever care about someone the way Jones cared about his mother. Jones’s song was still in his mind when he conjured a picture of Banina, his mother. It was one of his favorite sights of her coming home from a far hill, late.
It was M.C.’s birthday. They had known she would bring something for a present. They were all there on the side of Sarah’s, waiting. There were the kids. And there was Jones, trying to look as if he weren’t waiting for her half of his life, but not trying too hard. Because Jones didn’t mind waiting for Banina forever if he had to. But it was Macie Pearl who hurt most for her mother, who ached for her through every minute of every day without her.
They all would see Banina at the same moment, coming over the last hill across from Sarah’s. They would see her in the last light of evening. The sun had gone down over her left shoulder. Dusk came quickly where the hills shut out the light. There was not even a streak of purple gossamer where the sun had gone down. She had walked all the way from the river road where it left Harenton and turned westward. It had taken her most of an hour walking hard. Even though she went down the sides of hills and along passes, she walked mostly on the upward path.
In the pale light, her yellow dress looked white. She paused at the summit across the way. She had seen M.C. on his pole even when she could not for certain recognize the others. His mother leaned back, cupping her hands around her mouth. A yodel cry like no other filled the air. For a moment there was no sound other than that voice of hers which seemed to fall from the sky:
“Yad d’looka—M.C.—alodaaah . . .” It started low, with breath enough for a long, hard line:
“O-leay-aMama-home-alo. May-alay, alay-a-Macie-o-alaeu.” The voice went up the scale with perfect lightness and control.
“Mama!” Macie Pearl screamed. “I see you! Mama, Mama, alay-alaeu!”
There had been laughter, half-mocking before his mother sang again. She waved. M.C. had let his pole out in its sweeping arc. Lennie Pool and Harper raised their arms. With palms seeming flat against the air, they gave a silent salute. Macie was jumping up and down like a starving creature about to be fed.
Then Banina had begun to sing. Coming home, walking with the strength that was tired now but never left her, she sang them how the day had been for her. She sang so all the hills could hear. As night came creeping, came sweeping over the land, her voice told the hills what they already knew, but in a way that only she could tell it.
“Daddy!” Macie had said, going to her father.
“Shhh! I want to hear it all.” It was Harper.
“Daddy!” Macie had said again.
Jones grunted. He had been listening, but he shook himself seemingly awake. With one arm, he lifted Macie Pearl onto his shoulders. She held his neck with skinny arms. Her heels dug into his armpits. Then the two of them went down the side of Sarah’s. Jones was trotting so that he would reach Banina before she hit the gully and darkness.
M.C., with Lennie and Harper, had waited for that moment when their mother’s laughter would explode in the night, when she ran into Jones and Macie in the dark. It happened.
They had heard her talking in that high, hill way she had that gave no hint of the voice behind it. There was still enough light on the outcropping where they waited for them to see her face clearly.
The air had turned slightly cooler, M.C. remembered. There had been a breeze, warm and damp, with rain coming. And then, where there had been only shadow, she was there. Jones, with Macie riding shoulder-high, materialized next to her.
M.C. had given Banina a pole trick. Although it was his day, the trick was his birthday present to her. He took his feet from the pole pedals. Placing his hands on the pedals instead, he balanced his body in a shaky handstand.
Her laughter had exploded again. The contralto sound of it came as if from an echo chamber as it bounced around the hills.
“M.C., honey,” she said, “that’s real pretty, but you’re going to bust your head wide open, like a sweet melon fall down from a wagon. And break your poor mama’s heart, too.” Then she giggled.
M.C. remembered smiling. He’d kept his face hidden from her until he had slid down the pole to stand before her. He stood there, seeing that light he loved so out of her eyes. She had skin tanned reddish from the sun. It looked dark, smooth and shining with perspiration. She was nearly as tall as M.C., with a posture straight and proud. She was pretty good as a swimmer. Like M.C. and Jones, too, she loved water. Unlike the land, water was something to play in.
With one hand, she had taken M.C. by the shoulder to peer into his face. It was then he noticed she held a shopping bag in the other hand. With her pocketbook inside and on top, she had carried the bag the long distance home.
“I’m fine,” M.C. said, without any prompting. They had so little chance to be together, he had answered her unasked question to save time. At once they were deep in conversation.
“You going to swim with me sometime soon?”
“When can you swim if you be working?” he had asked.
“Early,” she said, “by dawn light in the cirque. You think you can make it?”
“I’ll even let you beat me.”
She had laughed and turned from him to the two boys. She set the shopping bag down and reached in under her pocketbook. Her hands came out of the bag, full of something for each of them.
Shyly, the boys came slowly to stand before her. It wasn’t their birthday, but they knew she wouldn’t forget them. Not until they were close to her did they discover she held three neat sacks of candy. They took the candy and Harper gave one sack to Macie. Silent, looking up at Banina, they had waited to see if that was all. But no, for she had leaned down over them. Soon she and the boys were whispering and giggling, planning some game or other. Maybe breakfast would be taken at the foot of M.C.’s pole. Or maybe they would all sleep out tonight within the mystery of the grape arbor.
She took her pocketbook out of the shopping bag. Reaching down again, she had come up with a big, square box. She opened it and handed it to M.C. He caught a whiff of chocolate. Cake, just for him to share with them. Last, she handed him a package tied with ribbon. He knew it was a shirt, or something. Socks. Maybe a pair of dress pants. He had been too happy even to say a word of thanks.
“Fall on your bending,” she had said softly, then, “I’m tired, me.”
Jones had swung Macie down. M.C., with Macie at his heels and the boys behind her, had led them away from the darkness that had encircled them. With the square box of the cake held carefully in front of him, and with the birthday package on top of it, he had been the strutting leader of the parade. Jones had folded Banina to his side and they had all walked into the house away from night.
5
M.C. FELT COOL all over. For a long while he sat where Jones had left him, remembering the way his mother had come home to them.
No more birthdays here, he thought.
As if waking, he saw that the sun had slipped away from him down the side of Sarah’s, across the gully and to the right toward the cirque and the westward river. With his mind remembering, he had been staring riverward. He’d seen something odd for more than fifteen minutes without its registering on his mind. Up from the river, there was something that glinted and flashed. It vanished and then, in a split second, it glinted and flashed again.
Things always did sparkle and glitter along the river.
But not s
o far from it, he thought.
He grew tense straining to see. He should have moved sideways so that whatever was glinting wouldn’t shine in his eyes. He knew his family ought to be out there somewhere, waiting on the road or just about to start on their way home. He began to worry now, searching for the thing that would suddenly glint, flash at him and suddenly vanish.
For a time he lost it in the trees stretching for miles above the river. He got up and walked over to the side of Sarah’s where he could see more of the steel town and the timber line along the hills. Time passed before M.C. spied a glinting flash on the eastern slope of a foothill. He cupped his hands around his eyes, cutting out from his sight all but that one vision.
Not moving steady, he thought. Is it a walking light? No, the glints are too fast. That’s what it is. Running . . . to beat the night. It has far still to go? The sun has caught to something. But what glints like that, on and off?
M.C. thought of rushing down there. It would take him time to reach the steel town. Besides, he wanted to be home when the dude came back.
Maybe it’s Mr. Lewis. Or the other one.
He thought of the girl: She still out there wandering?
He wondered why his father had supposed he would have spent time with her. Maybe he should have. Maybe he would next time.
Was there to be another time?
He stood utterly still, waiting to see if his mind could tell him. He felt slightly dizzy, as if he were swaying too hard on his pole. Falling into a reverie, he could no longer see the countryside. Instead, he sensed the girl close to him in the darkness. Although she was invisible, he could feel her slight form change and charge the space around him. But then the vivid impression of her faded. Once again he saw hills, daylight.
So that’s who, he thought, searching the land.
To catch her moving along without being heard or seen would take a lot of time.
Clear dark down there by then.
He knew how night could be a trap, once the sun had been blotted out by hills.
Would have to move so fast and quiet once I got near her. Like stalking on a hunt.
M.C. Higgins, the Great Page 7
