M.C. Higgins, the Great

by Virginia Hamilton

  “Yod-a-lay-da, M.C.-a-lun, a-lunch-a-ladieauuuu.”

  “He’ll be back after noon,” M.C. said quietly. Jones’s yodel had come from around Hall Mountain. “He’s going into town.”

  The children had momentarily forgotten the girl. She said not a word. But M.C. could tell it was her turn to wonder.

  For a yodel cry was like no other sound. It was a power of breath and voice. Like the lake, it was a magic belonging only to those of the hills. M.C. had the magic now and Macie would have it one day. So would Lennie Pool and Harper. She might have realized how it held father to mother, children to each parent and to each other, as it passed down the line of living.

  They all saw the girl seem to change again. Her shoulders slumped forward. Suddenly she seemed worn out. Shivering slightly in her damp clothing, she looked beaten down.

  “I have to go in,” she whispered. Turning away, she dragged her feet, kicking up stones as she went to her tent.

  “Can we come in a minute?” Macie called to her.

  “I don’t care,” the girl murmured. Falling to her knees, she crawled inside the tent.

  “Something wrong with her,” Harper said.

  M.C. kept his silence as the children went up to the tent in a group. Reluctantly he followed, as though forced against his will by an unseen power. Some nameless feeling for the girl had hold of him. With his brothers and sister close by, he was drawn back into the world with them again. He felt cut off from the girl and out of place in the bright sun.

  The children pushed into the tent as if they were still outdoors. Tripping over themselves, they were about to pull the tent down around them. M.C. hurried in to organize them, motioning them not to speak, nor to touch or bump into anything. He showed them how to settle down around a pile of clothing on one side of the tent, so as not to disturb it.

  The tent was big enough for one person to live comfortably. Two people could sleep in it, but with any more, it became crowded and stifling, not a pleasant place to be at all.

  Now the tent was crowded. There was no room for M.C. So Harper let M.C. have his place while he stretched himself belly-flat on the stones outside, with just his head and shoulders in the tent. M.C., Lennie and Macie Pearl sat in a line on one side. The girl was stretched out on the other side in a green sleeping bag. She lay exhausted, with her hands clenched into fists beneath her chest. M.C. sat farthest away from the tent opening, with his back against the damp coolness of the canvas wall. He could look straight into the girl’s eyes, her head was that close to his feet. Her eyes were closed and fluttering as though caught in fitful sleep.

  All at once her eyes opened, staring M.C. down. He thought she would say it was too crowded, that he and the kids should get out. But shivering slightly, she simply closed her eyes again.

  Next to her against the tent wall was that huge light she had beamed on M.C. the night before. It was all shining metal. Seeing its handle, he remembered how it had felt in his hands. Beside it on the tent floor was a towel and folded washcloth on which lay a number of silver and gold bracelets and one long necklace made out of seashells.

  M.C. recalled the rattling and jingling sounds of the night before. He had to smile at the washcloth where now their mystery lay solved.

  In his thoughts, he reached across the girl to touch the pretty necklace, motionless and still. He had a vision of her sitting up in the tent and slapping him hard, saying, “Don’t you ever touch a single thing that’s mine!”

  It was so real, he was shocked when he realized neither one of them had moved.

  Hanging from the tension rods that supported the tent was most of what the girl possessed. There was a large nylon bag with not much in it. Just a blanket, a canteen. There were some socks and some shiny things wrapped with care in plastic.

  There was hardly any food in the tent and no pot or pan to cook with. Just some apples and some dry cereal. Some crackers and beef jerky.

  Climb the hills with that little bit to eat? Not even a can of beans.

  M.C. glanced at her to find her staring at him again.

  “Too hot in here,” he said softly. The air in the tent had grown warmer and smothery. He didn’t know what else to say or where to look to avoid the girl’s eyes. Seeing her curled tightly in her sleeping bag, he knew he shouldn’t have spoken of the heat.

  “You all get on outside,” he said to the children.

  The boys never had to be told twice. They scooted out in a second. Only Macie Pearl looked stricken, as though to leave would break her heart.

  “You have to go, too, Macie,” M.C. told her. “Get some air in here.”

  “I’ll sit still. I won’t talk,” she pleaded.

  “Macie, do what he says,” the girl said. It was the first time she had called any one of them by name. Something in her voice, so weak and tired out, made Macie sigh and leave.

  With Harper out of the way of air movement, with all of them gone, M.C. felt he could breathe again.

  After a time he asked the girl: “Are you sick?”

  “I get chilled some,” she said. “All the dew that comes as soon as it’s dark. My clothes get all wet—I hate it!”

  “You ought to change what you have on from swimming,” M.C. said. “You ought to take your bed and everything out in the sun. . . .”

  Impatiently she kicked in the sleeping bag, dislodging from the foot of it a shoulder purse made of brightly woven cloth. The pocketbook was pretty, M.C. thought, and it bulged full of things.

  “Look,” she said abruptly. “I meant to be down in that town by now—always forget to buy some food. But now I’m so weak. I hate eating out of cans!”

  Again she kicked and turned in the sleeping bag until she had it twisted out of shape.

  M.C. couldn’t understand her. Right outside was a lake full of food. Bullheads and sunfish for whoever came early enough after first light and before swimming started. Even at noon anyone with a pole and a line and time to spare could catch something. He and his family never did any fishing. For them to resort to it for food was unheard of. Water was the opposite of land, which they possessed and loved. The lake was amusement, relaxation. But for her, he thought of fishing and looked around the tent for a pole and hooks. He found none.

  She had the knife hidden somewhere, probably in the sleeping bag with her, just to be safe. A knife could skin a rabbit in ten minutes.

  First you must catch it in a trap, M.C. thought. He grinned, remembering Ben had said he had a rabbit.

  “I just need some meat for some strength to get on down into town,” she said. “I’d love to have just one glass of milk. I can taste it.” And then: “A hundred and fifty dollars insurance on the car. Sure didn’t leave me much for food.”

  M.C. was halfway out of the tent before he turned and, not quite looking at her, motioned her to follow.

  “Look, can you get me some food?” she asked anxiously.

  Outside, the kids were waiting for M.C. Hot air hit him, but it was less moist, less stifling than that inside the tent. He stared at the children, seeing them as though they had been carved from sunlight. But he thought only of the girl.

  Crazy nerve. She don’t know a thing. I know about woods.

  He called inside: “Change, and bring that bed and things out here to dry. Come on over to my house. . . .”

  The noon mill whistle rose on the air, screaming soft and far and then loud and near. The sound of it wavered on air currents, echoing, bouncing off hills, until it died.

  There had been no movement inside the tent. M.C. had to coax her. “We have some food. Throw out the wet stuff. Daddy went to shop some more. I have to get these kids on home.”

  He saw the girl unwind herself from the sleeping bag before he turned away. When she had changed into the slacks of the early morning, with the knife glistening on her belt, she brought out the sleeping bag and her swimming clothes. She had her cloth pocketbook hanging from her neck like a feedbag.

  M.C. spread the sleeping bag an
d her wet clothes in front of the tent. Then he grabbed his shoes and pants and pulled them on. He flung his towel around his neck and tied his sweater around his waist. Once he looked at the girl. She stood waiting, uneasily, it seemed to M.C.

  “We’re closer to home than town,” he thought to say. “Least, there’s cider, if there’s no milk.”

  She looked so bedraggled and uncertain. He felt her tug hard on his feelings. He started out at once, before she could change her mind. He led the way from the shore over the ridge with her and the children following in a bunch. He was heading back over the same ground he and Banina had come hours before.

  They went through the pass at the side of Hall Mountain. At the end of it, M.C. half-slid down the steep hill slope and on through pine trees alive with dappled light and birds. He didn’t gaze at the sweep of mountains. In his excitement at having the girl come home with him, he was going too fast. He saw everything around him as if in a fog. Pure outlines of branches, pine boughs, grasses, filled his brain with haze.

  All at once he stopped and ran back to the bottom of the hill slope. There was the girl near the top, stepping down in great, comical strides, her arms held straight out from her sides.

  Run. It’s easier.

  But she went on striding faster and faster until the momentum caused her to hurtle forward. She would have fallen if M.C. hadn’t been there to catch her by the arms.

  She pushed him away. He didn’t mind. She was just like him. She didn’t like making mistakes either.

  “Take you by the hand so you don’t break your neck,” he said, teasing her.

  She half-smiled but kept her eyes on her feet. She was almost past him before he realized she meant to take the lead. He got in front and headed on alone, hurrying too fast as before.

  Home was not so far now. Soon they were in the foothills below Sarah’s Mountain. They were descending and his tennis shoes were full of small stones and dirt. They moved in and out among the pines until the trees began to thin out.

  Now close to the gully, where in the night he had frightened the girl, he paused, searching the side of Sarah’s Mountain looming ahead before he understood what he was looking for.

  Up there, his pole flashed silver-bright. It was lone, cold steel without its rider. He had a vague feeling for it, but that was all. The girl filled his head so, he hardly thought about it.

  The trees fanned out above the path, making clumps of shadow and shafts of brilliant light. He should have slowed down, for suffocating heat with trees and bush so close nearly took his breath away. He breathed with his mouth open. He could feel the towel wet and icy around his neck as his shoulders seemed to split open the air in front of him.

  He concentrated on home and the girl. Once he paused to turn. She and the children were coming. He could hear them, but he had left them out of sight.

  Something on the path ahead. Where there had been light and shade, there stood a black something blocking M.C.’s way.

  Not a deer. A Killburn?

  Fear gripped him. But he was moving so fast, he couldn’t stop. He would have busted right past whoever it was standing there if he hadn’t suddenly been caught under one arm with the strength of a bear. It was a grip like a vise, twisting M.C.’s arm and scaring him out of his wits.

  “What’s the big hurry in all this heat?”

  Jones, coming back with a sack of groceries in the other arm. It took him only a moment to see the state M.C. was in.

  “What you so afraid about? Somebody after you?”

  “Man!” M.C. said breathlessly. His legs almost buckled. “Didn’t look like you standing there. Looking like a witchy.” And then, with relief at seeing his father, he confessed all in a rush: “Took that girl through the water tunnel. She can’t swim a single lick!”

  “You ought to have your head whipped! Where’re the kids?”

  “Coming with the girl,” M.C. said.

  Jones jerked his head around. He waited for what seemed forever to M.C. before the children and the girl came into sight far down the path.

  “What do you mean by bringing her home?” Jones asked. Before the sound of his own voice had died, he knew why. His eyes softened as he stared at his trembling, wet rabbit of a boy.

  “She got this idea in her head to camp but she don’t know the first thing,” M.C. said. “She don’t even have any food.”

  “So you figure you’ll give her a feed off me,” Jones said.

  M.C. could tell Jones wasn’t angry. “And then I’ll teach her to hunt,” M.C. said eagerly. “How to skin a rabbit.”

  “First you must catch the rabbit,” Jones told him. “Maybe give a woman’s touch to baiting your rabbit traps. Leastways, it can’t hurt.”

  M.C. kept silent, reminding himself he had a rabbit already caught. Before long, he would have no need of the traps anyhow.

  I’ll give her the rabbit, he thought. We take a skillet down by the lake. . . .

  Jones turned and with a backhand wave to M.C., headed home.

  M.C. let him go. When the children and the girl were close, he led the way down into the gulley and on the path up Sarah’s Mountain. At the foot of the path, he waited until they were all there, bunched around him.

  “Up there’s where you live?” the girl said. Her skin appeared even sleeker, shining with perspiration.

  M.C. nodded and pointed to the ledge outcropping.

  “I don’t see anything,” she said.

  “The house is there. Come on,” M.C. said.

  “Sure is a big mountain. You all own it?” she said, as they started to climb.

  “Up to the outcropping, we own it,” M.C. told her. “Been in the family forever. And someday, it’s going to be mine.”

  The girl was at his elbow and she looked at him with something close to awe. The children moved around them, staring from her to M.C.

  “It’s always handed down to the oldest son,” M.C. told her. “My oldest son will take it from me.”

  “Can I still stay here, even when it’s yours?” Macie asked him.

  “Sure,” he said, “stay as long as you want.”

  “Stay until we have to leave,” Harper said. “Until dude come back for Mama.”

  “You all thinking of leaving?” the girl asked.

  The children waited for M.C. to tell it. Abruptly he stopped, his head down.

  Overcome by the power of two separate thoughts, he had the worst kind of mournful feeling.

  Talking about staying forever.

  It was as if his head contained two minds. The one knew they would never leave the mountain. The other knew they had to leave. At any time he could think of one and forget the other. Or think of both and be stopped, torn with not knowing what to believe.

  Wish it was over, one way or the other, he thought.

  He left the girl’s question unanswered and went on up the path. She was at his back now. Glancing around, he saw she was climbing like a child learning to walk, sliding and falling and not making any kind of time.

  “You can’t stand straight,” he told her. “See, stoop and lean forward.” He showed her and she tried it. But she had little strength in her legs. In a minute she had to sit down on the path. Macie and the boys stepped over her knees and waited off to one side.

  “How do you do it—all the way from the lake and then up this mountain?” she asked. “Even Macie can do it, it’s impossible!”

  “Not when you do it every day,” M.C. told her, coming back and kneeling next to her. He pulled up long stalks of dying grass burned by the sun. “We learn from since we’re babies. You get lost and go on. Least, once I thought I was lost.”

  He grinned suddenly, engagingly, and the girl couldn’t help smiling.

  “Daddy,” M.C. said, “off in the trees watching me. See it’s this game to see if I could find my own way. Knew it was a game, but I still was scared. I still was bawling my head off. Knew he wasn’t going to come get me.”

  “That’s cruel,” she said.
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br />   “Well,” M.C. said, “I just had to keep on walking, nothing for it. And I walk a long kind of time. Then, see, I get interested in finding where I am. I remember—I stop crying. I stop remember even Daddy is there. See, the scare is gone out of me. I think and I think and I remember this: Home is higher than the hills. Home is higher—up and up. So see, the highest mountain is right there. I climb and climb and I’m home. Never lose me again.”

  “So it isn’t cruel,” she said. “It’s teaching.”

  “Daddy has to teach something so he won’t have to learn something.” He yanked a clump of grass up by the roots and threw it hard into the weeds.

  “You don’t like him?” the girl said. “Maybe I shouldn’t ask.” But she waited.

  He thought a moment. Years and years of his father. Walking, hunting with him. At the table. On the porch.

  “Nothing to do with liking,” he said finally. “Him and me, it’s a feeling—But I like the mountains. But we have to leave. Mama’s a great singer going to be a star.”

  The girl looked at him as if he were joking. His face was closed. Stubborn. She stared around at the bedraggled children looking on with their alert, serious faces.

  “You believe that?” she said.

  “It’s the truth,” he said. He got up, spun around and headed home. “Come on. These kids have to eat.”

  He left her to make her way with Macie Pearl and the boys. He was across the yard and on the porch before they had reached the pathway through the briers. He saw his pole and the junk around it. It was gleaming. A marker. Not his alone.

  Jones waited inside the door. “You sure took your sweet time,” he said.

  “Girl can’t even climb good!” M.C. said. He came in, holding the ends of the towel around his neck, and collapsed on the couch with seats like cushions of air.

  “You want to dirty up the sofa?” Jones asked him.

  For a moment M.C. lay there, letting his body sink down and down into the softness. Then he tossed the towel toward the kitchen where it landed smacking against the floor. Sliding down to the plush carpet, he stretched out on his back and closed his eyes.