M.C. Higgins, the Great

by Virginia Hamilton

  “You think I’m going to swim in this fog?”

  “No telling what you might do.”

  “Now she’s going to worry some more,” M.C. said, as if Banina wasn’t there. “I just thought I’d maybe bare-hand fish and help her out.”

  “Help her all you want,” Banina said, “but don’t count on her.”

  “Mama, I’m going.” With a gentle smile at her, he vanished again in the fog. His disembodied voice came, like a mystery: “I’ll see you by darkness, Banina-honey.”

  “Don’t get your heart set. M.C.?”

  He was gone.

  I’m running.

  Only he couldn’t run because of the fog. He had to pick his way down the mountainside. If it had been night, he wouldn’t have had any trouble. He knew night paths through the hills as well as he knew them by light. But M.C. was unaccustomed to fog. And when he was through the gully and on the hill path, he had to worry about direction. He lost his bearings when he went faster than a walk. So he held his hands out in front of him, touching branches, bushes. One moment he would be terrified his hands might touch a face; the next, he was certain Great Anger of his imagination followed him.

  Wish I did have a dog. Or a gun. Something out here with me.

  Ben? No. Catch him later on Sarah’s High. How does he know when I’m coming?

  All M.C. had was his keen senses and his knowledge of the paths. Points of undergrowth were visible and they seemed to crowd him. His feet wouldn’t move smoothly.

  Wish I had on my tennis shoes.

  His pants were muddy and his shirt was wet from hitting branches. The fog wasn’t going to clear and no sun would come to dry up the night rains. But the thickness of mist would get thinner and thinner, until it had the look of metal with no shine.

  My pole.

  He’d forgot even to glance at it.

  By the time he reached the pass of Hall Mountain, his pants were muddy to the knee. He wondered at the quiet, and whether his being there somehow changed the natural and huge stillness.

  M.C. stopped. Bending down, he kneeled on the ground. Feeling the ancient height of mountains looming over him, he ran his hands down among weeds to the dark earth. No reason for him to pause there. And yet doing so gave him an odd inkling of something to come.

  What is it?

  Cool on the surface, the earth was still warm underneath where he dug with his hands. But coolness was on its way down into the earth. By feeling the ground, he had gauged the time for the change of seasons.

  Soon time for school. Maybe not for me.

  He got to his feet. He knew he had reached the end of the pass when, abruptly, the ground seemed to rise. The fog irritated him, taking from him all angles of depth and height.

  How will she find her way to town? Thinking of his mother.

  How did she find her way this far north? Thinking of Sarah.

  She’d never find her way out of this without me. Lurhetta. What if she’s. . . .

  He dragged his feet. Seeing the base of the ridge, he had an urge to turn and head home. But the fog had risen enough for him to see his way onward.

  It billowed out at the top of the ridge like a pillow against a headboard.

  Wish I’d stayed asleep.

  But he went on, climbing the ridge where he could see nothing until he was over the crest. Tricky stones clattered; then he was below the fog. The lake was milk-white with a white fog blanket hanging about twenty feet above it. Fog rolled in the trees like smoke.

  M.C. smoothed his hands over his arms. From head to foot, he was soaking wet. His hair was white from beads of moisture clinging to it.

  Down the shore, he could see the pile of brush she had arranged to hide her tent on its far side. He walked nearer through the rolling silence, around the pile. There, he suddenly bent over. He stooped, sliding his hands on the stones, as if entering through the tent opening. Pebbles, hard and damp under his knees. He searched the ground.

  Not a word.

  His insides churned. There was no tent.

  Not a good-by.

  Lurhetta Outlaw had disappeared without a trace.

  She didn’t have to go like that.

  Almost without a trace. For in the center of that space where the tent should have been was a black handle, flush with the ground. M.C. stared at it. He grabbed it, but it was attached to something. He had to twist and pull it out.

  Her knife came out clean. Smooth and sharp, as always, it was a knife fit for a hunter.

  For me. Or did she forget it?

  Not stuck in the ground like that, if she forgot it. She left it.

  He held the knife on the flat of his palms with the hilt and tip in the crook of his thumbs. Carrying it that way, he walked stiffly back towards the ridge. He should have rested. His legs felt weak and rubbery.

  All the time M.C. carried the knife, he had visions about it. The way he would hunt with it. How he could easily thrust it into his own heart. He walked the whole way as if he carried something heavy and dead.

  Finally at the gully, he skirted the mountain. At the plateau, he stopped still, hearing his brothers and sister come down, excited in the lifting fog, in a hurry to get to the lake to see M.C. and Lurhetta. Then he went on up to Sarah’s high, where he walked heavily and turkey-gobbled to the knife.

  Now he asked the knife, “Why did she do it?”

  And the knife said in the voice of Lurhetta: “Follow me.”

  But which way? How do I know how to get to you?

  The knife would say no more.

  Near the ravine but still on the path, he picked out Ben among trees a foot away. Ben glided up to him without a sound. M.C. held the knife up for him to see. He peered around Ben for Lurhetta, but there was no one.

  Ben shook his head.

  M.C. nodded. Once again he carried the knife as if it were dead. He turned to go.

  “M.C., you have a skunk caught this time. Can’t you smell it on me?” Ben said.

  Instantly waves of skunk odor swirled in the air, gagging M.C.

  “I had to knock that trap into the ravine and into the stream.”

  M.C. nodded and walked away.

  “M.C.”

  He headed home. Soon he plunged through the gully and strained up Sarah’s side, carrying the knife out in front of him.

  All was quiet on the outcropping when he got there. Banina was gone. Jones must have gone somewhere, for the front door of the house was locked. With the children gone, he knew the back door would be shut tight. Staring at the house, he hated Lurhetta. The clapboards of his home were soiled and discolored from mountain dirt and wind. The porch was cracked everywhere, with the steps breaking away into chunks. Streaked with soot, the roof sagged.

  Burn it down. Nothing but an outlaw shack.

  Through his blurring anger, he glimpsed his pole in the listless light. Its metal sheen was smooth and sleek and he felt no hate for it as he did for the shack and the girl.

  Haven’t seen you in forever.

  He headed for the pole with a feel for it coming back to him.

  Let’s go for a ride.

  Gingerly, he climbed over car parts with the knife between his teeth. He remembered how to grasp the pole hand over hand and how to twist his legs. He climbed with his legs tight around and muscles pushing. Up and up and faster he went, as the knowledge of how to climb smooth metal seeped back into his mind.

  The marker of the dead. But I’m alive.

  M.C. had to grasp the bicycle seat and pull up on it with hands and arms working, in order to get his feet on the pedals. He had to almost get his stomach on the seat. Here, he could fall. He could bust open, hitting the ground. But his balance was fine and he didn’t fall. He pulled himself up and sat, taking the knife in one hand.

  Why did you leave the knife?

  Well, out of kindness. I had to leave.

  Didn’t you like me?

  M.C. pressed the knife a moment against his chest, just to get the feel of it.

&
nbsp; Never to show her how to swim or to know the hills.

  The hurt of her going pressed in on him, like the thinning fog. High up in the air, he swung his pole in its sweeping arc. He thrust the knife at forming clouds. The fog was lifting far off on the Ohio. So M.C. stabbed the river and cut it in two. He sliced off chimneys of the steel mill, barely visible. And he cried out once as his pole swayed and swooped, chopping up the mist-shrouded town of Harenton.

  Never to show me which road to take—why did you leave the knife?

  Because I don’t live on a mountain.

  Thank you for giving it to me.

  He could see hills before him fading and returning, not solid or steady at all.

  He gouged a hole in the side of one, but he had no anger strong enough for murdering hills. He could feel their rhythm like the pulse beat of his own blood rushing. If they faded never to return, would his pulse stop its beat as well?

  You need it living on the mountain.

  Thank you for it. But not for leaving.

  His pole shuddered along its length and was still. He clamped the knife between his teeth again and slid down the pole. Stumbling over car parts, M.C. scraped his leg on a jagged piece of metal. He never felt the pain or the blood flowing. But at that very instant, he saw the single sunflower his mother loved. Next to the pump, its head drooped. Without sun, it looked about to die.

  Trancelike, he stumbled over to Sarah’s Mountain where it rose behind the house, as if he meant to walk right through it. But he stopped and kneeled suddenly, with both hands clamped tightly around the knife handle, plunging the blade into the soil. Shaking, raging with ever more forceful jabs, he stabbed the earth.

  Clumps of rock and earth loosened and fell around M.C.’s knees. They felt cool, smelled faintly rancid. He stared at the clumps, the knife poised in front of him. For a long moment, he waited; a perfect idea formed in his mind.

  He jabbed again. Earth had been softened by rain for an inch or more. Twisting the knife handle, he was able to get the dirt and rock up in bigger lumps. Soon he had a small pile, and he leaned back a moment to look at his work. Then gazing far up Sarah’s, he saw the dark underside of the spoil heap where it spilled over the highway cut.

  The car wrecks around his pole. He went over there, the knife handle held between his teeth, and pulled at a fender. It scraped with an ugly sound, but it came loose.

  Lurhetta, thanks.

  What for? I only left you the knife. I like to travel, but I’m not a camper. And it’s better not to carry a knife, when traveling.

  “What I Did This Summer,” by Lurhetta Outlaw.

  Sounds like the kind of thing they made me write when I was a kid. They’ll want a better heading at the top.

  How’s this? “Of hills and mountains and tunnels,” by Lurhetta Outlaw.

  They make you capitalize the first word and every noun after it. But it’s still too long.

  Okay. I have it now. “M.C. Higgins, the Great,” by Lurhetta Outlaw.

  You dig a trench for the fender and then you pile the dirt and rock around.

  I said, “M.C. Higgins, the Great.”

  I heard you, too. I like that one the best.

  Or you lean the fender against the pile and make another pile of dirt on behind it. Pack the dirt in tight and when the fender is standing straight, you add more dirt until it’s covered. That will take awhile.

  Do you think you will ever come back?

  Silence in his mind. He was busy piling dirt around the fender and packing it in tight when Macie Pearl came up behind him. Panting hard, she stood there a moment, catching her breath.

  Finally she said, “M.C., what you doing? Daddy’s gone for lawn work.”

  “He hates lawn work,” M.C. said.

  “He went anyhow,” Macie said. “M.C., look at your leg. It’s all bloody.”

  M.C. looked at his leg above the ankle, surprised to see he had scraped it. He pressed some dirt into the torn flesh.

  “What are you doing, M.C.?” Macie asked.

  “Making a wall,” he told her.

  “What kind of a wall?”

  “You’ll see when I’m finished.”

  Harper and Lennie Pool came up. With Macie, they sat near to where M.C. struggled with the knife.

  “Making a wall,” Macie explained to them.

  They didn’t ask her what kind of wall, or even why a wall. For they had been to the lake, all three of them, where they discovered that the tent and the girl were gone. Now they watched M.C. closely. They wondered, but they said not a word.

  Soon the boys were leaning over and playing with the dirt M.C. had loosened from the mountain. When he didn’t object, they scooted closer and began packing more dirt on the mound around the fender.

  Macie Pearl crawled over to help with the wall. She watched M.C.’s arm stab in and out of the dirt. Studying his hand and the side of his face.

  “Where’d you get that knife?” she asked.

  It took M.C. a moment to answer, so hard was he concentrating. But after a time he leaned back on his knees and wiped perspiration from his face. “She left it for me, in the sand,” he said.

  “Lurhetta Outlaw?”

  “Well, who else?” M.C. said.

  “Is she gone away?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will she ever come back, you think?”

  “I think she’s gone and never will come back,” M.C. said.

  “Oh.”

  This summer, I travel in my car to mountains. I met a lot of strange people with different ways from us. They had a spider web you could sit on. I learned how to go through a water tunnel and how to trap a rabbit and kill it. I met M.C., the Great, with a tall pole.

  The children had another fender, a motor and part of a crankshaft dragged over to the growing mound by the time Jones came up the side of Sarah’s about noon. He spied them working at something as the mill whistle blew for lunch. The whistle was a dull scream on the heavy air. The children and M.C. hardly noticed it; they didn’t hear Jones coming at all.

  Jones came closer to them to watch. He looked from the mound of dirt to M.C.’s stabbing arm. He stared hard at the knife every time M.C. raised up his arm. He glanced around looking for Lurhetta; and then he looked from the metal pieces at the mound to the car parts around the pole. When it came to him what M.C. was trying to do, he gazed up at the top of Sarah’s. He could see the dark and giant heap rising out of mist like a festering boil. He looked down at the bent, straining backs of the children, astonishment creeping into his eyes. He shook his head at them, but he continued to stand there, silently watching M.C.’s arm and the bit of dirt and rock loosened with each downward stab.

  Jones stood there a long while before he turned and went to the front porch. He kneeled at the side of the porch and crawled halfway under on his belly. His legs stretched and strained; and when he came out again, he was dragging a piece of shovel. It was rusted, old, with only a stump of a wood handle. Jones got up and turned the shovel over and back, poking it into the ground. He lifted it up to examine it, where rust fell away in flakes. Finally he carried it over to M.C. and leaned it on the mound where M.C. was working.

  M.C. didn’t notice the shovel at first. He saw Jones, and his temper flared suddenly, causing his eyes to go dark and his face to tighten. He then saw the shovel, but he wouldn’t give up his knife for it. Jones took up the shovel, holding its broken shaft between his hands and pushing his foot down on one side of the broad blade.

  “You can bring up more dirt in one time,” he said. He forced down on the shaft and the blade came up full of rocky earth.

  Jones dug until he had a good pile. He stopped, but still M.C. would not have the shovel. Jones walked away to the side of Sarah’s where he found some broken branches and some brush, and brought all of it over to M.C.

  “You can put anything in a wall—trees, anything. You can make it thick and more hard. At the last,” he told M.C., “you can make it higher, wider. It will never c
rumble and fall.”

  “I make it the way I want,” M.C. said. “It’s my idea.”

  “Use the shovel,” Jones told him.

  “I use what I want!” M.C. stood, clutching the knife. “Telling me what to do all the time; what to think—and next summer, the kids watch themselves . . . because I’ll be working. And if Mr. Killburn can’t pay me, I’ll take his vegetables for pay.”

  “Killburn!” Jones said. “You sound like a fool.”

  “Who’s the fool?” M.C. said, his voice quiet but tense. “I could’ve been working for them all this time.”

  “I wouldn’t take a milkweed from those kind,” Jones said.

  “Then you’re the fool.”

  “Watch what you say to me,” Jones said. “That girl went off and left, is that it?”

  “She left, but that’s not it.”

  “Well then, what is it?” Jones asked.

  M.C. heaved and sighed. He looked up at the gray sky. “I finally got something through my head,” he said.

  “Something what?” Jones said.

  Not just living on the mountain. But me, living on the mountain.

  Living . . . anywhere. You, living.

  “I play with anybody I want,” M.C. said. “This is my home. I live here, too.” Backing away from Jones toward the front of the house: “Ben? Hey you, Ben?”

  He kept his eyes on Jones, who came slowly toward him. At the edge of Sarah’s, still watching his father, he gave off a minor cadence yodel. He broke it off at its height of sound and turned it into an ear-splitting turkey gobble. The hills took up the noise, flattening it and rolling it over the land in gobbling echoes.

  M.C. disappeared in the undergrowth of briers, screaming Ben’s name at the top of his lungs. A minute after he had gone, he returned, jumping out at them so suddenly, that Jones staggered back. M.C. didn’t stop, but hurried to the wall he was building. He was on his knees again when Ben appeared in the exact spot where M.C. had stood calling him.

  “Come on here, Ben,” M.C. said, not turning around, nor changing the rhythm of his arm movement. “See, I’m building a wall.”

  Ben walked all the way around the far side of M.C.’s pole, but no farther. He never took his eyes off Jones. “What kind of wall?” he said faintly.

  “Well,” M.C. said. “Since I have to live here, I want something big between me and that spoil.”