The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3

by Donald Harington

  Divorced White Male, 39, living primitively as Bluff-dweller in rough but scenic mountain region, possibly alcoholic but non-smoker, small in stature but rugged, seeks feminine companion, preferably quiet but sensuous. Must like dog.

  By the time I returned to check my box for any responses, the few who sounded promising and had enclosed snapshots of themselves had already found situations elsewhere. The few others were impossibly homely, or underaged or overaged, or wanted an advance promise of marriage, or asked if there was a TV hookup available, or asked if they could bring a girlfriend along (or an aunt, or a mother), or were strict vegetarians, or wanted to know what breed of dog. I also had several nibbles from homosexual men who insisted that I would like them and that they were themselves Bluff-dwellers at heart. I corresponded with one woman for a while: we told each other the basic facts about our lives (she was a divorced college teacher of English who had become jaded with the current generation of students), and almost reached the point where she was ready to accept my invitation for a trial visit, when she confessed that she was “utterly passive in the sack,” that nothing could be done about it, that she had spent all her savings on psychiatric therapy, without help. “My former husband’s nickname for me was ‘The Remains’.” I almost answered, “R.I.P.,” but did not.

  One eighteenth of July I shaved off my beard, retrieved my best tropical suit from its careful wrappings, aired its wrinkles out, donned it, gave my finest Oxford elevators a thorough polishing, climbed into them, and hiked to the county seat, where, after tending to my mail, I sat on a bench by the courthouse, watching the girls go by. One of them, alone, seemed more idle, homely and simple-minded than the others. I approached her and said, “I need a housekeeper. Would seventy-five a week do, to start? No? A hundred, then?” When she convinced herself that I was neither drunk nor demented, and that such a wondrous salary was a legitimate offer, she asked for a few minutes leave to discuss it with her family, and returned in a pickup truck with two of her brothers, both armed with a pair of shotguns hanging over the rear window, who wanted to inspect her place of employment, and gave me a ride there, or as near there as the pickup could reach, some two miles down the mountain from my cavern, as I had to explain as best I could, and then to explain what sort of habitation she could expect to find (it wasn’t very large, I emphasized; it wouldn’t require much cleaning). The brothers gave one another dark and questioning looks; the girl continued to smile hopefully. One of the brothers said, “You mean it’s a cave?” Not exactly, I said, just a cavern (it was not until much later that I learned that most of these mountain people have an unnatural fear or superstition about any sort of cave or cavern). “Mister,” the brother said, “I don’t know what yore game is, but it’s too fur and snaky off up yonder, and we wouldn’t no more let Sister go off and live with ye than we’d let her git stuffed and used fer a store-winder dummy.” The girl began to snivel; they shoved her back into the cab of the pick-up. I thanked them for the ride.

  That night in my bed I cried tears of self-pity, thinking that I was doomed never, ever, to have a woman again.

  The months passed. Maybe the years passed. (The only way to escape those deadly tedious Three Horsemen: “Yesterday,” “Today,” and “Tomorrow,” is to confuse them utterly with one another.) One day, arriving at Kotex Falls to pick up my weekly jug, I found a man—or boy—there. At the sight of me—and by then I must have been a sight, my wild hair sprouting out of the holes of my sparring helmet like ferns from a punctured planter pot, my skin tanned almost as dark as an Indian’s, and my body cloaked in a regal but weird robe of turkey feathers, he grabbed up his shotgun and aimed it at me. I quickly dropped my atlatl and spears and raised my hands and told my dog to sit and stop snarling. The man—or boy, he could have been in his twenties or only pubescent—was not much more sightly than I: a fat ragbag, an overstuffed scarecrow, with a head much too small for the body and for the straw hat that would disintegrate if he tried to remove it. His heavy body seemed to list several degrees to one side. At his bare feet was a gallon earthenware jug identical to the empty one I had left by the falls and to the empty one I was returning, held up in one of my raised hands. At approximately the same instant it dawned on me that he was the purveyor of the liquor, or at least the purveyor’s courier or go-between, it dawned on him that I was a customer, and he lowered the shotgun.

  “You’ll find my ten-dollar bill under the rock,” I said, and took another ten out of the waistband of my breechclout. “And here’s for this week.”

  He took the bill and fetched the other from beneath the rock, and presented me with the full jug, took the two empties, and turned to go.

  “Where do you live?” I asked.

  He gave his head an almost imperceptible jerk forward, in the direction he was going. His straw hat fell off and disintegrated. He looked at it with woe.

  “Where?” I persisted. In the direction he had indicated there were no valleys, only higher ridges, steeper slopes, rising and rising.

  He finally found his voice, which was high, countertenor or male alto, incongruous for such a huge frame. “Aw, way back up over yonder in thar round about through them knobs.”

  “House or cabin?” I asked. It made a difference.

  The boy seemed to be debating with himself whether to tell me. Perhaps I was meddling. “Neither’n,” he said. “Hit’s sorta a rock house, or jist a cave. But you’d never find it.”

  “Do you live alone?”

  “Wal…more or less. Thar’s Ursulie and thar’s Robber.”

  “Sister and brother?”

  “Cousins. She’s a bar cub and he’s a full-growed ’coon.”

  “I see. You’re a hermit, then?” I said. It takes one to know one. And yet, somehow, I could not avoid feeling some resentment over this news, as if I had discovered a young competitor, a challenger for the title of Loner-in-Residence. This country aint big enough for you and me both, pard. Or maybe it was: it was vast and wild and sparsely settled, and folks had always remarked that if you took this county and flattened it out, ironed out all its hollows and ravines and gorges and mashed down all its peaks and escarpments, as if a gigantic steamroller crossed it, it would be bigger than that whole state southwest of here noted for its hugeness. “Do you make this stuff yourself?” I asked, needlessly, since I doubted he had any assistance from the bear cub or the raccoon. He nodded. “It’s excellent,” I declared.

  He blushed. “Aw, I jist make it the same way my pap and grandpap and all my foreparents have done it, fer years. We’ve always tried to do it right.” But he no longer seemed so eager to get away. He lingered, and we “visited.” I offered him my (or his) jug. “Jist a swig to rench my mouth,” he said, and, looking around, added in almost a whisper, “I aint of legal drinkin age yit, y’know.” I did not realize he intended to be humorous, for he was not grinning. We passed the jug back and forth. He squatted on his heels to relax, and I tried to remember what that position was called. I could often do it, as a boy, for seeming hours on end, but now as I attempted to assume that squat, I fell backwards, embarrassed, afraid that I had revealed myself as an outlander to the young moonshiner. My dog gave me a curious stare. On the second attempt I got myself into the proper squat: yes, I remembered it is called “hunker” or “hunkering down,” although it was painful for me to hold for very long. The boy seemed comfortable; he could have hunkered for the rest of the day in that pose. Infrequently over the months (years?) to come, I would chance upon him at the falls or elsewhere in the woods, and we would hunker and visit. Now we passed the jug back and forth. “Jist a nip fer my tonsils,” he said of one swallow. Of another: “Jist a little swill fer my gullet.” And so on. My ankles were wobbling violently from the effort to sit upon my heels and hold the hunker. “P’int yore heels more inwards,” he suggested. “Thet’s the way. Now, rest yore elbows more on yore knees. See?” And that adolescent moonshiner taught this middle-aging ex-curator how to hunker properly and comfortably. There
is really nothing to do with the hands while hunkering except to clasp them, and I clasped mine, but I took note of his long-fingered, almost delicate hands in contrast to the pudgy body: he was not simply clasping them but allowing the thumbs and fingers to play, to interreact, almost to dance with one another, like lords and ladies bowing and curtseying, tripping and curveting. It was fascinating to watch this. It did not at all seem to be a nervous habit but rather a graceful way to keep the hands from being idle. He interrupted the ballet of his fingers only periodically to take the jug, and even then the forefinger looping through the handle and the other digits curling around the neck seemed to continue their dance as he raised the jug to his mouth.

  Was it what I had had to drink, or did I hear him say this? I have often thought back to that moment, to reassure myself that I was at least sober enough not to have imagined what he said. At length he noticed my absorption with his fingers, and chuckled. He held them up, pressed together as if in prayer. “These here’s my friends,” he said, and let them back off and come together as in a square dance. Then he introduced them to me, one by one, and each bowed or curtsied as it was introduced.

  The left thumb: “Tricky Jick”

  The right thumb: “Large George”

  The left forefinger: “Day Digit”

  The right forefinger: “Diana Banana”

  The left middle finger: “Learnin Vernon”

  The right middle finger: “Jeleny Wieny”

  The left ring finger: “Every Clever”

  The right ring finger: “Latha the Way”

  He paused significantly and gave me an impish look before introducing the last couple,

  The left little finger: “Little No Name”

  The right little finger: “Stoney Nub”

  I knew then several things, if I were sober and did not simply imagine this young moonshiner. I knew most importantly that he was no mere uncouth teenaged moonshining hermit. And no mere choreographer of fingers. He was a sorcerer, possibly a wizard or warlock, an illusionist. He was Tricky Jick, the left thumb. He did not frighten me at all.

  Chapter twelve

  The effort to write my former wife does not succeed. The letter in its first draft is too self-pitying, and she had never tolerated my moments of cursing my lot or bemoaning my fate. She was not capable of genuine sympathy. The second draft is too analytical, too psychological, as if I am trying to explain away my defective character by using the attempted smothering and the subsequent non-mothering as crucial clues to my dependencies and hang-ups. By the third draft I am beginning to question my primary motive in writing the letter. Am I trying to get her to have me back? I don’t want to go back. And she wouldn’t come here. The fourth draft begins, “My father was buried beside my mother today and I inadvertently stumbled upon the funeral dressed in my Indian trappings. Few people there. None of Daddy’s friends. I don’t think he had any. Mostly local people, being polite: one of them an elderly lady, recently widowed, whose husband’s funeral I recently stumbled upon in the same cemetery. After Daddy’s funeral, I showed my sister and brother-in-law where I live. I don’t think they were impressed. Sis got high on my moonshine and reminded me of some things I had safely forgotten. She also revealed to me something I had never known but only sensed: that once, when I was five, my father tried to do away with me, he tried to smother me while I was sleeping, but was caught and stopped by my mother, who, however, was forbidden by him from ever smothering me with affection thereafter until her death. Does that tell you anything about me? Does it perhaps suggest that during the rocky years of our marriage, there was always inside me that five-year-old boy sending out desperate signals for affection? And a vicious circle: the more desperate the signal, the more you withheld affection, not wanting to be a mother to any of my children, let alone a mother to me. I am not accusing you; I am only trying to see the past clearly in order to learn how to deal with the future. You accused me of unwillingness or inability to change. How could I change, if I did not know what I had to change from? Of course there is no obliterating that small boy who cried out for love. But I think these years in solitude have buried him pretty thoroughly. No, wrong metaphor (or is it simile?). It suggests he is dead. He is in a deep sleep, a coma, chloroformed by this rare mountain-woods air, anesthetized by a nearly total lack of human contact…although after my sister had left I went to the house (or cabin) of one of my nearest neighbors, the recently widowed elderly lady, to borrow a lantern to find my way home, and she fed me supper and we had an interesting little chat, and I expect that when I go to return the lantern tomorrow (or this afternoon; it is well past midnight) I will chat with her some more. She’s almost twice my age, but lovely, and not lonely as a widow should properly be. Perhaps I will begin to see her quite often. Do you want to come for a visit? I would like to see you again, it has been so long, and partly for a purely selfish motive, if you want to see it that way: I’d like to find out if you do notice any change in me. I think you might find that I am not at all who I was.”

  I am not happy with this draft either, but I place it in an envelope and address it. I will not wait for months to mail it, but ask the old woman if she could find someone to mail it for me.

  Extinguishing my lamp, I bid my dog good-night, then guzzle a while straight from my jug of sleeping medicine, and climb into bed. My bed conforms as nearly as I could make it to the Bluff-dweller type: in a dry corner of the cavern, on a smooth flat rock ledge, I had first laid a deep and well-compacted layer of old oak leaves; over that, a thick layer of dried grasses; over that a “mattress” or bag woven tightly of long bluestem grass and stuffed with down from wild turkeys; over that, and upon which I lay, a blanket of rabbit skins sewn together, and when it was cold I covered myself with one or more blankets of rabbit skin and, when very cold, a coverlet of deerskin. The bed conforms to my body without being too soft or sagging, and I sleep deeply…although whether this is a result of the comfort of the bed or the comfort of the booze I cannot say. My bed is ample, and could easily sleep two, if it got the chance.

  And yet, possibly because it hasn’t had the chance, I have an ambivalent love/hate attitude toward my bed. Many people hate to go to bed at night but love it too much to leave it in the morning. My relationship with my bed is more complicated than that. Just about everyone I ever knew who died, died in bed. I shall probably die, if not in this bed, in a more sterile motorized bed. I was born in a bed, and it was traumatic. I was nearly murdered in a bed, and it left my psyche in chaos. I calculate that I have spent equal parts of that one-third of life we spend asleep sleeping alone or with somebody, some warm body, although if I discount the nights with the artificial warmth of my doll wife, it would come out less than 50–50. In my Indian bed, if I dream at all, I dream of the hunt, and of overcoming my prey by flying through the air, although these power-dreams often merge into nightmares of being buried beneath the bodies of all the rabbits I’ve slain to make my blankets. All my life has been a counterpoint or fugue of going and staying, nay, a simultaneous going and staying, leaving and returning, free and caught, departing and arriving, forsaking and clinging. I go to bed but stay awake. I forsake my busy mind but cling to my consciousness. I depart the day but arrive at another one. I’m free of me but caught by myself. I leave my life but return to it.

  Over the years I’ve learned exactly how much booze, no more, no less, I need to put me to sleep, on any given night, given the occasion, the weather, my mood, what I had for supper, the phases of the moon, and other variables. Yet tonight (or in this wee morning), I cannot sleep, for obvious reasons, and must rise again and again for more help from the jug, until, at last, when I cannot even know what I’m doing, I take the jug to bed with me, for the first time, where I find it empty beside me when I awake. It is already late afternoon. I lie here, until it is even later. One advantage of remaining in bed after waking is that it helps me get my priorities in order, if I have any. Usually I have none, and remain in bed as long as I like, t
hinking idle thoughts, or dwelling overmuch on my mistreatment by the world. But now I remember an errand I must do: return the lantern to the old woman.

  I rise up, and shadowbox a while to get the kinks out. My dog is still in slumber, having dreams of herding sheep, although he’s never done that, shepherd though he is. What an injustice that Nature suffers dogs and cats to sleep all they like, while men are expected to catch the early worm (the worm should have stayed in bed).

  I take a quick shower under the waterfall, and then, eschewing my breechclout, sandals and robe, I take from their wrappings trousers and jacket, a fresh white shirt and a necktie, and I polish my dress shoes. I even comb my hair and trim my beard, feeling like a youth preening for his first date. My dog is having a nightmare of being pursued by poisonous snakes, and he wakes in time to accompany me down the mountainside.

  But when I reach the road, I see that a new red Chevrolet pick-up truck is parked in the yard of the old woman’s cabin. I retreat some distance into the woods, just far enough that the truck remains in sight, and I wait. I have no watch, of course, and little sense of time; perhaps I wait an hour, perhaps half that. I count the first lightning bug and then another. Perhaps the visitor is having supper with the old woman. I realize I have not eaten since she fed me last, and I’m hungry. My stomach growls, and my dog returns the sound. “Hush!” I hiss at both of them.