The Homecoming

by Earl Hamner, Jr.

  Throwing the ax over his shoulder, Clay-Boy started back down the slope. Darkness would be upon the ridges soon, but Clay-Boy walked in a rosy circle of light cast by the pine knot torch. Even so, he looked back over his shoulder from time to time.

  At the foot of the mountain he found another hemlock, almost as pretty as the first. He chopped it down and lifted it on his shoulder. Just at that moment, unwarmed by any sunset light, the gray day darkened into night. He walked in darkness now, for the resin torch had burnt out. He did not mind. The lights of home were within his sight.

  THREE

  Two applesauce cakes were on display in the middle of the kitchen table when Clay-Boy walked in. He breathed in the spicy aroma appreciatively. Something had happened during his absence. There was some quickening of excitement, a sense of Christmas rushing inexorably down upon them, but in spite of the two proud cakes, he knew that his mother was not really prepared for the day.

  “I was getten ready to send out a search party for you,” said Olivia. She stood by the old wood-burning cook stove, where she was frying slices of ham.

  “I just poked along,” lied Clay-Boy. Olivia was inclined to be overly protective, and he had learned not to reveal his more dangerous adventures on the mountain for fear she might not allow him to venture there alone.

  “Did you get the tree?” she asked.

  “Yes ma’am,” he answered. “It’s out on the porch. Where is everybody?” asked Clay-Boy, sensing an unnatural quiet in the house.

  “I sent the children over to ask Mama and Papa to come have supper with us.”

  Clay-Boy noticed that the ham had been pared down to the bone and that every edible slice had been removed. He knew that it was the last ham left from the hog his father had butchered and cured in the fall.

  “Mama, what are we goen to have for the Christmas dinner?”

  “I don’t know, boy,” answered Olivia. “Maybe I’ll wring Gretchen’s neck and make stew and dumplins.”

  “Gretchen’s a layen hen,” objected Clay-Boy. “What’ll we do for eggs if we make a stew out of her?”

  “I don’t know that either,” replied Olivia. “I’m feelen reckless. Liven each day as it comes. Let tomorrow take care of itself.”

  Olivia tried to make her voice sound convincingly free of care, but she didn’t succeed. She and Clay-Boy both knew that the money Clay had left with her last week for food had dwindled to less than three dollars. There were some sweet potatoes left in the storage bin in the basement, some dried apples, and a few Mason jars of canned tomatoes, peas, string beans and peach preserves left from her summer’s canning. Seeing Clay-Boy’s troubled look, Olivia said reassuringly, “We’ll get by.”

  “What about Santa Claus for the kids?” he asked.

  “I made some little things,” answered Olivia. “Dresses for each of the girls. Warm pajamas for you boys.”

  “They’ll know you made them,” observed Clay-Boy. “They’ll know they’re not from Santa Claus. They’ll stop believen.”

  “Maybe it’s time they did,” said Olivia soberly. “In hard times like these maybe it’s silly to let children go on believen in foolishness.”

  “I remember when I was little,” said Clay-Boy. “Remember how we used to put out corn flakes for Santa Claus and carrots for his reindeer? It used to take me hours to get to sleep, thinken of him right here in the house. And then in the mornen when the presents were all under the tree and the corn flakes and carrots all gone, I really believed, Mama. I believed.”

  “Times were different. We had money to spend in them days.”

  “You reckon the Depression will last forever, Mama?”

  “I don’t know, boy,” answered Olivia wearily. “Mr. Roosevelt says it won’t. Now stop worryen about things you can’t help. Go put up the Christmas Tree. At least we’ll have somethen pretty to look at.”

  Clay-Boy went to the barn, found his father’s handsaw and a square block of wood to use as the base for the Christmas Tree. He returned to the back porch where the tree leaned against the wall. There he shook the tree vigorously, freeing it of the powdery snow which still clung to its limbs so it would be dry enough to take into the house. He sawed the pungent trunk of the evergreen evenly, and nailed the square block to the foot of the trunk.

  The boy worked rapidly to set up the tree in the living room before his brothers and sisters arrived home. They would clamor to start decorating it immediately, and he wanted it ready for them.

  Once it stood in a corner the tree released its wintery green aroma, which quickly permeated the living room. A tree in the house brought with it a feeling of mystery. Into the house the tree brought with it the memory of thousands of white-hot summer suns, the long wilderness silence of snow-mantled winters, the crash of thunderous storms, the softness of a new green spring, and all the wild things which had rested in its shade or nestled in its branches. There was something pagan and alien in its presence which pervaded the house.

  “You sure that’s the same tree we picked out last summer?” asked Olivia when she came in to inspect it.

  “No, it’s not, Mama,” replied Clay-Boy. “Somethen broke some branches on that other one.”

  Just then there was a great stomping of feet on the back porch, and they knew that the children had arrived home. Olivia rushed to the kitchen door, hoping they might have encountered Clay somewhere along the way, that he would be standing there when she opened the door with Pattie-Cake piggy back on his shoulders and the other children holding his hands and coattails. But there were only the children and their grandparents.

  “Merry Christmas, daughter,” boomed Homer Italiano in his voice, which was so loud that it lent authority to anything he said, no matter how commonplace it might be.

  “Come on in, Papa,” cried Olivia. “How are you, Mama?”

  “I think I got a crick in my back,” replied Ida. Homer’s wife was a thin wraith of a woman who, unlike her husband, spoke in a thin near-whisper.

  Alone with his wife, Homer was tender and dependent, an indulged child as much as a husband, but when they were in the presence of others he found it necessary to deride Ida’s talents and personality.

  “That woman is crazy,” remarked Homer with a wondering shake of his head.

  “Don’t listen to him,” whispered Ida, unbuttoning her coat.

  “What’s Mama done now,” laughed Olivia, ushering the children out of the cold and into the kitchen.

  “Been streaken all over the hills taken orders for the Larkin Company. Old woman like her ought to be home sitten by the fire in a rocken chair ’stead of scooten ’round like a snow plow!”

  “I made three dollars,” protested Ida. “And that’s three dollars we wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been out taken orders.”

  It was then that the children spotted the Christmas Tree, and with shrieks of delight they streamed into the living room to admire it. The grandparents came to the door and observed the tree for a moment, then turned back to take seats around the kitchen table.

  “Where’s Clay, daughter?” asked Homer.

  “Somewhere between here and Waynesboro,” answered Olivia. “Be here soon, I reckon.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” observed Ida. “I’ll bet you he’s down yonder drinken whiskey with those Staples women right this second.” Ida was a pillar of the Baptist Church and she lost no opportunity to remind her daughter that she had married a heathen.

  “Mama, I won’t have you talken about Clay that way,” objected Olivia.

  “He drinks, don’t he?” snapped Ida.

  “He takes a drink,” said Olivia. “There’s a difference. And anyway it’s Christmas Eve. Clay’ll want to be with his family.”

  “At least he’s worken,” said Homer. “That’s more’n can be said for the rest of us.”

  Nobody had any reply for this.

  “Hard times,” said Homer philosophically. Ida nodded absently.

  “I was listenen to the radio while ago,
” continued Homer. “They’re doen right smart talken about this New Deal.”

  “It’s what the country needs all right,” said Olivia.

  “I hear ’em talken about it all the time, but I don’t know what it means,” said Ida.

  “It means we got a man in the White House that’s goen to do somethen,” announced Homer. “Roosevelt says he’s goen to open the banks, get the country moven again, and I believe he’ll do it. You heard any of them Fireside Chats of his, daughter?”

  “I heard one the other night,” replied Olivia. “Talken about the NRA or some such thing.”

  “There’s some that feels the country is goen to the dogs,” said Homer. “But I don’t pay ’em no heed. I say Roosevelt is goen to keep his word.”

  “They say she’s real nice,” observed Ida. “Joe Phillips was up there in Washington on the Veterans March. She came out there and shook hands with everybody, tasted the stew and all. Joe said he got up as close to her as I am to you.”

  “I don’t care what they do as long as they get the mill open and Clay can come home to work again,” said Olivia.

  “Clay ought to be showen up here pretty soon,” said Homer.

  “I expect him any minute,” said Olivia, and she gave her mother a confident look to show that she meant what she said.

  In the living room there was a crisis. Clay-Boy had been overseeing the decoration of the Christmas Tree. On the topmost point of the tree he had fixed the silver glass star which had belonged to Grandma Spencer. Then they had placed the store-bought ornaments and ropes of tinsel on the tree, but there were still bare spots. To fill them each of the children had brought down from their rooms decorations they had made themselves.

  John had varnished some pine cones with gold paint. Mark had found a heavy antique brass key and had polished it so that it shone with a burnished glow. Shirley had joined circles of construction paper together to form a chain. From a piece of red flannel, Matt had constructed a Santa Claus with black-eyed peas for eyes, a lump of coal for a nose and a long ragged cotton beard. Even though she had made it for Thanksgiving, Pattie-Cake, because she was the baby, had been allowed to hang a crayon-colored, cutout of a turkey. From tinfoil Luke had fashioned several silver bells and when the decorations were all in place the tree had developed a certain helter-skelter style.

  The trouble developed when Becky arrived with her decoration—a blue jay’s nest containing one speckled grayish-blue egg.

  “You can’t put that thing on the tree,” said Matt. “It’s full of mites and that old rotten egg will smell bad.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talken about,” objected Becky. “This egg is not rotten. I blew all the stuff out of it. Inside it’s clean as a whistle.”

  “I don’t care,” said Matt. “It’s still got bird poop on it. Who wants a nasty thing like that on a Christmas Tree?”

  “I do,” said Becky firmly. “And it’s not nasty.”

  “You’re such a crazy, Becky,” said Shirley.

  “Oh, go paddle your canoe,” said Becky airily.

  Pretending to ignore her brothers and sisters, Becky reached into the most conspicuous spot on the tree and began arranging the blue jay’s nest on a handy fork while she sang the first stanza of “The Little Old Cathedral in the Pines.”

  “All I’ve got to say,” said Clay-Boy, “is Santa Claus is goen to take one smell of that bird poop and he’s goen to head right back up the chimney.”

  Pattie-Cake began to cry.

  “What’s the matter with you, cry-baby?” demanded Becky.

  “Santa Claus won’t come because of you,” wept Pattie-Cake.

  “Look what you’ve done now!” scolded Shirley. “Made her cry.”

  Pattie-Cake began to cry even more loudly.

  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Becky,” said Matt.

  “Oh, you’re all a bunch of piss-ants,” swore Becky.

  “Mama! Mama!” several voices chimed at once.

  Olivia appeared at the door, wiping her hands on her apron.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “Becky made Pattie-Cake cry and she ruined the Christmas Tree with bird poop, and she said a bad word!” cried Shirley, her eyes blinking with indignation.

  “You asken for a spanken, girl?” inquired Olivia, fixing Becky with an accusing eye.

  Becky refused to reply. She turned her head away, lifted her chin in the air and pretended she was a rich city girl in Charlottesville, wrapped in a full length white mink coat, casually shopping for diamonds at Keller and George. She had looked in the window once and ever since had treasured the fact that her eyes had beheld diamonds.

  She was saved from the threatened punishment by the sounds of footsteps, stomping off snow on the back porch.

  “There’s Daddy,” several voices shouted in unison, and like a school of minnows they flowed into the kitchen and threw open the back door.

  Standing on the back porch was Charlie Sneed, Clay’s friend and companion in hunting and fishing, woodcutting, drinking and poker-playing. Before the Depression he had worked beside Clay in the machine shop. Since the mill had closed he had become a backwoods Robin Hood, poaching game, some of which he sold in Charlottesville for cash money; the rest he gave to friends or families he knew to be in special need.

  Charlie’s most imposing feature was a large round belly which he called his “beer keg.” Sometimes Charlie held himself erect and the “beer keg” moved above and sometimes flowed over his belt. At other times it simply rested comfortably below his belt. Charlie was given to patting it fondly, like a mother fondling some overgrown blob of a child.

  Charlie’s face was jolly and round. His eyebrows and his hair were thick curls of reddish blond. When he smiled his brown eyes twinkled. He looked for all the world like a rural Santa Claus on his day off, doing some work around the farm.

  “Where’s Clay?” asked Charlie as he entered the kitchen and closed the door behind him.

  “He’s late tonight,” said Olivia.

  “Hey there, Mr. Homer, Miss Ida. How y’all?” asked Charlie.

  “Pretty good for old folks,” answered Ida.

  “Anybody else around here?” asked Charlie mysteriously.

  “Just us,” answered Olivia wonderingly.

  “Ep Bridges been around tonight?”

  Ep Bridges was the local sheriff and game warden, the beefy red-neck descendant of a Hessian deserter and a Siouan squaw. He was ardent in his enforcement of law and order, especially those laws concerning the taking of wild game out of season.

  “I saw his truck go by once today,” answered Olivia. “But he hasn’t been around here.”

  Now Charlie turned to the children who regarded him curiously.

  “Can you kids keep your mouths shut if I let you in on a secret?”

  “Sure, Charlie,” they answered.

  With an air of mystery, but yet taking pleasure in what he was doing, Charlie opened the kitchen door and stepped outside. When he came back in he carried a wild turkey gobbler. It had been shot through the head, and its rich bronze and gray and black wing feathers hung down awkwardly.

  “I knew Clay wouldn’t have a chance to go hunten this Christmas so I thought he’d appreciate a little meat on the table.”

  Tears welled in Olivia’s eyes. She had worried all day about what she would serve for Christmas dinner. Now she envisioned the turkey, roasted a rich brown, sitting in the middle of the table in her Blue Willow platter.

  “We’re much obliged to you, Charlie,” said Olivia, taking the turkey from him and carrying it to the sink.

  “Don’t say a thing about it,” said Charlie. “It’s my pleasure.”

  “I thought the hunten season was over,” said Ida with a faint air of disapproval.

  “It is,” said Charlie cheerfully.

  “Don’t it scare you to break the law on Christmas Eve?”

  “No, ma’am, it don’t,” said Charlie, firmly. “Why s
hould people go hungry when there’s game aplenty?”

  “Seems like a sin though,” said Ida. “I don’t think I could eat it.”

  “Well, you’re goen to, Mama,” said Olivia, “if you come to dinner tomorrow. And you stop worryen Charlie. This turkey is the answer to my prayers. I declare, I think I’ll cook it tonight! Won’t Clay Spencer be surprised when he walks in that door and finds a Christmas turkey roasten in the oven!”

  The storm outside seemed less threatening now. Christmas dinner, if nothing else, was assured. She was in her own house and her children were safe from harm. If only Clay were here she could ignore completely the snow-laden wind which roared in baffled rage at the windows and doors.

  FOUR

  Clay-Boy sat on a three-legged stool, while he milked the Guernsey cow, Chance, his head resting lightly in her flanks. When his father went off to Waynesboro to work, among the other chores Clay-Boy had inherited were the morning and evening milking. It wasn’t a job he minded. The cow placidly chewed her mash, occasionally giving him a companionable flick of her tail. Once she turned and lowed briefly and examined him with her dark, serious, luminous eyes, thanking him, Clay-Boy supposed, for the extra bucket of mash he had given her, since it was Christmas Eve.

  A warm silence hung in the barn, broken only by the swishing sound of the milk as Clay-Boy did his work, using both hands to propel the milk into the bucket. The lantern, hung on a nail behind the boy, cast a yellow circle of light which faded at the edge of the circle to grotesque shadows. The door was closed, for the gusty North wind had brought fresh snow which showed no signs of abating.

  Clay-Boy thought of the albino deer and the doe. He wondered where they were now and whether the buck had covered the doe successfully. Late breeding would mean that the fawn would be born past the season next summer, and might not mature enough to survive the winter. He resolved to watch for the fawn when summer came. A baby deer would be almost impossible to find because of the near perfection of its camouflage, but if the new creature took its father’s albino coloration, Clay-Boy thought he might have a better chance.