Is it the Holy Spirit? I thought. Is it the guardian angel watching over Tom? Is it the other people who have died in this room? I shuddered and blinked.
Suddenly I saw all the things I had hated about Tom I could just as well have loved. Maybe that was me seeing through other eyes. Maybe Locke was right about me refusing to accept Tom’s gifts. I saw what fools we had both been. All our quarreling had been such a waste. “The tabernacle is with men; former things are passed away,” I quoted. But it would have been impossible for Tom to have changed. I thought of his shoes by the hearth and fresh tears come to my eyes. The saddest thing of all was I saw that people couldn’t be any way but what they are. Even when doing right they are apt to be doing something else wrong.
The pile of chestnut logs Tom had sawed and left to season for crossties set between the barn and orchard. That was the place where he split rails and it was covered with chips and splinters. Now there was nobody to hew the crossties, unless it was Joe, and Joe would be too busy walking his trapline and hewing his own crossties. I could do most any man’s work, but I would never be able to lift those heavy logs and hew them into crossties.
And then I thought of the road up the ridge to the mountaintop orchard. Tom had kept the haul road mowed, and the weeds and brush cut back around the orchard itself. Places that had been all growed up when I married Tom had been opened and took care of while I hardly noticed. Once he started doing it Pa and me took for granted that weeds along the pasture edge would be trimmed, and weeds around the smokehouse and springhouse and along the trail to the branch would be cut so you could see a snake before stepping on it. Tom even mowed the path to the Sunset Rock two or three times a year. Often after finishing up in the field, or returning from selling produce in the village, he took his scythe from the shed and whetted it bright in the late sun. Working in a steady rhythm he would lay flat weeds between the apple and pear trees, and big pokeweeds below the hogpen. He did it so regular I hardly noticed. When weeds was cut in the sun they sent up an aroma of oils and incense rank as ether. I would walk where he had mowed and smell the wilting fragrance and not even think of the work he had done to keep the ground clear. I had never been able to mow with the scythe. It was too heavy to swing, and too awkward to balance the long handle and blade with the weight in my shoulders. It would be years before Moody or Muir could mow either. The place would grow up the way it had before I married.
The same might be true of the new ground Tom had cleared by the river. Without him to do the plowing and hoeing we could not cultivate so many acres. His long hours and steady work was the equal of three or four hired hands. But it wasn’t just the work he had done we couldn’t replace. It was his planning and thinking about what might be done. Wherever he looked he saw possibility. Every piece of ground was an opportunity, as every hour and day was. It was his “idea” about what to do that I would find the hardest to replace.
I thought of the gates Tom had built and the road he had widened. The road would have to be worked every year to keep it in the fine shape he had left it. The ditches would have to be opened and the puddles filled. New gravel would have to be spread in the low places. The steps down to the spring would have to be kept clear of leaves or they would be buried in a year or two.
There was the strawberry bed up by the spring, where Joe’s Poplar stood. Tom had kept the vines separated and the red dirt bare of weeds. It was the kind of job you had to do on your knees, and it took days. But Tom did it once in the spring when the berries bloomed and once in August. Every shoot and sprout had to be sorted and cut back and every tore root reburied.
We had never rented any of the Peace land. Since my great-great-grandpa had cleared the place it had been worked by the family. A lot of sweat had went into the dark loam by the river where Tom put his watermelon vines and tomatoes. I reckon some of that ground had been cleared by Indians for their little patches. But most had been maple swamps that had to be cut and drained. When the bottomland was wild it was covered with poison oak and poison ivy, and weeds that caused milksick when the cows eat them. Where Tom laid off his long straight rows had once been vines and sinkholes and snake dens. Tom laid off the straightest rows I had ever seen. A furrow he made run like a rifleshot to the yon end. I never understood how he could make a horse stumble over the clods and dips in such a straight line.
To farm all the acres Tom had, I would have to hire help, at least until Moody and Muir got bigger. Or maybe I should rent some of the land? I could sell off some cows since I wouldn’t be able to milk the four or five Tom had. The burned-over pasture might not support so many head.
As I set in the stillness by Tom’s body it occurred to me I did not even know where he kept his money. Many a time I’d seen him count the day’s earnings into the cigar box and close it. Sometimes he carried it upstairs where he slept on the pallet. It was just a pasteboard box that he used to put under the bed when he was sleeping with me. I had never paid it much attention, but I knowed he kept the money near where he slept. I would need the box to pay for things. But I did not want to climb the ladder in the dark and maybe wake Pa and the children.
I looked under the bed and of course the box was not there. The rocks and bricks was cooling, and I shuddered at the sight of them. Dirt still clung to the rocks and give off a strange baked smell. Where else might he have put the cigar box? I looked around the room and saw the chest of drawers. Only two of the drawers was used by Tom for his socks and underwear. I opened the drawers one after the other. I found the little jug Dr. Match had give me long ago, but there was no cigar box there. A pain went through my chest when I saw Tom’s washed and folded underclothes.
The cedar chest set just under the window and I lifted its top as slow and careful as I could. The smell of the cedar rose in the dark like a vague memory. I felt among the quilts and blankets and my wedding dress, and found a silver spoon Pa had give me as a little girl. The spoon was cold as ice.
I stood and looked at Tom on the bed, and then I looked around the room again. The wardrobe loomed in the shadows almost to the ceiling. I opened the creaky door and felt among the shirts and suspenders on the shelf above the hanging clothes. There was the cigar box. With trembling hands I slid it from under the shirts and carried it to the lamp. The box was heavy as a clock.
When I opened it the cigar box give off the fragrance of metal, of nickels and silver, of copper and folded bills that had mildewed. I was almost afraid to touch the contents. The money was Tom’s most private covenant. There was many twenty-dollar gold pieces and stacks of five and ten dollar bills tied with thread. There was a lot of silver dollars and dimes also. There was a big faded bone button, and I knowed what it was. It was the button from Tom’s daddy’s uniform that had been brought back from the prison camp in Illinois with the gold watch. All those years Tom had kept that button and never told me he had it.
I counted more than four hundred dollars in gold pieces. And then I saw a piece of yellowed paper under the coins. It was a clipping from an old newspaper. I opened it in the lamplight and saw it was a wedding announcement. “Mr. Benjamin Peace of Green River announces the marriage of his daughter Virginia to Thomas Powell.. . .” It was just a square of paper cut from the Hendersonville Times after our wedding and kept by Tom. The paper was ragged from the wear of the coins.
I put the cigar box on the table and looked at Tom. His face was gray now and his lips almost black. I thought of all he had give me, of the joy of his loving, and the children, of the work he had done to the house and the place, and the box of money. I thought of the terraces he had made on the orchard hill to hold back the topsoil in the worst rains, and the jugs of golden molasses in the smokehouse. He had give me more than I had even dreamed of. Locke had been right. I had thought I had give the Peace land to Tom, but the truth was he had give it to me.
It was such a waste that we had fought all those years. But saddest of all was that I could never repay him, or thank him, or tell him that I loved him. I wanted to tell him we
was in his debt, not him in ours. I wanted to say I accepted his gifts.
I decided it would not be fair to wake Pa so near daylight. He would get up anyway soon to make coffee and read his Bible in the kitchen. Why not let him sleep as long as he would? There would be plenty of time for him to learn Tom was gone and to walk over the hill to tell Joe and Lily and Florrie and David. They would all come down and try to help and comfort me. The house would be crowded for several days. Joe would start building a coffin out at the shed where Tom had made one for the baby. Florrie would be rushing around the kitchen, and thanking folks that brought dishes. For days people would be condoling me and patting me on the back. Somebody would have to write to Locke.
I took a long deep drink from the whiskey jug and set in the silence as though it was a cool bath on a hot day. Silence is the language of God, I thought. He prefers to speak to us that way, and through our own voices. I wanted to wait a while longer and study about things. I might not be able to think this clear again for a long time. I wanted to figure it out a little more, to see if there was some way I could understand what had happened to me. What did it come to? Soon there would be light outside. Birds would start making a racket in the junipers and hemlocks. As quick as I heard Pa stirring I would get up and tell him, and begin working. There was a lot that had to be done before Florrie arrived and ordered me to set down and rest.
“I think we can all see ourselves in Ginny and Tom, in the way they are full of desire and loyalty, yet deeply frustrated when things don’t work out as they plan. When we come to an understanding of ourselves and others, it is often too late to use it. I believe that sense of shared intimacy, pain, loss, that kinship and recognition of kinship, is the main reason we read fiction, and the main reason that we write it.”
—ROBERT MORGAN
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. The book begins with Ginny’s remembrance of her first revival (3–13). It’s at this revival that Ginny realizes her capacity for ecstatic worship, for speaking in tongues and receiving the “baptism of fire.” Is Ginny feeling something real, or is she just acting? Is Lily acting when she leaps up to shout? Are revivals more than religion for Ginny?
2. Ginny has an almost mystical view of nature (“It was like the water was talking, quoting scriptures or muttering a poem” [125]) while Tom is thoroughly grounded in the literal, physical reality of the world around him (“a fire is just a fire” [79]). What is it that attracts these two? Do you believe that opposites attract?
3. Tom is reluctant to talk about his poor relations, and chooses to expend all of his energy working Pa’s land. What does land mean to Tom, and what has it meant to generations of Americans? His sister-in-law, Lily, also comes from poverty (“she tried to act stylish and cultured I think to cover up how poor they had been” [102]), yet she and Tom don’t get along. What is the source of their mutual resentment?
4. Tom sits up and takes notice when Locke expounds on his theory of work (“He had been listening all along, but really woke up when Locke started talking about raising yourself above yourself through work” [43]). When Ginny describes worship, she says, “I had to let go of myself to save myself” (116). Are Tom and Ginny describing the same feeling? What are they trying to escape? Is escape, in this context, a negative?
5. In Ginny’s experience, is there common ground between religion and sex? If so, what is it? Is her notion blasphemous?
6. Morgan has re-created a world in which diseases are ever threatening and spectral, appearing without warning and for reasons only partially understood. How would your life be different if you knew you could be struck down at any moment by cholera, pneumonia, or typhoid fever? Would you live in fear, or would you just ignore it? How do Ginny and Tom face disease?
7. When Tom, Ginny, and Pa walk their land (266–75), are they doing more than settling a boundary dispute? What are they doing?
8. Does Ginny have reason to be jealous of Florrie? Should Florrie have known better than to become too familiar with Tom (“What I noticed was how close they stood. Wasn’t any need for grownup people to stand that close” [219])? If there is an attraction between Tom and Florrie, what is its source? How is Florrie different from Ginny?
9. When Ginny, Florrie, and Lily can peaches, it’s practically an all-day affair (155–69). In the rural Appalachian world of Ginny and Tom, the daily work of living, whether it’s making food or building roads or milking cows, occupies much of their time. Are our modern lives similarly occupied? How are they similar, and how are they different? Is this a sign of progress? Is it an improvement?
10. In her letter to Locke, Ginny describes her rapidly shifting moods (242–44). Is there a more modern term for what she is describing? How does she respond to her “dumps and blues and vapors”? Is there a positive aspect of her blue periods? When is Ginny most creative? When are you most creative?
11. Ginny says that “nothing makes a woman feel better than to pitch in and work alongside her husband.. . . A woman naturally comes to think like her husband sometimes” (170, 173). Do you believe this? Based on what you know of Ginny, is this really true for her? Is Ginny what you would call “an independent woman”?
12. Whom should we blame for the bitterness and fighting between Tom and Ginny? Tom, for trying to deny Ginny her revivals and isolating himself from her for long periods? Or Ginny, for rising so far above herself while in the whirl of worship that she forgets where she is, even with a child on her hip and bullets in the air?
13. What does Ginny mean when she says, “But it is the time just before I fell in love with something that I look back on with such feeling. It is a kind of homesickness” (243). What do you think she means by this?
14. In the end, as Tom succumbs to typhoid fever, Ginny notices she has been changed: “It would not be fair to say that I was thrilled by Tom’s sickness. And yet, the worse off he got the more sweetness I found in myself” (308). What has changed for Ginny? Had Tom lived, do you think Ginny would have been able to save the marriage? Would Tom have forgiven Ginny for attending Holiness services? When did you know Tom would die?
15. What was Ginny’s truest pleasure? What was Tom’s?
Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
WORKMAN PUBLISHING
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
© 1995 by Robert Morgan.
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Janet Vicario.
Cover photo © Yuen Lee/Photonica.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for a previous edition of this work.
E-book ISBN 978-1-56512-891-0
ROBERT MORGAN was raised on his family’s farm in the North Carolina mountains. He is the author of eleven books of poetry and eight books of fiction, including the bestselling novel Gap Creek. Winner of a 2007 Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature and the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award, he lives in Ithaca, New York, where he teaches at Cornell University. (Author photograph by Randi Anglin.)
PRAISE FOR ROBERT MORGAN'S The Truest Pleasure
“Eloquent, wise, and heartbreaking.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“May well be his best work yet . . . Comes together in the end like a complex piece of music, gathering all its earlier themes into a crescendo that swells and washes over the reader.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
“The Truest Pleasure is an epic love story.”
—Lexington Herald-Leader
“Robert Morgan’s writing is as clear and simple as befits farm life, yet it possesses a lum
inous poetic quality, a rough beauty hewn from the countryside and from old, forgotten ways.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Morgan has succeeded in a most difficult endeavor, writing a thoroughly entertaining and even moving novel about a time, place, and people that most contemporary Americans know only as cartoons.”
—Booklist
“Morgan writes with infinite grace and understanding—his prose is never far from poetry. . . His picture of the region he knows so well by background and experience is clear and true, and his grasp of storytelling, that of a master.”
—The Anniston Star
“Wondrous . . . it is the author’s wisdom and understanding of the characters that bring the incredible intensity and the truest pleasure to the reader of this stirring novel.”
—San Antonia Express-News
“So real are the characters that a reader can feel their frustration as they hide behind resentment and spite, keeping themselves apart until a calamity forces them together one last time.”
—The Orlando Sentinel
“His lovely tale of the trials of marriage is perfectly contemporary, a story of love found, lost and recovered, that is not sticky sweet, but earthy and solid, like homemade molasses.”
—Rapport
“Exquisitely detailed, compelling lyricism.”
—The State (Columbia, SC)
“Beautifully written and extremely moving . . . Morgan has created that rarest of literary creatures.”
—The Commercial Appeal (Memphis)
“A work of fiction as deep and rich and inset with memorable pictures is indeed one of the truest pleasures.”
—The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC)
ALSO BY ROBERT MORGAN
FICTION
The Blue Valleys
The Mountains Won’t Remember Us
The Hinterlands
The Truest Pleasure Page 29
