by Tony Earley
COPYRIGHT © 2000 BY TONY EARLEY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY ELECTRONIC OR MECHANICAL MEANS, INCLUDING INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS, WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER, EXCEPT BY A REVIEWER WHO MAY QUOTE BRIEF PASSAGES IN A REVIEW.
Little, Brown and Company
Time Warner Book Group
Hachette Book Group
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First eBook Edition: April 2001
THE CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS BOOK ARE FICTITIOUS. ANY SIMILARITY TO REAL PERSONS, LIVING OR DEAD, IS COINCIDENTAL AND NOT INTENDED BY THE AUTHOR.
PORTIONS OF THIS BOOK ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN
The “Little, Brown and Company” name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The Oxford American, The New Yorker, Brightleaf,ANDGranta.
ISBN: 978-0-7595-2319-7
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Prologue
BOOK I: Birthday Boy
Breakfast
A Day of Work
An Unexpected Gift
Baptism
After Supper
Jim at Bat
BOOK II: Jim Leaves Home
The Wide Sea
BOOK III: Town Boys and Mountain Boys
First Day
Big Day
An Unexpected Guest
News from the Mountain
A Victory of Sorts
King
Blackbirds
BOOK IV: Cold Nights
Christmas Eve
At the Tenant House
BOOK V: Quiet Days
A Game of Catch
An Afternoon in the Sun
BOOK VI: The View from Up Here
Our Boy
Also by Tony Earley
HERE WE ARE IN PARADISE
For
Sarah California
“I love it here in the barn,” said Wilbur.
“I love everything about this place.”
— E. B. WHITE
Charlotte’s Web
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank the following people and institutions, whose support, moral and otherwise, made writing this book possible: Gordon Kato, Charles and Reba Earley, Donald and Ruth Bell, Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, the Seaside Institute, the University of the South, and Vanderbilt University.
The tide Jim the Boy was appropriated from a book of that name, published by Jim Washburn of Lake Lure, North Carolina, in 1952. The author would like Mr. Washburn’s family to know that he would not have used Mr. Washburn’s title if he had been able to think of a better one of his own.
Prologue
Mr. Amos Glass
Lynn’s Mountain, N.C.
June 16, 1924
Dear Mr. Glass,
It is with a heavy heart that I write to you today, for your son Jim Glass, age twenty-three, has gone to live with the Lord. Just over a week ago, Jim went off alone to hoe cotton in the morning and did not return to the house at noon. My brother Al found him in the field where he had fallen, already dead. The doctor said that his heart had failed him and that he had not suffered long. I understand that Jim’s mother died in a similar manner at a young age, and it is a sad, sad thing that one man should have to hear such news delivered twice in one lifetime, and I am deeply sorry for you today.
As you know, Jim was married to my sister Elizabeth, whom we know as Cissy. Cissy has taken Jim’s death particularly hard and is not well. Because you and Jim have been estranged with each other these last several years, she asked me to refrain from writing you until after Jim was buried, and I have honored her request, as she was his wife. Also in accordance with her wishes, we provided Jim with Christian burial in the field where he fell, and have ordered a suitable stone to mark his final resting place and a fence to enclose it from the world. I am sorry that you did not have the opportunity to make right with Jim the things that came between you, for even though I came to love Jim as my brother and thank God for the precious time that he lived as a member of my family, the times I remember most these sad days are the occasions when I could have spoken to him with more patience and kindness than I did. I pray that as he lay dying he bore me no ill will in his heart.
But enough sadness!
I also write to you today with news of the happiest sort. Yesterday Cissy gave birth to a son, your grandson, whom she named Jim Glass in memory of his father. Jim is a fine, heavy boy with yellow hair and good lungs. Though there is still much sadness in our house, Jim’s arrival in this world has reminded us that life goes on and it is God’s will that we continue to do His work, even when we are sad and do not understand His plan. Each time Jim cries it is a call to arms for all of us here to do our best, as well as a reminder of our Savior’s love. (How much greater our grief if Jim was not here!) As I mentioned earlier, Cissy is not well and is in no condition to receive visitors at this time. It is my hope that at some point in the future the time will be right for you to meet your grandson and have him lift the grief off of you as he has begun to do for us.
Mr. Glass, it is my solemn promise to you that we will raise Jim in the heart of our family and see with God’s help that he becomes the kind of man his father would have wanted him to be. Jim was a good, Christian man and a hard worker and part of us, as he was part of you, and his name will not be forgotten as long as his son walks this earth in his footsteps.
I hope this letter finds you well and that the joy it contains eases the sadness you must at this time feel and I can’t even imagine.
I am,
Yours sincerely,
Zeno McBride (Jim’s brother-in-law)
BOOK I
Birthday Boy
Breakfast
DURING THE night something like a miracle happened: Jim’s age grew an extra digit. He was nine years old when he went to sleep, but ten years old when he woke up. The extra number had weight, like a muscle, and Jim hefted it like a prize. The uncles’ ages each contained two numbers, and now Jim’s age contained two numbers as well. He smiled and stretched and sniffed the morning. Wood smoke; biscuits baking; the cool, rivery smell of dew. Something not quite daylight looked in his window, and something not quite darkness stared back out. A tired cricket sang itself to sleep. The cricket had worked all night. Jim rose to meet the waiting day.
Jim’s mother opened the stove door with a dishrag. Mama was tall and pale and handsome; her neck was long and white. Although she was not yet thirty years old, she wore a long, black skirt that had belonged to her mother. The skirt did not make her seem older, but rather made the people in the room around her feel odd, as if they had wandered into an old photograph, and did not know how to behave. On the days Mama wore her mother’s long clothes, Jim didn’t let the screen door slam.
“There he is,” Mama said. “The birthday boy.”
Jim’s heart rose up briefly, like a scrap of paper on a breath of wind, and then quickly settled back to the ground. His love for his mother was tethered by a sympathy Jim felt knotted in the dark of his stomach. The death of Jim’s father had broken something inside her that had not healed. She pulled the heaviness that had once been grief behind her like a plow. The uncles, the women of the church, the people of the town, had long since given up on trying to talk her into leaving the plow where it lay. Instead they grew used to stepping over, or walking inside, the deep furrows she left in her wake. Jim knew only that his mother was sad, and that he figured somehow in her sadness. When she leaned over to kiss him, the lilaced smell of her cheek was as sweet and sad at once as the smell of freshly turned earth in the churchyard.
“
Oh, Jimmy,” she said. “How in the world did you get to be ten years old?”
“I don’t know, Mama,” Jim said, which was the truth. He was as amazed by the fact as she was. He had been alive for ten years; his father, who had also been named Jim Glass, had been dead for ten years and a week. It was a lot to think about before breakfast.
Mama put the biscuits she pulled from the oven into a straw basket. Jim carried the basket into the dining room. The uncles sat around the long table.
“Who’s that?” Uncle Coran said.
“I don’t know,” said Uncle Al.
“He sure is funny-looking, whoever he is,” said Uncle Zeno.
“Y’all know who I am,” said Jim.
“Can’t say that we do,” said Uncle Coran.
“I’m Jim.”
“Howdy,” said Uncle Al.
“Y’all stop it,” Jim said.
The uncles were tall, skinny men with broad shoulders and big hands. Every morning they ate between them two dozen biscuits and a dozen scrambled eggs and a platter of ham. They washed it all down with a pot of black coffee and tall glasses of fresh milk. “Those biscuits you got there, Jim?” said Uncle Zeno.
Jim nodded.
“Better sit down, then.”
In all things Jim strove to be like the uncles. He ate biscuits and eggs until he thought he was going to be sick. When Uncle Zeno finally said, “You think you got enough to eat, Doc?” Jim dropped his fork as if he had received a pardon.
Uncle Zeno was Jim’s oldest uncle. His age was considerable, up in the forties somewhere. Uncle Coran and Uncle Al were twins. Each of them swore that he did not look like the other one, which of course wasn’t true. They looked exactly alike, until you knew them, and sometimes even then. Not one of the uncles found it funny that they lived in identical houses. Uncle Al and Uncle Coran built their houses when they were young men, but, like Uncle Zeno, they never took wives. Most of the rooms in their houses didn’t even have furniture; only Uncle Zeno’s house had a cookstove.
Jim’s mother cooked and cleaned for the uncles. When she said it was too much, the uncles hired a woman to help her. Uncle Coran ran the feed store and cotton gin. Uncle Al managed the farms. Uncle Zeno farmed with Uncle Al and operated the gristmill on Saturday mornings. As the head of the family he kept an eye on everyone else. Occasionally the uncles grew cross with each other, and, for a few days, Uncle Al and Uncle Coran would retire to their houses immediately after supper. There they sat by their own fires, or on their own porches, and kept their own counsel until their anger passed. In general, however, everyone in the family got along well with everyone else; to Jim, the sound of harsh words would always strike his ear as oddly as a hymn played in the wrong key.
Jim patted his stomach. “That ought to hold me till dinner,” he said.
“You ate a right smart,” Uncle Coran said.
“Well,” said Jim, “I am ten years old now.”
“My, my,” said Uncle Al.
“I’ve been thinking it’s about time for me to go to work with y’all,” Jim said.
“Hmm,” said Uncle Zeno.
“I thought maybe you could use some help hoeing that corn.”
“We can usually put a good hand to work,” Uncle Zeno said. “You a good hand?”
“Yes, sir,” said Jim.
“You ain’t afraid to work?”
“No, sir.”
“What do you say, boys?” Uncle Zeno said.
Uncle Al and Uncle Coran looked at each other. Uncle Coran winked.
“He’ll do, I guess,” said Uncle Al.
“Let’s get at it, then,” said Uncle Zeno.
A Day of Work
AFTER BREAKFAST Uncle Coran went off to open the store. Jim rode to the field in the truck with Uncle Zeno and Uncle Al. He stood on the bed of the truck and looked out over the top of the cab. He held on to his straw hat with one hand and the truck with the other. The world at that early hour seemed newly made, unfinished; the air, still sweet with dew, an invention thought up that morning. In the low places near the river, stray ghosts of fog still hunted among the trees. The state highway led directly into the rising sun; when the sun pulled itself loose from the road, it suddenly seemed very far away. The sky, in a moment Jim didn’t notice until the moment had passed, turned blue, as if it had never tried the color before and wasn’t sure anyone would like it. Jim giggled out loud for no reason he could think of.
Five field hands met them at the edge of the river bottom. The field hands were black men who lived in the woods on the hill behind the new school. They walked over without saying much and took hoes out of the bed of the truck. Jim grabbed the newest hoe for himself. Its handle was still shiny and smooth with varnish, its blade not yet darkened by rust. Uncle Zeno shook his head.
“Give that one to Abraham, Doc,” he said.
Abraham had white hair. He could remember the day a soldier told him he was free. He was the father or grandfather of most of the people who lived on the hill. Jim did not want to give Abraham his hoe.
“I want to use this one,” Jim said.
“I’ll use this one here,” Abraham said. He took the last hoe from the truck bed. Its handle was broken off about halfway down. All the other hoes had been taken already.
“That one’s for Jim,” Uncle Zeno said. He took the new hoe from Jim’s hands. Abraham handed Jim the hoe with the broken handle. Jim knew better than to say anything else.
“Let’s get some hoeing done,” said Uncle Zeno.
“By dinnertime you’ll be glad you’ve got that hoe,” Abraham said. “It’s nice and light.”
Jim was still angry. “I’m ten years old today,” he said.
“My, my,” said Abraham.
Jim walked with the uncles and the field hands through the wet grass to the far end of the bottom. The grass soaked the legs of his overalls; the cloth was cold against his skin. The men fell out of line one by one and arranged themselves two rows apart. Each man would hoe to the end of one row and then back up the other. Then they would walk to the end of the line and take up two more rows. In this way they would hoe the whole field. Jim took up the two rows beside Uncle Zeno.
The corn was knee-high to the uncles, but almost waist-high to Jim. The field contained thirty acres. It would take several days to hoe it all. Then, after the hoeing was completed, Uncle Al would come back with the mules and the cultivator, and plow the middles of the rows. The field would then be free of grass and weeds; the corn could grow without competition. At the end of the summer there would be more to sell and grind into meal and feed to the mules.
Uncle Zeno stepped into Jim’s corn row. Jim’s cheeks flushed. He could feel the field hands watching him.
“You do it like this, Doc,” Uncle Zeno said. “You put the blade of the hoe against the stalk and then pull it toward you. That way you don’t hack the corn down.”
“I know how to hoe,” Jim said.
“Show me,” said Uncle Zeno.
Jim chopped at a small clump of grass. The hoe blade bit cleanly into a cornstalk. The cornstalk fell slowly over, like a tree. Jim heard a field hand laugh.
“That’s one lick,” Uncle Zeno said.
Uncle Zeno had never whipped Jim, but Jim was always afraid that he might. Uncle Zeno kept a running count of the licks he was saving for Jim. He said he had them written down in a book. When Jim did something good, he said he erased a lick or two. Jim figured that most of the time he ran a lick or two short of break-even.
“It’s this hoe,” Jim said. The end of the broken handle was as sharp as the point of a spear.
Uncle Zeno got down on one knee and looked Jim in the face. “Jim,” he said. “I ain’t got time to argue with you about that hoe and listen to excuses. Do you want to help me, or do you want to go home?”
“I want to help you,” Jim said.
“All right, then. Watch.”
Uncle Zeno dragged his hoe sharply across the clump of grass Jim had missed. The g
rass came up cleanly, and he scraped it into the middle of the row.
“Now you do it.”
Jim scraped up a small sprig of clover. “That’s good,” Uncle Zeno said. “That hoe works after all.”
Uncle Zeno stepped back into his own row. The field hands and Uncle Al were already at work. Uncle Al was slightly ahead of the line. None of the uncles liked to be beaten at anything. Jim didn’t like to lose, either. He decided he would beat Abraham to the far end of the field. Then after dinner Uncle Zeno would give the broken hoe to Abraham. Maybe Uncle Zeno would tell Abraham to go home.
Without looking up, Jim carefully scraped the ground clean around the first ten stalks of corn in his row. He piled the weeds and grass up in neat piles. At the tenth stalk, he ran into a clump of grass that was too tough to dig up with his hoe. He got down on his knees and pulled at it with both hands. It wouldn’t budge. He stuck the sharp point of his hoe handle underneath the grass and pried at it. He pulled and pried at the grass until the roots finally came loose with a ripping noise. Jim hoisted the clump of grass into the air like a trophy, or a large fish. Its roots held a clod of dirt as big as a cat. He looked around to see if anyone saw him, but everyone was gone. He couldn’t see anyone at all until he stood up. The uncles and the field hands were a hundred yards or more ahead of him, and moving away at a slow walk. Uncle Al was out in front of everyone else. Uncle Zeno and Abraham looked to be tied for second.
Jim turned and stared back at the head of his row. He could spit that far. He looked in the other direction at the end of the row in the distance. The woods along the river seemed as far away as the moon. The uncles, as far ahead of Jim as they were, had hoed less than a fourth of the way to the end of the field. Jim didn’t see how he could ever make it to the end of his row, much less hoe the one beside it. He had started a journey he knew he could not finish. He felt a sob gather up in his stomach like a cloud.
That Jim felt like crying made him angry. He attacked the ground with his hoe as if he were killing snakes. He struck almost blindly at the morning glories and grass and clover, but in his fury chopped down another stalk of corn. The sob that had been waiting in his stomach climbed up out of his throat and hung in the air for a second, a small, inconsequential sound, heard only by him.
