Gathering is the gold. They knew that now as well as I. But I lay there wondering, as any leader must, whether it wasn’t all the gold we needed, whether the gathering itself mightn’t be enough. But there wouldn’t be time to go back to school, to find out.
“We’ll train in that barn,” I’d said, that first morning we were all here. Plus a peewee little Johnny from the morons; we didn’t know what was his count and neither did he. He kept running in and out of our ranks, more trouble to shoo him than to let him stay. And we had to conserve our energy.
“As soon as we get the tools,” I said, “we’ll train. Go round to all the woodpiles and tight barns, there still are some on our side—and get the axes. Drag ’em, if you can’t heft. Go round to all the antique tables after dark—hook anything sharp, or that looks like a tool. There’s a thing called a sausage-grinder down in Kelley Two’s barn, you’ll surely have to drag that.” I hadn’t made definite plans yet, but that would come. “Scythes,” I said.
“Will crocks be useful?” said Johnny from Contoocook. I could tell he was puzzled for a plan of action too.
“No, I don’t think … pitchforks … no, there’s no time for torture … it’s too serious for that.” I found I’d decided. “Permanent useful tools only.” That way, whatever we made use of for training purposes would come in handy later also, if there was to be a later time. Would that depend on the training? And then the thought came to me, though I hadn’t since told any of them, even my deputy—guns. Or at least one gun. I knew who had a sharpshooter’s medal—before it was sold. Guns would be best.
You have to understand about the training. Wasn’t anything we could plan to do with any weapon—tool, that is—before we could lift. That’s what our training was. Over-the-summer had come to be like a hibernation time for our kind, and if we let ourselves get any weaker, this summer would likely be our last. When we could lift again, and swing and grind and mow and reap, each man alone, and not staggering onto the next one or cooling his temple against any wall that was left him to do it on, then maybe we could start to talk about action—or more of it than just a gathering on the night of the moon when their building was to be done, to make a great clatter to scare them with, over there on the opposite shore.
“Or going all the way round to their side to get our message across,” said Johnny from Contoocook. “If we are able.”
“Carrying the tools, of course,” I said.
He looked at me over the others, stern and thoughtful as always. “Oh yes,” he said, nudging me to note a Johnny Three from Nelson, who could almost lift a log singlehanded now, and a Four from West Wilton, who could handle the smallest axe. We had a couple of those Buddy names too, the one kid back at school had been so proud of—and what do you know, they turned out to be the weakest of all. “Oh yes. Carrying the tools.”
And here we were, on the very night, and almost able, if that steakmeat could be trusted—and I still had no plan of action. But I had the gun.
I’d hooked it from the store maybe easier than I could handle it. Couldn’t even call it a steal. He never even moved a shoulder, when I reached up above him and took it from the wall, up above the calendar. Had all I could do not to drop it; I don’t know what kind of game he and his china-teeth friends ever thought they’d need a gun like that for, this part of the country. It’s a high-powered rifle all right—a thirty-ought-six. With a telescopic lens. I was halfway out the screendoor dragging it in the gunnysack I’d brought, when he opened his mouth and said one word.
“Cartridges.”
They were in a tin box on the counter in front of him. So I had to go back in.
And so I practiced in secret with the gun, the way they all were doing with their implements, their tools. I didn’t worry about marksmanship. Once I could heft the gun, steadying my arm maybe in the crotch of a convenient tree, I knew I could fire it. And they all watched me, my army, and never said any more to me about our plan of action, just left it to me. But one thing more, I said to them. I was the leader: “We’ve got numbers to our names, can’t help that, it’s too late for it.” I happened to glance over at Johnny Ten, the highest of us in number and in brain the lowest; his big round face with the silly smile on it looked just like the hubcaps he’d chosen to carry but I wouldn’t let him. “But we won’t say Johnny any more; that’s how they weaken us too.” I took a look at my uncle, snoring there in the rocker. “We’ll at least say ‘John.’” And my dear deputy, who worried me so, he was getting thinner every day—John of Contoocook—grinned at that too. So that’s the way that was. Only one we couldn’t get to understand it was the little peewee, the moron, and he didn’t count; he’d be a Johnny until the end.
Otherwise, it worked fine. We’d had some trouble at first making Johnny Ten understand that our plan of action couldn’t be motorcycles. “Get those snazzy foreign ones!” he’d say every day, at training-time. “Wear those black-and-white crash helmets! Then—zoom.” And he’d raise the pick-axe with a hubcap on it, almost high. No use telling him that we had as much chance of motorcycles as of getting boats to cross the lake with, like from England to France. There’s never been any boats between them and us, only the boats on their side.
“What would that do for us, Ten?” my deputy would answer. His fingers were so dreamy-thin, looked as if they went round the scythe-handle twice. “No, it would just mean that we’d be the ones to move away.”
Watching us try to shoulder arms—nobody would exactly see twelve high-class buck-privates. Sometimes I wondered if, even with the training, anybody could see us at all—we were so faded. My own eyesight is still so damn good. But I consoled myself with seeing how at least getting into some action must have helped our circulation. And thinking forward to being Johns again seemed to satisfy everybody, and to improve our complexion too. For the mold that had spotted everyone of us, sometimes in places you wouldn’t like to think it—was gone.
One thing we talked out loud about, in those last evenings as we fed the fire before sleeping—was our ecology. We talked a lot about that, and what our summer rebellion could mean to the world. I wished I could ask the instructor. Sometimes we talked about him too, laughing at our secret nickname for him—Mr. Wilderness. For the funniest thing about him, what with all his talk about going to do research work or get him a job as a government forester in one of those high, wild tower overlooks where you can’t even have a wife—was that right out in front of the classroom, where we could all see it, he had the brightest, fastest, hottest little bug of a new red two-seater sport car.
And while we talked, I sometimes watched my aunt and uncle, him barefoot now in his rocker, her in her shawl. Soon he would be only ten yellow fingernails and ten toenails—he was going back to the horn. She was dozing, my tawny aunt, with her mouth open; soon she would be only a lost freckle on the air. Was this only the way it always should be, for the other generation? But then, what about us young? I wished I could ask the instructor—even him. I hadn’t ever told for sure whether his eyes, always so blind with teaching, hadn’t seen more about us than we thought he knew. Maybe he could be our control-group, I decided; he’d taught us that in any experiment where you’re matching one group of specimens against the other, in the best testing there ought to be still a third. One group, something gets done to it to produce its condition; to the second group, you do the opposite. The control doesn’t get anything done to it at all to narrow down its condition; that’s what it already is. He could be that.
So, two nights ago, I had written him a letter. He could listen to what we had in mind, I thought. Better still, I thought, as I was writing, he could come to be a witness; it was nothing to that red car, only thirty miles. So I wrote giving him directions where to come and when, and what to look for, and mailed it myself and according to what I knew the distribution time for the mail was out there—so he’d get it just in time to decide to come along for the show or not to; after all that effort I didn’t want us prevented. “We’re havi
ng a summer rebellion,” I wrote. “It’s to be a test. Not a battle.” For I knew it couldn’t be that. “It can’t be that,” I said, “even with the gun. Will you be our witness?” I wrote in the best grammar I had, deciding to use that from now on too, for the other only made me weaker. And I signed it “John,” without any number at all. What I’d wanted to do was to put my full last name after it, like one of their signatures—but I didn’t feel up to that, yet. Besides, he’d know by the postmark and the handwriting. And he always took the trouble to talk to me specially. He’d know.
So here we were, me and my deputy and all twelve of us, not counting that little thirteenth peewee with his white albino head and pink eyes held away from the firelight. Here we are, I said to myself, in our house that hasn’t caved in yet, in our flesh that isn’t mold yet, and with our tools we’ve rescued. And over there, on the other side of Willard Pond, their work is done. Turret on the outside—waiting for the weathercock, but that they’ll hang at the ceremony—and on the inside, hammered brass and hanging lanterns, and tables and chairs like a soda parlor’s, and a milk bar like a counter—and a fireplace, for winter. They couldn’t have an outside sign, not with their zoning rules, but just for today they had a great poster up on a tripod, with one of our iron kettles hanging on a chain beneath it. “Dedication ceremony. Everybody come and see us hang the weathercock. Six o’clock.” But inside, through the glass door, I’d seen that they had a sign saying The Pancake Palace. So that’s where our soda parlor number one, the old sign once on it, had gone. So there they are. Hadn’t I seen it all in the storekeeper’s binoculars, which on the way out his screen door the second time, he’d let me hock too? They had finished their job in time.
I went outside though, to look again for sure. Yes. It was now only a little past five o’clock, but small as the woods were, I’d better give us three quarters of an hour to get through it, even with the steak. A leader has got to plan. And I hoped I’d thought of everything, except what would have to be left to the last minute—my gun and its target. I’d half wanted to ask him that in the letter, but finally had let it be. For if I have a gun, but don’t know my own target—what do I have a gun for at all?
Outside, there was even a kind of double omen. The sun was still shining in that fool’s gold way it has at five o’clock. But on the other side of the world, not in any fair balance yet but trying, there was the palest full moon I’d ever seen in a sky. Even my keen sight could barely see it. Couldn’t see how it would ever have the energy to rise, except that moons do.
I went back inside, slamming the housedoor so that it shuddered back, wide-open. That was to be our signal. We don’t waste our energy. “Here we are,” I said. “And it’s time.”
One by one, we got each other up from the pine mattresses, and began helping the others fit themselves to their tools. Yes, we still had to do that—we’d only had a week. We still were twelve in number and made an honorable display. We’d kept the pitchforks after all, they handle so easy, and even if you aren’t going to use them in any other way, still their outline is so plain. I’d turned the house out, looking for my uncle’s clipping-shears, then found out he’d been using Blazer’s. So, after two of the forks, and counting my deputy’s scythe, we had four axes, large and small according to which could best carry the weight of them, two long butcher knives, one queer-angled iron earthtiller so antique we didn’t know what it was for but judged we ought to have it for that reason alone—and a hoe. Ten had let the little peewee have his hubcaps to clash.
I myself helped John of Contoocook with his scythe. We had to strap it on him; this was the only way he could manage it, and I’d have been doubtful of that except for his grin, which was still there. “Know you’ll do it,” I whispered to him. “After all, we don’t have to do anything after we get there but stand. But stand by!” It was the first time I’d used that expression out loud, and his eyes flickered at it. And you have the gun, he could have said to me, but didn’t. He’s like me in a way, with the difference that I’d hung on to more energy. Matter of fact, he was worse off than any of us. I couldn’t forbear asking him why. “Why do you suppose it is?” I whispered, as I buckled the strap. His grin was like the moon, just barely there, and like the sun, getting ready to set. “It was the pig,” he answered. “She was my ecology.” He’s hopelessly smart.
At the door then, I addressed my men at large as they went by me, both of us in a manner not to waste breath—in silence. My eyes keen upon them, I called their ghostly roll. “Johns of Four and Five—pitchforks. Johns Two and Three, Buddy Two—axes. A John Two and a Buddy One—knives.” Him with the tiller. Him with the hoe. And the rear guard. “John of Contoocook. Scythe.”
To make sure that none would fall by the wayside unless all did, I roped us all together. At the last minute, one of the knives broke down and couldn’t make it—one of the Buddies, wouldn’t you know? So to fill up the dozen, we had to count the peewee in anyway. Then they were all ready, weaponed and gathered at the door in the formation I’d decided on—a half circle which could at need fall into line. “You of Hillsborough,” I said to them. “Of Jaffrey and Hancock, of Dublin and Antrim, of Rindge and of Nelson, and even of Keene. You of the Monadnock Region. And of the winter time. Get ready. Get Set. G—”
And then my uncle got up from his rocking chair.
He faltered over to me, clickety-click. He was even able to dig his sharp fingers into my chest; he’s been a strong man in his day. “The old customs,” he said, in his wooden-doll voice. “We’ll go back to them. But first, we ought to know who we are, son, oughtn’t we.” He drew himself up straight as he could. “I’m Andrew. And that is Marietta, my wife.” Hearing that name, my aunt woke, looked around bewildered, at this battalion in her old sitting room, and then smiled straight at me, too, from her shawl. “And I know you’re John,” said my uncle. “I know you’re John. But son—” I felt his nails through my sweatshirt. “Son, remind me. What’s our last name? Our surname, as people used to say. I rock and I rock, but I can’t remember it.”
I smiled back at them, for love and for leaving, both. For who could know what would be, when and if we came back? And I had an awful temptation to say—“It’s Wilderness.” That little red bug-on-wheels maybe even now skipping toward us—he would like that. But that is not my style of interest. I know who we are. We’re not that faded, not to me. And I know who I am. I’ve always known. It’s our other distinction.
“It’s Willard,” I said. “For the Pond.”
And then we filed out the door, and made up our formation again, outside it. I hadn’t even had to say Go. But as we closed ranks, shouldering each as we could, with one hand, and ready to help his neighbor with the other, I heard my aunt’s voice. “I’m going to make you a flag.”
Then we were on the march. Marching is useful too; some say that all by itself it’s as useful to the spirit as gathering is, but in our state it wasn’t gold to us; it was simply what we had to do. Funny thing though, the woods, pine to maple to birch, were in perfect order for it. Even the underbrush lay quiet, as if somebody had swept. Yet I knew that although they across there had got as far as browning in the gardens and on the water, they hadn’t been much to the woods yet, for health. And they hadn’t paid to clear here; who would they pay that was left? Sometimes, toward autumn but before the leaves start twirling down, woods look like that, in perfect order for—something one can’t say. From tree to tree, these ragged woods of my forefathers let us by now, not putting out a root to trip us, passing us on, tree to tree. They stood by us. And we walked.
And we walked. Some might have called our pace a stumble. Or only a dragging, with a rope. But it was our pace. And we did it in silence. We had no extra breath for songs. Even the peewee’s hubcaps, heavy enough in his tiny hands scaled with skin rash like a lizard’s, were still.
Only my gun talked, braced on my shoulder. And only I heard it; it had such a soft voice. “Blazer, Blazer, go away,” it said. “Come a
gain some other day.” But that was for rain, not people. I knew that, though my own head seemed now and then about to twirl and fall. Then it said, “Hickory, dickory, your son John, took our Barbara with his britches on.” Only a nursery rhyme, and wrong at that, but marching was not my true rhythm, and the air at this hour of the day was hot and cold by turns, shiver and blister both. I prayed to the steak in my stomach. I thought I could see the others were too; behind the iron and steel, their lips were moving. But for me, there was worse to come. That gun tried everything. And by the last yard of it—the whole woods isn’t half a mile—that gun and I had fallen in rhythm together. “Bar-bar-a Blazer,” it said, “is beautiful.” And my feet answered, “Beautiful”—treading on moss now, for we were there.
We were on the shoreline of my forefathers’ pond. We were on the peculiarly mossy and stony patch of it that I could call at least jointly mine, and I turned round to look at my men. They had formed their half-circle again, almost without command from me—my army, my posse, my eleven other Johns and one Buddy. And one whiteheaded peewee. But this was all they could manage. Everything had stopped, but my anger. Above our heads, the sun and moon had stopped too. Or were in perfect balance.
“At ease, men,” I said. In silence, their weapons slid to the ground. One voice slid after them. “Hadn’t ought to do that, John One. We’ll never be able to get them up again.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Anger is slow, eight generations slow. But it never stops.” And trusting I was right, I inspected my ranks, as must be done before battle—or before testing, to the specimen.
Under that sky of double omen, my friends seemed to me only a step mistier than myself. Their heads were bowl-cut or longhaired like mine, but not in the new style, and their jeans and shirts were ragged, but not ragged new. They were ragged in the old style. They were a strange, weak sight, my winter Apollos, and when their arsenal was raised against that sky, they would be odder still. But maybe the people over there would see them the better for it. That’s what specimens are. And they were standing by. In spite of all suffered or lazed or blamed away, they had not utterly gone down yet—into the grass, the ground.
The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher Page 39
