The Memory of Old Jack, page 10
They coast down past the barbershop at the foot of the hill and then, accelerating again, climb up past the stores, the post office, the bank, the hotel, the church, and turn, rattling, into Mat’s driveway. When they stop the children are instantly scrambling over the tailgate.
Hannah gets out. “Listen! I want you both to mind now, and be good.”
“We will,” Margaret says.
“Mattie, did you hear me?”
“Yes.”
Her warnings to Mattie always leave her with the impression that she has just spoken to a squirrel. She will take care of him when he needs it, which he will. Balancing her load, she follows them around the house to the kitchen door.
“Well, look who’s come to see Granny,” old Margaret says, opening her arms as Mattie runs to her to get hugged.
Little Margaret holds the screen door open for her mother, who steps in and sets the box down on the drain-board of the sink and stands waiting while Margaret finishes greeting the children—a big exchange of information. There is chicken frying on the stove, a baked ham, sugared and crisscrossed and spiked with cloves, lying ready to slice in the center of the table.
Now Little Margaret and Mattie go out to play in the back yard, and the two women set to work. Margaret gets the biscuits ready to go in the oven. Hannah peels and slices a platter of tomatoes. Before they are finished Mary Penn comes in, bringing her share of the meal: mashed potatoes, stewed tomatoes, creamed corn, a plate of dressed eggs. She is a lean, tall woman, brisk in her ways. When she speaks, it is always assumed that she is saying exactly what she means. She is wearing a plaid, shortsleeved blouse and denim pants, for when the meal is over and the dishes done she will go to the field to help the men—as Hannah would if she were not pregnant.
So many hands make quick work. Soon the table is set, the dishes of food made ready, the ham sliced, a bowl of cream whipped and sweetened for the cobbler. The two children are called in to eat and get done before the men come.
Margaret, who has been watching the window, says, “I see one of the loads coming. We can put the biscuits in.” And then she says, “Uncle Jack ought to be here by now. I wonder where he is.”
“I’ll go get him,” Hannah says.
The children want to go too but she tells them, “No. You finish eating,” and goes out quickly before they can argue.
It is a moment of freedom she has now and she is glad of it. The work done behind her in the kitchen, she has the open day ahead of her for a few minutes, and then there will be the kitchen again, the hearty gathering in and feeding, the kitchen ritual of harvest. She feels good. She feels full of the goodness, the competency of her body that can love a man and bear his children, that can raise and prepare food, keep the house, work in the field. She is living deep in her body now as she goes under the hot, bright sky into the town of Port William.
She sticks her head into Jasper Lathrop’s store. “Uncle Jack here?”
“He was here early,” Jasper says. He is leaning on his elbows, writing in a ledger that he has laid open on the counter. “He’s been gone from here a couple of hours.”
“I expect he’s down to the barbershop,” one of the loafers says above his baloney sandwich, not to her, to Jasper. “He was there while ago.”
“Thanks.”
She lets the screen door spring shut behind her and starts on down toward Jayber’s shop. Now that she feels herself on Old Jack’s trail she has him on her mind. She is aware of his isolation, his remoteness, now, from the daily life the rest of them are living. In the stillness of his old age he is beyond them, as though he looks back upon the world from a lofty island in the middle of a river. But she is aware of something else too. Over the last several months it has come to her that of all those near her Old Jack most carefully understands the fullness she has come to, and most exactly values it. From Mat and others she knows his story, or much of it, and knows that he recognizes her out of pain and loss. She is what he has failed. She is his consolation and his despair. How much of his vision of the world comes right in the figure of a woman fulfilled and satisfied, her man’s welcomer, at home in the world! She is his Promised Land, that he may see but never hope to enter.
She steps out of the sun into the bouquet of the shop. That fragrant room is full of the deep stillness of midday. The conversation has broken up, the loafers having gone to dinner. Jayber is sitting in the barber chair, reading the paper. Old Jack is asleep.
Jayber grins sidelong at her from his perch. “Miz Totem, I believe.”
“Hold your tongue.”
“I have held little else. How’s everybody?”
“All right. I’ve come for Uncle Jack.”
Jayber motions toward the back of the room. Hannah nods.
“How is he ?”
“He comes and goes. He’s mostly gone, I think.”
They have spoken quietly, but now Hannah lets the door slam and calls, “Dinner’s ready, Uncle Jack.”
Old Jack shakes his head and looks out. The room collects and rights itself in his gaze. “Ah Lordy!” he says. Hannah’s voice has summoned him from a long time ago. And now he looks at her, smiling to find her there indeed.
He plants the cane and, holding to the crook of it with both hands, draws himself to his feet. Both Hannah and Jayber resist the impulse to help him. Though they have helped him in other ways, none of them has ever helped Old Jack to stand. It is a circumstance in which help would have to be too nakedly offered and accepted. It would be a violation. They leave him intact. He stands and approaches Hannah, removing his hat, offering his hand.
“Honey, I’m glad to see you.”
“I’m glad to see you too,” she says. She takes his hand, kisses his white-bristled cheek.
Old Jack’s hand, which she continues to hold, is a fixed and final shape, bent and worn, curiously inert. The stiffened fingers no longer move with an idle life of their own. They lie still until he has a use for them and then they move by deliberate will, like rude tools. His hands remind Hannah of old gnarls of root such as she has found washed up on the rockbars of the river, still holding the shape of their place in the earth though that place is changed by their departure. She holds the old, clumsy hand in hers, gently, for its own sake. But for the sake of more than that, for she is thinking, “We will come to this, my Nathan.”
“Come and eat dinner with us, Jayber,” she says. “We’d be glad to have you.”
“Oh, I guess I’d better stay here and mess up a little something for myself,” Jayber says. “I’d be spoiled by good cooking.” He says to Old Jack: “You’d better stay and have some dinner with me.”
“I thank you, son,” Old Jack says, signaling honor and gratitude to Jayber by a wave of his hand. “I know you can cook a meal of vittles as well as anybody, but the women, they’ll be looking for me up at Mat’s.”
Jayber laughs silently, winking at Hannah, and reopens the newspaper. Hannah takes Old Jack’s arm.
They walk slowly up the street toward Mat’s, Hannah holding to the old man’s arm as if to be helped, but in reality helping him. And yet she knows that, by taking that arm so graciously bent at her service, she is being helped. She is sturdily accompanied by his knowledge, in which she knows that she is whole. In his gaze she feels herself to be not just physically but historically a woman, one among generations, bearing into mystery the dark seed. She feels herself completed by that as she could not be completed by the desire of a younger man. As they walk, she tells him such news as there is: how they all are, where they are working, what they have got done, what they have left to do. From time to time she stops, as if to give all her attention to her story, to allow him a moment of rest. But she is glad to prolong the walk. She is moved by him, pleased to stand in his sight, whose final knowledge is womanly, who knows that all human labor passes into mystery, who has been faithful unto death to the life of his fields to no end that he will know in this world. As for Old Jack, he listens to the sound of her voice, strong and full of hope, knowing and near to joy, that pleases him and tells him what he wants to know. He nods and smiles, encouraging her to go on. Occasionally he praises her, in that tone of final judgment old age has given him. “You’re a fine woman. You’re all right,” he says. And his tone implies: Believe it of yourself forever.
They are crossing Mat’s yard now, and suddenly Old Jack can smell dinner. It is strong, and it stirs him. It changes his mind. He steps faster. He is leaving the world of his old age and entering a stronger, younger world. He is going into the very heart of that world where labor’s hunger is fed with its increase. That is the order that he knows, and knows only and finally: that complexity of returns between work and hunger.
They turn the corner of the house into sight of the back porch, and there are all the men just come in. Two washpans and two kettles of hot water have been brought out and set down. Little Margaret stands nearby, holding a towel. Lightning and Mat’s grandson, Andy Catlett, are washing at the edge of the porch, leaning over the pans. Mat is sitting in a willow rocking chair on the porch with Mattie on his lap. The others—Burley, Jarrat, Nathan, Eiton—stand or squat in the yard beyond the porch, smoking, waiting their turns. Their shirts are wet with sweat. Their hands and the fronts of their clothes are dark with tobacco gum. They smell of sweat and tobacco and the earth of the field. In the stance of all of them there is relish of the stillness that comes after heavy labor. They have come to rest, and their stillness now, because of the long afternoon’s work yet ahead of them, is more intense, more deeply felt, more carefully enjoyed, than that which will come at the day’s end. Even Mat, who ordinarily would be carrying on some sort of play with Mattie, is sitting still, his hands at rest on the chair arms. Mattie is leaning against his shoulder, nearly asleep. Only Burley is talking, though he keeps otherwise as carefully still as the others. He is directing a mixture of banter and praise at Lightning’s back. It is a bill of goods designed, as the rest of them well know, to keep Lightning on hand. Under the burden of such a stretch of hard work his customary bragging has given way to periods of sulkiness.
“Why look at the arm on him,” Burley is saying. “Look at the muscle the fellow’s got. Damn, he can barely get his sleeve rolled up over it. No wonder I can’t stay with him.”
The others grin and wink. The fact is that, left to himself, Lightning is slow. But all week Burley has been working constantly at his heel, bragging on him, threatening to pass him, never quite doing it—and has succeeded in driving him almost up with Elton and Nathan, who are the best of them.
Lightning straightens from his washing and dries hands and face on the towel that Little Margaret holds out to him. He is doing his best to stay aloof from Burley’s talk, but it gets to him, and he touches lovingly the muscle of his right arm.
“He put it on me this morning, Uncle Jack,” Burley says, seeing the old man coming around the house. “I tried him, but I couldn’t shake him.”
“Go on and wash,” he says to Jarrat. “I got to finish my smoke.” He stands bent forward a little at the hips, hand on the small of his back. He seems to be hurting a little. He probably is, but he is playing on it too, parodying an aged and a beaten man. He looks afar, soliloquizing about his defeat. “Nawsir! Couldn’t handle him! Too few biscuits and too many years have done made the difference.”
“Ay Lord, he’s a good one!” Old Jack says, seeing the point. He knows where that Lightning would be if somebody was not crowding him all the time. Somewhere asleep. But he shakes his head in approbation of Burley’s praise. “He’s got the right look about him.”
“You’re right, old scout,” Burley says. “He’s the pride of Landing Branch, and no doubt about it. But I believe I smell a biscuit in the wind, and maybe a ham, and that may make a difference this afternoon. When I go back out there I aim to be properly fed. Oh, I may not get ahead of him, but I’ll be where he can hear me coming. Ham and biscuits!” he says. And he sings:How many biscuits can you eat?
Forty-nine and a ham of meat
This mornin’.
Lightning is at work now with a comb, putting the finishing touches to his wave and ducktail, a sculpture not destined to survive the next motion of his head. There is an arrogance in his eye and jaw and the line of his mouth, based not upon any excellence of his own but upon his contempt for excellence: if he is not the best man in the field, then he is nevertheless equal to the best man by the perfection of his scorn, for the best man and for the possibility that is incarnate in him. Old Jack studies Lightning’s face—he recognizes it; he has known other men who have worn it, too many—and then he grunts, “Hunh!” and looks away.
Jarrat and Elton finish washing and Burley and Nathan take their places. Hannah picks up Mattie, who has fallen asleep in Mat’s lap, and takes him in to his napping place on the parlor floor. Little Margaret has wandered off to play.
Now Mat gets up and he and Old Jack wash. When they have finished with the towel, Mat hangs it on the back of the rocking chair.
“Let’s go eat it,” he says. He holds open the kitchen door and they file in past him, Old Jack first and the others following. There is a general exchange of greetings between the men and the three women.
Old Jack takes his place at the head of the table. “Sit down, boys,” he says, and they pull out their chairs and sit down. Mat is at the foot of the table. At the sides, to Old Jack’s right, are Elton and Lightning and Andy and, to his left, Burley and Nathan and Jarrat. They pass the various loaded platters and bowls, filling their plates.
They fall silent now, eating with the concentration of hunger. The women keep the dishes moving aroud the table as necessary and keep the glasses filled with iced tea.
“Lay it away, boys,” Old Jack says. “It’s fine and there’s plenty of it.”
Following his lead, the others praise the food, the ones whose wives have cooked being careful to praise the cooking of the other women.
In the presence of that hunger and that eager filling, Old Jack eats well himself. But his thoughts go to the other men, and he watches them. He watches the older ones—Mat and Jarrat and Burley—sensing their weariness and their will to endure, troubling about them and admiring them. He watches the five proven men, whom he loves with the satisfaction of thorough knowledge and long trust, praising and blessing them in his mind. He watches them with pleasure so keen it is almost pain.
And he watches the boy, Andy, whom he loves out of kinship and because he is not afraid of work and because of his good, promising mind, but with uneasiness also because he has so little meat on his bones and has a lot to go through, a lot to make up his mind about.
And he watches Lightning, whom he does not love. That one, he thinks, will be hard put to be worth what he will eat. For he is one who believes in a way out. As long as he has two choices, or thinks he has, he will never do his best or think of the possibility of the best.
Old Jack shakes his head. “See that that Andy gets plenty to eat,” he tells Mat.
“Don’t you worry. I’m going to take care of this boy,” Mat says. And he gives Andy a squeeze and a pat on the shoulder.
“We going to miss old Andy when he’s gone,” Burley says.
The edge is off their hunger now, and they give attention to Andy, for whom this is the summer’s last workday. Tomorrow he will be leaving to begin his first year of college.
“We’ll be looking around here for the old boy,” Burley says, “and he’ll done be gone. They’ll say, ‘Where’s the old long boy that could load the wagon so good? Where’s that one that used to house the top tiers?’ And we’ll say, ‘Old Andy ain’t here no more. He’s up there to the university, studying his books.’”
“Studying the girls,” Nathan says, grinning and winking at Hannah.
“He’ll be all right with the girls if he wants to be,” Hannah says. “I’m a better judge of that than you.”
“You do all right with Kirby, don’t you, Andy, hon?” Mary Penn says.
“Yeah, if old Kirby’s going to have any say-so, he better keep his mind on his books while he’s up there,” Burley says. “He don’t, she’ll kick over the beehive, I expect.”
“You keep your mind on your books anyhow, Andy,” Jarrat says, looking gravely across the table at the boy, his gaze ponderous and straight under thick brows. “Mind your books, and amount to something.”
“Andy,” Elton says, “you’ll get full of book learning and fine ways up there, and you won’t have any more time for us here at all.”
Andy, who has been grinning at this commentary on his departure, now flushes with embarrassment. “Yes I will,” he says, though he knows the inadequacy of such an avowal. The faith that Elton has called for, though he spoke in jest, will have to be proved.
They all know it. Andy has not yet chosen among his choices.
And then Mat says, “Well, he’s learned some things here with us that he couldn’t have learned in a school. A lot of his teachers there won’t know them. And if he’s the boy I think he is, he won’t forget them.”
“Yessir!” Old Jack says. “By God, that’s right!”
Now all the plates are empty. The women gather them and stack them by the sink. They replace them with dishes of blackberry cobbler, still warm from the oven, covered with cold whipped cream.
“You all can thank Andy for this,” Hannah says. “I made it for him because it’s his favorite.”
“Thank him!” Nathan says. “I’m mad as hell about it. When are you going to fix me something because it’s my favorite?”
Hannah grins. “Your time is coming,” she says, “junior.”
The others laugh. The iced tea glasses are filled again. They take their time over the cobbler, talking idly now of the past, of other crops.
The afternoon’s work is near them, not to be put off much longer. Old Jack can feel it around him in the air, that dread of the heat and heaviness of the afternoon that even the strongest and the best man will suffer. But not for him any more the going back to the field. No more for him the breaking sweat under the sun’s blaze, the delight of skill and strength, and the pride.
