Home from the Hill (15 page)

He tried to be honest with himself, not pretend that his wish to be with his wife was unselfish. Now as he searched without catching sight of her in the crowd, he found, somewhat to his consternation, that his desire for her company was sincere and urgent, and he found too that he was cold sober, could blame nothing more on Hubb's liquor. He knew that Hannah had done nothing to make him change his feelings about her. He knew just what those feelings were. They were what a man ought to feel for his wife: respect. Nothing urgent about that. He wanted to be honest with himself about this, too, and not enlarge upon his feelings to make them grand.

“Haven't seen my wife, have you?” he asked a man.

“Why, no. Not in the last little while.”

He asked another, and that one replied, “Why, yes, I seen her a little while ago. She was with your boy, standing over yonder by the house.” And then the man said, “Is anything wrong?”

“Oh, no. Nothing wrong. I was just looking for her, was all.”

20

“How was your girl?” said his mother to Theron.

“She is not ‘my girl.' She's the girl I'm taking to the dance, that's all.”

“That's all I meant to say.”

“Oh.”

“Is she a nice girl?”

“For all I know.”

“She's a pretty girl.”

“I suppose.”

“You suppose.”

“Well, you wouldn't want me to bring an ugly one?”

“What color eyes does she have?”

“Gray,” he said. “They're the kind,” he added hastily, “that you can't help noticing, that are paler than the face. You know the kind I mean.”

She smiled at his little giveaway, but it was hard to smile. Yet she knew she was torturing herself unnecessarily. Libby Halstead was just the girl he was taking to the dance. He deserved a pretty one. But the occasion made this seem his first really serious date, and, said the words that had sounded in her heart all day, the first of many, the start of his final growing away from her.

Though not religious, Mrs. Hannah, like all women of her place, had a mind stocked with scriptural tags, mostly of the bleak and grim sort, and the text that had occupied her thoughts all day was, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife.” Oh, she did not expect him to elope with this girl. But after this girl, another, others, and in time the one who would take him from her. She had seen how the girls all looked at him today. He was good-looking. He favored his father. She granted that. She could allow herself to, for she believed that there the resemblance ended.

She said, “I didn't know you knew how to dance.”

He laughed. “I don't,” he said.

“Does she know that?”

“No. I'll have to get her to teach me. Do you think she'll mind very much?”

“Mind? Why, it'll be worth it.”

“Oh, now, cut it out.”

“It'll be worth it—having the hero of the ball, even if he can't dance.” Then, “Why didn't you ask me?” she said, no longer in a bantering tone. “I'd have taught you.” But she knew why he had not asked her. Two reasons: it had never occurred to him that she knew how—she was not sure she did anymore; and he had wished to spare her. It was ungrateful of her not to allow him to, but she did not wish to spare herself.

She watched him go. Until now, she thought, he had seen himself only in the eyes of men. Today, and during this past week, when he had been the town hero, he had begun to catch reflections of himself in eyes into which he had never bothered looking before. He had been slow about girls, backward for his age, and it had been a blessing to her. He had had a contempt for girls. She knew what it came from. Though certainly there was some of that in it, it was not altogether from boyish notions of manly seriousness and dedication. His pride had been affronted by girls. Their transparent little wiles and coy inferences had worked perversely on him. She had seen him being solemnly insensitive to the hints and come-ons of more than one. He resented their assumption that what worked on all other boys was bound to work equally well on him, that he was so little the master of himself that a sigh or a flutter of the eyelids was enough to melt him, make him forget everything for which he lived. But he was not her little boy anymore. She was not worried that he would do wrong. Her worry, if it was a worry, was that he would do right. Theron was the marrying kind. She could not wish it otherwise, but she could not help regretting that it was so.

“Oh, Hannah! There you are! I've been looking all over for you!”

It was Wade.

She gave him her attention with difficulty. “Have you?” She had just remembered the old saying, My daughter's my daughter all the days of her life, but my son is my son till he gets him a wife. “What was it?” she said.

“What was what?”

“What?”

“You said, ‘What was it?'” he said.

“Did I? Oh. Well, you said you were looking for me. What did you want me for?”

“Oh. Oh, it wasn't anything in particular. I just didn't see you anywhere. Wondered where you were.”

“I was here,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “Having a good time?”

“You are, I can see. I mean smell,” she said.

“Oh, now. On a day like this?” he said. “Besides, I only had—”

“It must have been plenty to make you wonder where I I was,” she said.

She could not have been more surprised at herself. That she should have uttered such words to him in any tone at all, sardonic or bitter, was incredible; her tone had been neither of these; it was hurt, there was a suggestion of a pout in it, even supplication. Was she entreating him for attention?

If he had responded with any mawkishness she believed she might almost have hit him. Instead he said, “Maybe you ought to have a little for once.”

“I just may,” she said.

“This is the day for it,” he said.

“Yes, this is the day for it,” she said. He was proud, she thought, pleased with himself and with the celebration. How different from her mood. She felt a premonition of loneliness like an ague coming on.

“How does it feel,” he said, “to be the mother of a grown man?” But he ceased listening to himself as soon as he began to speak. What he was thinking was, why had this woman alone failed to love him?

She said nothing. He moved closer and he put his arm around her shoulder in a gesture of awkward and ungentle friendliness, such as men show for men. It disinfected the embrace for her, and she permitted the arm to remain. His words had given her a need for close company—even his. She could not be choosy.

He said, “Hannah, I was looking for you because I had something I wanted to tell you.”

Whatever it was caused him some little difficulty. He hesitated, and to her chagrin she felt something faintly stir in her heart. Quick as always to suspect herself, she wondered was she, after all, merely another of his creatures, and the most abject, that when he clapped her on the back, as he might one of his cotton-pickers or hunting companions, after twenty years of neglect and abuse, she could feel anything at all. Had she no pride? No memory?

“And that is: thanks. Thanks, Hannah. For everything. You have been all a man could ask for in a wife.”

She ought to have resented it, and out of loyalty to herself, she tried. All that a man could ask for, and ask and ask, she thought, while he gave what in return? But though she despised herself for her weakness, the candles she had lighted upon the altar of her resentment had been blown out by a gust of loneliness. She knew what had brought him to this, and she ought to have resented that too. It was the day, not her. He was grateful in his shallow way for the comfortable home she had made for him, for bringing up his son and heir a credit to him. Probably he dared even be grateful to her for not making trouble about his pleasures. Probably he dared to think she ought to be grateful for his gratitude. But maybe his gratitude ought to content her now. There were women who did not have even that. Maybe what her mother had always said, that as he grew older he would change his ways, was coming true. It was not love he offered, but it was peace of a kind, and she thought of the prospect that faced her soon, of living in the house there alone with him after Theron was married and gone. And maybe she had expected the wrong things, had asked for too much, little as it was. Maybe what she had had was what a good marriage really was. Women envied her, knowing all. Maybe they were right, after all. Maybe the other things, the things she had missed, never came, came only in books. One thing she had had: her husband's respect. And she had had this certainty: that he did not respect those other women. How long could she go on pining for things that over the years had grown vague and dim even to her? Young hopes and the pain, the bitterness that came when they went unfulfilled—wasn't she old to nurse them still? She felt like a traitor to herself, but she was starved for a little affection.

“You've been a good father to my son, Wade,” she said. It was an admission that cost her little. It was so. And she did not deny him credit for concealing his deplorable side from Theron. But then she felt a nagging suspicion that she had not been as generous with him as he had been with her. And then she saw again in her mind the gray, bristling head of the boar. Out of resentment of Wade she had driven Theron to expose himself to such danger, to possible calamity. No, she had not been as generous as he. With almost a shudder she pressed herself to him. “Our son,” she said.

21

Chauncey punctured the ham with the long skewer and slowly pushed it all the way in. He drew it out and a trickle of red juice followed it. He straightened, took off his apron and folded it up, took off his chef's hat and yelled:

“Come an git it!”

A longer pipe of smaller diameter was slipped through the one on which the boar was spitted. Three men squatted at each end and got their shoulders under it and lifted.

Theron was suddenly grabbed from behind. He felt many hands on him. He felt himself lifted off his feet. He was raised above the heads of the crowd, then lowered onto the shoulders of his father and Pritchard. His mother smiled up at him. They fell in behind the men carrying the boar, and the procession started up the hill.

Jokes were shouted up at him; he could catch only occasional words amidst the yelling. Boys were cavorting alongside the marching men. Someone began singing
For He's a Jolly Good Fellow
. All joined in, pausing in stride and raising their voices each time for the drawn-out note on
fe-el-low
, then marching quick-step to
which nobody can deny
. Once he felt a squeeze given his leg and looked down to see his father winking up at him.

He was borne through the crowd of women and children on the lawn to the head of the table and seated on the only chair. The men carrying the boar stood waiting. When Theron was seated, they heaved all together and raised it above the table and lowered it in front of him. The table creaked and sagged. Pritchard reappeared, bringing a comic set of carving tools. The knife and fork were three feet long, made of lath and covered with tinfoil. Theron made a pass at carving with them. He bore down, frowned, felt the edge of the knife with his thumb. Pritchard said, “What's the matter? Dull?” He took the knife and disappeared with it into the crowd. In a moment he was back with a genuine carving set. “Ground it down a little,” he said.

Smoke arose, and the liberated juices welled up when the pink ham was sliced into. A hum of hungry approval went up. When Theron had placed slices of meat on the first two plates, Pritchard grabbed them. People yelled, “Here! Hey! Just a minute there! Where do you think you're going? Women and children first!” But holding the plates above his head, he pushed through the crowd. They fell back, revealing Deuteronomy and the Plott bitch chained to a tree. Pritchard rested one plate on his forearm and shook out his pocket handkerchief and tucked it into Deuteronomy's collar for a bib. Then he set down the plates for the two dogs—who, however, found the meat too hot and too spicy. He got a roaring laugh.

There was a merry din. The Negroes were serving potato salad and beans and olives and cole slaw and pickles. Bottles were being opened, and children who had not yet learned to drink from the bottle were choking on sodapop. Beer, jostled, foamed over onto trousers, splashed shoes. There was a great deal of loud talk, jokes yelled over heads, much laughing and some crying.

Manners remained good until after the women and children were served. Then the men and boys crowded and pushed against the table. Two Negro men had taken over the carving of the meat, but Theron insisted that every plate must pass through his hands. The flashing knives and forks of the two carvers worked as steadily as two pairs of knitting needles, and Theron had all he could do to serve the stuffing and hand out the plates and keep up with them. Naturally some were offended by the cut or the size of the portions they were served. These, however, were not so deeply offended as those who were kept standing while time after time Theron passed them over and gave the plate to someone else. And there was a consistency in it: he simply did not see any but the men he was accustomed to find in the circle of hunters on the square, and some fairly uncouth swampers among them whom he saw seldom enough there. So long as they were hunting men. Otherwise it might be the mayor himself or the president of the bank or the most respected Christian in town, but for Theron they were just not there; the only men who existed for him were the hunters. The poor Baptist minister, whose summer revival-meeting tabernacle chairs had been borrowed for the day, after standing right in front of Theron (where the other men, out of respect for his calling and guilt that they did not otherwise honor it much, had pushed him), timidly holding out his hand for every plate, finally got served at all only because Captain Wade saw his plight and came and served him.