Jayber Crow (15 page)

“Compliments on your vittles, Mrs. Thigpen,” Burley said as he buttered his seventh and eighth biscuits and reached for the pitcher of sorghum molasses.

“They do very well,” said Loyd Thigpen, knowing his man, “but don't it ever come over you at a time like this that you'd enjoy to have a good mess of feesh?”

“Well,” Burley said, “being as it's up and we can't help it, we might as well fish.”

They agreed that they would put out Loyd's fish baskets that afternoon, Burley would take what fish he found in them on his way home the next morning, and after that Loyd would raise them for himself.

And so when I came upon him that Monday morning, Burley was ready to raise the third basket, but for the moment was standing there so quietly just to warm his hands in his pockets and enjoy himself, afloat in the flooded world.

 

While we were going down the river we didn't say anything. Keeping his own direction out there in the confusion of currents took all of Burley's attention, and I had plenty to look at and think about on my own. Among other things, I was wondering where and how we were going to get ashore. But at a certain place, Burley pulled us out of the channel and
through an opening among the tops of the shore trees. And then we were in the woods. As the slope of the hillside rose under us, the tops of the trees rose over us, and it was clear going among the trunks of some fairly big elms and box elders and water maples and sycamores and a few walnut and ash.

Burley rowed by the gable and roof of what looked to be a camp house. He said, “It don't look like it now, but I slept there Thursday night.”

The hillside was steep in that place. Not far behind the house, Burley pulled up beside a sort of wooden cage, only the top of which was visible above the water. He put the fish he had caught into the cage, saving out and stringing two nice catfish that weighed about five pounds apiece. Then he rowed to shore.

“From here,” he said, “we got to walk or fly.”

He laid his oars in the bottom of the boat, picked up the two fish, and stepped ashore. When he had got out, I followed, carrying my box.

He tied the boat to a tree and started up the slope toward the road, which wasn't far. He hadn't looked at me again.

I said, “Much obliged for the lift, Mr. Coulter.”

He said, walking on, “Burley. Burley. Mr. Coulter's my daddy.”

I followed him on up to the road. When we got up there onto comfortable footing, he stopped and turned to me. He looked me over, from top to toe and from toe to top, and then he grinned at me, remembering, I think, that I had been “winding about” for three days.

He said, “How was it you got here?”

“Well,” I said, “by enacting my ignorance of geography—which is to say, by being lost the better part of three days.”

He enjoyed that. “Afoot?” he said.

“I got a few rides, but most of the time I was walking, I guess.”

“And in all that rain!”

“I've got a good raincoat,” I said.

He looked me over again and said, “In fact you do.”

He started on again. I was uncertain whether to come with him or not, until he said, walking along, carrying the fish, “What did you eat?”

I told him more or less what, as I hurried to catch up.

He said, “Are you hungry?”

“I could eat,” I said.

He said, “Well. Come on.”

We left the road presently and went through a stand of big trees and then up along a little stream—Coulter Branch, as I would learn—that was coming down a lot faster than we were going up. After a longish climb we left the hollow and angled across a hillside pasture to a weatherboarded double log farmhouse right on the point of the ridge, from where we could look back over the woods and down to the flooded river. We went to the back of the house and up onto the porch.

Before we got to the kitchen door, it opened. Burley's mother, Zelma, a determined-looking woman with her white hair in a bun, stood there with her hand on the knob. She was wearing a clean apron over a long dark blue dress with long sleeves.

“Burley Coulter!” she said. “I had given you up for drowned!” She was both aggrieved and half joking, as if she had worried about him too often to have worried too much. But she said, “Come here and let me see.”

He went obediently to her, grinning. She pressed the sleeve of his coat to assure herself that his own arm was actually inside, and he bent and gave her a loud kiss.

He made a little gesture with the fish.

“Oh, Lord!” she said, pleased. “More fish to fry!” And then she looked at me.

Burley said, “You remember that boy Aunt Cordie and Uncle Othy Dagget took to live with them? This is him.”

“Well, honey, I didn't know you! Lord, how long has Aunt Cordie been dead? It was when?”

“Nineteen twenty-four,” I said.

“Well,” Burley said, “he needs to be brought in and wrung out and hung up to dry. He's been rambling around in the rain for three days.”

“My land!” she said. “Come in, honey!”

Burley had started out to a three-legged table leaning against the cellar wall, where he cleaned his fish. An old yellow tomcat was sitting on the table, eyeing the fish and licking his chops.

Burley called back to his mother, “He's a barber.” And then he said, “He's hungry. Me too.”

I stepped through the door and set down my box. Mrs. Coulter
showed me where to put my coat and hat and overshoes, and where to wash. She started stirring about at the stove, building up the fire, sliding various cooking vessels over to the heat, putting a pan of biscuits into the oven to warm.

“Dave and Jarrat and the boys already ate and went back,” she said.

She set two places at the table and brought out a pitcher of buttermilk.

“You never know,” she said, “when to expect that Burley Coulter to show up. Or disappear, either. When he does show up, you can expect he'll be hungry. But as like as not he'll bring something to cook. So maybe it all evens up. Somewhere.”

She seemed at first to be talking to me, and then only to herself. But when she had set the pitcher down she turned and looked at me.

“I don't remember your name,” she said, “but you're welcome.”

“Jonah Crow,” I said.

She drew a chair out from the table to bring it closer to the stove. “Come and get warm,” she said. “Sit down.”

 

Mrs. Coulter fed us a wonderful big dinner, lamenting all the time that she hadn't had much to fix and that all of it was warmed over, until Burley diverted her by telling about the flood—how high the water was, and who had had to move out, and so forth.

“Well,” she kept saying, clearly proud of him and happy to be in possession of so much firsthand news, “did ever anybody hear the like!”

When we had eaten every bite we could hold, washed down with several cups of hot coffee, and pushed our chairs back and rested for a few minutes in the warmth, Burley said, “I reckon you want to go see that shop.”

I said, “I reckon I do.”

So we got back into our wraps and I picked up my box and thanked Mrs. Coulter. We walked out a long lane on the backbone of the ridge and then took the road to town.

When we passed the schoolhouse and came down into the swag, Burley walked up to the front of a small weatherboarded building, gave it a pat with the flat of his hand, and said, “Here she is.”

It was a two-story building, one room of about twelve by twenty-four
feet over the top of another, the upper story reached by an outside stairway. It was as plain a structure as you could imagine, all rectangles, with a false front and a brick chimney poked up through the middle. And it was ungainly, too narrow for its height. The whole thing was slung a little askew like an old dog half-minded to lie down, and it was badly in need of paint. It was clearly several steps down from Skinner Hawes's establishment, let alone the University of Kentucky, but in twelve years I had not seen anything I wanted so much.

Burley was leaning to one of the front windows with his hands cupped around his eyes. “She's ready for business,” he said. “Barber chair, setting chairs, stove—everything it needs, except a barber and some loafers.”

I looked in the other window and saw that it was true. There were maybe a dozen chairs lined up along one wall. Some of the chairs were the wire-backed kind, some were hickory-bottomed. There was a big heating stove with a register in the ceiling over it to let warm air rise into the upstairs room. And the barber chair was one of the good old-fashioned ones, porcelain and polished metal and leather, well-worn but fine as a throne. Behind it there was a narrow little backbar, just a shelf painted white like the walls and ceiling. Above the backbar was a good-sized mirror and another, not matching, was on the opposite wall. The room was walled and ceiled just as it was floored, with six-inch tongue-and-groove boards nailed across the studs and joists, making it look longer than it actually was. The finish on the floor was simply wear, the treading of many feet for a long time, so that it was brighter in some spots than in others.

“Yessir!” Burley said, seeing a vision. “Why a single man with a place like this would be
fixed
. He'd have his dwelling place and his place of business right together. And look a-here.”

He led me around to the side of the building where the stairs went up. Grinning, he pointed up to the little landing at the top. “A man could set up there of an evening,” he said, “and rock and look out.”

We climbed up and looked through the door glass into the upstairs room, which was completely empty.

From the landing or stoop or what you may call it, we could see the remainder of the property. The lot was twenty or so feet wide, giving room for a sort of driveway on the side where the stairs were. Below us
we could see where coal had been piled. When he left, Barber Horsefield had taken everything but the black stain on the ground. Behind the building the lot continued back maybe a hundred and fifty feet to a brushy fencerow that divided that part of town from a large sheep pasture. In one of the back corners there was a privy under a good-sized wild cherry tree.

Burley went down first and turned to face me at the bottom of the stairs. He pinched my sleeve and gave a little pull. “What do you think about it?”

It was clear that he wanted me to buy the shop, but at the time I had no idea of his reason. Had he bought the shop himself from Barber Horsefield, and was wanting to sell it at a profit? Was he anxious to redeem his own vision of the good life a man could live in such a place? Or, maybe, did he like me?

I hoped so. But I said, “Well, what will you take for it?”

He laughed. “Oh, it ain't mine. I don't own anything I can't carry or that won't follow me when I whistle.”

“Well, who owns it?”

“The bank, so I hear. They took it to clear Barber Horsefield's note. My opinion, Barber Horsefield got the best of the deal.”

“Where's the bank?”

“It's up the street yonder, but I believe it's shut by now.”

I said, “Aw!” in a way that showed my disappointment more than I meant it to.

“But what we can do, we can go see Mat Feltner. He's on the board.”

 

We went up the road then, past the poolroom and three stores and the Independent Farmers Bank and the post office and the church, and around to the back of a large house that was actually a farmhouse at one of the corners of the town. In Port William only strangers and preachers and traveling salesmen ever went to anybody's front door. Burley knocked at the kitchen door and stood back with his hands inside the bib of his overalls.

A quick-stepping woman with a kind face opened the door, saw who was there, and said, “Why, hello, Burley.”

Burley took off his hat and I hurried to do the same.

“Howdy, Mrs. Feltner. We was wondering if Mat's around.”

“He just came in.” She turned and called back into the house: “Mat!” And then she opened the door wider. “You all come in.”

“Aw, we'll just wait here,” Burley said.

She shut the door, and then pretty soon it was opened by a man who looked too young to have white hair.

“Hello, boys. Come in.”

“Aw, Mat, our feet's muddy.” Burley had put his hat back on and his hands were again behind his bib.

“No, they're not,” the man said. “Come on in.”

He held the door open for us and we stepped inside. Mat Feltner glanced at me and saw that he didn't know me, and then looked at Burley. “What have you got on your mind?”

And then Burley, as if preparing to auction me off, told him who I was, how I had come, where I was when he had found me, what my trade was, how he had showed me Barber Horsefield's old shop, and how I liked it and wanted to ask about buying it. “He thinks it's just the ideal place for a young fellow to settle down and take hold.”

Mr. Feltner—who would not be “Mat” to me for a long time—turned to me and stuck out his hand. “Mr. Crow, I'm Mat Feltner. I'm glad to know you. I knew your mother's people. I remember the Daggets very well.”

There was nothing glancing or sidling about the way he looked at you. He looked right through your eyes, right into you, as a man looks at you who is willing for you to look right into him.

When we had shaken hands and he had given me that look, he pulled chairs back from the kitchen table. “Sit down.”

We sat down. He studied me for a minute again, and then he said, “You're not married, Mr. Crow? You've got no family responsibilities?”