Spencer's Mountain

Spencer's Mountain

Earl Hamner, Jr.

With enduring gratitude
to my aunts, whose love
and faith and abundant
generosity made the writing
of this book possible:

Any resemblance between the characters herein and actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

On the day before Thanksgiving the Spencer clan began to gather. It was a custom that at this time during the year the nine sons would come together in New Dominion. On Thanksgiving Eve they would celebrate their reunion with food and drink and talk. On the day itself the men would leave at dawn to hunt for deer.

All day cars had been arriving at Clay Spencer's house. Each car was greeted by Clay-Boy, a thin boy of fifteen with a serious freckled face topped by an unruly shock of darkening corn-colored hair. Now the day was drawing toward evening, but still the boy lingered at the back gate waiting for the one uncle who had not yet arrived, the one he wanted most to see.

In the west the taller ridges of the Blue Ridge Mountains were rimmed with a fading autumn silver, but in the foothills, in the Spencers' back yard, all was in darkness when the ninth and last car stopped at the back gate, Clay-Boy, waving his flashlight excitedly, directed the car to a parking place.

“That you, Clay-Boy?” shouted the man who stepped out of the car.

“Uncle Virgil?” called Clay-Boy, suddenly shy in front of his city uncle. Virgil Spencer was the one who had gone to Richmond during the Depression when the mill had closed for four years. In Richmond, Virgil had found work as a mechanic and had stayed on there even after the mill had reopened.

“We been waiten for you,” the boy said.

“Who-all's here?” asked Virgil as he began unloading his gun and shells and hunting coat from the back seat.

“You're the last one,” said Clay-Boy.

“Your mama still got that law about no whiskey in the house?” asked Virgil. He reached into the glove compartment and removed a fifth of bourbon.

“There's whiskey there all the same,” answered Clay-Boy. “They've been goen back and forth between here and Scottsville all day long.” Scottsville was the closest place where store whiskey could be bought.

“What she don't know won't hurt her,” laughed Virgil. He concealed the bottle in his hunting coat, and the man and the boy walked toward the crowded little company house where lights beamed cheerfully from each window and the muffled sounds of festive conversation could be heard.

“I'm goen with you-all tomorrow,” said Clay-Boy. “On the hunt.”

“That's what you said last year,” said Virgil.

“Last year I wasn't but fourteen,” Clay-Boy objected.

“Last year your mama wouldn't let you,” Virgil reminded him.

“This year I'm goen,” Clay-Boy said.

Last year's hunt was a shameful memory to Clay-Boy. For as long as he could remember he had wanted to go. Right up until the night before the hunt he had had his father's permission. Then on the eve of the hunt, his mother, learning his plans, had said
no
. He wasn't old enough, Olivia had claimed. Didn't know how to handle a gun. Might not even come back alive with all those men out there crazy with whiskey and shooting at anything that moved. In the end she had won, and he had retired in an agony of frustration and cried silently into the pillow so late that he had not
even wakened the next morning and had been deprived of even the pleasure of watching the men depart.

This year Clay-Boy was using a different strategy. He had spoken to his father about going on the hunt and Clay had agreed that it was all right with him as long as Olivia did not object too much. Clay-Boy then decided he just would not mention it to his mother at all and when the time came to go on the hunt he would simply go with the men.

When Clay-Boy and his uncle came to the kitchen door, Virgil threw it open and shouted, “Let's start the party!”

“Well, Lord, look what the wind blew in,” exclaimed Olivia. Virgil was one of the youngest of the Spencer men and a great favorite with his brothers' wives. He kissed each of the sisters-in-law in turn, and came at last to his mother, the undisputed ruler of the clan, old but still beautiful, so tiny it seemed incredible she could have mothered such an enormous brood of sons. In her white hair was a jaunty bunch of artificial violets. She had been enthroned in a rocking chair from which she had been directing the cooking, the conversation, and the setting of the table, all the while delivering a lecture on the advantages of a large family; she was far from satisfied with the number of grandchildren her sons' wives had presented to her.

“How you doen, cutie?” Virgil asked.

“Bend down here and give your old mama a kiss,” she demanded, laughing happily. Virgil bent forward and her hands came up and held his head while they kissed.

“When you goen to bring a wife home?” she asked, releasing him.

“Mama,” he teased, “what do I want with a wife?”

“What you want with a wife is to get some grandchildren like the rest of the boys,” she scolded.

“Where is everybody?” Virgil asked, meaning his brothers.

“They're all in there in the liven room, swappen lies. Go on in there. I reckon they're expecten you.”

“I'll be a ring-tail ripstaver!” exclaimed Clay Spencer when his brother entered the room. Clay-Boy watched as Virgil was welcomed into the group. The brothers were
intensely fond of each other, and there was much clumsy hugging and back-slapping. More often than not their joy in seeing each other was expressed in an oath or a hearty laugh.

Watching his father and his uncles, Clay-Boy was impatient to be one of them. They were tall men. Not one of them was under six feet. They were small-boned but muscular, and each had some different shade of red hair and brown eyes. But it was not only to be like them physically that Clay-Boy yearned. It was his dream that some day he would earn the reputation his father and his uncles already enjoyed, for they were known to be good providers, hearty eaters, prodigious drinkers, courageous fighters, incomparable lovers and honorable in all dealings with their friends and neighbors. It was a proud thing to be a Spencer man, thought Clay-Boy.

Of the nine sons only Virgil had left the community permanently. The others, Matt, John, Rome, Luke, Anse, Ben, Clayton and Ham had left from time to time to look for better jobs, but they were never satisfied away from New Dominion and always came home again. Some of the boys—like John and Ben—drove to jobs in Charlottesville each day, but that was only twenty-eight miles away and they were always home with their families by nightfall.

Clay-Boy's attention was drawn away from his uncles when he suddenly caught sight of his grandfather. His Grandfather Zebulon was a handsome old man. His hair, like his curling handlebar mustache, was white and carefully combed, and even his great age had failed to dim the zest, the merriment, the celebration of life that shone in his clear brown eyes.

The old man sat near the fire. He was not being ignored intentionally. It was simply that he was too old and inactive to rise and push his way into the group. His lips formed words to welcome his son and his hands would rise up to embrace him, but then Virgil's attention would be attracted by one of his brothers.

Clay-Boy slipped over and stood beside his grandfather's chair, and when a lull came in the conversation called, “Uncle Virgil, here's Granddaddy.”

Virgil came and hugged the old man.

“Papa,” he scolded fondly, “what you doen up so late? I thought you always hit the hay when the sun set.”

“Couldn't go to sleep till you got here, boy,” said Zebulon.

“How they treaten you, Papa?” asked Virgil.

“I'll tell you the Lord's truth,” answered Zebulon in his thin old voice, “these boys have nearly made an old woman out of me. Took my gun away from me, won't let me drive a car from here to the gate, and they hide every drop of whiskey that comes in the house.”

“I'll take care of that, Papa,” said Virgil. He reached in his pocket and brought out the bottle of whiskey he had hidden away and passed it to his father.

“Now,” said Virgil, “let's get caught up on everythen that's been goen on.”

Listening to the talk of his father, his grandfather and his uncles, Clay-Boy sat on the floor curled against the edge of a sofa, storing away each word to be remembered and savored long after the reunion was over. Suddenly he heard his name.

“Where is that boy anyway?” It was Clay speaking.

“Right here, Daddy,” he said. “I been here all the time.”

“Well, come on out here, son,” Clay said. “Your Uncle Virgil brought you somethen from Richmond.”

Virgil was holding out a long thin package wrapped in brown paper. “I thought it was about time you had one of your own,” Virgil said.

Silence fell among the men while Clay-Boy unwrapped the package. He removed the paper and discovered a hunting knife. It was enclosed in a sheath that had slits along the top so it could be attached to his belt. The handle was of beautifully polished wood and when he withdrew the blade from the sheath he found it razor-sharp. Self-consciously Clay-Boy attached the sheath to his belt and returned the blade to its place.

“I sure do thank you, Uncle Virgil,” Clay-Boy said. “I been wanten one.”

“You know what to do with it, boy?” Clay asked.

“Sure,” said Clay-Boy. “If the deer ain't dead you jump on him and cut his throat.”

“When you goen to take that boy on the hunt, Clay?” asked the old grandfather.

“He says he's goen with us tomorrow,” said Clay.

“He's old enough,” the old grandfather said. “When I was his age I must of killed me twenty-five deer. It wasn't for sport back in them days. Food. Salt 'em down like you fellers do a pig nowadays. I plan on venison tomorrow night.”

“Clay-Boy!” His mother called from the kitchen.

“Yes'm?”

“You plannen on some supper you better put some wood in the box. Nearly empty.”

Clay-Boy left the men reluctantly and was going through the kitchen when his mother noticed the hunting knife.

“What are you doen with that thing on your hip?” demanded Olivia.

“Uncle Virgil brought it to me from Richmond,” he said.

“You be careful of that thing,” she warned. “You're liable to fall down and cut yourself on it.”

“Aw, Mama,” he objected impatiently. It annoyed him that Olivia always pointed out the most impossible and improbable dangers in any situation. Never had he tried out any new thing without having her warn him that it was too dangerous or that he was not old enough or he was sure to get hurt in the endeavor.

“And if you've got any notions about goen deer-hunten tomorrow you can just put it out of mind right now,” Olivia warned as the boy was halfway through the door.

Clay-Boy replied by slamming the door behind him as he went to the woodhouse for fuel to feed the ever-hungry old cooking range.

“Livy, you're goen to turn that boy into a sissypants,” observed the old grandmother, Elizabeth. “Keepen him here in the house all the time. Never letten him go off and learn men's ways.”

“It's just not time for him to go hunten yet,” said Olivia. “You start 'em off hunten the next thing you know the old
Army or Navy comes in here after 'em and that's just one step away from getten married and leaven home. And where's your child then? Off and gone, that's where.”

“Nine of 'em I raised,” the old grandmother said. “They all went off and married women, God knows. 'Cept Virgil, and God knows what'll come of that boy, breathen city dirt all day and ruinen his eyes with moven-picture shows at night.”

“Boys are a heartache,” said Olivia.