Spencer's Mountain (16 page)

After they left the parsonage, Clay drove along the main road until they came to the foot of Spencer's Mountain. Here he turned off the gravel road onto a smaller roadway that led to the top of the mountain. He stopped the car at the edge of a pasture on top of the mountain and led Olivia out into the field.

A brilliant moon shone down, so bright their shadows stood out sharp in the dark green grass at their feet. Below them they could see the village. The air around them was sweet with the scent of honeysuckle.

He took her hand and led her farther up in the pasture to where the land leveled off and a pleasant grove of trees stood. He looked at Olivia, watching for some reaction.

“It's pretty here,” she said.

“This is where I will build you a house,” he said. “A place to live in and bring up our family. A place all our own.”

At night in the company-owned house, going off to sleep
beside her he would say, “I will paint the house to your liken.”

“White I would like,” she would say, “with green shutters. I would like a flagstone walk goen down to the gate and a wisteria vine over the gate like an arch. I'll plant petunias down that walk on either side and we'll need a fence to keep the children inside so I won't worry when I can't keep my eyes on them every minute.”

“White with green shutters is pretty,” he would agree and drift into sleep.

“I've always been partial to green,” she would say, and then realize that he had gone to sleep. Then she would join him and their dreams would be akin, of the house and the children and the scent of honeysuckle.

Looking at Clay now, Olivia realized suddenly how much he had aged. There was the beginning of a streak of gray at his forehead. The skin around his eyes and in his forehead showed deep wrinkles; sitting there over the drawing he looked stoop-shouldered, as if his back were permanently bent a little forward.

She did not have the heart to stop Clay's description of the work he would start the next day. It was only when Clay-Boy, half asleep with his chin resting on his hand, let his head fall forward with a jerk that Clay realized it was nearly one o'clock.

“God Almighty,” said Clay. “It's goen to be daylight in an hour or two. If we're goen to get any work done tomorrow we'd better get some sleep.”

Clay-Boy yawned “Good night,” and stumbled off to bed. Olivia and Clay turned off the downstairs lights and then tiptoed quietly up the stairs and into their room.

Taking off his shoes as he sat down on the bed, Clay said, “I'm goen to finish off the basement first. It'll be a good place to store your canned goods.”

“It's goen to take plenty of that to feed the hungry mouths around here,” Olivia said. She lay down and Clay switched off the light by pulling the cord he had rigged to the bare electric globe in the center of the room.

“Night, Sweetheart,” he said.

“Night, Clay.”

Men are strange creatures, thought Olivia as she yawned
and rolled her head against the pillows; they really believe all the things they promise women. For seventeen years he had promised her the house and now he had renewed that promise. And women are just as foolish, she thought a moment later, for the vision of the house hovered in her mind. It was there so bright she could see the shining white clapboard in the sunshine and smell the honeysuckle sweetness carried on the wind. Then she went to sleep.

At dawn the following morning, Clay-Boy, still half asleep, followed his father across the meadow that rose to where Clay had started his house. The sun was just rising above the horizon and lingered there above a distant mountain. Fog rose from the damp meadow and the sun was a cool smoldering orange. Clay-Boy stumbled along behind his father but he came awake in a terrible rush of fear as a covey of young quail rose in startled flight around them. The covey dispersed in the air with fierce speed and then darted toward the ground and shelter and again the morning was still except for the tentative call of the hen as she assembled her chicks.

“Near about nineteen or twenty in that covey, I figure,” said Clay. “How many did you make out?”

“About that, Daddy,” said Clay-Boy.

“Them jaybirds is goen to make good eaten come fall of the year,” said Clay. “Quail is plentiful this year. You come back here on week ends from that college course and we'll shoot us a mess of 'em.”

“I wish I'd hear something from 'em down at the University
of Richmond. I go down to the post office twice a day and not one letter has come from 'em yet.”

“Well, I wouldn't bother my mind about it. They probably take their time maken up their minds.”

They walked on through the brightening morning until they came to the hole in the ground which was Clay's basement. Nearby was the new power saw. It consisted of a rotary blade attached to one end of an axle. At the other end was a band which connected to an old Model-T engine by a thick heavy leather strap. It had been little used and was in good condition.

“Don't you tell your mama, boy,” said Clay, “but I paid ten dollars more for that saw than I told her. Old Man Pickett was asken fifty, but I got him down to forty. I told your mama thirty because you know how she is. You name a big amount like that and she'll worry her head off about how we're ever goen to pay for it. We'll pay it all right. It wouldn't surprise me if I didn't make money on this saw and get the house put up to boot.”

“How you goen to make money on it, Daddy?” asked Clay-Boy.

“Well, there's plenty of dead wood on this land, chestnut mostly, that got killed in the blight. There ain't much else can be done with it, but it'll make good firewood. Once I get the house built I'm liable to go into the firewood business.”

“I reckon there's money in it,” said Clay-Boy.

“There is if you know how to make it,” said Clay. “Now me, I ain't goen to waste my time sellen wood to these poor folks around here that can't afford lard to make bread. What I aim to do is get me a truck of my own, go over there to Charlottesville and peddle it there. That's where the big money is. Them city folks will pay money. Around here, all you'll get is a pat and a promise.”

Just then the last wisp of fog vanished in the meadow and the bright light of the sun fell on the man and the boy and the hole.

“Better get started here,” said Clay, and found a file with which he began sharpening the teeth of the saw.

When he was satisfied that the teeth of the saw were
sharp enough, he started the Model-T engine. After a preliminary coughing it huffed away enthusiastically, splitting the quiet morning with its busy sound. Next Clay connected the leather pulley which led from the motor to the saw and the blade began a slow gradual building sound that ended in a steady metallic clawing scream.

“That buzz saw is ready!” shouted Clay to his son.

“She sure sounds it,” agreed Clay-Boy.

Clay stopped the engine and the whine of the saw gradually subsided to silence. The boy looked at his father and saw that his eyes were glowing with pleasure.

“Let's cut lumber, boy,” said Clay.

“Yes sir,” said Clay-Boy.

They walked across the meadow and into the woods. Once in a while Clay would stop and examine a tree but reject it because it housed a nest of squirrels or because it was so old that it might have decayed sections. They came finally to a great oak which might have been a hundred and fifty years old. It was located near the edge of a clearing where it had received sunshine for most of its years and in its seemingly effortless growth toward perfection had grown a thick almost perfectly round trunk from which branches appeared at uniform intervals. Its leaves were a bright healthy green and when Clay saw it he recognized it as the wood he wanted for the underpinnings of his house.

Clay examined the tree carefully, observing weight and slant of branches above and determining which way he wanted the tree to fall.

“There's lumber enough in this old honey to build sixteen houses,” he exclaimed to Clay-Boy.

“It's sure goen to make a whale of a crash,” said Clay-Boy.

“I want her to fall out into the clearing,” said Clay. “There's other trees in there she could knock over and I don't want to harm none of 'em if I can help it.”

First Clay chopped out a triangular cut in the trunk in the direction he wanted the tree to fall in. He chopped with the axe in regular joyous strokes, chipping away at the wood—one stroke up and one stroke down—until he had cleared
away a quarter of the diameter of the tree. Just as the tree began an almost imperceptible list he called out to the boy to stand aside.

They waited, but the gigantic thing held. Now the two of them with a double crosscut saw which Clay kept on the mountain approached the side away from the triangular wound and made a fresh cut in the untouched bark. Back and forth they tugged until the blade had sunk four inches into the trunk, making it nearly impossible for them to operate the saw. Clay inserted an iron wedge behind the saw and tapped it gently into the slit the saw had made. The tree groaned, and they began to saw again. The teeth of the saw ate steadily toward the center of the tree, tearing away in seconds rings which had taken a whole year to form until Clay pulled up on the saw and called to Clay-Boy to stop.

The tree was supported now only by the delicate threads of wood it had been in the first decades of its life. They had pierced now to its core, had sawed through wood and time until the tons of wood and leaves and branches and twigs that stood above them were held almost by a slender thread.

“She'll come down now,” said Clay to the boy. “You get back.”

“All right, Daddy,” the boy said.

“You go all the way over yonder in the center of the field,” his father said. “I won't drive the wedge in till you get there.”

“Yes sir,” the boy said, and ran. When he reached the center of the field he raised his hand and waved. He could not see his father any longer because he was lost in the shade of the tree, but in a moment he heard the pounding of a sledge hammer against the iron wedge. He watched with a mixture of melancholy and awe as the tree began to tremble at the top and then, like the folding of a gigantic fan, lean, then drop and explode with a great crashing sound back to the ground where it had started so long ago as a seed.

Clay-Boy ran back to the base of the tree. He found his father sitting on the raw stump. He was smoking a cigarette and looking at the tree thoughtfully.

“I felt it when she hit the ground,” said Clay-Boy, “Way
over there in the middle of the field I could feel it when she hit.”

“A tree is a sorrowful thing to see layen down on the ground that way,” observed Clay.

The tree had not yet settled against the earth. Even now a strong limb, caught in some awkward strained position, would snap; a branch would straighten itself out and fling its leaves out of the broken mass like a stricken arm trying to pretend that its trunk was not dead. Gradually a stillness came into the mass of broken limbs, no sound or movement came from it, and it was dead.

All morning Clay and the boy worked over the tree, cutting away each branch from the trunk. Clay examined each branch carefully. Some he designated as firewood, others he placed in a special pile, naming them by use he would make of them.

“This one will make good two-by-fours,” he would say. “Here's a prime four-by-four. Put that in a special pile over there.”

By noon they had stripped nearly half of the tree of its branches. Soon they would be coming to the smaller limbs. Clay had already spotted limbs that he could use only for firewood and by the time they came to the tip of the tree he would be picking out the smaller limbs to be used for beanpoles in the garden.

At noon they heard voices and looked across the field to see Olivia and the children. The children ran on ahead, but Olivia was carrying the two youngest children and could not keep up with the others.

Shirley was the first to arrive. She ran to Clay, breathless and full of importance with the news she brought.

“We got a letter,” she said. “It came in the mail.”

“Who's it from?” asked Clay-Boy.

“Mama didn't open it yet, but it says on the envelope it's from Richmond and she thinks it's from Uncle Virgil.”

“They sent word from the post office that there was this letter down there,” chimed in Becky, “and that somebody ought to come down and pick it up. Mama let Shirley and me go get it.”

Olivia arrived, out of breath and tired from the long walk and from having carried two children. She placed Pattie-Cake on the tree stump and handed the baby to Clay-Boy.

“I think we've heard from Virgil,” she said and pulled the letter out of her pocket.

“Why didn't you open it and find out what he said,” asked Clay.

“It's addressed to you. I thought maybe you'd like to open it,” replied Olivia.

Clay accepted the letter, opened it solemnly, and read the contents. Olivia and the children waited respectfully until he had finished.

“What in tarnation is a Jew?” asked Clay when he had finished the letter.

“It's some kind of religion. It's like a Arab or a Greek or somethen. There's some of them over in Charlottesville, I've heard. Why?” asked Olivia.

“Virgil says he's comen up here one week end soon and bringen one with him.”

“One what?”

“One Jew. A girl Jew.”

“What's he bringing her for?”

“Says he's thinken about marrying her.”

“I'm glad Virgil's finally got a girl,” said Olivia. “but what does he say about taken Clay-Boy in?”

“Says he'll talk to us about it when he gets here.”

“I don't feel none too good about it if he's plannen on getten married.”

“I ain't even sure I want Clay-Boy down there if he's goen to be liven in the same house with a Jew. They might be worse than the Baptists.”