Spencer's Mountain (7 page)

But after breakfast, as he stepped out of the back door and looked up at the sky, his mind was filled with the vision of a certain fishing hole he frequented on Rockfish River. He could see the slow strong movement of the deep slate-colored
water, dappled with sun and shadow and fairly jumping with carp and bass and catfish. The fact that he had announced that he would work on the house nagged him for a moment, but then he answered the voice of his conscience with the excuse that a nice mess of bass for the supper table would please Olivia. Besides, he had worked hard all week and deserved a few hours of peace and rest in some quiet place.

In the end he compromised and decided that he would take his rod and reel and stop by the river until he had rested and then continue on to the foot of the mountain and the fieldstone.

On the back porch he went to the shelf where he kept his fishing equipment and took down his rod and reel.

“You are the first man I ever saw build a house with fishen tackle,” teased Olivia through the screen door.

“What do you know about builden a house, woman?” Clay laughed.

“I don't know much,” replied Olivia, “but every one I ever saw built was put up with hammer and nails. This must be a right funny house you're slappen together up there on the mountain. I've never seen you carry hammer or nails away from here yet.”

“There ain't a thing to nail together yet, old woman,” he said. “I been spenden all my time on the basement. You want a place to keep your canned goods, don't you?”

“I got me a place to store my canned goods, and sometimes I think you'd be smarter to work on this place than spenden all your time on that castle up there.”

“That's what it's goen to be all right,” he retorted. “A castle fit for a royal-butted king. And you'll change your tune once you see it.”

“You watch how you talk, Clay Spencer. There's innocent young children around this place, and I'm doen my best to make Christians out of them.”

“Nobody ever made me into a Christian, and look what a tall dog I turned out to be,” Clay teased her.

“Humphf!” she said with pretended disgust and turned into the house. Clay laid down his fishing tackle, eased the kitchen door open and grabbed Olivia up in his arms. She
struggled with pretended anger, but he held her so her feet could not reach the floor. Her cries of outrage mingled with the children's howls of delight as Clay danced Olivia around and around the room, alternately kissing and tickling her. Finally, out of breath, he put her on the floor again and she rearranged her clothing and her hair.

“You old fool,” she cried.

“That woman is plumb crazy about me,” Clay laughed. “I wish I had twenty more just like her.”

“Pick her up again, Daddy,” the children cried.

Clay started after her, but Olivia ran out of the room.

“Y'all be good babies,” Clay called to the children. He kissed them all and went up through the back gate. As he came out on the road, he met his mother-in-law, Ida Italiano.

“Where you gallivanten off to, Miss Ida?” he called.

“Up to the Baptist parsonage, Clay,” she replied. “The Ladies Aid Society is cleanen it up for the new preacher.”

“That's a fact?” said Clay, falling in step with Ida. “Livy did mention there's a new preacher comen in.”

“They tell me he's a powerful good speaker,” said Ida. “You ought to come down to church in the mornen and listen to his sermon.”

“Lord, Miss Ida,” laughed Clay. “The roof would fall in if I ever walked in that Baptist church.”

“Don't joke about it, Clay,” admonished Ida. “Don't you want to save your soul so you can go to Heaven and be with all decent folks when you die?”

“Miss Ida,” said Clay, “the Baptists have got one idea of Heaven and the Methodists have got another idea and the Holy Rollers have got still another idea what it's like. I've got my opinion too.”

“I can just imagine what your idea of Heaven is,” sniffed Ida. “A fishen pole and a river bank.”

“That's part of it, yes ma'am,” agreed Clay. “I use up a little bit of Heaven every day. Maybe it's just haulen off and kissen the old woman, or haven one of my babies come and crawl in bed with me at night and snuggle up against my back, or a good day's work on my house up on the mountain.

“I don't have to wait to die for it, Miss Ida. I got Heaven right here.”

“That's not Bible Heaven,” said Ida.

“It's the only one I ever expect to see,” said Clay.

“I'll pray for your soul anyway, Clay, if you don't mind,” said Ida.

“Appreciate the favor, Miss Ida,” replied Clay sincerely.

They parted at the Baptist parsonage and Clay continued on down the road toward Rockfish River.

When Clay reached the bank above his favorite fishing hole he set down the box he carried his fishing tackle in. Looking for a lead sinker, he pushed back one of the upper trays and found—forgotten but happily nearly full—a quart of whiskey. He remembered now he had hidden it there the last time he had been drinking.

He pulled the cork out of the bottle, sniffed the contents. This was a habit he had acquired after Olivia once found a hidden bottle and diluted its contents with castor oil. Satisfied that the bottle held what it was supposed to, he lifted it to his lips, tilted it back and took a long gurgling throat-searing drink.

“That's prime whiskey,” he said to the world.

He searched around in the tackle box, found the sinker he had originally been looking for and attached it to his line. Then out of the minnow bucket he lifted a large black chub, saucy and active, hooked it through the flesh beneath the dorsal fin and dropped it into the water to recover from the shock of the hook. The minnow shook itself fiercely. Satisfied that it was an inviting bait, Clay cast into the river in a little eddy just above an outcropping of stone.

Clay lay back on the bank and there began in his mind a fantasy he often enjoyed after throwing a particularly inviting minnow into a particularly productive-looking pool. “That looks like a place where the grandaddy of all the bass in the river lives. That old ripstaver is layen down there against that rock hopen some June bug is goen to come floaten past him and when he sees that minnow I got on my line he ain't goen to believe it. He'll just sit there for a little while and stew about it, but after a while that minnow is goen to make
him so hungry he's goen to priss over there and see if he's real or not. Then he's goen to open that big old mouth of his and chomp down on that minnow and that'll be the last of you, Mr. Bass. Come on, you slippery monster! Bite.”

Clay's daydream was interrupted when a car came to a stop on the highway above the bank. Presently Clay heard the car door open and slam shut, and a head appeared above him. The face was a friendly one and though the man had a city look to him—he was dressed casually in a sport shirt and slacks—Clay liked him immediately.

“Howdy, stranger,” called Clay.

“How's the fishing?” the man asked.

Clay could tell at once if a question of this kind was mere curiosity or if the inquirer honestly wanted to know. He gave the stranger a swift glance of appraisal and decided he was a man who knew a mullet from a mud cat.

“Biten,” Clay replied.

The stranger's face lighted up with an eagerness Clay recognized immediately.

“I've got some tackle in the car. Where's the closest place I can get some minnows?”

“Right here,” said Clay and motioned toward his minnow bucket.

The stranger went back to his car and in a few minutes returned with fishing equipment that Clay noted with approval was well oiled and cared for. Nothing else was said between the two men, but Clay watched as closely as he could without staring directly at the stranger while he made his way quietly down the side of the bank, lifted the minnow bucket just high enough out of the water to select a minnow without injuring the others, closed the clanking tin top with a minimum of noise and plunged the hook through the meaty back of the minnow, then dropped it in the water for a moment so it might recover before he cast it into the deeper water. The minnow swam listlessly for a moment, then with a promising spurt of energy plunged forward and down, making the red-and-white cork bob frantically up and down on the surface. Carefully the stranger lifted the minnow out of the shallow water and cast expertly into a quiet deep-looking
pool just beyond the swirling eddy where the water fell over a rock formation. He laid the rod against a fallen log where it would be secure and sat down.

“The name's Goodson,” the stranger said and held out his hand to Clay. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Spencer's mine,” said Clay, “and don't mention it.”

A comfortable fisherman's silence fell between them. Each, absorbed in his own particular bobbing cork, waited patiently and silently for a bite.

It was Clay who hauled in the first fish, a fierce and outraged six-pound bass that continued to fight even after Clay had taken him from the water and had secured him with a small chain through his gills.

To celebrate, Clay took a nip from his bottle; Mr. Goodson, elated by Clay's catch and encouraged by it, joined him.

***

At the Baptist parsonage a group of ladies was busy preparing the house for the arrival of their new minister. The parsonage itself was a white frame house that had been built along a pleasant road about a mile from where the Spencers lived. It contained six square rooms and faced squarely on the highway in much the same manner the Baptists faced their God. The grass of the front lawn was quite green, clipped and proper and kept healthy, if not from God's good rain at least from frequent baptisms by hose. There were no frivolous zinnias or nasturtiums to mar its green expanse, although some white snowball bushes bloomed on the lawn in early August. In the back were some hollyhocks along the path that went to the henhouse, but that was all the frivolity there was about the house. All told, it was a very Baptist establishment.

On this particular Saturday afternoon, the Baptist Ladies Aid Society had summoned its members to prepare the parsonage for the new parson's arrival. If the number of ladies present exceeded the membership of the Ladies Aid Society it could perhaps have been due to the fact that every woman who had a daughter of marriageable age had brought
her along, since the one thing they knew for certain about the new minister was that he was not married.

Mrs. Lucy Godlove, along with her daughter Barbie-Glo, and Mrs. Tillie Witt, along with her daughter Honey-Glo, had drawn the chore of cleaning the kitchen. Neither of the girls had much enthusiasm for their task. It was by no coincidence that both of their minds were on the same thing. They were both thinking about the square dance at Buckingham County Courthouse that was held every Saturday night. Each of them was devising in her mind some way she might sneak away from home and attend the festivities, sneaking away being a necessity since neither of their mothers, being Baptists, condoned the sin of dancing.

Lucy Godlove talked a great deal, which was unfortunate because half the time she did not say what she thought she was saying. Speaking of Frances Paine, who was taking a course in beauty culture, Rose had reported that Frances was taking a beauty vulture course. The influenza academic had taken Lucy's father in 1917, and she never let Barbie-Glo go to Charlottesville without warning her not to speak to any of the University of Virginia students because it was a well-known fact that all they thought of was hauling young country girls off to their maternity houses and raping them.

While the girls devoted their minds to their plans for evading their mothers that night, the two women chatted about the new preacher.

“Be nice if he was young,” sighed Lucy Godlove.

“Be nice if he knew some new sermons,” observed Tillie Witt. “That's all I ask. It had got so with old Preacher Goolsby that I knew what he was goen to say before he could open his mouth.”

“I didn't mind Brother Goolsby so bad,” said Lucy Godlove, “except once in a while his stutteren used to get on my nervous. I still can't say the Lord's Prayer without stutteren, but I'm hopen that'll clear up now he's gone, bless his soul.”

“I just can't stand hearen the same old sermon, over and over. I never did do half the things Preacher Goolsby used to preach against anyway, that old adult'ry and idolizing gold. Come to think of it, I don't think I ever had any gold to idolize,” said Tillie Witt.

“What I'm hopen this new preacher will do,” said Lucy Godlove, “is put some life back in the church. Church is all I got in my life, God knows.”

Church indeed was Lucy's life. Her husband Craig was the night watchman at the mill and since he had left her bed and taken up with a girl named Alabama Sweetzer, Lucy had turned completely to the church. She went to Sunday School, the Sunday Morning Sermon, the Sunday Night Sermon, Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting, the Ladies Aid Society every Thursday afternoon and she even attended the Friday-night meeting of the BYPU, the Baptist Young People's Union. Every year at the Annual Baptism over at Witt's Creek she got herself baptized, went down with her eyes screwed tight together and her hands clenched together and came up screaming that she had seen Jesus and sputtering muddy water, her drowned hair in long wet coils down her shoulders. Afterward she would walk around telling everyone that she felt as clean as the day she was born.

Each year as Christmas approached Lucy would take charge of Christmas Tree Night. This was the program that was presented each Christmas Eve at the Baptist church. On this one night of the year the church lost its chilly barren look and was gaily decorated in pine wreaths tied with gay Christmas red bows and festooned with streamers of crepe paper and creeping cedar. Nervous children dressed as shepherds and angels recited poems that Lucy would make up in her head. Always some little boy forgot the poem he had worked on since Thanksgiving until he found his mother's face in the audience, mouthing the searched-for word, and then was able to continue. Afterward Mr. Willie Simpson, who sang so loud in the choir, would arrive all dressed up in a Santa Claus suit and there would be presents for everybody.