The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry Read online

  “What can I do for you, Otis?” the proprietor asked. He never cracked a smile, but he gave the drummers just the slightest little wink, and the drummers chuckled.

  None of them saw the look that crossed Tol’s face, drawing one eye just a fraction of an inch narrower than the other, and if they had seen it they probably wouldn’t have known what to make of it. But Sam, who was hanging back near the door, did see it, and did know what to make of it, and he made himself comfortable against the doorjamb and folded his arms.

  Tol’s eyes were set under bristly brows, and were much wrinkled at the corners. Mostly there was great candor in them; you could look through them right into his mind. But sometimes you could not see into his mind. At such times, thinking was going on in there that Tol didn’t want anybody to find out about. When Tol thought, Sam Hanks said, he looked like he wasn’t thinking at all; he looked like he was listening to a low rumble in his guts. And that was the way he looked for maybe about three seconds after the proprietor called him “Otis.” And then, as if suddenly remembering where he was, he looked back at the proprietor.

  “Two bushel of navy beans, if you got ’em, please, sir,” said Ptolemy Proudfoot. If they had known their man, the proprietor and the drummers might have heard a very precise comment in the way Tol said “sir,” but they missed that, too.

  “I don’t customarily sell them by the bushel, Timothy,” the proprietor said, “but I believe I can let you have them.”

  “I’d be mightily obliged,” said Tol.

  The proprietor walked to a door in the back and called, “A bag of navy beans for Mr. Wheatly here.”

  Every time he called Tol by a new name, he glanced at the drummers, who seemed to be appreciating his wit a great deal, for they were grinning and nudging each other and whispering. And Sam appreciated it, too, in his way, for he knew, as they did not, that they were watching a contest.

  A colored fellow came through the door in the back with the bag of beans on a hand truck and stood the bag up beside Tol.

  The proprietor beat a little drumbeat on the edge of the counter with his hands. “Will that be all for you today, Mr. Bulltrack?”

  “Well, I believe so,” Tol said. “How much, if you please, sir?”

  The proprietor told him, and Tol began grabbling in his pocket. He held his suspenders with one hand and grabbled with the other, and finally drew out clenched in his fist an assortment of wadded bills, some coins, half a cut plug, a pocket­knife, and the last three inches of a pencil. He made order of all this on one large stretched-out palm, and laid the price of the beans a bill or a coin at a time on the counter in front of the proprietor, the exact amount. And then he poked around in his hand and came up with a quarter.

  He smiled over at the proprietor. “Ever see one of them disappear? I can make that disappear.”

  “Why, you’re a magician, too, are you, Mr. Briarly?” the proprietor said, winking at the drummers. “Let me see.”

  Tol made a violent jerk with his right hand that sent the coin bouncing to the floor between two baskets of produce. He got down, grunting, onto his hands and knees and laboriously retrieved it. The drummers were laughing out loud now, and the proprietor’s face had begun to wear the smile of the successful host.

  “He’d done lost me,” Sam would say later when he would tell the story. “Looked like he was trying to make a fool of himself. I thought, ‘Now what?’ ”

  “Well, you made it disappear, all right,” the proprietor said.

  “Wait a minute,” Tol said, coming up with the quarter. “Watch it this time.”

  He made the same jerk, and sent the quarter spinning under the stove, and crawled after it. The drummers were holding onto themselves.

  “Well, that ain’t all the tricks I can do,” Tol said. “I’ll bet you this quarter I can jump into that basket of eggs and not break a one.”

  “Well, Spud, old boy, I’ll just bet you can’t,” said the proprietor. And then he caught that look in Tol’s eye that Sam had been watching all along, and his own eyes got wide. “Wup,” he said.

  He was too late. His lips had just shut on that little “wup” when Tol leapt into the air as light as a fox and came down with both feet in the basket of eggs. There was a loud crunch that totaled up the breaking of many small shells, and a viscous puddle began to spread slowly around the basket.

  Tol’s light leap and heavy descent were funny, Sam told me, but nobody laughed.

  “Didn’t you laugh?” I asked him.

  “Hell, naw!” he said. “I was trying to act like I was there by myself. It was as quiet as a church with nobody in it. It was as quiet as a graveyard at midnight.”

  Tol stood in the basket of broken eggs with what Sam described as “a sweet, innocent smile,” holding his quarter out to the proprietor. “Well, you got me. Dogged if you ain’t a hard man to get ahead of.”

  The proprietor stood looking at Tol’s quarter with his mouth open. “And then,” Sam told me, “I swan if that fellow didn’t reach out, still not quite able to get his mouth to shut, and take that quarter and put it in his pocket.”

  Tol stepped out of the basket, shouldered his sack of beans, and walked to the door, which Sam was holding open.

  I heard Sam Hanks tell the story in town one July afternoon, and the next time I stopped by to see Miss Minnie, it occurred to me to ask her if she had ever heard it.

  She had, of course. And she told it much as Sam had told it, but a good deal shorter. She was sitting in her rocker in the kitchen of the little house where she and Tol had passed the time their lives had been joined together. Now, their lives put asunder, Miss Minnie told the story with the mixture of approval and amusement with which she usually remembered Tol. When she finished the telling, she laughed. And then she sat in silence, reflecting, I knew, on the opposing claims of charity and justice in the story, and on the conflict of ex­trav­agance and gentleness in Tol’s character. The late sun threw a patch of warm light on the wall behind her. The clock ticked.

  “Mr. Proudfoot was that way,” she said, and smiled. “But he was half sorry just as soon as he did it.”

  NATHAN COULTER

  For John

  Chapter 1

  DARK. The light went out the door when she pulled it to. And then everything came in close around me, the way it was in the daylight, only all close. Because in the dark I could remember and not see. The sun was first, going over the hill behind our barn. Then the river was covered with the shadows of the hills. Then the hills went behind their shadows, and just the house and the barn and the other buildings were left, standing black against the sky where it was still white in the west.

  After supper it was only the inside of the house, lighted where we moved from the kitchen to the living room and upstairs to bed. Until the last of the light went out the door; and it was all there in the room, close enough to touch if I didn’t reach out my hand. The dark broke them loose and let them in. The memory was closer than the sight of them. What was left outside was the way it had been before anybody had come there to see anything.

  I lay awake listening to the wind blow. It was the beginning of the dream, I knew, even if I was still awake listening. The wind came hard against the back of the house and rattled the weatherboarding and whooped around the corners; and went on through the woods on the hillside, bending the trees and cracking the limbs together; and on with a lonely, hollow sound into the river bottoms; and on over the country, over the farms and roads and towns and cities. It seemed that I could hear the sounds the wind made in all the places it was, all at the same time.

  I never knew when I began to dream the wind and quit listening to it. But after a while the bed rose off the floor and floated out of the house. It flew up high over the roof and sailed down again to the hillside above the river. The wind pulled at the bedclothes and I had to hold them around my neck to keep them from blowing away.

  Standing at the edge of the woods was a lion, looking up at the house, with the
valley and the river lying in the dark behind him. I could see every muscle in his body rolled up smooth under his hide. The wind blew through his mane. His eyes reminded me of Grandpa’s, they were so fierce and blue.

  While I watched he lifted his head and roared toward the house, his white teeth showing and his tongue curled under the sound. I knew then it wasn’t the wind I’d heard, but the lion’s voice, lonely and like a wind. The muscles in his belly hardened and heaved the voice out of his mouth; and he stood quiet while the sound went on and on over the country. I held the covers around my neck and watched him, and heard his voice go through the woods and into the valley and against the walls of the houses where the people were asleep.

  Late in the night the bed floated into the house again. And it was quiet until the roosters began to crow in the dark where the voice of the lion had been. While the roosters crowed I dreamed of them, their voices crying in the barns and henhouses, close and far away under the dark. In my dream their combs were red, and their feathers black as coal. And while I slept they crowed the dark away.

  Sunlight came red into my sleep and I nearly woke until I turned over and slept again in the shadow of my face. Then the light brightened and hardened in the room and I couldn’t sleep any longer. But I kept my eyes closed, remembering what I’d dreamed.

  I heard Mother walk across the kitchen floor and shove the teakettle to the back of the stove. I listened to her clear away the dishes that she and Daddy had used for their breakfast and begin cooking breakfast for Brother and me. The sounds separated me from the night, and I let my eyes come open.

  Brother was still asleep on the other side of the room. He’d thrown the sheet off and was lying on his back with one foot sticking over the edge of the bed. I watched his ribs fold and unfold over his breathing. The sun hit the mirror on top of the bureau and glanced off against the ceiling. Beside my bed my pants and shirt were piled on my shoes where I’d taken them off the night before. My clothes were hand-me-downs that Brother had outgrown and passed on to me. His clothes were newer, not so faded as mine.

  I pushed the sheet back and sat up on the side of the bed. Out the window I could see Daddy harnessing the mules in the driveway of the barn. He took the gear off the pegs in front of their stalls and swung it over their backs and buckled it on. Then he led them out into the lot and shook out the checklines and snapped them to the bits. I was too far away to hear the sounds he made. One of the mules kicked at a fly and I waited for the harness to rattle, but there wasn’t any sound. He backed the mules into their places on each side of the wagon tongue and hitched them up. I could hear the wheels joggle when he started out of the lot. Mother went to the back porch, letting the screen door slam, and called something to him. He stopped and answered her, and drove on through the gate.

  Across the hollow that divided our place from Grandpa’s I could see his house and the two barns white in the sun. The back door slammed over there and Grandma crossed the yard and emptied a pan of dishwater over the fence. Grandpa’s hogs came up to see if she’d given them something to eat, and smelled around where she’d thrown the water.

  Grandpa and Uncle Burley were walking out toward the top of the ridge to meet Daddy and the wagon. Uncle Burley’s two coon hounds trotted along at his heels, sad-looking and quiet because they knew he was going to work and not hunting. Grandpa walked in front; he and Uncle Burley weren’t talking to each other. They got to the top of the ridge and stopped. Uncle Burley turned his back to the wind and rolled a cigarette. When Daddy came up they climbed on the wagon and rode out of sight down the other side of the ridge.

  Grandpa’s farm had belonged to our people ever since there had been a farm in that place, or people to own a farm. Grandpa’s father had left it to Grandpa and his other sons and daughters. But Grandpa had borrowed money and bought their shares. He had to have it whole hog or none, root hog or die, or he wouldn’t have it at all. Uncle Burley said that was the reason Daddy had bought our farm instead of staying on Grandpa’s. They were the sort of men who couldn’t get along owning the same place.

  Our farm was the old Ellis Place. Daddy had bought it before Brother and I were born, and we still owed money on it; but Daddy said it wouldn’t be long before we’d have it all paid. If he lived we’d own every inch of it, and he said he planned to live. He said that when we finally did get the farm paid for we could tell everybody to go to hell. That was what he lived for, to own his farm without having to say please or thank you to a living soul.

  Uncle Burley didn’t own any land at all. He didn’t own anything to speak of; just his dogs and a couple of guns. In a way he owned an old camp house at the river, but it was Uncle Burley’s only because nobody else wanted it. He’d never let Grandpa or Daddy even talk to him about buying a farm. He said land was worse than a wife; it tied you down, and he didn’t want to be in any place he couldn’t leave. He never did go anyplace much, except fishing and hunting, and sometimes to town on Saturday. But he wanted to feel that he could leave if he took the notion.

  I stood in the patch of sun in front of the window and began putting on my clothes. The day was already hot. Hens were cackling, and a few sparrows fluttered their wings in the dust in front of the barn. I watched our milk cows wade into the pond to drink. Over Grandpa’s ridge I could see where the road came up from the river and went into Port William. At the top of the hill a gravel lane branched off to come back past Grandpa’s gate to our place. On the other side of town the road went down into the bottoms again and followed the river on to the Ohio. I couldn’t see the houses at town, but the white steeple of the church pointed up over the trees and I could make out the weather vane on top. On Sunday mornings we could hear the church bell ringing all the way to our house. And we heard it on Wednesday nights when it rang for prayer meeting.

  Between the hills white fog covered the river and bottoms, and trailed off into the woods along the bluffs. Grandpa remembered when steamboats were on the river, carrying tobacco and passengers and livestock down to the Ohio and on to Louisville. But now there were only a few towboats pushing bargeloads of sand. The hills on our side of the river were green, and on the other side they were blue. They got bluer farther away.

  Uncle Burley said hills always looked blue when you were far away from them. That was a pretty color for hills; the little houses and barns and fields looked so neat and quiet tucked against them. It made you want to be close to them. But he said that when you got close they were like the hills you’d left, and when you looked back your own hills were blue and you wanted to go back again. He said he reckoned a man could wear himself out going back and forth.

  Mother came to the foot of the stairs and called us to breakfast. I shook Brother awake and waited for him to dress, and then we went down to the kitchen.

  Our mother was sick, and in the afternoons when she’d washed the dinner dishes she had to lie down to rest. Daddy made Brother and me stay out of the house then so it would be quiet. When the weather was good we’d go to the field with Daddy or Uncle Burley, or go swimming, or just wander around looking for things to do. And even though we worried about our mother’s sickness it was good to have the whole afternoon to ourselves without anybody to bother us.

  We went down the hill and into the woods that grew along the hollow between our farm and Grandpa’s. Just enough air was stirring to tilt the leaves without rustling them together, and except for our feet rattling dry leaves on the ground the woods was quiet. We climbed the fence and started on toward the dry streambed at the bottom of the hollow.

  When we’d gone about ten feet on Grandpa’s side of the fence we came to Aunt Mary’s grave. The grave was a shallow trough in the hillside, filled with sticks and leaves. There was no stone to mark it.

  Our Aunt Mary had been buried there a long time ago. It was the first thing anybody remembered about our family, and nobody could remember anything else for a good while after that; we didn’t know how many years it had been since she died.

  A
unt Mary was our great-great-grandfather’s youngest daughter. His name was Jonas Thomasson Coulter. And about the time Aunt Mary was grown he got into an argument with a man named Jeff Ellis who was living on our place then. Jonas thought the line fence between their farms should be built on Jeff Ellis’s side of the hollow, and Jeff Ellis thought it ought to go on Jonas’s side. They squabbled over it for several years, and there was some shooting done by both sides before it was settled.

  While they were in the worst of this fight Aunt Mary took scarlet fever and died. Jonas Thomasson Coulter went down to the hollow and dug a grave where he thought the fence ought to run, and he made the rest of the family bury her in it. His wife never would speak to him or even look at him after that; but it settled the argument over the fence.

  Jeff Ellis was afraid of the dead, and he wouldn’t come close to the grave. So they built the fence ten feet on his side of it. That made Jonas’s farm ten feet wider than even he thought it should have been.

  It didn’t really matter much, because the land in that hollow was steep and ill-natured anyway, and nothing ever grew there but trees and buck bushes. But Uncle Burley said that wouldn’t have bothered Jonas Thomasson Coulter. What he wanted was to own land; it didn’t matter a damn whether it was flat or straight up and down, or whether it would grow tobacco or buck bushes.

  That was all we knew about Grandpa’s grandfather—­his name, and how he’d made certain that Grandpa’s line would run where it did. We didn’t know where he came from, or even where he was buried.

  It wasn’t long after they buried Aunt Mary there in the hollow until one of the Ellises saw her ghost. She walked back and forth across her grave on dark nights, carrying a dishpan in one hand and shaking a dishrag with the other one, the way she’d always looked coming back to the house after she’d emptied the dirty water over the yard fence. From then on a lot of people saw her, our people and different ones of the Ellises. Grandpa said he saw her once when he was a boy. And I thought I’d seen her a time or two, but I wasn’t sure enough to tell anybody but Brother.