Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food Read online

  “Why, look at the arm on him,” Burley is saying. “Look at the muscle the fellow’s got. Damn, he can barely get his sleeve rolled up over it. No wonder I can’t stay with him.”

  The others grin and wink. The fact is that, left to himself, Lightning is slow. But all week Burley has been working constantly at his heel, bragging on him, threatening to pass him, never quite doing it—and has succeeded in driving him almost up with Elton and Nathan, who are the best of them.

  Lightning straightens from his washing and dries hands and face on the towel that Little Margaret holds out to him. He is doing his best to stay aloof from Burley’s talk, but it gets to him, and he touches lovingly the muscle of his right arm.

  “He put it on me this morning, Uncle Jack,” Burley says, seeing the old man coming around the house. “I tried him, but I couldn’t shake him.”

  “Go on and wash,” he says to Jarrat. “I got to finish my smoke.” He stands bent forward a little at the hips, hand on the small of his back. He seems to be hurting a little. He probably is, but he is playing on it too, parodying an aged and a beaten man. He looks afar, soliloquizing about his defeat. “Nawsir! Couldn’t handle him! Too few biscuits and too many years have done made the difference.”

  “Ay Lord, he’s a good one!” Old Jack says, seeing the point. He knows where that Lightning would be if somebody was not crowding him all the time. Somewhere asleep. But he shakes his head in approbation of Burley’s praise. “He’s got the right look about him.”

  “You’re right, old scout,” Burley says. “He’s the pride of Landing Branch, and no doubt about it. But I believe I smell a biscuit in the wind, and maybe a ham, and that may make a difference this afternoon. When I go back out there I aim to be properly fed. Oh, I may not get ahead of him, but I’ll be where he can hear me coming. Ham and biscuits!” he says. And he sings:How many biscuits can you eat?

  Forty-nine and a ham of meat

  This mornin’.

  Lightning is at work now with a comb, putting the finishing touches to his wave and ducktail, a sculpture not destined to survive the next motion of his head. There is an arrogance in his eye and jaw and the line of his mouth, based not upon any excellence of his own but upon his contempt for excellence: If he is not the best man in the field, then he is nevertheless equal to the best man by the perfection of his scorn, for the best man and for the possibility that is incarnate in him. Old Jack studies Lightning’s face—he recognizes it; he has known other men who have worn it, too many—and then he grunts, “Hunh!” and looks away.

  Jarrat and Elton finish washing and Burley and Nathan take their places. Hannah picks up Mattie, who has fallen asleep in Mat’s lap, and takes him in to his napping place on the parlor floor. Little Margaret has wandered off to play.

  Now Mat gets up and he and Old Jack wash. When they have finished with the towel, Mat hangs it on the back of the rocking chair.

  “Let’s go eat it,” he says. He holds open the kitchen door and they file in past him, Old Jack first and the others following. There is a general exchange of greetings between the men and the three women.

  Old Jack takes his place at the head of the table. “Sit down, boys,” he says, and they pull out their chairs and sit down. Mat is at the foot of the table. At the sides, to Old Jack’s right, are Elton and Lightning and Andy and, to his left, Burley and Nathan and Jarrat. They pass various loaded platters and bowls, filling their plates.

  They fall silent now, eating with the concentration of hunger. The women keep the dishes moving around the table as necessary and keep the glasses filled with iced tea.

  “Lay it away, boys,” Old Jack says. “It’s fine and there’s plenty of it.”

  Following his lead, the others praise the food, the ones whose wives have cooked being careful to praise the cooking of the other women.

  In the presence of that hunger and that eager filling, Old Jack eats well himself. But his thoughts go to the other men, and he watches them. He watches the older ones—Mat and Jarrat and Burley—sensing their weariness and their will to endure, troubling about them and admiring them. He watches the five proven men, whom he loves with the satisfaction of thorough knowledge and long trust, praising and blessing them in his mind. He watches them with pleasure so keen it is almost pain.

  And he watches the boy, Andy, whom he loves out of kinship and because he is not afraid of work and because of his good, promising mind, but with uneasiness also because he has so little meat on his bones and has a lot to go through, a lot to make up his mind about.

  And he watches Lightning, whom he does not love. That one, he thinks, will be hard put to be worth what he will eat. For he is one who believes in a way out. As long as he has two choices, or thinks he has, he will never do his best or think of the possibility of the best.

  Old Jack shakes his head. “See that that Andy gets plenty to eat,” he tells Mat.

  “Don’t you worry. I’m going to take care of this boy,” Mat says. And he gives Andy a squeeze and a pat on the shoulder.

  “We going to miss old Andy when he’s gone,” Burley says.

  The edge is off their hunger now, and they give attention to Andy, for whom this is the summer’s last workday. Tomorrow he will be leaving to begin his first year of college.

  “We’ll be looking around here for the old boy,” Burley says, “and he’ll done be gone. They’ll say, ‘Where’s the old long boy that could load the wagon so good? Where’s that one that used to house the top tiers?’ And we’ll say, ‘Old Andy ain’t here no more. He’s up there to the university, studying his books.’”

  “Studying the girls,” Nathan says, grinning and winking at Hannah.

  “He’ll be all right with the girls if he wants to be,” Hannah says. “I’m a better judge of that than you.”

  “You do all right with Kirby, don’t you, Andy, hon?” Mary Penn says.

  “Yeah, if old Kirby’s going to have any say-so, he better keep his mind on his books while he’s up there,” Burley says. “He don’t, she’ll kick over the beehive, I expect.”

  “You keep your mind on your books anyhow, Andy,” Jarrat says, looking gravely across the table at the boy, his gaze ponderous and straight under thick brows. “Mind your books, and amount to something.”

  “Andy,” Elton says, “you’ll get full of book learning and fine ways up there, and you won’t have any more time for us here at all.”

  Andy, who has been grinning at this commentary on his departure, now flushes with embarrassment. “Yes I will,” he says, though he knows the inadequacy of such an avowal. The faith that Elton has called for, though he spoke in jest, will have to be proved.

  They all know it. Andy has not yet chosen among his choices.

  And then Mat says, “Well, he’s learned some things here with us that he couldn’t have learned in a school. A lot of his teachers there won’t know them. And if he’s the boy I think he is, he won’t forget them.”

  “Yessir!” Old Jack says. “By God, that’s right!”

  Now all the plates are empty. The women gather them and stack them by the sink. They replace them with dishes of blackberry cobbler, still warm from the oven, covered with cold whipped cream.

  “You all can thank Andy for this,” Hannah says. “I made it for him because it’s his favorite.”

  “Thank him!” Nathan says. “I’m mad as hell about it. When are you going to fix me something because it’s my favorite?”

  Hannah grins. “Your time is coming,” she says, “junior.”

  The others laugh. The iced tea glasses are filled again. They take their time over the cobbler, talking idly now of the past, of other crops.

  The afternoon’s work is near them, not to be put off much longer. Old Jack can feel it around him in the air, that dread of the heat and heaviness of the afternoon that even the strongest and the best man will suffer. But not for him anymore the going back to the field. No more for him the breaking sweat under the sun’s blaze, the delight of skil
l and strength, and the pride.

  FROM Jayber Crow

  Jayber himself is speaking. From 1937 until 1969 he was the barber in Port William, living in the single room over his shop. Health regulations requiring hot running water put him out of business there. Now he is living, and still barbering, in a remote camp house on the river. Not much is said here about food, though the occasion is partly a meal. But maybe the real subject is the free exchanging of affection and help that makes what Burley Coulter calls “the membership” of Port William.

  TO GET MY own hair cut, I had continued to go down to Hargrave. When I lived in Port William, this was easy enough to arrange. I would hear that somebody was going and would speak for a ride. From the house on the river, it was not so easy. Sometimes it would come to hitchhiking, which could take half a day. I happened to mention this to Danny.

  He said, “Why, Jayber, you don’t need to go to Hargrave to get your hair cut. Lyda can cut it.”

  It was evening. He had finished running his lines and was going home. “Come on,” he said.

  So we went up to his truck and I rode home with him.

  “Lyda,” he said, “Jayber here needs to get his hair cut.”

  She said, “Well, he’ll have to eat his supper first. I can’t stop now.”

  I said, “Oh, now, I hate to put you to the trouble.”

  “One more mouth won’t make any difference here,” she said.

  “Naw, Jayber,” Burley called from the porch swing, “it won’t be any trouble. Come on up. I’ll have supper on the table in a few minutes.”

  Lyda took a swipe at his shoulder with the rag she had in her hand. “You’ll have it on the table! That’ll be a fair fine day in Hell!”

  “That’s where they’ve got something cooking all the time,” Burley said. “Come on up, Jayber.”

  By then all the children and dogs knew there was a stranger on the place, and they had come to look. They all crowded around me as if maybe I had my pockets full of candy.

  “Get back! Get back!” Danny said. “Give a man room to walk!” He made a parting motion with his hands.

  Children and dogs fell back to each side like the waters of the Red Sea, leaving a sort of aisle that Danny and I walked through to the washstand by the rain barrel at the corner of the porch. Danny picked up the wash pan, smote the surface of the water in the barrel with the bottom of the pan to drive the wigglers down, dipped the pan half full of water, set it down on the washstand, and stepped aside, gesturing welcome with his hand. “There’s soap and a towel if you’d like to wash up,” he said to me, and then to the children and dogs who had clustered around again, “Get back!”

  The children and dogs fell back, never ceasing to watch me. I washed up, threw the water out, dipped the pan for Danny, and made my way amongst the children and dogs up onto the porch. “Sit down, Jayber,” Burley said, and I sat down.

  When he had washed, Danny refilled the pan and stood there watching while the children washed, the bigger ones seeing to the littler ones, who wanted to splash more than wash. Danny said, “Keep your hands off of them dogs, now, till after supper.”

  You might think that so many young children would make a considerable uproar at a meal, but when Lyda called us in to supper those children (from Will, who was fourteen, right down to Rosie, who was four) went in and sat down in their places and never made a peep. I thought at first that that probably was because I was there, but in fact it was pretty much according to rule. But this wasn’t spiritlessness: It was discipline. Out from under Lyda’s gaze, the children were noisy enough. When Reuben and the two girls were little, they talked all the time, all at the same time, in high chirps, like a tree full of sparrows.

  When the meal was over, the children scraped and stacked the dishes, which Burley then washed and Will dried and put away.

  There was a running joke between Burley and Lyda about Burley’s reluctance and incompetence at housework, but of course Burley had lived alone for a long time before Danny and Lyda came, and he could do all the household work, if not to Lyda’s taste at least well enough. When they came, since it was his house, he might have treated them as the beneficiaries of his hospitality, but instead he made himself their guest. They responded, as maybe they didn’t have to do, by being hospitable to him. He was, I think, a good guest, helping especially Lyda in every way he could. She caught his trick of dealing with this arrangement and their large affection for each other as an endlessly branching joke, in which they said the opposite of what they meant. If Burley complained that he was behind in his housework because she was always underfoot and in the way, he meant that she was anything but in the way and he was thankful to have her there. If Lyda said that it would have been a mercy if she had married one husband instead of two bachelors, that meant that she loved them both more than enough to put up with them. And so on.

  While Burley and Will did the dishes and Danny and Royal and Coulter and Fount went out to feed the dogs and do a few last chores (the children having milked and fed before supper), Lyda gave me my haircut. The sight of their mother cutting a stranger’s hair was so shocking that Rachel and Rosie whispered and giggled throughout the operation, and Reuben could bear to watch only from under the table.

  FROM Hannah Coulter

  These two paragraphs return us to Hannah Coulter. It is the year 2000. Her second husband, Nathan, has died. Her grandson Virgie—son of Margaret, daughter of Hannah and her first husband, Virgil Feltner—has taken to disillusion and drugs, and has disappeared. Caleb is Hannah and Nathan’s son. He is a scientist, a professor of agriculture in a university some distance away. Alice is his wife.

  EVEN OLD, YOUR husband is the young man you remember now. Even dead, he is the man you remember, not as he was but as he is, alive still in your love. Death is a sort of lens, though I used to think of it as a wall or a shut door. It changes things and makes them clear. Maybe it is the truest way of knowing this dream, this brief and timeless life. Sometimes when I try to remember Nathan, I can’t see him exactly enough. Other times, when I haven’t thought of him, he comes to me unbidden, and I see him more clearly, I think, than ever I did. Am I awake then, or there, or here?

  It is the fall of the year. We have had Thanksgiving. Caleb and Alice were here. And Margaret came, reconciled by now maybe to Virgie’s absence, but not one of us spoke of Virgie. I fixed a big dinner, enough to keep us all in leftovers for a while: a young gobbler that Coulter Branch shot and gave to me, dressing and gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, corn pudding, hot rolls, a cushaw pie. We sat down to it, the four of us, like stray pieces of several puzzles. Nathan would have asked the blessing, and I should have, I tried to, but that turned out to be a silence I could not speak in. I only sat with my head down, while the others waited for me to say something out loud. And then, to change the subject, I said, “Caleb, take a roll and pass ’em.”

  The Pleasures of Eating

  (1989)

  MANY TIMES, AFTER I have finished a lecture on the decline of American farming and rural life, someone in the audience has asked, “What can city people do?”

  “Eat responsibly,” I have usually answered. Of course, I have tried to explain what I meant by that, but afterwards I have invariably felt that there was more to be said than I had been able to say. Now I would like to attempt a better explanation.

  I begin with the proposition that eating is an agricultural act. Eating ends the annual drama of the food economy that begins with planting and birth. Most eaters, however, are no longer aware that this is true. They think of food as an agricultural product, perhaps, but they do not think of themselves as “consumers.” If they think beyond that, they recognize that they are passive consumers. They buy what they want—or what they have been persuaded to want—within the limits of what they can get. They pay, mostly without protest, what they are charged. And they mostly ignore certain critical questions about the quality and the cost of what they are sold: How fresh is it? How pure or clean is it, how
free of dangerous chemicals? How far was it transported, and what did transportation add to the cost? How much did manufacturing or packaging or advertising add to the cost? When the food product has been manufactured or “processed” or “precooked,” how has that affected its quality or price or nutritional value?

  Most urban shoppers would tell you that food is produced on farms. But most of them do not know what farms, or what kinds of farms, or where the farms are, or what knowledge or skills are involved in farming. They apparently have little doubt that farms will continue to produce, but they do not know how or over what obstacles. For them, then, food is pretty much an abstract idea—something they do not know or imagine—until it appears on the grocery shelf or on the table.