A Far Piece to Canaan (14 page)

The talking didn't stop there either. Sometimes I'd wake up at night and hear strange sounds out of their room that didn't make any sense to me. Everything was great except when they brought up moving to Indiana. That was the only place they seemed wanting to buy.

In May, Bob's college let out and something happened that changed the whole summer. One evening in early June, I come home from the Mulligans', and Bob's old bicycle was sitting outside the kitchen porch. It didn't look at all like the beat-up wreck we'd kept for him while he was at war. Now it was perfect. It had new tires and fenders, and its chrome shined, even in the twilight. A back carrier had been added too. It was beautiful. I run my hands over it and measured the height from the seat to the pedals against my body. It was a tad long, but if the seat was lowered I could pedal it if I knew how, which I didn't. Inside the house everybody was sitting around the kitchen table. Bob grinned at me.

“Whadyasay, stranger?” he asked.

“Hi,” I said.

Dad kind of leaned back in his chair. “You see how Bob fixed up his bike?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Looks great.”

Bob stuck his hands in the pockets of his Levi's. “I added a light up front, and a rack in back. It's gonna make gettin' back and forth t' classes a lot easier.”

“Yeah,” I said again, turning sideways and looking out the screen door. “It's really nice. How 'bout givin' me a ride?”

Bob looked out through the twilight and said, “Well, guess I could. We got a headlight if it gets too dark. Let's go.”

I ran outside and got on the luggage rack and waited. Man, he was slow. When he got there, he said to hop off until we got out in the lane because he didn't want to risk chipping the paint on the yard gates.

The minute we were through the front yard, I got on the luggage rack again.

Bob shook his head. “You can't ride there. Get on th' seat.”

“Where you gonna sit if I'm on th' seat?”

“I'm not,” he answered. “I'm gonna help you learn t' ride. It's your bike, Samuel. Happy tenth birthday, six months late. Have a good time this summer.”

I couldn't believe it! Then I saw the whole family standing behind us and I let out a yell and grabbed Bob around the waist and gave him a hug and everybody started laughing and saying, “Congratulations!” and “Mazel tov!” and “Happy Birthday!” We had a big old time.

Learning to ride took longer than I figured because it was a man's bike and it really stretched me to reach the down pedal even with the seat low. I took a hundred spills. I didn't worry about the skinned knees and hands, just about hurting the bike. I couldn't wait to tell Fred but I wanted to be able to ride before I showed him. In a couple of days I could stay up. Then, in just a few hours, it seemed like I could do everything.

The next morning, Saturday, I headed for the Mulligans'. Climbing the big hill from our gate to where it got easier was tough, boy. I had to stop beside the sweet apple tree and push. When I reached the top of the hill it was pretty much flat to the Dry Branch turnoff, then downhill steep for a ways, then it flattened to the Mulligans' gap. I come down that last stretch flying. Fred was on me before I scooted to a stop.

“Samuel, where'd you get that bike?”

“It's mine,” I said, trying to catch my wind. “Bob give it to me. Want a ride?”

“Lordy, yes, hun'ney,” he yelled, and got on the rack.

It was mid-afternoon before we got back to the Mulligan house. When we pulled into the yard, Fred went inside for a drink of water and I sat on the bicycle puffing. Thelma Jean came out and walked to just in front of me.

“Hidey, Sam,” she said. “Your new bike's not very purty. It shoulda been brown 'stead of blue. Old blue bicycles got by everybody. You ought take hit back and make them paint hit brown. You know, that old headlight of yorn ain't nothin' but a flashlight all fancied up. Hit won't be a month 'fore the batteries go dead and leak. You better take them out right now,” and she reached down to take hold of my headlight.

I caught her hand and said, “Leave it alone. If it needs fixin', I'll fix it!”

That was the only thing wrong with going to the Mulligans'. You had to put up with Thelma Jean. She was dumb and stunk all the time. Just then Fred stuck his head out the door and said his ma wanted me to come in and say hi.

I parked the bike against the house and followed Thelma Jean inside.

The living room was crowded. It was small to begin with and Mamie and Alfred's bed filled a quarter of the space even though it was shoved into a corner. There were only two chairs, one being Mamie's rocker, and the other more of a stool than anything else because it didn't have a back. Alfred was sitting on it. Bea and Pers Shanks were there and they were using the two kitchen chairs. That didn't leave me anyplace to sit because Fred, Annie Lee and her new boyfriend, WK Lensfort, and Thelma Jean took up all the space on the bed.

I was pooped, boy. I leaned my shoulder against the wall and sort of catnapped. Pers and Alfred were talking about crops and things and Mamie talked with Bea and kept an eye on WK and Annie Lee on the bed. Fred had told me Mamie didn't like WK being around Annie Lee because he was twenty-five and Annie Lee was only fourteen.

“Yeah,” said Alfred. “That's right, three hundred dollars' worth of strawberries, and they didn't take but a little while t' pick. Old Berman, he brought th' crates, and th' kids and Mamie did most of th' pickin'. Got one hundred and fifty dollars for my part. Easiest money I ever made.”

“Boy, boy, Alfred, that's great,” Pers whispered. “Y' know, them berries ain't done yet.”

“That's what I think too,” said Alfred. “With the hog and tobacco money, I'll have enough for my mules, a plow, secondhand disc harrow, and maybe a few other things. I can't make all I need for rentin' for two years, but that's okay 'cause old Red Bill says he'll wait.”

“Red Bill sure can be a cuss though, can't he? An' that idjit boy o' his gives me th' willies.”

Alfred laughed. “Red Bill's meaner'n a by-God's fifth cousin. Hit's just good bidness makes him want me t' crop his place, though. Idjit don't bother me. Five, six years from now I'm gonna own a little piece a land just like you.”

“I hope so, Alfred. I sure do.”

During the next week, I taught Fred to ride. He caught on quick and we would take turns pedaling. Trouble was, we didn't have anyplace we needed to go. Somehow just pedaling lost its fun and in a couple weeks we found ourselves doing the same things we were doing before I got the bicycle and wishing we had a reason to use it.

I
was no longer acclimated to the Kentucky heat and humidity and was exhausted by the time I returned to my hotel room, having driven to Clay's Ferry, then around Bourbon County. I ordered a burger and fries from room service, ate them with bourbon on the rocks, and fell asleep with my clothes on.

I awoke at three in the morning feeling restless, and decided to go for a drive. Once the lights from Lexington were behind me, I was enveloped in darkness, save for my headlights and the awakening in the east. There was no one on the road, so I slowed to thirty and opened the front windows. The air was warm and fresh, and smelled of newly mown hay.

Nora would have loved this ride, I thought. For all her feisty nature, Nora had the soul of a poet. She used to write me letters for no particular reason. I would come home tired and discouraged, go into the bedroom to change into casual clothes, and there on my pillow would be a handwritten note expressing the depth of her love and belief in me. Frequently there would be a P.S.: “Tonight I'm going to test your manhood.” She would, too! Sometimes after a rousing liaison, while we were still gasping, she would say: “Brooklyn did this to me.” Nearly a half century of marriage and I never cheated on my wife.

Tears began to blur my vision. She had pushed me into this odyssey, but now, instead of lessening my pain, the journey brought it back, along with memories better left forgotten.

Nora would never have known anything about my years on Berman's if it hadn't been for Mom and Dad. In retrospect, this trip began during our first visit to the farm in Indiana. Nora had asked Dad about our years in Kentucky, what it was like being a Jewish sharecropper, about the people we lived among and how they related to Jews. She listened with fascination as Dad claimed that he faced very little anti-Semitism among the Kentucky farm folk. The always inquisitive Nora had countered: “Tell me about your life in Kentucky.”

Dad had been born in Eastern Europe and, at age twelve, was sent by my grandfather during a pogrom to live with an uncle in America. Dad never returned to the old country. Over the years in Kentucky, he had acquired the great Southern art of storytelling. Nora was fascinated, and the more stories he dredged up, the more Nora wanted to hear. Eventually, of course, they came to the time we lived on Berman's.

I never spoke to Nora about my years on Berman's. Whenever she asked about Kentucky, I always finessed her in my best hillbilly drawl, insisting that I made the best moonshine of any twelve-year-old in our parts. During that first visit to our farm in Indiana, I was standing behind Nora in Mom and Dad's kitchen when she asked Dad for stories about me. Dad saw me shake my head and treaded very carefully.

“Did he get the scar on his arm on Berman's?” she asked.

My father smiled at her. “Nora, I'm going to have to plead privacy here. Samuel is a man now. You'll have to ask him about those years. I hope you understand.”

Nora turned immediately toward me.

“We'll discuss it later,” I said, hoping that she would forget.

I should have known better. After we pulled away from Mom and Dad's gate to begin our journey home, she looked across the front seat. “Tell me about your life on Berman's.”

I must've sighed very deeply because her eyes searched my face in obvious wonder. I asked what was bothering her. Why should she want to know about my childhood? She already knew about my years in high school. Why was Kentucky important?

“Because I'm getting ready to marry a man who is hiding three years of his life.”

I answered that I didn't ask about her personal life and that she was the woman I was going to marry. Her response: “Ask anything you want.”

I didn't want to know about Nora's personal life before she met me. “Do I have to?”

We drove about twenty-five miles in silence. It wasn't deep-freeze, arm-folded silence, but it was unsettling. I decided to tell her some, but not all. She sensed that the rendition she was hearing had been abridged but already understood enough about her man that she was willing to proceed in bits and pieces over the years.

One night after Mom died, I was having difficulty getting through the loss, and with a few stiff drinks in me, I brought several things into the open. We had been married quite a few years by that time and Nora knew me well. When I finished my story, she told me there was something I should do. I thought she was talking about seeing a psychiatrist and before she could continue I told her that it would be a cold day in hell before I went to a shrink.

Nora laughed. “That's not what I want you to do. But I do think you have a problem. You need to go back to Kentucky, Samuel. You need to go back to Berman's.”

I asked her why. How was going back to Berman's going to help me get over my mother's death?

“Probably nothing to get over your mother's death. That will come with time. But I don't think you've made peace with things that happened on Berman's. It's going to make loss of any kind more difficult for you. Fred was your friend and you really cared about him. He's gotten word to your father more than once that he wants to see you, yet you refuse to go.”

I told her there was nothing in Kentucky for me now and going there would be a fool's errand. She replied that I was unhappy with people in my field of work, that we rarely saw other faculty members, that I was becoming a recluse at my beautiful little college, and finally, that my problems, which she felt were partly due to my past, weren't going away until I dealt with them.

I resented that assessment. I replied that my students liked me, my family loved me, and I didn't give a diddly damn about the pompous asses on the faculty. If my colleagues in the world of comparative English literature didn't like me, that was just tough!

Nora was at least partly right—I got over Mom's death, Dad's death, and the deaths of my siblings. Each was devastating, and through it all, the love and support of Nora and the girls kept me sane. Now, Nora was gone. I still had the girls and I loved them, but my rock had disappeared. And here I was, back in Kentucky, looking for . . . what? I didn't know.

By the time I reached Old Cuyper Creek Pike, the glow in the eastern sky had lit up the clouds. A couple of miles down the pike, I recognized a small, redbrick building on the right side of the road that I had missed previously. Sixty years before, it had been taller and had a belfry. The Colored Baptist Church. I stopped and began wandering the grounds. The building was in disrepair and looked abandoned. I rounded a wall and walked to a window to see inside.

“Who you is, and whatchu want'n in our choich? We still owns this choich 'n' you trespassin'.”

I jumped. In the window I could see a form behind me. I turned toward it. The speaker was a black man I judged to be about ninety. He was nearly six foot, skinny, and dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and a sweater. His shoes were high-top work shoes, nearly identical to those worn by the farmers of my childhood. There was now enough light to see a Cincinnati Reds baseball cap and snow-white, extremely short, wiry hair extending below the cap's rim. His face was dark brown and deeply wrinkled, as were his hands. The right hand was missing a thumb.