A Place on Earth (Port William) (22 page)

"So we dropped down through the woods on the hillside pretty
straight to where the sound was coming from, and a good while before
we got down to it we could hear a motor running full-throttle underneath the sound of the horn. And then when we got down in sight of the
road we could see this bright red Ford sort of leaning over the edge of the
road into the ditch, all covered with radio aerials and foxtails and mudflaps and one thing and another until it looked like a carnival booth.
Whoever was driving it had it running as hard as it would go, the rubber
stinking and the blue smoke blowing and the mud spraying twenty feet
behind the left hind wheel. And there was an old woman the size of a
cow standing above it on the top of the road bank, with her fists doubled
up on her hips, just looking at it.

"It wasn't the sort of situation you'd just walk into. And we stopped in
the bushes at the edge of the road to see if we knew who it was, and to try
to understand if we could what in the world was going on. The commotion was just a little hard to see through. We wasn't hoping to see through
it to anything reasonable, but did hope for something recognizable.

"I'm telling you this from the beginning because I want you to know
how I come to be meddling in it."

"Go on," Mat says. "Tell it all to me."

"Well, I didn't have any trouble recognizing the woman. She was a
sister to Gideon Crop's wife's mother. Lizzie Kate Skinner. Used to be
married to old man Albert Skinner in town here. You know the one I
mean, the one they used to call Meathouse to her back. Big rough brassmouthed woman. Spent half her life trompling Albert into his grave,
and then married an old fellow by the name of Greatlow down on the
other side of Hargrave. Well, that's who it was was driving. I knew him
along back before he married her. He was a pretty tolerable decent sort
of fellow, as big as a bull himself, but awfully quiet and shy, and not too
well stocked with brains. A bachelor all his life, for sixty or sixty-five
years, and had a little farm, a good one, which is how come her to fall in
love with him.

"What had happened, as near as we could see, was they'd come down
the hill from here and hit that layer of wet mud that the high water put
down on the road, and of course after that couldn't either guide the car
or stop it. And had gone scooting over into the ditch. And there they
were. And the old man hadn't quit driving yet. The old woman had got
out and up onto high ground, to save her life, I reckon. And the old man,
I reckon, afraid she'd kill him if he ever once admitted he was stuck, was
keeping on doing his level damnedest.

"Me and Jarrat waded across the mud to the other side of the road.
We just sort of nodded and tipped our hats to the old woman, and eased
on around the front end of the car, and then along the slope of the bank
to the door on old man Greatlow's side. He was still driving right on,
blowing the horn in great long bleats. The car was just shaking and
bouncing, but aside from that wasn't moving. The window was streaked
with two or three slashes of tobacco juice, where he'd got confused and
tried to spit out it while it was shut. I had to lean close to get much of a
look at him. And there he sat, both hands gripped onto the wheel, staring straight out the windshield, pouring the gas to her like Casey Jones.
He had the door locked.

"I leaned down to the glass and hollered: Whoa there, Mr. Greatlow!
Hello!' And then I knocked on the door.

"He never let up or turned his head, or gave any other sign.

"Finally I leaned over the windshield and waved and hollered, and directly he saw me. Whoa!' I said. And I went to his window again and
tried to signal to him to stop the racket. He rolled the window down, and
spit over my shoulder and hollered `What?' and kept that old car bucking
right on.

"I hollered to him: `Shut that engine off. We're going to try to help
you a little!'

"He seemed glad enough to do that, and he shut the racket down and
scooted across the seat and got out. The door on his side was leaning too
far over against the bank to open enough. And once he was out he didn't
pay any more attention to me or Jarrat. The only one he was thinking
about was the woman. He sort of backed out into the middle of the road,
looking toward her but not at her, with his hand up. `It's all right now,
Lizzie. I'll get it out. Just let me alone, and give me a little time. And I'll
get the son of a bitch out of there. The God-damned road department.'

`And Aunt Meathouse stood there on the top of the bank, sort of
clouding up over him, like she was still waiting after six years for him to
do or say something sensible.

"Well, I seen that wouldn't do, so I walked up the bank and raised my
hat, and said, `Where was it you all was aiming to get to, ma'am?"'

The sky has whitened. The first stain of the coming sunrise lies on the
horizon. While Burley has been talking the two of them have turned to
the window.

"It's going to be clear again," Burley says.

"Yes. Another good one," Mat says. "Well, go on. You asked where
she was trying to go."

Burley pushes his hat off his forehead, and settles it, and puts his hand
back in his pocket. "That's right. Sort of by way of polite conversation I
asked her where they were going.

"Well, I found out. That is, I sort of gathered it in from among a good
many strong statements about what old man Greatlow wasn't much
good at, driving and so on. What it come down to is that it had been
something better than a week since she'd talked to Ida Crop on the telephone, which she says she usually does every day or so because, with
Ida's mother and daddy dead, she feels called on to take some interest. It's
a worry to her and all, but she does it. Well, last Saturday, she said, she tried to get Ida and couldn't-it wouldn't ring. She called the operator,
and the operator told her the line was out. She said she knew there wasn't
much chance of getting into that creek bottom on account of the high
water. So she called the phone company and told them the whole story,
and told them they'd have to get down there and fix that line, and I can't
remember all the strong statements she did make to them about it. Well,
of course the phone company couldn't get in there any better than she
could. And so the line stayed dead, and so on and so on. And she spent
the week worrying about Ida.

`And so when the river began to fall, she didn't waste any time getting
the old man into that beautiful automobile that her son had fixed up,
looked like, to haul movie actresses in, and then left with them when he
went to the Navy. And they'd been on the way since sometime in the
morning. The old man surely hadn't driven anything since a Model A,
and he poked along, fumbling at it, scared to death-and that old woman,
I know, mouthing at him every foot of the way. They had to give up the
river road about a mile out of Hargrave, and double back and come by
the hill roads and the ridges. And, finally, when they got here in town
they somehow thought they'd made it-and went rolling into the mess
we'd found them in.

"I felt sorry for them, even her. She was sort of licked, for once, and it
improved her. Or, anyhow, I got the feeling-which I never had before
about her-that she was letting me live because she wanted me to.

"While she was talking he'd been standing down in the road, making
a show of studying the situation. And when I stepped down off the bank
I said, `Well, Mr. Greatlow, what do you think about it?'

`And he said, A man build a thing like this, this day and time, and call
it a road. It's a shame.'

"I'd seen about all I needed to see, and knew Jarrat had. So I said,
`Well, hold on, old chap. We'll have to go get a team to pull you out.'

"We started back up the hill toward Jarrat's house, and then Jarrat
said, `Second thought, you'd better go get your team too.' So I branched
off to my barn. We got the teams geared up, and threw the singletrees
and doubletrees and log chains and some digging tools onto Jarrat's sled.
And when we got back they were still standing there just like we'd left them. As we stopped the teams, just as cheerful as I could I said: `Well,
now, folks, just settle back, just be at ease. We'll have you on your way in
about five minutes.'

"It took forty-five. It was a hard enough pull, no more purchase than
the mules could get on that mud. But to make it worse, it tookJarrat and
me both to handle the teams, and we didn't have any choice but to let old
man Greatlow handle the car.

`Jarrat fastened the log chains to the back bumper and hitched the
teams one ahead of the other, and I dug behind the buried wheel so as to
give it a way out. We got the old man back into the car and got it started,
and Jarrat told him how, when we gave him the word, to give it just a little gas and let it pull along with us. We let the mules ease up over that
slick footing into the slack of the chain. And then we called on them, and
they tightened, and we called on old man Greatlow, and he jerked the
clutch out and poured on the gas, and went to drilling away in low gear
just like he'd done before. Pulling against us! And throwing mud all
over us.

"We got the mules stopped, and got old man Greatlow stopped, and
Jarrat put the gearshift into reverse for him, and told him not to give it too
much gas, just let it pull easy. And we tried it again, and he mashed the gas
pedal down to the floor again as if anything would save him that would.

"`Whoa! Jarrat said. And then he said to me: `He's going to run clean
over us if we do pull him loose.'

"So we stopped him again and told him we thought it'd be best if he
just sat there and held the wheel the way we showed him, and let the
mules do all the pulling. We called on the mules again, and in four or five
tries finally pulled him out of the ditch and up onto the road.

"We unhooked the chain and drove the teams out of the way, and Jarrat told him: `Go back easy, now. You're still on mud. Go slow'

`And the old man started her up, and shoved her into second instead
of reverse, and slipped her right back into the same hole, just like shutting a drawer.

"Well sir, I thought that old woman would die. Thought she'd fly all
to pieces like a dropped clock. You could see that he'd done just exactly
what she had thought he'd do, and she felt justified-but still it made her
mad.

"So I sung out to him, like I'd never looked at a better job of driving,
`That's the time, old chap! Now you talking! Now you got her in shape so
we can get her out!' For some reason or another that headed her off. It
looked like, then, she turned him over to us. She stuck her chin up and
turned her back.

"The second time we didn't take any chances. We made him hold the
wheel straight, and drug him past the mud, and got him out, and Jarrat
got in and turned the car around, and we loaded them both back in and
told them to start on home so they'd get there before dark and told them
the shorter way to go."

Margaret comes into the kitchen, and Burley hushes and stands and
takes off his hat.

"Good morning, Mrs. Feltner."

"Why, hello, Burley. I didn't know it was you. You're out early."

"Yes ma'am, I know it's a mighty bad time of day to come knocking
on your door."

"Oh, don't mind that. Any other time, we'd already be up. The wet
weather made us lazy."

`Ain't it everybody?" Burley says.

And then Nettie Banion opens the back door and comes in. Everybody says good morning again, and what a fine one; and after that the
women begin preparing breakfast. Burley moves to another chair to be
less in their way.

"Well, Mat, I never gave another thought to what the old woman had
said about not hearing from the Crops until I'd left Jarrat and had gone
home. And then, while I was doing my night work at the barn, it got to
worrying me. And I said, well, I'd go back over the hill as quick as I got
a chance and see for myself how they'd made out. And then I'd see if I
could get word to old Mrs. Greatlow, since I'd seen that she sure enough
was worried. And, to tell the truth, I was sort of touched to think of Ida
Crop's not having anybody outside their little valley to worry about her
except that drastic old aunt. But by the time I'd finished my work it was
getting on toward night, and I said I'd go first thing in the morning. I put
the thought aside then, and fixed a little supper and ate and radioed until
I got sleepy and went to bed.

`And, it must have been two-thirty or three d clock this morning, I commenced to hear that horn again. And I says to myself, `Well, Burley,
your dreams are getting too loud to sleep with.' I rolled over and tried it
again and it didn't stop, and it come to me then that I was hearing it. And
I says, `Well, durned if the luck ain't picked you out.' After I'd listened a
while, I could tell it was stuck sure enough this time, wasn't anybody
blowing it that way on purpose. I had the suspicion from the first that it
was the same horn. But I somehow hated to admit it.

"I was out of bed by that time and had the light on and was climbing
into my clothes, and hurrying. I went down and snatched up the lantern
and lit it and started out. And hadn't more than made it to the yard gate
before I realized I didn't have any idea at all which direction I ought to be
going. That horn seemed to be bawling from every direction at once, the
air just ringing with it. My head was full of it, and it seemed to be piling
up around me, getting louder all the time.

"Figuring any direction was more likely than none, I took off running
down the hill, because it was easier, I reckon, and into the woods. And
then the sound began to fade out. `Well,' I said, `I've found out something.' And I turned around and started backup the hill. As I broke out of
the woods I seen a light at Jarrat's, and then his lantern coming across the
field toward my house. I swung my lantern and he answered with his,
and we met and went on together. When we climbed over into the lane
at the top of the ridge we struck a fresh car track.