A Place on Earth (Port William) (25 page)

In the left-hand pocket of his shirt since the middle of the afternoon
has been his copy of a contract-drafted by Roger's lawyer in longhand
on yellow paper, signed by Roger and by Mat-by which Mat is employed as overseer of Roger's property at an annual wage of something
less than he imagines will pay for his trouble. That afternoon's meeting
between Mat and Roger and the lawyer bore no resemblance at all to
their earlier ones. Mat controlled it deliberately from the beginning,
deferring neither to Roger's wish to speak nor to his own consideration,
which once constrained him, of Roger's right of say-so. They sat at the
kitchen table and made the agreement to Mat's specifications, the old
lawyer writing on his pad below Mat's pointed forefinger. For Mat was
angry enough, and he had told himself: "If anybody besides him is
responsible, it's me, and I've sat and watched as long as I'm ready to."
Before it was over, while the lawyer was still there, he said to Roger:
"There'll be a man coming here, as soon as I can get hold of one, to live
with you, and look after you, and keep this old house. You can't go on living here by yourself. Do you understand?"

And Roger said he did.

Mat takes no pride in that-it is only patchwork-but he is glad,
relieved. And he has made some plans. Coming and going in the latter
part of the afternoon, he has looked newly at Roger's land. Some of it,
the steep ground of the hillsides, is worn out; it will have to be owned by
its thickets longer than Mat will live. That part of it he has put to rest in
his mind, turning to what can be kept and used and made better. While
he was at home in the afternoon he hired Ernest Finley to work on the
barn at Gideon Crop's.

Although he has increased his worries, he has no regret, no feeling
that he has done less or more than he had to do. But a few days ago, if he
had considered expending time and bother on this land, he would have
considered also the possibility that he might later be able to buy it. But
now Virgil is missing, and Mat needs no more land for himself. He is too
old now to need it-if he ever did. This new work must be done for the
sake of the land itself-and for the sake of no one he can foresee, someone who will come later, who will depend then on what is done now

Tuesday and Wednesday it turned cold again. The wind blustered all day
both days. But sometime Wednesday night the weather quieted, and
Thursday morning the spring seemed to have gained back all it had lost,
and more.

On Tuesday morning Wheeler Catlett phoned and left word for Mat
that he had found a man who might do to stay with Roger, and that the
two of them would drive up to look at the place and talk wages that
afternoon.

An arrangement was made, and the man-a hearty, loud-talking fellow named Bailey-promised to gather his belongings and return on Friday. Now, Thursday night, supper finished and Roger gone sober to bed
for the fourth night in a row, Mat is sitting alone on the well top behind
the house, smoking a cigar. Just the pale last minutes of the twilight are
left. The sun's heat rises out of the ground, and the air is still and warmsummer air. During the day, taking Roger with him here and there in the
truck, he has made the beginnings of his spring work, and he is tired
with a familiar tiredness that now, near rest, comforts him. In spite of the
bothering with Roger, it has been a good day, and the night is good.
Tomorrow night he will be at home.

Behind him, in the old kitchen, he hears Roger cough and stir. And he
becomes aware of a sadness, too, that he has been feeling, staying there
those nights. Roger is old with his wasting of himself and with agecoming down to the end of the line, for him, and for the line too. Mat
has been thinking of that. Roger is the last remnant of a history of which
he is the only admirer. After him, there will be no sign that the Merchants
ever existed, except for a diminishment of the earth and of human possibility. They have gone, and are going, leaving nothing behind but thicket
growing back over the slopes they destroyed, and a remnant of usable
soil on the ridges and in the bottoms that they would have destroyed if
they had lived long enough.

Around Mat, the country throbs with the singing of frogs. Too high
in the dusk to be seen, a flock of wild geese passes, a kind of conversation muttering among them. They will go talking and talking that way
all night, flying into new daylight far off. That they do not think of him,
that they go on, comforts Mat. He thinks of those wild things feeding along weedy lake edges way to the north with a stockman's pleasure in
the feeding of anything, and with something more.

And now Burley Coulter steps over the sagged yard fence without
breaking stride and comes on down the slope of the yard through the
dead weeds, carrying an unlit lantern in his hand. He comes over to the
well and sits down beside Mat and lights a cigarette. They sit smoking
for a while.

Finally Burley says: "Spring night sure enough, ain't it? Frogs singing."

"Yes."

`And I heard a flock of geese go over just before I got here."

"I heard them."

There is another silence, and again Burley is the one who breaks it:
"Well, Mat, since I saw you-when was it I saw you? Day before yesterday evening?"

"I think so."

"Well, after we talked I went and talked to Jarrat, and we did some
telephoning to various ones about Ida's troubles. If everybody does like
he says, we ought to be able to give her all the help she'll need. We went
down this afternoon and broke some plant-bed ground on top of the
ridge. Some of the others are going down tomorrow to haul wood to
burn on the beds when we get them ready. And I reckon that's about the
way it's going to go."

They talk on, considering possibilities, looking ahead through spring
and summer and fall, thinking of what will have to be done and how
they will manage to do it.

"Ida says all we need to see to is the heavy work-the plowing and so
on," Burley says. "She'll do the rest."

"Do you think we ought to depend on her to do that?"

"She'll do it anyhow," Burley says. "So we might as well depend on
her."

March 25, 1945

Dear Nathan,

I laid off to write you last Sunday, but never got around to it, and reckoned you would be on your way across the water anyhow. I expect,
if that's so, you'll get this one about as quick as you'd have got the one I
didn't write last week. I hope so.

The flood is over now. It was a bad one, and come at a bad time, and
done damage, and has throwed everybody way behind. We got awfully
tired of looking at water.

The worst of it-which we didn't even know about until it was overwas that Gideon and Ida Crop's little girl, Annie, got drowned on the
10th. Gideon, according to what Ida says, watched over the backwater
until it went down. And then he went. And hasn't been found either. Mat
Feltner has been trying to find him, calling the police and such in different places, but hasn't heard a word of him. It seems a man is about as
easy to lose in this world as a pocketknife. I wouldn't have thought it. But
there's a lot I never would have thought that has turned out to be so.

Virgil Feltner, by the way, hasn't been heard from either. Nothing to
say about that, I reckon, until Mat says something. Except it's bad.

I hate to write down these sad troubles. But I can't think of any argument why I oughtn't to tell you. They happened. And I'm in a way
obliged to speak of them because they did happen and I know it. Seems
to me that when you start home you'll want to know what's here and
what's not. And if anybody's going to write it to you, looks like it'll have
to be me. I said to your daddy the other day, "Why don't you write to
Nathan?" And he said, "God Amighty, Burley, he knows what I'm doing."

Making tracks is what he's doing. Making that team of black mules
realize what he fed them through the winter for. Which I imagine you
do know.

Well, spring is here, finally. And we've had some days of fine weather.
This is one, clear and quiet, hardly any air stirring at all, just warm
enough to be comfortable in the sun, and the country turning greener
all the time. I'm happy today, in spite of everything, glad to see it all come
back.

The old spring comes up in me just like it comes up in everything, and
I'm gladder to be alive today than three weeks ago I imagined I'd ever be.
The night, say, of the day you left.

Speaking of time, I was fifty years old on March 12, and clean forgot
it. Jarrat was the one finally thought of it. Day before yesterday he says,
"Burley, you're fifty. You've been fifty for two weeks." It scared me. And
then it made me mad. Which made him laugh, which don't happen
every day. And we counted up and fifty's what I am. Half a hundred years
I've been alive. And it's a mystery where they've gone. I used to think
that when I got to be a man I'd do what I pleased. And what I aimed to
please to do was hunt and fish, and breed as far and wide as a tomcat. But
there's a great many pretty girls that I've gone by, and a lot of good hunting nights, and a lot of fishing weather. It has happened that that wasn't
so much what I was called to as I thought. What it has been, I reckon you
would say, is love, forJarrat and you boys. I realize now that if my calling
hasn't been that, I haven't had one. When I die there won't be much
around here that anybody can point to and say "Burley Coulter done
that." There's not any wheeling and dealing of mine that anybody'll
remember. But for me, when I think of my life I have to think of it with
Jarrat's and yours and Tom's. And even if there is a lot I've let go by, I
don't say I ain't blessed.

Don't pay any attention to what I write, unless you want to. My mind
just gets to going. Jarrat and I are so quiet, looks like I don't know what is
on my mind until I go to writing to you.

When the ground dried off enough to let us get on it with the teams,
which was last Tuesday morning, Jarrat went at it just like I told you he
would. And I've been my usual hundred feet behind him ever since. We're
both soft from the winter and from being idle so much during the wet
weather, and pretty old too for such a pace, but I expect we've left as
many tracks behind us in the last week as we ever did in our lives. The
sun has been getting up mighty fast and going down mighty slow.

We've got ourselves behind an awful pile of work-farming on both
of these places, and at Mat's. Plus we're trying to help Ida carry on until
Gideon turns up, if he does. Plus there's no chance we can see of hiring
much help. There's sort of nobody here but children and women and old men. I imagine I'm going to get mighty tired of looking at your daddy's
back before October.

All week we've been burning and sowing plant beds-at Mat's, and
then down at Gideon's, and since Friday afternoon up here. Fact is, that's
what we're doing right now. Last night when we quit I said to Jarrat,
"Let's get a little rest tomorrow." And Jarrat said all right. And we passed
it back and forth awhile, saying we'd lay around today and get over some
of our soreness and hit it hard again Monday morning. And then this
morning early we got to looking over all we've got to do, and piddled
around and greased the wheels on Jarrat's wagon and sharpened our
axes. And first thing you know we're out here on the ridge, working like
it's the last good day. And every time we get a little break I come over
here to the wagon and write some on this letter.

It's on in the afternoon now, and we're just sitting here, resting and
watching the last of it burn. I do like this work. There's something about
this fire going before the new crop that's cleaning. The thought of it is
good. All last year's old mongrel chances burnt out of the ground. And
first thing you know we'll have them little tobacco plants speckling up
through the ashes.

Everybody seems to be as behind in his work as we are, going early
and late. From the house at night I can see the plant beds burning for
miles, and smell them too. And you know people are awake and busy
around them. It sort of brings the country together in a way it never is
any other time.

Down in the bottoms they're still waterlogged, just sitting and looking at mud and waiting. Anvil Brant says if it wasn't for fishing he'd try to
get in the Army.

Old Ike just come up and laid down under the wagon. I've heard him
treed way down in the hollow nearly all day. And he's finally dug out
whatever it was, and eat it. So I reckon I'll have to be the one to eat the
leftovers tonight. He wants to know what's the matter with me, I haven't
been hunting with him for so long. And I don't know what to tell him.
I've been thinking that if you stay around this part of the country after
the war, maybe we'll get hold of a good bitch and raise a litter of pups,
and start over.

That's one of my thoughts. Amazing how I've got so I depend on my thoughts. I can take one I like and just about wear the hair off of it between supper and bedtime. I can remember a time when my head wasn't
exactly the part of me that I was most interested in. And now there's
actually some thoughts that I kind of look forward to getting a chance to
think. I've got a pretty good pocketknife and a pretty good dog and three
or four good thoughts.

And a good country to live in, I will have to say. This is about as pretty
a time right this minute as you'd ever want to see. Still and clear, and little smokes here and yonder from the plant beds, and that green coming
strong. And I'm tired enough that I don't mind to see the sun going
down. I wish you was here.

Lord bless you, old boy, I think about you all the time.

Your uncle,

Burley