A Place on Earth (Port William) (30 page)

In the next couple of days the frontier is pushed across Jasper Lathrop's back lot, and on down behind the doctor's office and the drugstore. A great litter of old cans and bottles is picked up and piled in an out-ofthe-way corner. The burnable trash and the cut weeds are piled on top of
the old crates behind jasper's store and burnt in a smoky fire that draws
all the boys in Port William and a considerable number of the men.

Saturday morning after breakfast Old Jack goes out into his clearing
and stands and looks. Childish as he suspects it may be, he cannot help
feeling a little elated at what he has done. But along with the satisfaction
there is growing an uneasiness, a sadness. It is finished, and what will he
do now? Having escaped it a little while, he has again knocked square
against the realization that there is mighty little left in this world for him
to do. And this morning what he has done seems threatened by the possibility that it was done for nothing. What can he do now but sit and look
at it? And know that the weeds will come back, and he will go.

As if in answer to a prayer that he has not even thought of praying, he
sees Floyd Mahew's boy driving a team of mules and sled along the
fence, as he has morning and noon and evening all week, only today
there is a breaking plow lying on the sled.

Something to be growing in it: the idea is born full grown into Old
Jack's head. He waves his cane.

"Oh, son! Whoo! Hello, boy!"

But the mules are coming at a brisk trot and the boy cannot hear over
the rattling of the harness.

"Deaf and dumb!" Jack says. He waits until the team comes up even
with him and calls: "Whoa!"

The mules stop. The boy falls forward, catching himself against the
fore-standard of the sled, and looks around in some confusion until he
sees Old Jack coming.

"Boy," Old Jack says, "can you run that plow?"

"Yessir," the boy says, grinning and nodding. It's a Mahew grin, a
Mahew face. The Mahews have always reminded Jack just a little bit of
catfish. He gives the boy a good looking-over, not sure he is telling the
truth. He is not a very big boy. "Well," he says finally, "go on up yonder
to the gate and come in here. I've got a little piece of work here I want
you to help me with."

The boy looks doubtful. "Uh, I better go on to work like my daddy
told me to."

"You're Floyd Mahew's boy, ain't you?"

"Yessir." Again the nod and grin.

"Well, I ain't worried about him. You just drive up to that gate and I'll
help you get it open."

The old gate into the alley along the upper side of the hotel has not
been opened in maybe fifteen years. The slats are rotten, some of them
broken. The whole thing has been bound together in place with baling
wire.

They do finally get it open. The boy drives the sled into the alley. They
unload the plow and hitch to it.

"I'll drive, son, and you handle the plow. Can you plow a straight furrow?"

"Yessir. I'll try."

"What in the hell does that mean? `Yessir. I'll try.' Well, I'll drive
straight. You just keep your plow running level."

"Yessir," the boy says. "Uh. How long do you think this'll take?"

"Ne' mind! Don't you worry about your daddy. Gee, boys! Take hold of
your plow, honey."

The boy takes hold, and they go across and back the long way of Mrs.
Hendrick's lot, leaving a straight, neatly turned backfurrow through the
middle. The black earth bursts at the touch of the share and crumbles.
Hard telling when it ever was broken, if it ever was. If it is not virgin
ground it might as well be. It has been a long time since old Jack has
seen any dirt like it. He is delighted by the look and the smell of it, and
by the feel of it when he stops and picks it up and crumbles it in his
hands.

"Lord Amighty!" Old Jack says. "Look what dirt you're plowing," he
says to the boy. "Did you ever plow any dirt like that before?"

"Yessir."

"Nosir. "

"Nosir."

"That's what new ground looks like. You've never seen any of it on
that place of your daddy's."

"Oh."

"I've broke a fair amount of it in my time. You'll not break but mighty
little in yours."

"Yessir."

"Do you know why?"

"Nosir."

"Because all of it, you might as well say, has been broke, and a lot of it
used up. From my day to yours is a long time, and a lot more is used up,
and not much to the improvement of the world, far as I can see."

"Yessir."

"Yessir, what? Yessir, Hell! Do you know what I'm talking about?"

"Yessir."

Old Jack looks down at the boy, studying him, and then snorts. "Until
you get enough sense to worry about it, I reckon I'll have to. Well, look
at that ground you're turning and remember it."

They've come to the end of a furrow, and they look at each other,
each a little perplexed by the other.

"It's something you ought to remember. Not many in your generation will ever see it."

"Yessir."

They begin the next furrow.

"Did you ever imagine what an improvement it would be to the
world if everybody cut his own weeds?"

"Nosir."

"Well, you won't come to that with a boy's head. But I'll tell it to you.
It'd be a hell of a big improvement."

"Yessir."

"What's the biggest fish you ever caught?"

`About the size of that mule's ear," the boy says. "But I ain't fished
much."

There's a slam behind them, and when they look Mrs. Hendrick is
standing on the stoop at the kitchen door, a wet dishrag dripping in her
hand. She is red in the face, bent forward as if about to dive off the stoop.

"Just keep ahold of your plow, honey."

"Stop! You all just stop them old mules right there!"

Jack addresses the mules quietly and gently: "Whoa, boys." He turns
slowly to face her.

"Mr. Beechum! What're you plowing up my back yard for?"

"For the good of the world!"

Whack! she shuts the screen door. Wham! she shuts the kitchen door.

"Come up, mules! Gee! Come up!"

When Wheeler comes this time it is a good while before he can get in
a word. Mrs. Hendrick tattles on Old Jack, describes the look on his face,
quotes him a number of times so as to make obvious the outrageousness of his tone. She speaks of her own decent life, of her great sympathy for a lonely old man such as Mr. Beechum, and of the hardships and
travails of widow women in this world. And Wheeler has to allow her
some sympathy. She is having a rough time of it. She oughtn't to have to
put up with insults from Old Jack.

"Well," Wheeler says. "I'll certainly talk to him about the language he
uses, Mrs. Hendrick, and I'll ask him to show you more respect. But I'll
also have to tell you again what I told you the other day. I can't see why
you object to what he's doing. I can't see that it won't be to your advantage to have a garden back there."

Agarden?" she snaps. "How'd I know it was going to be a garden? Well,
I just hope there won't no more trouble come out of it, is all I hope."

When Wheeler goes out back, the ground-breaking is finished. Floyd
Mahew's boy is gone, and the old gate has been shut and wired up. Old
Jack is standing and looking.

"Hello, wheeler boy!"

'What're you going to plant here, Uncle Jack?"

`A little bit of a garden. Maybe raise that old woman something she
can cook."

"That's fine," Wheeler says. He had not known any better than Mrs.
Hendrick that a garden was what Old Jack intended to raise.

"These here shirt-tail lawyers looking after my business, I'm liable to
have to go back to working for a living, so I reckon I'd better keep my
hand in."

They laugh.

'Wheeler, did that old woman call you down here to complain about
me?"

"That's right."

"The damned old thing hasn't got any sense, Wheeler."

"Not much. But you haven't been giving much consideration to that."

"You're right, son. I haven't been giving her a thought. And it's causing
you trouble, ain't it? You reckon I'd better hunt another place to go?" He looks over his garden patch-not altogether liking that thought. "Or"he grins-"we could buy this place and throw her out. Get us a couple of
old women about eighteen years old to come in and keep house."

Wheeler laughs. "No, Uncle Jack. I think the best thing to do now is
let things be as they are. I just ask you, for my sake, don't insult her, and
try to show some respect for her rights in her own property."

Old Jack sees that the crisis is over, and he turns away, wanting to
change the subject. Good company is going to waste.

"I want you to look at that ground," he says.

They pick up handfuls of the black moist dirt, letting it crumble
through their fingers.

"It won't take but mighty little working to get that ground ready to
plant."

They stand there a few more minutes, talking about the newness and
richness of that neglected place.

And then Wheeler starts toward the street. Old Jack watches him go.
He is going to have to begin making some kind of peace. He has been
mighty unwilling to have that woman on his mind. But now he will let
her be there-for the sake of peace, and for Wheeler's sake, and his own.

He looks at his watch. It is three-quarters of an hour until dinnertime.
The sun has begun to dry the surface of the turned ground. He paces the
length and width of the plot, and then goes into the woodshed. He sits in
his chair and takes out his notebook and pencil and figures how much
seed he will have to buy.

A lot, it proves. They will have plenty to eat fresh, and plenty to can,
and some to give away. He goes out to the street, his list fluttering in his
hand, the ground waiting.

April22, 1945

Dear Nathan,

Here I've let a month go by without writing, in spite of getting two letters from you. We've been working mighty hard since I wrote last-daylight to dark, and seven days a week. Last week we worked right through
Sunday, and didn't know we'd passed it until Tuesday.

Well, this Sunday morning I decided I couldn't put off writing any longer, so I slipped out early and walked to town. Thought I'd get where
Jarrat can't find me and I can't hear him holler, and get this letter written.
When it's done I guess I'll have to go back and let myself be found. I'm
sitting here on the sidewalk in front of Jayber's door. It's a quiet fair morning, and a pleasant place to sit. Jayber was just finishing his breakfast when
I got here. He came down and hung around and talked until I thought I
might as well give up and go home. But he finally went back upstairs.

What Jayber was wanting to talk about was Old Jack Beechunis doings
up at the hotel. The old man has cleaned the weeds and trash off of all
the back lots from the post office clean to the pool room. Then yesterday
morning he got one of Floyd Mahew's boys to break up a big garden
patch behind the hotel. I didn't know anything about it until yesterday
evening. I'd finished cutting some ground at Mat's and had loaded the
harrow onto the sled and was starting home. It was, I imagine, an hour or
so before sundown. I shut the gate and pulled out into the road, and here
come Old Jack, waving his cane and hollering, "Whoo! Oh, Burley!
Whoa there!" I pulled on up even with him and stopped. He wanted me
to come out back and work that garden patch for him so he could plant it.

I went and did it. It didn't take long. That ground worked like new
ground, which I imagine it is-fine and black and loose as ashes. When I
got it worked good, Old Jack brought out a sack full of garden seed and
we laid off some rows and started planting, him dropping the seeds and
me a covering. It was right remarkable to see that old man all buttoned
up in a winter coat-for he tells me he never gets quite warm-going
along dropping seeds in the ground. While we were planting the garden
Jayber came by. He'd closed his shop for supper and come to hunt up Old
Jack, since he hadn't seen him for three or four days and had got to wondering if maybe he was sick. Well, he soon found out all he wanted to
know about the old man's health, and got put to work pretty suddenly
too.

Nothing at all has been heard of Virgil Feltner beyond what I already
told you. It'll soon be two months now that he has been missing. I know
that for Mat and them it has been a long wait and a long hope, and
they've maybe only begun. Once in a while when you're talking to Mat
you'll realize all of a sudden that he has quit listening, ain't there, is way
off somewhere in his trouble, and then you can see the pain in his face. That missing doesn't give him much to take a hold of. These last seven
weeks have aged Mat right sharply too. He nearly always seems steady,
reined pretty tight. But it's no trouble to look at him now and see that it
has been a long time since he has been at rest in himself.

Nobody has seen hide nor hair of Gideon Crop either. Several of us
are working down there, turn about, to help Ida keep things going.

You asked me to tell you what things look like now, and I'll try it the
best I can. It's full spring now. The trees are leafed out. The big ones here
in town reach over the road so that from where I'm looking the town
seems sort of roofed with leaves. The yards are green and flowers are
blooming in some of them. Now and then when I look up into town I
see one or another of Minnie Lathrop's old hens chasing a bug across the
road. Uncle Stan has got his old Jersey tied to a stake in the empty lot next
to the church. The grass is coming good everywhere and people will be
putting their stock on pasture before long. Out home your Grandma's
old lilac is in full bloom and various ones of her flowers is blooming, or
has bloomed. As fine a spring as you'd ever want to see.

Telling you about it makes me wish mightily that you could see it.
Which, if the predictors are right, you may before too long. I think a
mighty lot of you, old boy. Let me hear a little something when you get
the time.