A Place on Earth (Port William) (32 page)

HOUSE 7-3672

He dials the house number and waits, hopeful. He can just hear
Wheeler's wife answer the phone and say, "Yes, Uncle Jack. Wheeler left
a good while ago. He ought to be getting up there about now." It rings
and rings. It does not take Old Jack long to guess what that means.
Wheeler is not up. It is a fact that Wheeler sometimes sleeps as late as
seven o'clock. That is the only bad fault Old Jack has ever found in
Wheeler. He must have told him a thousand times, by various subtleties
and hints, that a man cannot hope to get anywhere lying in the bed so
late of a morning with the sun shining in his face.

"My Lord Amighty!" Old Jack says in disgust, as ashamed and humiliated and angry as if Wheeler was his own boy.

He lets her ring.

Finally the receiver clicks up on the other end.

"Hello!" Old Jack does not have much faith in the instrument, and he
talks loudly.

Somebody speaks into the other end.

"Hello!"

"Hello." The sound still seems to come from too far away.

"Who is that a talking?"

"It's Wheeler, Uncle Jack. What's the matter?"

"Wheeler, I'm ready, honey. It's daylight. Are you coming?"

"I told you I'd be there, didn't I? And I didn't say when. I said pretty
early."

"Well?"

"Well," Wheeler says, "the sun's not even up!"

Old Jack was not aiming to let on what he thinks, but he cannot help
it. "Damn it to hell, don't tell me what the sun does in the morning! I
know and you don't!"

They're both good and mad now.

"Well," Wheeler says.

"Well what?"

"Never mind!"

"Well, are you aiming to come or not? I got business I want to take
care of."

"I'll be there, Uncle Jack," Wheeler says. `Just hold on. It'll be about
thirty minutes. Be ready."

"Ready, hell!" Jack says. "I been ready!" And he hangs up.

He goes out and, seeing that Dolph Courtney has opened up and
Ernest Finley has come for his sandwiches, starts down to the drugstore.

Old Jack going in, Ernest coming out, they meet in the door.

"Good morning, boy."

"Morning, Uncle Jack."

"Well, are you on your way to work?"

"Going to try it another day."

"You're all right, son, You're a good'un."

Old Jack likes to see a man start his day's work when the day starts.
But instead of comforting him, the sight of a man getting up the way he
ought to only makes him more bitter toward Wheeler-and everybody
else in the country who is still lying in bed. He cannot get used to this
new fashion of sleeping until the sun is three or four hours high. He cannot imagine how a man could ever do anything worthwhile in a day he
had already slept the best part of.

"Morning!" Dolph calls from the back of the store where he is cooking his breakfast.

But Old Jack does not hear him. He has turned around to watch
through the door glass while Ernest gets into the truck and starts to his
work. All his life-when he was on his place, in his place-he and the
ones who worked with him got up before the sun.

"If they stay with me they've got to get up!" he thinks, repeating in his
mind words he has said many times aloud. He feels the emptiness of that
boast now. Now the truth is that there is not a soul living-Wheeler
included, damn him-who cares whether Old Jack gets up at daylight or
not. And everybody knows that after he does get up there is not much he
can do. But he demands that he get up. And once he is up, because his life
has taught him, he can see what needs to be done. A man who has
learned to see cannot help seeing.

'Ay, Lord!"

"What's that, Uncle?"

Dolph's gold tooth is shining in the middle of a grin.

"Too damn many people sleeping in the daytime," Old Jack says.

He pauses, the necessity of speaking to Dolph making him realize
that he is making the wrong point.

`And better off asleep, some of 'em."

Old Jack's anger has carried his indictment far beyond the point where
it might apply to any fault of Wheeler's. He is well aware of that and is
comforted by it. Now, watching Dolph eat his breakfast-thinking how
Dolph's wife will come flopping up to Burgess's store in her bedroom
slippers about nine d clock, eyes still half shut, hair full of curlers-Old
Jack feels all of his anger go out of him, leaving only sadness that what
he has said is true.

"Surely," he says, "a man can get up and be ready when the time
comes."

He looks at Dolph and shakes his head. He might just as well be hollering down a groundhog hole. But he will say what he means.

"Look at Mat Feltner up there. His boy's gone, he's getting old, he's
troubled in his mind-and you'll never see him hit a half-assed swat at a
fly."

Toot! Toot-toot!

Old Jack is on his way out, Dolph Courtney forgotten, before the
horn stops blowing.

Outside he sees that it is not Wheeler at all, but somebody in a truck,
already going out of sight up the road.

But before he has time to be disappointed Wheeler is there, his car
coming up over the rise beyond Mat's house, slowing up and stopping in
front of the hotel. Old Jack waves his cane.

"Oh, Wheeler! Whoo! Hold on!"

Wheeler lets the car roll on down the street to where Old Jack is hurrying to meet him, and stops and opens the door. Old Jack gets in, puts
his packet of sandwiches on the seat between them, puts the point of his
cane between his feet, slams the door, laces his fingers over the crook of
the cane.

"How're you, Wheeler?"

'All right, Uncle Jack. How're you?"

"Tol'bly well."

"It's a fine morning."

"It is that."

They are both over their anger and glad to see each other. Old Jack
suddenly feels a lot better than tolerable. He is on his way home, his day
begun. He glances over at Wheeler, who is looking mighty fine in his
suit and clean white shirt, and feels a tremor of pride that he knows that
fine man.

'Wheeler," he says, "you'll see that you'll be in good shape today on
account of getting up early. It gives you time to think over what you've
got to say, don't it?"

He could not help saying that, though now that he has said it he reckons maybe he should not have.

"Right!" Wheeler says, laughing. "I'll be two times better than I usually am-if I can just stay awake until I get there, and find some breakfast."

Laughing too, Old Jack says, A real lawyer would have finished breakfast two hours ago."

Well, he is glad he brought it up. There is no doubt now that their
quarrel is over.

Wheeler, from his side of the car, has been watching Old Jack with
amusement and growing sympathy. The old man is sitting there in his
whopsided old cap and big coat and puttees, blood dried on his face from
last night's shaving, leaning toward the windshield, taking in everything,
and it comes to Wheeler what this day means to him.

They drive out past the edge of town and turn right onto the Bird's
Branch road. The gravel road stays up high along the backs of the ridges,
and as they go along they can see miles of the country, the points and
ridges marked by long shadows in the red light of the sun still not far
above the horizon. They go slowly into the turns and slants of the road,
talking about the weather and the prospects of the year. Finally Wheeler
asks:

"Have you seen Mr. Feltner lately?"

"I see him every day."

"How do you think he looks?"

'Ay, Lord! He looks like a man that's hurt."

Wheeler, as if considering that, says nothing for a minute, looking down the road. And then he says: "Bess is worried about him, and so am
1. He's taking this mighty hard."

"It's hard on all of them."

"Yes, but Mrs. Feltner and Hannah have the baby to think about
and get ready for. That seems to be some help to them. But Mr. Feltner
doesn't-or won't-have anything but his work. And he's doing too
much of that. I've never seen him tireder."

`Ah! And everything he does is bound to remind him of what he
hoped for his boy."

"Yes."

Old Jack touches Wheeler's leg with the end of his cane to make
Wheeler look at him.

"Do you think his boy's alive?"

Wheeler doesn't answer for what seems a long time, as though he is
wishing Jack had not asked. "Not likely," he says finally, "though we may
not know for certain for a long time. And may never."

Seeing that the old man is saddened by what he said, Wheeler says
kindly: "Nothing anybody can do, Uncle Jack."

But surely Wheeler knows better than to think that is any consolation. It is just the truth. And a man who is depending on the truth to console him is sometimes in a hell of a fix. To Old Jack, the sorrowful thing
exactly is that there is nothing anybody can do.

"Not a thing in the world. And he's as fine a one as ever set foot on the
ground."

They come to Old Jack's place-a big white house set back from the
road in a yard full of trees, clean well-fenced pastures and fields sloping
away from it, barns and outbuildings all painted white too and in good
repair. It is plain from the look of it that a man's competent love for it has
dwelt in it. Old Jack has neglected nothing, let nothing go.

Wheeler stops in front of the barn and names a time late in the day
when he will be back. Old lack gets out and stands watching and then listening while Wheeler drives out to the road and disappears and then the
sound of his engine goes out of hearing over the next hill. Much as he
likes to be with Wheeler, he is glad he has gone.

The sun has risen above its first redness now, and is slanting down
clear and bright. The dew is still on. The pastures are in excellent shape, the grass thick and deep. In the fresh sunshine, amidst the green of the
trees and the grass, the buildings are white and clean. Old Jack stands and
looks, gathering it all in. The place itself comes back into his mind. They
come together like the two halves of the same thing. There is smoke rising from the kitchen chimney, and he hears from somewhere out back of
the barn the sound of harrow disks striking rock, which tells him that his
new tenant is at work. That is a relief. He purposely gave no warning of
his visit, the better to get an idea of this man's way of doing, but he came
half afraid of the pain it would cause him if this one too proved incompetent or lazy.

During his declining years Old Jack has had a number of tenants who
contracted to raise the tobacco on the shares and to work by the day
when he needed them and they could spare the time. Most of these were
men living on neighboring farms who wanted to take on the extra work,
and except for one, who was called to the Army after staying only a year,
all of them have proved unsatisfactory in one way or another. Most of
them, in fact, nearly worried Old Jack to death with their poor ways of
doing-messing at their work or neglecting it, losing his tools or leaving
them in the rain, forgetting to fasten gates, mistreating the stock. Sooner
or later he would always get disgusted with them and make them go, or
they would become sulky under the demands he made on them and quit.
It was a bad situation, Jack knew, but nothing else seemed possible. And
in spite of everything, because he was still living there, and was constantly watchful and busy, the farm stayed in good shape.

But when he had made up his mind to move to town, he and Wheeler
decided that a more stable arrangement would have to be made. Old
Jack left everything to Wheeler. A young man-the tenant for the past
year on a neighboring farm-was recommended, was interested, and a
contract was signed in January in Wheeler's office. Since then, on his
trips with Wheeler to the farm, and on chance meetings in town, Old
Jack has seen his tenant maybe a dozen times, but only briefly, without
having a chance to form a judgment of him. Until recently he has just
trusted Wheeler's continuing good opinion, knowing he would find out
for himself sooner or later.

He has always liked the young man, but has wondered about him too.
And he has wondered what will happen to his place now that he no longer lives on it. The question has troubled him. He would have come out two
weeks ago if Wheeler had not stalled him, waiting for better weather.

Standing in front of the barn, he has already begun his exploration of
the young man's ways, looking into the fence corners and into the open
sheds and at the back porch of the house. All that he can see is orderly.
The tools that are not in use have been put into the sheds out of the
weather. The gates and doors are all closed and latched. Rows of young
vegetables are growing in the garden. A flock of hens is scratching
around the henhouse in the sun. In one of the front fields he can see
three milk cows grazing, and there are a couple of sows and pigs in one
of the small pens below the barn. All that is as it should be. These people
are not the kind who will be running to the grocery store to buy all they
eat. That means a great deal, to Old Jack's way of thinking.

The young man's wife is carrying water from the well into the
kitchen, and old Jack imagines that she is heating water to wash clothes.
The first time she came out she waved to him and called, "Good morning!" And he waved to her. Since then she has gone on with her work,
paying no attention to him. It pleases him that she has started her work
so early in the morning, and that she goes about it without stopping to
talk. Though he has seen her only a few times, and then at a distance, he
can tell that she recognized him, and that pleases him too. For a long
time he can remember exactly the cheerfulness of her voice. He makes
up his mind about her on the spot. She is a good woman.

Turning and going into the feed barn, he puts his packet of sandwiches up on a shelf inside the doors, and goes back through the cleanswept driveway, opening the stalls and looking in. All the stalls have been
freshly bedded. The barn looks the way it ought to. He goes to the other
barns and buildings. Everywhere there is the same orderliness. Everywhere he can see the signs of the presence of a good man, a good manager, a good head-a kind of intelligence that he recognizes and feels
akin to.