Chaneysville Incident (8 page)

He had not been to the spring in a long while. The soft earth at the edge of the water was printed by the feet of small animals, the hooves of a pair of deer, but bore no track of man. He had not cleaned the spring in a long time, either. The bottom of it was littered with waterlogged leaves, and I knew that below them would be a film of mud. That would make the dipping difficult. But I had no choice; I knelt down and slowly and gently maneuvered the edge of a bucket into the water, not pushing it too deeply, trying to let the water move without setting up a current. He had taught me how to do that, how to dip clean water from a shallow, leaf-choked spring. It was not an easy thing to learn; it required strength and patience and practice, and it had taken me years to really learn to do it right, for the very simple reason that each time I had failed, I had had to wait for the detritus to settle before I could try again. He had watched me do it, sitting silent and unperturbed, correcting my mistakes in a soft voice: I had got excited, I had got rushed, I had moved too quick, I had moved too jerky, I must wait there, quietly, until the dirt had settled, and then I must try again. Because someday it would be important that I do it right and do it right the first time. And now the day had come. And I was nervous, and frightened, not sure I remembered how to do it, not sure at all.

But I did remember. Something in me did, and I was calm and patient when I needed to be, and I was strong and steady when I needed to be, and I filled the buckets without disturbing the mess that cluttered the bottom.

I stood up then, feeling satisfaction at having done something so simple, and looked around at the mountains, trying to remember the days when this was exactly what I had wanted out of life: to get up in the morning and build a fire and go to the spring and pay a visit to the privy, and then cook my breakfast. But it was not that way now; now I stood in the shadow of the Hill and looked down the slope towards the gray, unsturdy-looking outhouse and almost dreaded the time when I would have to use it. But then I stopped daydreaming and paid more attention to the land that lay beyond the privy, and what I saw frightened me.

I was standing in the shadow, but there, on down the slope, I could see the sunlight. And it was weak sunlight, without warmth and without force, not at all the way it should have been on a clear March morning. I looked up at the sky. The clouds were low and gray, drifting almost imperceptibly northward. The air was wet and heavy. Snow. It was going to snow. Not one of those benign snows that lay light on the ground; it would be a blizzard. I knew how it would go; for as long as I could remember, for as long as anybody could remember, the pattern of the blizzards had been the same. First the slow drifting of cloud cover, coming in from the south, pushed by the south wind. The cloud could build for hours or days, perhaps losing a little moisture in snow or freezing rain, but staying, until the storm center drifted far enough northward and drove the winds hard against the mountains. Then the snow would fall, fast and furious. That was the first phase. How long it would last no one could say. But sooner or later the matronly south wind would tuck up her skirts, go scuttling off across the mountains, taking the clouds with her. Then there would be calm, and clearing skies; the second phase. It might last a night or a week. But sooner or later it would end. And then the witch wind, the west wind, cold and sterile, would come slicing across the mountains, making a weird, oddly pitched, indescribable sound, ripping the snow from the ridges and making it go boiling down into the valleys to build impassable drifts. That was the third phase. It could last, it seemed, forever. I would have to get out of there before that happened; I would have to get him out of there before the snow fell deeply, or I wouldn’t get him out of there at all.

I picked up the buckets and went up the path as quickly as I could. When I reached the door I stopped and waited a minute, catching my breath. Then I nudged the door open with my foot and went inside.

The cabin seemed almost warm now. It wasn’t really, but the fire had made some difference; the chill was off the air and his breathing seemed less labored. I closed the door quickly to keep the heat inside, and then I stood there for a minute while my eyes adjusted to the dimness. As I stood I grew more calm, more sensible. My run up the hill, I realized, had been silly. Because there was no real hurry. The snow would not fall all at once, and even if it did there would be no rushing; there would never be any rushing Old Jack.

So, when my eyes adjusted, I took the buckets over and filled the reservoir on the stove; I would need hot water before the reservoir would supply it, but eventually it would raise the humidity and make his breathing easier. Then I added some hardwood to the pine that was burning in the stove—I needed even heat now; steady heat. Then I put some water in the kettle and set it to boil.

I opened my pack then, and took out some of the supplies I had brought: every vitamin we had had in the house; the penicillin Judith kept around, defying her own best medical advice; aspirin. I laid it out on the table.

The kettle was almost ready to boil by then, and I made a quick search for his shelves. I found his cups, two of them, enameled metal. His honey supply was low, and what was there was so clotted by the cold that it would not have poured inside an hour. He had a little sugar, though. And he had plenty of whiskey, fifteen bottles of the stuff. Store-bought, he would have called it, implying that it was not good. And he would have been right; it was terrible stuff, as cheap as dirt and as harsh as kerosene, but it had alcohol in it and it would taste all right mixed with sugar and water. It would taste a lot better than nothing.

I mixed two toddies, using the recipe he had taught me: four fingers of whiskey, and if you have no honey, three thumbloads of sugar, and when the water boils, pour it slow till the fumes rise and make your mouth water. That had been on a winter night, when the winds had brought wet, sleety rain, and I had arrived on his doorstep soaked and shivering. He had instructed me to take off my clothes, had hung them close to the stove, and by the time the toddy was ready the aroma of wet, steamy clothes had pervaded the air. I had grown to really love the taste of whiskey that night, while he had spun some improbable tale into the fetid air. Standing there waiting for the water to boil, I tried to remember what the story had been about.

But I couldn’t. There had been too many stories, told over too many years, too many years ago; they all blurred together in my mind. I wondered if they would be blurred in his. And then I began to think about what a man’s dying really means: his story is lost. Bits and pieces of it remain, but they are all secondhand tales and hearsay, or cold official records that preserve the facts and spoil the truth; the sum is like a writer’s complete works with crucial numbers missing: the works of Macaulay minus the essay on Milton; the Complete Henry Hallam without
The Constitutional History.
The missing volumes are often not the most important, but they are the stuff of background, the material of understanding, the real power of history. The gaps in the stories of the famous are filled eventually; overfilled. Funeral eulogies become laudatory biography, which becomes critical biography, which becomes history, which means everyone will know the facts even if no one knows the truth. But the gaps in the stories of the unknown are never filled, never can be filled, for they are larger than data, larger than deduction, larger than induction. Sometimes an attempt is made to fill them; some poor unimaginative fool, calling himself a historian but really only a frustrated novelist, comes along and tries to put it all together. And fails. And so, like a poor cook trying to salvage a culinary disaster, he peppers his report with deceptive phrases—“it appears” and “it would seem” when he is fairly sure but has no evidence, “clearly” and “almost certainly” when he has no idea at all, and salts it with obscure references and then he pretends (to no one in particular because no one in particular usually cares) that the seasoned mess is Chateaubriand instead of turkey hash.

The water boiled then, and I filled his cup and set the kettle on the back of the stove. I stirred his toddy and carried it to him.

“Jack?” I said. I waited. His breathing changed ever so slightly. I leaned over and waved the cup under his nose. He stirred.

“Johnny?” he said, without opening his eyes.

“It ain’t George Washington.”

He smiled, opened his eyes. “I dreamed you was here.”

“Wasn’t dreamin’,” I said. “I got here at just after daybreak.”

He nodded, seemingly exhausted by the effort of moving his head.

“I’ll be all right now,” he said. “It’s mornin’. I’ll be all right till midnight. It’s them small hours I can’t abide no more.”

“You ain’t been eatin’ right,” I said. “That’s all. You can’t hardly expect to go runnin’ around half the night if you ain’t eatin’ right.”

“Hell, Johnny, I ain’t been doin’ nothin’ right. I got this cough an’ the bastard won’t let go. Started coughin’ blood, losin’ weight, got so I could hardly stand up long enough to piss.”

“You gotta eat,” I said. “That’s all you need. I’ll make some stew.”

“That stew’ll probably kill me. You recall the time—” He coughed then, grabbing awkwardly for a stained rag beside him. I could see the blood. I held his shoulders to steady him while he coughed, then turned away quickly so he would not be embarrassed as he cleaned himself as best he could, and so he would not see my face.

“All you need is a little hot food,” I said, “and if you say one more word about my cookin’ I’m gonna eat it all myself.” I gave him the toddy, waited until I was sure he could hold the cup. “We’re gonna have to do somethin’ about that cough,” I told him.

“More whiskey,” he croaked.

“You need a doctor.”

“Like hell I do. I ain’t never needed no doctor. Last time I went to a doctor, I went on over to see Old Doc Martinson, an’ that old quack thumped me an’ pounded me an’ stuck his finger up ma butt, an’ then he charged me a dollar an’ sent me up to that bastard Hawkin’s drugstore with a perscription, an’ Hawkin charged me fifty cents for a little bottle ’bout the size of a bean pod, an’ when I ast him what was inside he told me a whole bunch a crap an’ then let out that it was twenty percent alcohol, an’ I says, damn, Hawkin, I can get twice this much ’shine for a quarter, an’ that’s gonna be a hunnert proof, an’ that was the last time I ever had no truck with doctors, an’ I’m too damn old to start now.”

“You’re too damn sick not to,” I said.

He grunted, and sipped at his toddy, pretending at being silent. But I could see what had happened; the weakness had come across him, and he was trying to finish the toddy while he could still hold the cup himself. I hesitated, then reached out and took the cup away. “Don’t drink that so fast,” I said.

“I wasn’t finished,” he snapped. “Man gets a little under the weather, an’ first thing you know some damn Methodist is runnin’ to snatch his whiskey away.” He dropped his hands to the cot. I pretended I had not seen them tremble.

“You drink this crap that fast, somebody’s like to snatch your butt off an’ you wouldn’t even notice.”

“May be, but he ain’t like to live to tell the tale. Give me my whiskey back.” He reached out for it, and his hands were steady again.

“All right,” I said, “but you take it easy.” I went back to the stove and mixed my own toddy, keeping my back to him. I heard him sigh once or twice, one soft click as the cup hit his teeth, but I did not help him.

“You can mix me another in a minute,” he said finally.

I turned around and set my own toddy down. He was holding his cup out to me, his face a mask of effort. I took it quickly and went and filled it with water. Then I made up a dose, two of every pill that might do him some good, and took it all back to him.

“I don’t want no damn pills,” he said. But he took them almost eagerly, and swallowed all the water. I got him another cup, and he swallowed that too. Then I went and mixed him another toddy.

I left him while he drank it, and took up my own, and settled down in the chair that was closest to the door. My chair. I pretended I was not watching him, that I did not see him resting his cup on his chest after each sip. We didn’t say anything; it took all his strength to drink, and I was lost in thought, thinking about that chair, how once when I had sat in it my legs would not reach the floor and I would sit there and swing them, extending my toes, trying to reach the ground, about the thrill I had known the first time I had managed to touch it, and had known that I was getting my growth, just as he had said I would. I closed my eyes and listened to the muted roar of the air in the flue, to the soft keening of the fire. I heard a slurp as he took the last sip, and I relaxed; even if he dropped the cup, or fell asleep, there was nothing to spill.

Presently his breathing evened and he began to snore, and I knew it was real sleep this time, not the exhausted unconsciousness. I felt better. I got up from the chair, my joints creaking as if I were as old as he, and concocted a stew of venison and beans and carrots in his old iron pot, and set it to simmer. I was hungry now, but I would wait. I mixed another toddy, my hand perhaps a shade too liberal in the darkness. I sat down again and drank.

“I recall the night I met him,” he had said. “It musta been near fifty year ago now, but I recollect it clear. It was in the back room a Hawley’s store, halfways through a Saturday night. Back in them days, there was always a card game at Hawley’s on a Saturday. I ’member this here night I wasn’t playin’ on accounta the night ’fore that I took the train up to Sulphur Springs to see this gal, lived back in the mountains, and wouldn’t nothin’ satisfy her ceptin’ I bring her on back into town to walk around awhile, an’ I had to buy her dinner, an’ then I had to take her on home again on the train, an’ after I done all that, she wouldn’t do nothin’ ’sides kiss me. Plus which, I was clean outa money, an’ I had to walk back down. It wasn’t but eight mile, but I tell you, I never went to see that gal again—she was knock-kneed an’ cross-eyed, anyways. Way I heard it, she ended up married to a fella that worked cook on the B&O. Light-skinned fella. She left on to everybody that he wasn’t colored at all, he was an Eyetalian. Whatever he was, he ended up with that gal; an’ welcome, far as I’s concerned.