M.C. Higgins, the Great (13 page)

A long time of silence, in which Jones shifted his position, bent and stretched his legs and folded his arms. When he did speak, his voice was matter-of-fact: “I figure it will slide like that until it reaches the yard. There, on the level, it will halt.”

“Then what?” M.C. said softly.

“Say?” Jones said.

“Then what will we do with it?” M.C. spoke eagerly.

“Well, then,” Jones said, “we chop it up. We wait for the cool days of late fall, winter. We let her harden. Then we take a section at a time, rope it and drag it down into that gully, way off to one side so’s we won’t have to see it.”

“I didn’t know that!” M.C. grinned, so pleased to find out that Jones had been thinking about the spoil and planning. “So that’s how,” he said.

“Yes,” Jones said.

James Lewis raced one hand through his crisp, graying hair, as though his scalp itched. He cleared his throat. “I don’t believe it will slide all the way,” he said cautiously. “The grade of that slope will be too steep.” And then, politely: “I’m afraid there will be a momentum and a pressure that will bring it all crashing down.” And then he folded his hands, looking worriedly at Jones.

M.C. stared from one to the other. He waited for Jones to tell James K. Lewis he was dead wrong. But Jones merely stayed silent, looked stubborn. An uncontrollable feeling of dread spread within M.C. It cleared away all but the truth. Just a moment ago he had believed the spoil heap would inch its way down because Jones had said it would.

He almost tricked me with it, M.C. thought.

He had believed Jones was thinking and planning.

But he only want to make us stay on the mountain.

After that, M.C. wouldn’t look at Jones or anyone.

Tension grew and touched each one of them in the room except Jones. He, alone, seemed untroubled by the awkward stillness, until he got to his feet, saying, not to the dude, not to anyone, “We’ll rope it and drag it on out of the way.”

Crazy. Liar.

Standing there, Jones forced the dude to stand also. In the act of rising, he had dismissed James Lewis as clearly as if he had said, “
Leave my house.
”

Incredulously, the dude peered at Jones, Slowly it dawned on him that Jones meant for him to go.

M.C. watched his mother pull herself up straight in formal leave-taking. He tried sitting for as long as he could, hoping to keep the dude there a while longer.

Get him to talk some more, reason with Daddy.

But he felt himself being dragged to his feet by invisible bonds of formality, learned so long ago he was hardly aware of them.

Lewis pocketed his tapes. He eased the tape machine back into its case and slung it over his shoulder.

“Thank you so much,” he said to Banina. “You are truly a performer. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”

“Was my pleasure,” she said, smiling, but oddly detached.

“All the same, I took your time,” Lewis said. “Now I have to sort it all out.” He indicated his recording machine. “See what will be the best course to take.” He laughed nervously. “Mizus Higgins, you have swept me off my feet! I don’t know where to go with you, off-hand.” He grinned. “But I will sort it all out. And then I’ll come on back.”

“All the time you need,” Banina said quietly.

The dude nodded and spun around. He was not quite able to meet Jones’s cool eyes on him. Stiffly, Jones bowed before the dude could extend his hand. Lewis bowed in return.

To M.C., he said, “I surely do thank you, son.” A worried expression on his face before it faded in sadness.

“Wasn’t nothing,” M.C. said, as sharply as he dared. The dude and his father both had pulled him one way and then the other until he no longer knew what was true and what wasn’t. But he was sure the dude would find a way to take his mama’s voice. He wouldn’t dare believe they wouldn’t leave the mountain. But an awful thought swept into his mind.

We’ll all stay here and die.

“You pay your respects,” Banina was saying to him.

“Good night,” he said to the dude.

“Good night, son,” Lewis said.

Banina let M.C. pass.

He headed through the kitchen and on, not stopping until he was in his cave. Without a light, he undressed in a moment and crawled into bed, tired to his bones. His eyes fluttered closed when his head hit the pillow. Vaguely, he could hear the front door open. His mother’s voice, smooth, yet formal; and then the door closing.

Later Banina came in, hovering above him. He knew she tucked the light blanket around him as though he were a child; yet he couldn’t respond. He was too deeply gone and dreaming darkness.

I’m running.

One jump ahead of Jones trying to rope him.

7

BANINA WOKE UP
M.C. to go swim in the cirque, the way she would do sometimes. It was an hour when the moon was going down. A false dawn of neither night nor day, when gray light seemed to rise from the earth. Birds chirped in clusters of awakening sound, only to fall silent again as false light faded away in dimness and murk of hills.

In M.C.’s cave, it was night in which his mother was an irritating darkness. And if he hadn’t gone with her the way he really didn’t want to go—he just wanted to sleep on in the coolness—she would have gone swimming by herself. She wouldn’t have awakened Jones or any other one of her children. For she made up her mind that a swim at dawn was something she wanted to do only with her oldest son. Banina was like that. Jones and the kids would join them as soon as they were up.

M.C. had covered his head with his arms, pulling the blanket clear over his face. He had a hollow feeling, a numbness of too much worry left over from the night before. He supposed it would be with him a long time.

“Come on now, M.C.,” his mother said, “we’ll miss the sunrise!” Whispering, she was darkness bent over him, pulling at the blanket.

“Leave me be.” His muffled reply. “What time is it? Is he gone? Leave me alone.”

“Is who gone? Mr. Lewis? Poor old dude,” she said. “Jones had to lead him most by the hand down the mountain.”

“Why didn’t he stay ’til morning?” he asked sleepily. But then he remembered.

“Stayed long enough,” Banina said. “Come on, M.C. Don’t you want a swim in the cool air?”

Desperately he held out for the dark of his cave. “Act just as silly,” he scolded her. “How’ll they ever grow up when their mama acts like a child.”

“The kids? Shoot,” she said, in the soft way she had. “Best be a babe for as long as you can. Now come on. I’ll go by myself, I’m telling you. Some old bobcat sure to stalk me by myself. You fixing to let him jump Banina Higgins right there in the piney woods?”

So M.C. had to go with her. But not without muttering about it first. Secretly he was pleased she had chosen him, although he never let on. Of all the times he was alone with her, he never got used to how pretty she was. When he was much younger, he had worried that she wasn’t his real mother, although he never told anyone.

“How come I don’t look like you?” he would say to her.

“You’ve got my mouth,” she had answered. “You look like Jones out of the eyes, but you have my mouth and my walk.”

Now the two of them moved swiftly the same, up one hill and down another on their way to the cirque. Banina walked slightly ahead of him. She was barefoot and already suited up in an old but still good one-piece bathing suit. She had her shoes and her work-a-day clothes in a shopping bag which M.C. carried for her. He walked to one side of her. In the murk, he could see her and only a short way in front of her on the path. He didn’t much like being in the woods in the heavy shadows before dawn. It was an eerie time in which trees and undergrowth appeared changed and ghostly.

Probably scared old dude. Run all the way. And the other one. Now I bet she’s out here somewhere.

Banina stopped on the path. At once M.C. halted, every muscle tense and fearfully ready. He peered ahead and caught sight of the incredible spring of a doe in midair. Always, it seemed a larger animal would see you a split second before you saw it. They had flushed the doe, coming on her blindly. She sprang up amidst the trees like a wind up toy, swift and magical.

Banina raised her hand as if to touch the deer’s fluid shape and hold her wild motion.

The doe was gone. “That was a surprise,” Banina said, walking the path again. “I swear. I thought all the deer had gone. Used to be they’d be all around the house in a morning. You remember that, M.C.?”

“No. Yes, a little. Wish I had me a gun,” he said.

“You’d kill that pretty thing?”

“Think of the meat,” he said, sounding like a man.

“You couldn’t kill anything that big. Not you.”

“Why not me?” he said, surprised. “What if it is big? Because I never have? Won’t mean I never could.”

“Could you?” Banina looked to be half smiling at him.

He thought first to lie. Then he grew uncomfortable, remembering the girl all of a sudden, their knives and how they had fought.

“No,” he said finally. “Nothing bigger than a rabbit. And him, only for food.”

“I was thinking not,” Banina said and fell silent.

The woods changed misty gray, with birds awakening. But the trees were still heavy with night. M.C. felt a quiver down his spine as he heard rustling sounds in the undergrowth. Small animals scurrying. He calmed himself.

“It’s so nice out here,” Banina said, as they came out of the trees. Now they could walk easily to the foothills. The hills were actually outcroppings of mountains called Grey and Hall. And as they began to climb the foothills, Grey Mountain and Hall Mountain came into view like swollen, smoky giants. Black with trees, they looked rolling cushion soft and belly full.

M.C. and his mother turned sharply and began to climb one hundred feet up the hill slope of Hall Mountain. M.C. kept his eyes on his feet. Grey Mountain was behind him. Without looking, he could feel it, immense and misty.

Banina pulled herself up the slope by grabbing saplings and branches of trees. Where there was nothing else to hold on to, she leaned forward. Knees bent nearly to a crouch, she dug her feet into the rugged hillside and held on to clumps of weed.

“Mercy!” she whispered, panting.

M.C. gave her a boost. “We’re almost there,” he told her.

She stopped to rest a moment, letting him lead. He went ahead and out of sight. By the time Banina reached the top of the slope, she had come exactly the way M.C. had, following a natural turn and round of the mountain. She reached M.C. and fell on her back, breathing hard.

Hall Mountain loomed over them somewhat to their right. It was dark, brooding with mist, still half a mile away. M.C. was glad they didn’t have to climb it. It seemed to grow as they watched it, as crimson light tinted the sky behind it.

Banina sat up, hugging her knees. She was covered with goose flesh, for the mountain air was still cold. M.C. moved to give her his sweater, she motioned him never mind. She fixed her gaze on Hall Mountain, unwilling to give up a second of it. Her sweaty face settled into peace. Her panting stopped. She, and M.C., too, sat as still as forms carved from mountain wind and icy rain.

She broke their silent watching. “Must be what Sunday people call God Almighty,” she said about the mountain. “High enough for heaven and older than anybody ever lived.”

“Won’t make it God Almighty,” M.C. told her.

“It does for me,” she said.

“God Almighty can’t be moved,” he said, “but watch and see if somebody don’t come along and move that mountain.”

Banina smiled. “Never move that God.”

M.C. wasn’t smiling. “Witchy folks heal mountains by laying hands on them.”

She looked at him hard. “Who told you that?”

“Ben. His daddy put hands on the mining cuts.”

Banina shook her head. “Never let your father see you playing with Ben. Stay away from over there, you hear? Living all bunched together. Nobody knowing which is real father to what son, and which mother to daughter. The wives never leaving the plateau. Those people aren’t right.”

“I know who Ben’s daddy is,” M.C. said. “They’re just like anybody else. They don’t have no more power than we do. Do they? Wish they did. Wish they
could
change things—can they, Mama?”

“They have the power,” Banina said. She stared at M.C. “There’s no denying. I’ve seen it. They are different.”

“Seen it?” he said.

“Seen it, and I haven’t been back since.”

“Tell,” he said.

“Well,” she began, “it was farmer in the valley behind the plateau. He was using a sickle on a patch of wheat. You know, it with that hooklike blade fitted into a little handle. Anyway, he was working and not seeing the child creeping up on him to surprise him. He thrust back with the sickle. And sweeping it forward, he caught that child in the curve of the blade. Laid his thigh open the way you slice to bare the bone from a piece of ham.”

“Oooh!” M.C. said.

“No doctors, only in Harenton, just like it is now. But there was the Mound. I was over there that day with her. We’d just got back here, Jones and I, and she was my neighbor. I liked her. I’d heard the tales of their power, but I paid no attention. Until farmer come running up all covered with blood. The child, so white and blood so much on his leg, you couldn’t see it. And she—”

“Who?” M.C. said.

“Viola Killburn,” Banina said. “Why, she simply took the child and arranged him on the ground. He appeared death-still. She didn’t touch the wound gushing blood all over. But move her hand over it like searching for something above it in the air. All of a sudden, the hand stop and tremble like over a hump and then move slowly the length of the wound curve.

“Vi had her eyes on that wound in the strangest look I never will ever forget. Only her lips move. Secret prayers of the Bible, they say, but I don’t know,” Banina said. “I know this. The blood gushing away that child’s lifetime clotted all in a minute. The wound ceased to flow. It turn gray and darker. It heal.”

“Man!” M.C. whispered.

“Vi ran to pick the ginseng and other weeds I don’t know the names of,” Banina continued, “and she pack the wound with all this messy weed juice and stuff and leaf and dirt right off the Mound. The child was conscious. He have no pain when his father pick him up to carry him home.”