Spencer's Mountain (17 page)

In the days to follow there was much discussion and conjecture about what a Jew might be, but the end result of it was that nobody had ever really seen or known one and there was not a soul in New Dominion who could tell what it was Virgil was bringing home.

Mrs. Estelle Watts, who happened to drop by selling mail-order products, said that Jews were people who wore little black bonnets and didn't believe in automobiles and
there was no one to say that Mrs. Watts was wrong. Mrs. Frank Holloway stopped in the road one day to talk to Olivia and she said they were a religious group who went to Church on Saturday and were something like Shakers, and nobody disputed her. Mr. Willie Benblood told Clay at work that his son, Bibb, that went off to Washington, D.C., to live, had married a Jew and had even taken it up himself and that all he knew about them was that they didn't eat meat. Bibb never brought her back to New Dominion so what Clay heard was of no earthly use to anybody.

Claris Coleman had become so much a member of the family that she did everything but sleep at the Spencer house. She would arrive usually as Clay was leaving for work and sit at the table till all the children had finished their breakfast. Sometimes Olivia enjoyed having her, but most of the time her observations made Olivia uncomfortable.

“Your baby must be nearly fifteen inches long now,” she said one morning, observing Olivia's swollen stomach.

“My baby is none of your business, and if you don't want to wear out your welcome around here, don't mention it again,” said Olivia.

“It's only that I'm so terribly enthralled with human reproduction at the moment. I've found a medical book at the house and it shows the development of the foetus from the moment the sperm and the egg unite until…”

“No more!” said Olivia.

“All right,” answered Claris. “I was merely trying to make interesting conversation.”

“You make interesting conversation about somethen else,” suggested Olivia as she began gathering the breakfast
dishes. Claris insisted on helping, and this only added to Olivia's distress. Usually they left the dishes to Becky and Shirley, who in a manner of speaking washed and dried them while Olivia made the beds. But with Claris there, Olivia was reluctant to leave the room for fear she might return to find Claris giving the girls a lecture on the reproductive process of tropical fish or the merits of Buddhism over Baptism. Now that Claris had become a part of the routine of the house Olivia altered her own routine so she could stay in the same room with her and thus halt or direct Claris' comments if they became what Olivia considered harmful or too clinical.

“Some day before I leave,” said Claris, “I'm going to give you and Mr. Spencer a week's vacation.”

“That's somethen I've never had,” said Olivia. “That ought to be real interesten.”

“Yes,” dreamed Claris, “you and Mr. Spencer will just be free as birds for a whole week and I'll take over here and manage everything. I'll change the diapers and wash the dishes and make the beds and cook the meals and probably wear myself to bits, but it will be worth it if you and your husband can get off for a moment alone together.”

“Just where would you recommend we go?” asked Olivia.

“I know you can't go very far because of your circumstances. What about Virginia Beach? Have you ever been there?”

“No,” said Olivia, “I never have.”

“Then that's where you should go. It's not terribly far and it shouldn't cost too much just for a week end, and there's dancing and swimming and sun-bathing and it's very relaxing. Mother and I spent a week end there once and I'm sure you'll enjoy it immensely.”

“I'm sure we would too, but I'd call it a vacation if I just got a chance to sit down out there on the porch for ten minutes,” said Olivia, and started for the bed she shared with Clay.

“I'll help you make the beds,” offered Claris.

“No thank you,” said Olivia. “You sit out there on the front porch where Clay-Boy is and rest a while.”

“Your mother and father are going to Virginia Beach for
a second honeymoon,” Claris informed Clay-Boy when she found him sitting on the front porch.

“You and I are going to be the mother and father while they're gone and sleep in their bed. What do you think of that?”

“You're crazy,” he said.

“You really must learn to answer people sensibly,” she said, “if you're going out into the world. I am not in the least crazy. What you really mean is that I am straightforward and that confuses you.”

“Oh God,” groaned Clay-Boy, “I pity the man that does get you one of these days.”

“I do, too,” said Claris. “I'm going to be hell on wheels to live with.”

“Don't say that!” shushed Clay-Boy.

“Don't say what?”

“Don't say ‘hell.' If Mama hears you she'll send you home.”

“It seems to me your mother hears worse than that every waking hour of her existence.”

“Oh, she does,” replied Clay, “but she's not used to hearing it coming from a girl.”

Claris cupped her chin in her hands and looked out on the morning. Often in the middle of one of their talks she would become silent and thoughtful. Clay-Boy had learned not to interrupt her thinking periods because they usually produced conversational fodder well worth waiting for, once she had come to a conclusion, if she would share it.

Finally she said, “If I could be anybody in the world do you know who I would be?”

“Who?”

“I would like to be your mother. She is the most fulfilled woman I have ever encountered.”

“How do you figure that?” asked Clay-Boy.

“My dear boy, your mother has been delivered of nine children. I only hope that I shall be so lucky.”

“You're crazy,” he said.

“I'm crazy about you, but you're going to have to cut your hair differently when we're married. Oh, I shall boss
you about terribly. Tell me, what are you going to be when you get out of college? We ought to get that settled.”

“I'd like to be an archeologist,” he answered. He had read a book about an archeological expedition to Egypt, had memorized the methods its members had used and had been stimulated by the excitement of the accounts of their actually coming upon real relics. Thereafter he had combed the little library for books on archeology and had read everything he could put his hands on on the subject.

“Maybe I'll take that up too,” Claris declared with enthusiasm. “We'll both become famous archeologists and we'll go to Egypt and dig up old bones and find lost Egyptian kings and get our pictures splashed all over every newspaper in the world. Then we'll write books together and give lectures and travel all over the world.”

“Heck,” said Clay-Boy, “you don't have to go to Egypt to dig up relics. I know a place not so far from here. I've been digging in it lots of times.”

“Where is it?” she asked.

“It's an Indian mound,” he said. “A place where they used to bury dead Indians.”

“I want to see that,” said Claris.

“It's too far away for you to go,” he said. “And anyway it's a secret place that I'm the only one knows about.”

“If you don't take me to see it, I'll go back to Washington and never speak to you again in my whole life.”

“It's a long ways from here,” he said.

“Where?”

“It's at the top of Spencer's Mountain.”

“Next time you go will you take me?” she asked.

“Maybe,” he said.

“I don't see why you can't say
yes
right off. Don't you want to take me?”

“I wouldn't mind, but I never took anybody up there before. It's a long ways and you're a girl. I don't know if you can climb that high.”

“I can climb any mountain around here. Now you promise to take me or I'll scream and when your mother comes I'll tell her you tried to pinch my bottom.”

“But I didn't,” he said.

“Well, you'd like to, so it's practically the same thing. Now, are you going to promise or am I going to have to scream at the top of my lungs?”

“You're going to have to scream,” he said.

Claris drew in a great breath of air, threw back her head and was about to shatter the morning with her scream when Clay-Boy knew she had defeated him again.

“Don't scream,” he said.

“That's more like it,” she said as soon as she could breathe again. “Now, when do we go?”

“One Saturday mornen when I can get away.”

“Why do you fight me all the time?” she asked. “Why couldn't you just say
yes
right away?”

“I don't know,” he said. “I guess I just never ran into any girl like you before.”

“Of course you didn't, silly,” she said. “There aren't any other girls like me.”

The sun was setting when Claris declared she had to go home. This was early for her to be leaving. Usually she stayed until every one of the children had been bathed and was ready for bed and by that time the night was so dark that either Clay or Clay-Boy had to walk her home. But tonight she was leaving early because her father had promised to drive her to Charlottesville for a movie and supper.

Clay-Boy walked with her home and when they reached her house she announced, as she had the first day in the library, that she was going to give a party.

“It's going to be the weirdest guest list you ever saw. I'm going to invite Miss Parker, Mr. Goodson, Geraldine Boyd, Alabama Sweetzer, Mrs. Lucy Godlove, your parents, and you, of course.”

“Well, I'm not coming.”

“Why not?”

“Because all those people would be uncomfortable with each other.”

“Oh, I don't know about that. Mother gives very successful parties and she always makes a point of having people who are very different from each other. Wouldn't you just
love to see what a lot of these oddballs would do if they got together?”

“I think it would be terrible,” said Clay-Boy.

“Of course the Colonel will try to talk me out of it, but I can be very persuasive when I want to. Don't you think it sounds like an interesting gathering?”

“I can hardly wait,” groaned Clay-Boy.

“Of course I can't let the Colonel know who I'm inviting or he'll bust a gut.”

An item of unusual interest appeared the following Wednesday in Miss Eunice's column in the
Citizen
:

“What in the name of God is this?” exploded the Colonel when he read the item at breakfast.

“I don't know, Daddy,” said Claris. “What are you talking about?”

“It says here you're having a party Friday night. Is that true?”

Claris came around to her father's place and read the item. Hoping that her mirth sounded convincing, she began to laugh.

“I don't find it so amusing,” said the Colonel sternly.

“Don't you see? She fell for it hook, line and sinker. She was around snooping and trying to find out things one day so I made up the story on the spot. I've done it before. Don't
you remember last year when I gave her that news item about a movie company coming to New Dominion on a talent search. She printed it.”

“It serves her right,” said the Colonel, beginning to smile a little. “But at the same time it seems to me you ought to have a few more friends around here than these hillbillies. I've a good many friends over in Charlottesville in my golf club. If you'd like to give a real party I could have them send some boys and girls over here your own age, more the kind of people you ought to be meeting.”

“Sure, Pop,” said Claris. “But may I have just one person from around here?”

“As long as it isn't one of the nuts on this list in the paper.”

“Well, it is, as a matter of fact. Clay-Boy Spencer.”

“Ask him. It's all right with me.”

Word that the original party had been called off and a second one planned in its place lost no time in making the rounds of the village. That Clay-Boy had been invited to both and that he was the only local boy to be invited to the second party was mentioned in every kitchen gathering and over every back fence.

When he went to deliver Mrs. Moses Hughes' buttermilk she asked him into the kitchen and promptly began prying.

“I got it from Gilsee Joplin that you're steppen into high society next Friday night,” she said.

“Well, I got invited. I couldn't hardly turn it down,” he said.

“What does your mama say about you getten mixed up with high society?”

“Mama said I could go,” he said. “It don't matter to her.”

“I reckon your picture'll be in the Charlottesville
Citizen
and maybe the Richmond
News Leader
,” Mrs. Hughes observed teasingly.

“I expect so,” he said, trying to grin but succeeding only in pulling up the corners of his mouth.

“Well, it wouldn't surprise me if you didn't end up marryen into that crowd and ownen half the mill before you're through,” she said.

She had hit a tender spot and his face betrayed him. He blushed.

“When you and that girl goen to announce your engagement?” Mrs. Hughes asked and prodded him in the ribs, her fat jolly face next to his.