The Year of Jubilo Page 6

  “Oh, man,” said Gawain. “You don’t—”

  “Bah!” said Stribling. He drew his watch out, looked at it, pocketed it again. “Be dinnertime before long. She’d be sittin down at table, look up, see you standin there in the doorway—” He turned, frowning. “Say, she ain’t dead is she? Or married? Same thing, of course—”

  “No,” said Gawain.

  “Then get up,” said Stribling. “You think she’ll be any less stranger to you than you are to her?”

  “She don’t even know if I’m alive or not,” said Gawain. “What if she—” He stopped, and opened the case and looked at the image, and shut it again. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  “You didn’t finish your thought,” said Stribling.

  Gawain shrugged, shook his head.

  “Then I will finish it for you,” said Stribling. “What if she ain’t the one in the picture anymore? That’s what you’re afraid of mostly, ain’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Gawain. “Maybe. I can’t … I can’t seem to see her anymore. I—”

  “Well, you never will, sittin in the weeds,” said Stribling. “Now quit bein so pitiful and let us be gone. Anyway, it’s likely she never was the one in the picture—God only knows what you’ve made her out to be these last years.”

  “Well,” said Gawain, and hoisted himself out of the grass. “I suppose I am bein pitiful.”

  They went on, and Stribling talked of how you could make things out to be something they weren’t, especially people, especially women, and illustrated his point with colorful anecdotes from his own experience, until Gawain said, “Well, you are a philosopher, ain’t you?”

  “Only an apprentice,” said Stribling. “There is one or two things I ain’t figured out yet. Gravity, for instance.”

  “Gravity?”

  “Yes,” said Stribling. “I don’t believe in it.”

  “Be damned,” said Gawain.

  Presently they came to an open space; ahead they could see a paling fence rambling by the road, a fence that was whitewashed once, but in bad repair now.

  “Well, we are gettin ever closer,” said Gawain. “There is the old graveyard by the Mount Zion church.”

  The church itself came in view, a gray, weathered affair with tight-shuttered windows and a leaning bell tower that had never harbored anything but wasps. In the graveyard, a saddled mule stood ground-tethered, head bent in boredom. When Zeke whickered, the mule looked up, then bent its head again.

  “There is a fellow diggin a grave all by himself,” said Stribling. “A sorrowful duty. I remember—”

  “Hold on,” said Gawain. They stopped in the road and watched the man; he was deep in the earth so that only his shoulders and head were visible, and the rising and falling of his shovel. He was gray and old, but his naked arms and shoulders were wiry, taut of muscle like a young man’s. He glistened with sweat.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Gawain. “I reckon some things don’t change.” He put down his bag and walked to the fence and leaned his elbows on it. Stribling followed, and tied Zeke to one of the palings. The dog slipped through the fence and went over to the mule and lay down.

  “Friend of yours?” asked Stribling.

  Gawain laughed. “Oh, that is old Dial Ethridge. He is diggin up his father-in-law again.”

  “Say it ain’t so,” said Stribling.

  “Well, it is so.”

  “Well, now, listen here—,” began Stribling.

  “Never fear,” said Gawain. “Somebody always comes along to stop him—like us—though once he did actually hove out the old man onto solid ground. Nobody could figure out how he did it—he’s in a pneumatic coffin, you see—old Waddell, I mean—mighty heavy. He—”

  “But why does he do it?” asked Stribling.

  “It’s always his wife Lonny drives him to it. She is a terror, and he does it for revenge. You ought to see her—stout as a barrel, with a mustache. Good God.”

  “Well, still—,” said Stribling.

  “See here, Dial!” said Gawain, lifting his voice. “You can’t be diggin up Mister Waddell. You come up out of there!”

  The old man ceased his shoveling and squinted into the glare. “Who is that? Gawain Harper?”

  “Yessir,” said Gawain. “And this is my friend Harry Stribling.”

  The old man clambered out of the hole like a spider. He held the shovel at port arms. “Where you been?” he demanded.

  “Well, I been off at the war,” said Gawain.

  “Oh, you have, have you?” said the man. He lowered the shovel. “What you doin right now?”

  “Well, right now we are walkin to Cumberland. You—”

  “Never mind,” said the old man. “You come up here, help me get this out.”

  “Ah, me,” said Gawain. He eased himself through a gap in the fence.

  “Here! Where you goin?” said Stribling.

  “Goin to fill up that hole again,” said Gawain. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

  Stribling shook his head and followed through the gap. When they got to the grave, Gawain and Stribling peered within. Old Dial Ethridge had uncovered the coffin; the top was scarred with the marks of his shovel. Through the murky glass window, they could make out the pale oval that was the face of the departed. It was framed in muttonchop whiskers and seemed to be scowling.

  “Look at the stone,” said Gawain.

  Stribling knelt by the headstone and brushed his fingers over the writing there:

  _________________________________

  J. Vincent Waddell

  Born in Delaware, 1775

  Died Cumberland, Mississippi, 1855

  He Feared God Above Many

  _________________________________

  “That is a peculiar sentiment,” said Stribling. “I may have to philosophize on that later.”

  “Well, I wish you would,” said Gawain. “I have never made any sense out of it.” Then Gawain made the old man sit down on the mound of dirt and lectured him on the sacredness of the grave and other proprieties. Soon, to Gawain’s dismay, the old man burst into tears.

  “You have no notion,” the old man said. “You all got no idee what I go through. She ere a demon, boys—ever little thing she is on me like a ball-face hornet—and I ain’t seen her teats in a generation—not that I’d want to, understand, but it ere the principle of the thing, you see. God knows, it’s little enough I ask out of life.”

  Stribling knelt by the old man and patted his knee. “Now, now,” he said.

  “You understand, don’t ye?” sobbed old Dial Ethridge. “You a man of sensibility—I can tell by lookin at ye.”

  “Surely,” said Stribling. He patted the old man again. “Did you ever think of just knockin the dog shit out of her?”

  The old man let out a howl. “Lonny!” he wailed.

  “Well, good God,” said Stribling.

  While the old man sobbed, Gawain went to the grave and contemplated the face of the dead man through the glass window of the casket. J. Vincent Waddell had died of apoplexy ten years before; now here he was, still in his old-fashioned collar and cravat, his cheeks still rouged, his hair brittle and white and grown long as a woman’s. His eyes were squinched up, as if he were bothered by the light.

  “By God, I am tired of lookin at dead people,” said Gawain.

  “Well, quit lookin at em then,” said Stribling.

  “Well, they keep showin up.”

  Old Dial Ethridge was snuffling now, and muttering to himself. Stribling patted him on the back, came and stood by Gawain and looked down into the grave. After a moment, he said, “Well, I am ready to philosophize now.”

  “Proceed, then,” said Gawain.

  Stribling knelt, and shoved his hat back on his head, and gathered a handful of dirt clods. He began to drop them one by one onto the window of the casket.

  “You are goin to break that sure,” said Gawain. “Then we’ll all be sorry.”

 
Stribling ignored him. He went on dropping dirt into the grave until the window was covered and the face of J. Vincent Waddell could be seen no more. Then he stopped and dusted off his hands. He looked at Gawain. “Here is my philosophy, and you may take it or leave it as you will.” He paused again; he stood up, and with the side of his boot raked a shovelful of dirt into the grave, then another and another. The dirt rattled on the iron coffin, and Stribling went on kicking at the dirt, and all at once he seemed to be in another place entirely. Finally Gawain said “Harry!” and he stopped, breathing hard, the sweat running down his face, his eyes narrowed and fixed on the distant line of the woods. He was quiet for a moment; when he spoke at last, his voice was steady, though it might have been himself he was talking to.

  “Maybe you have noticed,” he said. “You can’t raise the dead, no matter how hard you try. You can’t fetch em back again, you can’t fix em nor make em answer for anything.” He looked at Gawain now, his eyes still narrow and glittering. “You know what they are? They are holes in the universe for a little while, and then they close up again, stoppered with dust. This one here, all these—” He waved his hand to take in the mossy headstones leaning in the sun.

  Stribling looked off toward the woods again. A cloud shadow fled across the land; when it passed, the sun seemed brighter than ever. A bold mockingbird came and perched on the headstone, close enough for Harry Stribling to touch him. The bird flicked its tail and watched them. Finally, Stribling spoke again, and his voice was quiet now. “It ain’t the dead that keep showin up—it’s the ones we used to be. A lawyer, a professor, a girl in a picture.” He nodded toward old Ethridge. “That feller there, who was young and in love with a girl once, who has a mustache now. That’s who we keep seein. They seem mighty real, don’t they?”

  Gawain nodded. “Mighty real,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Stribling. He picked up a handful of dirt and crumbled it into the grave. “They were real, too. Once.” The mockingbird hopped down, snatched up a fat worm that Stribling turned up, flew away and disappeared into a cedar tree. “But not anymore, Brother Harper,” said Stribling.

  “You think I don’t know that?” said Gawain:

  “I think maybe you think you do,” said Stribling. He wiped his hand on his breeches leg. “I’ll remind you of it, directly we get to Cumberland. I been there since you have, remember. Now, let us get this poor bastard covered up again and get on down the road. It’s gettin on to dinnertime.”

  They took turn about with the shovel, and after an hour they had J. Vincent Waddell at rest in the earth once more. When the grave was finished and tamped down, they were all three drenched in sweat, and covered in mud, and hungry. The sun was high now, and the day was beginning to merge into the peculiar suspension of a summer afternoon. The birds were quiet, and clouds were gathering like sheep. They rested in the shade of a hickory tree and divided, among themselves and the fyce, the remaining three biscuits in Gawain’s bag, and emptied his canteen.

  “Well, we’ll make a gallant spectacle comin into town,” said Gawain, scraping at the mud on his shoes. “I am muddy, I stink, I am hungry unto death. Makes me homesick for the army.”

  Stribling laughed. “Let me get my pistol, go off a ways and empty a cylinder at you—then you’d be right at home.”

  “Hah,” said Gawain. He looked at the old man then, who was sitting with his head between his knees. “Old Dial,” said Gawain, “you ain’t said much lately. How is it with you?”

  The old man looked up, his eyes red and bleary, his face streaked with sweat and grime. “I’m sorry, boys,” he said. “I been too much trouble for ye.”

  “Nonsense,” said Gawain.

  “No, it’s the God’s truth,” said the old man. He slowly unfolded himself from the ground and walked off a little and stood with his hands in his pockets, gazing across the burying ground. He was still shirtless, and now, in his weariness, he seemed frail and very old. His bones showed through his sunburned skin; his stringy gray hair was plastered to his skull, and his single gallus looped down like a vine. After a while, he turned, looked at them, shrugged his thin shoulders. “I promise I won’t try to dig him up no more,” he said.

  “I am glad to hear you say that,” said Gawain. “It never made a great deal of sense anyhow.”

  “No,” said the old man, “I suppose it didn’t.” He looked at the sky, his face twisted as if he might cry again. But he didn’t cry. “I am obliged for the biscuit,” he said. “I been too much trouble for everybody.” Then he turned and began to walk toward his mule.

  “Well, old Dial,” said Gawain after him. “You go on and make peace with Miss Lonny if you can.”

  The old man stopped, turned again. He looked at Gawain for a long moment, then shrugged again. “I can’t,” he said. “She died last winter, of the blood poison. Then I had a dream last night—she was right there, except when I put out my hand, she warn’t. I don’t know. Sometimes I hear her in the crows, too. It was her I meant to dig for, but I got … I got confused. I thought it was another time, I reckon. I don’t know. Anyway, it don’t matter now.”

  Gawain and Harry Stribling sat quietly, their backs against the hickory tree, while old Dial Ethridge mounted his mule and rode away. They could see him get smaller and smaller until he was a speck against the treeline, and then he was gone.

  IV

  Gawain Harper thought it odd that the road was so empty, and he remarked on the fact to Harry Stribling. They were walking again, side by side, the horse and the little fyce following behind.

  “Well, where would the people have to go, if they wanted to go some-wheres?” said Stribling.

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Gawain. “Seem like somebody ought to be passin. Used to be—”

  “‘Used to be,’ hell,” said Stribling. “This ain’t ‘used to be.’ How many times I got to tell you?”

  “Well, surely, but—”

  Stribling laughed. “What if there ain’t any town? What if, when we get there, everbody’s gone—nothin but old ashes with vines growin in em, weeds, black crows roostin in the chimneys and everthing still and solemn. What then?”

  “You ought not to say that,” said Gawain. “That ain’t so.”

  They went on in silence a little way until Stribling spoke again. “No, I ought not to of said that;”

  “Perhaps it is just the way of philosophers,” said Gawain.

  “Hmmm,” said Stribling. “I’ll tell you, pard—maybe I ought to take up another line of work.”

  “Well, what would you do? Be a lawyer again?”

  “No, no—I am a Christian now, since the war.”

  “Well, you could start a newspaper again. No doubt Cumberland will need one. You could—”

  “No,” said Stribling. “I am hampered by principles now, so that avenue is closed as well.”

  “The clergy, then,” said Gawain.

  “Hmmm,” said Stribling.

  They were coming into the Leaf River bottoms now, the road winding down out of the hills. This had been cleared country once, but the woods were taking it back: sweetgums, sycamores, lots of willows, scrub oaks with their ugly, stubby leaves knotty with galls. Not many cedars in this bottomland, for which Gawain was thankful. He marveled at the growth—three summers, and already the old cotton rows were hidden under the leaves and brush and rank grass. He had hunted birds here once in distant autumns, following the dogs through the brown stubble of cotton and the feathery broomsage. Now it would be deer country again, or pretty soon anyway, if somebody didn’t get to work on it.

  He was thinking hard on these things, his mind wandering further and further from the road and the bright noon, so when he heard the gunshot, he didn’t know if it was real or something out of his memory—either way, the sound was already past when he found it in his head. “Did you hear that?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Stribling. “Somebody’s around besides us, anyhow.”

  “It wasn’t a rifle,” said Gaw
ain.

  “No. A fowling piece, I guess.”

  As if in confirmation, another shot came to them, flat and hollow, muffled by the woods. Picket firing, thought Gawain, not in words but as a shape, a picture. He pushed it away.

  “Now, there’s a pleasant novelty,” said Stribling.

  “What’s that?” said Gawain, startled.

  “Why, to be able to speculate on a gunshot in the woods and not take it personal.”

  Gawain looked at his companion. “I was just thinkin the same thing,” he said.

  “Were you?” said Stribling. “Well, I am not surprised, given our late profession.”

  “It wasn’t any profession.”

  “Pastime, then,” said Stribling. “A diversion.”

  “Wasn’t that either,” said Gawain.

  “What was it then? It had to be something.”

  “Yes,” said Gawain. “The longest dream I ever had, and the worst. Or maybe not. Maybe this is.” Gawain stopped, tangled up in his own thinking. “I don’t know what it was.”

  A cardinal lit by the roadside ahead, then flicked away. Gawain saw the red slash against the leaves, heard his fretful chipping.

  “By and by, maybe we can figure it out,” said Stribling. “It all had to mean something—I’d give worlds to know myself.”

  “I imagine a good many would,” said Gawain.

  “Such a long way we’ve come,” said Stribling.

  Yes, thought Gawain. Such a long way. Gawain felt the road under him, heard the old, comfortable sound of the horse plodding behind. The afternoon closed around them, the long grass full of voices. Suddenly, overhead, the cardinal sang:

  Free-dom, Free-dom, Free-dom, Free—

  Gawain stopped, looked up. He heard the bird again:

  Free-dom, Free-dom—

  “What?” said Stribling, stopping too.

  “Listen. Listen at that redbird.”

  Free-dom, Free-dom, Free-dom, Free—

  Stribling cocked his head. “He’s calling for his lady,” he said. He looked at Gawain. “They mate for life, you know.” Then he frowned, as if listening to another voice. Gawain watched him.