Hannah Coulter (26 page)

It was as familiar as my old headscarf and coat and shoes, as my body. I have lived from it all these years. When I am buried in it at last my flesh will be the same as it, and hardly a difference made. But I have seen it change. It has changed, it is changing, and it is threatened.

The old neighborliness has about gone from it now. The old harvest crews and their talk and laughter at kitchen tables loaded with food have been replaced by machines, and by migrant laborers who eat at the store. The old thrift that once kept us alive has been replaced by extravagance and waste. People are living as if they think they are in a movie. They are all looking in one direction, toward “a better place,” and what they see is no thicker than a screen. The houses in Port William and even on some of the farms are more and more being used as temporary lodgings by people who temporarily, as they think, can do no better. Port William is becoming a sort of whatnot shelf where, until they can find “a better place,” people live and move and have their being.

The old Port William that I came to in 1941 I think of now as a sort of picture puzzle. It was not an altogether satisfactory picture. It always required some forgiveness, for things that of course could be forgiven. But the picture was more or less complete and more or less put together, and the pieces were more or less replaceable. After the war ended in 1945, slowly at first but ever faster, the lost pieces were not replaced. Sometimes, as when we buried the old Feltners or Mr. Milo Settle, the new grave contained a necessary and forever finished part of the old life. The new life seems to be composed of pieces of several different puzzles never to be completed. And who is to blame for this? I don't know. Whoever caused it, it is everybody's disease, and nobody could have caused it who didn't have it.

Like a lot of old people I have known, I am now living in two places: the place as it was and the place as it is. As it was it is almost always present to me, with the dead moving about in it as they were: Virgil, Old Jack Beechum, Mat and Margaret Feltner, Joe and Nettie Banion, Burley and Jarrat Coulter, Art and Mart Rowanberry, Elton and Mary Penn, Bess and Wheeler Catlett, Nathan. By the ones who have moved away, as many have done, as my children have done, the dead may be easily forgotten. But to those who remain, the place is always forever a reminder. And so the absent come into presence.

I knew as I walked about that day after Kelly's visit that I will do whatever I can to see that this place is not desecrated after I am dead. But I am not going to have myself buried in the lane. I will be buried up on the hill at Port William beside Nathan, to wait for the Resurrection with him and the others.

 

I walked down off the ridge into the woods farthest from the road. I found the path where the slope is not too steep. The sun was bright, and under the brow of the hill I was out of the wind. I was idling along with my stick, recognizing the trees and wishing them well.

And then I saw this hunter slipping along through the undergrowth slowly and quietly, coming more or less toward me. He was wearing camouflage clothes, but I saw him a good while before he saw me. I let him get close, and then I said, “Good afternoon, young man.”

He took a step backward and said “Oh!” And then he pretended not to be surprised. He said, “Hello! Are you Mrs. Coulter?”

I said, “No.”

“Well,” he said, “we have Mrs. Coulter's permission to hunt here.”

“We who?”

“Me and my buddy.”

“I suppose you do,” I said. “She's a generous old woman.”

Now we are in the new year of 2001, also a new century, also a new millennium, and it is the same world still. Here in Port William, it seems, we are waiting. For what? For the last of the old rememberers and the old memories to disappear forever? For the coming of knowledge that will make us a community again? For the catastrophe that will force us to become a community again? For the catastrophe that will end everything? For the Second Coming? The only thing at all remarkable that has happened is that Virgie has come back.

It was a quiet evening about the first of February. I had started fixing myself a bite of supper. When I heard a rather noisy old car come in and stop behind the house, I thought it must be some of the Branches. They operate a fleet of junkers, and I can't tell which is which by the sounds they make. But I didn't hear a car door shut and nobody came to the kitchen door, so I went out to see.

It was getting on toward dark, but I could see the car well enough, and I didn't recognize it. I hesitated a minute. The country is full of strangers now, and you hear tales. There are, no doubt about it, some people who would knock an old woman in the head more or less on speculation. But I thought “What of it?” and went on out.

The driver of the car had just stopped and leaned forward onto the
steering wheel. I could see a head of beautiful long hair and I thought at first it was a woman, but when I got closer I saw it was a man. I rapped on the window and he raised his head.

It was Virgie. He looked like death warmed over, and his face was wet with tears. He looked like a man who had been lost at sea and had made it to shore at last, but had barely made it. I could feel the ghosts gathering round as they had done at his mother's wedding. Time was when I too would have wept at that homecoming, but though a big ache of love passed through my heart, I shed no tears. I don't think I am going to weep anymore.

But he was weeping, with relief, I think, and sorrow and regret. Maybe it was some feeling of unworthiness that kept him from moving. Maybe he had given himself permission to come back, but he couldn't give himself permission to get out of the car.

I rapped on the window again, and he rolled it down. I said, “Virgie, come on to the house, honey, and let me fix you some supper.”

I went back to the house myself then, and he got out and followed me.

He hesitated at the door, and I said, “Come in.”

He came in and shut the door. I said, “Go in yonder and wash.” He did. He minded like a good child. He had not said a word. I set about finding something to cook. He finished up in the bathroom and came back to the kitchen, walking as soundlessly as a cat. I realized that he was making his way through a series of permissions that I would have to give. He needed permission to be there as himself, as my grandson, as before. He needed permission to be there in Nathan's absence. He needed, maybe, permission to live. He had pulled his hair back and tied it.

I said, “Does your mother know where you are?”

“No,” he said. His first word.

I said, “Then go call her up and tell her.” He started into the living room to the telephone. I said, “And tell her you love her. I imagine she needs to know.”

I heard him talking. I don't know what he said. He was in there a good while.

When he came back I had supper on the table. I said, “Sit down.”

He sat down and I filled his plate. I said, “Eat.”

He was gaunt and hollow-cheeked and had an unsure look in his eyes. He ate a lot.

When we had eaten, I said, “Well, what brings you back?”

He started to say “You,” and couldn't, and said, “This.”

I said, “This?”

He said, “I want to be here. I want to live here and farm. It's the only thing I really want to do. I found that out.”

I said, “Maybe you can do that. You have still got it to do. We can see. There's nothing to stop you from trying.”

He said, “Thank you. I would like to try.”

I said, “Do you have stuff you need to bring in?”

When he came in with it, I said, “There's a clean towel and washrag for you if you want a bath. I'm going up now to fix your bed.”

I made his bed for him in his old room and came down and busied myself in the kitchen. He took his bath and I heard him go up the stairs. When I knew he was in bed, I went up and gave a little knock on his door and went in. I leaned over him and gave him a kiss. I said, “Are you going to be warm enough? Do you have enough covers?”

“Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”

I said, “Sleep tight.”

 

That was a month ago. The next day I handed him over to Danny Branch.

Danny happened to stop by the house early that morning to call for Reuben or one of Reuben's boys to come and help him with a calving heifer. I was just starting to fix breakfast. I had heard Virgie up and stirring about, but I knew he would not come down until I called him. There were a lot of permissions yet to be given.

When Danny had made his call and come back into the kitchen, I said, “Danny, can you use another hand?”

“Who?”

“Virgie.”

“He's back. He showed up here about dark last night.”

“Sure,” Danny said. “I can use him.” He smiled his smile. “Does he have something in particular he wants to do?”

“Whatever you need him to do,” I said. “Anything. I want you to put him to work and keep him at it. All day every day.”

“Sure.”

“What he does for you, you can pay him for. What he does here or on
his mother's place, we'll pay him for. But he'll be your hand. Ask what you need to ask of him. If he quits, he quits. Fire him if you have to.”

“All right.”

“Well, as soon as I can feed him his breakfast, I'll send him to you.”

Danny went out to wait for Reuben. I called Virgie. When he had finished breakfast, I gave him Nathan's old work jacket and sent him up to the barn.

He has been at work with Danny and the other Branches every day since. Danny says he works hard, and he remembers enough of what Nathan taught him to work pretty well, though he has a lot to learn. Lyda has given him a haircut, on Danny's instructions, for fear that “all that hair would get wound up in something.” He is living here with me. I give him breakfast and supper, he eats dinner with the Branches. Danny has started calling him “Virge.”

He looks better. Confidence seems to be coming back into his eyes. All the necessary permissions have been given. He went to Louisville on his own permission and spent a Sunday with his mother. It has taken him too long to grow up, but he is young enough yet to make things well with himself and stand on his own feet and live his life. He has not told me where he has been or what he has done, and I have not asked, nor am I going to ask, nor do I want to know. All I want to know is that he is well and at work. So far, he is well and at work. The look of him has become a delight to me again.

Some day, maybe in a year or so, we will begin to know what this amounts to. After drugs and escape and whatever freedoms he has tried, can he stand what has got to be stood? Has he maybe learned the lesson he has tried at so much cost to teach his father?

I thought, anyhow, that something had begun to mend in him when he came in one evening after he had worked all day, cleaning a barn on the Feltner place with Fount Branch, who remembers things, and he told me from start to finish the story of Burley and Big Ellis and the disconnected steering wheel. He is too young to have any memory of Burley, and he told me the story as if I had never heard it. I pretended that I had never heard it, and we laughed.

When you have gone too far, as I think he did, the only mending is to come home. Whether he is equal to it or not, this is his chance.

Now and then the thought drifts into my mind that Virgie might actually prove himself a farmer and become worthy of the Feltner place and live there, and that Margaret, by his good favor, might end her days there, and all come somehow right at last. And then I let it drift on by. I let it come and go like a leaf floating on the river.

I know by now that the love of ghosts is not expectant, and I am coming to that. This Virgie of mine, this newfound “Virge,” is the last care of my life, and I know the ignorance I must cherish him in. I must care for him as I care for a wildflower or a singing bird, no terms, no expectations, as finally I care for Port William and the ones who have been here with me. I want to leave here openhanded, with only the ancient blessing, “Good-bye. My love to you all.”

I am standing at the gate. Nathan has been salting the cattle down at the edge of the woods below the spring. Now he is walking back up the hill toward the house, toward me. He is walking in his thoughtful way with the salt bucket on his arm, looking around. He is whistling, as I know, over and over a piece of some old tune that will have the rhythm both of itself and of his breath.

I am watching him, but he has not yet seen me. And now he sees me. The expression on his face does not change, but now his intention has changed, he is walking toward me and nothing else. As he comes closer he smiles a little, still whistling. I know that when he comes to where I am he will give me a hug, and I want him to. I know how it is going to feel, the entire touch of him. He looks at me with a look I know. The shiver of the altogether given passes over me from head to foot.

Maybe I believed once that some day I would be able to write a novel by myself, and probably I thought I would be glad when that day came. It has never come. This novel, my seventh, has put me more in need of help than any of the previous six. And so my practice of this art has led, not to independence, but to debt and to gratitude—a better fate.

To clarify details of Virgil Feltner's and Nathan Coulter's involvement in World War II I found an ideal helper. Edward Coffman, military historian and my friend since our student days, addressed himself to my problems generously and precisely. He also contacted on my behalf his friend, Fletcher R. Veach, Jr., who commanded a company in the Battle of Okinawa, and Col. Veach responded graciously and usefully.