M.C. Higgins, the Great (22 page)

The three of them came up to the enclosure from the rear of a shed. They stepped around tomato plants that were too small and yellowish this late in the growing season. Ben led the way to a rope ladder hanging down from the top of the shed.

“We climb from here,” he told them.

Neither Lurhetta nor M.C. said a word, such was the strange feeling they had so near Killburn life.

“You climb like this,” Ben said to Lurhetta. He climbed easily as the ladder changed shape, sagging under his weight.

“I don’t know. . . ._Where does it lead to?” Lurhetta said.

“Just up and over,” Ben told her. “Now just do the way I do. We take it a step at a time. Try just to look up as far as my heels. Because at the top, we have to turn the corner—you can’t see where, but it’s just one step and around.”

“What is? I don’t know,” Lurhetta said, “can’t we just walk it?” But at Ben’s gentle urging, she followed him up the ladder. All of her natural grace came into play, helping her manage the awkward climb.

Wish we hadn’t come, M.C. thought. Wish she’d just learn the hills with me.

He waited, peering around the side of the shed. Up ahead was the stream, which moved sluggishly and was a sickly shade of yellow. Behind it was the first house of the compound. A woman standing still on the small front porch. She faced the common yard of vegetables and just her head was turned toward the shed and M.C. Apparently, she had witnessed their coming and she stood poised, waiting. She was the only one of the women M.C. had seen who wore anything resembling a dress. It was more in the shape of a tent. Homemade, belted, with just a neck hole and armholes, of a faded, neat flower pattern. A tiny child stood holding on to her at the knee. No other children could be seen from below. They were all up above, M.C. guessed, remembering. But he kept his eye on the woman who was watching him. And slowly he sifted her features out from the general look all of the Killburns had. He recognized her as she seemed to recognize him. Ben’s mother, Viola Killburn. A big woman, not fat, but strong and lanky, with gentle movements and an easy smile. She was smiling at M.C. right now. Smiling and nodding.

He felt glad, a relief at seeing her after so long a time. How long had it been? He couldn’t remember when he’d seen Mrs. Killburn. But he felt good about finding her again. Leaning there at the side of the shed, he would have liked to skip over the rows of vegetables to sit at her side.

Sit on one side, his memory told him, with Ben on her other side.

The both of them leaning against her, without either one of them saying a word. Never a war between her and them and whatever they wanted given. If she had ever wanted anything, they would have given it. But she never wanted.

“Come on, M.C.” Ben and Lurhetta at the top of the shed, peering around the corner. Lurhetta looked down at M.C, her face full of surprise.

“You can see everything!” she called down. “There’s lots of kids!”

At these words, M.C. noticed the chatter from above. All around from above. He must have been hearing it all the while. But he had been remembering things. Feeling regretful, sad, talking to himself in his head. The girl, Lurhetta, all mixed up with past and future, with vegetables and witchy folks. So that the chatter had been like an internal clock ticking off loneliness of his dreaming, or the staccato of a time bomb set to go off.

The sound of chatter spilled over him and through him. And he remembered with sadness, with regret, that the Mound had been the happiest place he’d ever known.

No mountain to worry. No past. No ghosts.

“M.C., come on.”

He could just stay here forever.

“I’m coming,” he said, and started his climb.

12

IT’S THE BIGGEST COBWEB
I ever saw in my life,” Lurhetta said. “See? That’s just what it looks like.”

“I know,” M.C. said, “I remember now.” He eased himself up on the web next to her and Ben.

The same idea as the swinging bridge, but an earlier version using rope as well as vine. It was like a half-forgotten dream awakened into life. M.C. must have been very little when he’d last seen it. And no wonder Ben’s father had made the swinging bridge so quickly after M.C. had told Ben the idea. Because Mr. Killburn had had the idea first here on the Mound. He had used it differently, maybe better. Unwittingly, M.C. had taken Mr. Killburn’s idea, changed it a little and given it back to him.

What it was the three of them were looking at: Guidelines of thick rope and vine twisted so as to combine. These connected the houses in the area of the common ground. The lines were held to each house just under the roof edge with iron stakes, around which the rope and vine were knotted.

The three of them sat near the top and in between two guidelines where began a loose weave of rope weathered to a softness not unlike old cornshucks. There were at least eight guidelines and in between each was that soft weave. Nearer the ground, the lines came closer together. Their weave grew tighter at dead center of the common, some five to six feet over the ground. Here began a hub connected to the weave. It was some twenty feet across and just as long, made of twisted vines and rope loosely tied into six-inch square shapes.

The effect from guidelines to hub was one of an enormous web or net, or even a green and tan sunburst. In the hub were many children of various sizes and ages. Most had the light, sickly complexion of Killburn people. With a color range from orange to reddish-brown hair, they looked like a fresh bunch of bright flowers jumbled and tossed by breezes, their stems dangling through the square shapes of the hub.

“How many kids?” Lurhetta asked, breathlessly.

“Not too many,” Ben said. “Maybe seventeen up here. Twenty-three all together, if you count me.”

“It looks like more,” M.C. thought to say and then fell silent, watching

At any time, some of the older children would crawl out of the hub onto the weave. There they would flip over under the weave and swing hand over hand to the hub again. Grabbing the nearest stem, the closest leg of a brother or sister or cousin, they would hang on, clinging from leg to leg. Until they had made their way directly above a potato row or a cabbage row, where they would fall lightly down and commence to pull up weeds. At any moment, three or four Killburn children would be hard at work, often filling bushel baskets to the brim with vegetables in seconds. Or they would dance through the rows over to Mrs. Killburn’s house. They always seemed to go to that house in particular, dancing on up the steps. A table on the porch held pitchers of lemonade and single-server clay dishes of custard. Women and young men and girls in overalls came out of the house with drinking glasses and returned with empty dishes or pitchers. All of it done in a pleasant, amiable fashion.

The children chattered. The women and young men and girls continued their conversations with one another as they worked. Furthermore, they kept an eye on the babies who were too young for the hub and who spilled out of the door onto the porch like sweet cinnamon lumps.

Lurhetta sighed in awe. M.C. watched her, feeling a growing jealousy, he didn’t know why.

“Better be going back,” he said once. But she merely frowned an instant before her face cleared and she was delighted.

Lurhetta gazed all around, at men and women far off in the fields and close by in the common. Her eyes roved over the children.

“You must have enough food here to feed an army,” she said to Ben.

“Looks like a lot,” he said, “but everybody eats only vegetables. Soups and things or just plain-cooked. Sometimes we get too much rain, too fast; or not enough and too late. That water of the stream is changing color. And so when a good year comes with the right kind of weather, we store a lot. Still the vegetables is smaller than they once was.

“I see,” Lurhetta said. “And you buy—”

“—we buy milk, coffee, flour, clothes and cloth, just a few things like that,” he said.

“And you live—”

“—we live okay. Now that daddy has the icehouse and a new generator, we live fine,” he said.

“But you are all one family?”

“We are all relatives,” Ben told her. “Just a few, maybe not so related. Sometimes a friend with nothing and no one.”

“How long have you all been here?”

“Been here?” Ben repeated. He gazed at the children down in the hub. Some were in groups, playing games. Others stared peacefully down through the squares to the plants below. A few were even sleeping serenely on their backs. “My grandmother is ninety-six.”

“Where did she come from?”

“She say she don’t know, she was always here,” Ben said. “She say those vegetables all around is fields of tobacco. See, she so old, most times she only talk to herself.” Ben grinned. “She can be a young girl and she can talk to the pictures on the walls. Talks like they were talking back to her.” He laughed softly. “But when my mother bring her tree bark and moth wing, she will mash them up. She will get out her bottles and she know everything. Everything.”

They were together, Ben and Lurhetta. They were close, with M.C. looking on, separated from them. He didn’t have anything to tell. Nothing with which to break in on their conversation.

He wrung his hands. “We going to sit up here forever?” he said anxiously.

Ben stared at him with the slightest sign of irritation.

Witchy eyes. Witchy fingers, M.C. thought meanly.

Lurhetta suddenly clutched Ben by the hand, as if his six fingers meant nothing to her. She started down into the hub, supporting herself on Ben’s arm.

They left M.C. behind. He was forced to follow if he wanted to keep up with Lurhetta.

In the midst of the children, the hub bounced like a trampoline. Laughing, Lurhetta nearly fell. But there were children rising to help her.

“And who are you?” she said to one of them. “And you . . . and you!” Names were spoken. None of them seemed surprised by her. They were not shy or bashful. And none asked her name. Where all were the same, names had no great importance.

The children bounced the net just to hear her laughter. All of the time she held tightly to Ben. And her pretty face, her smile, had captured him and made him her prisoner.

Snare him in the net.

They were on the hub for no more than ten minutes. To M.C., it seemed forever. He disliked so many Killburn children crowding him. The way they always seemed to be copying one another, as if watching a mirror image. Momentarily a child would clutch his shoulder or his arm, like he was planted there for them to hang on to. They leaned into him and yet they seemed not to notice him.

M.C. thrust his hands deep in his pockets and balanced precariously. Once his foot slipped through one of the squares. He was down, not hurt, but feeling foolish, with the children pulling at him. There was no way to get back up with the hub rising and falling, without asking for their help.

“Let me loose,” M.C. muttered, once he was on his feet again. Witchy hands, all over him. He didn’t dare look at all the fingers. “Ben? I want
down!
”

“What’s a-wrong? Too high for you?” Ben said, teasing M.C.

“He’s getting seasick,” Lurhetta said. “I know I am.”

So they got off the hub. They jumped down one by one, careful of the vegetables at their feet. With Ben leading, they headed for the porch. Ben strutted, happy to have friends come over. M.C. lagged behind, seeing all there was around him—the hub to his back now, the porch before him. There were three more houses. The one farthest away faced Mrs. Killburn’s house. The other two were situated on each side of her house, facing each other across the common. And surrounding everything, even the chatter of the children, was an enormous stillness which the chatter could not penetrate. No sounds of the town of Harenton, no river boat sounds. But a silence that swept over the land in every direction, as did the sunlight.

Peaceful, the way Sarah’s would be only in the early hours of morning.

Mrs. Killburn came out on the porch carrying a pie in each hand. She placed them on the table. Plates were brought out by a teenage boy wearing an apron. He had a fine dust of flour all over him; and obviously he had been baking. Sweet odors of hot baking bread drifted out. Mrs. Killburn cut a pie and put pieces on the plates. As they came up on the porch, she handed each of them a plate.

“Sweet potato pie,” Ben said.

“Is it?” Lurhetta tasted it. “Umm, delicious!”

M.C. held his plate just under his nose. He would have liked to say, “No, thank you!” But the pie was too much for him. Its sweet-smelling heat brought to mind the cold weather of winter. Slowly he ate it, trying not to gobble it up in three swift bites.

Lurhetta and Mrs. Killburn were talking. Now and then Viola Killburn had a word or two for M.C.

“Haven’t seen you in so long, M.C., where you been? Got just as tall.” Her voice gentle and soft-spoken.

“Yessum, I been all around,” M.C. said. “I seen Ben about every day.”

“Well—” Mrs. Killburn saying the word the way hill women did generally. A rising inflection so that it came out with sympathy, comforting.

“Banina feeling good?”

“Yessum, she’s fine. She’s singing and a tape recorder man come along and recording her voice.” Instantly M.C. wished he hadn’t said that. But it was so easy to tell Viola Killburn things, it had just slipped out

“Well—”

M.C. sighed and ate his pie.

He realized there was a weight on his foot. A baby, sitting on his toes, like a soft pressure hardly noticeable. It was just a little thing, sucking on a crust of pie which had on it a thin icing of sweet potato. The child had gummed and wetted the crust into the softness of oiled dough.

All at once he laughed at finding the baby there. Watching him, they all did. And gently he pulled his foot away. He bent down beside it to feed it some sweet potato. Seeing the food, the baby opened its mouth. Big, trusting eyes on him. Face full of freckles the exact color of its orange hair. It slurped sweet potato off the fork, making a perfect, tiny O with its mouth. M.C. laughed again. They all did.

Smiling, Mrs. Killburn swept the baby up and under her arm. She held the child around its middle, the way she might rest a sack of sugar on her hip. Neither the position of the child nor the weight of it seemed to bother either one of them in the least. Viola Killburn went on talking to Lurhetta in her calm, pleasant fashion, as the child continued sucking on the crust.