Spencer's Mountain (33 page)

“What are you looking at?” she inquired. Her eyes danced with laughter, but her voice sounded reproachful.

“You,” he said.

“You seem so nervous,” she said. “I don't know if I like you this way or not.”

“I'm not nervous,” he insisted.

“Guilty, then?” she asked.

“What have I got to be guilty about?” he demanded.

“Oh, I don't know,” she said. “Unless you've been taking other girls up to the top of the mountain.”

“I haven't been back up there,” he said angrily. “Alone or with anybody else. Look Claris, I came here prepared to do the right thing.”

“And what is that?” she asked.

“I'm going to marry you. We'll have to find some place to go and we won't tell anybody where we are until it's all
over. Then we'll let our people know and put their minds at rest, but we'll do whatever has to be done.”

“You are the most confusing boy,” she said. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about those letters you've been sending me. I'm talking about the baby.”

“What baby?” she asked.

“Aren't you going to have a baby?”

“Whatever gave you that idea?” she asked innocently.

“Every letter you've sent me since you left,” he replied.

“You really do have a guilty conscience, haven't you?” she said. “If you have such a guilty conscience later why do you take little girls off to the top of the mountain?”

Angered beyond words, he seized her by the arms and shook her violently.

“Are you going to have a baby or not?”

“No,” she cried.

“That's all I want to know,” he said. He released her, turned and walked away, but she ran in front of him and stopped him.

“I'm sorry I teased you. It was only because I had a wonderful surprise and I didn't want to tell you until I knew for sure.”

“I've had enough of your surprises,” he said and tried to push her aside.

“Will you just listen to what it is?” she asked.

He stood silent and waiting.

“The reason I went back to Washington early this summer was to talk Mother into letting me switch colleges. That was hard enough, but getting into the new school was harder still. But it's all settled now. I've been accepted at Westhampton.”

“Where's that?”

“It's the girl's college at the University of Richmond. It's right across the lake from where you'll be. That's all I wanted to tell you.”

Clay-Boy felt as if he had awakened from a dream in which he had been falling from some great height. The earth and all that surrounded him had been so blurred and distant
in his despair returned to focus. He could hear the singing of birds again and see the trees and the earth and the eyes of the girl before him. The nightmare visions of the Colonel coming to confront him, of his father and all the family being turned out of their home, of the shame of betraying his father after he had sacrificed so much, all fell away with one shuddering surge of relief.

“Aren't you pleased?” he heard someone say and looked down into Claris' face. For the first time since he had known her she seemed shy and wordless.

“It's wonderful,” he said.

“We won't have classes together, or anything like that but we could see each other once in a while.”

“I won't have much money for dates,” he said, “but you know that already.”

“We could walk around the lake.”

She stood looking up at him. She was not teasing him now. She was waiting for something, and then he realized that it was the same thing he wanted and bent and put his lips to hers. Their arms stole around each other and after a long time they walked out of the golden canopy of the mulberry tree into the brilliant September sun.

***

All during the last summer months Olivia had been gathering a wardrobe for Clay-Boy to wear at college. She had mended every rip and tear in his existing clothing and she had gone through every article of his father's clothing to see if she could find something Clay-Boy might use.

Finally she had decided that the one thing he absolutely had to have was a good suit. Those she found at the commissary she decided were wrong. They all looked like something an old man might wear, and she wanted this suit to be exactly right.

One night after the children were in bed, she and Clay sat in the living room. Clay was lost in his Western story in a Zane Grey book Clay-Boy had brought to him from the library while Olivia studied the pictures of boys' suits in the Sears, Roebuck catalogue.

“I want it to be somethen like the rest of them boys will be wearen,” said Olivia. “Somethen collegy.”

“Honey, he's goen down there to get an education,” said Clay. “It don't matter if he wear a burlap sack. It's what they're goen to put in his head that's important.”

“Still, I don't want him to look countrified,” she said. “He's goen to have to get used to so many newfangled things the least we can do is send him off dressed for it.”

“Honey, it's goen to be the same as it was with me and that cow. Get all dressed up and your best friends will mistake you for a stranger.”

“You are the ignorantest thing I ever heard talk,” observed Olivia dryly.

“Honey,” he said teasingly, “it's a mighty fine thing for you I never had the chance that boy is getten.”

“How do you figure that, you crazy old thing?”

“Well, if I'd of gone to college I would of got myself one of them little college girls and where would you be today?”

“One thing's for sure. I wouldn't be sitten here talken to no fool now.” Olivia returned to her perusal of the Sears, Roebuck catalogue. “Now here's what I kind of had in mind,” she said and held out the catalogue so that Clay might see. “That one there,” she pointed out.

“It's right pretty from the picture,” said Clay.

“That one looks exactly like what I saw a boy wearen over in Charlottesville one time. I said to myself at the time how nice Clay-Boy would look in a suit like that.” She read the description from the catalogue. “Green herringbone tweed. Comes with vest. Extra pants optional.”

“How much they asken for it?” demanded Clay.

“Nineteen dollars and ninety-five cents.”

“Methuselah's britches!” exclaimed Clay, “What's it made out of? Fourteen-carat gold?”

“It says this herringbone tweed is fifty per cent wool and fifty per cent cotton, long-lasting and keeps its crease. Clay, I know it's expensive and all, but I think he ought to have it. We could buy it out of that money his granddaddy left him, and he'd still have seventeen dollars in his pocket when he leaves.”

“Honey, there ain't a thing wrong with that suit I was plannen to be buried in. I'll just put off dyen for a while and let him use that.”

“Oh, he's goen to use it,” Olivia said. “I've already taken in the britches so it fits him just fine, but that's goen to be his everyday suit. What I'm talken about here is somethen for when he dresses up.”

“Two suits! Woman, you have lost your mind.”

“Listen to me, you old hillbilly. I'll bet you some of them boys he'll be up against down there will have two or three of everything, and while we're on the subject I think he ought to have some more shirts.”

“Give him that white one I was saven to be buried in,” Clay offered again.

“I was already counten that one, but that still only makes four. I think I'll get him one more. A green one maybe to go with his new suit.”

“Woman,” he exploded, “Whatever gave you the notion you married John D. Rockefeller?”

“I reckon it was the way you talked when you were courten me,” she rejoined.

“Oh, I was John D. Rockefeller in them days. I had money to burn back then. Why, in them days I'd go out of an evening and spend five or six dollars and never think a thing about it. Then all of a sudden you come along swingen that pretty little tail in front of me and I knew my time was up. Now here I am with eleven kids to take care of, one of 'em goen to college, and nothen to be buried in if I die by accident. All my clothes will be strutten around down yonder at the University of Richmond.”

They debated long into the night but the discussion ended finally with Olivia making out the order, without the extra trousers, and sending it off in the morning mail. When the suit came she planned to keep it as a surprise for Clay-Boy and not give it to him until the time came for him to leave.

***

Eliza returned home unexpectedly. “Just wanted to get settled before winter time,” she said. “Needed the feel of my own bed again. My own things around me.”

Some of the pain had gone from her eyes, but the family knew that she would never completely stop grieving for the old man. They contrived to keep her busy. The girls went
to her with happily granted requests for lessons in knitting and crocheting. Olivia brought out scraps she had been saving for a patchwork quilt and Eliza fitted them together, using her own Star of David pattern.

On Friday of the week end he was to leave, Clay-Boy stood in the doorway of the little library for one final look. He had read every book on the shelves and he felt better about leaving them now that he knew they would be left in loving hands—Miss Parker had persuaded the Episcopalian minister and his wife to allow their daughter, Geraldine Boyd, to take Clay-Boy's place at the library. Clay-Boy locked the door, placed the key under the mat and hurried home.

Early Sunday morning Clay-Boy sat at the window of the boys' room and looked out into the crabapple orchard. He had not slept. In a few hours he would be leaving, and every sound that came to his ears filled him with pain and sadness.

***

The routine sounds of the house coming to life seemed more beautiful than he had ever imagined. He heard the clamor of his father's alarm clock, his father's long deep yawn and then Clay's muttered weather forecast for the day: “Goen to be a nice one.” And then he heard the clank of the iron lid as his father filled the cooking range with wood, the whoosh of the fire up the chimney as Clay lighted the kerosene-soaked sticks, the squeak of the loose board in the hall as Clay came to the foot of the stairs to call Olivia—“Sweetheart.” “All right, I'm awake,” her answer came.

At breakfast everyone was solemn. Olivia's eyes were swollen and red from weeping and she spoke hardly at all. The plate she served Clay-Boy was laden with ham and eggs and biscuits.

“Be a long time before you get good home cooken again,” she said. “Eat hearty.”

Once in a while Clay would think of some parting piece of advice for his son and would interrupt his eating long enough to say, “Don't get mixed up with bad women if you can help it, boy. They'll ruin you.”

Later he said, “Don't borrow money, play square with everybody and look 'em straight in the eye.”

Clay-Boy promised gravely to follow his father's advice and the other children nodded their heads as if they too had heard and taken counsel from their father.

When everybody had been served, Olivia left the room and went up to the boys' room. Later when she came down she said, “I've laid your clothes out for you on your bed, son.”

“I reckon it is about time I started getten ready,” he said. He made his way up the stairs slowly. The first thing he saw when he walked into his room was the new green herringbone tweed suit.

All sound had stopped from down below. They were all waiting for some signal of his surprise, some cry of joy, but when none came everyone looked at each other uncomfortably. Finally Olivia came to the foot of the stairs.

“Son,” she called.

When no answer came she called again, “Clay-Boy?”

“Yes ma'am,” he answered, and his voice was thick with tears.

“You all right?” she called.

His footsteps sounded across the floor and when he came to the door of his room he was carrying the suit in his arms.

“You like it all right?” she asked.

“Oh Mama,” he said. “I never in my life expected to have anything so pretty.” He went down the stairs in a rush, embracing his mother and father and then was off to show his brothers and sisters, letting them feel it if their hands were clean.

When he tried the coat on, his father said, “Boy, you're goen to have to fight the women off when you wear that.”

“I bet I will too, Daddy,” he said, and then he went back upstairs to finish dressing.

His mother was waiting for him in the kitchen when he came back down. She was holding the envelope with the money in it that would pay for Clay-Boy's first semester of college.

“Can't I just put it in my wallet, Mama?” he asked.

“No,” she said, “you'll lose it.”

She slipped the envelope in the inner pocket of his suit and fastened it there with a safety pin.

“I've got it pinned there good and tight,” she said. “Don't unpin it until you're ready to pay the college.”

On the front porch, Clay-Boy found his Grandmother Spencer waiting to say good-by. After they had kissed each other she held him at arm's length and said, “Don't take up fancy ways, boy. Trust in God and go to church.”

Clay had borrowed a pickup truck to drive Clay-Boy to Hickory Creek, where he would catch the bus for Richmond. Clay was driving and Olivia, holding Franklin Delano and Eleanor, sat in the front seat. Clay-Boy and the other children rode in the body of the truck.

As the truck pulled out of the yard, Clay-Boy looked for as long as he could back at the house. He wished for one moment that the truck would turn around and take him back and that he could relive every moment he had known in that house, but then the house was gone in a turning of the road, and only the memory of the warmth and happiness and love he had known there remained in his mind.

When they reached Hickory Creek the Trailways bus was already lumbering down Route 29. Clay-Boy kissed each of the children good-by, then his mother, while his father flagged down the bus.