At a place just before the road came to the vertical wall of the cut, where maybe half a dozen cars were parked along the roadside, I began looking for the path I supposed would be there, and soon found it. Already I could hear voices above me, and not long after I passed into the shadow of the woods I could see the light of a fire glancing on the undersides of the leaves. So now maybe you can imagine it: the moon hanging all alone out in the sky, its light pouring down over everything and filling the valley, and under the moonlight the woods, making a darkness, and within the darkness a little room of firelight, and within the firelight several men talking, some standing, some sitting on stools of piled rocks or on logs, some sitting or squatting or kneeling around a spot swept clear of leaves where they were playing cards, and all around you could hear the whippoorwills. Nearly everybody there had a coal oil lantern, most of them unlit to save oil. One of the two or three that were lighted hung from a low limb to illuminate the card game.
When I came into the light, the place fell silent and everybody looked at me. A great embarrassment came over me and I stopped; it seemed a place where you did not belong unless you had been there before. I recognized Rufus Brightleaf, Portly Jones’s brother Wisely, the Ellis known simply as Big, Roy Overhold, and River Bill Thacker. Grover Gibbs, who was jack-of all-trades, was bending over the fire, lifting the last frying of catfish and corn pone out of the grease. They all looked at me, and I gave a silly little wave.
And then from off at the edge of the dark I heard Burley Coulter: “Come in, Mr. Crow, come in!”
And then, as I glanced around, the others acknowledged me: “Mr. Cray”—“Mr. Cray.” One of the younger ones said, “Hello, J. You got your scissors?”
And then a little swirl of talk passed among them:
“What? You want a haircut?”
“Give me a haircut.”
“In the dark?”
“In the dark he cuts it all. Ears too.”
“When he barbers in the dark, he don’t charge extra for ears,” said a man playing cards with his back to me.
They laughed.
And so I was there.
“Here,” Burley said, handing me a tin plate and leading me by the sleeve of my jacket toward the fire.
There were two sizable pans on rocks, close enough to the fire to stay warm. One held several pieces of fish and the other corn pones. I put a piece of fish and a corn pone on my plate.
“Here,” Burley said again, and took my plate and heaped it up and handed it back. “Come on,” he said. “Over here.”
I followed him back to where he had come from: the trunk of a blown-down red oak out on the edge of the firelight and close to the drop-off where the hill had been blasted to make way for the road. We sat looking right out into the moonlight with the valley all silvery below us. Besides Burley and me, there were four others—Martin Rowanberry from down on Sand Ripple; Webster Page, a man of about seventy, a serious fox-hunter who lived at Goforth; Uncle Isham Quail, who had come with Mr. Page; and Julep Smallwood from town—all of us sitting spaced apart along the tree trunk.
It was good fish, fried crisp, and the corn pone was just right too, crusty, and salty enough. I ate with my pocketknife until the food cooled a little, and then with my fingers.
Nobody said anything. Our purpose evidently was to listen, but I did not yet know for what. Mr. Page smoked his pipe and looked out over the valley at nothing, not even the moon. Julep Smallwood sat watching the rest of us while pretending not to. The others sat with their heads down, their elbows on their knees, their hands clasped together.
“Well, the earth just swallowed him up,” Uncle Isham said finally. “Or he went off into thin air.”
“He went up Sand Ripple and lost them, I’d rather think, just about at the mouth of the Cattle Pen branch,” said Martin Rowanberry.
“He went through your hog lot and they lost him there,” Webster Page said, “and then he ran up the branch. Rounder’ll piece it together. Give him a little time.”
“He’s done out-roundered Rounder,” Uncle Isham said.
Before I thought, I said, “Who?”
“The fox,” Burley said. And then, as if suddenly remembering me and his manners, he said, “Here. Hold on.”
He groped a moment in the shadows behind him and drew out a half-gallon glass jug, its mouth stopped with a corncob. He withdrew the cob and held out the jug to me.
“That fish’ll dry you out,” he said. “See if this won’t moisten your swallow.”
I took a taste—it was a local product, as innocent of water as the inmost coal of the fire, but also mellow and fragrant—and then I took three swallows, for the fish surely was drying me out.
“Did you hear what it said?” Burley asked me. “It said, ‘Good-good-good.” ’
He tilted the jug to his own lips and it said, “Good-good.”
He handed it past me to Mart Rowanberry, who tilted it, and it said, “Good-good.”
Mart handed it to Uncle Isham, and it said, “Good.”
Uncle Isham handed it to Webster Page, and it said, “Good.”
Mr. Page handed it to Julep Smallwood, who had been watching it as a cat watches a mouse, and it said, “Good-good-good-good-good.”
And then—without Burley needing to say anything, I noticed—the jug traveled back along the row of us, and Burley stoppered it and set it down again.
We listened some more. After a while we heard a bass voice lift out of the shadows way up the valley. I did not yet understand that the voice was saying, “Fooox!” But that was what it said. It said so again: “Foooox!”
“Rounder,” said Webster Page.
By the time the hound’s voice made its announcement a third time it was joined by a higher, brighter voice that said excitedly, “Yes! Fooox!”
Mr. Page said, “Gail.”
And then the whole pack opened—six or eight hounds altogether, it sounded like. They hesitated briefly again when the fox doubled back in the running water of the branch up Cattle Pen, and then came on. Their voices faded as they went deeper behind the hill, crossing the Sand Ripple valley, and then grew gradually clearer. As they came into the river valley and turned more or less in our direction, they were running close to the fox and very fast, their voices rising into the moonlight like a string of pennants. The men on the log spoke in one-word sentences, naming places and hounds, as the cry moved down the river valley—swiftly across the open lands, slower and with more trouble in the woods—and passed below us and went on.
From time to time Burley would fish the jug up out of the shadow, offer it first to me, for I was his guest, then drink himself, and pass it down along the tree to where Julep Smallwood sat at the root. The jug invariably pronounced its longest benediction upon Julep Smallwood. “Good-good-good-good,” it would say. And again, “Good-good-good-good-good.”
Julep had straddled the tree and was riding it like a man on a bucking horse, watching always with pretended indifference for the jug to appear and begin another journey toward him. When he saw Burley lean back and reach into the shadow, Julep glowed like a firefly.
Julep Smallwood, as his comrades told one another amusedly and somewhat resentfully in endless speculation on the matter, was not an alcoholic. He had not even an honest entitlement to be called a drunk. If Julep had drunk only the liquor he paid for, he would have been dry as a preacher. He would have crackled when he walked, as Burley Coulter would now and again inform him. Julep’s addiction was to free liquor, namely other people’s. When other people’s was available, he drank of it merely all he could hold. Julep, as Grover Gibbs attested upon oath, was one of those rare fellows who could drink himself drunk and then continue on to drink himself sober. He was as partial to other people’s food as to their whiskey, but it was an article of belief generally sworn to that he could drink way more than he could eat. His favorite Bible verse was, “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities”—w
hich he quoted frequently when he was sober and able to propose and believe that he drank in moderation, since on the average he did, and in a tone conveying a certain self-pity for his often infirmities and the cruel scarcity in Port William of the sanctioned remedy.
And here I must confess that, having never drunk a drop in my life that I had not paid for myself, I too was somewhat under the spell of Burley’s hospitality. I loved to hear what that jug had to say for itself; when it said it was “good-good-good,” I believed it. Presently I observed that the moon had become abashed and uncertain of its position out there in the fathomless sky.
Julep Smallwood called out to Burley, making his voice arch over the rest of us who were on the log: “Oh, Burley!”
Burley was wearing a big grin, signifying that he understood perfectly and enjoyed deeply the whole complexity of Julep’s thirst, the course of the fox race now again out of hearing, and the embarrassment of the unsteadied moon. After a longish while, he said, “What?”
“Ohhhh, Burley!”
“What?”
“Do you still know where we are?”
After due consideration, Burley said, “Where else would we be? Right here!”
“Where’s here?”
“Here on this log.”
“Where’s this log?”
“Why, it’s right here at the Grandstand.”
“Well, where’s the Grandstand, old Burley Coulter, old bud?”
“Why it’s right here beside Port William.”
“Where’s Port William?”
“In Kentucky.”
“Where’s Kentucky?”
“In the United States of America and the republic for which it stands.”
“Where’s the United States?”
“In the world indivisible.”
“Where’s the world?”
“In the universe.”
“Where’s the universe?”
Burley’s grin now included the universe, with liberty and justice for all. “I dog if I heard ’em say.”
He said this in a tone of deference and fair-mindedness, as if to acknowledge the likelihood that at some time in his youth somebody had told him the whereabouts of the universe but he had not been listening or it had slipped his mind.
The jug again passed along the row of us as if obedient merely to the course of nature.
Shortly after that I noticed that Burley was gone. Just gone. He had stood up with his unlit lantern and stepped beyond us into the moonlit, shadowy woods. For a moment I was astonished at how quickly and surpassingly free he was, even from that party at the Grandstand, which I had thought was pretty free.
The next thing I noticed (or that I remember) was Webster Page standing up beneath the two moons and blowing his fox horn. The hounds must have faltered or run the fox to his hole somewhere nearby, for they were soon among us. Mr. Page and Uncle Isham and Martin Rowanberry lit their lanterns and made their way amidst the hounds down the path to the road.
Julep then gathered up the jug, which seemed to have come into his sole possession, and, carrying it like a doll in both arms, walking as if each of his legs was a little shorter than the other, went over by the fire, where Wisely Jones and Rufus Brightleaf and Roy Overhold and Big Ellis were still playing cards. Grover Gibbs and River Bill Thacker were watching and talking with the players, who by now appeared to be playing in a sort of hypnotic trance, as if they might go on from one more hand to one more hand forever.
Seeing that Julep had appropriated Burley’s jug, Grover and River Bill offered me a drink, which I refused with thanks, having apparently retained one final grain of sense. But somebody had thought to bring a jug of water, and I helped myself eagerly to that, remarking as I set down the jug that I could see now that it had been, in fact, a water-drinking party. And all agreed, saying solemnly that every drop they had drunk all night had been drunk in honor of water.
The fire was putting out a pleasant warmth. I stretched myself on the dead leaves nearby, thinking to watch the game and take part in the conversation from a more comfortable position. I heard Grover Gibbs resume a tale that he evidently had been in the midst of:
“Anyhow, them two gentlemens just stood up right there and went at it. They had the hellovest fight that ever you seen.”
“Call the law!” Julep Smallwood cried urgently up into the moonlight, but Grover did not even look toward him, if he heard him at all.
“Until finally that little ‘un—he must have been a science man—he drawed back and hit that big ’un one lick right in the googler, and he went over like a plank. That put the quietus on him.”
“Looord, increase his pain!” said Julep Smallwood.
And then the quietus came upon me, and I slept.
When I woke up it was well on in the morning. The sun was high, and except for the birds singing, the world seemed to have stopped. There was not the least breeze, and the cardplayers were sitting still with their heads up. They held their hands of cards in front of them but they were not looking at their cards. They were listening. I lay without moving and listened also. I could see that now there were only five of us, Grover Gibbs and Bill Thacker and Julep Smallwood having straggled away.
After a moment, Roy Overhold got up and tiptoed over to where he could see down into the road. And then quietly and seriously he began to climb a small sugar tree that branched nearly to the ground. He went up in a hurry and the other three came in quick succession right behind him.
What had wakened me, what they had heard, was Cecelia Overhold, Roy’s wife, slamming her car door down beside the road. For just a moment after Roy and Wisely and Rufus and Big Ellis had gone up as high as they could go in the tree, it was absolutely quiet again.
And then I saw Cecelia Overhold coming up the path. She was wearing a sort of baggy hat tilted stylishly over her right ear, a nicely tailored broadcloth coat with a fur collar, and stockings and high heels. And she was walking like the Divine Wrath itself. She was a beautiful woman still, in those days, really something to look at. But I did not regard her with extreme pleasure that morning. I just shut my eyes and lay still. Why I didn’t get up and run, I can’t tell you, any more than I can tell you why Roy and the others had not run. We were all involved, I think, in a form of self-induced mental retardation.
Lying there with my eyes shut, filled with alarm and the recognition of catastrophe, I fully expected her to come right up and kick me. I was tensed for the blow. But she paid no attention to me at all, either because she didn’t see me or because she thought me unworthy of attention; she was capable of that. I heard her gathering up the scattered cards and throwing them onto what was left of the fire. She picked up a piece of a limb and knocked loose the hanging lantern and sent it flying. She battered all the tin plates. And then I heard her breaking the jugs and bottles that were lying around. She even broke the water jug. The fury of battle was on her.
When I heard her walking over toward the sugar tree I opened my eyes. I have never beheld such a spectacle in all the time since. Roy Overhold was at the very top of the tree; Wisely Jones was under him, and under him was Rufus Brightleaf, and under him was Big Ellis. They all gazed downward like treed coons, and then they gazed upward as if hoping to find that the tree continued into the sky like Jack’s bean stalk. The tree looked like a totem pole that had come to life and sprouted branches and leaves. And down at the foot was that beautiful outraged woman, looking up, with her fists on her hips.
She said, “Come down from there, you Sunday cardplaying sons of bitches!”
The only one up there with any conceivable reason to come down was Roy, and since he was at the top, he could not come down unless the others would come down first. Big Ellis would have had the honor of being first to accept her invitation, and he declined. Nobody came down. Nobody said a word.
And then Cecelia looked over at me and saw that I was watching. Our eyes met for a second and a chill passed over me.
“What are you looking at, you bald-h
eaded thing?”
Well, in fact I was getting bald, but I had been telling myself that it wasn’t very noticeable. I hate to admit my vanity, but what she said hurt my feelings probably worse than anything else she could have done.
What else she could have done, and did do, was pick up a smallish rock all jaggedy and crusty with fossils and throw it at me. It hit me square in the mouth.
After that, I played dead (which wasn’t hard). Even after she went away and I heard her start her car and turn it around, I lay still with my eyes shut, tasting blood and feeling my broken tooth with the end of my tongue.
It was a while too before the others came down out of the tree. It was as though Cecelia had run us not out of the place but out of the day, and it took some time and thought for us to get back in.
And when we finally gathered ourselves together again among the ruins, we were changed. It had been a beautiful night and now it was a splendid day, but embarrassment and sorrow had come over us.
Everybody knew that Cecelia and Roy Overhold were each other’s all, and that for both of them their all was varyingly either too much or not enough. Both of them were good people, as people go, and they had a nice farm, but they were living out the terms of a failure that was long and slow. I don’t claim to understand it. I only know, from what I had seen already and what I saw later, that they would go along together quietly enough for a while, and then one night (it would always be at night) they would come face to face again with their old failure, each with needs that the other could not fill, and nothing they could do for each other that would not make things worse. Maybe it was childlessness that caused it. Maybe it was just one of those inescapable errors that people sometimes make. When Roy would turn up at my shop after dark or at some nighttime gathering of the men, I would know that he had come in from failure and despair that he could not escape but hoped at least to get off his mind for a while.
So we stood there, not knowing either how to stay or how to go, and felt the weight of that failure. We felt sorry for Roy, who was a quiet, smiling, unhappy man, and sorry for Cecelia, who was a beautiful, unhappy woman, and sorry we could think of nothing to say that would help.