“The accumulation of laughter,” the Old Man said, pacing up and down in front of the fire with his hands behind his back, “comprises an aggregate of wisdom.” It was raining to beat the band.
“Huh?” I said. “What was that again?” I was looking hopefully out the window, and not paying much attention to the inside of the house.
“The accumulation of...you heard me the first time,” he said. “How did it sound?”
“Fine,” I said. “What does it mean? And who made it up?”
“I just made it up,” the Old Man said. “Maybe I might of read it somewhere, I disremember. Seneca or one of them other old Romans. Somebody or other.”
“Seneca?” I said. “I always thought Senecas were a tribe of Indians, kind of like the Iroquois.” If this was going to be one of those days when everybody was flinging knowledge around I was going to crowd right in there with my share.
“There’s a lot you don’t know,” the Old Man said. “Seneca tended store somers about thirty or forty years A.D. He got famous for being a Stoic.”
“A what?”
The Old Man held up his hand. “A Stoic. A Stoic is a man who practices and preaches Stoicism, which is another word for grinning and bearing it, no matter how rough times get. You could pull the toenails out of a real Stoic before he’d let out a whimper. He was calm in the face of adversity. He could stand there and take it, even though his whole life was crumbling in ashes all around him. You got to be a Stoic these days to get along in this world.”
I noticed the Old Man wasn’t dropping his “g’s,” a sure sign of something about to happen that I wasn’t going to like He had a habit of leading up to these things kind of sneaky more or less for his own amusement. The Old Man was about the kindest man in the world, but there was a streak of bad boy in him still. He liked to tease me, and that’s what he was doing now.
“What does it mean?” I asked again.
“It means,” the Old Man said, “that it ain’t going to quit raining today and if I were you I’d start practicing being a Stoic right now. I’d try to think about all the funny things that’ve happened, and this way you wind up wise. How’s your stiff upper lip?”
When I looked out the window my lip didn’t feel very stiff, and I didn’t feel either funny or wise. It was raining pure pitch-forks, and each driving tine stabbed my hunter’s soul. I had waited nine months—and one five-day century—for this Day. Very seldom does Opening Day come on Saturday, but this year it did, combining permanent Christmas with a blue moon and a month of Sundays, with hell about to freeze over for good measure.
Now then, me and the weather had come to grips before. I had been rained out of more than one Saturday, but generally I found something to do with it that did not involve robbing a bank. Being rained out of any Saturday would stab you to the heart, and all the Old Man’s favorite quotes about life being just a rainy Saturday didn’t help much.
But I had never been rained out of a Saturday which was also Opening Day before, and I had been planning this one since I put my gun away when the season closed last February.
I had been to the hardware store and bought the shells. I was spending Saturday night out in the country, at Sheriff Knox’s house. Apart from the Sheriff’s birds, there were Mrs. Goodman’s birds, and Aunt Florence Hendricks’ birds, and Big Abner’s birds, and Aunt Mary Millette’s birds, and Lyndon Knox’s birds, and some vagrant perimeter birds, all waiting to be shot at on this Saturday by me. The dogs had dry-hunted every Sunday since the weather turned cool, and were panting for the smell of powder. There was one six-month-old puppy who promised to be the best quail dog that ever hit the piny woods.
Monday had been bright and golden, the sky blue and unspecked by cloud. Frosts had come and killed the undergreenery. The corn shucks were sere and liver-spotted, and the persimmons were sweet enough to eat without turning you into a Chinaman. A fire felt cozy-comforting at night. The last Sunday, the dogs had worked well on the tame coveys we kept around the house for training purposes. The dogs were sharp and ready, and so, I thought, was the hunter.
Tuesday was bright and golden. So was Wednesday. So was Thursday. So was Friday. And tomorrow would be Saturday, with no school. And Opening Day!
But now the rain pounded down in drops as big, it seemed, as baseballs. Then the wind rose and drove the drops savagely in thin arrows against the walls and windows. The panes were steadily bleared by water, as it cascaded down in clear sheets against the sills. The rain had come about breakfast time, teasingly at first, each big drop making a little dimple in the clean-swept sand of Sheriff Knox’s yard. Then the dimples turned to holes, and then the holes to little gulleys, and finally the gulleys spread to small lakes. Noah never saw a meaner rain than I had to celebrate that Saturday, the Opening Day.
Breakfast was warm inside me—a big breakfast of oatmeal and ham and eggs and hominy and coffee. The fires burnt bright in the fireplaces, but a steady gust of rain drove through the breezeway that cut the old-fashioned country house in half, and little creeks of water ran in the uneven flooring.
I opened the front door against the solid wall of sheeting water, and went out on the wide veranda. The rain was not so heavy you couldn’t see across the road to the soybean field where all the doves hung out. The dogs started to follow me out of the warm sitting room, but the wet wind smote them and they huddled back against the door. The guinea fowl that always ran loose committing suicide in the road had crowded under the house, and were standing, ruffled and angry clattering, with their feet hating the wet sand.
I fought the door open again and the dogs and I went back inside. The Old Man and the Sheriff were sitting companionably in front of the fire, which hissed from the trickles that drove down the chimney. I was dressed for the wars, but neither of the old gentlemen had bothered to put on boots. They both wore the soft-sided Congress gaiters, and you could see the white legs of their long-handled drawers pulled down over their sock tops. They hadn’t even bothered to put on the long red-topped wool hunting socks they wore with their boots. The Old Man shook his head.
“You might as well take off some of that regalia,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll hunt any birds today. How about it, John?” he turned his head to the Sheriff. “That rain looks like she’s hereto stay, eh?”
“Yep,” the Sheriff said, spitting an amber arc into the fire. “You won’t see sun today. I thought for a while she might fair off, but I don’t think so now. And even if she did, the woods are too wet. Birds are all in the branches, huddled under some brush. They wouldn’t of fed out, and it’s too wet for the dogs to smell. No scent on a day like this.”
I was all for dragging the dogs out by main force and fighting my way into the wet, but the Old Man shook his head.
“Waste of time,” he said. “All you’ll do is rust your gun and catch a death of cold. You might as well resign yourself to the fact that this ain’t your lucky day. Even the dogs got better sense than to go out on a day like this. This day ain’t good for nothin’ but ducks, and the duck season ain’t open yet. Be a Stoic and count your past blessings.”
The Old Man was right, of course. Some of the best bird shooting in the world happens in the right kind of rain—a slow drizzle that moistens the dry ground and helps a dog’s nose function, like a wet night makes combustion better in an auto-mobile motor. The trailers can trail and the winders can wind, and the coveys hang closer together. Also the singles have a way of sticking to where they hit, so you can make them better, and they don’t flush wild all over the place when you shoot over a point.
Some of the best shooting I ever had was on a half-wet day, when the boys got separated from the men and the lazy hunters stayed home by the fire, but this was not going to be one of those days. I would have needed a boat to make it to the nearest pea patch.
The Sheriff and the Old Man kept talking interestingly enough, I suppose, all about war and politics and crops and the last deer drive, but I couldn’t work up an appetite for what they were saying. I was someplace else, with the sun shining and the dogs fanning the fields.
The Old Man watched me fidget for a while, and then he said, “Why don’t you go do something with the girls and leave us in peace? You’re about to wear out the rug. This ain’t any way to be a Stoic, and anyhow you’re making me and the Sheriff nervous.”
Now as a rule I ain’t got anything against girls, especially today, when I’m a sight older. But right then the only time I had for women was when they were in the kitchen cooking something that smelled good and that I would eat later. About all girls were good for was to tattle and giggle and cry if you looked cross-eyed at them. I never knew a girl who could throw a baseball without snapping her elbow, and there seemed to be a general suspicion that all girls were good and all boys were bad.
The Sheriff had a flock of gal children, and Ethel and Sally and Annie Mae and Gertrude were all twittering around about something or other, and all I could think of was that they sounded like a gaggle of geese and didn’t seem to accomplish much outside of confusion. The dogs were no help, either. They just lay by the fire and looked as mournful as I felt. Altogether it was the finest study in frustrated indoor activity I ever run onto.
Lunchtime came and the rain still walloped down, hitting as hard as hammers. We sat down to eat a big country lunch—dinner, it was called in those days—but I didn’t have much feeling for the fried chicken and the venison and the apple pie, the big sugared tomatoes and all the other stuff I usually loved.
After lunch the Old Man looked at me sharply, and for one of the few times in his life his voice matched the look. “All right, all right” he said. “Get your gun and the dogs, if you can find one that’s damned fool enough to go with you, and go hunting! Anything to get you out of the house before you drive us all crazy.”
I put on an old oilskin over my canvas hunting coat, got the gun, and stirred up the dogs with my foot. They were not enthusiastic about leaving the fire, and I had to drag the old boys out the door. Only the puppy thought it was fun enough to come along under his own steam.
The rain still sloshed down by the bucketful. I trudged through the soybean field, hoping to rouse a dove or so, but nothing was feeding. The gray-topped cotton soil was pure muck, now, and it stuck to my boots like cement, leaving black patches of soil underneath. Just walking in the gumbo was an effort, for your feet weighed a ton each.
Two things, I learned that day, are not improved by bad weather. One is open ocean. One is woodland. Of the two the weeping woods are sadder than the sea.
I still don’t know what happens to most outdoor life when it rains. I suppose the rabbits dive into their burrows and the birds perch in the trees or huddle under brush heaps. No sign of life appeared in the dripping woods, in the sodden fields, in the soaked prairies of high grass. The dogs were draggled, cockle-burred, and shivering. My old oilskin provided small protection. Rain got into my eyes and blinded me. My nose ran in time to the dripping of the trees, and the wind howled and the rain slashed down.
I forced the dogs down into the swamps, figuring it would be dryer under the heavy trees, and perhaps we would stumble on a covey of quail. We stumbled on nothing shootable, although I did manage to slip in the mud while jumping the small creek and made myself a little wetter, but not much.
After two hours or so I gave up. The dogs and I trudged back to the farm, as cold and miserable as dogs and boys are likely to get. We must have been a sight as we trudged into the breezeway.
The Old Man must have seen us coming, because he met us in the breezeway. “Get out of them wet clothes,” he snapped, “and then come in to the fire. But mind you dry them dogs off before you turn them into the house. They’ll stink bad enough half-dry, anyhow.” Then he turned and stumped back into the sitting room where the fire was.
I nearly froze changing from wet clothes to some dry ones, and I was afraid to go in to the fire until I had rubbed the dogs with a couple of dry tow sacks from the smokehouse.
“Get any birds?” the Old Man asked sarcastically, as I stood with my back to the fire, waiting for the heat to burn my back-side before I gave it a chance at the front.
“Nosir,” I said.
“See anything?”
“Nosir. Nothing.”
“I thought not,” the Old Man said. “You feel any better for flounderin’ around in the wet for the past few hours?”
“Nosir,” I said.
“Prove anything?”
“Nosir.”
“Have a cup of coffee,” the Old Man said, “and listen to the Sheriff tell about that bad field hand that killed his wife with an ax just back there close the road near to the graveyard.”
After the Sheriff had finished his tale, which was sufficiently gory to hold any boy’s interest, the Old Man got up and walked to the window.
“Looks like the rain’s slackenin’ off,” he said. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the sun didn’t set fair. Tomorrow’ll likely be a nice day. Pity it’s Sunday.”
I muttered something, I dunno what, but it wasn’t very stoical. Then I sneezed.
“You’re as butt-headed as your mother,” the Old Man said. “And she’s as butt-headed as her mother. I reckon if being butt-headed means anything you got the makings of a pretty good Stoic. I don’t see you handing out any accumulation of laughter, but if an aggregate of wisdom comes from being butt-headed I guess that sneeze tells me you’ve learned something about beating your head against a stone wall. Time and again you’ve heard me say that bad weather’s all right if you know how to make it work for you, but on a day like today the best way to make it work for you is to stay home in front of the fire with a book.”
I sneezed again.
The Old Man cocked his head. “Go get one of the women folks to give you some cough syrup and tie a rag around your neck,” he said. “A sneezing Stoic is an abomination before the Lord. And anyhow, if you get sick from being foolish you won’t be able to go hunting tomorrow. Tomorrow’s dead certain to be better, because I can see the clouds lifting and the sun coming out.”
“But tomorrow’s Sunday,” I said. “And I ain’t allowed to hunt on Sunday.” This time I managed to snuffle back the sneeze.
The Old Man grinned. “You can carry Stoicism too far,” he said. “We’re out here in the backwoods and you’re visitin’ the Sheriff. You’ve got the Law on your side, and I shouldn’t wonder if the good Lord wouldn’t make an exception in your case this time, if you don’t go telling everybody about how you broke the Law. I reckon with it raining on Saturday and Opening Day you been punished enough, and you got a little something coming from On High.”
I let out a whoop, which might have been the first symptoms of pneumonia, but I didn’t care. That was the Old Man for you. He was tricky as a pet coon. One thing I had added to my “aggregate of wisdom” this day was that if I lived to be a hundred I’d never figure him out, but right then I wasn’t inclined to argue. I felt so good with my accumulated laughter that I even helped the gals wash dishes that night after supper and didn’t bust but one.