I flipped the remnant of the corncrib back into the grass and started down into the small valley. The tenant house the Cross family had occupied was gone. Above it, the volcano hill rose in green splendor. When I crossed the creek, I angled for the sheep path, which, had it been there, would have risen upward along the base of the volcano hill. The path was gone but I could have made this walk with my eyes closed.
The base of the volcano hill rose gently from the valley to a point that had allowed a distant view of the Mulligan house, as well as the thicket situated in front of the pond. Thicket and house were both gone. One landmark still loomed high above everything: Cummings Hill. I walked toward the pond and discovered it had been replaced by bulrushes. I circled the bulrushes and came to the base of Cummings Hill.
The path from the pond to the Mulligan house was also gone, and getting to where it had set became a matter of exploration. Eventually, I topped a rise and saw the Dry Branch Road. My eyes followed the black ribbon until it dipped toward the Dry Branch Creek. Now I knew exactly where the house had stood. The entrance to the Mulligan yard from the road had been fifty feet before the drop-off. I wandered the area but found no evidence of the house.
I was getting tired and decided to return to the car by what had been my favorite route, past the hickory and locust grove. I hadn’t gone far when I remembered something and turned back to look at Cummings Hill. I wondered if they were still there, waiting for Fred and me to show up. Then my memories broadened in a rush. The rabbits, the corn-sheller accident, and all the guilt I felt when I learned of Fred’s injury. The evening at his bedside when we each confessed our deceit. All the things that happened that year before my family left Berman’s. Fred was my best friend. The best friend of my life! And I never saw him again after we left Berman’s!
I choked up. Why hadn’t I contacted him? I couldn’t remember another person in my adult life, other than family, who wanted nothing more from me than friendship, who supported me in the face of adversity. None of my colleagues fit that description. When Dean Simmons received an angry letter from an advisory board member objecting to my unorthodox teaching methods, he called me in and demanded that I give didactic lectures. I told him my pedagogical approach was a matter of academic freedom. This was true, and it was important to the entire faculty, but not one professor in the Leland-May English department stood up for me. When the issue resulted in my being passed over for promotion to full professor, a committee of my colleagues—all of whom knew how important my teaching was to me, and to the issue of academic freedom—advised that I “reassess [my] teaching techniques.”
The more controversial my stand on teaching became, the more the faculty distanced themselves from me. Tolliver Atwood, a professor with whom I played tennis, found another tennis partner. How many letters had I written for his advancement? If I hadn’t come through for him, he would never have progressed as rapidly in rank.
Thoughts of Fred had gone through my mind frequently during that particular brouhaha. Fred would never have deserted me in the manner of Atwood, and he was a child when we were together. I was willing to bet he would have called the dean and my faculty peers sonamabitches. I wanted to see Fred, but so much time had passed since he last had tried to contact me and I hadn’t responded. I couldn’t face him. Dad had told me in high school that he had run into Babe MacWerter, and in the course of the conversation, learned that Fred had wanted to see me. I didn’t go, because I was afraid someone at Harlan Jeffords High would find out and new jokes would arise about me being a Kentucky clodhopper and my life would become even more miserable. It was, perhaps, forgivable for me to have erred at that time, because I was a young teenager and desperate to be accepted by my peers. But Fred had tried to contact me again in later years and I never responded. Somehow, I just couldn’t. Fred had meant so much to me; he had come through for me when grown men might have left a friend twisting in the wind.
I scanned Cummings Hill. It’s been a long time, Fred, I thought, but I’m going to find you. When I do, I’m going to tell you the truth and let you decide if you want to tell me to go to hell, or try to resurrect our friendship.
I began walking again and was soon in the hickory and locust thicket. I wandered into the interior and tried to get my bearings. Most of the locust was gone, but the hickories were now very large. True to the Kentucky farm folk, they had cut the thorny locust, leaving the hickory trees to produce their sweet nuts to crack and eat on a cold winter night. I sat under a hickory and lay back with my hands under my head and stared at the canopy. The leaves were beautiful, deep green and so thick that I was completely shaded. The wind rustled them and the odor of soil and grass wafted about. A few minutes later a squirrel leaped from one limb to another, then scampered back to the trunk. It was a big fox squirrel, and he turned his head to look at me. Suddenly there were more squirrels, all gamboling about on the tree trunk and peeking at me. I was an intruder. I rose and started walking, then I suddenly realized the significance of this spot. It was here I saw Annie Lee and WK together that night. I chuckled, then continued on to the car, thinking about Fred.
That was a tough summer for Fred. I did everything I could to help him deal with his injury but I was only partly successful, because some tasks became difficult for him to perform. Perfection was the only goal Fred accepted for himself. Being with him every day, however, strengthened our friendship.
The problems he would suffer from the loss of his finger became clearer when . . .
. . . August come around and that meant tobacco housing. Like always, we were short of help so I stayed home after school started. Fred and I were made full-fledged tobacco hands, breaking out suckers, handing sticks of tobacco up from the wagon to the man on the bottom rail and even hanging some burley ourselves when we got to the sheds, where it helped to be short because the barn’s roof sloped and bent a grown-up over. We also learned to cut tobacco. That’s when Fred found out he was going to have big trouble from his hand. He dropped things. And even when he didn’t, he was clumsy. We both learned cutting at the same time and in just a little while I was hacking my stalk of tobacco off with a tomahawk and ramming it over a spear and onto my stick. Fred could cut his plant off okay, but he had trouble hitting the spear. Before I knew it, I’d be ten, fifteen sticks ahead of him. It made me feel bad to be ahead of him, but we had to get the tobacco in the barn so I kept cutting as fast as I could. Fred never mentioned it because he knew that was what I had to do. When we finished housing, he told me that if he couldn’t figure out how to get the job done with three fingers and a thumb, he and his Pa might have trouble on Red Bill’s because he didn’t think Alfred could go hard for a full crop year. It was true about Alfred. He tried, but by mid-afternoon he’d run out of gas.
The Sunday after I started back to school, I rode my bike to the Mulligans’ for a visit and found Fred awful down about his hand. Alfred was down too, talking about how the goddamn sugars was holding him back and how some days he wudn’t worth a diddly shit. I kept telling Fred he was worrying about his hand for nothing because we had just read in the paper where a fellow lost a whole arm and leg during the war and was running a four-hundred-acre farm with just him and his woman and that Fred was in a lot better shape than that old boy. Fred sighed and said, “Yeah . . . maybe.” When I left the Mulligans that Sunday, I knew something had to be done to cheer Fred up, but I couldn’t think of a thing until it dropped right in my lap.
It come about when Melvin Langley lost his lunch box at school and I found it. It didn’t surprise me he lost it because Melvin always looked up. He’d talk to you and it was like he was looking at the top of your head. I couldn’t figure how he found anything. Anyway, my finding it made Melvin happy because everybody knew how Miz Langley made her boys walk the straight and narrow and if I hadn’t found it he’d have got a licking. That evening on the bus, he invited me over for a fox hunt. I was surprised because the only person the Langleys ever took with them was their dad’s friend Mr. Rick. Fred had told me once that he would give most anything to go on a fox hunt, so I asked Melvin could I bring him. He said he’d check and the next day he said yes. I thought Fred was going to do cartwheels when I told him.
I left our house about 7:30 the evening of the fox hunt. The radio said rain, but it was warm and wudn’t a cloud in the sky. It was hard biking to the Dry Branch Road, but after that, it was all downhill to the Mulligans’. When I got there, Fred was antsy.
“Hun’ney, you better hurry or we’re gonna be late! It’s two, three mile to that bluff!”
“We’ll make it okay,” I puffed and took off pedaling hard.
We scooted down past where the school bus turned around, then a way further we turned up a gravel lane overhung by hickory and elm. This made it darker and in the early twilight I could hardly see where I was going. It also got steeper. I thought about slowing down but figured if I did Fred would yell so I just let her rip. Pretty soon, we come to the gap Melvin told me about, then pedaled across a field until we come to a big open meadow with just a few trees on top and a thicket at the bottom. We could see four, five people and some dogs.
“Hit’s them!” yelled Fred.
Melvin came over to meet us as we pulled up. “Hidey, Samuel, Fred. Y’all just in time. You bring some victuals?”
“Sure did,” I said, and Fred held our sack up so Melvin could see it.
“When we startin’?” Fred asked.
“Just a few minutes,” said Melvin. “Pa and Mr. Rick will take th’ dogs down by th’ thicket so’s they can get a scent. Soon’s they pick one up, him and Mr. Rick will come back up here and we’ll lay around and talk and eat and listen to ’em run.”
Just then, Mr. Langley got his dogs by their neck chains and started down the hill followed by Mr. Rick with his three. The two men and the dogs faded into outlines against the thicket, the dogs jumping and yelping. One of the yelps got kind of excited, and Melvin grinned.
“Hit’s Maude,” he said. “She’s on t’ somethin’.”
I could see Mr. Langley’s form bend down and turn one of the dogs loose, then the other dogs started going wild, rattling their chains and barking. All the dogs were turned loose then, and I watched their ghostly bodies snuffling and twisting and turning. Then one of the dogs began trotting, then loping with all the others following, and the barking changed into a “yaaap, yaaap, yaaap” as they disappeared into the early dark. Mr. Langley and Mr. Rick floated back toward us, then Mr. Rick built a fire.
The rest of the evening was spent lying on the ground and listening to the dogs bay. We ate our sandwiches while Mr. Langley and Mr. Rick drank. I was bored silly, but Fred loved it. I pretended like it was great because I wanted Fred to have a big time. The only real fun I had though was looking into the fire and watching the clouds light up from lightning in the direction of the Little Bend. It was far-off weather, but as the evening wore on, the lightning turned to small streaks and you could hear low thunder.
“Looks like we’re gonna get that shower they predicted on th’ radio, Frank,” said Mr. Rick as the lightning got closer.
“Yeah, sure could use a shower. Wish I had my rye sowed. Wouldn’t you know, I just finished discin’ that field. Now I’ll have t’ do it all over again.”
“Right now, though, we better get outta here before that old truck of mine gets mired down on a muddy hillside,” said Mr. Rick.
Mr. Rick got to his feet and stretched, then picked up his big horn, which was shaped just like the shofar Mr. Gollar blew at shul. Everybody stood around while he wet the end with spit and took a deep breath.
“Burrrup . . . burrrup . . . burrrup,” then he listened to the dogs. “Burrrup . . . burrrup . . . burrrup,” and this time there was some quiet, then a few barks. “Burrrup . . . burrrup,” then quiet.
Fred was still having a big time but I was wanting to go because the lightning was brighter and the rumbles deeper. You could tell that there were clouds gathering too because the stars had gone out in that direction. It was going to pour and I was going to get soaked.
Soon, the dogs came running in, shaking and panting, their tongues hanging out and giving off heat and grass smell and pushing up against our legs, tired and happy.
“Good girl, Maude,” said Mr. Langley, kneeling down and patting her.
Maude flopped down on her back and lay panting while Mr. Langley scratched her belly and took out the pint again. “One for th’ road, Carl?” he asked after taking a big snort.
Mr. Rick nodded. “Just enough t’ kill,” he said, looking at it through the firelight, then drained the bottle and put it behind the truck seat.
Going back wudn’t nothing like as easy as coming down, and we were already tired. By the time we got to the Mulligans’, I was beat and the storm was closer.
I rested a couple of minutes in front of the Mulligan house. I thought Fred wouldn’t ever stop thanking me. It was good to see him happy.
The air was dead calm as we said good night, but the thunder and lightning was coming every few seconds. I started pedaling as fast as I could. About halfway to Cuyper Creek Pike the trees began moving, slow at first, then quick with rustling leaves as the wind rose. It was coming straight at my face and getting harder by the second. To make any headway at all, I had to stand on the pedals. I was giving out fast, gasping for breath, my legs aching so bad I thought they’d explode. Little flashes of lightning were coming between the big flashes now, and the road kept going from half dark to real bright like somebody turning a switch off and on. Finally, I could see the hill to the pike and knew the turn was a couple hundred feet up the grade. That seemed to give me new power. I reared up on the pedals, cramming them down with all my might, sometimes almost freezing straight up because I didn’t have enough weight to turn the wheels against the wind.
Finally, I made the turn and stopped. My breath cut my lungs. A giant lightning bolt split the sky and hung there. I could see the thunderhead clear, boiling and coming straight my way, and I could smell the rain. The wind was to my left side now instead of my front and the road was flat at the start, then downhill, which really helped. I began pedaling like mad, my body stretched out over the handlebars.
Then the rain hit. It came in mighty sheets, cold, like somebody throwing buckets of ice water at me and getting in my eyes. It got hard to see, and the old batteries in my headlamp didn’t help much. The wind kept gusting up and letting down, then got terrible hard in little short puffs and once I thought it was going to blow me off the road. The trees were going crazy. A limb as thick as my leg blew across the road just missing my back tire. I knew I had it made, though. I was going into the steepest part of the hill, which meant that the sweet apple tree was just ahead and beyond that our gate. I was giving it all I had when a lightning flash lit up what looked like a great, towering man staggering out of the brush, waving four arms and coming straight at me. I screamed and swerved. The bike skidded and I almost went down, then my foot bounced off the road and I got control.
When I reached the house I was numb. I couldn’t remember opening the gate to the lane or yard. I just stood on the screened-in porch and shook and cried. Mom and Dad were waiting up. They’d been worried. They thought I was crying because I’d been scared by the storm and I didn’t tell them any different. Besides, the more I calmed down, the more sure I was I hadn’t seen anything but tree limbs. People didn’t have four arms. Not even crazy men.