Bringing It to the Table (29 page)

 

 

T
HEY WALK SLOWLY up the street toward Mat’s, Hannah holding to the old man’s arm as if to be helped, but in reality helping him. And yet she knows that, by taking that arm so graciously bent at her service, she
is
being helped. She is sturdily accompanied by his knowledge, in which she knows that she is whole. In his gaze she feels herself to be not just physically but historically a woman, one among generations, bearing into mystery the dark seed. She feels herself completed by that as she could not be completed by the desire of a younger man. As they walk, she tells him such news as there is: how they all are, where they are working, what they have got done, what they have left to do. From time to time she stops, as if to give all her attention to her story, to allow
him a moment of rest. But she is glad to prolong the walk. She is moved by him, pleased to stand in his sight, whose final knowledge is womanly, who knows that all human labor passes into mystery, who has been faithful unto death to the life of his fields to no end that he will know in this world. As for Old Jack, he listens to the sound of her voice, strong and full of hope, knowing and near to joy, that pleases him and tells him what he wants to know. He nods and smiles, encouraging her to go on. Occasionally he praises her, in that tone of final judgment old age has given him. “You’re a fine woman. You’re all right,” he says. And his tone implies: Believe it of yourself forever.

They are crossing Mat’s yard now, and suddenly Old Jack can smell dinner. It is strong, and it stirs him. It changes his mind. He steps faster. He is leaving the world of his old age and entering a stronger, younger world. He is going into the very heart of that world where labor’s hunger is fed with its increase. That is the order that he knows, and knows only and finally: that complexity of returns between work and hunger.

They turn the corner of the house into sight of the back porch, and there are all the men just come in. Two washpans and two kettles of hot water have been brought out and set down. Little Margaret stands nearby, holding a towel. Lightning and Mat’s grandson, Andy Catlett, are washing at the edge of the porch, leaning over the pans. Mat is sitting in a willow rocking chair on the porch with Mattie on his lap. The others—Burley, Jarrat, Nathan, Elton—stand or squat in the yard beyond the porch, smoking, waiting their turns. Their shirts are wet with sweat. Their hands and the fronts of their clothes are dark with tobacco gum. They smell of sweat and tobacco and the earth of the field. In the stance of all of them there is relish of the stillness that comes after heavy labor. They have come to rest, and their stillness now, because of the long afternoon’s work yet ahead of them, is more intense, more deeply felt, more carefully enjoyed, than that which will come at the day’s end. Even Mat, who ordinarily would be carrying on some sort of play with Mattie,
is sitting still, his hands at rest on the chair arms. Mattie is leaning against his shoulder, nearly asleep. Only Burley is talking, though he keeps otherwise as carefully still as the others. He is directing a mixture of banter and praise at Lightning’s back. It is a bill of goods designed, as the rest of them well know, to keep Lightning on hand. Under the burden of such a stretch of hard work his customary bragging has given way to periods of sulkiness.

“Why, look at the
arm
on him,” Burley is saying. “Look at the
muscle
the fellow’s got. Damn, he can barely get his sleeve rolled up over it. No wonder I can’t stay with him.”

The others grin and wink. The fact is that, left to himself, Lightning is slow. But all week Burley has been working constantly at his heel, bragging on him, threatening to pass him, never quite doing it—and has succeeded in driving him almost up with Elton and Nathan, who are the best of them.

Lightning straightens from his washing and dries hands and face on the towel that Little Margaret holds out to him. He is doing his best to stay aloof from Burley’s talk, but it gets to him, and he touches lovingly the muscle of his right arm.

“He put it on me this morning, Uncle Jack,” Burley says, seeing the old man coming around the house. “I tried him, but I couldn’t shake him.”

“Go on and wash,” he says to Jarrat. “I got to finish my smoke.” He stands bent forward a little at the hips, hand on the small of his back. He seems to be hurting a little. He probably is, but he is playing on it too, parodying an aged and a beaten man. He looks afar, soliloquizing about his defeat. “Nawsir! Couldn’t handle him! Too few biscuits and too many years have done made the difference.”

“Ay Lord, he’s a good one!” Old Jack says, seeing the point. He knows where that Lightning would be if somebody was not crowding him all the time. Somewhere asleep. But he shakes his head in approbation of Burley’s praise. “He’s got the right look about him.”

“You’re right, old scout,” Burley says. “He’s the pride of Landing Branch, and no doubt about it. But I believe I smell a biscuit in the wind, and maybe a ham, and that may make a difference this afternoon. When I go back out there I aim to be properly fed. Oh, I may not get ahead of him, but I’ll be where he can hear me coming. Ham and biscuits!” he says. And he sings:

Lightning is at work now with a comb, putting the finishing touches to his wave and ducktail, a sculpture not destined to survive the next motion of his head. There is an arrogance in his eye and jaw and the line of his mouth, based not upon any excellence of his own but upon his contempt for excellence: If he is not the best man in the field, then he is nevertheless equal to the best man by the perfection of his scorn, for the best man and for the possibility that is incarnate in him. Old Jack studies Lightning’s face—he recognizes it; he has known other men who have worn it, too many—and then he grunts, “
Hunh!
” and looks away.

Jarrat and Elton finish washing and Burley and Nathan take their places. Hannah picks up Mattie, who has fallen asleep in Mat’s lap, and takes him in to his napping place on the parlor floor. Little Margaret has wandered off to play.

Now Mat gets up and he and Old Jack wash. When they have finished with the towel, Mat hangs it on the back of the rocking chair.

“Let’s go eat it,” he says. He holds open the kitchen door and they file in past him, Old Jack first and the others following. There is a general exchange of greetings between the men and the three women.

Old Jack takes his place at the head of the table. “Sit down, boys,” he says, and they pull out their chairs and sit down. Mat is at the foot of the table. At the sides, to Old Jack’s right, are Elton and Lightning and Andy
and, to his left, Burley and Nathan and Jarrat. They pass various loaded platters and bowls, filling their plates.

They fall silent now, eating with the concentration of hunger. The women keep the dishes moving around the table as necessary and keep the glasses filled with iced tea.

“Lay it away, boys,” Old Jack says. “It’s fine and there’s plenty of it.”

Following his lead, the others praise the food, the ones whose wives have cooked being careful to praise the cooking of the other women.

In the presence of that hunger and that eager filling, Old Jack eats well himself. But his thoughts go to the other men, and he watches them. He watches the older ones—Mat and Jarrat and Burley—sensing their weariness and their will to endure, troubling about them and admiring them. He watches the five proven men, whom he loves with the satisfaction of thorough knowledge and long trust, praising and blessing them in his mind. He watches them with pleasure so keen it is almost pain.

And he watches the boy, Andy, whom he loves out of kinship and because he is not afraid of work and because of his good, promising mind, but with uneasiness also because he has so little meat on his bones and has a lot to go through, a lot to make up his mind about.

And he watches Lightning, whom he does not love. That one, he thinks, will be hard put to be worth what he will eat. For he is one who believes in a way out. As long as he has two choices, or thinks he has, he will never do his best or think of the possibility of the best.

Old Jack shakes his head. “See that that Andy gets plenty to eat,” he tells Mat.

“Don’t you worry. I’m going to take care of this boy,” Mat says. And he gives Andy a squeeze and a pat on the shoulder.

“We going to miss old Andy when he’s gone,” Burley says.

The edge is off their hunger now, and they give attention to Andy, for whom this is the summer’s last workday. Tomorrow he will be leaving to begin his first year of college.

“We’ll be looking around here for the old boy,” Burley says, “and he’ll done be gone. They’ll say, ‘Where’s the old long boy that could load the wagon so good? Where’s that one that used to house the top tiers?’ And we’ll say, ‘Old Andy ain’t here no more. He’s up there to the university, studying his books.’”

“Studying the girls,” Nathan says, grinning and winking at Hannah.

“He’ll be all right with the girls if he wants to be,” Hannah says. “I’m a better judge of that than you.”

“You do all right with Kirby, don’t you, Andy, hon?” Mary Penn says.

“Yeah, if old Kirby’s going to have any say-so, he
better
keep his mind on his books while he’s up there,” Burley says. “He don’t, she’ll kick over the beehive, I expect.”

“You keep your mind on your books anyhow, Andy,” Jarrat says, looking gravely across the table at the boy, his gaze ponderous and straight under thick brows. “Mind your books, and amount to something.”

“Andy,” Elton says, “you’ll get full of book learning and fine ways up there, and you won’t have any more time for us here at all.”

Andy, who has been grinning at this commentary on his departure, now flushes with embarrassment. “Yes I will,” he says, though he knows the inadequacy of such an avowal. The faith that Elton has called for, though he spoke in jest, will have to be proved.

They all know it. Andy has not yet chosen among his choices.

And then Mat says, “Well, he’s learned some things here with us that he couldn’t have learned in a school. A lot of his teachers there won’t know them. And if he’s the boy I think he is, he won’t forget them.”

“Yessir!” Old Jack says. “By God, that’s right!”

Now all the plates are empty. The women gather them and stack them by the sink. They replace them with dishes of blackberry cobbler, still warm from the oven, covered with cold whipped cream.

“You all can thank Andy for this,” Hannah says. “I made it for him because it’s his favorite.”

“
Thank
him!” Nathan says. “I’m mad as hell about it. When are you going to fix me something because it’s
my
favorite?”

Hannah grins. “Your time is coming,” she says, “
junior
.”

The others laugh. The iced tea glasses are filled again. They take their time over the cobbler, talking idly now of the past, of other crops.

The afternoon’s work is near them, not to be put off much longer. Old Jack can feel it around him in the air, that dread of the heat and heaviness of the afternoon that even the strongest and the best man will suffer. But not for him anymore the going back to the field. No more for him the breaking sweat under the sun’s blaze, the delight of skill and strength, and the pride.