Home from the Hill (43 page)

The man had fallen back upon his face, and suddenly, even in that waning light, Theron saw the last movement of the body, a tremor as it settled to the ground. In the crescendo of silence he heard the snapping of twigs and the sighing of leaves as the body settled among them, and it was as if these were sounds of relaxation and surrender made by the man himself as he died. Faster than the failure of the light, Theron's vision darkened; the body grew dark. He began to walk towards it. Yet it seemed to fade, seemed to grow darker instead of lighter as he neared. Then he realized—and stopped again, breathless—that the man's clothes were darkening from the stain of released and rapidly spreading blood. He drew near, stood looking down, and he could feel, like a mist hovering above the body, the warmth of its life departing into the air. He bent and grasped one warm, wet, outflung arm. But already the back of the head, the shape of the ears, the stoop of the shoulders told him who it was. Still holding the arm, which seemed to cool perceptibly, he listened for a moment; the woods had resumed their lively silence, their ancient indifference to men. He turned the body over.

There had been just time, as he felt the pain in his aching heart eased forever, for Mr. Halstead to smile.

Deputy Sheriff Bud Stovall was new to his job then, and eager. “Well?” he said. “What are we waiting for?”

The evidence had been examined. The men of the posse had stood over the body looking down at that triumphant smile and at those eyes which did not close against the glare of the flashlights nor blink the raindrops that fell upon them, but stared past them, fastened upon the dark infinity above their heads. They had seen the raindrops dance upon the two well-oiled, fine shotguns. Now they stood shining their lights down the single line of tracks that led from the body deeper into the woods.

Slowly the great beam of light faded, dwindled, as one by one the men turned away, until only the Deputy Sheriff's light was left shining down the path, which, shortly beyond, was lost in the darkness and drizzle.

“Well?” said Bud.

Pritchard laid a hand on his arm and said softly, “You'll never find him in there if he don't want to be found. Only one man could have done it. Now he's the best woodsman of all.”

The Sheriff sighed. “The body,” he said, in his official tone, “could not be recovered.”

“Body?” said Bud. “Body? He ain't got no gun. Don't you see them footprints? Body? What makes you think—”

Nobody said a word.

Bud turned about, his slicker crackling. “But, men,” he said, “we got to do something. Can't we get dogs, bloodhounds?” But he knew, for he was just off the farm himself then, that soon, if not already, the rain would have washed away all scent from the ground, by morning would have washed away the tracks themselves. His voice sank to a horrified whisper. “We can't just leave him in there to—”

“You mean,” said the Sheriff firmly, “that we could not recover the body.”

There was silence for a moment, then Bud said, “How long do you think he can—”

“Will you shut up!” the Sheriff hissed.

Then the Deputy Sheriff slowly lowered his flashlight. One by one, as the beam retracted, the footprints fell away into darkness. “Yeah,” he said, and his voice came shuddering out of the darkness, punctuated by the patter of rain upon his slicker, “the body could not be recovered.”

A Biography of William Humphrey

William Humphrey (1924–1997) was an American author and a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 1959 for his classic book
Home from the Hill
, which told the story of a small-town family in rural Texas. Indeed, themes of family life, hardship, and rural struggle are the defining characteristics of his writing, appearing in all thirteen of his works.

Humphrey was born on June 18 in Clarksville, Texas, to Clarence and Nell Humphrey. Nestled in the heart of Red River County, Clarksville in the early 1920s resembled the Old South more than the Texan West. It is from this time and place that Humphrey drew inspiration for much of his writing career. Daily life in rural, isolated Clarksville was built around cotton farming and was emotionally and physically taxing. Neither of Humphrey's parents attended school beyond the third grade, and the family moved frequently during his childhood: fifteen times in five years. His father, an alcoholic, hunted in the snake-infested swamplands of the Sulphur River to help feed his wife and son. Although Clarence was a difficult and quick-tempered man, Humphrey cared deeply for him, and his love for his father had a profound impact on his writing.

As the Great Depression progressed into the 1930s, so did the strain on the Humphreys' already-precarious finances. Clarence worked as a shade-tree mechanic, yet was too poor to buy a car of his own. He would test-drive the cars he fixed as fast as they could go, taking them screaming down the back roads of Red River County.

In 1937 Clarence was killed in an auto accident. Humphrey was just thirteen at the time. Much later, in his memoir
Farther Off From Heaven
(1977), Humphrey commented on this period, which was to be the end of his childhood: “What my new life would be like I could only guess at, but I knew it would be totally different from the one that was ending, and that a totally different person from the one I had been would be needed to survive in it.” Soon after his father's death, Humphrey and his mother moved to Dallas to live with relatives. He did not return to Clarksville for thirty-two years.

Humphrey exceled in school and was able to attend an art academy in Dallas on a scholarship. At the onset of the Second World War, Humphrey attempted to join the navy but was rejected for being color blind. Having seriously considered being an artist up to this point, Humphrey decided to focus on his writing instead. He attended the University of Texas and the Southern Methodist University for short spells during the early 1940s but did not graduate from either college. In 1944 he left SMU in his final semester and headed briefly to Chicago and then went on to live in New York City's Greenwich Village.

In 1949 Humphrey published his first short story, “The Hardys,” in the
Sewanee Review.
He was so excited to receive the letter of acceptance that he tripped and fell as he was running up the steps to his house to share the news with his wife, the painter Dorothy Cantine, and broke his ankle. On the strength of that story, Humphrey was hired to teach creative writing and English literature at Bard College. Starting around this time, renowned writer Katherine Anne Porter, Humphrey's contemporary and a fellow Texan, became a close friend and a firm supporter of his work, and remained so for many years.

The 1950s were a period of prosperity for Humphrey, who continued to publish stories in magazines like the
New Yorker
and
Harper's Bazaar.
These works drew on Humphrey's childhood in the Texan scrub, and many were collected in
The Last Husband and Other Stories
(1953). During this early stage of his career, Humphrey also formed a lifelong friendship with the poet Theodore Weiss and mentored playwright and author Sherman Yellen.

In 1957 Humphrey's debut novel,
Home from the Hill
, rocketed him into modern conversation and defined him as an author. Previously regarded as a Western writer due to his Texan roots and their resonance in his work, Humphrey now became firmly grounded in the Southern literary tradition. Comparisons to Faulkner were constant throughout his life and long after his death.

Home from the Hill
was an instant success and was made into a motion picture in 1960 starring Robert Mitchum.
Variety
reported that the film rights sold to MGM for $750,000, to which Humphrey humorously responded, “Unfortunately, they had one zero too many.” Still, it was enough money for Humphrey and his wife to travel extensively in Europe, moving to England in 1958 and later to Italy. Humphrey also used this time to focus on one of his greatest passions: fly-fishing.

In 1963 Humphrey returned to the United States and over the next few years partially returned to the world of academia, taking up short-term positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, Smith College, and Washington and Lee University. But he continued to publish short stories and essays in major magazines such as
Esquire
,
Sports Illustrated
, and the
Atlantic Monthly
and in 1964 was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Short Story for his work “The Ballad of Jesse Neighbors.” In 1965 Humphrey bought an apple farm in Hudson, New York. Though he would travel extensively in the coming years, the apple farm was to be his home for the rest of his life.

During the same year, Humphrey published his second novel,
The Ordways
, which received extremely strong critical reviews and was compared to the writings of Mark Twain. A second collection of short stories,
A Time and a Place
, was published in 1968, and two essays
, The Spawning Run
and
My Moby Dick
, which first appeared in
Esquire
and
Sports Illustrated
, respectively, were eventually expanded and published as short books.

Over the next few years, Humphrey continued to publish with discipline, writing books that incorporated his signature microcosmically expressed theme of family values. These included
Proud Flesh
(1973),
Hostages to Fortune
(1984),
The Collected Stories of William Humphrey
(1985), and
Open Season
(1986). His last novel,
No Resting Place
(1989), was based on the forced removal of the Cherokee nation along the Trail of Tears and was heralded by the
Los Angeles Times
as “a novel every American should be required to read.”

Humphrey's final collection of short stories,
September Song
(1992), conveyed his mounting sense of frustration at his declining health. By his seventieth birthday, Humphrey had undergone treatment for skin cancer and was hard of hearing. Diagnosed with cancer of the larynx, he died on August 20, 1997, at his home in Hudson. He was seventy-three years old.

William Humphrey in the 1960s, shortly after returning to the United States.

The author in Alsace, France. The image was taken in 1965, the year
The Ordways
was published. Two years prior, the manuscript almost disappeared when Humphrey accidentally left it aboard an express train from Rome to Milan. He added a prefatory note in the published edition thanking “Capostazione Michele Fortino of the Stazione Terminal in Rome” for his efforts in recovering the manuscript.

By the 1970s Humphrey was well established within contemporary literature.