I
We were on our way to see Uncle Nathe Ponder buried. Serena was as
happy as she could be with decency, considering our solemn destination.
She had not been away from home for several months, and her joyous
reaction could be suppressed only intermittently. But, at any time, her
laughter was pleasantly low of key, as if she were softly trying it out
before subjecting you to the full flow that never came.
And Serena was infectious. I had set out with my mind meditatively
intrenched on the going down of men into the grave; the passing of
man himself, of earth, of suns, of systems, with no full-grown hope
of any immortal salvage; but Serena, pulsingly aware in a significant
world, soon restored me to stature as a member of a community bent on
giving due honor to one whose days among them had been spent with the
vividness that amounts to virtue among a people who look to life for
their drama instead of the stage and the morning papers.
We had left home early because of Len’s prediction that we should have
to walk after reaching Red Hog Gap, the entrance to Silver Valley. “But
we’ll be in two miles o’ the graveyard then,” he said, “an’ can pick
it up in no time.” Uncle Nathe’s farm lay in Silver Valley township
only four miles, by crow’s wing, northwest of mine, but the descent
over cliffs and crags was hazardous, and we had set off in exactly
the opposite direction, walking the two miles down to Beebread, where
Arnold Weaver was waiting on the new highway with his car--the first
automobile to become a local pride in our part of the mountains. We
soon sailed over the few miles of highway and reached Scatter, the
next railroad-station below Beebread, where we turned into the narrow
mountain road leading to Uncle Nathe’s country. Here we began to come
upon people who were walking to the funeral, and it was here that our
car, through Len’s cordiality, became so firmly packed. He extended
invitations until the seats, the floor, and the running-boards would
hold no more. “You’re payin’ fer the whole car,” he said, “an’ might as
well git yer money’s worth.”
We were bouncing heavily along over the rutty road when ahead of us we
saw a young man whose brisk step was certainly not of the highlands.
There were various unsuccessful conjectures as to his identity,
and suddenly Len called out: “Hey, Arn, stop yer shooter! It’s Ann
Lindsay’s boy!”
“He’d have to set ’tween yer big toe an’ the long un,” said Arn. “I
ain’t goin’ to stop no more.”
“But he’s come all the way from C’lumby to be at Uncle Nathe’s buryin’.”
“He didn’t walk only from Scatter.”
“I’ll jump out an’ let him set in my place.”
“You ain’t got any place. You’re settin’ on the tip aidge o’ nothin’.”
But Arn stopped the car. “Here, Bake,” said Len, “I’m gittin’ out, an’
you hop in. Reckon you know me?”
“Len Merlin!” cried the stranger. “You caught that fox yet?”
“No, he’s waitin’ fer ye.”
“Can’t get him this trip. Got to hurry back. Go on, Arn, with your
baggage. I’m walking to rest myself. Been on the train since last
night. I’ll see you all over the hill.”
His refusal of the “seat” was positive, and we moved on, but not
far. We were climbing the hill leading to Red Hog Gap, and Lea’s
prediction came true. The car refused to take the last lap over the
hill, though we gave it an opportunity to do its best, by dropping out
and scattering as readily as overripe plums from a suddenly shaken
bough. With good cheer we began our walk to the graveyard. When nearly
there we were overtaken by Bake Lindsay, and Len picked up their broken
conversation.
“What yer hurryin’ to git back fer? You ain’t been in sence when?”
“Not since I was married,” said Lindsay, “and that’s five years. I
started soon as I heard about Uncle Nathe.”
“Is he really a nephew of Mr. Ponder?” I asked of the woman walking
nearest to me, for with the whole country calling him “uncle,” the
blood-kin were left without distinction.
“No, he ain’t no nephew,” she said, in a tone that I had learned to
recognize as a shut trail in Unakasia. The story was not for me, an
outsider. Even Len and Serena had turned a gently impassive front to my
very reasonable interest in Uncle Nathe’s family history. But Serena
now stepped up and said intimately: “Jest wait, Mis’ Dolly. We’ll go
to dinner with Aunt Lizy Haynes. Uncle Nathe’s half-brother, Ranz, is
stayin’ there, an’ he’s shore to let loose after the buryin’. When
Uncle Ranz lets loose it’s something else, I’m tryin’ to tell ye. They
won’t be any more questions to ast when he gits through.” Then she
moved over to Bake. “It’s fine, yore comin’ in, Bake,” she said.
“Of course I wanted to be at the funeral, but,” he explained honestly,
“I’ve come mainly to get mother.”
“She goin’ back with you?” cried half a dozen voices.
“She’s promised to. I’ve been trying to get her to come out to me and
Jenny ever since we’ve been married.” Then his voice seemed to struggle
a little. “Before we tied up, Jenny gave me her word that she’d be good
to mother, and I know she’ll keep it.”
“You got any young-uns?” asked Len, and Bake said he had a little boy.
They had named him Nathan.
“That tickled Uncle Nathe, I reckon,” said the woman who had answered
me the moment before. Then she hastened to cover her indiscretion.
“’Course y’all have been on his place a long time, an’ he’s been mighty
good to ye.”
“He’s been good to ever’body,” said another.
“I reckon he has,” said Bake, and we entered the graveyard.
It was to be a Masonic funeral. Uncle Nathe’s popularity would have
drawn a large attendance, but the presence of the Fraternity made the
occasion an event in Silver Valley’s history. Nathan Ponder had been
the only Freemason in his township, a member of the distant lodge in
Carson, and for years he had not been in active attendance there,
but he had left a request to be buried by the brethren, and they had
gallantly responded.
“That’s Elmer Jenkins,” whispered Serena of a man who was prominent in
the ceremony. “He’s a lawyer, come up from South C’liny ’bout a year
ago, ’count of his wife’s health, an’ settled in Carson.”
“Looks like,” said another voice, “that they could ’a’ got along ’thout
a furriner to tell ’em what to do.”
“He’s high up in the lodge,” said Uncle Ranz Ponder, the half-brother
of Uncle Nathe, “an’ he seems mighty frien’ly.”
The old and impressive service was solemnly conducted to the end, and
there was a general breaking-up, amid a conflict of invitations for
everybody to go home with everybody else for dinner.
“We’ll go with Aunt Lizy,” said Serena. “They’s a lot been astin’ me,
but they ain’t none of ’em pulled the buttons off my clo’s tryin’ to
take me with ’em, an’ I know we’ll be full welcome at Aunt Lizy’s.
Uncle Ranz, he’s her cousin, he’ll be there, like I said.”
So Mrs. Haynes’s invitation was accepted. Serena and I were to stay
until the next day, but Len and the daughter, Lonie, were to return
that evening to look after the children, the cows, and the chickens.
The brethren who had come out from Carson returned to town, with the
exception of Lawyer Jenkins, who, probably, was thinking of profitable
affiliations with the remote but fertile valley. I observed him reading
the headstones around the new-made grave, and it seemed to me that he
was afflicted with a growing concern. He turned, with a question, to
the man nearest him, who happened to be Len.
“Am I to understand that our good brother was married four times?”
“You shore air,” said Len. “There lays four of as good wives as a man
ever had. Them tombstones don’t tell no lies. They’s all ’fore my time,
savin’ Aunt Lindy, his last ’un, but I’ve hearn enough to know what
they wuz.”
“But four? Isn’t it a little unusual?”
“Well, maybe it is, but Uncle Nathe wuzn’t no hand to set at home by
hissef.”
At that moment, to Len’s apparent relief, Aunt Lizy came up, and we
found that Mr. Jenkins also had accepted her invitation. He walked with
her husband, Uncle Dan’l Haynes, and I gathered from drifting fragments
of their conversation that Mr. Jenkins was still on the trail of Uncle
Nathe’s connubial history.
At the dinner-table he pleased all of the guests by introducing the
topic from which they were politely holding back. “I have been learning
from our kind host,” he said, eying with favor his selected piece of
fried chicken, “what this loss means to the community.”
“Yes,” some one responded, “it knocks all of us, losin’ Nathe does.”
“There is some property too, I believe. I trust there is harmony among
the heirs.”
“They’re all behavin’ fine,” said Aunt Lizy, with some heartiness.
“Our brother was married several times, I understand. Did--er--all of
his wives leave issue?”
“Young-uns? No, Aunt Lindy never had any, ner Lu Siler, but Callie had
a little feller that died--Rufe, they called him. An’ Ponnie, his fust
wife, left four, all livin’ yit. They git along together fust-rate.”
“I wonder what Ponnie would ’a’ said,” reflected Uncle Dan’l, “ef
somebody had told her Nathe wouldn’t be buried alongside o’ her.”
“Well,” said Uncle Ranz, “I’d ruther not hear what Ponnie would ’a’
said.”
“I say it ought to ’a’ been Lindy he wuz laid by,” asserted Aunt Lizy.
“She lived with him the longest an’ worked the hardest.”
“She didn’t think a grain more o’ him than Lu Siler did,” returned
Uncle Dan’l.
“Our brother expressed no preference?” inquired Mr. Jenkins.
“You mean which un did he want to lay ’longside of? No, he wuzn’t a man
to put one wife ’fore another. He left that to us.”
“Very thoughtful, I take it,” said the lawyer. “A strong character
certainly. I am sorry I never knew him.” And he mused a little on the
bed-rock qualities of the old mountaineer.
“We meant,” explained Uncle Dan’l, “to lay Nathe by his fust wife,
Ponnie, but when we dug down there we struck a rock that would ’a’
had to be blasted out, an’ we’s afeard it would shake up the graves.
We couldn’t lay him t’other side o’ her, ’cause her two childern wuz
there, an’ then come Lindy, his last wife, so we decided to dig jest
beyant Lindy. But about four feet down we come to water that turned
ever’thing inter mud--it wuz that spring, I reckon, that sinks inter
the ground above the graveyard--an’ we had to go to the upper row where
Callie an’ little Rufe an’ Lu wuz layin’. We couldn’t put him by Lu,
’cause she wuz in the aidge o’ the Ponder lot, right next to Randy
Hayes in Bill Hayes’s lot, an’ it jest had to be Callie er nothin’.”
Comments followed, various and spirited, with citations of other
instances, historic and contemporary, and the dinner was over. Mr.
Jenkins regretted that he must leave us. He was urged to stay, in the
politest highland manner, but when the door had closed behind the
respected “furriner,” the immediate relaxation in the air showed that
the hour of restraint had been heroically prolonged.
“Harmony!” exclaimed Aunt Lizy. “An’ there’s Angie Sue claimin’
ever’thing her daddy had. There won’t be a scrap left when they all git
through fightin’.”
The general glance slanted toward me, and I began to think that I ought
to have disappeared with Mr. Jenkins, though the fact that I was under
Serena’s native wing had done much to vouch for me.
“I don’t reckon Bake Lindsay’ll mix up in anything,” said Pole Andrews,
with an eye carefully diverted. “I seen he wuz at the buryin’.”
“Wonder what he’s back here fer?” said another, equally disinterested.
“He’s come to git his mother,” Serena easily announced.
“Ann!” came from several voices.
“That’s what he said. You heard him, Mis’ Dolly.”
She turned to me with careless confidence, and I responded with an
uncritical smile that embraced the company.
“Oh, yes! He has come in for his mother. She is going to live with him
and Jenny.”
I knew everything then! There was a stir of abandon, and an eager voice
asked: “You don’t think that Bake can tech any o’ the property, do you?”
“’Course he kain’t,” said Aunt Lizy, before I could recover from the
direct appeal. “Anybody knows that.”
“You are right, Mrs. Haynes,” said I, now clothed in authority. “He is
not entitled to a single thing. Though, of course, I’ve never heard the
whole story. I’ve been wishing some of you would tell me everything
just as it happened.”
“Ranz there’ll tell ye,” said Aunt Lizy. “He thinks his tongue’s got a
mortgage on ever’thing abody could say about Nathe Ponder.”
“Ef I’ve got sech a mortgage, Lizy, you’re always scrappin’ to git yer
name on it.” Then he turned to me. “If I tell it, I’ll have to start at
the fust of it. I never could hit the middle an’ go on.”
“All right, Uncle Ranz,” said one of the younger men. “That’s what we
want. I reckon this is the last time we’ll all corcus over Uncle Nathe.”
“Y’all keep Lizy from pesterin’ me then, an’ turn that feist out, some
o’ ye.”