Nickel Mountain (35 page)

“I tell Walt it don't much matter where he lays,” the woman said, “his soul's in Glory.” She stood sideways to Henry, her big-knuckled hands folded two inches or so below her chin, and she spoke out of the side of her mouth, her eyes fixed, as if intently, on the ground.

“Mmm,” Henry said, nodding, thinking about it.

The old man waved at her as if to hit her. “Oh, shut up,” he said. Then, to Henry: “She's crazy. Always has been.”

“Walt don't believe in God,” the old woman said. She smiled, sly, still looking at the ground.

Jimmy leaned forward to look around Henry at the grave-diggers. Henry put his hand on the boy's head, glad to have an excuse to make no comment.

“He's dead and rotten,” the old man said. He jerked his arm, with his cane dangling from the end of it, in the general direction of the grave. Again, however incongruously, he had the look of a hell-fire preacher. He said, “Now, you shut up.”

Henry cleared his throat, preparing to leave. “Well—” he said. He glanced over at the grave-diggers. One of the two men was down in the hole, throwing the dirt up—all you could see of him now was his hat. The other man stood at one corner, poking with a crowbar. Beyond them the hillside sloped away in sunlight and shadow, from thick glossy headstones to the taller, narrower markers over in the older section, past the statue of the Kunzmuller girl and the Kendall crypt with pine trees around it, and down to the creek, where the woods began. The shadow of a crow swept over the grass and out of sight in the trees, incredibly swift. Jimmy left Henry's side now and walked a few feet toward the grave. He stood with his hands behind his back and watched.

“Fine boy you got there,” the old man yelled.

“Yes, he is,” Henry said, grinning.

“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” the old woman said. She separated her hands for a minute, and the fingers shook.

Henry rubbed his nose and said nothing.

“She's crazy,” the old man said.

“I believe in the resurrected Lord,” she said.

Henry looked away, over in the direction of the old people's car. It was an old green Hudson, as big and square as a truck. It had a stubborn look, a kind of solid inflexibility that was vaguely impressive. He wondered how people as old as they were could get it to go around corners. He said, “I guess we'd better be getting on home.” He took a step toward Jimmy, but the old man raised his arm.

“My boy,” he said, then hesitated a moment, “—was fourteen.”

“It's a shame,” Henry said—the only thing he could think of to say, since any of the usual things one said might set the old man off. He looked at the ground, embarrassed, shaking his head and vaguely reaching for his cap.

“Just fourteen years old,” the old man said. He raised his arms again. “I loved that boy—” Again he hesitated, hunting for words, or maybe hunting for some lost emotion, but whatever he was after it wouldn't come and he dropped his arm and said, “Hmph.” The old woman was weeping. The old man patted her arm, but absently, staring past her, still hunting.

“We kept his room just like it was,” the old woman said. She nodded as if someone else had said it, and rubbed her eyes with her coatsleeve, her fingers shaking.

The old man nodded too. “But then we moved.”

“Life goes on,” Henry said sadly, and the words filled him with a pleasant sense of grief. He thought of his own approaching death, how Callie and Jimmy would be heartbroken for a while, as he'd been heartbroken when his father died, but would after a while forget a little, turn back to the world of the living, as was right. And if it were Callie that died? or Jimmy? The question startled him, as if someone standing behind him had asked it, and instantly he put it from his mind. He glanced a little nervously at Jimmy, who'd moved closer to watch the digging.

“You never forget,” the old man said.

“Never!” the old woman said sharply, suddenly meeting Henry's eyes. “When we meet him in Glory—”

The old man said, “Shut up.”

For a full minute nobody spoke, there was only the rhythmical scrape of the shovel and the thump of the dirt as it fell beside the grave. Far away there was a tractor plowing for winter wheat. The motor would dig in for a minute, then whir a second while the man slipped the clutch in, and then the motor would dig in again. It reminded him of something, vaguely.

“Love—” Henry began at last, philosophically, but he couldn't think how to finish. The old man was still patting the old woman's arm, and, noticing it, Henry Soames half-frowned, thinking something more that he couldn't quite get hold of. Tears were still running down the cracks in her face, and her hands were clenched together.

One of the grave-diggers said, “There she is.” He said it as if to himself, but they all heard it, and the old man jumped, as if frightened, and touched his hat. A limp burdock leaf slipped down farther over one ear and he slapped at it, not knowing what it was. The old woman rolled her eyes toward the grave, her eyelids batting, and turned very slowly, reaching out for her husband's arm with one hand, tugging up the front of her coat with the other, her black mouth open. After a second Henry went to her other side to help her over the grass. Jimmy was right at the edge of the grave now, on hands and knees, looking down.

“You keep back, Jimmy,” Henry called, but Jimmy pretended not to hear, and Henry let it go. They inched over the grass, the two old people bent forward stiffly, clinging to each other, both their mouths open now, sucking in air. The old man's head was shaking as the woman's hands had before, and at every step he ran his tongue over his lower lip. He leaned heavily on his cane, and the cane's rubber tip pushed down in the ground, interfering with the progress he couldn't have made without it. When they were within five or six feet of the place, the man with the crowbar said, “We've hit the box. She'll still be a while yet.” They stopped, and the old man stood leaning on his cane with both hands, breathing hard and rolling his head.

“You ought to sit down,” the old woman said.

He looked at her angrily but said nothing, still laboring for breath.

The old woman said, “We ought to left him lay.”

“A family should keep together,” the old man said. As soon as the words were out, a coughing fit came over him. Henry watched helplessly, the old woman leaning on his arm.

“Our Bobby was struck by lightning,” the old woman said, meeting Henry's eyes again. “It was God's hand.”

The old man was furious, but he went on coughing.

“I believe in the resurrected Lord,” the old woman said again now, taking advantage of her husband's inability to speak. “Walt don't believe.” She smiled. Then she said: “He was only fourteen.”

“He's dead and rotten,” the old man yelled, “it's the Law of Nature! Consider the lilies—” He coughed again, a thick, racking cough that threatened to turn him inside out.

“God forgive this poor sinner,” the old woman said, grim, and the old man swung his cane at her but missed and jabbed it back in the ground just in time, thrown off balance.

“Here now,” Henry said. He glanced over at Jimmy but he hadn't seen it, he was still looking down in the hole. He was lying on the ground now, his trousers low and his skin very white between his belt and the bottom of his T-shirt.

“Our only child,” the old woman said, and all at once she was crying again. The old man reached out toward her and made a patting motion in the air. She said, “But we've never forgot him.”

“Never!” the old man said.

She pressed her lips tight together, weeping, and the old man struggled painfully to her side, swearing at the cane as he came. They stood there leaning on each other, and Henry, free to move now, went over to stand beside where Jimmy lay at the head of the grave. Most of the top of the box was clear, and they'd dug out a two-inch slit of dirt around the sides to about halfway down the walls. The man down in the hole looked up at the man on top and nodded, and the man on top went over to the truck. He ground on the starter and got the truck going and backed it around to the side of the grave, and they unhooked the chains hanging down from the winch and lowered them into the hole. There was a rod that went between the two chain ends, just above the hooks, so when the hooks were clamped to the ends of the box the loops at each end of the rod held them tight, like tongs. When the man down in the hole had the rig on and the man on top had the winch turned so the chain was taut, the man below climbed out, helping himself up with the chain. Henry moved back a little, drawing Jimmy up on his knees and back with him.

The old woman said as if angrily, “We kept his room just like it was the day he died.”

“But we had to move,” the old man said. “The farm was played out, and I had to get some kind of work, so we moved to Rochester.”

“We had relatives there,” the old woman said.

The winch creaked, beginning to turn, and Jimmy kneeled with his hands on his knees, in the shadow of Henry's leg. The chains pulled tighter and the rear end of the truck went down a little, and one of the grave-diggers wet his lips and shouted something and the other one laughed and nodded. Then the box came out with a sucking sound and tilted, free of the grave sides now, threatening to roll sideways and spill the dead boy out, but it righted and kept coming till it hung a little above the level of Henry Soames' belt. The taller of the grave-diggers, the red-headed one, went around front and moved the truck a few feet forward, and when he came back they swung the box into the truckbed. The old man waved his arm. “Well, there it is,” he said. He was excited and pleased, as if he'd managed the whole thing himself. “See how easy they done it, Hessie?”

“Praise the Lord,” she said, weeping. Immediately the old man scowled and flapped his arm at her, waving her off.

The men slid the long, dirt-caked box to the front of the truckbed and chained it in place and got down and went back to their shovels. They began filling the grave. The two old people went over, very slowly, to look at the box.

Jimmy said, “Is there a dead man inside?”

Henry nodded.

The old man was patting the side of the truck. “I loved that boy more—” he began, but he seemed to lose track.

“Can we see him?” Jimmy said.

Henry shook his head.

“Are
they
going to see him?”

“I don't know.”

The old woman was crying, wringing her hands. “We've always loved you, Bobby.”

The old man said, confused, “Shut up.” Then, finally, as if with relief, he too was crying. He began to pat the old woman's arm.

Suddenly Jimmy laughed. “They're funny,” he said.

Henry turned to look at him, frowning anxiously, and said quickly, “No they're not, Jimmy. When you grow up—”

The grave-digger with the red hair said, with a look of disgust, “Just pitiful, sonny.” He hardly glanced up as he said it.

“That's not true,” Henry said. He chewed his lip and stopped himself from saying more.

The grave-digger smiled to himself, wry, but Henry pretended not to see.

They went back to the tombstone near the front fender of the old peoples' car, where Henry had left the rifle and the canvas bag that held the rabbit. It was after noon and Callie would be worried.
I lost track of the time,
he thought.
I'm
sorry.

“Please, why can't I see?” Jimmy said.

“No,” Henry said. “I already told you once.”

“You never let me see anything.” A whine this time.

The old people were crossing the grass again, leaning on each other, as always, seeming to make no progress.

“You don't like me,” Jimmy said. He started to cry.

Henry clenched his jaws; but looking at the boy's face, seeing beyond any possible doubt that however trivial the cause, however ridiculous the words, the child's grief was perfectly real, the injustice terrible and never-to-be-forgotten, he bent down to him and said, “Now listen, Jimmy. I love you and you know it. Now quit that crying.”

“Well
I
don't love
you,”
Jimmy said, not looking at him, seeing what would happen.

Henry smiled sadly, reaching out to touch Jimmy's shoulder. “Poor dreamer,” he said.

He was tired and it was a long way back. He thought how good it would be to lie down, only for a little while, and rest.

A Biography of John Gardner

John Gardner (1933–1982) was a bestselling and award-winning novelist and essayist, and one of the twentieth century's most controversial literary authors. Gardner produced more than thirty works of fiction and nonfiction, consisting of novels, children's stories, literary criticism, and a book of poetry. His books, which include the celebrated novels
Grendel
,
The Sunlight Dialogues
, and
October Light
, are noted for their intellectual depth and penetrating insight into human nature.

Gardner was born in Batavia, New York. His father, a preacher and dairy farmer, and mother, an English teacher, both possessed a love of literature and often recited Shakespeare during his childhood. When he was eleven years old, Gardner was involved in a tractor accident that resulted in the death of his younger brother, Gilbert. He carried the guilt from this accident with him for the rest of his life, and would incorporate this theme into a number of his works, among them the short story “Redemption” (1977). After graduating from high school, Gardner earned his undergraduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis, and he married his first wife, Joan Louise Patterson, in 1953. He earned his Master's and Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa in 1958, after which he entered into a career in academia that would last for the remainder of his life, including a period at Chico State College, where he taught writing to a young Raymond Carver.