Spencer's Mountain (15 page)

“I do too,” he insisted.

“It means she's going to have another baby. I find that most interesting, don't you?”

Secretly Clay-Boy found it appalling because Mrs. Wirt Hazeltine already had more children than she could take care of, but he hesitated to tell Claris he found it much less fascinating than she did.

“It would seem to me that you would observe such things,” she teased.

“I guess I just don't pay enough attention,” he said.

“I imagine one day you will try to make me gravid,” she observed casually.

He looked at her in amazement and now he knew what it was that made them different this year from what they had been last summer.

“But of course I won't let you until we are married,” she declared.

He stuttered something but it didn't make sense. He hated her because he could never find a reply for her bolder statements.

“You're crazy about me,” she said. “Aren't you?”

“You're the one that's crazy,” he said.

“Could I have my books, please?” she said and held out her arms. One by one he gave her the books to prolong their parting.

“Some day I'll give a party,” said Claris with sudden gentleness. “I'll have lemon ice cream and lots of people. You'll come.”

“Thank you,” he said, and placed the last of the books in her arms.

“You're crazy,” she said, and then she was gone into the house and Clay-Boy was alone and miserable, bewildered and in love.

The living room was silent. Once in a while a sigh would come from upstairs when one of the children murmured a soft sleepy word. The only sound that came with any regularity was the steady ticking of the clock in the kitchen which showed that the time was five minutes to eleven.

Clay-Boy was reading a book he had brought home from the library and Olivia was holding a two-day-old copy of the Charlottesville
Citizen
in front of her but she was nodding so with sleep that she hardly saw the words.

Clay-Boy looked up from his book and called quietly to his mother.

Olivia opened her eyes and was wide awake in an instant.

“Why don't you go on to bed?” he said. “I'll wait up till Daddy gets here.”

“I sure would like to,” she said. “I'm so tired I can't see straight.”

“Go on to bed,” urged Clay-Boy.

“No,” said Olivia, “If your daddy has gone off and spent his paycheck in sin and whiskey he's goen to have to answer to me for it when he walks in that door.”

“Maybe he had to work late, Mama,” said Clay-Boy.

“If he had to work late that's all the more reason for me to be up. I'll make him some supper so he won't go to bed hungry.”

Clay-Boy returned to his book and Olivia resumed her pointless perusal of the daily
Citizen
. At a quarter to twelve they heard footsteps sound faintly down the road. Clay-Boy laid aside his book and Olivia dropped her newspaper as the footsteps left the road, came up the front walk onto the porch. The door handle turned and Clay walked in.

Something had happened that had made him proud and cocky.

“Boy,” Clay said, grinning at the two of them, “when you get married get yourself a woman like your mama. That woman loves me so much she'd sit up till the rooster crowed if I wasn't home.”

“Where've you been, you old fool?” asked Olivia, trying to pretend that she was angry.

“I been off to Charlottesville loven them city gals,” replied Clay. “Where'd you 'spect me to be on payday night?”

“I thought probably you were down there at The Pool Hall drinken and gamblen.”

“Thinken it over, boy,” he said to Clay-Boy, “don't get married at all if you can help it. Women have got a suspicious nature and they're pesky to live with. Get up there, woman, and round me up some supper. I'm hungrier than a bear in the springtime.”

Clay-Boy followed his mother and father into the kitchen. Olivia was still trying to pretend that she was angry because it was midnight and Clay was just getting home, but she was pleased that he had not been drinking and this time when she demanded to know where he had spent the evening she was not so much angry as curious.

“Woman,” he said, “you are looken at a man who owns a power saw.”

Olivia was pouring the coffee she had kept hot for Clay. When she heard what he said she set the percolator down beside his place and looked at him in real anger.

“Clay,” she cried, “have you gone and spent every cent of the paycheck?”

Clay reached in his pocket and pulled out a roll of bills which he placed in her hands. Olivia started to count the money, but he said, “No need to count it. It's six dollars short.”

“Where'd you ever find a power saw for six dollars?” she asked, worry over the six dollars already crowding out the relief that the entire amount had not been spent.

“Well now,” explained Clay, “five dollars of that money was the down payment. The other dollar I paid to a feller to take me down to Old Man John Pickett's in his truck.”

Mr. John Pickett was a rich man, the only person native to the country who could make that claim. Of course, Mr. John Pickett had done nothing to earn the money. It had simply come down to him from his family along with the remains of what had once been a great tobacco plantation on a high bluff overlooking Rockfish River.

“You see,” said Clay, “I got word down at the mill that Old Man Pickett was sellen his power saw. Wanted thirty dollars for it.”

“Don't tell me you got him down to five dollars!” said Olivia.

“No, I didn't,” said Clay. “I know better than bargain with Old Man John Pickett, but I did make a deal with him. I'm buyen that power saw on the installment plan. Five dollars down and five dollars a month.”

“Clay!” she said. “These children need shoes and you go throwen your money away on a thing like that. I don't see what could be in your mind.”

“It's springtime. Let 'em go barefoot for a while. It won't hurt 'em. And anyway, it wasn't money thrown away. Me and Clay-Boy are goen to work on the house first thing in the mornen.”

“What are you goen to do? Go up there and dig some more on that hole in the ground?”

“No ma'am,” said Clay. “I'm goen up there, and we are goen to start cutten down trees and sawen them trees into lumber. That's what took me so long tonight. The saw is already up on the mountain. I took it up there tonight.”

“Clay,” said Olivia, “why can't you just sit down and rest of a week end like other men do. Let the house go.”

“Don't talk crazy, woman. Come here and sit down. Clay-Boy, get me a pencil and paper.” Clay-Boy brought the pencil and a writing pad. Clay pushed his supper away and began to draw. “Look here, honey,” he said. Olivia sat and watched as he sketched an outline on the paper.

“Now this here,” he explained, “is where I'm goen to put you up a kitchen. It's goen to be big enough that when all my babies come home for reunions and all, they can bring
their babies
and there's still goen to be room for everybody to sit down and eat. I'll put you a big window right here in this wall because it looks out on the prettiest sight anybody ever saw. There's a clump of birch trees right under that window and I'm leaven them so you'll have somethen pretty to look at while you're washen your dishes.”

It was a familiar story and listening to it again Olivia only half-heard what Clay was saying. His head was bent over the drawing and from this angle his face looked as young as it had been the night he first declared his love for her.

President Wilson had just declared war on Germany and that night in prayer meeting they had prayed for the Belgian babies and sung “Tenting Tonight” in memory of the boys from New Dominion who would be going over there.

After prayer meeting she had found Clay waiting for her in the shadows outside the church. Walking home he held her hand and asked her to wait for him while he was away. The next day Clay walked to Lovingston, the county seat, to offer himself to fight for his country. He did not know where Germany was or why they were at war with his country, but he was a crack shot and thought his country could use him. To his dismay he was turned down and he could never understand that the reason he was disqualified from fighting for his homeland was that he was only fourteen years old.

Having been turned down by the Army, Clay returned home to a good job. The company was particularly short of workers in the gang room, the place where the great diamond-tooth saws ground twenty-four hours a day to chew the stone into separate slabs. Here Clay found work as an apprentice.

In the years that followed, Clay Spencer became a legend in the community. He could drink more whiskey, hold it down longer, and walk straighter afterward than any man in the community. He developed a flair for cursing and the swear-words he invented passed into the local language. He grew to a height of six feet two and always weighed two hundred pounds unless he'd been in a good fight and if the fight were worth the effort he would usually lose from four to five pounds and gain them back at breakfast.

He was always the first to arrive at a square dance and the last one to leave, and if the square-dance caller grew weary Clay himself would take over. While many of the mothers in the community expressed their disapproval of what they considered his wild ways, their daughters looked on him with favor.

One of the mothers who looked upon Clay with particular distaste was Ida Italiano. Ida was a strict Baptist and considered dancing, drinking and swearing among the most abhorrent sins, and since Clay excelled in all three she found him especially ineligible to court her daughter Olivia.

“I don't want that wild boy comen around here, Homer,” she would say to her husband.

Homer, a carpenter at the mill as his father had been before him, would answer, “What you got against the boy, Ida?”

“He's a heathen, that's what he is. You got to tell him to stop comen around here.”

“Livy don't seem to mind him comen.”

“Livy's not old enough to have a mind.”

Ida's statement had some truth in it; Olivia was only sixteen years old. A quiet pretty girl who sang in the choir at the Baptist church, Olivia was obedient to her mother in all respects but one. When Ida forbade her to see Clay Spencer, Olivia continued to see him. On Wednesday nights after prayer meeting, Clay would be waiting for her outside the church and he would walk with her home. Again on Friday night after choir practice she would find him waiting for her and they would walk home slowly—but not quite all the way home, for Ida had threatened dire things if Clay ever set foot in the yard.

The people of the village watched the romance and marveled that a boy with such wicked ways as Clay would choose such a religious girl.

“She's too tame for him,” said the jealous girls, but the older and wiser women noted that Olivia might be just the right girl for Clay.

“Settle him down to have a girl like Livy,” and it appeared that Olivia was already having a settling difference on Clay, for he began to drink less; he no longer appeared at the poker parties on the night he was paid and only occasionally would he show up at a square dance.

On a Wednesday night in June of 1922 Clay Spencer climbed the hill to where Olivia lived. The footpath was covered with a canopy of dogwood trees which emerged at the gate of the Italiano house. Clay stopped beside a lilac tree and was about to call out when Olivia came quietly from the shadows. When he took her in his arms, he whispered,

“Don't be scared.”

“I'm not. I'm just a little nervous.”

“How did you get away?” he asked.

“I told her I was goen to Prayer Meeten.”

When he had stilled her trembling they went down the hill to the car Clay had borrowed for the night. They drove in silence to the Baptist parsonage where hand in hand they walked along the flagstone walk to the minister's house. Clay knocked once, a little nervously. From somewhere in the house they could hear footsteps and then the door opened and they saw Mr. Goolsby, the old Baptist minister. He held up a lamp to see who had knocked.

“Come in, children,” he said.

Holding the lamp to light their way down a long dark hall he led them into a small, comfortable living room.

“I'm sorry we won't be able to have a long visit. I have to go in five minutes or I'll be late for the Prayer Service.”

“We won't be needen more than that, sir,” said Clay. “We come here to get married.”

“I thought probably you had,” said Mr. Goolsby, “and I've been trying to decide what I should tell you.”

“What do you mean,” asked Clay.

“Children,” said Mr. Goolsby, “marriage is a grave
undertaking, not to be entered into lightly, not to be risked if there are factors that would seem to doom it from the beginning.”

“Mr. Goolsby,” said Clay, “if you've only got five minutes hadn't you better save the sermon for another time?”

“I'm sorry, son,” he said to Clay and then turned to Olivia. “Olivia, your mother is a good friend of mine. Knowing how she would feel about this marriage I cannot perform it.”

Olivia began to cry and started out of the room.

“Come on, Clay,” she said. “I told you he wouldn't.”

“All right,” said Clay, “We'll go.” But turning to the preacher he said, “I just want you to know you are not the only damn preacher in the world.”

They had nearly reached the front door when Mr. Goolsby called them back. “If that's the way you feel about it,” he said, “I will marry you.”

The ceremony took longer than five minutes because when Mr. Goolsby became nervous he stuttered, and he stuttered now as he realized the consequences that would come when it became known that he had joined together one of the fairest daughters of the Baptist church and the wildest devil in the county.