An American Harvest Read online

  With a hole in one side about twenty feet up from the ground

  Where we once found an old mother ‘possum

  And a litter of little ones.

  I remember setting muskrat traps and rabbit gums in late fall and early winter

  In and around the edges of the woods and thickets

  Getting up before the break of day and making the rounds

  Sometimes on horseback

  But mostly on foot.

  I remember the dining room and the seating arrangement

  With Mother on the corner near the kitchen

  And the youngest child next to her

  The next youngest next, and so forth

  Up that side and down the back

  And Papa at the head of the table ready to pinch the ones nearest him

  Anytime they started talking, when he thought they should be listening.

  HOWARD:

  This business of sitting at the end of the table: I was the fifth youngster, and when Cletus left, I was on that left hand side next to my Daddy on the end. Then, a little later, when John and Kenneth with Mother began to push up, they pushed me over to the big boys’ side. Well, I was the closest one to Papa on the right side then, so I got a double dose of pinching.

  LUTHER:

  You know, it was interesting how he would pinch you—he wouldn’t say a word, not a word would he say—but he really kept order around that table by pinching the boy next to him.

  JOHN:

  Then there was his one word cure for hiccups. He’d look you dead in the eye with deadpan authority and quietly say: “Shutup.” No matter how hard I tried to dredge up another hiccup, I never could. No one else since has had that kind of power over me.

  KENNETH:

  While we’re talking about Father and the table, you may recall that he always ate the gizzard. Many, many years later, he said, “I really don’t like the gizzard, but a chicken has only one.”

  LUTHER:

  And Mother used to eat the backs, and always said she liked them best . . . she was doing it to give us the better pieces all the time, I guess.

  KENNETH:

  Well, our father, I’m sure, was eating this gizzard to sort of keep order around the place—because there was only one.

  My dad really liked the gizzard. That’s why he ate it. Mom preferred the heart. When I tried the heart and said I liked it, Mom denied herself and let me have it.

  As for order around the dinner table, sometimes the boys would start teasing and pick on one another. When Mother told them to stop, and they didn’t, she sometimes just lost it. She’d jump up from the table with tears in her eyes, saying, “I spent most the morning getting this meal, and if you boys can’t behave I’m going to my room and staying there!” We then felt so bad we’d finish our meal in silence. These were likely the times when her hyperthyroid problem flared, and she really wanted to be alone.

  ARTHUR:

  Luther, your interest in chickens goes back a bit, at least to Churchland High School. Remember, we lived in a three-story fat-pine dormitory operated by ‘Uncle’ Mock Koontz and his daughters. I recall that you, my brother, had a very good way of having something tasty to eat there along about midnight.

  You and ‘Uncle’ Mock invited me out one night to feed the chickens. ‘Uncle’ Mock fed the chickens—and you caught one, sneaked it under your shirt. That night, on the third floor, we and some of the other boarding students got the old pot-bellied stove real hot, dressed the chicken, disposed of the refuse in the hot fire, and then stewed up that bird and ate it, with milk-gravy, as I remember. Well, the thing that still surprised me is that stolen chicken should have tasted so good.

  LUTHER:

  I never got but one chicken, and that was because two of the fellows tried and they failed. We kidded them so mercilessly that I was dared to go get the chicken myself. So I went and got the chicken, and we killed it up on the school ground.

  The next morning, the Superintendent, Mr. Hasty, was seen standing over this blood spot. When he dismissed chapel, if you remember, Arthur, he announced that he would like to see Luther Raper.

  He called me into the office, and of course I was just as guilty as sin, and he said to me, “Luther, do you by chance know anything about the chicken that was killed last night?” I said, “Yes, I do.” And he said, “Do you know who did it?” I said, “I did it.” He said, “Yes, I knew you would be honest. “Well,” I said, “Mr. Hasty, it wasn’t so bad, for ‘Uncle’ Mock Koontz came up and helped us eat it. It was good chicken. He came up at 1:00 a.m., for he had smelled it. He came into the room saying: “I smell chicken cooking, and I like it too.”

  One more word, because I wasn’t a thief. It was customary in this high school that the classes every year have a feast of some kind. This time I got sucked in on it. I was dared to go get the chicken, and it was easy for me to catch a chicken. I had caught them all my life.

  RALPH:

  Beginning at age two.

  LUTHER:

  Yes, beginning at age two, I’m afraid. We used to raise little chicks along with hens in coops made out of tobacco sticks; do you remember? And on top of the coops, to keep the chickens dry, were boards that Mr. Joe Woosley, the hired man, had split out of oak timber.

  I must have been too little to know what I was doing, but Mother claims she caught me one day taking the boards off the top and, as the little chicks would jump up to come out, mowing their heads off with a tobacco stick. Momma accused me of killing six or eight of them as they came out before she caught me. I don’t remember having done it, but I was guilty, I’m sure.

  BLANCHE:

  And Luther, don’t forget the time you painted one green.

  LUTHER:

  I’d rather forget.

  Luther’s story reminds me of a time in my childhood when my brothers and I would go frog hunting down at our farm. With flashlights, clubs, and gunnysacks in hand, we stalked the cute little green hoppers at night when they were out looking for an evening meal. We stunned and sacked them for slaughter next day.

  That ritual took place on the roof of our chicken coop. As my brothers instructed, we’d hold each frog at the edge of the roof, slice off its torso, front legs attached, and watch it jump off the roof for chicken feed in the yard below. The chickens liked that.

  Then Mom cooked the plump hind legs in nicely seasoned butter for our noontime meal. We liked that.

  I have felt sorry about it ever since.

  ARTHUR:

  Getting back to the stolen chicken—

  LUTHER:

  I’d rather not.

  ARTHUR:

  Nevertheless, this man Mr. Hasty whom you talked about putting you on the spot about the chicken, was he not one of the best friends you ever had?

  LUTHER:

  One of the best friends I ever had.

  ARTHUR:

  And most of the friendship matured after that.

  LUTHER:

  Yes, well, he used to say I was honest. But now y’all oughtn’t challenge just me on this chicken business. I know for a fact you little boys played some tricks on ’em just to amuse yourselves.

  KENNETH:

  You mean like when John and I would tie a kernel of corn to a string, feed the chicken the corn, hold fast the string and, once she’d swallowed, lead her along?

  JOHN:

  I expect it was what Luther was talking about.

  KENNETH:

  I remember a little exchange between Mama and Ralph, and I’m wondering who, in this case, was responsible—maybe you, Luther, or some dogs, or just plain providence. I was in the kitchen one morning when Ralph came in and Momma asked, “Did you feed the chickens?” Ralph answered, “Yes, but it makes no difference; they’re all dead.”

  LUTHER:

  Now don’t go accusing me of killing all the chickens; I think I’d learned my lesson well by the time that came to pass.

  ARTHUR:

  Well, if dogs did it they could have been ours
. I think I have a little remembrance about dogs and chickens. Dad, when I first remember, did a lot of hunting—particularly at night, ‘possums largely. I don’t think we needed the food, particularly because I can’t remember eating ‘possum but one or two times, but it was a pastime, and he and other men would get together and go hunting—so there were some dogs around our place.

  I must have been not more than four years old. This was the picture when we came home one Sunday afternoon from Grandfather Crouse’s . . . whether we were in a buggy or carriage I don’t remember.

  It was about sundown when we drove in the yard and here were the chickens, practically all we had, piled up around the red maple tree just to the right of the short path between the back door steps and the well. There were feathers scattered around. Dad took a look at the situation, saw that his dogs had killed the chickens and made sport of piling them up close to the back door. Well that was the end of the dogs. There were, in fact, no other dogs at our house that I remember for the next couple of decades.

  Now as I tell this, I sort of have a half feeling that this is a dream, but on the other hand, I think it is a fact.

  LUTHER:

  I vaguely recollect it. I’d count it for a fact.

  JOHN:

  Two decades may be about right. We had no dogs when I was little, but there was a succession of three later on when I was going to high school. None was for hunting; they were strays that wandered in on us. The first was a Highland Scotch Terrier, cute as a bug’s ear, all white fluff and—

  BLANCHE:

  John, may I ask a question?

  JOHN:

  You already have.

  BLANCHE:

  And if I weren’t such a nice sister, and if you weren’t a favorite brother, I’d kick your shins for that. Some folks never grow up quite!

  I’ll ask my question anyway. What was that dog’s name? Something beginning with B: “Bugger?. . . Boogey?” Something like that.

  JOHN:

  We called him “Booger.” Ralph found him one day, sitting by a lonely road, way off in the wilderness near a beach he’d been to.

  RALPH:

  That’s right; there wasn’t a soul around and hadn’t been for some miles. He looked so lost. I stopped the car, opened the door, the dog hopped right in just as if he’d been waiting for me. He was content to remain at our house thereafter.

  JOHN:

  The last dog we had was a mongrel. I loved him dearly, but I can’t remember his name. I think I can’t remember it on purpose, because of his terrible ending:

  A certified mad dog had wandered down our road and bitten him. Rather than see him develop rabies, I took him out to the pasture. I told him to sit and wait; I backed off; he looked at me expectantly with pleading eyes, wagging tail, waiting for the usual word of release so he could come and be petted.

  I shot him in the head instead. It was one of the most tearing things I ever had to do.

  BLANCHE:

  John, I know you did love that dog. This must have happened when I was away at college. No one ever told me you had to shoot him, I’m glad I wasn’t home that day.

  John grew up to love having dogs. He preferred wire-haired fox terriers for their bounciness and the challenge of training them. Perhaps as the youngest and seemingly most disciplined of all the siblings, he sought some satisfaction in trying to control winsome, irrepressible pets. Hearing this story about having to shoot his own beloved pet puts a lump in my throat. I love him the more for suffering so and having such courage.

  ARTHUR

  I’ve been thinking all evening while we’ve been talking here how much we’ve lost in Cletus’s death. Why, he was the liveliest of the bunch at our last reunion; always had something of a whimsical nature to say, comment upon. He put a different twist on things somehow; looked at things just a bit differently from the rest of us, he being the oldest and all.

  He’s a grievous loss to us. Naturally enough, we can’t speak for him, only about him. I’ve a word or two here written down about Cletus and the War. Let me start with that:

  I remember, of course, when Cletus voluntarily went off to World War I, when Luther was later called up for the draft and was accepted, and when I, too, had been called up to report. All of this left Dad greatly saddened. He didn’t believe we had any business fighting over there.

  Word came back from Cletus in Europe now and again. Despite Dad’s feeling—and the feelings of many another like him, I might add—we were all committed to seeing this thing through.

  What relief there was when it was over! It happened just before I had to report to the Army. I was on my way to Winston-Salem with a load of hay and was going up the Sol Miller hill from South Fork creek some five or six miles from Winston-Salem just at daybreak, and the wind must have been from the north, for, of a sudden, I heard the bells and whistles at Winston-Salem break forth and continue for several minutes. I was by myself and thought surely this meant the War was over. It did.

  After a time, Cletus came home. He had been gassed. The effects of that stayed with him over the years and doubtless didn’t help him any when he later developed a heart condition.

  Cletus and Billy.

  He never wanted to talk about his experiences; and really, how does one talk about it? And how does a family adjust to one of its members having borne the peril of the conflict? And even beyond this, how does a family adjust to the fact that it was Cletus and Gertrude’s only son Billy who was the only direct family casualty in World War II? In the face of facts like these, I can only stand deferentially, humble, silent.

  I think of my mother’s youngest brother Luther who also volunteered for the army in World War I. News of his death arrived just after Armistice Day. His father, like Frank, strongly opposed that war, having earlier practiced law midst a Midwest community of honest German immigrants who always paid their bills on time.

  Luther grew up motherless—his mother, my grandmother, died of tuberculosis when he was merely two. Grandfather favored Luther as his most promising child. He never got over his death, in what he thought was a tragic, thoughtless war.

  Four of my five older brothers served in World War II. Unlike Billy, they all came home, scarred but safe.

  HOWARD:

  Arthur, there is one thing you mentioned incorrectly about going to Winston-Salem with a load of hay on this particular day, the first Armistice Day, for I was with you on that load of hay—whether you remember that redheaded guy or not.

  I remember when we got to Winston-Salem and reached the place where the load of hay, already having been sold, was to be delivered. The livery stable was closed, and the proprietor had gone off with the parade. So there we were in Winston-Salem with a load of hay—parading with the Cadillacs. After a time, we prevailed upon someone we knew down on North Cherry Street to take our hay off our hands, and then we were able to come home with the empty wagon.

  ARTHUR:

  Well, I do remember the parade, but, sorry Brother, not you.

  While we are talking about Cletus, I would like, for the record, to say that he was a very keen political and social analyst. While that wasn’t his profession—he actually was very successful professionally as financial manager for a big construction company—he knew a lot about politics, sociological phenomena, and baseball too, a sport Dad wouldn’t allow him to play on Sundays when he wanted to.

  RALPH:

  Just to keep the record balanced, Cletus wasn’t always serious, hard working. He was temporarily expelled from the college at Guilford in his second year for hitting the president with a snowball.

  Then, after he got back from the War, he and another fellow worked for about two years on an invention: they invented a kind of balloon tire, but they were working in a shed rented from a big tire company, and the big company with their big lawyers got the patent. Some of us family members chipped in what we could to help with the lawsuit, but in the end, Cletus and his associate didn’t make a dime—in fact they went into debt over
it. He was so depressed about that it took him a long time to recover. About that time he met Gertrude and it was she, I believe, who helped him most, out of the doldrums.

  CHAPTER 7

  Be Polite

  RALPH:

  I remember the small dam that Luther, Arthur, and I built

  Across the little stream down in the pasture

  And that Cletus would rather read than join us.

  One noon we saw him coming down

  Reading while walking.

  So we got on the bank across from his approach

  Just beyond a fairly large hole we had dug in making the dam.

  He came to the pond

  Pulled up his overalls

  Started to wade across

  Stepped into the hole

  And went completely under.

  BLANCHE:

  ‘Twas more a mudhole than a pond, but you boys could swim in it. I wasn’t allowed to go and I wanted to right much—you just don’t know how I craved swimming there—so much so that I secretly fixed myself up a bathing suit; I sewed it out of some old scraps of black cloth I found around the house.

  And then I prevailed upon the littlest one, John, to take me over for a swim one fine hot summer’s day, which he did obligingly. We no sooner got there when my homemade suit began to rip, first on the left side, then up the back; it began to disintegrate altogether—before I even got into the water. I had to sneak home in shame.

  JOHN:

  Providence, dear Sister!

  BLANCHE:

  More than likely. Anyway, black was an appropriate choice of color; I was in mourning.

  Oh Blanche! I’m ever so glad I came a generation later. My childhood as the only girl with five older brothers took an opposite turn. Those boys had me doing everything they did: football, baseball, swimming, skiing, hiking, camping, fishing, boating. Our parents went along with that. I fondly remember my brothers’ highest praise: “That’s pretty good—for a girl.”

  JOHN:

  Well I thought you ought to have gone swimming with the rest of us.