Spencer's Mountain (3 page)

The hunting party was about a quarter of the way up the mountain when one of the men called out, “There's a good stand right here.”

“Let's give this one to Clay-Boy,” Clay suggested, and the other men agreed.

“I'll be right up there where the road turns, son,” said Clay. “If one comes 'long I'll let you have first crack at him.”

Clay-Boy took up his station just off the roadway. He found an old tree stump, brushed it clear of snow and sat down. For a little while he could hear the distant conversations of the other men as each took his stand, but finally he could hear them no longer and a great stillness settled over the woods.

He was not as cold as he had expected to be. Actually he might have done without one of the extra sweaters he was wearing. After a while he began to feel drowsy. He nodded, catching himself each time before his gradually lowering chin reached his chest. Each time on opening his eyes he would scan all that he could see for deer and, finding none, would begin to nod again.

Something quite suddenly brought him fully awake. It was not a noise, for no sound had come. It was something the boy felt, a presence he sensed, and in the instant his eyes opened he saw standing not more than thirty feet away an enormous deer.

What he saw was fixed forever in his mind, the dull gray sky of the winter morning, the barren limbs of the sleeping trees, the virgin snow and the great deer which stood silent, immobile, and enduring through all of memory.

The deer either did not see him or it had no fear. It stood nearly rigid; only its sides moved as it inhaled gulps of air and exhaled them in small clouds of fog on the frosty air.
The animal was a majestic thing. It stood with its proud head high and erect, its many-pointed antlers regally aloft. Its coat was white, and even across the distance that separated him and the deer, Clay-Boy could see that its eyes were pink.

A shocking thing came then into the boy's mind. He had thought so much about the hunt that the whole adventure had been contained in the idea. He had pictured himself coming home triumphantly carrying the greatest deer in the forest, but the actual killing of the deer he had not even imagined. Now it came to him with a terrible knowing that the whole purpose of his being there was that he should kill the live thing that stood before him.

Clay-Boy hesitated. He could feel the small beads of cold perspiration breaking out on his forehead and down his back. He did not want to kill the beast. For one brief moment he wished the deer would leap away and lose itself in the forest, but it stood silent, quivering, waiting.

When Clay-Boy raised his rifle his hands were trembling. Carefully he steadied his aim by laying his head against the butt of the rifle and when he found the heart of the deer he closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. The recoil sent the boy tumbling backward and when he scrambled to his feet he thought for a second the shot had missed its mark. But in that same instant the forelegs gave way and the deer collapsed into a kneeling position. Even when the hind legs folded and the deer's body was entirely on the ground it held its head aloft, as if reluctant to surrender its antlers to the ground.

Clay-Boy had heard enough hunting stories that he knew now what must be done. He ran headlong toward the stricken deer, grasped the antlers, and with all his force twisted them over and rammed them into the ground, thus protecting himself and exposing the deer's throat at the same time.

He reached for the knife, fumbling over the snap at the sheath for a second, and then when he had the knife firmly grasped he plunged the blade into the fur and leather of the animal's throat. A shudder wrenched through the dying deer
and when the boy felt the quiver of final strength wane from the antler he held, something seared through his body that filled him with awe and terror.

Clay-Boy turned away, reeled back toward the stump where he had been sitting, and vomited. When his retching stopped he looked up and saw his father crashing through the underbrush.

“I heard a shot,” called Clay. “You all right, boy?”

Clay-Boy nodded, and pointed to the body of the deer.

“Oh my God, son,” exclaimed Clay. He pointed his gun into the sky and fired three shots, a signal to the other brothers to come in from their positions.

Clay examined the deer wonderingly, and then he looked again to his son.

“You're tremblen,” said Clay.

“I was thinking about what Grandpa said,” answered Clay-Boy, “about whoever killed the white deer would be marked someway.”

“Whatever you're marked for, boy, you'll stand up to it,” said Clay.

Someone was approaching down the snowy wood trail; when he turned the bend they saw that it was Virgil. He walked over to the deer, and when he saw that it was the white deer, he turned to Clay and said, “I'm kind of sorry you got him, Clay. It's a burden on a man to be marked.”

“The boy got him,” said Clay. “Not me.”

Virgil went to where Clay-Boy, to hide his trembling, had knelt and was cleaning his knife in the earth and snow. Virgil knelt beside Clay-Boy, and though he spoke to Clay, his eyes were on Clay-Boy's eyes. “It wasn't no boy killed that deer, Clay,” he said. “It took a man to do it.”

It was a gracious thing for Virgil to say, and the remark had a calming effect on the boy. The trembling began to leave him and he was able now to squat alongside the carcass with his other uncles as they arrived, each one expressing his astonishment and admiration at what he had done, making guesses as to the deer's weight and counting the antlers.

When all the men were gathered they began to prepare the deer for the triumphant march home. Slits were made in
the fore and hind legs and then the strong tendon pried through so the carrying pole might be inserted.

Anse, the eldest, and Clay, the strongest, shouldered the carrying pole and led the way out of the forest. When the men had come up the mountain, Clay-Boy had trailed at the end of the line, but now when Clay stepped forward, his uncles motioned for Clay-Boy to step in the line behind his father.

Snow had begun to fall again on Spencer's Mountain, and as it settled thickly over the place where the deer had received its death, the stain of the blood changed from vermilion to red to pink to white, and there was only the white stillness, the falling snow and the quickly vanishing outlines of the steps of men.

After Thanksgiving the winter turned severe. Snow fell all through Christmas and New Year, blotting out the horizon from the boy who at odd times during the day would stop in his chores and gaze absently off toward the barn where the antlers of the great deer were mounted over the door. As the months passed and nothing extraordinary happened, he became less of a curiosity in the community, and this was a relief to him. But in his own mind he would reconstruct what had happened on the mountain, marvel at the event, and wonder what it could mean.

One day the icicles which had grown on the eaves of the barn began to glisten in the sunlight and melt. Each following day brought some new sign of spring. Olivia's crocuses along the front walk seemed to burst into blossom overnight. The earth began to dry and the only sign of winter that remained was the crusted patches of snow that lingered in shady corners beside the house. Soon, along every path through the hills the redbud and dogwood were in blossom, and the edge of every wood was filigreed with redbud pink and dogwood white.

One Saturday morning Clay-Boy woke at dawn and
listened to the sounds of the house as it awakened to morning. The morning was quiet, still bathed in the pale light of dawn, broken only by the abrasive cry of some wakeful rooster. The only sound from inside the house was the regular, terrible rise and fall of his grandfather's snore. It came from the room downstairs which the two old people shared. Clay-Boy wondered if his grandmother was awake; she frequently complained that she had not slept a wink all night on account of the old man's snoring.

At five o'clock, Clay-Boy heard the alarm from the clock his father kept beside his bed. It sounded for a moment, then was silent as Clay wakened and turned it off. Clay-Boy listened now to his father's long deep yawn, smothered so as not to wake the children, and then after a moment the torturous screech of bedsprings as his father raised himself in the bed and put his feet on the floor. Clay usually muttered to no one in particular a four-or-five-word weather forecast. This morning he said, “Goen to be a beaut.”

Then there was silence again while Clay got into his work clothes, broken at last when he made his way down the stairs, through the living room and into the kitchen. Once in the kitchen Clay set about building the fire in the old wood cooking range, drenching each stick of wood with kerosene to make the fire start quicker. Then when the fire roared up the chimney he dressed in a heavier coat to go out and milk the cow and feed the pigs.

With the milk pail in his hand Clay tiptoed back to the foot of the stairs and called softly, “Sweetheart.” It was his name for Olivia and the only thing he ever called her at that hour. And she whispered, “All right. I'm awake.”

By the time Olivia reached the kitchen, Clay had gone to the barn. Soon the aroma of strong black coffee drifted up the stairway to where Clay-Boy lay, and the tantalizing smell of fried lean bacon, the bubbling, spattering, hissing sound of fried eggs, and all the warm rich sunny smells of biscuits baking.

Clay announced his return from the barn by placing the pail loudly on the kitchen table. Then Olivia strained the warm foamy milk into Mason jars, placed them in the refrigerator and sat down to breakfast with Clay.

While they ate they talked quietly and the sound of their voices floated up to Clay-Boy.

“Clay-Boy's goen to need money for his class ring soon,” his mother said. “I put a down-payment of three dollars on it when they ordered them, but there's twelve more has to be paid when the rings come.”

“I'm senden that boy through high school to get an education,” said Clay. “What the Sam Hill does he need a ring for?”

“It's like a sign,” explained Olivia, “something to show he graduated.”

“What does he need a sign for?”

“Well, he can walk in some place and ask for a job and the minute the man sees that ring on his finger, he'll know he's a high school graduate and that'll put him ahead of the ones that aren't wearen one.”

“A ring is somethen pretty to go on a woman's hand is my way of looken at it,” said Clay. “Clay-Boy don't need any ring to show he's graduated from high school. It's what they put in his head that counts.”

“He's goen to be the only one in the class that won't get a ring, then. You want him to be different from the others?”

“You're A–1 right I want him to be different. I want him to make somethen of himself. The rest of 'em ain't goen to amount to a hill of beans. But Clay-Boy's goen somewhere in this world.”

A man who had been to school only a few days in his life, Clay had an incredible respect for learning. In New Dominion it was a rare thing for a boy to graduate from high school because extreme youth was no barrier to finding a job with the company. Most boys dropped out of school once they passed the seventh grade to take a job, either to earn their independence or to help with the support of the numerous brothers and sisters. Long ago Clay Spencer had ruled out this possibility for his own sons and daughters. “I'll give 'em what I was too big a fool to get,” he would declare. “Them babies of mine will get a high school education.”

Now the first installment of his dream was drawing near. Clay-Boy, the only boy in a class of thirteen seniors, was due to graduate on the first of May.

“I know it's sinful to wish for somethen that just can't be,” said Olivia, “but it would be my heart's craven to see that boy go on to college.”

“He's got the brains for it,” Clay nodded.

“No use day-dreamen,” said Olivia as she rose from the table to begin preparing the children's breakfast.

“Goen to be a nice day, looks like,” said Clay. “There's the sun comen up.”

A ray of sun sent a pencil of light into the room where the boys slept. Clay-Boy, careful not to wake his brother Matt, who slept beside him, rose from the bed and went to the window to watch the sun come up.

His window overlooked an orchard of crabapple trees. Clay-Boy pretended to himself that they had been planted by Johnny Appleseed, and there was no reason why they could not have been. Now in the first light of a spring morning a curtain of light fog was lifting from the orchard. Already the tender green leaves were glistening on the trees, disguising the heavy gnarled old trunks and branches with their color and shape.

Suddenly a flock of goldfinches flew into the orchard, thousands of little golden bundles that might have been flung from the morning sun into the pale green fog-damp orchard. They would cling to the young branches, fill the air with their canary-like warblings long enough to announce the new day and then disperse to their separate chores of eating or singing or courting. Each spring they came to the orchard and some mornings they came in such number that the pale green leaves would be concealed and the trees would become a swaying mass of gold and singing.

Clay-Boy watched the gold-green singing morning until he heard his mother's voice calling from the foot of the stairs.

“Breakfast, everybody! Breakfast!”

Clay went to the center of the room and pulled the cord that turned on the single electric bulb hanging from the ceiling. The glare of the bulb revealed two beds in the room. The one in which Clay-Boy had slept contained his next oldest brother, Matt. In the other bed, huddled together in a single blanket-covered lump were his next three brothers,
Mark, Luke, and John. Clay-Boy gave each sleeping form a nudge, then crossed the hall, went into the girls' room and switched on the light. There, in two more beds, were Becky, Shirley and Pattie-Cake. There was another child, but he slept in a baby bed in the room with his father and mother. His name was Donnie; he had not grown old enough to have much impact on the family and was referred to mostly as the baby. When he was satisfied that the girls were awake Clay-Boy went down to the kitchen. One after another the brood followed.