Ten : Mat

  When Old Jack was not on hand for breakfast, when the kitchen was seen to bear none of the usual marks he left when he fixed his own, when there was no response to a knock on his door, when he was not to be seen standing anywhere along the street, when he was not to be found in any of his old resting places, then Mrs. Hendrick sent for Mat, and Mat found him, or found what was left of him, sitting in his rocking chair before the window He looked very natural, very like himself. His eyes were open, staring off, and his mouth too was open, his head raised and tilted back; he looked as though he was poised upon the verge of speech, thinking of what he would say. But the spirit was gone from his eyes. His eyes had become substantial and opaque. He had been dead several hours.

  Mat, who had known many deaths, who had foreseen and even hoped for this one, nevertheless felt an onset of grief he did not expect. For only a moment he might have wept, and then the knot of grief in his throat dissolved and spread all through him, taking the shape of his own flesh, so that he seemed illuminated and clarified to himself by this completion of so much that he knew.

  “At last,” he thought “At last. And so well.”

  And then those words at last took a different and more difficult character in his mind. At last Old Jack was helpless. At last the premises of his independence and the ground of his defiance had been vacated, and now the world would have its way with him. There would be the undertaker and the preacher. There would be Clara and Gladston Pettit. There would be proprieties and usages and considerations and bothers. And all would exact their tribute now upon the passive remnant of Jack Beechum, who had so faithfully maintained and honored his difference from them all.

  But it came to Mat that now he was the only one who knew; for the moment Old Jack was dead to no one in the world but him. And Mat turned then and drew the only other chair in the room up beside Old Jack’s, and sat down. For a while, for only a little while—Mrs. Hendrick would be waiting to know what he had found—Mat sat with Old Jack in death as he had sat with him in life. For a while he let Old Jack’s body be safe and secret there with him. And then he got up and laid his open hand briefly on the dead man’s shoulder—that touch of the hand, that welcome or farewell, by which Ben Feltner was bound to Jack, and Jack to Mat, and Mat to his dead son and to his living grandsons—he touched him with that casual and forever binding salute. And then he left him and went out to tell those who must be told.

  He told Mrs. Hendrick, who was waiting for him in the little lobby, and who explained that she had felt last night that Mr. Beechum was not well, but she had not realized the poor man was as sick as he must have been. And Mat told her it was all right; there was nothing she could have done.

  He did not have to tell Margaret, who was waiting on the walk in front of the house, and who knew from the look of him what he had to tell.

  “Sitting up in his chair,” he said. “Coat and cap still on.”

  Margaret nodded. She raised her hand and touched lightly the corner of her eye. It could not have happened better, and they knew that. For some seconds they stood in silence. And then Margaret took hold of his sleeve as if to turn him from what was past toward what must be done.

  “You’ll have to call Clara.”

  “Yes. And the undertaker.”

  And then he was set upon by the stubborn sense of appropriateness that has ruled him or troubled him ever since.

  “No,” he said. “I’m going to the field and tell them first.” And he went to his truck.

  The day’s work was already well started when he arrived. The five men had cut the first rows and were standing at the end of the patch, smoking and talking. They had drunk from the water jug and set it back in the shade of the long grass in the fence row. He was late, and they turned to look at him, wondering.

  As he told them he felt the change. He felt it come over them all, as quiet and complete as a night of snow. A landmark that they all had depended on had fallen, and a strangeness came between them and the country. Their minds had already begun to change and things would no longer be as they had been.

  Mat felt the change upon himself. Now he was the oldest, and the longest memory was his. Now between him and the grave stood no other man. From here on he would find the way for himself.

  He left them and went back to the house. Margaret had already called Bess and Wheeler. She got up and gave the chair by the phone to Mat.

  “They’ll be here as soon as they can, Bess said. But it’ll be up in the afternoon. Wheeler’s in Lexington.”

  “All right,” Mat said. “There’s no hurry.”

  He put on his glasses and looked up the number and dialed the undertaker at Hargrave. It was a strange and a stubborn mood he was in. He was standing guard over Old Jack and over his death. He would not have the outline of that absence blurred or its dimension narrowed. The voice of the gentleman on the other end of the wire was full of solicitude, prepared for death, no matter whose, and Mat propped himself against it. The voice assumed that Mat would be down later to select a coffin and to make the necessary arrangements. Mat thought not. The gentleman would be informed of the arrangements when they were made; as for a coffin, the dead would be well satisfied with whatever was cheapest. And so it went, each exchange followed by a silence in which the gentleman on the other end was perhaps taking notes. The dead, Mat allowed, were noted for their frugality. There was another pause. Margaret had been listening to him, her eyes a shade doubtful of what he was up to. And then she smiled to herself and went away. She would be his ally, and he thought there would be others.

  “Oh dear!” Clara said when he phoned her. And then, as if suddenly aware from how far off this summons came, she said, “Oh heavens above!”

  She said that she would have to phone Gladston, and that they would be there just as soon as they could, and that she did not know just how soon that would be, and that they would be there in time to make all the necessary arrangements.

  That was what Mat was afraid of. He said that he was taking care of the arrangements, that she should not worry about anything, that everything was going to be taken care of properly. And he hung up.

  That left the preacher to be dealt with, and Mat wanted to go ahead and get that done, the sooner the better. The situation was simpler now than it was likely to be again. When the Pettits came it would get complex, he was certain of that. He was just starting out the door to hunt up the preacher when he saw that young man heading up the walk—sent, it turned out, by Mrs. Hendrick.

  The preacher, Brother Wingfare, was a seminary student only recently established with his new wife in Port William—a pale, slightly plump, impeccable young man, very new to his profession, very eager to please both God and man, a difficulty of which he had not yet encountered either extreme. He began, of course, by saying that though he had not had the privilege of knowing—uh—Mr. Beechum, he was very sorry to learn that he was dead. “But,” he said, “the Lord knows of our affliction and is our refuge in the hour of trouble.”

  “Come in,” Mat said. He shook Brother Wingfare’s hand and held the screen door open for him. He wanted to like the boy, and felt somehow protective of his eagerness to serve, this shy, pale, painfully polite young fellow, so new and vulnerable, it seemed, to whatever might come next. And yet he was vaguely offended and put out to see him undertake upon any occasion the solemn presumptions of his office.

  Mat put his arm around the young fellow’s shoulders and led him into the living room.

  “Sit down.”

  Brother Wingfare sat down in the chair that Mat pointed to, a platform rocker to one side of the front window.

  Mat sat down in the easy chair, facing the preacher. “Well,” he said, “I don’t know that you should be sorry. After all, you didn’t know him particularly. And it’s not a tragedy when a man dies at the end of his life.”

  Under Mat’s gaze Brother Wingfare nodded vigorously in agreement.

  “As soon as the undertaker has got his artistry done,” Mat said, “we’re going to bring Uncle Jack’s body here. We want to have the funeral day after tomorrow, in the early afternoon. That’ll give his daughter and her husband time to drive out from Louisville, if they don’t stay overnight here.”

  He wanted to set the funeral for the afternoon of the next day at the latest, but he knew he had to be careful.

  “We want a simple graveside service, nothing else.”

  That was not what Brother Wingfare had expected. Mat leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and smiled at him.

  “My friend,” he said, “I want you to understand this.” He considered for a moment and went on. “He was not a churchly man. He was a man of unconfining righteousness. He stuck with us to the end. He never liked a great deal of fussing and formality, and we don’t want it imposed on him now. That would be kicking him while he’s down, if you know what I mean.”

  Brother Wingfare either did or did not know what was meant. He did not say. But he was paying attention. He heard something in Mat’s voice that did not permit his mind to wander. There was a strange authority in this old man with his white hair, with the dirt of the field on his clothes, who spoke as the younger kinsman of a dead man much older. Nothing in his training at the seminary had prepared him for this. He was supposed to be the spiritual authority. But he knew that he was receiving orders. And he was afraid that he was taking orders.

  “Here’s what we want you to do,” Mat said. He got up and went to the desk that stood in a corner of the room and brought back his old Bible and sat down again. “Let me see,” he said. He put on his glasses and opened the book across his knees. He wet his thumb and turned the pages. “Write these down,” he said. And he spoke the numbers of certain psalms: the Twenty-third, the Twenty-fourth, the Thirty-ninth, the Ninetieth, the Hundred-and-fourth, the Hundred-and-twenty-first.

  The preacher wrote them down.

  “That’s all,” Mat said. He compressed his lips and looked over the top of his glasses at the preacher. The book shut with a snap.

  “That’s all? You don’t want a few—uh—remarks?”

  “That’s all,” Mat said.

  “A prayer at the end?”

  But Mat was finished. He folded his glasses and stuck them into his shirt pocket and got up and returned the Bible to its place.

  “Well,” he said, “smells like we’ll be having a bite to eat before long. You’d better stay.”

  “No. Thank you,” Brother Wingfare said, rising. “I must go. When will Mr. Beechum’s daughter and son-in-law be here? I should speak to them.”

  “Sure,” Mat said. “They’ll be here along in the afternoon. Come back whenever it suits you.”

  After he had accompanied the preacher to the door, Mat returned to the living room and stood a while in front of the window, smoking and thinking. And then he walked a few restless turns of that room. And then he stood again.

  He wanted, in fact, much less of an occasion than he had asked for. He had asked for what he thought he could hope to get. He had heard the sound of his determination ringing in his voice, and it had moved him and clarified him to himself. He had become the defender of the dead.

  He heard Mary Penn and then Hannah and the children come into the kitchen. And presently he heard the men on the back porch washing up for dinner. He joined them and washed with them, and they went into the kitchen and ate. After the meal the men went into the living room and rearranged the furniture to make space for Old Jack’s coffin. When the others went back to the field, Mat stayed at the house to wait for the Pettits. He bathed and shaved and changed his clothes, and then while the women completed their work in the kitchen he took charge of Mattie, who because of all the excitement had refused to take a nap and as a result, according to his sister, had got cross enough to bite himself.

  Mat carried the little boy into the living room and sat down in the rocking chair and told a long story about two boys who went rabbit hunting, and who were never satisfied and were always trying to kill one more rabbit, and while they were trying to get one more rabbit out of a sink-hole their dog ate the rabbits they had already killed, and then they didn’t have any. Before the story came to an end Mattie stuck his knuckle in his eye and put his head down on Mat’s shoulder. And then Mat rocked him and sang to the heavy beat of the rockers: Old hound dog

  Stole a middlin’,

  Old hound dog

  Stole a middlin’,

  Old hound dog

  Stole a middlin’

  Many long years a-go.

  The Pettits arrived about two-thirty and Brother Wingfare not long afterward. The air of the house became formal then. Mat and Margaret and Hannah sat with their guests in the living room and made the careful conversation of people who do not know each other well and who are not exactly comfortable with each other. The question of the funeral arrangements came up, as it was bound to do, and Mat quickly said that nobody needed to worry; he and Brother Wingfare had already settled everything. Next to Clara, Mat was, after all, Old Jack’s nearest of living kin, he was also a good many years older than Clara, and he had generously volunteered the use of his and Margaret’s house for the observances that would precede the burial. Mat erected upon those facts a proprietary claim that would have embarrassed him greatly in different circumstances.

  After about two hours they heard an engine whispering in funereal dignity in the yard. It was the hearse, backing up to the front porch. Mat went to the door to hold it open, and the others stood to make way. The undertaker and his assistants wheeled the coffin in on silent rollers, positioned it, opened it, and began arranging about it several baskets of flowers. Margaret and Hannah and the preacher stood back in deference as Clara and Glad approached the open coffin to look upon Old Jack in his death. Mat stayed at the door. He had no love for the undertaker’s art. But something calm and assured in the stance of the Pettits alerted his eye. And then he saw the perfection of his defeat.

  For the coffin testified to its costliness with the assertive elegance of the Pettits’ automobile—a veritable Cadillac of a coffin. Its sedately burnished lid opened upon a spotless drift of white as deep and soft as a summer cloud. Upon that cumulus of eternal ease, Old Jack lay in a dark, richly woven suit, a white shirt and tie. The face raised upon the satin pillow had been stuffed and smoothed to look not as Old Jack had ever looked. Only his hands, which lay in undissembling lifelessness at his sides, bore an indelible resemblance to what they had been. They seemed to have grown with utter incongruity out of the sleeves of the president of a bank.

  And now Mat held him only in his mind.

  Done with their work for the time being, the undertaker and his men departed. The Pettits, saying they could not stay for supper, left soon afterward, the preacher stepping out the door with them. And then Wheeler and Bess and Henry came. The kitchen table was already filling with various gifts of food brought in by neighbors. Mat went out and did his chores.

  When supper was over the townsmen began to come, and presently the living room was full of women, sitting and speaking quietly in little groups. The men sat on the porch or stood on the walk, smoking and, like the women, talking in quiet groups that endlessly gathered and divided with changes of subject.

  At about ten o’clock the people began leaving, and they went away one or two at a time. Hannah Coulter and Mary Penn were the last of the women to leave. Bess Catlett and Margaret went to bed then, and the rooms of the house fell quiet. On the porch, at the end of a lapse in the talk, Jayber Crow stood and stretched, a gangling silhouette against the night sky.

  “Well,” he said, “time will finally make mortals of us all.”

  And Burley said: “Yes, if we don’t die first.”

  Jayber went down the steps, heading for his lodging over the barbershop. And then the last who were going had gone. Save for Andy Catlett, who had gone off to college and would not be told of Old Jack’s death until after the burial, there remained only the little company of men who had known Old Jack best, and whom he had loved: Mat, the Coulter brothers and Nathan, Elton Penn, Wheeler Catlett and his boy Henry.

  They moved into the living room and sat there, talking on a while by the light of the one lamp that Mat had left burning on the desk. And then, one by one, those who had worked through the day fell asleep in their chairs. Except for his chores Mat had done no work, and his mind teemed and spun with thoughts. He alone sat awake through all the night while his friends, the living and the dead, slept around him.

  When they went to the field the next morning Mat went with them, and though they did not say so they worked that day for Old Jack’s sake, honoring him in the familiar, and in what he had honored.

  Now that the day is done and supper finished, Mat has cleaned up and come out into the back yard to sit and rest in the quiet before his duties as host will resume. Before long the neighbors will be coming in again, and the Pettits will be arriving from Louisville, perhaps to spend the night. He is not looking forward to that. He is weary from his sleepless night and from his day of work. Through the night and the day he has felt himself near to the most wholehearted curse of his life upon the Pettits and the likes of them and upon the tribe of undertakers. But he has not uttered it, he has not even formed the words in his mind, and he knows that he probably never will. For a great deal that would otherwise be large is small within the silence of Old Jack’s voice, that so stayed and comforted Mat all his life. That silence is the most demanding thing he knows now, and he has come out to sit alone in it, to let his thoughts come to rest in it, if they will.

  But there seems little hope of that, as he ought to have expected, for almost as soon as he is settled in his chair there comes a roar and then a sustained growl from under the hill, and the Berlews’ automobile comes crawling up over the curve of the slope like an enormous beetle. It travels up over the grass of the pasture, honking imperiously at the milk cows to get them out of its way, turns, and stops just outside the door of the barn. The two Berlews get out. Lightning disappears into the barn and appears again with Mat’s toolbox. He selects some wrenches and, lying down on his back, crawls under the car. Smoothbore stands and looks around, her hair in pincurls, covered with a scarf tied tightly under her chin. She has a way about her that suggests that if only she could be sure no one is watching she would do something else. Now she turns up a feed bucket and sits on the bottom of it near the car. She lights a cigarette. She sits with her feet apart, her knees together, cigarette held aloft in her right hand, her left hand tugging and smoothing the hem of her skirt. While Lightning works she talks to him, and now and then leans down to peer at him under the side of the car.