Spencer's Mountain (29 page)

“I hope I'm not pregnant,” said Claris, looking up at him impishly.

“What made you say that?” he asked, his voice betraying the horror he suddenly felt.

“Good night, lover,” she said and went running into the house.

When he came to his own home Clay-Boy found his father sitting on the front porch and he reported that the house on the mountain was in good order and then Clay-Boy went directly to his room. What had happened, he felt, must clearly show in his face and he was not yet ready to confront his mother.

He delayed going to supper that night until his mother had called him three times, and when he came to the table he had no appetite.

“What's the matter with you?” his mother asked.

“Nothing, Mama,” he said.

“Somethen's the matter with you,” said Olivia. “You're all flushed and looks like you're comen down with somethen to me. Let me feel your forehead and see if you've got a fever.”

Olivia felt his forehead and he flinched, feeling that what troubled him was so obvious that she might guess what it was merely by touching his head.

“Just feel a little sunburnt,” she said and placed a heaping plate of food in front of him. “I been keeping your supper warm for you. Now eat.”

Clay-Boy made himself eat the food, hoping that would avert their suspicions. As soon as he could, he excused himself from the table and went into the bathroom.

His father might have guessed part of the truth for after Clay-Boy left the room, Clay said to Olivia, “I think that boy's in love.”

Olivia grunted despairingly. “That little girl will be gone in a week or two and I'll be glad to see it. You know what she said to me? Sitting there at the table she asked me if my uterus was back in place yet from having the babies. Where she ever learned such things in the first place is beyond me.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her it was none of her business. She's always talken like that, and the things she must have put in Clay-Boy's head God only knows.”

In the bathroom Clay-Boy was applying Noxzema to the
more painful portions of his sunburned skin when the door opened abruptly and Shirley started into the room.

“Get out of here!” he shouted.

“I just want to use the bathroom,” said Shirley indignantly. “You aren't using it. Why can't I?”

“Oh God,” moaned Clay-Boy, “can't I ever have any privacy around here?”

“All right then,” said Shirley, “but the next time I'm using it, don't you holler at me to hurry up.”

She slammed the door and marched in the kitchen where she announced, “Clay-Boy's the craziest thing.”

“Well, honey,” said Olivia, “you ought not to walk in the bathroom when somebody else is usen it. Just wait your turn.”

“He's putten Noxzema on his fanny,” said Shirley.

“What in God's name is he doing that for?” Asked Olivia. “Clay, you go in there and see what he's doen. He won't let me in the bathroom with him any more. Says he's too big. You go in there and see what that boy is doen.”

When Clay walked into the bathroom he could see that even though Clay-Boy had smeared the white salve over his buttocks they were still a bright and angry red.

“Let me give you a hand there, son,” he said, and taking the jar of Noxzema he covered the places on Clay-Boy's back which the boy had not been able to reach.

“You want to talk about anythen, son,” Clay asked after a while.

“What do you mean, Daddy?” Clay-Boy asked innocently.

“Son,” said Clay, “If a man's been away all day long with a girl and comes home with his backsides all sunburned, that don't mean but one thing, in my way of seein' it.”

Clay-Boy turned and faced his father. He could not tell if his father was angry or pleased.

“I'd appreciate it, Daddy,” he said, “if you wouldn't let on to Mama.”

“I don't see no point in it,” said Clay. “There ain't a damn thing anybody can do about it now. Except next time, if I was you, I'd try to find a shady place.”

Claris appeared quite dramatically a few evenings later while the Spencers were at supper. Most of the summer she had worn blue jeans and a shirt, but tonight she had on a suit and was wearing high heels.

“Hi there, little girl,” said Clay, “sit down and have some supper.”

“Thank you, but I really can't stay. Daddy's waiting for me down at the front gate. He's in a terrible hurry, but I just couldn't go without saying good-by to my favorite family.”

“You're leaven early this year,” said Olivia, only half-concealing her relief.

“Yes,” said Claris mysteriously. “Something's come up.”

“I always use you for my almanac to tell me when summer starts and when it's over. Looks like with you goen back to Washington, D.C., now, we're in for an early frost.”

Claris gave everybody a hug and a kiss except Clay-Boy. When she came around the table to where he was sitting she said, “You can walk with me down to the car if you want to.” He rose and followed her out of the door. In the front yard he pulled her over behind a forsythia bush where they could not be seen.

“What's this all about?” he asked.

“Something wonderful is going to happen,” she said.

“What?”

“I don't want to spoil the surprise now,” she said. “I've got to wait until I'm sure. I'll write to you.”

“I hate to see you go.”

“Do you love me?” she said.

“I really do,” said Clay-Boy and took her in his arms.

“It's going to be so fine,” she said.

“What?” he asked.

“When we're together always,” she said, then broke out of his arms and ran to the waiting car.

***

Within three days after Claris left Clay-Boy received word from his Aunt Frances, the postmistress, that a letter was waiting for him and that it could be picked up at the post office.

He opened the letter with pleasure and read it with mounting horror.

Clay-Boy tore the letter to shreds and threw the pieces away. Later he returned to where he had thrown the pieces, collected as many as he could find and burned them.

He became a sleepwalker and both day and night went about like a person in a daze. Some nights he would toss and turn in his bed, his whole body flushed with dread of the day her father would come galloping up to the door on his horse. In some of his dreams the Colonel rode right into the kitchen and without even dismounting slashed the air with his riding crop and demanded vengeance.

Clay-Boy would imagine the disbelief and then the sorrow that would cross his mother's face when she realized that it had indeed happened. He had ruined the daughter of the manager of the company. He had no idea what the Colonel would demand of him, but it was certain that his father would lose his job at the mill and with no way to make a living in New Dominion they would have to move to some other place.

There came a day when Clay could no longer stand the cast on his leg, so on a Saturday morning he took his fishing rod and reel and hobbled down to Rockfish River. After carefully casting his baited hook out into a productive-looking pool he sat down on the edge of a rock and gently lowered his cast-encased leg into the water.

Late that afternoon Olivia sat on the front porch to get a breath of fresh air before going into the kitchen to prepare the evening meal. She could see Clay coming up the road, but it was not until he came through the wisteria arch over the front gate that she saw him clearly. He was holding a long string of catfish and as he came toward her Olivia saw for the first time that the leg he had broken was bare from the knee down.

“Clay,” she cried, “what happened to your cast?”

“I threw it in the river,” he said happily.

“You come up here and sit down,” she demanded. “I'm goen to send for the doctor.”

“Don't do that, woman,” he said. “I don't need any doctor to tell me when my flesh is well.”

“It wasn't your flesh,” said Olivia. “It was your bone.”

“Flesh or bone, whatever it was, it's all well now,” he said and continued on around to the back of the house, where he proceeded to skin the catfish for supper.

***

It was little Shirley who made the comment which was to forecast what the day might bring when at breakfast the following morning she observed, “Daddy don't look like Daddy.”

Because Clay was going to Mr. John Pickett's place that Sunday to borrow the money to send Clay-Boy to college he had dressed in his white shirt, white duck trousers and white oxfords Virgil had given him many summers ago.

Clay didn't dress in light colors often. Weekdays he wore blue or gray denim shirts and trousers to match. To church he usually wore his dark blue suit, but no one had ever seen him all in white before.

“You look nice, Clay,” said Olivia. “You ought to dress in that outfit more often.”

“Don't I look like a peacock though!” he replied and came up behind Olivia, who was frying eggs, and kissed her on the back of her neck.

“Stop that, you old fool. I'm tryen to get these children some breakfast.”

“You better be careful how you talk to me, woman. With these glad rags on it wouldn't surprise me if I wasn't kidnaped by some good-looken woman before the day is over.”

“She's welcome to you, you silly old rooster.”

“Lord, that woman loves me!” said Clay to the children and winked broadly at them. “How are my babies this mornen anyway?” He made the round of the table, kissing and hugging everyone.

After breakfast Clay took the tin milk pail and went to the barn where Chance, the cow, had been lowing for her breakfast. As usual Chance had taken her position in front of the trough where she was always fed and where Clay usually milked her, and that is where he found her. Following his usual procedure he mixed her feed and went past her head and dumped the mixture in her trough.

Ordinarily Chance was a peaceful cow. She had never
kicked and was by nature so gentle that Clay had seen no reason to have her dehorned, so that from her head sprouted two gracefully curved and quite sharp horns.

This morning she was fractious and though Clay noticed her erratic behavior he failed to realize that Chance just did not recognize him in his white clothing. When Clay poured the feed into her trough, hungry as she was she lifted her head, refused the food and bolted past him out of the barn and into the pasture. A few yards away she turned and looked back at the barn, peering distrustfully at Clay in his white shirt and trousers and lifting her head up and down in a troubled way.

“Come back here, you hellion!” shouted Clay as he came out of the barn in pursuit of her. As he advanced toward her Chance backed away. At first she had only appeared to be frightened, but now her eyes grew angry. She was hungry and needed to be milked and had no time for the advancing white-clad stranger.

But Clay was a stubborn man and the faster she backed away from him the faster he advanced upon her. Finally she stopped and something in her eyes told Clay that he would be wise to advance no farther. He realized too that she had lured him too far out into the pasture for him to run to safety if she should advance on him.

Chance evidently realized her advantage, for she charged. Coming at Clay with a fury he had not known she possessed, her head down, the horns aimed squarely for him, he realized that his only chance was to try to outrun her.

Because of the leg he had broken he could not run as fast as he thought he could, but still he was only a few yards from the barn when Chance caught up with him. When she did she caught him full in the seat and, tossing her head up, sent Clay flying through the air. The entire seat was ripped out of his pants and two long red streaks showed on his backside where her horns had made their mark.

Oblivious to Clay's curses and with threads of his white trousers still clinging to her horns, Chance trotted calmly into her stall and began to eat her breakfast.

“Lord God, Clay,” cried Olivia when Clay came to the
house and set the bucketful of warm foaming milk on the table, “What happened?”