That Distant Land, page 30
“No!” I said.
“So we need somebody who can load us a lot of blanks, and somebody who can furnish guns that can shoot blanks of the sizes he can load, in case we can’t furnish them ourselves.”
“All right. Petey Tacker. I reckon he will lend a certain dignity to the occasion.”
“No question about it,” Burley said. “And then we got Grinner Hample.”
Frankie Lee Hample was known as Grinner because, even with his thick glasses, he could not see very far ahead, and so his face was set in a perpetual grimace as though he suspected that he was only a step or two from something that was going to hurt if he ran into it. A man of courage. “Splendid choice,” I said.
“And we got Big Ellis.”
Big Ellis was a man of large girth and small behind, who customarily did whatever he was doing with one hand while holding up his pants with the other.
“Ah, the element of suspense.”
“And,” Burley said, “we got Mushrat Cotman.”
Mushrat was six and three-quarters feet tall, round of face, long of trunk, and short of leg. He was called Mushrat, Mush for short, because he eked out the income from his little hillside farm by trapping in the wintertime. “Brilliant,” I said.
“Old Daniel Boone hisself,” Burley said. “Well, what do you think?”
“That’s just six of us. Is that enough to discover Kentucky? It’s a big place.”
“Well,” Burley said, “we ain’t going to discover but just a little of it.”
When John T. came in again, I told him we had put together the most authentic band of pioneers to be found anywhere. I didn’t tell him who.
“That’s good, that’s good,” he said.
“I reckon you don’t want a haircut, then.”
He made his mouth little, as if it had a drawstring, while he let on to think the matter over. As almost anybody could have predicted, he didn’t want to appear to be one of us. “I’m going to be the teamster,” he said. “You all are going to be the pioneers.”
But the rest of us turned out our hair and beards. Word soon got around that we were part of an authentic reenactment of history that was going to be put on at Frankfort. As if Frankfort’s business were not the reenactment of history.
We grew a good deal of hair. Burley and Mush gathered up some coon hides and fashioned them into caps that were rough, smelly, and fairly greasy on the inside, but authentic. Petey Tacker inventoried our arsenal, supplemented it where necessary, and spent several nights in the manufacture of blank cartridges and shells. One night after I closed the shop Burley and I ripped up a sheet and painted two large banners, one for each side of John T.’s wagon, that said: KENTUCKY PIONEERS LOOK INTO THE FUTURE. And Burley found two white earthenware jugs and painted black X’s around their outsides.
As we would have known if we had been interested in thinking about it, John T. could take us as pioneers or let us alone. It was roustabouts and horse grooms that he wanted. But we were good-humored about it. We went down to his place the afternoon before the parade and helped him.
He had hired Sam Hanks to haul the equipment on his truck, and Sam was not in a good mood. He had been hauling livestock and tobacco to market out of the Port William community for forty years. He had allowed himself to be hired by John T. in order to be a proper public servant, but he didn’t especially like John T. He thought our project was frivolous, and he made his opinion plain by sitting on the driver’s seat of his truck with the door open and his feet on the running board, smoking his pipe, while we worked. We loaded John T.’s wagon, which was a pretty authentic antique of some kind. We loaded its hoops and canvas cover. We cleaned the four mares’ harness and loaded it. We found places for our firearms and ammunition, the two painted banners, and the two earthenware jugs now pleasantly weighted and guggly as we passed them up into the load. And we did this under the influence of a lizardly skepticism in the eyes of Sam Hanks, and under the strict and picky supervision of John T. McCallum.
“Boys,” John T. said, “it may freeze tonight. Ain’t you all afraid them jugs are going to bust?”
“John T.,” Burley said, “them jugs ain’t going to bust.”
Down at John T.’s before daylight the next morning, we loaded the mares, standing them crossways and head-to-tail, in John T.’s truck, and then started for the seat of government—Burley and Grinner and I riding with Sam, Petey and Big Ellis and Mush with John T.
When we got to the place where the parade was being assembled it was full day, and we could see ourselves. John T. looked natty in a suit and overcoat and a snap-brim felt hat and a pair of kid gloves; it was clear that he had come to drive, not to work. Sam, in his trucker’s cap and coveralls, looked the way he offen did: displeased. The rest of us, as Burley said, didn’t look like anybody you’d want to walk up on in a fog. If authentic beards had been wanted, they should have provided more time between election and inauguration. We didn’t look bearded; we looked unshaven. We didn’t look long-haired; we looked unbarbered and uncombed. And our coonskin caps just looked outlandish. We were an authentic version of something that John T. evidently had not quite foreseen, for he paused a long moment to look at us as he came around the truck.
And then he said, “Boys, we got to get these mares unloaded and ready, and we got to get all this equipment unloaded. It won’t do to stand around.”
But Burley, who had unloaded his jugs the first thing, said, “John T., you always ought to drink plenty of water early in the morning. It keeps you reg’lar.”
What was in those jugs was not water, or not water entirely. Each of them held about a pint of water, which had been diluted with perhaps a quart of Kentucky Pride, a distilled essence of our homeland, of which the only notable virtue was cheapness. In its pure state, it would roll the skin off your tongue like a window blind—and, even as Burley had diluted it, would warm the throat a little more than pleasantly and bring a few sincere tears to the eyes.
Burley lifted one of the jugs, authentically stoppered with a corncob, withdrew the cob, and proffered the jug to John T. “John T.?” he said.
“No, thanks,” said John T. politely, but looking at the jug for the first time with something like curiosity.
Burley raised the jug toward Sam Hanks, who was again sitting in his truck with his feet on the running board, smoking and not looking at us. “Sam?”
Sam withdrew his pipestem, said, “Naw,” and replaced the pipestem without looking at it or at us.
Burley handed the jug to Petey Tacker, and then opened the other one and handed it to me. We each took two or three swallows, managing not to exclaim, and turned away from John T. to hide our tears.
We set to work then, and tried honestly to please John T., and did. We unloaded the mares, tied them to the racks, and groomed them until they shone. We put the harness on them. We rolled the wagon off Sam’s truck, and fixed the hoops in place and stretched the canvas cover over it. We attached the lettered banners to the sides. We filled our pockets with ammunition and put an extra supply along with our firearms inside the tailgate of the wagon. The outfit actually did look authentic. We stood back and admired it.
“Here,” Burley said, starting the jugs around again. “We got to keep our circulation circulating.”
John T. waited politely until I had passed the jug to the next man, and then he crooked his forefinger at me and I followed him to the far side of the wagon.
“Jayber Crow,” he said, “now here’s the deal.” He was standing practically on my toes, speaking right into my face in that confidential undertone of his. “You all walk behind the wagon, see. Because there are just a few of you, and we want the crowd to get the full force of you all being pioneers. If you all scatter out too much and get up alongside the wagon and all, it won’t make no impression. Don’t you see?” He stuck his forefinger into my breastbone three times to make sure I saw.
I saw. He didn’t want the impression that he and his horses would make to be mixed with the impression that we would make.
But I thought, “Well, why not?” I said, “Why, sure, John T. I see exactly what you mean. You’re the doctor.”
“And listen,” he said. “One more thing.” He became even more confidential. “That Linda mare, the off mare in the wheel team? She might be just a little bit on the fractious side. Now she won’t be no trouble, long as she’s going. And I can hold her, of course, if I have to. But if we stop, I’d appreciate it if you’d just step up beside her, where you can take hold of her bit.”
Well, John T. was an odd case, but in some ways he was as shrewd as he thought he was. I saw that he had made me his second-in-command, the person most eligible to be depended on, and I had enough Kentucky Pride in me by then to be proud.
“Why, sure,” I said. “Just walk up to where I can hook my finger in her bit ring, right?”
“Right,” John T. said, and he gave me a comradely pat on the elbow.
When we rejoined the other discoverers, who were having another authentic sip from the authentic jugs, John T. felt so good about his conquest of me that he decided to take offense at Sam Hanks’s indifference.
“Sam Hanks,” he said with a put-on affability that would have maddened a pig, “ain’t you going to go with us?”
“Hell, no!” Sam said, still looking at the far horizon.
“Well, why not?” John T. said. His voice was now full of patriotic indignation.
“Because,” Sam said.
“Because why?”
“Because I ain’t a going to do it, that’s why.”
“Well, if you wasn’t going to take part, why did you haul our stuff up here?”
“I’m a hauler,” Sam said. “I ain’t no inaugerater.”
“Well, these other fellows here, they’re taking part,” John T. said. He was enjoying himself, just wonderfully gratified by the superiority of his sense and his patriotism.
“Well, these other fellows here ain’t me, and I ain’t them.”
“But look here,” John T. said. “Why would a fellow not want to help out to inaugerate his own governor of his own state?”
“The last thing this state needs is another damned governor. What good’s a governor ever done us?”
“Why, roads! They build us roads.”
“Roads’ ass! You know what roads are for? To haul stuff out that sells for too little, and to haul stuff in that sells for too much. I’ve hauled enough livestock out of Port William community in my time to make us all well off, and what I’ve mostly done is put it where somebody can steal it.” He was looking at John T. now, just furious.
And John T. was furious too. “The duly elected governor of your state,” he said, “is being inaugerated today. And you’re too contrary to help out.”
“I’m right proud to say I am.”
“Our duly elected governor . . .” John T. said, enjoying the phrase.
“Elected’s ass! Auctioned! A governor gets elected by auctioning hisself off. Governors don’t govern Kentucky—companies govern Kentucky. We’ll see the day when some damned company will tear that capitol down and sell it off for doorstops.”
I had heard it all before—most of us had—but John T. had never heard any of it, because he usually didn’t listen to anybody but himself. He was shocked. For almost a full minute, Sam having spoken to his satisfaction and John T. unable to speak at all, they just looked at each other.
And then John T. turned around and walked off. “Well!” he said. “We got a governor to inaugerate.”
“Go right ahead,” Sam said. “Inaugerate a rangatang if you want to. It won’t make no difference.”
All of us frontiersmen looked at each other and grinned. The parade hadn’t even started yet, and we were already having a good time. We took on a little more Kentucky Pride.
And then another blow fell on poor old John T. An official-looking group with a clipboard, who had been watching us from afar, came over and informed John T. that the parade position of KENTUCKY PIONEERS LOOK INTO THE FUTURE would be last.
And John T., whose face had just returned to a more or less normal color, began to turn red again, starting with his ears. It was plain that John T. had imagined his horses leading the parade, not following it. He said, “Wuh . . . ,” but the official group was already hurrying off, following its clipboard. John T. watched them go, and then he turned around and looked at us. He had begun to regret that Kentucky was going to be discovered by anybody he knew.
He was glad, all the same, to have our help in getting the mares hitched to the wagon. And one of us stood by the head of each mare until he was on the seat and Burley handed him the lines. Now that the outfit was all put together, we felt a certain patriotic pride in being associated with it. The four mares stood as if they knew they were being watched, all as black and bright as buttons, and even John T., we had to admit, looked good, sitting up there in his faultless suit with the reins in his gloved hands.
And then a covey of breathless ladies robed all in white fluttered up to the wagon, followed by the officials with the clipboard. Their float had broken down, they said. Something had happened to the motor. And would John T. mind, please, if they rode on his wagon, since it was empty? They were a church choir, and it seemed so important to them that a religious note should be sounded somewhere in the parade.
A very sweet-faced youngish lady, who appeared to be the leader of the choir, looked up at John T. almost with tears in her eyes and said, “Oh, won’t you please let us ride with you?”
John T., who had removed his hat and was holding it against his breast like a proper horseman, said, “Yes, mam, climb right on.” He was, you could see, just transported, having been granted, as if by divine intervention, a change of causes. Now Kentucky was going to have to look out for its own discovery; John T. was rescuing ladies in distress.
While Grinner and Big Ellis stayed with the horses, John T. and Petey and Mush helped the ladies into the wagon, and Burley and I loosened the canvas cover and furled it neatly along one side.
As I happened to be going by him, John T. caught me firmly by the elbow, gave me a straight look and said, “Behind the wagon, Jayber Crow.”
“All right,” I said. “Fine.”
The wagon looked even better with the choir on it. We got ourselves behind it, and loitered about for a few minutes, having another infusion of Kentucky Pride. And then it came to us that, since the parade was not even ready to start and we were the tail end of it, we had time on our hands.
“If we’re in the parade, we can’t see it,” Petey Tacker said. “Let’s go see it before we have to get in it.”
There was much sound sense in that, so we set off in a bunch. And then I thought of my responsibility, and I looked back at John T. “What about Linda?” I said.
John T. thought a minute and then said, “Well, let Grinner Hample stay with her.”
So Grinner turned back to stand at Linda’s head, and John T. waved the rest of us on. He was plainly glad to be shed of us, and our departure did add greatly to his dignity.
Petey was the most authentic one of us, for he had on an old leather coat of some kind that could have passed for buckskin. The rest of us, besides our coonskin caps, were wearing just whatever we worked or hunted in. But however authentic we looked, with our ringtailed hats and our old clothes and our hair and whiskers, we attracted a lot of notice and comment.
At some point in the proceedings, Petey had come to be deeply amused. As he walked along, he chuckled under his breath and scratched his stomach. At the sight of anything he thought remarkable, he said, “Well! What about that? What about that?”
Mush too was amused, but he was silent; he just had a broad, warmhearted smile on his face. He looked as if he could not possibly have been more pleased. His pants and old hunting coat were rather smudgy in complexion, frazzled by briars, and his coat cuffs were slick with tallow. He looked like a tall broken-off tree stump on the top of which somebody had treed a coon.
Big Ellis, very happy also, appeared to be ascending out of his pants into his hat. His pants, loaded with cartridges, were requiring much assistance from his left hand, but he never raised them above his pelvis, and he had risen well past his eyebrows into his hat, so that he had to tilt his head back to see.
And Burley was wearing an expression of utter decorum, as if he was not impersonating John T.’s idea of a pioneer at all but was well-groomed and wearing a suit. Only when he looked straight at you could you see way back in his eyes the flicker of profound amusement. When I looked at him I could feel a grin stretching across my soul.
There were wonderful things to see in that parade. There were floats of every kind, decorated in various ways that had taken a lot of work. And the floats were separated by all manner of high school and college bands. There were drum majors in tall hats, majorettes in short skirts, actors and dancers and downs, companies of soldiers, many flags and banners. We’d had no idea.
There was a float that said, FORWARD WITH KENTUCKY COAL. It had a lump of coal on it as big as a house, and on top of the lump of coal was a crown, and inside the crown were three fiddlers, for this was Old King Coal, don’t you see?
And there was a float that said, FORWARD WITH KENTUCKY TIMBER; and one that said, FORWARD WITH KENTUCKY TOBACCO; and one that said, FORWARD WITH KENTUCKY WHISKEY; and one that said, FORWARD WITH KENTUCKY BASKETBALL. And every one of them was as clever as it could be.
There was a float that said, KENTUCKY—OPEN FOR BUSINESS. It showed a kind of cutout of the state, a sort of fancy candy box, with the lid propped up like a piano lid, and inside it were people at desks, paying and collecting money. Another float said, SELL KENTUCKY, and there was a man in a suit on it, sitting at a big desk. Behind the man’s chair was a heap of coal and a stuffed sheep and a sawlog and a basket of tobacco, and in front of the desk a coal miner and a farmer and a logger were standing in line, waiting to receive their checks. Another float bore a living replica of the state seal: a man in buckskin handing a check to a gentleman in a cutaway coat; a legend arching over their heads said, THE COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY; and along the side of the float was a banner that said, TO THEM THAT HAVE, IT SHALL BE GIVEN.
