Nathan Coulter (Port William, #1)

by Wendell Berry

That was what he lived for, to own his farm without having to say please or thank you to a living soul.

Our mother was sick, and in the afternoons when she’d washed the dinner dishes she had to lie down to rest.

Our Aunt Mary had been buried there a long time ago. It was the first thing anybody remembered about our family, and nobody could remember anything else for a good while after that; we didn’t know how many years it had been since she died.

Aunt Mary was our great-great-grandfather’s youngest daughter.

Her ghost walked because she wanted to be buried in the graveyard with the rest of the dead people in our family. But nobody had ever taken the time to dig her up and bury her there. We never even put flowers on her grave.

A big hickory grew up beside the grave, and she was just some earth tangled in the roots. It was strange to think of Aunt Mary being a part of Grandpa’s farm, or maybe a hickory tree.

I watched them, letting myself float in the slow current. I thought if I floated to the mouth of the river I’d always be at the center of a ring of trees and a ring of hills and a ring where the sky touched. I said, “I’m Nathan Coulter.” It seemed strange.

But it caught up with him over old man Crandel’s barn. BLAM!

Daddy got short-tempered with us, and stayed that way longer than he ever had before. He took us to the field with him every morning to keep us out of the house and we stayed with him all day. It was hard to have to be with him so much. Brother and I were careful not to aggravate him, but scarcely a day passed that we didn’t get at least a tongue-lashing from him. He was worrying a lot and working hard, and the least thing could set him off. The worst times were when we came to the house at noon and at night. He wouldn’t let us make a sound then.

quit having the dream about the lion, and began dreaming things that woke me up in the middle of the night. I came awake sweating and afraid, but I could never remember what I’d dreamed. It always

“Boys, your mother’s dead,” she told us.

Every time the axe came down he said “Ah!”—the keen sound of it ready to turn into crying, until the bite of the axe stopped it; and he tightened his mouth and swung again.

“If Mother was alive he wouldn’t pick on us,” I said.

He’d changed and we didn’t try to talk to him.

His hands were heavy and big, with white scars on them that never sunburned. His hands never quit moving. Even when he went to sleep sometimes at night sitting in his rocking chair in the living room his hands stirred on the chair arms as if they could never find a place to rest.

The inside of the coffin looked snug and soft, but when they shut the lid it would be dark. When they shut the lid and carried her to the grave it would be like walking on a cloudy dark night when you can’t see where you’re going or what’s in front of you. And after they put her in the ground and covered her up she’d turn with the world in the little dark box in the grave, and the days and nights would all be the same.

“It’s mine, God damn it.”

My mother’s soul was going up through the sky to be joyful with the angels in Heaven, so beautiful and far away that you couldn’t think about it. And we were riding on a wagon behind Grandpa’s team of blackmules, going to live with Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Burley, leaving the place where they were singing over her body. The sun was bright on the green grass up the ridge and glossy on the slick rumps of the mules. When we were driving away from the lot gate the people at the house were singing: In the sweet by and by, We shall meet on that beautiful shore; In the sweet by and by, We shall meet on that beautiful shore. It was pretty; and sad to think of people always ending up so far from each other.

We’d been living at Grandpa’s for a little more than a year when Mrs. Crandel died. And the next day Kate Helen Branch had a baby. Uncle Burley said that was just the way things were. They put one in and pull another one out.

I thought how my mother was dead. But I didn’t think of her growing up into a tree. Her body had to stay in the ground, but her soul was in Heaven because she’d been good. Grandma said she was happy up there with the angels. I thought it would be a bad thing to be dead anyway. I figured it was probably darker there than it was on Earth. And maybe she missed Brother and me.

said, “Uncle Burley, there’s not any way to find out how many times they’ve got your name in that book, is there?”

It was a cheap thing, and she couldn’t grin enough to change it.

While daylight came we sat and looked at the black pile of ashes. We hadn’t accepted the fire; we’d been able to fight that as long as it burned. But now, in the daylight, in our tiredness, as if we’d fought all night in a dream, we accepted the ashes.

But we’d quit being brothers, and it was my fault.

He’s worked like the world was on fire and nobody but him to put it out. It’s a shame to see him getting old.”

I nodded. Grandpa had been hard on all of us. He’d kept himself stubborn and lonely, not allowing any of us to know him; we saw him and he saw us through his loneliness. But his loneliness and stubbornness humbled us too. We had to admire him.

When we came to the store we saw that Beriah had hung our fish outside the door so everybody could see it. Flies were swarming over it, and several men were standing there looking and talking. As we passed one of them called, “Is this your fish, Burley?” “It’s Beriah’s fish,” Uncle Burley said.

He joked sometimes about how one day we’d be able to do more than he could. “One of these days they’ll go by the old man,” he’d say. “They won’t even look at him. They’ll say, ‘We’re coming, old man,’ and there won’t be a thing for me to do but get over.” And he usually wound up, “But, by God, they’ll have to have the wind in their shirttails when they do it. I’ll tell them that. When they go past me they’ll look back and know they’ve been someplace.”

Once we’d passed him we could never be behind again. We’d have to stay in front, and it was a lonely and a troublesome place.

“When the old man’s dead and gone I want you all to walk in front of the coffin so you’ll know what the country looks like out in front of him.”

He’d had to work hard for so long, pushed by creditors and seasons and weather, until now it was a habit. That had made him what he was. That was the way he knew himself, and he needed it.

I tell you, boys, when he’s dead and gone they’ll be standing in line to see what the country looks like without him wheeling and dealing in the middle of it. And it’ll be a sight they never saw before.”

Daddy and Brother had fought. It had happened, and it was over. We couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Boy, are you going?” Uncle Burley asked him.

A few stars were out. We stood in the gate a long time after Brother was out of sight, dreading to believe that he was gone.

When Uncle Burley had finished I said, “He’s not mad at you anymore.” And then Daddy cried. He didn’t say that he was glad Brother wasn’t mad at him, or that he was sorry for their fight. He just sat there, looking at his plate and chewing on a bite of corn bread, with tears running down his cheeks.

I could have cried myself. Brother was gone, and he wouldn’t be back. And things that had been so before never would be so again. We were the way we were; nothing could make us any different, and we suffered because of it. Things happened to us the way they did because we were ourselves. And if we’d been other people it wouldn’t have mattered. If we’d been Mushmouth or Jig Pendleton or that dog with the roman candle tied to his tail, it would have been the same; we’d have had to suffer whatever it was that they suffered because they were themselves. And there was nothing anybody could do but let it happen.

“Well,” Uncle Burley said, “they’ll grieve in this old land until you’d think they were going to live on it forever, then grieve some more because they know damn well they’re not going to live on it forever. And nothing’ll stop them but a six-foot hole.”

They had known themselves in Daddy’s authority. But their fight had ended that; and the old feeling had been too strong and had lasted too many years to allow them ever to know each other in a different way.

Until that year, although he’d cursed his weakness and his age, he’d either ignored the idea of his death or had refused to believe in it. He’d only thought of himself as living. But now that he finally admitted that he would die we thought about it too. We couldn’t get used to the feeling it gave us to go to work in the mornings without him.

Grandpa had owned his land and worked on it and taken his pride from it for so long that we knew him, and he knew himself, in the same way that we knew the spring. His life couldn’t be divided from the days he’d spent at work in his fields. Daddy had told us we didn’t know what the country would look like without him at work in the middle of it; and that was as true of Grandpa as it was of Daddy. We wouldn’t recognize the country when he was dead.

I called his name, but he didn’t stir. I picked him up in my arms and I carried him home.