The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [218]
But there will be many other things for Nail to think about before then. At one point he will have to decide whether or not he and his lady should relinquish their sylvan sanctuary and move back to society. It will become clear, after a while, that nobody is really trying to find them. Nearly everybody will know that they are up there, somewhere, high on Ledbetter Mountain in a cave or cavern near a spectacular waterfall. They will know that I have made countless trips up there myself, each time carrying a bowl of chicken and dumplings, and I myself will have heard of the men on Ingledew’s storeporch making bets on which will happen first: the remaining chicken and dumplings will spoil, or Nail will grow tired of them. And sure enough, those wagering on the former contingency will be victorious.
What will bring Nail out of hiding, eventually, will not be my continued reassurance that nobody, especially not the law, or what is left of the law in Newton County, is actively searching for him, but Doc Swain’s sorrowful announcement to him that his father has taken a turn for the worse. On one of his visits, a week or so after Nail’s return, Doc Swain will examine Nail and pronounce him almost recovered from his malaria, and then will sadly tell him that his father is dying.
That will bring Nail home.
He will never again return to the cave, except, oh, years later on a kind of nostalgic pilgrimage to it, he and Viridis will take their little boy to see the spot where the boy was conceived, although of course they won’t try to explain to a kid that young what “conception” means. And I will be getting far ahead of my story.
[Although my story, that is, the story of my own life, will tend to fade off, far off from here. I will not immediately, or soon, honor my assent to Every’s request; for one thing, my mother will constantly remind me that he cannot be my beau, for two reasons: he’s a cousin, even if twice removed, and the Dills are the lowest of the low on the Stay More social ladder, such as it is. Raymond Ingledew, youngest son of banker John Ingledew, will begin to take notice of me, or take a letch for me (is there a difference?), and my mother will think Raymond makes a far more eligible beau, but the story of all of that, and what will happen between Every and Raymond, will have to wait until you, dear reader, can tell it.]
Nail will attend his father in his last hours. Nail will move back into his father’s house, and he and Viridis will sleep there, not together of course, because even though everybody will assume that Nail and Viridis have been sleeping together in the cave, it would be improper and unseemly, not to mention immoral, for an unmarried couple to sleep in the same bed in the house of decent folks. And besides all that, it would not be nice for a man to have relations with his girlfriend while his father is dying. Seth Chism will hang on for nearly a week after Nail moves home, and Nail will sleep in his old bed, and his brother Luther will be sent to Waymon’s house so that Viridis can have Luther’s bed. And everything will be proper while Seth is dying.
When Seth dies (happy, Doc Swain assures everybody), Nancy, Seth’s widow, will move in with her oldest son Waymon, who lives down the trail a ways in the old McCoy place with his wife Faye, and young Luther, her least boy, still a teenager, will go with her, leaving the old Chism place entirely to Nail and to Viridis, and even though they will not be married yet, it will be nobody’s business whether they resume sleeping together. It will be their house. Nancy will deed that house and eighty acres to her son Nail, who will add to it the forty acres of his own that had been a pasture for sheep. Now he will have a hundred and twenty acres on which to raise sheep…if he cares to.
Will he care to? One of the biggest things he will have to think about is not whether he wants