To be read prior to performance:
The following is a one-man—or one-woman—recitation whose purpose is to remind a thoughtful audience that certain idealized notions concerning nature must be revisited and revised; wise folk greatly desire but do not invest in the hope that dogwood blossoms and wild primroses and twilight whip-poor-wills dispose the human heart to beneficence. This recitation may not be read at Easter or Christmas or on other holy days; it may not be read in March. It may, though, be read in August when the dog star hangs low in the morning and in October, because the beauty of autumn is a betrayal and a deceit. Sugar maple red is like unto a whore's lips. This fact should be noted. Finally, the recitation may be acted in part if so desired, but be it understood that the slaying of the brown-eyed boy with the corn silk hair will not be represented, for there are tragedies that demoralize the soul of men and cause them to doubt the goodness of Almighty God.
* * *
The gathering feels somewhat like a drama, as everyone expects and wants the retelling to be. The proscenium is the overhang of the porch; the hewn logs of the cabin and quilt that hangs over the front door are the backdrop; and on the porch planks are the props: a rocker at center stage, two cane bottom chairs, one chunk of sawed oak set upright, and a bench, (all but the rocker variously placed). A jug of moonshine sits at the base of the stage right stanchion and a rusty can spittoon is by the rocker.
The actors are Ma Cloud, Charlie Cloud, their family, and a few friends. Four children sit on the porch with their arms around their knees.
Setting: The sun is sinking in purple behind Piney Ridge, so the shadberries and wild pear are tinted lavender. The woods surrounding the cabin are growing darker as twilight encroaches, but behind the ridge is the merest glow of a rising moon. The evening is mild, and the spring peepers are trilling.
(A brief aside: Jugs and spittoons are cliches of hill life—icons of coarse pleasures that give you and me the sense of superiority we crave. We—the soft ones with our soft beds and soft muscles who wouldn't survive a wet night under a limestone outcropping—we who can't bag our own game or even plant our own gardens, we love the smugness we feel observing jugs and spittoons. But Alf Bolin would have shot us dead with all the concern of a farmer scything wheat.)
Ma Cloud is settled in the rocker, comfortable in her joints but preparing a familiar bitterness in her heart. For a moment, she holds her hand to her forehead, but then she grips the rocker arms and begins speaking:
"I remember my first sit-down with Alf. He didn't go by Bolin then, but by his family name, Bolend. He changed his name after his mama left him and he come to be with us. So much for Christian charity. He was fifteen years, maybe sixteen, a boy big as a man, and he was holding Puss in his lap. He asked me serious-like, 'Mizz Cloud, Why do cats allus smile? Look at him. Don't he look like he's smiling?' Alf was rubbing her ears, and the cat was purring, and I says, 'Well, Alf, it's just the way their mouths curl up at the corners.'
"And Alf then asks, 'Why do you keep him?'
"'Mostly to kill the mice and rats. Though I have to admit she provides a kind of comfort. There's something about a cat that makes a house feel more home-like, the way it sits and watches nothing in particular—contented to be.'
"He answers and says, 'Seems to me a house ain't nothing but four walls and a roof, and there ain't a goddamned thing can make it more'n that.'
"Now, I don't generally tolerate language such as that—takin' the Lord's name in vain—, but I figgered maybe he said such a thing because his mama left and his pa was dead. So I let it pass. But mark me here, I do now say this word to you deliberately and without fear of reproach because if there is any word that signifies Alf Bolin, that word is 'goddamned.'
"Anyhow, Alf pushes the cat away, and when it comes back to rub against his leg, he kicks at it. Not really mean-like, just unnecessary. About that time, Calvin come in from the cold and said, 'Well, Alf, how d'you like your new quarters?' And Alf smiled at him, just like a cat."
Ma Cloud puts her hand to her forehead again before resuming:
"Things went along, and Alf did his share around the farm, and I didn't see him to be so much different from my own boys. Charlie"—and here Ma Cloud nods to her youngest son—"you knowed him good as anybody. What did you see?"
Charlie said, "He didn't seem so different, Ma. I mean, he got in scuffles, but, hell, we all did. It's just boys."
"That's my point. Who could've prophesied what would happen? Alf went to Star School up through eighth grade like my other children, and he could figure and read and spell as well as any boy there. You ain't gonna believe this because it's so unlikely, but Alf won a spelling bee right before he left school. It was down to him and little Sarah Puffin, and Miss Smiley asks her to spell 'separate.' And Sarah says S-E-P-E-R-A-T-E. I remember her smiling so big because she thought she'd won, but Alf he just laughs out loud. Miss Smiley says, 'Alf, kin you spell it?' And Alf says, S-E-P-A-R-A-T-E, separate. And teacher says that's right. And Alf says, you know how I remember that? 'Cause there's A RAT in the middle of separate."
Charlie said, "Ma, you read too much meaning into that."
"Ain't no such thing as too much meaning when it comes to a son of a bitch like Alf, begging your pardon."
But no one's pardon really needs begging, so Ma Cloud continues.
"1860 come and went, and then came the hell year, 1861. Lord Jesus, it wasn't no time before these hills were baptized in blood. That's when I learned the only thing I know for sure: that a thing don't have to make sense to mean something. Over here in this valley was Mr. Hill and over there in that valley was Mr. Billy, and they rose up and killed each other and called theirselves heroes for doing it. They killed each other and sent their boys out to kill each other and sent their girls out to be raped and cut, all because they believed in something they couldn't even see. Lord Jesus—if there had just been an image, some false idol hewn from stone or carved from a tree stump—something to point at and say, 'That thing right there is what I'm killing you for,' I could've seen something with the blood of men on it and say, all right, that's what it is. But this killing wasn't for nothing! Nothing! Killin' for lines in the woods couldn't nobody see."
Charlie shook his head and ran his fingers back through his hair. "Ma . . ."
"Don't you 'Ma' me, as if I ain't earned the right to speak the truth in anger. I have purchased the right to speak the truth, and if I'm damned for it, so much the worse for Almighty God!
"My Calvin joined the Union army, and Alf, he went Confederate, so he kept clear of the farm until one October afternoon he came riding back. The hickories were just turning and the sugar maples out back were red as fire, and up rides Alf and two other men. They had covered their heads with sacks with eyeholes cut in 'em—like I'd not know his voice—and he says to me, 'Give me a gun, or we'll kill you and everybody in the cabin.'" But Alf, he didn't know Calvin was home on a furlough. So, Calvin comes out and says to me, 'Mary Jane, go inside.' Then to Alf, 'What do you want, Alf?' Alf says, 'You heard me. Give me a gun. I need it.' Calvin said, 'Take that damned sack offa your head, Alf Bolin, and ask me like a man, and maybe I'll do it. But I ain't negotiating with a feller with a sack on his head.' So Alf pulls the reins tight against his horse neck so's he can sidle up against his partner. And he takes the pistol from the other feller's holster, and he points it—"
Ma Cloud took a breath then, not for any effect though it was by God dramatic. For in her breathless pause for breathing, the listeners saw Calvin Cloud, a vanished actor indeterminately standing below Alf's horse, and Calvin's face bore the features of a good man. The listeners heard Calvin's reasonable and manly proposition—that negotiations should only transpire between men of open countenance. But Ma Cloud was netted and twisted in the memory of the unprovoked outrage, in the obscenity of Satan's indifferent smile; she had turned on the threshold of the cabin door and saw Alf Bolin hooded; she saw him point a pistol and shoot her husband dead. She saw Alf Bolin remove the hood and throw it on her husband's body, the man who took Alf in and treated him like a son; she saw Alf Bolin dismount and take the pistol from her good man's belt and put the pistol in his own belt. And then she saw Molly, her sweet young Molly, heavy with child and soon to suffer her own pangs, swing open the privy door to see what had happened. Ma Cloud saw the unhooded, smiling Alf turn the pistol on precious Molly—his adopted sister, with her father newly slain—and pull the trigger. But the pistol only clicked, so Alf indifferently stuffed the weapon back in his belt and rode his horse over Calvin's body to make his way out of the valley, away from the farm, away from the family who took him in and fed and clothed him according to the command and rule of Holy Scripture.