{"id":2400,"date":"2014-11-13T14:38:54","date_gmt":"2014-11-13T07:38:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/potnecknews.com\/?p=2400"},"modified":"2020-11-16T08:19:39","modified_gmt":"2020-11-16T01:19:39","slug":"the-excitement-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/potnecknews.com\/?p=2400","title":{"rendered":"THE EXCITEMENT"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chapter 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

THE MONKEY AND THE IGUANA<\/strong><\/p>\n

When we reached the house Drew went by the fireplace to sit.\u00a0 Once there, he soon fell asleep.\u00a0 Mama went about her regular Sunday after Church routine of helping Miss Elly with the chores.\u00a0 They sat on the side porch rocking, talking, and separating the last of the sacred\u00a0tobacco seed for the planting.<\/p>\n

“Miss Elly,” Mama said, “I’m thinking about something special for supper tonight to go with those beans we’ve got soaking.\u00a0 What do you think about that fatted hen in the coop?\u00a0 Do you reckon she’d pluck out easy and boil up good?”<\/p>\n

Miss Elly smiled.\u00a0 “I reckon she would indeed, Margaret.\u00a0 But what about Marse\u00a0James? Won’t he be furious that we cooked up one of his\u00a0prized hens without him being here to oversee the plucking\u00a0and eat\u00a0the breast?”<\/p>\n

“That fat hen will be eaten and long forgotten\u00a0before that man ever sets foot back on this property, if he ever does.”\u00a0 I was surprised to hear\u00a0Mama say that.<\/p>\n

“Then it’s settled, Elly,” she added.\u00a0 “Later, I’ll get\u00a0a pot of water boiling and commence to pulling those feathers.\u00a0 We’ll make it a real fancy sit down supper and we’ll let\u00a0Sassy\u00a0make those dumplings we’ve been promising to teach her about.\u00a0 Will you ask Mose, later,\u00a0to sharpen\u00a0up his hatchet?”<\/p>\n

“I will, Margaret,” Miss Elly said with a satisfied smile.<\/p>\n

I didn’t know why they were planning this frilly supper.\u00a0\u00a0We only had chicken on celebration days and we would never do anything like this without daddy\u00a0here.\u00a0 He would forbid it.\u00a0 I thought Mama must surely be going crazy or, at least,\u00a0trying to hide her sadness by busying herself with a day’s worth of work.\u00a0 To sacrifice\u00a0one of his precious hens without him being here was something that I just couldn’t\u00a0understand.<\/p>\n

It seemed that most everyone\u00a0else, though,\u00a0was excited about this last minute supper\u00a0and a small crowd was beginning to gather\u00a0around the chicken coop to watch Mose make that hen run around the stump with its head cut off.<\/p>\n

I knew that my friend, Hilmon, would be on Writer’s Rock waiting for me but, I wasn’t ready, just yet, to go down to the rock.\u00a0 Those Federal men had come by the house first looking for my father and then they proceeded on to the church.\u00a0 Everyone knew my daddy was in jail.\u00a0 The terrible secret was out.\u00a0 Our pretentious innocence was covered with shame.\u00a0 I couldn’t face my friend.<\/p>\n

I went to the only place I could find peace.\u00a0 I went to the tree.\u00a0 My oak tree.\u00a0 Along a line running north and south on the eastern side of the house stood a row of fifteen oak trees.\u00a0 All of them were 60 years old and they were each 20 paces apart.\u00a0 Grandpa\u00a0knew how old they were because he planted them.\u00a0 He planted them all\u00a0except the furthest one out from the house, the one that marked the entrance to our road.\u00a0 This tree was\u00a0older than the other\u00a0oaks.\u00a0 It was, according to my Grandfather, over 100\u00a0years old.\u00a0 When you walked down that long row of trees and got to the oldest\u00a0and the biggest one, the last one away from the house, you were on the road to Dover.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0older times, Grandpa said,\u00a0this old oak was the setting for\u00a0the celebration of a new\u00a0beginning.\u00a0 After the War of Independence, veterans\u00a0of that War gathered here, around this tree, with their families to remember the sacrifices and to remember\u00a0those who gave their lives for freedom. \u00a0We whipped those redcoats twice, Grandpa loved to say. They used to assemble there\u00a0every year in the summer, he said,\u00a0to celebrate, but those days ended long before my time.\u00a0\u00a0He told\u00a0me grand stories about the\u00a0food and the happiness and the large\u00a0groups of people that once congregated\u00a0around this tree.\u00a0 My tree.<\/p>\n

More than one Governor had spoken beneath it, he bragged.\u00a0 Grandpa said he missed those celebrations after they stopped.\u00a0 He said people forgot about the\u00a0sacrifices that were made to win that War.\u00a0 People forgot about how\u00a0hard it was to get free.\u00a0 He said his daddy reminded him of that every day.\u00a0 He said that making a free living, once only a dream, was made\u00a0available to everybody because of that\u00a0War, the War\u00a0for Independence. \u00a0Andy Jackson’s War only proved that we were right, he said, and they celebrated that here, too.<\/p>\n

He always told me, the journey<\/em> of life is\u00a0the reward.\u00a0 Nobody remembers their beginning and the end is always just a\u00a0little too sad.\u00a0 The journey<\/em>\u00a0of\u00a0life\u00a0is where your most precious memories\u00a0are made.<\/p>\n

He didn’t agree with that\u00a0northern war\u00a0that came to Dover.\u00a0 It didn’t\u00a0seem right\u00a0to\u00a0him that we all had to fight\u00a0again and even amongst ourselves.\u00a0\u00a0He said the problem was that people wanted perfection or at least they\u00a0expected everyone else to be perfect.\u00a0\u00a0They expected perfection in an imperfect world and they had nothing more important to do than to hurry\u00a0about pointing fingers about why everyone else was wrong.\u00a0 That was why they stopped coming to the celebrations, he said.\u00a0 It was because of all of the hurrying and the scurrying and the forgetting about what was important.\u00a0 It was because people were\u00a0not taking care of their own.<\/p>\n

It was under this tree, in the wonder of Spring, that he showed me the path to reach a higher plane, a plane separated from the tangled web of\u00a0man.\u00a0 He showed me a place where\u00a0inner peace could replace outer struggle.\u00a0 It’s a simple thing, really.\u00a0 Slow down, he said.\u00a0 Slow down.\u00a0 Grandpa taught me to lay back in the great tree of understanding.\u00a0\u00a0He said to\u00a0let its branches be your cradle.\u00a0 Rest your head back, close your eyes, and breathe.\u00a0 Then, listen.\u00a0 Listen to the sounds around you and understand how to live within them.\u00a0 There is a peace to be found there, he said.\u00a0 And he was right.<\/p>\n

This massive tree leaned just enough into the road so that footsteps carved into its side by my Grandfather provided an easy access\u00a0to climbing\u00a0up and into its hidden domain.\u00a0 Just as with him two generations before, it now\u00a0became my fortress.\u00a0 It was my fortress of wood.\u00a0 I felt safe there.\u00a0 The world in all of its glory\u00a0could go by and nothing could harm me there.\u00a0 I wanted the world to go by quickly now.<\/p>\n

In the summer when the leaves are green and full no one can see you there.\u00a0 The branches are thick and one can easily lay on them without fear of falling.\u00a0 Hilmon and I stayed there for hours at a time watching the carriages and the people streaming by like so many fish on the\u00a0road\u00a0below us.\u00a0 This was the road to the West.\u00a0 This was the road back to the East.\u00a0 There was never a shortage of travelers on this road.\u00a0 Sometimes we would toss acorns or green walnuts\u00a0at the backsides of their horses to see them jump and scatter.\u00a0 Hilmon was the best.\u00a0 He could strike a horse in the hindquarter with one throw nearly every time.\u00a0 Laughter became our only giveaway.\u00a0 The tree was our window to the world and together Hilmon and I watched it go by.\u00a0 Together, we speculated on its vastness, on its smallness, on its cruelty, and on its compassion.\u00a0 All of these things came, we soon understood, in their own time and in no small quantity.<\/p>\n

Now, and again, came the beginning of Spring.\u00a0 It was my favorite time of the year.\u00a0 Only the rain was left of a cold winter and the summer days of life lie ahead.\u00a0 The leaves of my oak were not yet in full bloom but even in the Spring I could hide in the tree with little effort.\u00a0 Branches of enormous size crisscrossed the road and you actually had to lean out of them to be seen.\u00a0 The branches were open and comfortable and I lay there motionless on my branch watching carriages come and go from our house with some regularity.\u00a0 All of the haughty, stately neighbors were coming by to assure Mama that everything would be all right.\u00a0\u00a0They each stayed about ten minutes.\u00a0 Not even long enough for tea.\u00a0 Then, they left.\u00a0 Sometimes, as the carriages met in the roadway beneath me, they paused to discuss the situation with one another and I could hear them talking about the Excitement<\/span>.\u00a0 The Excitement<\/span> they talked about didn’t sound like the excitement that happened in our church.<\/p>\n

I don’t know, but I think I fell asleep and was dreaming so it was a long time before I came down from the tree.\u00a0 I thought I heard Hilmon calling my name before I realized he wasn’t there.\u00a0 It was way after supper and almost dark when I finally got back to the house.\u00a0 Miss Elly and Mama were taking turns rocking and playing with Miss Elly’s new grandbaby on the front porch.\u00a0 Mama asked me if I wouldn’t mind stacking some firewood on the side porch.\u00a0 I knew we hadn’t had\u00a0blackberry winter yet so I started right into stacking.\u00a0 Miss Elly asked me if I needed any help, but I said no, thank you.\u00a0 She smiled and started into the house but stopped just outside the door.<\/p>\n

“Hil went down to the tree looking for you at suppertime.\u00a0 You feel all right, Comer”, she asked?<\/p>\n

“Yes, Miss Elly, I feel fine”, I answered.\u00a0 I kept stacking wood on the porch until it was more than enough to warm a blackberry winter.\u00a0 I stacked it up high but safe enough to stand on its own.\u00a0 I didn’t know when daddy would be home but, I had a feeling that my sacred tobacco patch just got bigger.<\/p>\n

It was dark and I was hungry so I ate some dumplings and cornbread before I went to bed.\u00a0 I tried not to think about daddy much and I slept well, for all the commotion of the day.\u00a0 I slept so well that the next morning I woke up late.\u00a0 The sun was already up.\u00a0 I was called, Miss Elly\u00a0said, but missed a sit-down breakfast so I grabbed a biscuit and rushed out the door to find Hilmon.\u00a0 The sting of Sunday’s events had somehow softened with the arrival of a new day.\u00a0 The sun was shining and it was even warmer than the day before.\u00a0 It felt good on my face.\u00a0 It made me feel more like Summer\u00a0and it made me more anxious to get to Writer’s Rock to see Hilmon Jacobs.<\/p>\n

I ran to the end of the oaks, turned away from town, and ran straight to the first curve in the road where I cut across the hollow and down into the clearing where Writer’s Rock lay.\u00a0 There, on the rock, I found Hil.\u00a0 Even this early in the morning, with the sun, just rising, I knew I could find my friend there.\u00a0 The penetrating sun was beaming through the trees and warming the large piece of limestone that we christened Writer’s Rock.\u00a0 Hilmon was there as he always was and spread across the top of it like dinner on a table.\u00a0 I mean, he was all over it. \u00a0As I watched he arched his back, stretching through the morning rays.\u00a0 Pressing against the stone’s hardness with his shoulders and the back of his neck, he rolled his chest upward.\u00a0 He reached back and pushed up with his hands beside his head and elevated the smallness of his midsection into the air until he formed a perfect, inverted arch on the rock.\u00a0 Once his stretch was complete he settled effortlessly back down to the prone position and wriggled his toes freely in the warm sunlight.<\/p>\n

Hil was my best friend.\u00a0 He had always been my best friend.\u00a0 He taught me how to fish.\u00a0 Not just dropping a line in the water kind of fishing, but how to think like a fish.\u00a0 Where I might go, what I might eat, and when I might be hungry if I were a fish.\u00a0 That included showing me his best, secret fishing holes.\u00a0 We got fat on fish!\u00a0 We hunted squirrels together, swam across the river together, and when we played fox and hounds nobody tree’d Hil and me.\u00a0 I learned the world from Hil.\u00a0 I even learned how to kiss a girl from Hil.\u00a0 Kind of, anyway.\u00a0 I saw him kissing Lucretia Skelton behind the haystack at the Harvest Festival.\u00a0 He knew that I saw him.\u00a0 She didn’t know.\u00a0 I saw the wink in his eye proclaiming his pride.\u00a0 I witnessed his celebration in living and his passion for life.\u00a0 I needed Hil to show me these things.\u00a0 He was closer to me than my own flesh and blood.<\/p>\n

“Hil, hey Hil,” I say.<\/p>\n

“Hey, Comer.\u00a0 Down here.\u00a0 On the rock,” he called back.<\/p>\n

As I reached him we smiled at each other and nodded but did not speak.\u00a0 We just milled about, sitting on the rock, and I took off my shoes, too, so\u00a0the heat\u00a0from the rock could soak up into the soles of my feet.<\/p>\n

We understood personal trials.\u00a0 We’d been through that before.\u00a0 I\u00a0stood by Hil many times when he was challenged\u00a0about his color or his upbringing by\u00a0some poor bred, towny rapscallion who hurled ignorant, angry words or demeaning personal insults towards him.\u00a0\u00a0Even so, Hil didn’t need me<\/em> to do that.\u00a0 He was a\u00a0strong man in his own right.\u00a0 No matter what was said about him or us, we stood together.\u00a0 It was an inner bond\u00a0that we shared.\u00a0 It said, plainly, I understand you and, as your friend,\u00a0I stand\u00a0beside you at all times.\u00a0 You are not alone.<\/p>\n

It\u00a0feels good\u00a0to know that you have\u00a0at least one friend who will never reject you, at least one person\u00a0who you can\u00a0count on when you need them.\u00a0 There is strength in\u00a0knowing that not everyone is against\u00a0you.\u00a0 Especially,\u00a0if that someone is\u00a0someone you trust with your life.\u00a0 Hilmon would never kick me when I was down.\u00a0 We sat there for a long time, enjoying the increasing warmth of the sun until, finally, I broke the silence.<\/p>\n

“Mama left out early this morning,” I said.\u00a0 “According to Miss Elly, her and Uncle Mose went all the way to Clarksville.\u00a0 Miss Elly said they wouldn’t be back until Wednesday night, if then.<\/p>\n

“I know,” Hil explained.\u00a0 “I watched them from the tree until they got all the way around the far bend.”<\/p>\n

The far bend was a country mile away from Hilmon’s vantage point\u00a0deep in the tree.\u00a0 Watching\u00a0family members or friends as they left the farm was a safety precaution Hil and I practiced religiously.\u00a0 It was\u00a0an understood form of protection, spiritual maybe, to be watched or to be looked out for until the line of sight was broken.\u00a0 As long as you could keep someone in your train, to us, they would remain safe and in the spirit of safety.\u00a0 It was an unspoken signal of vigilance for Hil and I and whether we be sender or receiver it acted as a shielding vanguard to keep our world unblemished, untangled, uncomplicated, and perhaps, even innocent.\u00a0 If you could see it you could protect it, we believed.\u00a0 There are bad men out\u00a0in the world.\u00a0 Even, we understood, in Stewart County.\u00a0 No one should have to be alone.\u00a0 Anyway, it was good luck, we said, to keep someone in your sights as they were leaving.\u00a0 I knew Hil had done me a great favor.<\/p>\n

“Thanks, Hil, ” I said.\u00a0 “I reckon she had to get over to the Court to see about daddy.\u00a0 It ain’t a good thing, Hil.\u00a0 Something ain’t right.”<\/p>\n

“Reckon its been that way a long time, Comer.”<\/p>\n

“I know, Hil.\u00a0 Yankees and all coming, it’s got to be about the War.\u00a0 But that’s been over a long time, Hil.\u00a0 Why did they come back now?” I asked.<\/p>\n

“Comer, I’ll tell you something, but you got to promise not to tell anybody.\u00a0 You promise?”<\/p>\n

“I promise, Hil,” I said.\u00a0 And I meant it.<\/p>\n

“Comer, them wasn’t Yankees that come and got your daddy yesterday.\u00a0 Up at the Free Will Church last night the preacher said they come and got your daddy and four other men in the County yesterday over the Excitement<\/span> that happened in Town about 15 years ago.”<\/span><\/p>\n

“The excitement, what excitement?” I asked.\u00a0 I didn’t know what Hilmon was talking about because I was only 14 years old.\u00a0 “That was before I was born, Hil.\u00a0 How could those men come and get daddy over something that happened so long ago?\u00a0 That was\u00a0even before the War!”<\/p>\n

“I don’t know, Comer,”\u00a0 Hil said.\u00a0 “The Preacher acted more different than I have ever seen\u00a0when he spoke about this Excitement.\u00a0 He said it was a bad time and a lot of people got hurt, even killed.\u00a0 I could tell it was important because everybody got real quiet and then the preacher started praying for strength and\u00a0understanding.\u00a0 He come and stood right by my\u00a0Mama and put his hand on her shoulder.\u00a0\u00a0When the prayer was finished we all just come home.\u00a0 I asked Mama what it was about, but she just shook her head, no.”<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

“Miss Elly didn’t tell you nothing,” I asked.<\/p>\n

“Nothing,” Hil answered.\u00a0 “She just shook her head.\u00a0\u00a0That’s all I know.”<\/p>\n

“Thanks, Hil.\u00a0 I won’t say anything.”\u00a0 I thought about what my father had to do with this bad time.\u00a0 I worried that it couldn’t be anything good.\u00a0 After a while, I told Hil that I was going home to sit for a spell.\u00a0 I felt like I needed to be at home with Drew.\u00a0 Maybe, I could help him to understand.\u00a0 Maybe, I could help myself to understand.\u00a0 I still didn’t know anything but, I had a bad feeling way up in my gut.\u00a0 I put my shoes back on, we said our goodbyes, and I got up to leave from the rock.\u00a0 After I walked all the way back up to the top of the ridge, I turned and looked back down to see Hil.\u00a0 He lay there, still, bathing on the rock in the Spring sun but, all the while watching me.\u00a0 As I looked, he stood up erect and raised a long, sinewy arm above his head to wave goodbye.\u00a0 I waved back.\u00a0 It was then, at that moment, that I realized how much I needed Hil to be my friend and how much everything fit together between us.\u00a0 The trust, the honor, the respect, and the love was all there for me.\u00a0 It would be a very long time before I would come to understand that he could never need me the same way.<\/p>\n

End of Chapter 2<\/p>\n

RLB4<\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter 2 THE MONKEY AND THE IGUANA When we reached the house Drew went by the fireplace to sit.\u00a0 Once there, he soon fell asleep.\u00a0 Mama went about her regular Sunday after Church routine of helping Miss Elly with the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-page-2-the-excitement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/potnecknews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/potnecknews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/potnecknews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potnecknews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potnecknews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2400"}],"version-history":[{"count":77,"href":"https:\/\/potnecknews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5520,"href":"https:\/\/potnecknews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2400\/revisions\/5520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/potnecknews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potnecknews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potnecknews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}