Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry
It was Virgie. He looked like death warmed over, and his face was wet with tears. He looked like a man who had been lost at sea and had made it to shore at last, but had barely made it. I could feel the ghosts gathering round as they had done at his mother’s wedding. Time was when I too would have wept at that homecoming, but though a big ache of love passed through my heart, I shed no tears. I don’t think I am going to weep anymore.
But he was weeping, with relief, I think, and sorrow and regret. Maybe it was some feeling of unworthiness that kept him from moving. Maybe he had given himself permission to come back, but he couldn’t give himself permission to get out of the car.
I rapped on the window again, and he rolled it down. I said, “Virgie, come on to the house, honey, and let me fix you some supper.”
I went back to the house myself then, and he got out and followed me.
He hesitated at the door, and I said, “Come in.”
He came in and shut the door. I said, “Go in yonder and wash.” He did. He minded like a good child. He had not said a word. I set about finding something to cook. He finished up in the bathroom and came back to the kitchen, walking as soundlessly as a cat. I realized that he was making his way through a series of permissions that I would have to give. He needed permission to be there as himself, as my grandson, as before. He needed permission to be there in Nathan’s absence. He needed, maybe, permission to live. He had pulled his hair back and tied it.
I said, “Does your mother know where you are?”
“No,” he said. His first word.
I said, “Then go call her up and tell her.” He started into the living room to the telephone. I said, “And tell her you love her. I imagine she needs to know.”
I heard him talking. I don’t know what he said. He was in there a good while.
When he came back I had supper on the table. I said, “Sit down.”
He sat down and I filled his plate. I said, “Eat.”
He was gaunt and hollow-cheeked and had an unsure look in his eyes. He ate a lot.
When we had eaten, I said, “Well, what brings you back?”
He started to say “You,” and couldn’t, and said, “This.”
I said, “This?”
He said, “I want to be here. I want to live here and farm. It’s the only thing I really want to do. I found that out.”
I said, “Maybe you can do that. You have still got it to do. We can see. There’s nothing to stop you from trying.”
He said, “Thank you. I would like to try.”
I said, “Do you have stuff you need to bring in?”
When he came in with it, I said, “There’s a clean towel and washrag for you if you want a bath. I’m going up now to fix your bed.”
I made his bed for him in his old room and came down and busied myself in the kitchen. He took his bath and I heard him go up the stairs. When I knew he was in bed, I went up and gave a little knock on his door and went in. I leaned over him and gave him a kiss. I said, “Are you going to be warm enough? Do you have enough covers?”
“Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”
I said, “Sleep tight.”
That was a month ago. The next day I handed him over to Danny Branch.
Danny happened to stop by the house early that morning to call for Reuben or one of Reuben’s boys to come and help him with a calving heifer. I was just starting to fix breakfast. I had heard Virgie up and stirring about, but I knew he would not come down until I called him. There were a lot of permissions yet to be given.
When Danny had made his call and come back into the kitchen, I said, “Danny, can you use another hand?”
“Who?”
“Virgie.”
“Virgie?”
“He’s back. He showed up here about dark last night.”
“Sure,” Danny said. “I can use him.” He smiled his smile. “Does he have something in particular he wants to do?”
“Whatever you need him to do,” I said. “Anything. I want you to put him to work and keep him at it. All day every day.”
“Sure.”
“What he does for you, you can pay him for. What he does here or on his mother’s place, we’ll pay him for. But he’ll be your hand. Ask what you need to ask of him. If he quits, he quits. Fire him if you have to.”
“All right.”
“Well, as soon as I can feed him his breakfast, I’ll send him to you.”
Danny went out to wait for Reuben. I called Virgie. When he had finished breakfast, I gave him Nathan’s old work jacket and sent him up to the barn.
He has been at work with Danny and the other Branches every day since. Danny says he works hard, and he remembers enough of what Nathan taught him to work pretty well, though he has a lot to learn. Lyda has given him a haircut, on Danny’s instructions, for fear that “all that hair would get wound up in something.” He is living here with me. I give him breakfast and supper, he eats dinner with the Branches. Danny has started calling him “Virge.”
He looks better. Confidence seems to be coming back into his eyes. All the necessary permissions have been given. He went to Louisville on his own permission and spent a Sunday with his mother. It has taken him too long to grow up, but he is young enough yet to make things well with himself and stand on his own feet and live his life. He has not told me where he has been or what he has done, and I have not asked, nor am I going to ask, nor do I want to know. All I want to know is that he is well and at work. So far, he is well and at work. The look of him has become a delight to me again.
Some day, maybe in a year or so, we will begin to know what this amounts to. After drugs and escape and whatever freedoms he has tried, can he stand what has got to be stood? Has he maybe learned the lesson he has tried at so much cost to teach his father?
I thought, anyhow, that something had begun to mend in him when he came in one evening after he had worked all day, cleaning a barn on the Feltner place with Fount Branch, who remembers things, and he told me from start to finish the story of Burley and Big Ellis and the disconnected steering wheel. He is too young to have any memory of Burley, and he told me the story as if I had never heard it. I pretended that I had never heard it, and we laughed.
When you have gone too far, as I think he did, the only mending is to come home. Whether he is equal to it or not, this is his chance.
Now and then the thought drifts into my mind that Virgie might actually prove himself a farmer and become worthy of the Feltner place and live there, and that Margaret, by his good favor, might end her days there, and all come somehow right at last. And then I let it drift on by. I let it come and go like a leaf floating on the river.
I know by now that the love of ghosts is not expectant, and I am coming to that. This Virgie of mine, this newfound “Virge,” is the last care of my life, and I know the ignorance I must cherish him in. I must care for him as I care for a wildflower or a singing bird, no terms, no expectations, as finally I care for Port William and the ones who have been here with me. I want to leave here openhanded, with only the ancient blessing, “Good-bye. My love to you all.”
24
Given
I am standing at the gate. Nathan has been salting the cattle down at the edge of the woods below the spring. Now he is walking back up the hill toward the house, toward me. He is walking in his thoughtful way with the salt bucket on his arm, looking around. He is whistling, as I know, over and over a piece of some old tune that will have the rhythm both of itself and of his breath.
I am watching him, but he has not yet seen me. And now he sees me. The expression on his face does not change, but now his intention has changed, he is walking toward me and nothing else. As he comes closer he smiles a little, still whistling. I know that when he comes to where I am he will give me a hug, and I want him to. I know how it is going to feel, the entire touch of him. He looks at me with a look I know. The shiver of the altogether given passes over me from head to foot.
Acknowledgments
To clarify details of Virgil Feltner’s and Nathan Coulter’s involvement in World War II I found an ideal helper. Edward Coffman, military historian and my friend since our student days, addressed himself to my problems generously and precisely. He also contacted on my behalf his friend, Fletcher R. Veach, Jr., who commanded a company in the Battle of Okinawa, and Col. Veach responded graciously and usefully.
For my Chapter 21, “Okinawa,” the principle sources are E. B. Sledge, With the Old Breed; George Feifer, The Battle of Okinawa; Donald O. Dencker, Love Company; and Sóetsu Yanagi, The Unknown Craftsman.
Tanya Berry listened sympathetically and critically to the chapters of the first draft as they were written, and she made the first typescript from my longhand. Tanya and Dave Charlton transcribed the much-edited typescript onto a computer disk, and suffered many further alterations and additions, all the while treating me and my book with wonderful kindness.
Don Wallis, yet once more, proved himself an illuminating critic and an indispensable friend.
Carol Berry, Mary Berry Smith, and Don Hall read the manuscript. Their kindness helped me, and the thought that they were reading my work made me more critical of it.
Trish Hoard and Jack Shoemaker, of Shoemaker & Hoard, gave me readings that encouraged me, changed my mind, and improved the book. Julie Wrinn, a conversable and exacting copy editor, did me many favors, large and small.
Chapter 20, “The Living,” was published in the Temenos Academy Review, number 6.
Author of over forty books of fiction, poetry, and essays, including Citizenship Papers, Wendell Berry has farmed a hillside in his native Henry County, Kentucky, for forty years. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the T. S. Eliot Award, the Aiken Taylor Award for poetry, and the John Hay Award of the Orion Society.
Copyright © 2004 by Tanya Amyx Berry
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. This book is a work of fiction. Nothing is in it that has not been imagined.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berry, Wendell, 1934–
Hannah Coulter : a novel / Wendell Berry.
p. cm.
1. Port William (Ky. : Imaginary place)—Fiction.
2. Women—Kentucky—Fiction.
3. Kentucky—Fiction I. Title.
PS3552.E75H36 2004
813’.54—dc22 2004013121
eISBN : 978-1-582-43990-7
eISBN : 978-1-582-43990-7
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Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter