BEHOLD THE KEY
By John O'Brien
Start
of the weekend and Beck comes home late at 5:45 looking weary
and in a grumpy mood. It's been a long, hard week with fifth-
and sixth-graders. She says, "Warm weather just makes them
crazy. All they want to do is go out and run around in it."
Then she adds, "Me too," and sighs. Beyond weariness,
she forgot about tomorrow morning at the library on Main Street.
It's a fine new library downtown, but operating funds are low,
and so library volunteers—the official "Friends of
the Library"—volunteer for Saturday morning duty. Beck
really enjoys this. She gets to nose around the children's literature
and pick out books for her kids or maybe find another one to
order for our granddaughter, Rachel. Sometimes people that she
hasn't seen for awhile come in from one of the other two valleys,
and this is a great pleasure as well. The problem is, she was
supposed to pick up the key from the librarians, two come-heres
who have split the paid position between them, but she forgot
until too late. Now the library is closed and she will have to
drive across town and up Dickerson Mountain to the farm they
rent. She very much likes the librarians, but in her present
exhaustion, only wants to sip tea and page through a catalog.
Beck can't believe she forgot the key. I say, "You
call up there and tell them I'm coming for the key." "
Would you?" I say, "Want me to call?" Beck says,
"I can manage that much," and makes the call.
Out the door and down Anderson Hill to Franklin town, I'm grumbling—as my father used to say—like a bear with a sore rump. I have not had a good week, either, and was looking forward to a quiet, well-tempered weekend with Beck. The asparagus is in at the grocery store and I planned cream of asparagus soup, chicken kiev—my version of that dish—and rum pears. Cooking while I listen to a new Billie Holiday tape, Billie Touring Europe. But Beck is starting the weekend in a down mood, and around here one thing can lead to another. Our joint emotional bank account is so low, something as small as forgetting a key could darken the next two days. I don't feel like driving up Dickerson Mountain either, but want to retrieve the weekend. Who was it that said they would never marry because that would mean your happiness would depend on another person's mood? Of course, my moods never affect Beck. In fact, I don't have moods. People often point this out. They say, John, how do you manage it? You're always in control. I tell them, I find that. . . .The point is, my emotions rollercoaster much more erratically than Beck's, and I don't even have a room full of rambunctious fifth- and sixth-graders to blame this on. Knowing this does not prevent me from seeing myself as Saint John, patron of martyr husbands as I drive through town. Going along, I'm thinking, I'm always trying to help Beck, but she . . . and so on. It's one of my least attractive guises, and I know it but can't seem to help myself.
At the Propst Gap Bridge, where I have to turn left and start up Dickerson Mountain, my mood brightens. From the bridge, the South Branch is striking. The water is up and, in this light, the opaque green of glacier water. It only looks this way for a few weeks in spring and it brings back a memory of my three years in Alaska. There I am on the Kenai Peninsula casting toward a school of salmon. It's like a brief virtual vacation in Alaska.
Across the bridge, past the power transformer—humming its hot, one-note tune-past the farmhouse in the dip. The hard road ends in about two miles, and I start up a steeper grade on the dirt and gravel. In the deep shadow of this mountain, the temperature drop is startling. The window is down and I can see my breath. On the left, the woods have the solemn look of unseen woods on a winter evening. The trees are black and naked and perfectly still. A few cedar trees supply a touch of green. The leaf litter is dull orange. It is a distinct pleasure to drive from spring back into winter only for a visit.
Now on the right, in a very small enclosure hard against a rocky bank, four black lambs stand huddled together. I stop to look at the lambs and at once a fierce, gray dog—a Norwegian elkhound, I think—darts under the fence and walks stiff-legged toward the car. It stops and holds there, frozen like a statue staring at my face. I've come to know dogs fairly well. When I take my night-walks around Franklin, they often run out to the edges of yards to bark and snarl. It's all show. Most dogs are cowards. This one isn't, though. These are his lambs, and he means business. There's no canine posturing here. I've never seen a stare this fixed. I smile and drive on.
Now the steep dirt road becomes steeper—almost straight up between winter trees that lean toward one another. The open sky is at the top, and it's like driving through a tunnel toward the light. I'm driving toward the sky, and this pleases me.
On top, I pass Mr. Hammer's Christmas tree farm, where we buy a tree each year. I haven't been out this way since last December. Passing, this small family movie plays through my mind: The four of us—Beck, Chris, 16, Shelly, 12, and me—all wandering off in our own directions through the Scotch pine, fir, and cedar. The Shelties-Big Crazy and Little Crazy—race back and forth between us, stopping to sniff at deer droppings on the frozen ground. We fight over the tree every year. Each one of us has very specific ideas about the perfect Christmas tree, and won't budge an inch. We come home with a compromise tree that pleases no one altogether and sometimes don't have much to say to one another as we drive back home. Then, after all the assorted junk is on and we throw the switch after dark, we decide it's the best tree we've ever had. Despite this, we start the fight the next year and so on. Passing Mr. Hammer's tree farm, I understand for the first time that even the fighting part is all right and don't know why it's taken me this long to see this.
I have never actually been to this farm, but Beck told me it was the last house on the mountain. She said, "It's the only thing up there as far as I know." Here it is now, a beautiful old white farmhouse surrounded by a well-kept yard just turning green. The yard itself is surrounded by open pasture, and because this is the very top of the mountain, it's all air and open space and clean spring sky. I'm on top of the world. I see the front door—it's one of those old oak affairs with a wreath carved into the wood—but do not know whether to go there or to the kitchen door at the side. With real farmhouses—as opposed to I don't know what-front doors often go unused except for formal occasions like wedding receptions, funerals, or visiting preachers. The kitchen door is for everyday use. I drive past the side of the house, cross a cattle guard, turn around in the pasture, and start back. My problem is resolved when I see a man come out the side door. In his early fifties, rather short and white-haired, he wears an old plaid bathrobe, unlaced work boots without socks, and has one of those winter hats with furry earflaps on his head. Walking toward the car, one hand holding the robe closed, he does not appear the least bit self-conscious. He's been sick—Beck told me that—and at the window he says, "I would've brought it down, but I've been under the weather." I say, "Nothing serious, I hope." "No, no," he says, "Some flu or cold thing." I say, "Beck has the library covered tomorrow." He suddenly looks like he's going to sneeze or cough. Turning away, he says-and sounding like Morris the Moose with a head cold from that children's book—"Thang goo berry buch," and walks back toward the house holding his plaid robe shut.
Driving down the mountain, I find myself smiling. One of the great advantages of living on a mountaintop farm in Pendleton County, West Virginia, is being able to walk across your yard in a bathrobe, work books without socks, and a hat that makes you look like an escapee from a Dr. Seuss book. I envy this man's freedom and keep thinking about that William Carlos Williams poem where the speaker in the poem—maybe Williams, maybe a persona—describes dancing around naked in front of the mirror at three in the morning. Whoever it is ends the poem by saying that if he can do that, then no one can question the fact that he is master of his house. This man might say the same thing about walking across his lawn in a bathrobe.
I am compelled to stop and see the lambs again. As the car stops, the elkhound drops into a crouch and takes several quick steps toward me, then once again freezes into menace. I say out loud, "No sweat, Pal. No way I'm getting out of this car." Suddenly the door on an old shed opens, and a dark-haired woman carrying a white bucket steps out. She wears jeans, high-topped work boots laced tight, and a red plaid wool jacket that I always associate with deer hunters. Seeing me, she stops short and a worried look takes her features. For a moment, I don't know what to do. I'm intruding and maybe should just drive off, but that seems rude. On the other hand, starting a conversation with someone so obviously busy doesn't seem right, either. The window is rolled up by now, and so I don't hear what she says, but she looks toward the dog and says something. The dog immediately unfreezes and trots off just like someone's pet. The woman looks up and smiles. Then, in a gesture vaguely reminiscent of Indians in Hollywood movies, she raises her free hand in greeting. In that moment, I become her neighbor. I smile and wave back, then drive on.
At the Propst Gap Bridge, the last of the
daylight has settled on the surface of the river. I stop there
before turning. The South Branch has become a dark satin ribbon
stretching toward Franklin town. A fist opens up inside my chest.
Views of glacial water, lambs and noble guard dogs, a Christmas
understanding, a man in his bathrobe, a new neighbor, and now
this view of the South Branch River. Beck has given me all of
this and does not know it. Send this Old Bear out again, Good
Wife; forget something once a week. Unexpected gifts of marriage
and sweet indirection: Behold the key.