Hermas

HERMAS by Bill Best I don't remember very much about Hermas . I saw him very few times, but I heard a lot about him. And what I know about him probably tells more about my home community and the people there than it tells about him. Grandma always said that Hermas knew more about people in Rogers Cove than anyone else. Since his small garden was about the only crop he ever tended, he had a lot of time to roam up and down the ridges. People were so used to Hermas being around that they were hardly ever startled to find him hunkered down by a clump of broom sedge next to a fence row. He blended in as a part of the landscape. According to Grandma, he had a powerful telescope and always knew what everyone was doing. But despite his supposed nosiness and his "quare" ways, I never heard anyone say anything really negative about him. The first time I remember seeing Hermas up close was on a cold, snowy night in the dead of winter. Word had passed around that he was down sick and in need of food and fireplace wood. When it came our turn to provide both, Daddy took me with him, and we went over to Hermas' house. He lived in a small frame building not too far from the foot of Rocky Knob. We knocked on the front door and he called for us to come in. We went into the room and found him over by the fireplace sitting on his heels with his hands stretched out over the fire. The room was very dark with the small fire in the fireplace furnishing the only heat and light in the entire room. Daddy talked with him for a short while, checking around to see if he could do anything to make the room more comfortable. After a while, he said it was time for us to go. Daddy knew that Hermas was hungry but wouldn't eat in our presence. People in the cove took turns helping him out until he was able to do for himself once again. But it was becoming obvious to all of us that Hermas was reaching a time when his independent ways would be put to the test. He was gradually becoming blind and having to stay much closer to his house than ever before. When he finally became so blind that he was unable to continue his everyday activities around his house, some of the men in the cove stretched a clothes line wire from his house over to his spring. The wire enabled him to carry water to the house and gave him a chance to walk over some of the ground that he had known so well for so long. People in the cove continued to provide him with food and wood. 49 Eventually the county officials stepped in and took Hermas to the County Home to spend the rest of his life. He had become so frail that he could no longer do anything for himself. His trails across the fields, through the woods, and up and down the ridges had begun to have sprouts growing up in them. People in Rogers Cove continued to visit Hermas during his stay in the County Home and during his later stay in the hospital. During what was to be his last week of life, he sent word by Uncle Jim that he wanted to hear cousin Carroll play the banjo one last time. Carroll and Jim then went back to the hospital and found him in a near coma. Carroll began to play the banjo. Hermas, at first, continued to lie very still, but in a few minutes his body began to move in rhythm to the music. He opened his nonseeing eyes and sat upright. He then climbed over the foot of the bed and, for several verses and choruses, danced his final buck and wing. Then the nurses came and put him back to bed where he stayed until his death later that week. Hermas was never one to sit around and talk. He never joined. But his life...