Crum

Chapter 16

149 Chapter 16 I couldn’t be sure, but now and then the sky got a darker blue tone to it and the wind seemed to slow to a gentle breeze, carrying just a hint of something warm from wherever it came. There were no buds on the trees yet or anything, but winter was dying and maybe it would be possible soon to swim in the river again, or walk in the woods with my shirt off or just lie in the sun at the edge of a cane field. At least it was getting close enough to think about. Spring in Crum never came gently. It was raw in its early days, refusing to allow anyone to let down his guard against the blowing rain. The stoves in the houses still glowed and the coal dust still filtered into the living rooms and parlors. I sat in my shed thinking about Genna and about how men came in through the front door. There was no fire in the wood stove in the kitchen and the shed was so cold I wrapped a blanket around me and thought about that a lot—about courage and being afraid. And I thought maybe I was afraid. It was not easy admitting that, but at least I thought of something to do about it. Off the upriver end of the schoolground there was a cemetery. In all the time I lived in Crum I never saw a funeral held there, but old people would come and clean the graves and the place looked cared for, used, if you know what I mean. Sometimes in the sad light of evening I would see a stooped form pulling weeds or picking up twigs around the grave markers. Maybe the graveyard was haunted, maybe not. But it sure was lonely. Strangely, sometimes I liked to pay a visit to it. Especially on those days when Crum was closing in around me and I was having trouble 150 breathing. It was one of the few places where there were people who had gotten out, had gotten away from Crum. Now, I waited in that graveyard for the sun to go down. If I really was a man, if I really could do things that I was afraid of, I could sit in a graveyard until the sun went down and then walk through it in the dark. But it had to be really dark, black dark, dark like there never would be any more light again, before I would allow myself to leave. That’s what I had decided. I had picked a smooth grave, a plot of ground that hadn’t sunk below the original level of the earth after the burial dirt had settled. The old plots were all like that—as though the grave diggers never quite put back enough dirt to make it back to ground level. But I had picked a good flat one, and my back rested against the gravestone. As the light faded my mind began to fill up. I imagined haints— Appalachian ghosts—hiding behind the stones. My head became packed with fear and I felt my throat contract with panic. I wasn’t trying to prove anything to anyone else—just to me. I didn’t dare move a muscle, because if I did in an instant I’d be up and running , splitting the new grass of spring like the star halfback on the best football team in the county. But I didn’t run. I sat there, with my mouth dry, imagining ghosts in the trees and waiting for total darkness. It never came. Before the sun went down, the moon was already on the way up. Either that or I fell asleep. I sometimes do that when I am really frightened; I get so tensed up that I suddenly drop off. A year or so before I was down at the river just fooling around when it occurred to me that I had never really spent any time on the Kentucky side. I had been on the Kentucky shore lots but I had never camped on Kentucky soil. It looked just like the West Virginia side, but knowing that it was Kentucky made it different, somehow. It 151 was strange. I had never even seen a house on that side of the river, and for all I knew those Kentucky pig fuckers...