The Hills of Home Read online

  The Hills of Home

  Jory Sherman

  Hard Shell Word Factory

  This story copyright 2000 by Jory Sherman. All other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.

  Published by Hard Shell Word Factory.

  8946 Loberg Rd.

  Amherst Junction, WI 54407

  http://www.hardshell.com

  eBook ISBN: 0759924333

  Cover art copyright 2000, Mary Z. Wolf

  All electronic rights reserved.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatever to anyone bearing the same name or names. These characters are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  For my friends and fellow writers in the Ozarks Writers League and the Missouri Writers Guild.

  Foreword

  FOLLOWING a talk before the local historical society in Berryville, Arkansas, I asked one of the descendants of early pioneers, where his ancestors came from and why they settled in Arkansas back in the 1830s. He did not hesitate and replied: "Because these hills reminded them of home."

  After twenty years of living in the Ozarks, that statement continues to impress me. For we all are seeking a home, and though we wander, we almost always settle in those places that seem like home to us.

  So it was when we first came into these Ozarks hills. Although we had never been here before, the place seemed like home. After roaming the hills, and fishing the lakes and streams and ponds, I formed my own impressions of the people and places encountered along the way.

  There is a peace and serenity in these hills of home, places where you can go and find perfect tranquility. The experience can be, and most often is, spiritual. If there is a bond between man and his planet, it is formed in those quiet moments when he gazes on a solemn sunset or listens to the whisper of the wind in the trees, or sits by a glass-still pond with a line in the water and hears the croak of frogs, the saw-buzz of insects in the waving grasses.

  There is a special allure to the Ozarks that is profound, mystical, and mysterious. No words can explain this attraction, but I think it has something to do with man's longing for a spiritual union with his true home, the universe itself. Man has always ventured beyond his home in a quest for knowledge, and this movement is almost always westward, toward the setting sun, that grand golden beacon in the sky that represents energy, warmth, immortality.

  We ask of ourselves, always, three prime questions: Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going? And, when we venture beyond the boundaries of our birthplace, we are in search of the answers to these questions.

  Life, we find, is not just one thing, but consists of many small moments, many incidents that, over time, form a tapestry of where we have come from and who we are and, ultimately, where we are headed. Often, we find that we may have missed some important moments and there is a poignant feeling of loss.

  There is a richness to life and a grandness to living that transcends explanation. All we can do, most of the time, is enjoy those fleeting moments of bliss and happiness that we find along the path of our journey.

  In these pages, some moments are portrayed through the eyes of a single person who may represent generations of humans who came into the gentle hills of a place and found homes, not just physical structures, but places where the heart finds nurture and contentment and harmony.

  And in time, these hills become all the hills of the world and the universe. In morning mist and evening shadow, they seem to give a permanence and a meaning to a life that is ephemeral. And often, they do not seem real at all, but only some divine creation that exists for but a single moment in time and so becomes timeless, eternal. Our minds know different, but our hearts believe that all the good parts of life are lived in a single moment of incredible beauty, when the hills form both barriers and vistas, when they hold us safe from harm, and protect us from outside invasions, but at the same time, they beckon as boundaries to be climbed and crossed, so that we may glimpse the world beyond and beyond and beyond.

  But, always, we return to the hills of home, in life or in spirit, and so it seems that they are always there, and always will be there, in memory or in fact. And, if those hills were ever gone, we would not know what to do or where to go. So they are there, always, and we can go to them anytime we wish and we can linger in the dusks and dawns and listen to the heart murmur, and the spirit soar with a song that is peculiar to such timeless places.

  If you listen closely, you will hear my heart singing. If you look closely, you will see my shadow among the trees and on the hillsides. If you read these words you will know that we have been there in those ageless hills and that we have walked together in the only real home we will ever know on this earth.

  The hills of home.

  Jory Sherman

  Branson, Missouri

  Daybreak

  I'VE LOOKED at these mornings for a thousand years. It seems that way. Yet each morning seems like the first, the only. I have looked into the dark mists before day breaks and wondered what it would have been like to have been present at the dawn of creation. It must have been a slow process according to all that I've read, but it seems to me that there must have been a single morning that was like the ones I witness each morning in these Ozarks hills.

  There must have been a day when a man looked into the dark and saw the sun for the first time, rising above the horizon all aflame. It would have been an awesome sight. It is still so, even after so many suns over so many eons of time.

  The earth itself seems to fall into a solemn hush just before dawn. The woods go quiet, and the whippoorwills fall silent. There is a change in the air's rhythm and flow. I stand at the edge of the woods and wait, listening, wondering at the changes, wondering if I am imagining them. But no, even my dog cocks her ear and listens. There is not a sound and I have heard this silence, too, thousands of times.

  There is just that one moment, though. It lasts an eternity and it lasts but a split-second. I take a breath to see if I am still alive or maybe just to make a mortal sound. Then, the earth begins to change. It begins to grow as if the hills were sprouting for the first time, as if the trees suddenly rose up out of the soil and grew leaves, as if the grasses, smudged by night, emerged from nothingness.

  The sun's light begins to break over the land, shooting life and color into dead Stygian things, putting shape to gnarled blobs, sculpting the bluffs, carving a bed where a river will flow and then making the river itself appear as if by magic.

  The hills take on form and definition and they seem like the first hills ever created, different from the ones I saw at dusk the day before. They are the same, of course. Yet, they are altered, too, by time, by the wind and the weather's slow beat and by the light streaming from a star only 93 million miles away.

  The hills are changed and I am changed.

  I change each morning when I stand outside at daybreak, struck with the wonder of this vast universe, the wonder of those things close at hand. The other day my wife looked out the window and saw a young whitetail buck walk onto our road, less than thirty yards from where she sat at her computer. He was joined by a doe and they ambled along the road, flicking their tails, sniffing at the clumps of grass alongside. She watched them as they casually walked into the field of grasses next to the house and headed for the creek a short distance away. She was changed by that moment, brought into the environment even as she sat at her desk.

  The other evening, I saw our female cat Coco, trotting up that same road, carrying something in her mouth. Behind her trotted our male cat, Boots, following her as if he wanted to share in her kill. I thought Coco had caught a c
hipmunk or a baby squirrel. But no, she was carrying one of her own kittens. She brought it into the garage and then trotted back into the woods where she had dropped her young. She carried the other one back a few moments later and we set up a nest for her and looked all around the fields and woods to see if there were any more. Coco is but a kitten herself, yet she brought her kits in to shelter where she has been nurturing them for several days.

  We were changed by this sight, too, and taken out of ourselves into the world of nature.

  Many years ago, I made a vow to myself. I changed my hours to accommodate that silent promise. I have never regretted the commitment: Never miss a sunrise. Never miss a sunset. These are the most beautiful times of day, the quietest. The break of day gives me a feeling like no other, fills me with energy and hope. When the sun sets, I feel a part of all the cycles of seasons and days, of years and centuries. I have been a participant in life, not just a bystander.

  I wish I could have seen these hills when they first saw sun. But it doesn't matter, really. Each morning is like the first morning. When I see the dawn break, the words to that remarkable song by Harry Chapin run through my mind. Hymn to Morning, I think it's called. Cat Stevens recorded it and I play it often.

  I hear it in my mind every morning when I stand out there alone at daybreak, regarding the sunrise as I have for thousands of years, it seems. And each morning I am there for the first time, a witness to creation, a solitary celebrant, awestruck at the silence and magnitude of this very ordinary occurrence. The sun makes not a sound, yet it strikes deep chords in me and it starts that tune running through my mind.

  "Praise for the morning," the words say. And this morning, like the first morning.

  Even if you watch for a thousand years.

  The Coming of Spring

  SOME DAYS here, you can sense the coming of spring to these Ozarks hills. There is the urgency of the morning tapping at your mind with the insistence of crickets. There is the dawn itself, with its ruddy cheeks, its promise of a long day's sun. This special dawn is more confident, healthier, stronger, livelier than it was during the long winter.

  The morning, on these sweet Ozarks days, shrugs its shoulders like a young child. You can feel the warm smile of the day on your face when you open the door. April rushes up to you on a girl's silver skates and sprays you with a splash of icy breeze delicate as a silken shawl. A deep breath tastes of cedar and redbuds and dogwood blossoms. The lake breeze is fresh, bright as sleek trout moving in shallow creek waters.

  A once-dry creek bed fills with snow melt, breaks through a deep hollow, wends its way along the thawed ground seeking life and the mingling with the big lake that was once a mighty river. The bluffs, still frigid with ice and secrets, catch the warming sun, reluctantly shed their long ermine beards, become shawls of dripping waterfalls. You can hear the water's ancient song long into the night.

  Spring in the Ozarks is fickle, relentless, full of surprises. It brings out the raccoons, the opossums, the brown robber birds. Gray squirrels skitter down the oak trees with flaring paramecium tails and chittery voices. The air soars across the newborn land, full of promises and pleasant whispers.

  This is the way Spring is for me here. This is the way it moves in and heads for summer. This is the way it sings its green songs, weaves its gold sun threads during its time of birthing. It is awesome in its quietness, splendid in its muscling youth. You can't help but feel the continuity of the universe, the perfect rhythms beneath the seeming chaos, the symmetry of life itself.

  A man doesn't need much more than this.

  The Butterflies

  ONE DAY I saw a butterfly float through the woods on golden wings. Free of the cocoon and winter, he fluttered across the land in a scurry, threading an invisible flight path in the warm spring sun, like a dancer having nothing to do, showing off his new wings.

  Two weeks before, I saw his brother, too early for spring, perched on a broken branch clustered with cedar sprigs that had fallen to the snow.

  Thinking it alive and resting from its flight, I stooped down to look at the creature more closely. It didn't move. My hand reached out to touch its wing and I saw its feet were fastened to the branch. It had been frozen there, its wings spread wide. Perfectly preserved, it looked as though it had been waiting for the cold to pass.

  I brought the butterfly home, still locked to its foothold on the browned cedar branch, and set it on one of the bookcases.

  The quick and the dead, the one aflight, skimming on the warm zephyrs of Cedar Creek, the early butterfly caught in the chill, as though pinned to the earth midway in its course by a lepidopterist. I take no meaning from these things, but only marvel that some beings fly and some are stiffened by the late, hanging-on winter.

  The butterflies must have a time clock inside them that tells them it is time to break free of the branches and head for open spaces. Nature sometimes plays the fickle lady and taunts her delicate charges with the whispering lips of death.

  This is what happened with the frozen butterfly. He was no less the flying dancer, but he looked up at blue skies over the lake and felt the warmth of a cloudless day too soon. Eager fellow, anxious to strut and show off his bright yellow wings, he became that year's Icarus of the forest, a victim of unperfected cryogenics.

  The butterfly will never come alive again, never dance on the air, never fly above the gelid perch where he last drew breath.

  The one who waited, the one I saw dazzle his way above the still snowy earth, might make his way into summer. I hope he does. He has my heart in his wings. He flitted away like an old movie, into infinity, his body growing smaller and smaller until he finally winked out of sight.

  There is really no vocabulary to explain such things. It's just that we all have a quirk about life and sometimes life has a quirk about us. The butterfly that flew away is just as gone as the one that I placed on my bookcase. I see them both equally in the tapestry of life. Both are vivid in my mind, both are real. Both are gone.

  Butterflies now give me a very strange feeling. Life is so ephemeral, for them and for us.

  I wish I could explain how I feel about them. I wish they could explain about me.

  Farm in Morning

  HE STOOD on the steps of morning. Stood on the bare lean brink of it and looked at the wet green field beyond the fence that kept the cows away from the house. The field was dulled by morning dew because the sun had not yet risen above the horizon, and its green was soft, like fur, and quiet like a thick pale-green quilt atop a featherbed. It was so quiet he could hear his heart beat and his stomach fluttered at that moment as it always did early when the smell of dew and grass was strong on the light air and before the sunrise that he knew would come.

  The house was still asleep, but a comfort to him, big and white and two-storied with a front porch that looked out over the big field and the barn. There was a back porch that gave them a view of the small quarter-acre garden and the chicken coop, the outhouse beyond. He had built these things, built the fences, the chicken coop, the outhouse, and his wife had planted the garden after he plowed it with the mule pulling a moldboard plow, the blade slicing into the earth and turning it over, peeling back the clods that leaked fat earthworms and the white grubs with little brown eyeless faces.

  He smelled the garden, too, and heard the General, the little bantam rooster with the golden epaulets on his shoulders. He heard the General crow and heard the whip-flap of his wings as he stretched and boasted of his dominion over five banty hens.

  The farmer laughed and walked to the gate, vowing to fix its sag one day, and he opened the gate and walked through it, down the little path he had worn through the grass. He strolled to the barn, past the pond and now the smell of musty hay and manure was strong in his nostrils and the cows made burly throat sounds and amplified them with their chests. He spoke to them and they followed him as he strode past the fence and they stood there, lowing and watching him with rolling round eyes. They slabbed heavy tongues o
ver their lips as he pulled the hay down from the stack of bales and broke it up into biscuits and began tossing the flat chunks over the fence, walking along it and spreading the hay out so the cows could all get to it.

  He had grown this hay, too, in the other field, and baled it, trucked it here to his barn in the wide green pasture. There were only a few cows here now and they had been certified free of contamination. The milk cows had been sold off according to government edict and the farmer and his wife now bought their milk in town like everybody else.

  He went inside the barn where it was dark and the musk heady as October wine and he dipped a large empty silver-shiny can into the bag of oats. He put the oats in the feedbin for the mule and the mule munched on the grain, pushed the feed back and forth and nibbled with worn-down teeth that showed his age to be nearly thirty years.

  He filled the stocktank for the mule, and stepped outside just as the sun made the sky red and the rim of it came up over the creek and the Blue Hole beyond the far pasture. There was not much else to do. There were five cows left, three calves, one old bull across the road in its own pasture.

  The tractor, the stock trailer, the newest pickup, had all been taken away, sold at auction. He did not go to auctions anymore. He had nothing left to sell. Soon, the sheriff, or someone, would come and take away the rest of the cattle, too, and maybe even Jules, the mule.

  The farmer laughed, thinking about that, but there was a sadness in the laugh and he stopped laughing because he did not want to be sad. He walked through the feeding cows, the calves, and over to the pond. A bigmouth bass struck at a nymph and the water boiled for a minute. A frog plopped into the water and then another as he walked around the edge of the pond just to get the feel of it, just to feel part of it and he stood under the lone poplar tree for a minute as the sun rose higher and made the field lush and green, made the dew sparkle like diamonds, made the earth give up its fragrance. And the field looked as it had when it was brand-new, when the first good grass had grown and before the lightning took out the big black walnut at the edge of the field. He had used some of that fine wood to make furniture and he had used the cedars to line the closets and he had made a chest for his wife, planing the wood down thin, boxing it in with walnut. The aroma of the dead cedar, he believed, would last forever.