Life & Other Passing Moments. Victor J. Banis
part of the house. The aroma of cooked cabbage and the dishes stacked neatly in the sink spoke of an early supper. Otis and I struggled to make conversation, as people will who wish to be polite but have little to say to one another. Finally I mentioned that we had hoped to buy some mushrooms.
He went to his pantry and returned with what he said were his very best, just picked that same day. They were in a shoebox lined with a clean, neatly folded dishtowel, a dozen or more of the loveliest mushrooms I had ever seen. The largest of them was a giant, easily seven inches tall, and there were a good half dozen who were only a shade smaller.
I looked them over, holding them one at a time in my hand. They were all but weightless, clean, smelling faintly of the earth from which they had recently come—the scent of dead leaves and cleansing rains and an unspoiled wood in the springtime sun. It is a scent like no other and the finest of perfumes to the aficionado.
We bought six of them, which Otis put into a brown paper bag for us. As I was counting out the money, I glanced up once and found him looking at me with an expression that I could not read and which vanished so quickly I thought perhaps I had imagined it. Was that a twinkle in his eyes, a spark of amusement? I blinked and looked again, and now I saw nothing but the dull gaze with which in the past he had always regarded the world.
We shook hands and parted with the usual polite suggestions to look one another up again. But I was disconcerted. That sense of having surprised something heretofore unsuspected in his expression teased at my mind. Had I missed something all along about Otis? I have always counted myself an astute judge of other people—that, after all, is the essence of the writer’s business. It was troubling to think that I might have been entirely off the mark where Otis was concerned.
As we strolled homeward, I asked my mother what she thought of Otis, what impression she got of him. She thought for a moment and said, “He seems very contented.”
As she so often did, my mother had hit the nail precisely on the head. Real contentment is far rarer than one might suppose. In most people you can almost always sense a feeling of wanting, of needing, of searching for something more than, different from, their present circumstances. Sometimes it is only a wish for the workday to end, or dinnertime to arrive, the trivia of a day’s impatience, and sometimes it is great ambition, and sometimes great resentment at ambition thwarted.
There are few who you feel are truly satisfied in any given moment with their lot. Walking at my mother’s side on that moonlit Ohio night, with Otis’ mushrooms in a bag in my hand and the memory of that glint of amusement I had seen earlier still fresh in my mind, I realized that Otis was one of those rare few.
I had to laugh, partly at myself. Who would ever have dreamed that there would be a story to tell about poor Otis, but there it was. He had found his niche.
He was the Mushroom King.
(Excerpted from Spine Intact, Some Creases)
I’LL SEE YOU HOME
It had been a bad year: a slow spring, the crops late planted, and just when they had been about to harvest, winter came ahead of himself, so they lost more of the wheat than they reaped, and most of the corn. They would have to make the long trip into town to buy provisions, if they weren’t to starve over the winter, but money was short, and she had put off going just one day too long. When Janet finally said they must go, as the larder was nearly empty, another storm came out of nowhere, and she stood at the stove, stirring the oatmeal—all they had left now—the baby balanced at her hip, and watched the white outside the window, and worried.
It snowed for two days, and when finally there was a pause in its falling, Tom went outside and looked at the few sullen stars in the distant sky, and said they would go in the morning, and pray to get back before the weather changed its mind.
So they hitched Big Gray to the wagon in the first chilly light of dawn. She would have to go with him. He would need help loading and unloading the wagon if they were to have it done before dark, and the boys were needed here to see to the chores. They couldn’t do them, though, and keep an eye on the baby, and anyway, Rachel was only six months and still feeding, and so she must come with them to town, cold or no.
The roads were treacherous still with snow, and Big Gray was old, but as enormous as his name implied, a giant of a horse, and though his strength was clearly on the wane, he was strong enough still to pull the wagon through ruts and drifts with no great effort. Janet sat beside Tom, the baby Rachel bundled on her lap. If everything went well, they would get there and load their provisions and make it home before dark.
Things weren’t going well, though, they hadn’t since that late spring, and even in the wan daylight, the road was not a good one. Halfway into town, Tom missed a bad rut, and they broke a wheel. There was nothing for it but that he must repair it, and that took a considerable while, so that, by the time they reached town, and bought what they needed, and loaded it into the wagon, and started for home, the day was already quit, night falling, and with it, fresh snow.
The night got quickly darker, and the snow fell harder, whipped now by a merciless wind, and Big Gray, plodding through ever-deeper drifts, began to tire, you could see the slump in his shoulders, and the way his hooves sometimes lost their rhythm.
Rachel began to cry, and Janet opened her coat and her dress and nursed her, shielding her from the cold as best she could with the blanket. Even so, her breast felt icy, and she cut the feeding short. Rachel protested and then, once again wrapped in the warmth of the blanket, slept.
“We’ll have to take the short cut,” Tom said. It was the first he had spoken since they left town, and she knew that his silence was a worried one.
“In the dark?” she said, alarmed. “We’ll never get across the bridge.”
“We’ll never make it home the long way,” he said. “Don’t you trouble yourself over that bridge, I’ll get you both home safely, you have my promise on that.”
So he took the cut through the woods, and down the long hill, to the ravine over the creek, and the bridge that spanned it, no more than logs and planks, with a scant inch or two to spare on either side, and Gray didn’t like the crossing at the best of times, in summer, and in daylight. He balked, as they had known he would.
Tom got down from the wagon, and took the reins, and gentled the horse onto the planks. They were slippery, and the wagon slid sideways a little, and Janet caught her breath. It was twenty feet or more down to the creek, and that was nothing now but ice and rocks—but the wheels held.
They went slowly, Tom talking to Big Gray the whole way, his words no more than a murmur to Janet’s ears, and she began to think they would be all right, when something spooked the horse. Maybe a hoof slipped. She never did know what, but he jerked and reared back, and Tom swore aloud, and the wagon slid again. This time, the back right wheel went over the edge.
On the slick bridge, the old horse’s footing was precarious, and the drag of the wagon’s weight pulling him back and sideways threw him off-balance, and just like that, they went down, man and horse, went down hard.
Janet sat there in frozen silence for a long moment, clutching little Rachel to her bosom, and waiting to see if the wagon was going over, but it stayed where it was.
“Tom?” she said finally, in a small voice.
It seemed to take him a long time to answer, but finally he said, “It’s all right, love, I’ll get you down from there,” and a moment after that he loomed beside her in the darkness.
“But what will we do?” she asked, clambering down with his help.
“Gray’s broken a leg,” he said. “We’ll have to leave him, and walk home.”
“From here? But it’s three miles, most of. In this weather? We’ll freeze to death before we get there.”
“There’s nothing else for it now,” he said, and added, in a determined voice, “Never you fear, my love, I swore I’d see you both home and I will, and safely, and the boys can come back tomorrow with the sleds and bring things