WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.040 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.040 --> 00:00:04.680 align:middle line:84% There will be two readings next week. 00:00:04.680 --> 00:00:07.500 align:middle line:84% On Wednesday night in the terrace lounge 00:00:07.500 --> 00:00:09.660 align:middle line:90% five students will read. 00:00:09.660 --> 00:00:15.030 align:middle line:84% They are Mary Clark, Laurie Craig, Michael Noll, Rhonda 00:00:15.030 --> 00:00:17.400 align:middle line:90% Opits and Walter Willett. 00:00:17.400 --> 00:00:19.890 align:middle line:84% That's one week from tonight in the student union terrace 00:00:19.890 --> 00:00:21.930 align:middle line:90% lounge. 00:00:21.930 --> 00:00:26.790 align:middle line:84% And on Thursday night, Writers at Work sponsoring a joint reading 00:00:26.790 --> 00:00:30.360 align:middle line:84% by Ed Abbey and Clyde Moneyhun and that 00:00:30.360 --> 00:00:37.410 align:middle line:84% will be in this auditorium, that's Thursday the 16th. 00:00:37.410 --> 00:00:40.140 align:middle line:84% We would like to put out one more newsletter 00:00:40.140 --> 00:00:42.300 align:middle line:90% before the semester is finished. 00:00:42.300 --> 00:00:45.465 align:middle line:84% So we've made Friday our deadline to get news. 00:00:45.465 --> 00:00:49.550 align:middle line:90% 00:00:49.550 --> 00:00:51.380 align:middle line:90% We publish only good news. 00:00:51.380 --> 00:00:56.653 align:middle line:90% 00:00:56.653 --> 00:00:58.320 align:middle line:84% I hope you can all come to the reception 00:00:58.320 --> 00:01:00.488 align:middle line:84% tonight to meet Mr Gardner who'll 00:01:00.488 --> 00:01:02.280 align:middle line:84% be in the usual place in the terrace lounge 00:01:02.280 --> 00:01:04.110 align:middle line:90% in the Student Union. 00:01:04.110 --> 00:01:08.250 align:middle line:84% If you've not been over, go to the most inaccessible corner 00:01:08.250 --> 00:01:10.050 align:middle line:84% of the Union and that's the terrace lounge. 00:01:10.050 --> 00:01:16.420 align:middle line:90% 00:01:16.420 --> 00:01:20.110 align:middle line:84% It's a great treat to have John Gardner with us. 00:01:20.110 --> 00:01:23.140 align:middle line:84% His reading is sponsored by the drama department. 00:01:23.140 --> 00:01:26.410 align:middle line:84% He's here in conjunction with a very fine presentation 00:01:26.410 --> 00:01:31.030 align:middle line:84% of a dramatization of his novel, The Sunlight Dialogues 00:01:31.030 --> 00:01:36.790 align:middle line:84% and the play will be nightly through the 12th 00:01:36.790 --> 00:01:38.710 align:middle line:90% with matinees on the weekend. 00:01:38.710 --> 00:01:41.382 align:middle line:84% For information, call the drama department. 00:01:41.382 --> 00:01:44.280 align:middle line:90% 00:01:44.280 --> 00:01:48.090 align:middle line:84% Mr. Gardner is currently at State University of New York 00:01:48.090 --> 00:01:50.680 align:middle line:90% at Binghamton, New York. 00:01:50.680 --> 00:01:53.250 align:middle line:84% He also teaches at Bread Loaf Writers Conference. 00:01:53.250 --> 00:01:55.770 align:middle line:90% 00:01:55.770 --> 00:01:59.130 align:middle line:84% In addition to his novels, he's written 00:01:59.130 --> 00:02:02.820 align:middle line:84% The Life and Times of Chaucer, two collections 00:02:02.820 --> 00:02:05.610 align:middle line:84% of short stories, King's Indian and the Art of Living 00:02:05.610 --> 00:02:08.280 align:middle line:84% which has just been published and copies 00:02:08.280 --> 00:02:13.180 align:middle line:84% of that will be available for sale tonight at the reception. 00:02:13.180 --> 00:02:17.230 align:middle line:84% Very well known for his criticism on moral fiction 00:02:17.230 --> 00:02:19.180 align:middle line:84% and you may not be aware that he also 00:02:19.180 --> 00:02:23.050 align:middle line:84% writes books for children and opera libretti. 00:02:23.050 --> 00:02:26.900 align:middle line:90% 00:02:26.900 --> 00:02:31.370 align:middle line:84% His most recent novel is Freddy's Book. 00:02:31.370 --> 00:02:33.860 align:middle line:84% I'm very happy to introduce to you, John Gardner. 00:02:33.860 --> 00:02:37.199 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:02:37.199 --> 00:02:44.292 align:middle line:90% 00:02:44.292 --> 00:02:45.750 align:middle line:84% I haven't decided for sure what I'm 00:02:45.750 --> 00:02:48.852 align:middle line:84% going to read to you tonight, but it'll come to me. 00:02:48.852 --> 00:02:50.310 align:middle line:84% But I know that the first thing I'm 00:02:50.310 --> 00:02:54.000 align:middle line:84% going to read to you tonight is the thing 00:02:54.000 --> 00:02:57.430 align:middle line:84% I wrote for a friend of mine named Peter Blue Cloud. 00:02:57.430 --> 00:03:01.240 align:middle line:84% Peter Blue Cloud runs a magazine which is called Coyote's Journal 00:03:01.240 --> 00:03:05.940 align:middle line:84% and well, he with some friends and coyotes no doubt. 00:03:05.940 --> 00:03:09.420 align:middle line:84% Anyway, it's a journal which is devoted 00:03:09.420 --> 00:03:12.555 align:middle line:84% to anything anybody wants to say about coyotes. 00:03:12.555 --> 00:03:15.570 align:middle line:84% He is, as you might guess from that name, Indian. 00:03:15.570 --> 00:03:20.280 align:middle line:84% And Coyote is an old Indian mythic figure 00:03:20.280 --> 00:03:25.140 align:middle line:84% of cunning and intellect and represents 00:03:25.140 --> 00:03:27.900 align:middle line:84% everything Athena represents in the good old days. 00:03:27.900 --> 00:03:30.450 align:middle line:84% And there's another figure of intellect, 00:03:30.450 --> 00:03:31.950 align:middle line:84% I'm telling you all this because you 00:03:31.950 --> 00:03:34.033 align:middle line:84% need to know it for the story, otherwise the story 00:03:34.033 --> 00:03:37.710 align:middle line:84% will be totally meaningless, which it will be in any case. 00:03:37.710 --> 00:03:39.855 align:middle line:84% Another figure of intellect is the crow. 00:03:39.855 --> 00:03:43.982 align:middle line:84% The crow is associated with the wisdom of the poet, which 00:03:43.982 --> 00:03:46.440 align:middle line:84% of course from the point of view of any good microbiologist 00:03:46.440 --> 00:03:48.150 align:middle line:90% is stupidity. 00:03:48.150 --> 00:03:51.630 align:middle line:84% And this is a story about Coyote and Crow. 00:03:51.630 --> 00:03:55.260 align:middle line:84% The magazine, one can send anthropological articles, 00:03:55.260 --> 00:03:57.810 align:middle line:84% articles on Indian Affairs, if you can somehow coyote 00:03:57.810 --> 00:04:03.702 align:middle line:84% slanted, anything, including zoological studies of coyotes. 00:04:03.702 --> 00:04:05.160 align:middle line:84% I think it's wonderful that there's 00:04:05.160 --> 00:04:07.980 align:middle line:84% a magazine in the world that's devoted to one animal. 00:04:07.980 --> 00:04:10.350 align:middle line:84% Instead of a fiction magazine, I mean 00:04:10.350 --> 00:04:12.930 align:middle line:90% that's a very mixed up animal. 00:04:12.930 --> 00:04:15.480 align:middle line:90% But everything OK. 00:04:15.480 --> 00:04:18.089 align:middle line:84% This is called Coyote and the Dead Man. 00:04:18.089 --> 00:04:20.649 align:middle line:84% I'm really reading it to you because I'm in Arizona. 00:04:20.649 --> 00:04:23.730 align:middle line:84% I was trying to think, what can one do from Pennsylvania 00:04:23.730 --> 00:04:25.290 align:middle line:90% to impress the Arizonans? 00:04:25.290 --> 00:04:29.130 align:middle line:84% And if you know that I have a story about Coyote, 00:04:29.130 --> 00:04:31.350 align:middle line:90% maybe you won't hate me. 00:04:31.350 --> 00:04:35.190 align:middle line:84% This is called, Coyote and the Dead Man. 00:04:35.190 --> 00:04:38.250 align:middle line:84% I should also mention that when Peter Blue Cloud asked me, 00:04:38.250 --> 00:04:40.770 align:middle line:84% I maybe just talk to you tonight but, when 00:04:40.770 --> 00:04:42.630 align:middle line:84% Peter asked me to write this story, 00:04:42.630 --> 00:04:46.140 align:middle line:84% I was very embarrassed because he's a very fine writer. 00:04:46.140 --> 00:04:48.570 align:middle line:90% A legendary, he calls himself. 00:04:48.570 --> 00:04:50.040 align:middle line:84% An Indian writer, they don't like 00:04:50.040 --> 00:04:53.610 align:middle line:84% the word fictionist and poet and that kind of stuff. 00:04:53.610 --> 00:04:56.850 align:middle line:84% And he writes beautiful coyote stories. 00:04:56.850 --> 00:04:59.160 align:middle line:84% So I told him, I just can't do that. 00:04:59.160 --> 00:05:02.370 align:middle line:84% It's not my culture and it would be an insult to you guys. 00:05:02.370 --> 00:05:04.680 align:middle line:84% For me to write a coyote story would be an effrontery. 00:05:04.680 --> 00:05:08.550 align:middle line:84% And I said, but maybe if you 00:05:08.550 --> 00:05:12.430 align:middle line:84% let me just do a Saturday morning cartoon coyote, 00:05:12.430 --> 00:05:13.620 align:middle line:90% it'll be all right. 00:05:13.620 --> 00:05:16.950 align:middle line:84% And he allowed as how that was all right. 00:05:16.950 --> 00:05:20.052 align:middle line:84% One day Coyote opened his door to step into the world 00:05:20.052 --> 00:05:22.260 align:middle line:84% and what should be lying there right across the stoop 00:05:22.260 --> 00:05:24.630 align:middle line:90% of his door but a dead man. 00:05:24.630 --> 00:05:27.390 align:middle line:84% Coyote scowled, then glanced back to see if his children had 00:05:27.390 --> 00:05:29.072 align:middle line:90% noticed, but they hadn't. 00:05:29.072 --> 00:05:31.530 align:middle line:84% Then he slid his eyes around to see if any of the neighbors 00:05:31.530 --> 00:05:34.200 align:middle line:84% were looking, but so far so good. 00:05:34.200 --> 00:05:36.750 align:middle line:84% He stepped over the dead man with delicate feet then leaned 00:05:36.750 --> 00:05:38.950 align:middle line:84% back to pull the door shut, then carefully dragged 00:05:38.950 --> 00:05:42.330 align:middle line:84% the dead man into the bushes and sat down to think. 00:05:42.330 --> 00:05:45.060 align:middle line:84% He thought, lightning fast as was his way, 00:05:45.060 --> 00:05:47.610 align:middle line:84% about why such things had to happen in the world, why 00:05:47.610 --> 00:05:50.410 align:middle line:84% this particular dead man should be laid at his door, 00:05:50.410 --> 00:05:52.710 align:middle line:90% and not Crow's, for instance. 00:05:52.710 --> 00:05:55.170 align:middle line:84% The smell of him ruining the morning. 00:05:55.170 --> 00:05:57.593 align:middle line:84% And then Coyote thought of a plan. 00:05:57.593 --> 00:05:59.260 align:middle line:84% He leaned down to the dead man and said, 00:05:59.260 --> 00:06:01.470 align:middle line:84% "listen brother, we've got to change the world. 00:06:01.470 --> 00:06:03.150 align:middle line:90% Are you up to it?" 00:06:03.150 --> 00:06:05.310 align:middle line:84% The dead man opened his eyes to look at Coyote 00:06:05.310 --> 00:06:08.190 align:middle line:90% with deep disgust. 00:06:08.190 --> 00:06:11.410 align:middle line:84% "Dead friend," said Coyote, "Let me phrase it another way. 00:06:11.410 --> 00:06:13.590 align:middle line:84% What is it that interests such elevated spirits 00:06:13.590 --> 00:06:15.810 align:middle line:84% as yours and mine except truth and justice 00:06:15.810 --> 00:06:18.000 align:middle line:90% and the dignity of life?" 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:20.460 align:middle line:84% This was not really what was deepest in his heart 00:06:20.460 --> 00:06:22.050 align:middle line:84% but he felt it would be wise to take 00:06:22.050 --> 00:06:25.350 align:middle line:84% the high line with the dead at least in the beginning. 00:06:25.350 --> 00:06:27.090 align:middle line:84% You get one of them riled up, there was no 00:06:27.090 --> 00:06:29.460 align:middle line:90% telling what it might lead to. 00:06:29.460 --> 00:06:33.090 align:middle line:84% The dead man closed his eyes, he was tired. 00:06:33.090 --> 00:06:35.580 align:middle line:84% "Let me put it in yet another way," said Coyote. 00:06:35.580 --> 00:06:37.950 align:middle line:84% The dead man's eyes closed tighter. 00:06:37.950 --> 00:06:40.050 align:middle line:84% "Listen you," said Coyote and leaned far over 00:06:40.050 --> 00:06:42.430 align:middle line:84% to whisper behind his paw into the dead man's ear. 00:06:42.430 --> 00:06:43.650 align:middle line:90% "I know your kind. 00:06:43.650 --> 00:06:47.130 align:middle line:84% Get up and follow me and believe you me, you won't be sorry." 00:06:47.130 --> 00:06:48.540 align:middle line:90% The dead man groaned. 00:06:48.540 --> 00:06:51.090 align:middle line:84% He thought it would be just the same old thing. 00:06:51.090 --> 00:06:53.130 align:middle line:84% But he stood one finger then another, 00:06:53.130 --> 00:06:56.280 align:middle line:84% and pretty soon, not so steady, a little absent minded, 00:06:56.280 --> 00:06:57.960 align:middle line:90% he was up on his feet. 00:06:57.960 --> 00:07:01.200 align:middle line:84% "It better not be far, " he said. 00:07:01.200 --> 00:07:05.250 align:middle line:84% "Believe me," said Coyote, "it's not far." 00:07:05.250 --> 00:07:07.740 align:middle line:84% Coyote set off whistling under his breath darting back 00:07:07.740 --> 00:07:10.073 align:middle line:84% and forth on the road to have a look at things, whatever 00:07:10.073 --> 00:07:12.330 align:middle line:84% other travelers had thrown away was sadly left behind 00:07:12.330 --> 00:07:14.940 align:middle line:84% or accidentally dropped, but there was nothing, just junk. 00:07:14.940 --> 00:07:17.880 align:middle line:84% And the dead man came slowly behind him. 00:07:17.880 --> 00:07:19.650 align:middle line:84% His eyes were closed to slits and he 00:07:19.650 --> 00:07:21.660 align:middle line:84% was too tired and bored to pick up his feet. 00:07:21.660 --> 00:07:25.590 align:middle line:84% He just slid them first one shoe then the other on the dirt. 00:07:25.590 --> 00:07:29.590 align:middle line:84% His hands hanging down past his pockets never moved at all. 00:07:29.590 --> 00:07:32.520 align:middle line:84% It took them so long to get 50 feet that Coyote was secretly 00:07:32.520 --> 00:07:34.560 align:middle line:84% in a fury and could hardly remember his plan 00:07:34.560 --> 00:07:38.460 align:middle line:84% but all he did was whistle under his breath a little harder. 00:07:38.460 --> 00:07:41.190 align:middle line:84% Coyote led the dead man to the window of a house, 00:07:41.190 --> 00:07:42.880 align:middle line:84% and they looked in, and lo and behold, 00:07:42.880 --> 00:07:46.130 align:middle line:84% there was a beautiful maiden kissing a chicken on the head. 00:07:46.130 --> 00:07:48.678 align:middle line:84% "Wow," said Coyote, putting all his soul into it. 00:07:48.678 --> 00:07:49.720 align:middle line:90% "What a beautiful maiden. 00:07:49.720 --> 00:07:52.330 align:middle line:84% Look at that hair, look at that soft pretty mouth." 00:07:52.330 --> 00:07:54.640 align:middle line:84% The dead man's eyes were falling further shut. 00:07:54.640 --> 00:07:56.320 align:middle line:84% And carefully, so the dead men wouldn't 00:07:56.320 --> 00:07:58.660 align:middle line:84% notice what he was doing, Coyote reached up 00:07:58.660 --> 00:08:00.010 align:middle line:90% and opened them a little. 00:08:00.010 --> 00:08:02.770 align:middle line:84% Then Coyote smiled tenderly letting his own eyes fall 00:08:02.770 --> 00:08:04.783 align:middle line:84% closed a little as if his heart were ravished 00:08:04.783 --> 00:08:05.950 align:middle line:90% and he were half in a dream. 00:08:05.950 --> 00:08:09.190 align:middle line:84% He said, "Look at how sweetly she's kissing that chicken." 00:08:09.190 --> 00:08:11.650 align:middle line:84% The dead man was fast asleep so that when Coyote tugged 00:08:11.650 --> 00:08:13.420 align:middle line:84% at his arm he almost tipped over, 00:08:13.420 --> 00:08:15.890 align:middle line:84% but Coyote caught him and with difficulty, led him around 00:08:15.890 --> 00:08:18.520 align:middle line:84% to the front of the house and finding the door open, 00:08:18.520 --> 00:08:20.290 align:middle line:90% let him in where the maiden was. 00:08:20.290 --> 00:08:23.260 align:middle line:84% "Tell me beautiful maiden," Coyote said, as if faint 00:08:23.260 --> 00:08:24.768 align:middle line:84% with emotion, "why are you kissing 00:08:24.768 --> 00:08:25.810 align:middle line:90% that chicken on the head? 00:08:25.810 --> 00:08:28.450 align:middle line:84% Is it really your father that's been transformed by a witch 00:08:28.450 --> 00:08:30.950 align:middle line:84% or is it perhaps that you're so saddened by life that you're 00:08:30.950 --> 00:08:33.458 align:middle line:90% willing to take anything?" 00:08:33.458 --> 00:08:35.500 align:middle line:84% "I don't know," said the maiden blushing a little 00:08:35.500 --> 00:08:36.730 align:middle line:90% and becoming even prettier. 00:08:36.730 --> 00:08:37.570 align:middle line:90% "She's my pet. 00:08:37.570 --> 00:08:38.570 align:middle line:90% That's all. 00:08:38.570 --> 00:08:41.080 align:middle line:84% Is there something wrong with that?" 00:08:41.080 --> 00:08:43.332 align:middle line:84% Then she saw the dead man and began to scream and bat 00:08:43.332 --> 00:08:45.040 align:middle line:84% in the air to drive out the smell of him. 00:08:45.040 --> 00:08:47.740 align:middle line:84% "No matter," thought Coyote and helped the dead man back out 00:08:47.740 --> 00:08:49.000 align:middle line:90% through the door. 00:08:49.000 --> 00:08:50.980 align:middle line:84% It was obvious that dead people cared no more 00:08:50.980 --> 00:08:53.512 align:middle line:84% for beautiful maidens than for turnips. 00:08:53.512 --> 00:08:54.970 align:middle line:84% Getting rid of the dead man, he was 00:08:54.970 --> 00:08:58.390 align:middle line:84% beginning to see might not be all that easy. 00:08:58.390 --> 00:09:00.520 align:middle line:84% They went about 60 or 70 feet and found the part 00:09:00.520 --> 00:09:02.745 align:middle line:84% time residents of a visiting chieftain who'd 00:09:02.745 --> 00:09:04.120 align:middle line:84% been all around the world and had 00:09:04.120 --> 00:09:06.520 align:middle line:84% all the good and evil spirits at his bidding. 00:09:06.520 --> 00:09:09.160 align:middle line:84% They found a ladder against the wall left by some thieves who 00:09:09.160 --> 00:09:11.110 align:middle line:84% tried to sneak into the place a while before 00:09:11.110 --> 00:09:13.120 align:middle line:84% but had been chased off by the dogs. 00:09:13.120 --> 00:09:14.620 align:middle line:84% When the dogs saw the dead man, they 00:09:14.620 --> 00:09:17.350 align:middle line:84% went slinking away with their tails between their legs. 00:09:17.350 --> 00:09:20.020 align:middle line:84% Coyote and the dead man climbed the ladder, Coyote pushing 00:09:20.020 --> 00:09:21.200 align:middle line:90% the dead man from behind. 00:09:21.200 --> 00:09:23.140 align:middle line:90% It was hard hard going. 00:09:23.140 --> 00:09:25.420 align:middle line:84% And looked in at the window, the whole room 00:09:25.420 --> 00:09:28.090 align:middle line:84% was filled with gold and jewels and priceless artifacts 00:09:28.090 --> 00:09:30.550 align:middle line:84% gathered by the spirits and by the chieftain's own hard work 00:09:30.550 --> 00:09:32.890 align:middle line:90% and sound business practices. 00:09:32.890 --> 00:09:34.210 align:middle line:90% "Wow," said Coyote. 00:09:34.210 --> 00:09:35.920 align:middle line:84% "Will you look at all that treasure." 00:09:35.920 --> 00:09:37.540 align:middle line:84% With apparent greed and avarice, he 00:09:37.540 --> 00:09:40.000 align:middle line:84% smiled up at the dead man on the ladder just above him 00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:42.970 align:middle line:84% and then instantly Coyote's smile turned to dismay 00:09:42.970 --> 00:09:45.130 align:middle line:84% for the dead man who was now in a deep sleep, 00:09:45.130 --> 00:09:47.660 align:middle line:84% no more interested in treasure than a bundle of sticks 00:09:47.660 --> 00:09:49.900 align:middle line:84% was tilting backwards far off balance 00:09:49.900 --> 00:09:52.540 align:middle line:84% and would soon come crashing down on Coyote and both of them 00:09:52.540 --> 00:09:56.410 align:middle line:84% would go banging down the ladder onto the paving stones. 00:09:56.410 --> 00:09:59.050 align:middle line:84% Coyote reached up and pushed the dead man's hind end 00:09:59.050 --> 00:10:00.400 align:middle line:90% and got him balanced again. 00:10:00.400 --> 00:10:03.730 align:middle line:84% Then carefully, slowly, back down the ladder 00:10:03.730 --> 00:10:04.930 align:middle line:90% went the two of them. 00:10:04.930 --> 00:10:08.310 align:middle line:90% Coyote gnashed his teeth. 00:10:08.310 --> 00:10:10.780 align:middle line:84% 100 feet later, they came to old Mountain Lion's house. 00:10:10.780 --> 00:10:12.877 align:middle line:84% And Coyote thought, "What was there to lose, 00:10:12.877 --> 00:10:13.960 align:middle line:90% you might as well try it." 00:10:13.960 --> 00:10:16.390 align:middle line:84% So finding the door open, he went into old Mountain Lion's 00:10:16.390 --> 00:10:17.890 align:middle line:90% house with the dead man. 00:10:17.890 --> 00:10:19.703 align:middle line:84% As usual, sure enough, old Mountain Lion 00:10:19.703 --> 00:10:21.370 align:middle line:84% was doing the various things he believed 00:10:21.370 --> 00:10:23.450 align:middle line:90% one should do to keep fit. 00:10:23.450 --> 00:10:25.420 align:middle line:84% He let out a bolt of lightning from the bottle 00:10:25.420 --> 00:10:27.160 align:middle line:84% where he kept them and then raced the bolt 00:10:27.160 --> 00:10:29.033 align:middle line:84% to the far wall of his house, running so fast 00:10:29.033 --> 00:10:31.450 align:middle line:84% he could no longer be seen and then he would throw himself 00:10:31.450 --> 00:10:33.617 align:middle line:84% against the wall just in time for the lightning bolt 00:10:33.617 --> 00:10:35.500 align:middle line:90% to hit him: crash! 00:10:35.500 --> 00:10:37.000 align:middle line:84% Sometimes, he would take it directly 00:10:37.000 --> 00:10:39.520 align:middle line:84% in the chest, sometimes with an elegantly casual look, 00:10:39.520 --> 00:10:42.400 align:middle line:84% he would tip up an elbow and take it there or take one 00:10:42.400 --> 00:10:43.270 align:middle line:90% on the heel. 00:10:43.270 --> 00:10:45.730 align:middle line:84% Occasionally, showing off, he would take a small one 00:10:45.730 --> 00:10:47.350 align:middle line:84% in the eyeball, which would briefly 00:10:47.350 --> 00:10:50.728 align:middle line:84% turn the eyeball bluish white like a sapphire. 00:10:50.728 --> 00:10:53.020 align:middle line:84% He'd let out lightning bolts and allow them to hit him 00:10:53.020 --> 00:10:54.700 align:middle line:84% for an hour or so, he would sit down 00:10:54.700 --> 00:10:56.830 align:middle line:84% panting hard and wiping his forehead 00:10:56.830 --> 00:10:59.410 align:middle line:84% and then he'd begin on his muscle builders. 00:10:59.410 --> 00:11:01.390 align:middle line:84% He would pick things up, set them down again, 00:11:01.390 --> 00:11:03.490 align:middle line:84% pick them up again, and set them down again and so 00:11:03.490 --> 00:11:06.850 align:middle line:84% on, starting with relatively light things like the house 00:11:06.850 --> 00:11:10.150 align:middle line:84% and moving to relatively heavy things like the mountain. 00:11:10.150 --> 00:11:12.550 align:middle line:84% "Wow," cried Coyote and old Mountain Lion 00:11:12.550 --> 00:11:15.100 align:middle line:84% had the mountain over his head straining every muscle 00:11:15.100 --> 00:11:17.050 align:middle line:84% and trembling with the effort, his eyeballs 00:11:17.050 --> 00:11:20.530 align:middle line:84% bulging, sweat pouring off him like water from a waterfall. 00:11:20.530 --> 00:11:23.920 align:middle line:84% "Look at that physical power and fierce determination." 00:11:23.920 --> 00:11:25.420 align:middle line:90% The dead man said nothing. 00:11:25.420 --> 00:11:27.225 align:middle line:84% And when Coyote looked around, he 00:11:27.225 --> 00:11:28.600 align:middle line:84% saw that the dead man had allowed 00:11:28.600 --> 00:11:31.510 align:middle line:84% himself to sink back onto the mountain lion's chicken coop. 00:11:31.510 --> 00:11:34.690 align:middle line:84% His arms stretched wide, head fallen limply to one side, 00:11:34.690 --> 00:11:37.030 align:middle line:90% mouth open, eyes shut. 00:11:37.030 --> 00:11:39.880 align:middle line:84% Grimly whistling under his breath harder than ever, Coyote 00:11:39.880 --> 00:11:42.130 align:middle line:84% headed the dead man on down the road. 00:11:42.130 --> 00:11:44.710 align:middle line:90% "Come on, come on," he nagged. 00:11:44.710 --> 00:11:48.115 align:middle line:84% "Be much farther," mumbled the dead man. 00:11:48.115 --> 00:11:49.990 align:middle line:84% They came to where the people were all taking 00:11:49.990 --> 00:11:51.370 align:middle line:90% part in a great festival. 00:11:51.370 --> 00:11:53.953 align:middle line:84% Coyote couldn't remember which one; traveling with a dead man, 00:11:53.953 --> 00:11:55.570 align:middle line:90% he'd lost all track of time. 00:11:55.570 --> 00:11:57.850 align:middle line:84% Or whatever the name of the festival might be, 00:11:57.850 --> 00:12:01.060 align:middle line:84% they were all eating roasted chicken and Coyote realized 00:12:01.060 --> 00:12:02.290 align:middle line:90% that he was hungry. 00:12:02.290 --> 00:12:04.660 align:middle line:84% He stood in line with his straw dish and the dead man 00:12:04.660 --> 00:12:06.580 align:middle line:84% came along behind with his and after they'd 00:12:06.580 --> 00:12:08.320 align:middle line:84% been served pieces of chicken and cups 00:12:08.320 --> 00:12:11.260 align:middle line:84% of red willow tea, Coyote and the dead man 00:12:11.260 --> 00:12:15.160 align:middle line:84% went over to where it was shady and found a place to sit. 00:12:15.160 --> 00:12:16.372 align:middle line:90% Coyote ate his chicken. 00:12:16.372 --> 00:12:17.830 align:middle line:84% It tasted just wonderful and he was 00:12:17.830 --> 00:12:19.372 align:middle line:84% thinking of sneaking through the line 00:12:19.372 --> 00:12:21.250 align:middle line:84% again when he glanced over at the dead man 00:12:21.250 --> 00:12:24.700 align:middle line:84% and saw not to his surprise that the dead man hadn't taken one 00:12:24.700 --> 00:12:26.890 align:middle line:84% single bite but was sitting with his feet crossed 00:12:26.890 --> 00:12:31.510 align:middle line:84% leaning against the tree and looking dead again. 00:12:31.510 --> 00:12:33.220 align:middle line:90% His eyes closed slits. 00:12:33.220 --> 00:12:35.140 align:middle line:84% "Here I'll trade you," Coyote said 00:12:35.140 --> 00:12:36.640 align:middle line:84% and gave the dead man his empty dish 00:12:36.640 --> 00:12:39.010 align:middle line:84% and took the dead man's full one. 00:12:39.010 --> 00:12:41.402 align:middle line:84% As he ate, he racked his brains for something in the world 00:12:41.402 --> 00:12:43.360 align:middle line:84% that might interest a dead man, and the more he 00:12:43.360 --> 00:12:45.190 align:middle line:84% turned the question over, the more he 00:12:45.190 --> 00:12:47.620 align:middle line:90% realized how vexatious it was. 00:12:47.620 --> 00:12:49.540 align:middle line:84% Beautiful maidens were no better than turnips 00:12:49.540 --> 00:12:53.020 align:middle line:84% to a dead man and vast treasures were worth no more than bundles 00:12:53.020 --> 00:12:53.680 align:middle line:90% of sticks. 00:12:53.680 --> 00:12:55.918 align:middle line:84% Power and quickness were so tiresome to the dead man 00:12:55.918 --> 00:12:57.460 align:middle line:84% that they could put him to sleep even 00:12:57.460 --> 00:12:59.450 align:middle line:84% on the sharp roof of a chicken coop. 00:12:59.450 --> 00:13:01.660 align:middle line:84% And not even the rich smell of roasted chicken 00:13:01.660 --> 00:13:05.200 align:middle line:84% could entirely bring a dead man to his senses. 00:13:05.200 --> 00:13:10.283 align:middle line:84% Coyote had stumbled, he saw, onto a hard, hard question. 00:13:10.283 --> 00:13:11.950 align:middle line:84% He was thinking with such concentration, 00:13:11.950 --> 00:13:13.632 align:middle line:84% he didn't notice at first that a little 00:13:13.632 --> 00:13:15.340 align:middle line:84% to the left of the tree with the dead man 00:13:15.340 --> 00:13:18.520 align:middle line:84% was an old woman in black with grayish black hair 00:13:18.520 --> 00:13:21.730 align:middle line:84% who had come with some children to sit down on the grass and eat. 00:13:21.730 --> 00:13:23.560 align:middle line:84% And the old woman to keep the children 00:13:23.560 --> 00:13:26.230 align:middle line:84% from hitting each other or stealing each other's food 00:13:26.230 --> 00:13:28.300 align:middle line:90% was telling them all the story. 00:13:28.300 --> 00:13:30.700 align:middle line:84% It was one of those stupid complicated stories 00:13:30.700 --> 00:13:34.300 align:middle line:84% about Coyote and Crow, the kind of story Coyote hated. 00:13:34.300 --> 00:13:37.120 align:middle line:84% The story with no lesson or purpose in the world, not even 00:13:37.120 --> 00:13:40.550 align:middle line:84% so much as a sneaky half virtue to justify its existence. 00:13:40.550 --> 00:13:44.230 align:middle line:84% One of those stories that do nothing but pass the time. 00:13:44.230 --> 00:13:46.480 align:middle line:84% Coyote painfully slit his eyes to the children 00:13:46.480 --> 00:13:49.000 align:middle line:84% and the old woman but none of them noticed. 00:13:49.000 --> 00:13:51.610 align:middle line:84% "Well," said the old woman, smiling and rolling 00:13:51.610 --> 00:13:54.850 align:middle line:84% her black flashing eyes around from child to child, 00:13:54.850 --> 00:13:56.920 align:middle line:84% "Crow thought long and hard about which 00:13:56.920 --> 00:13:57.880 align:middle line:90% of the baskets to open. 00:13:57.880 --> 00:14:01.450 align:middle line:84% The basket made of grass, the basket made of sticks, 00:14:01.450 --> 00:14:03.507 align:middle line:84% or the basket made of braided hair." 00:14:03.507 --> 00:14:05.590 align:middle line:84% Coyote shook his head and stretched to the corners 00:14:05.590 --> 00:14:07.060 align:middle line:90% of his mouth down. 00:14:07.060 --> 00:14:08.950 align:middle line:84% There had never been any such basket. 00:14:08.950 --> 00:14:11.035 align:middle line:90% It was all lies and foolishness. 00:14:11.035 --> 00:14:12.910 align:middle line:84% He wished the old woman would go away and let 00:14:12.910 --> 00:14:14.860 align:middle line:90% him think about his problem. 00:14:14.860 --> 00:14:17.980 align:middle line:84% But the old woman chatted on, her cracking, dry voice 00:14:17.980 --> 00:14:19.060 align:middle line:90% distracting him. 00:14:19.060 --> 00:14:21.310 align:middle line:84% She said, "Then Crow got to thinking 00:14:21.310 --> 00:14:23.740 align:middle line:84% how Coyote was the trickiest spirit that ever got trapped 00:14:23.740 --> 00:14:25.580 align:middle line:84% in a skin, but Chicken on the other hand, 00:14:25.580 --> 00:14:28.990 align:middle line:84% who had given Coyote the baskets, was a witless and blissful--or small 00:14:28.990 --> 00:14:31.270 align:middle line:84% minded and spiteful, if that mood was on her-- 00:14:31.270 --> 00:14:33.550 align:middle line:84% it was hard to be sure she had any spirit at all 00:14:33.550 --> 00:14:34.870 align:middle line:90% under her skin." 00:14:34.870 --> 00:14:36.340 align:middle line:90% The old woman chuckled. 00:14:36.340 --> 00:14:38.410 align:middle line:84% Coyote stood up and narrowing his eyes, 00:14:38.410 --> 00:14:41.500 align:middle line:84% lowering his head so that he looked like a hunchback, carried 00:14:41.500 --> 00:14:44.740 align:middle line:84% the dirty straw dishes and cups to the trash ravine. 00:14:44.740 --> 00:14:46.120 align:middle line:84% Then returned to get the dead man 00:14:46.120 --> 00:14:47.890 align:middle line:90% and continue on their search. 00:14:47.890 --> 00:14:51.070 align:middle line:84% The dead man sat with his eyes a little open and one large 00:14:51.070 --> 00:14:54.730 align:middle line:84% led gray ear tipped slightly in the direction of the old woman. 00:14:54.730 --> 00:14:56.890 align:middle line:84% "Stranger and stranger, thought Crow," 00:14:56.890 --> 00:14:58.270 align:middle line:90% the old woman was saying. 00:14:58.270 --> 00:15:00.640 align:middle line:84% "And he looked long and hard at the three trap doors: 00:15:00.640 --> 00:15:03.220 align:middle line:84% one with a ring handle of stone, one with a ring 00:15:03.220 --> 00:15:05.590 align:middle line:84% handle of buffalo horn, one with a ring 00:15:05.590 --> 00:15:08.230 align:middle line:84% handle of turquoise framed in silver." 00:15:08.230 --> 00:15:10.330 align:middle line:84% "Come on," said Coyote to the dead man 00:15:10.330 --> 00:15:11.890 align:middle line:90% and tapped him on the shoulder. 00:15:11.890 --> 00:15:15.220 align:middle line:84% Slowly, the dead man raised one finger to his mouth 00:15:15.220 --> 00:15:17.970 align:middle line:90% signaling Coyote to silence. 00:15:17.970 --> 00:15:19.870 align:middle line:84% Coyote stared in horror from the dead man 00:15:19.870 --> 00:15:21.520 align:middle line:84% to the old woman who was croaking 00:15:21.520 --> 00:15:23.980 align:middle line:84% on and on, her black eyes aglitter, 00:15:23.980 --> 00:15:27.160 align:middle line:84% her hands absentmindedly picking small wildflowers mixed 00:15:27.160 --> 00:15:29.110 align:middle line:84% in with the grass around her and dropping them 00:15:29.110 --> 00:15:31.450 align:middle line:84% onto the pile of trash she already had. 00:15:31.450 --> 00:15:34.030 align:middle line:84% Bits of bright cloth, gleaming metal trinkets, 00:15:34.030 --> 00:15:38.980 align:middle line:84% gray and white stones, one robin's egg long since hatched. 00:15:38.980 --> 00:15:40.840 align:middle line:84% And his delicate feet rolling his eyes 00:15:40.840 --> 00:15:44.830 align:middle line:84% toward heaven and disgust, remembering now 00:15:44.830 --> 00:15:46.990 align:middle line:84% that this had been his plan from the beginning. 00:15:46.990 --> 00:15:50.020 align:middle line:84% The old woman was obviously Crow in a typically stupid 00:15:50.020 --> 00:15:51.310 align:middle line:90% disguise. 00:15:51.310 --> 00:15:53.290 align:middle line:84% Coyote sidled off and when he was sure 00:15:53.290 --> 00:15:56.350 align:middle line:84% he was rid of the dead man for good turned around grinning 00:15:56.350 --> 00:15:58.630 align:middle line:84% and flew like lightning straight back to his house. 00:15:58.630 --> 00:16:03.460 align:middle line:84% Ran in and slammed the door and leaned his back on it. 00:16:03.460 --> 00:16:06.820 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:16:06.820 --> 00:16:12.600 align:middle line:90% 00:16:12.600 --> 00:16:15.600 align:middle line:84% I don't usually like to read anything that I've written 00:16:15.600 --> 00:16:18.150 align:middle line:84% that's already been published, that hasn't. 00:16:18.150 --> 00:16:23.220 align:middle line:84% But since this book is available only in Tucson, the publication 00:16:23.220 --> 00:16:25.830 align:middle line:84% date of The Art of Living, the last collection of stories, 00:16:25.830 --> 00:16:29.220 align:middle line:84% I thought is May 1st, but in Tucson, it's 00:16:29.220 --> 00:16:31.100 align:middle line:90% earlier because here I am. 00:16:31.100 --> 00:16:37.120 align:middle line:84% I thought I'd read one of the stories in this collection. 00:16:37.120 --> 00:16:39.240 align:middle line:84% I thought I might read any one of the stories 00:16:39.240 --> 00:16:42.720 align:middle line:84% but it comes to me now that this is the one I'm going to read. 00:16:42.720 --> 00:16:44.508 align:middle line:84% My excuse for reading this story is 00:16:44.508 --> 00:16:46.050 align:middle line:84% that it's the only other thing that I 00:16:46.050 --> 00:16:48.990 align:middle line:84% know that could be remotely related to the West. 00:16:48.990 --> 00:16:51.150 align:middle line:84% And the only reason for that is there's this song, 00:16:51.150 --> 00:16:53.730 align:middle line:84% Old Bill Jones had two daughters and a song. 00:16:53.730 --> 00:16:55.410 align:middle line:90% That's a Welsh name, right? 00:16:55.410 --> 00:17:01.830 align:middle line:84% And clearly, this is a story about the Welsh and that's all. 00:17:01.830 --> 00:17:05.760 align:middle line:90% It's called, Come On Back. 00:17:05.760 --> 00:17:09.438 align:middle line:84% And that's all I'm going to read you, just this story. 00:17:09.438 --> 00:17:10.980 align:middle line:84% I'm sorry you can't see the pictures. 00:17:10.980 --> 00:17:13.980 align:middle line:90% Pictures are nice. 00:17:13.980 --> 00:17:16.437 align:middle line:84% Four to five years ago--I wonder if I should tell you 00:17:16.437 --> 00:17:17.520 align:middle line:90% anything about this story. 00:17:17.520 --> 00:17:22.290 align:middle line:84% I mean, since I'm here, I'll tell you. 00:17:22.290 --> 00:17:24.599 align:middle line:84% I always wanted to get in the New Yorker. 00:17:24.599 --> 00:17:26.579 align:middle line:84% I really, really wish they'd chosen-- 00:17:26.579 --> 00:17:27.089 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:17:27.089 --> 00:17:28.500 align:middle line:90% New Yorker. 00:17:28.500 --> 00:17:29.700 align:middle line:90% And they won't. 00:17:29.700 --> 00:17:32.250 align:middle line:90% I write faggotized stories. 00:17:32.250 --> 00:17:36.630 align:middle line:84% No, I write stupid stories, I write experimental stories. 00:17:36.630 --> 00:17:41.580 align:middle line:84% I try and try but they won't work. 00:17:41.580 --> 00:17:43.350 align:middle line:84% So I thought maybe a reminiscence, 00:17:43.350 --> 00:17:47.100 align:middle line:84% coming to the--New York is famous for its reminiscences. 00:17:47.100 --> 00:17:50.430 align:middle line:84% A reminiscence is essentially the stupidest, dullest, 00:17:50.430 --> 00:17:52.980 align:middle line:90% most boring story in the world. 00:17:52.980 --> 00:17:56.160 align:middle line:84% So eventually you get fooling around with it a little bit 00:17:56.160 --> 00:17:59.557 align:middle line:84% and a plot starts creeping in when you really didn't mean-- 00:17:59.557 --> 00:18:01.140 align:middle line:84% I mean, you know the minute plot comes 00:18:01.140 --> 00:18:02.640 align:middle line:84% in you're dead at The New Yorker, 00:18:02.640 --> 00:18:05.790 align:middle line:90% but you can't help yourself. 00:18:05.790 --> 00:18:09.810 align:middle line:84% And then symbolism starts rearing its disgusting head 00:18:09.810 --> 00:18:13.080 align:middle line:84% and that really is bad at The New Yorker 00:18:13.080 --> 00:18:16.030 align:middle line:90% but that's what happened. 00:18:16.030 --> 00:18:20.370 align:middle line:84% So it's my New Yorker story, not of course 00:18:20.370 --> 00:18:22.857 align:middle line:90% published in The New Yorker. 00:18:22.857 --> 00:18:24.690 align:middle line:84% Four, five years ago when Remsen, New York 00:18:24.690 --> 00:18:26.700 align:middle line:84% was called Jack and nearly all the people who 00:18:26.700 --> 00:18:28.830 align:middle line:84% lived there were Welsh, my uncle or rather 00:18:28.830 --> 00:18:33.280 align:middle line:84% my maternal great uncle, E.L. Hughes, ran the feed mill. 00:18:33.280 --> 00:18:35.280 align:middle line:84% His name was no longer remembered in the village 00:18:35.280 --> 00:18:37.470 align:middle line:84% and the feed mill is in ruins, set back 00:18:37.470 --> 00:18:39.270 align:middle line:84% behind houses and trees so that you have 00:18:39.270 --> 00:18:41.320 align:middle line:90% to know it's there to find it. 00:18:41.320 --> 00:18:44.040 align:middle line:84% There's a big sprawling Agway that already looks ancient 00:18:44.040 --> 00:18:46.590 align:middle line:84% though it can't be more than 15 or 20 years old 00:18:46.590 --> 00:18:48.930 align:middle line:90% on the other side of town. 00:18:48.930 --> 00:18:50.580 align:middle line:84% I seldom get up to that area anymore, 00:18:50.580 --> 00:18:52.080 align:middle line:84% but I used to visit often when I was 00:18:52.080 --> 00:18:55.500 align:middle line:84% a child living with my parents on their farm outside Batavia. 00:18:55.500 --> 00:18:57.150 align:middle line:84% My grandfather Hughes whom I never 00:18:57.150 --> 00:18:59.400 align:middle line:84% knew except by the wooden chest of carpenter's tools 00:18:59.400 --> 00:19:02.280 align:middle line:84% he left my father and a few small tattered Welsh hymn books 00:19:02.280 --> 00:19:04.260 align:middle line:84% he left my mother, they originally 00:19:04.260 --> 00:19:07.600 align:middle line:84% settled in the village of Remsen or just outside it. 00:19:07.600 --> 00:19:10.440 align:middle line:84% And for years, even past the time of my Uncle Ed's death, 00:19:10.440 --> 00:19:13.620 align:middle line:84% my parents made pilgrimages back to see old friends, 00:19:13.620 --> 00:19:15.750 align:middle line:84% attend the Cymanfa Ganu festivals, 00:19:15.750 --> 00:19:18.510 align:middle line:84% visit the white wooden church called Capel Ucca, 00:19:18.510 --> 00:19:21.990 align:middle line:84% and keep a casual eye on the mill's decline. 00:19:21.990 --> 00:19:24.420 align:middle line:84% At the time my grandfather and his brothers came over, 00:19:24.420 --> 00:19:26.760 align:middle line:84% Remsen was generally viewed back in Wales 00:19:26.760 --> 00:19:29.640 align:middle line:84% as a kind of New Jerusalem, a shining hope, 00:19:29.640 --> 00:19:32.220 align:middle line:90% a place of peace and prosperity. 00:19:32.220 --> 00:19:34.530 align:middle line:84% There was a story of a Welshman who landed in New York 00:19:34.530 --> 00:19:37.290 align:middle line:84% and looking up bug eyed at the towering buildings said, 00:19:37.290 --> 00:19:41.490 align:middle line:84% "If this is New York, what must Remsen be?" 00:19:41.490 --> 00:19:44.580 align:middle line:84% In those days, it was a sleepy little hamlet beside a creek. 00:19:44.580 --> 00:19:47.160 align:middle line:84% Though the Depression was on in the rest of the country, 00:19:47.160 --> 00:19:49.590 align:middle line:84% you saw no signs of it in Remsen. 00:19:49.590 --> 00:19:52.110 align:middle line:84% On the tree-lined streets with tall houses set back 00:19:52.110 --> 00:19:54.450 align:middle line:84% from each with its roses, small vegetable 00:19:54.450 --> 00:19:57.810 align:middle line:84% garden, and grape arbor, there were shined up square cars, 00:19:57.810 --> 00:20:00.690 align:middle line:84% mostly model 8 Fords and occasional buggies. 00:20:00.690 --> 00:20:03.150 align:middle line:84% My Uncle Ed, one of the richest men in town, 00:20:03.150 --> 00:20:05.340 align:middle line:90% had a black and green Buick. 00:20:05.340 --> 00:20:08.040 align:middle line:84% Milk was still delivered in squarish glass bottles 00:20:08.040 --> 00:20:11.610 align:middle line:84% by an orange horse-drawn cart, coal for people's furnaces 00:20:11.610 --> 00:20:13.950 align:middle line:84% came on a huge horse-drawn wagon black 00:20:13.950 --> 00:20:18.610 align:middle line:84% with white lettering: WBS Price and Sons, Coal and Lumber. 00:20:18.610 --> 00:20:21.270 align:middle line:84% The horses were chestnut colored Belgians, I remember, 00:20:21.270 --> 00:20:24.450 align:middle line:84% so immense and so beautiful they didn't seem real. 00:20:24.450 --> 00:20:27.270 align:middle line:84% At the end of almost every driveway back behind the house 00:20:27.270 --> 00:20:29.310 align:middle line:84% there was a two story garage with chicken wire 00:20:29.310 --> 00:20:31.170 align:middle line:90% on the upstairs windows. 00:20:31.170 --> 00:20:32.640 align:middle line:84% If you shouted from the driveway, 00:20:32.640 --> 00:20:34.640 align:middle line:84% one or two of the chickens would look out at you 00:20:34.640 --> 00:20:35.970 align:middle line:90% indignant like old ladies. 00:20:35.970 --> 00:20:39.390 align:middle line:84% But however you shouted, even if you threw pebbles, most of them 00:20:39.390 --> 00:20:41.040 align:middle line:90% just went about their business. 00:20:41.040 --> 00:20:45.030 align:middle line:84% The people were pretty much the same, unexcitable. 00:20:45.030 --> 00:20:47.940 align:middle line:84% There weren't many houses, maybe 20 or 30, 00:20:47.940 --> 00:20:51.060 align:middle line:84% a couple of churches, a school, Price's lumber 00:20:51.060 --> 00:20:55.470 align:middle line:84% yard and a combination gas station and market. 00:20:55.470 --> 00:20:58.530 align:middle line:84% As we head from the south, my Uncle Ed's huge grain mill 00:20:58.530 --> 00:21:00.660 align:middle line:84% reaching up past the trees into the sunlight 00:21:00.660 --> 00:21:03.210 align:middle line:90% was the first thing we'd see. 00:21:03.210 --> 00:21:05.700 align:middle line:84% The mill was to the left of the narrow dirt road, a three 00:21:05.700 --> 00:21:08.940 align:middle line:84% towered barn like building set back beyond the lawn and flower 00:21:08.940 --> 00:21:11.860 align:middle line:84% garden that rose gradually toward the brown shingled house 00:21:11.860 --> 00:21:14.170 align:middle line:84% where Uncle Ed had lived for years with his wife, 00:21:14.170 --> 00:21:16.840 align:middle line:90% my Great-Aunt Kate. 00:21:16.840 --> 00:21:20.080 align:middle line:84% I remember her only dimly as an occasional bright presence, 00:21:20.080 --> 00:21:24.550 align:middle line:84% soft spoken and shy in my Uncle Ed's kitchen on his camp 00:21:24.550 --> 00:21:27.160 align:middle line:84% as they called it on Black River. 00:21:27.160 --> 00:21:29.920 align:middle line:84% She wore thick glasses that made her eyes look unpleasantly 00:21:29.920 --> 00:21:31.030 align:middle line:90% large. 00:21:31.030 --> 00:21:33.610 align:middle line:84% They shared the house, or anyway the basement, 00:21:33.610 --> 00:21:36.950 align:middle line:84% with Uncle Ed's younger brother, my Great-Uncle Charlie. 00:21:36.950 --> 00:21:39.370 align:middle line:84% Charlie, they called him, who helped out 00:21:39.370 --> 00:21:42.580 align:middle line:84% at the mill for room and board and a trifling wage. 00:21:42.580 --> 00:21:44.860 align:middle line:84% Across the road from the mill and Uncle Ed's house 00:21:44.860 --> 00:21:48.310 align:middle line:84% stood a blacksmith shop then still in operation, 00:21:48.310 --> 00:21:52.750 align:middle line:84% a dark lively place full of coal smell, iron smell, and horse 00:21:52.750 --> 00:21:53.830 align:middle line:90% smell. 00:21:53.830 --> 00:21:56.320 align:middle line:84% All day long it rang like a musical instrument 00:21:56.320 --> 00:21:58.480 align:middle line:84% with the clanging of iron on iron 00:21:58.480 --> 00:22:02.260 align:middle line:84% just far enough from the house and mill to sound like bells. 00:22:02.260 --> 00:22:04.510 align:middle line:84% The creek ran just behind the blacksmith shop, 00:22:04.510 --> 00:22:06.790 align:middle line:90% a bright, noisy rattle. 00:22:06.790 --> 00:22:08.950 align:middle line:84% I used to catch tadpoles and minnows there, 00:22:08.950 --> 00:22:09.960 align:middle line:90% those deeping places. 00:22:09.960 --> 00:22:12.850 align:middle line:84% And if my grandmother found out I'd been playing in the creek, 00:22:12.850 --> 00:22:14.765 align:middle line:90% I got spanked. 00:22:14.765 --> 00:22:16.390 align:middle line:84% The building's gone now and the creek's 00:22:16.390 --> 00:22:18.670 align:middle line:84% fallen silent, grown up in weeds. 00:22:18.670 --> 00:22:20.980 align:middle line:84% I remember the building as small, made of stone, 00:22:20.980 --> 00:22:24.040 align:middle line:84% burned black inside, crowded outside with burdocks 00:22:24.040 --> 00:22:26.470 align:middle line:84% whose leaves were always wet with the mist 00:22:26.470 --> 00:22:29.350 align:middle line:84% from the waterfall that rumbled day and night, not far 00:22:29.350 --> 00:22:31.960 align:middle line:90% upstream. 00:22:31.960 --> 00:22:34.060 align:middle line:84% I was five or six still at that age 00:22:34.060 --> 00:22:36.610 align:middle line:84% when a day lasts for weeks and everything you see or hear 00:22:36.610 --> 00:22:39.160 align:middle line:90% or smell seems vividly alive, 00:22:39.160 --> 00:22:41.020 align:middle line:84% though later you can get only glimpses 00:22:41.020 --> 00:22:43.780 align:middle line:84% to serve as memories or anyway, so it 00:22:43.780 --> 00:22:46.660 align:middle line:90% seems until you start to write. 00:22:46.660 --> 00:22:50.320 align:middle line:84% This much comes back at once, the large grinning figure 00:22:50.320 --> 00:22:52.810 align:middle line:84% of my Uncle Ed, Uncle Charlie next to him timidly 00:22:52.810 --> 00:22:55.300 align:middle line:84% smiling, dwarfed beside his brother 00:22:55.300 --> 00:22:58.450 align:middle line:84% and standing not far from them, and Kate with a dish towel 00:22:58.450 --> 00:22:59.830 align:middle line:90% and teapot. 00:22:59.830 --> 00:23:02.080 align:middle line:84% I get back to a little of the sunlit world 00:23:02.080 --> 00:23:05.965 align:middle line:84% they inhabited seemingly without a care, as if forever. 00:23:05.965 --> 00:23:09.250 align:middle line:84% On one kitchen wall, they had a large black pendulum clock 00:23:09.250 --> 00:23:12.760 align:middle line:84% on which the four was written I-I-I-I. 00:23:12.760 --> 00:23:15.580 align:middle line:84% I could never decide whether the thing was a mistake-- 00:23:15.580 --> 00:23:17.980 align:middle line:84% I was already aware that the Welsh were prone to make 00:23:17.980 --> 00:23:21.880 align:middle line:84% curious mistakes--or something more mysterious brought down 00:23:21.880 --> 00:23:24.070 align:middle line:84% from the ancient unimaginable time when, 00:23:24.070 --> 00:23:27.490 align:middle line:84% according to Uncle Ed, the world lived in caves and trees 00:23:27.490 --> 00:23:32.050 align:middle line:84% and couldn't talk yet but had to get along by singing. 00:23:32.050 --> 00:23:35.470 align:middle line:84% In those days, everything was for me more than most children 00:23:35.470 --> 00:23:38.680 align:middle line:84% perhaps half real, half ethereal. 00:23:38.680 --> 00:23:41.530 align:middle line:84% It was not just the stories Uncle Ed liked to tell. 00:23:41.530 --> 00:23:44.962 align:middle line:84% In our farmhouse, I slept with my grandmother and every night 00:23:44.962 --> 00:23:46.420 align:middle line:84% before she turned off the bed lamp, 00:23:46.420 --> 00:23:48.880 align:middle line:84% she would read me something from the Bible or the Christian 00:23:48.880 --> 00:23:50.207 align:middle line:90% Herald. 00:23:50.207 --> 00:23:51.790 align:middle line:84% I didn't remember what she read, but I 00:23:51.790 --> 00:23:54.640 align:middle line:84% remember seeing pictures of bright winged angels playing 00:23:54.640 --> 00:23:59.050 align:middle line:84% harps and singing, beings she insisted were entirely real, as 00:23:59.050 --> 00:24:01.480 align:middle line:90% real as trees or hay wagons. 00:24:01.480 --> 00:24:04.642 align:middle line:84% She made my world mythic, her own as well. 00:24:04.642 --> 00:24:06.100 align:middle line:84% During the day, she would sometimes 00:24:06.100 --> 00:24:09.130 align:middle line:84% go out in our front yard with a hoe and kill grass snakes. 00:24:09.130 --> 00:24:12.610 align:middle line:84% It made my father, who was a practical man, furious. 00:24:12.610 --> 00:24:15.850 align:middle line:84% "Mother," he would ask, "What harm do they do?" 00:24:15.850 --> 00:24:18.430 align:middle line:90% "They bite, " she would say. 00:24:18.430 --> 00:24:20.590 align:middle line:84% Sometimes my mother would try to defend her. 00:24:20.590 --> 00:24:22.090 align:middle line:84% Grandma Hughes had lived in Missouri 00:24:22.090 --> 00:24:23.757 align:middle line:84% for a time where there were rattlesnakes 00:24:23.757 --> 00:24:26.200 align:middle line:84% and she was too old to change her ways. 00:24:26.200 --> 00:24:28.840 align:middle line:84% "Even a darn fool mule can be reasoned with," 00:24:28.840 --> 00:24:30.100 align:middle line:90% my father would say. 00:24:30.100 --> 00:24:32.530 align:middle line:84% He was a breeder and trainer of plow horses 00:24:32.530 --> 00:24:34.690 align:middle line:84% but he wouldn't pursue the argument. 00:24:34.690 --> 00:24:37.870 align:middle line:84% To me though, steeped in her Bible and Christian Herald stories, 00:24:37.870 --> 00:24:40.627 align:middle line:84% nothing seemed more natural than that my grandmother 00:24:40.627 --> 00:24:43.210 align:middle line:84% and her righteousness should be out there in the dappled light 00:24:43.210 --> 00:24:45.850 align:middle line:84% below the maple trees, her bright blue eyes 00:24:45.850 --> 00:24:48.160 align:middle line:84% narrowed, her whole blade poised, 00:24:48.160 --> 00:24:50.140 align:middle line:84% every nerve on the lookout for serpents. 00:24:50.140 --> 00:24:52.930 align:middle line:90% 00:24:52.930 --> 00:24:54.730 align:middle line:84% "Did you ever really see an angel?" 00:24:54.730 --> 00:24:56.800 align:middle line:90% I once asked her. 00:24:56.800 --> 00:24:58.240 align:middle line:84% Since there really were snakes, it 00:24:58.240 --> 00:25:01.090 align:middle line:84% seemed to me probable that there were angels. 00:25:01.090 --> 00:25:03.280 align:middle line:84% "Not that I'm aware of," she said. 00:25:03.280 --> 00:25:06.190 align:middle line:90% I thought it over, "Did my dad?" 00:25:06.190 --> 00:25:08.710 align:middle line:84% "I doubt it," she said then bit her lips together 00:25:08.710 --> 00:25:10.908 align:middle line:90% trying not to smile. 00:25:10.908 --> 00:25:12.700 align:middle line:84% So I knew on my grandmother's authority 00:25:12.700 --> 00:25:14.325 align:middle line:84% to say nothing of Uncle Ed's that there 00:25:14.325 --> 00:25:16.510 align:middle line:84% was more to the world than meets the eye, 00:25:16.510 --> 00:25:19.240 align:middle line:84% I rather knew that there were two worlds, 00:25:19.240 --> 00:25:21.970 align:middle line:84% that it came to seem to me that Remsen, like the valley where 00:25:21.970 --> 00:25:24.820 align:middle line:84% Jacob saw the ladder, was one of the places where 00:25:24.820 --> 00:25:26.260 align:middle line:90% they connected. 00:25:26.260 --> 00:25:29.770 align:middle line:84% Perhaps it was Remsen's peculiar clear light or the sense 00:25:29.770 --> 00:25:33.010 align:middle line:84% of peace my whole family seemed to feel there gathering 00:25:33.010 --> 00:25:35.890 align:middle line:84% with relatives and friends to sing hymns in Capel Ucca 00:25:35.890 --> 00:25:38.050 align:middle line:90% those bright Sunday mornings. 00:25:38.050 --> 00:25:40.000 align:middle line:84% Perhaps it was simply the otherworldliness 00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:42.310 align:middle line:90% of a village that spoke Welsh. 00:25:42.310 --> 00:25:44.410 align:middle line:84% It was true that time had stopped there 00:25:44.410 --> 00:25:46.630 align:middle line:90% or at very least had paused. 00:25:46.630 --> 00:25:49.300 align:middle line:84% We had no blacksmith shops in Batavia. 00:25:49.300 --> 00:25:52.270 align:middle line:84% Mr. Culver who shoed my father's horses came 00:25:52.270 --> 00:25:54.880 align:middle line:84% with his equipment in a panel truck and the mill 00:25:54.880 --> 00:25:59.080 align:middle line:84% where my father took his grain, the GLF, was like a factory, 00:25:59.080 --> 00:26:03.400 align:middle line:84% freight cars on one side of it, track on track on the inside. 00:26:03.400 --> 00:26:06.130 align:middle line:84% Wherever you look through the billowing white dust 00:26:06.130 --> 00:26:09.340 align:middle line:84% big iron machines and men in goggles. 00:26:09.340 --> 00:26:11.970 align:middle line:84% My Uncle Ed when he worked in the old fashioned mill 00:26:11.970 --> 00:26:14.250 align:middle line:90% in Remsen wore a suit. 00:26:14.250 --> 00:26:17.280 align:middle line:84% It was gray with grain dust and it was a little disheveled 00:26:17.280 --> 00:26:19.200 align:middle line:90% but it was a suit. 00:26:19.200 --> 00:26:22.560 align:middle line:84% Uncle Charlie wore striped overalls. 00:26:22.560 --> 00:26:24.660 align:middle line:84% Uncle Ed's machinery was mostly made of wood 00:26:24.660 --> 00:26:27.840 align:middle line:84% and made very little noise, just a low sweet humming sound 00:26:27.840 --> 00:26:30.120 align:middle line:90% with rhythmical thumps. 00:26:30.120 --> 00:26:31.830 align:middle line:84% I would sometimes be left overnight 00:26:31.830 --> 00:26:33.360 align:middle line:84% with the two old men and Aunt Kate 00:26:33.360 --> 00:26:37.170 align:middle line:84% when my parents went off with younger relatives to some sing. 00:26:37.170 --> 00:26:39.840 align:middle line:84% There was always the sing on somewhere around Remsen. 00:26:39.840 --> 00:26:42.030 align:middle line:84% Every time two Welsh men meet, people said, 00:26:42.030 --> 00:26:43.710 align:middle line:90% it's a choir. 00:26:43.710 --> 00:26:45.720 align:middle line:84% In those days it was more or less true. 00:26:45.720 --> 00:26:47.400 align:middle line:84% Everywhere my parents drove, they 00:26:47.400 --> 00:26:51.428 align:middle line:84% sang almost always in a minor key and always in harmony. 00:26:51.428 --> 00:26:53.220 align:middle line:84% And every time relatives got together, they 00:26:53.220 --> 00:26:57.060 align:middle line:84% sang in almost as many parts as there were people. 00:26:57.060 --> 00:26:58.680 align:middle line:84% I'd be alarmed when my parents began 00:26:58.680 --> 00:27:01.530 align:middle line:84% dressing for a sing telling me in a falsely sweet voice 00:27:01.530 --> 00:27:03.390 align:middle line:84% that I was to stay with my uncles and Aunt 00:27:03.390 --> 00:27:05.052 align:middle line:90% and be a good boy. 00:27:05.052 --> 00:27:06.510 align:middle line:84% My grandmother, if she was there, would 00:27:06.510 --> 00:27:08.230 align:middle line:90% insist on going with them. 00:27:08.230 --> 00:27:11.752 align:middle line:84% Though she was nearly 80, she had a voice like a bird, she claimed. 00:27:11.752 --> 00:27:13.710 align:middle line:84% The song fest wouldn't be the same without her. 00:27:13.710 --> 00:27:15.960 align:middle line:84% Uncle Charlie would shake his head as if disgusted, 00:27:15.960 --> 00:27:17.918 align:middle line:84% though everyone said he'd had a wonderful tenor 00:27:17.918 --> 00:27:19.320 align:middle line:90% voice when he was younger. 00:27:19.320 --> 00:27:20.850 align:middle line:84% In those days, they said he wouldn't 00:27:20.850 --> 00:27:22.683 align:middle line:84% have missed the Cymanfa Ganu or an Eisteddfod, 00:27:22.683 --> 00:27:24.930 align:middle line:84% the really big sing where hundreds 00:27:24.930 --> 00:27:26.880 align:middle line:84% and hundreds of Welshmen came together, 00:27:26.880 --> 00:27:29.220 align:middle line:90% for all the tea in China. 00:27:29.220 --> 00:27:30.810 align:middle line:84% Uncle Charlie would blush like a girl 00:27:30.810 --> 00:27:32.700 align:middle line:84% when they spoke of his singing days. 00:27:32.700 --> 00:27:34.950 align:middle line:84% "Well, the body gets old," he'd mutter. 00:27:34.950 --> 00:27:38.700 align:middle line:84% "Pride," my grandmother would snap, "sinful pride." 00:27:38.700 --> 00:27:40.860 align:middle line:90% She was a woman of temper. 00:27:40.860 --> 00:27:42.990 align:middle line:84% She'd been a redhead when she was young. 00:27:42.990 --> 00:27:45.420 align:middle line:84% But for all her sternness, she loved Uncle Charlie 00:27:45.420 --> 00:27:48.810 align:middle line:84% as she loved nobody else, her husband's youngest brother, just 00:27:48.810 --> 00:27:52.050 align:middle line:84% a boy when she first knew him, all his life the one who'd 00:27:52.050 --> 00:27:53.550 align:middle line:90% been of no account. 00:27:53.550 --> 00:27:55.410 align:middle line:84% "That voice of his was his downfall," 00:27:55.410 --> 00:27:57.750 align:middle line:84% she said once to my mother wiping dishes 00:27:57.750 --> 00:27:58.950 align:middle line:90% while my mother washed. 00:27:58.950 --> 00:28:01.830 align:middle line:90% "It gave him ideas." 00:28:01.830 --> 00:28:04.560 align:middle line:84% To me, a child, it was a puzzling statement 00:28:04.560 --> 00:28:09.118 align:middle line:84% but my mother, ruefully nodding, apparently understood. 00:28:09.118 --> 00:28:11.160 align:middle line:84% I tried to get my grandmother to explain it later 00:28:11.160 --> 00:28:13.285 align:middle line:84% when she was sitting at her darning in our bedroom, 00:28:13.285 --> 00:28:15.240 align:middle line:84% more in my bedroom than hers, she would say 00:28:15.240 --> 00:28:17.160 align:middle line:90% when a certain mood was on her. 00:28:17.160 --> 00:28:19.110 align:middle line:90% Another puzzling statement. 00:28:19.110 --> 00:28:22.080 align:middle line:84% "Grandma," I asked, "How come Uncle Charlie's voice 00:28:22.080 --> 00:28:23.760 align:middle line:90% gave him ideas?" 00:28:23.760 --> 00:28:25.500 align:middle line:90% "Hush now," she said. 00:28:25.500 --> 00:28:27.630 align:middle line:84% That was always her answer to troublesome questions 00:28:27.630 --> 00:28:29.070 align:middle line:90% and I knew how to deal with it. 00:28:29.070 --> 00:28:33.720 align:middle line:84% I just waited watching her darn making a nuisance of myself. 00:28:33.720 --> 00:28:36.372 align:middle line:84% "Well," she said at last then stopped to bite a thread. 00:28:36.372 --> 00:28:38.580 align:middle line:84% She looked at the end, twirled it between her fingers 00:28:38.580 --> 00:28:41.130 align:middle line:84% to make it pointed then continued, "singing has got 00:28:41.130 --> 00:28:43.137 align:middle line:84% its place but a body can get to thinking 00:28:43.137 --> 00:28:44.970 align:middle line:84% when he's singing with the choir that that's 00:28:44.970 --> 00:28:46.770 align:middle line:84% how the whole blessed world should be 00:28:46.770 --> 00:28:48.750 align:middle line:84% and then when he comes down of the clouds 00:28:48.750 --> 00:28:51.360 align:middle line:90% it's a terrible disappointment." 00:28:51.360 --> 00:28:54.150 align:middle line:84% I suppose I looked as puzzled as ever tentatively considering 00:28:54.150 --> 00:28:56.160 align:middle line:84% the idea of people sitting up in the clouds 00:28:56.160 --> 00:28:58.290 align:middle line:84% like the angels in their pictures. 00:28:58.290 --> 00:29:00.720 align:middle line:84% She leaned toward me and said, "Uncle Charlie never 00:29:00.720 --> 00:29:02.880 align:middle line:84% found a good woman, that's what's wrong with him. 00:29:02.880 --> 00:29:04.920 align:middle line:84% Bills to pay, whippersnappers, that 00:29:04.920 --> 00:29:08.592 align:middle line:84% will bring you down from your la la la." 00:29:08.592 --> 00:29:13.060 align:middle line:84% I gave up, as puzzled as before and slightly hurt. 00:29:13.060 --> 00:29:16.860 align:middle line:84% I knew well enough she never let me forget what a burden I was. 00:29:16.860 --> 00:29:18.360 align:middle line:84% Not that she didn't kiss me and make 00:29:18.360 --> 00:29:20.310 align:middle line:84% a great to do when I was dressed up for church 00:29:20.310 --> 00:29:22.170 align:middle line:84% or had done something nice for her, dust 00:29:22.170 --> 00:29:24.210 align:middle line:84% mopping the bedrooms without being told to 00:29:24.210 --> 00:29:26.490 align:middle line:84% or helping her find her brass thimble-- 00:29:26.490 --> 00:29:28.410 align:middle line:84% she was a great mislayer of things, 00:29:28.410 --> 00:29:32.220 align:middle line:84% it made my father sigh deeply and shake his head. 00:29:32.220 --> 00:29:35.520 align:middle line:84% I was in general as good a child as I knew how to be, 00:29:35.520 --> 00:29:38.190 align:middle line:84% but it's true I was sometimes a trouble. 00:29:38.190 --> 00:29:40.980 align:middle line:84% I justified her existence, I realize 00:29:40.980 --> 00:29:44.730 align:middle line:84% now, living with my parents, too old and poor to live alone, 00:29:44.730 --> 00:29:47.640 align:middle line:84% she didn't have to think herself a nuisance to the world. 00:29:47.640 --> 00:29:50.250 align:middle line:84% As my babysitter, she made it possible for my mother 00:29:50.250 --> 00:29:52.080 align:middle line:84% to teach school and for my father 00:29:52.080 --> 00:29:54.030 align:middle line:90% to work in the fields all day. 00:29:54.030 --> 00:29:56.130 align:middle line:84% All the same, I'm sure I ran her ragged 00:29:56.130 --> 00:29:59.190 align:middle line:84% and there were times, especially when my parents had somewhere 00:29:59.190 --> 00:30:04.020 align:middle line:84% to go after dark, when I was as much trouble as I dared to be. 00:30:04.020 --> 00:30:06.180 align:middle line:84% I hated those nights when my parents left me 00:30:06.180 --> 00:30:08.880 align:middle line:84% for a Grange meeting at home before a sing 00:30:08.880 --> 00:30:10.470 align:middle line:90% when we were in Remsen. 00:30:10.470 --> 00:30:13.860 align:middle line:84% I lived through them, I knew I might even enjoy myself 00:30:13.860 --> 00:30:16.920 align:middle line:84% after a fashion but the night would be darker than usual 00:30:16.920 --> 00:30:20.040 align:middle line:84% outside the big old Remsen house when my parents and grandmother 00:30:20.040 --> 00:30:23.160 align:middle line:84% weren't somewhere within call, upstairs 00:30:23.160 --> 00:30:25.680 align:middle line:84% in the elegant dimly lit living room. 00:30:25.680 --> 00:30:27.870 align:middle line:84% The mirror, much as I loved it by day, 00:30:27.870 --> 00:30:31.350 align:middle line:84% looked ominous from my Uncle Ed's kitchen window after dark. 00:30:31.350 --> 00:30:33.630 align:middle line:84% It would seem to have moved closer, blocking out 00:30:33.630 --> 00:30:39.270 align:middle line:84% the starlight, an immense black tombstone. 00:30:39.270 --> 00:30:42.060 align:middle line:84% I would hear the clock on the kitchen wall solemnly knocking 00:30:42.060 --> 00:30:45.330 align:middle line:90% the seconds off, tok tok tok. 00:30:45.330 --> 00:30:47.520 align:middle line:84% The silence so deep, I could also hear the clock 00:30:47.520 --> 00:30:49.320 align:middle line:84% on the desk in the living room hurrying 00:30:49.320 --> 00:30:52.410 align:middle line:84% as if in panic, tick, tick, tick, tick. 00:30:52.410 --> 00:30:54.120 align:middle line:84% The sunflowers at the end of the garden 00:30:54.120 --> 00:30:56.070 align:middle line:84% would be gray now staring back at me 00:30:56.070 --> 00:30:59.040 align:middle line:84% like motionless ghosts and the blacksmith shop 00:30:59.040 --> 00:31:02.790 align:middle line:84% across the road, a darker blot in the surrounding darkness. 00:31:02.790 --> 00:31:05.220 align:middle line:84% Weeds all around it hushed as if listening 00:31:05.220 --> 00:31:08.430 align:middle line:84% to the clatter of the creek were transformed in my mind 00:31:08.430 --> 00:31:10.510 align:middle line:84% to a terrible place, the overgrown 00:31:10.510 --> 00:31:13.050 align:middle line:90% hovel of a cum-witch. 00:31:13.050 --> 00:31:16.910 align:middle line:84% I would whine, hanging around, clinging to the white porcelain 00:31:16.910 --> 00:31:18.980 align:middle line:90% doorknob as my parents dressed. 00:31:18.980 --> 00:31:21.380 align:middle line:84% "Why can't I come with you?" I'd? say. 00:31:21.380 --> 00:31:24.440 align:middle line:84% My mother's eyes would remain on the mirror concentrating hard 00:31:24.440 --> 00:31:26.000 align:middle line:90% on the eyebrow pencil. 00:31:26.000 --> 00:31:29.150 align:middle line:84% Because she was fat, I thought she was amazingly beautiful. 00:31:29.150 --> 00:31:30.950 align:middle line:90% Her hair was dark red. 00:31:30.950 --> 00:31:32.750 align:middle line:84% "You can when you're bigger," my father 00:31:32.750 --> 00:31:34.880 align:middle line:84% would say, standing behind my mother, 00:31:34.880 --> 00:31:38.321 align:middle line:90% chin lifted, putting on his tie. 00:31:38.321 --> 00:31:39.890 align:middle line:84% In the bathroom, my grandmother 00:31:39.890 --> 00:31:43.340 align:middle line:84% would be singing, loosening up her voice. She did sound 00:31:43.340 --> 00:31:48.110 align:middle line:84% like a bird, I thought grimly, like a chicken. 00:31:48.110 --> 00:31:50.370 align:middle line:84% In the end, knowing I had no chance of winning, 00:31:50.370 --> 00:31:52.760 align:middle line:84% I would pretend to be seduced by Aunt Kate's molasses 00:31:52.760 --> 00:31:55.640 align:middle line:84% cookies and the promise that Uncle Ed would tell me stories. 00:31:55.640 --> 00:31:59.090 align:middle line:84% Sulking a little to show them I didn't intend to forget this, 00:31:59.090 --> 00:32:01.220 align:middle line:84% I'd walk with my parents as far as the door 00:32:01.220 --> 00:32:03.620 align:middle line:84% keeping an eye on their red beaming faces 00:32:03.620 --> 00:32:05.480 align:middle line:84% and listening full of disapproval 00:32:05.480 --> 00:32:08.480 align:middle line:84% to their loud cheerful talk as they took leave of my uncles 00:32:08.480 --> 00:32:11.390 align:middle line:84% and aunt and went down the wooden steps between the house 00:32:11.390 --> 00:32:13.610 align:middle line:84% and the big dark mill to greet the relatives who'd 00:32:13.610 --> 00:32:15.530 align:middle line:90% come for them in their car. 00:32:15.530 --> 00:32:17.420 align:middle line:84% The inside lights of the car would go on 00:32:17.420 --> 00:32:19.220 align:middle line:90% as the car doors opened. 00:32:19.220 --> 00:32:21.650 align:middle line:84% In that little square windowed island of light, 00:32:21.650 --> 00:32:24.050 align:middle line:84% I'd see grown up cousins and children cousins, 00:32:24.050 --> 00:32:27.590 align:middle line:84% just a little more than my age, squeezing over, climbing 00:32:27.590 --> 00:32:29.350 align:middle line:90% onto other cousins' laps. 00:32:29.350 --> 00:32:31.100 align:middle line:84% The alley between the mill and the house 00:32:31.100 --> 00:32:33.920 align:middle line:84% would fill up like a pool with laughter and shouts of "watch 00:32:33.920 --> 00:32:36.740 align:middle line:84% your elbows!" and sometimes my father's voice 00:32:36.740 --> 00:32:38.090 align:middle line:90% carefully, patient: 00:32:38.090 --> 00:32:41.210 align:middle line:84% "That's all right mother, take your time." 00:32:41.210 --> 00:32:43.520 align:middle line:84% Then the doors would close leaving only the headlights 00:32:43.520 --> 00:32:46.400 align:middle line:84% and the car would chuff chuff chuff past the mill 00:32:46.400 --> 00:32:49.100 align:middle line:84% and, listing like a carriage, would go around 00:32:49.100 --> 00:32:51.980 align:middle line:84% the corner at the end of the garden, then listing again, 00:32:51.980 --> 00:32:54.890 align:middle line:84% tail lights like two garnets, would veer out 00:32:54.890 --> 00:32:58.575 align:middle line:84% onto the road, briefly lighting up trees. 00:32:58.575 --> 00:33:00.200 align:middle line:84% When the tail lights were out of sight, 00:33:00.200 --> 00:33:03.080 align:middle line:84% I would turn, trying not to cry, to Uncle Ed who 00:33:03.080 --> 00:33:05.930 align:middle line:84% would lift me and carry me on his shoulder like a feed sack 00:33:05.930 --> 00:33:06.980 align:middle line:90% to the kitchen. 00:33:06.980 --> 00:33:09.650 align:middle line:84% "So," he would say, "I guess you didn't know 00:33:09.650 --> 00:33:11.690 align:middle line:90% I used to work for a bear." 00:33:11.690 --> 00:33:14.765 align:middle line:84% "I don't believe it," I would say, though I did in fact. 00:33:14.765 --> 00:33:16.880 align:middle line:84% "Big old black bear, name of Herman. 00:33:16.880 --> 00:33:19.550 align:middle line:84% Used to live up by Blue Mountain Lake." 00:33:19.550 --> 00:33:22.100 align:middle line:84% He often set his stories on Blue Mountain Lake 00:33:22.100 --> 00:33:25.070 align:middle line:84% or nearby Black River where his camp was. 00:33:25.070 --> 00:33:26.630 align:middle line:84% He would take us there sometimes. 00:33:26.630 --> 00:33:30.680 align:middle line:84% To my grandmother's dismay, an immense log and stone lodge 00:33:30.680 --> 00:33:34.160 align:middle line:84% filled with stuffed lynx wolves and owls, Japanese lanterns 00:33:34.160 --> 00:33:36.280 align:middle line:84% overhead and on the rustic table, 00:33:36.280 --> 00:33:38.555 align:middle line:84% the whole museum's worth of strange objects 00:33:38.555 --> 00:33:42.110 align:middle line:84% Aunt Kate had collected, little models of birch canoes, 00:33:42.110 --> 00:33:45.320 align:middle line:84% carved figures, a stereopticon with pictures of Paris 00:33:45.320 --> 00:33:46.850 align:middle line:90% long ago. 00:33:46.850 --> 00:33:49.850 align:middle line:84% The lodge was set in among trees, all but inaccessible, 00:33:49.850 --> 00:33:52.520 align:middle line:84% a wooden dock below it where Uncle Ed's guide 00:33:52.520 --> 00:33:54.770 align:middle line:90% boat was tied during the day. 00:33:54.770 --> 00:33:57.560 align:middle line:84% The water in the river, shallow and clear as glass, 00:33:57.560 --> 00:33:58.910 align:middle line:90% seemed hardly to move. 00:33:58.910 --> 00:34:02.690 align:middle line:84% But when you dropped a leaf on it, it quickly sped away. 00:34:02.690 --> 00:34:04.310 align:middle line:84% Fish poked thoughtfully in and out 00:34:04.310 --> 00:34:06.650 align:middle line:84% among the shadows of underwater weeds. 00:34:06.650 --> 00:34:09.800 align:middle line:84% And when you looked up, you saw a world almost equally strange. 00:34:09.800 --> 00:34:13.070 align:middle line:84% Pine woods and mountains, large hurrying clouds 00:34:13.070 --> 00:34:15.409 align:middle line:84% of the kind I thought angels lived on, 00:34:15.409 --> 00:34:18.440 align:middle line:84% huge white mountains full of sunlight. 00:34:18.440 --> 00:34:20.900 align:middle line:84% Whenever Uncle Ed began to speak of the Adirondacks, 00:34:20.900 --> 00:34:23.540 align:middle line:84% you knew that in a minute he'd be telling of his childhood 00:34:23.540 --> 00:34:27.139 align:middle line:84% in Wales, where people lived in cottages and dark green hills 00:34:27.139 --> 00:34:32.052 align:middle line:84% with their sheep and collie dogs and nothing ever changed. 00:34:32.052 --> 00:34:34.219 align:middle line:84% Well, through supper Uncle Ed would tell me stories. 00:34:34.219 --> 00:34:36.650 align:middle line:84% Aunt Kate just kept moving back and forth 00:34:36.650 --> 00:34:39.350 align:middle line:84% between the table and the stove patting my head sometimes 00:34:39.350 --> 00:34:41.420 align:middle line:84% telling me not to believe a word of it. 00:34:41.420 --> 00:34:43.969 align:middle line:84% Uncle Charlie would sit grinning as if sheepishly, 00:34:43.969 --> 00:34:46.070 align:middle line:84% sometimes throwing me a wink, sometimes 00:34:46.070 --> 00:34:48.739 align:middle line:84% saying a few words in a high pitched voice trying 00:34:48.739 --> 00:34:51.531 align:middle line:84% to make me think it was the parrot, Bobby Watson, who 00:34:51.531 --> 00:34:53.239 align:middle line:84% stood watching and pecking at the lettuce 00:34:53.239 --> 00:34:55.280 align:middle line:90% in his cage in the corner. 00:34:55.280 --> 00:34:58.400 align:middle line:84% Uncle Charlie was as small boned as a sparrow 00:34:58.400 --> 00:35:01.710 align:middle line:84% and had startling eyes, on brown, one blue, 00:35:01.710 --> 00:35:03.590 align:middle line:84% but he was almost as old as Uncle Ed. 00:35:03.590 --> 00:35:06.320 align:middle line:84% He had light brown hair and a brown mustache, 00:35:06.320 --> 00:35:09.680 align:middle line:84% a shiny soft brown with hardly any gray in it. 00:35:09.680 --> 00:35:12.620 align:middle line:84% Perhaps it was partly the way he sat, head forward, 00:35:12.620 --> 00:35:14.780 align:middle line:84% eyes lowered, his hands on his knees, 00:35:14.780 --> 00:35:17.000 align:middle line:84% except when he raised his fork or spoon. 00:35:17.000 --> 00:35:20.360 align:middle line:84% He seemed even with all his wrinkles just a boy no bigger 00:35:20.360 --> 00:35:22.162 align:middle line:90% than Uncle Ed's right arm. 00:35:22.162 --> 00:35:24.620 align:middle line:84% People who didn't know them, thought Uncle Charlie was Aunt 00:35:24.620 --> 00:35:26.330 align:middle line:90% Kate's brother, not Uncle Ed's. 00:35:26.330 --> 00:35:29.630 align:middle line:84% She too was, she liked to say, petite. 00:35:29.630 --> 00:35:31.430 align:middle line:84% After supper, while Aunt Kate washed 00:35:31.430 --> 00:35:34.460 align:middle line:84% dishes and the two old men went out to the mill to catch up, 00:35:34.460 --> 00:35:37.940 align:middle line:84% really to smoke cigars, I would bang on Aunt Kate's piano 00:35:37.940 --> 00:35:39.020 align:middle line:90% in the living room. 00:35:39.020 --> 00:35:43.010 align:middle line:84% The piano was a good one, a Story and Clark upright. 00:35:43.010 --> 00:35:45.980 align:middle line:84% In the total dimness of the living room, 00:35:45.980 --> 00:35:48.740 align:middle line:84% its cold black surfaces shone like mirrors 00:35:48.740 --> 00:35:50.510 align:middle line:90% or like Black River at night. 00:35:50.510 --> 00:35:54.560 align:middle line:84% And everything I played on it sounded to me like real music. 00:35:54.560 --> 00:35:57.110 align:middle line:84% I would lose all track of time, closing my eyes 00:35:57.110 --> 00:36:00.680 align:middle line:84% and tipping my head to the piano sound, dark sustained chords 00:36:00.680 --> 00:36:02.630 align:middle line:84% that in my mind made a shadowy place you 00:36:02.630 --> 00:36:07.280 align:middle line:84% could move around and explore like an old time Indian. 00:36:07.280 --> 00:36:09.140 align:middle line:84% When my uncles and aunt came together again 00:36:09.140 --> 00:36:11.770 align:middle line:84% after the dishes and cigar smoking, they'd call me back 00:36:11.770 --> 00:36:14.230 align:middle line:84% and we'd play dominoes at the kitchen table. 00:36:14.230 --> 00:36:15.760 align:middle line:84% After an hour or so, Uncle Charlie 00:36:15.760 --> 00:36:19.150 align:middle line:84% would say, grinning, not meeting anyone's eyes, "Well, time 00:36:19.150 --> 00:36:21.400 align:middle line:90% to turn in, by gaw, ain't it?" 00:36:21.400 --> 00:36:25.090 align:middle line:84% And he'd go down to his narrow yellow wallpapered room 00:36:25.090 --> 00:36:27.070 align:middle line:90% in the basement. 00:36:27.070 --> 00:36:29.440 align:middle line:84% I'd sit a little longer with Uncle Ed and Kate. 00:36:29.440 --> 00:36:31.540 align:middle line:84% They must have known how I hated to go upstairs 00:36:31.540 --> 00:36:34.060 align:middle line:84% alone in that big quiet house, but it 00:36:34.060 --> 00:36:36.310 align:middle line:84% was Aunt Kate's habit to listen to her records, 00:36:36.310 --> 00:36:40.090 align:middle line:84% some of them old Pete Edison records, most of them opera. 00:36:40.090 --> 00:36:42.940 align:middle line:84% And sew for a while before going up to bed. 00:36:42.940 --> 00:36:45.010 align:middle line:84% And it was Uncle Ed's habit to settle down across 00:36:45.010 --> 00:36:48.250 align:middle line:84% from her, heavy and comfortable as an old gray cat, 00:36:48.250 --> 00:36:51.700 align:middle line:84% draw on his steel rimmed spectacles and read. 00:36:51.700 --> 00:36:53.410 align:middle line:84% They were both too old to go climbing 00:36:53.410 --> 00:36:55.750 align:middle line:90% that narrow back stairway twice. 00:36:55.750 --> 00:36:58.840 align:middle line:84% The front hallway stairs were wide and glossy with a runner 00:36:58.840 --> 00:36:59.900 align:middle line:90% down the steps. 00:36:59.900 --> 00:37:01.870 align:middle line:84% I don't remember anyone's ever using them 00:37:01.870 --> 00:37:05.770 align:middle line:84% much except my cousins and me playing Chinese school. 00:37:05.770 --> 00:37:09.970 align:middle line:84% Aunt Kate was brittle and climbed steps one at a time. 00:37:09.970 --> 00:37:12.220 align:middle line:84% As for Uncle Ed, he was huge for a Welshman 00:37:12.220 --> 00:37:14.380 align:middle line:90% with hair as white as snow. 00:37:14.380 --> 00:37:16.210 align:middle line:84% When I began to nod, he'd say, looking 00:37:16.210 --> 00:37:18.490 align:middle line:84% at me over the spectacle rims, "You run up 00:37:18.490 --> 00:37:20.050 align:middle line:90% and put your pajamas on buddy. 00:37:20.050 --> 00:37:21.910 align:middle line:90% We'll be up in a jiffy." 00:37:21.910 --> 00:37:23.920 align:middle line:84% As I think back to it, it surprises me 00:37:23.920 --> 00:37:27.310 align:middle line:84% that I didn't make a fuss but I obeyed without protest 00:37:27.310 --> 00:37:31.000 align:middle line:84% knowing I'd be long asleep before they got there. 00:37:31.000 --> 00:37:33.670 align:middle line:84% Once in a while, I'd wake up for a minute when they came 00:37:33.670 --> 00:37:36.280 align:middle line:84% and I'd see them in their white flannel nightgowns kneeling 00:37:36.280 --> 00:37:37.510 align:middle line:90% beside the bed. 00:37:37.510 --> 00:37:40.540 align:middle line:84% Pretending to be asleep, I slept on a cot across the room 00:37:40.540 --> 00:37:41.260 align:middle line:90% from them. 00:37:41.260 --> 00:37:43.870 align:middle line:84% I'd watch them bow their heads side by side 00:37:43.870 --> 00:37:46.570 align:middle line:84% and press their hands together just below their chins 00:37:46.570 --> 00:37:49.240 align:middle line:84% and I'd listen to their whisperings in Welsh. 00:37:49.240 --> 00:37:51.580 align:middle line:84% Uncle Ed had three stubbed fingers cut off 00:37:51.580 --> 00:37:53.750 align:middle line:84% in a gristmill when he was young, 00:37:53.750 --> 00:37:55.720 align:middle line:84% his rounded shoulders were enormous. 00:37:55.720 --> 00:37:58.270 align:middle line:84% And my memory, no doubt inaccurate, 00:37:58.270 --> 00:38:00.640 align:middle line:84% they went a third the length of the bed. 00:38:00.640 --> 00:38:02.590 align:middle line:84% In the middle during the day, Uncle Ed 00:38:02.590 --> 00:38:05.260 align:middle line:84% was like a king lifting heavy feed sacks 00:38:05.260 --> 00:38:07.570 align:middle line:84% as if they were nothing, chattering lightly 00:38:07.570 --> 00:38:11.170 align:middle line:84% past his dead cigar mostly in that clicking lilting gibberish 00:38:11.170 --> 00:38:12.070 align:middle line:90% he spoke. 00:38:12.070 --> 00:38:15.730 align:middle line:84% But now for all his size, he was a subdued and meek 00:38:15.730 --> 00:38:19.258 align:middle line:84% as Uncle Charlie or Aunt Kate there beside him. 00:38:19.258 --> 00:38:21.550 align:middle line:84% The only light in the room was the dim one on the table 00:38:21.550 --> 00:38:22.780 align:middle line:90% beside the bed. 00:38:22.780 --> 00:38:26.920 align:middle line:84% It made his hair look soft like a baby's and Kate's hair 00:38:26.920 --> 00:38:28.375 align:middle line:90% was like fine silver wire. 00:38:28.375 --> 00:38:31.120 align:middle line:90% 00:38:31.120 --> 00:38:33.640 align:middle line:84% One time when we were visiting, Uncle Charlie 00:38:33.640 --> 00:38:36.880 align:middle line:84% took what they all called later a tumble. 00:38:36.880 --> 00:38:39.250 align:middle line:84% I'm not sure how much of it I actually saw. 00:38:39.250 --> 00:38:41.950 align:middle line:84% I was, as I've said only five or six. 00:38:41.950 --> 00:38:44.620 align:middle line:84% A few sharp images have stayed with me all these years 00:38:44.620 --> 00:38:49.480 align:middle line:84% but for the rest I must trust imagination and family stories. 00:38:49.480 --> 00:38:52.270 align:middle line:84% I remember sitting in the office at the mill, that time 00:38:52.270 --> 00:38:54.460 align:middle line:84% or some other time drawing on one 00:38:54.460 --> 00:38:56.710 align:middle line:84% of the yellow legal sized notepads, 00:38:56.710 --> 00:38:59.200 align:middle line:84% Uncle Ed used for figuring and keeping records, 00:38:59.200 --> 00:39:02.260 align:middle line:84% the pot-bellied stove unlit in the corner. 00:39:02.260 --> 00:39:04.480 align:middle line:84% It was August, I know because farmers 00:39:04.480 --> 00:39:06.430 align:middle line:90% were bringing their wheat in. 00:39:06.430 --> 00:39:10.120 align:middle line:84% All around the stove stood pale bluish salt blocks. 00:39:10.120 --> 00:39:12.850 align:middle line:84% The slippery blue white of bone in a butcher shop 00:39:12.850 --> 00:39:14.560 align:middle line:84% and stacked around the salt blocks that 00:39:14.560 --> 00:39:16.960 align:middle line:84% were bales of twine and barbed wire, 00:39:16.960 --> 00:39:19.645 align:middle line:84% kerosene lanterns, and zinc coated buckets 00:39:19.645 --> 00:39:23.997 align:middle line:84% sat one inside the other, the top bucket filled with nails. 00:39:23.997 --> 00:39:26.080 align:middle line:84% Outside the window, I could see Aunt Kate's garden 00:39:26.080 --> 00:39:29.650 align:middle line:84% glow at that time of year with roses, zinnias, and sunflowers, 00:39:29.650 --> 00:39:31.420 align:middle line:90% vegetables down the middle. 00:39:31.420 --> 00:39:34.300 align:middle line:84% At one end a scarecrow in a washed out ragged coat 00:39:34.300 --> 00:39:38.380 align:middle line:84% and straw hat that had once been no doubt Uncle Charlie's. 00:39:38.380 --> 00:39:40.810 align:middle line:84% There were farmers in the room with me, reached back 00:39:40.810 --> 00:39:43.778 align:middle line:84% on the round backed wooden chairs, talking and joking 00:39:43.778 --> 00:39:45.820 align:middle line:84% as they always did while they waited for Uncle Ed 00:39:45.820 --> 00:39:48.310 align:middle line:84% to grind their grist and then for Uncle Charlie 00:39:48.310 --> 00:39:51.160 align:middle line:84% to load the bags on the two wheels food truck 00:39:51.160 --> 00:39:54.010 align:middle line:84% and rail them to the dock then lift them down a foot or 2 00:39:54.010 --> 00:39:55.632 align:middle line:90% under the wagon. 00:39:55.632 --> 00:39:58.090 align:middle line:84% No doubt I'd been running back and forth with Uncle Charlie 00:39:58.090 --> 00:40:00.700 align:middle line:84% for most of the morning since that's what I usually did, 00:40:00.700 --> 00:40:02.380 align:middle line:90% neither of us talking. 00:40:02.380 --> 00:40:04.000 align:middle line:84% Uncle Charlie almost never talked 00:40:04.000 --> 00:40:06.640 align:middle line:84% except when he pretended to be the parrot in the kitchen. 00:40:06.640 --> 00:40:09.460 align:middle line:84% I, for my part, trying to be of help, 00:40:09.460 --> 00:40:12.010 align:middle line:84% snatching an empty feed sack from his bat, 00:40:12.010 --> 00:40:14.140 align:middle line:84% though in fact there was plenty of room. 00:40:14.140 --> 00:40:16.570 align:middle line:84% Trying to push a heavy door open further. 00:40:16.570 --> 00:40:19.480 align:middle line:84% But now, I was in the office, weary of the game, 00:40:19.480 --> 00:40:21.820 align:middle line:84% half listening to the singing of the wooden walls 00:40:21.820 --> 00:40:25.480 align:middle line:84% as they resounded to the mill wheels and drawing rabbits, 00:40:25.480 --> 00:40:27.490 align:middle line:84% so much like those my father drew. 00:40:27.490 --> 00:40:29.620 align:middle line:84% Rabbits were all he knew how to draw. 00:40:29.620 --> 00:40:31.330 align:middle line:84% But if you'd asked him later, you 00:40:31.330 --> 00:40:34.720 align:middle line:84% couldn't have told you for sure which one of us had done them. 00:40:34.720 --> 00:40:37.600 align:middle line:84% I heard no shout, no noise of any kind, 00:40:37.600 --> 00:40:39.940 align:middle line:84% but suddenly the farmers were up out of their chairs 00:40:39.940 --> 00:40:43.150 align:middle line:84% running in their heavy boots from the office into the mill 00:40:43.150 --> 00:40:45.620 align:middle line:84% and as fast as I could get down out of my chair, 00:40:45.620 --> 00:40:47.050 align:middle line:90% I was after them. 00:40:47.050 --> 00:40:48.610 align:middle line:84% Where the wooden machinery thudded 00:40:48.610 --> 00:40:52.270 align:middle line:84% and sang, sending up white powder, nothing was wrong. 00:40:52.270 --> 00:40:54.970 align:middle line:84% Uncle Ed stood blinking as the farmers ran up to him 00:40:54.970 --> 00:40:55.780 align:middle line:90% and passed him. 00:40:55.780 --> 00:40:58.090 align:middle line:84% Then he pushed the worn smooth wooden lever 00:40:58.090 --> 00:41:01.030 align:middle line:84% that made the rumbling stop, caught me up in his arms 00:41:01.030 --> 00:41:02.907 align:middle line:90% and ran after the farmers. 00:41:02.907 --> 00:41:04.990 align:middle line:84% When we came to the sunlight beyond the open door, 00:41:04.990 --> 00:41:07.720 align:middle line:84% we found Uncle Charlie climbing up from between the loading 00:41:07.720 --> 00:41:09.880 align:middle line:84% dock in one of the farmer's wagons, 00:41:09.880 --> 00:41:11.630 align:middle line:84% furiously shouting and wiping dirt 00:41:11.630 --> 00:41:13.700 align:middle line:90% from his mouth and mustache. 00:41:13.700 --> 00:41:16.910 align:middle line:84% The wagon had been carelessly parked, a three foot 00:41:16.910 --> 00:41:19.640 align:middle line:84% gap between the dock and the wagon bed. 00:41:19.640 --> 00:41:21.590 align:middle line:84% On the wagon where Uncle Charlie had dropped 00:41:21.590 --> 00:41:24.050 align:middle line:84% it when he stepped into the gap and fell 00:41:24.050 --> 00:41:27.170 align:middle line:84% a sack lay split open, slowly drizzling grist down 00:41:27.170 --> 00:41:29.450 align:middle line:84% through the slats onto the ground. 00:41:29.450 --> 00:41:30.980 align:middle line:84% He shouted louder than before now, 00:41:30.980 --> 00:41:33.410 align:middle line:90% no doubt swearing in Welsh. 00:41:33.410 --> 00:41:37.100 align:middle line:84% An amazing sound from a man always so quiet. 00:41:37.100 --> 00:41:39.290 align:middle line:84% And with a look half enraged, half guilty, 00:41:39.290 --> 00:41:42.170 align:middle line:84% he tried to get up on his feet and save the grain. 00:41:42.170 --> 00:41:46.190 align:middle line:84% Then another look came over him, surprise, indignation, 00:41:46.190 --> 00:41:49.370 align:middle line:84% and one leg cut like a corn knife flipped out 00:41:49.370 --> 00:41:50.540 align:middle line:90% from under him. 00:41:50.540 --> 00:41:53.300 align:middle line:84% Uncle Ed set me down, almost threw me from him 00:41:53.300 --> 00:41:55.550 align:middle line:84% and jumped onto the wagon holding out his arms 00:41:55.550 --> 00:41:58.700 align:middle line:84% as if to pick up Uncle Charlie, then thought better of it 00:41:58.700 --> 00:42:00.260 align:middle line:90% or got confused. 00:42:00.260 --> 00:42:03.800 align:middle line:84% He just stood there bent at the waist arms thrown forward 00:42:03.800 --> 00:42:07.293 align:middle line:90% like a child playing catch. 00:42:07.293 --> 00:42:08.960 align:middle line:84% At the top of the stairs across the way, 00:42:08.960 --> 00:42:10.430 align:middle line:84% the back door of the house opened 00:42:10.430 --> 00:42:12.860 align:middle line:84% and my grandmother came out in her knitted black shawl. 00:42:12.860 --> 00:42:15.860 align:middle line:84% "Land to Goshen," she cried in a loud, angry voice, 00:42:15.860 --> 00:42:18.020 align:middle line:90% "Now look what you've done." 00:42:18.020 --> 00:42:21.920 align:middle line:84% My father came out behind her looking baffled and apologetic 00:42:21.920 --> 00:42:26.240 align:middle line:84% as if if he hadn't been taking a nap he could have prevented it. 00:42:26.240 --> 00:42:28.160 align:middle line:84% "Now stop that," he said to my grandmother 00:42:28.160 --> 00:42:32.090 align:middle line:84% almost absentmindedly and instantly she stopped. 00:42:32.090 --> 00:42:35.030 align:middle line:84% Tears running down the sides of Uncle Charlie's mustache 00:42:35.030 --> 00:42:37.760 align:middle line:84% and he clung to his leg with both hands, not shouting, 00:42:37.760 --> 00:42:40.580 align:middle line:84% now clamping his lips together and whimpering. 00:42:40.580 --> 00:42:42.860 align:middle line:84% Then Aunt Kate was there with them, near-sightedly 00:42:42.860 --> 00:42:43.670 align:middle line:90% bending forward. 00:42:43.670 --> 00:42:45.920 align:middle line:84% "I'll call the doctor," she said, turning, 00:42:45.920 --> 00:42:48.320 align:middle line:90% and went back into the house. 00:42:48.320 --> 00:42:51.050 align:middle line:84% "It's all my fault," one of the farmers said, shaking his head 00:42:51.050 --> 00:42:52.700 align:middle line:84% and working his jaw as if in a minute 00:42:52.700 --> 00:42:54.500 align:middle line:90% he meant to hit himself. 00:42:54.500 --> 00:42:57.230 align:middle line:84% "Here now," Uncle Ed said, "Let's get you inside." 00:42:57.230 --> 00:42:59.930 align:middle line:84% And carefully fitting his arms under Uncle Charlie, 00:42:59.930 --> 00:43:02.610 align:middle line:84% taking pains to support the broken leg, 00:43:02.610 --> 00:43:05.570 align:middle line:84% he lifted him like a child or a newborn calf 00:43:05.570 --> 00:43:07.910 align:middle line:84% and carried him up onto the loading platform 00:43:07.910 --> 00:43:11.690 align:middle line:84% over to the steps at the far end then down and across the way 00:43:11.690 --> 00:43:14.450 align:middle line:84% and up the wooden stairs toward the kitchen. 00:43:14.450 --> 00:43:16.940 align:middle line:84% "Mercy," my grandmother said unable to control herself, 00:43:16.940 --> 00:43:20.120 align:middle line:84% her eyes as bright as when she went out with a hoe 00:43:20.120 --> 00:43:21.710 align:middle line:90% to kill snakes. 00:43:21.710 --> 00:43:25.460 align:middle line:84% My mother took her arm and patted it. 00:43:25.460 --> 00:43:27.140 align:middle line:84% I was of course not aware at the time 00:43:27.140 --> 00:43:29.240 align:middle line:84% that they all felt as guilty as I 00:43:29.240 --> 00:43:31.670 align:middle line:84% did, even my grandmother, I realize now, 00:43:31.670 --> 00:43:35.360 align:middle line:84% must have felt guilty, shouting at us all as if she secretly 00:43:35.360 --> 00:43:37.732 align:middle line:84% believed she should have taken better care of us. 00:43:37.732 --> 00:43:39.440 align:middle line:84% But whatever they were feeling, they soon 00:43:39.440 --> 00:43:42.080 align:middle line:84% got over it once Uncle Charlie was inside on the couch 00:43:42.080 --> 00:43:43.460 align:middle line:90% in the living room. 00:43:43.460 --> 00:43:45.710 align:middle line:90% I myself took longer. 00:43:45.710 --> 00:43:48.380 align:middle line:84% It was a matter of fact to me that if I'd been doing my job, 00:43:48.380 --> 00:43:50.720 align:middle line:84% running along with Uncle Charlie and his feed truck, 00:43:50.720 --> 00:43:53.150 align:middle line:84% keeping his way clear and watching out for trouble, 00:43:53.150 --> 00:43:56.340 align:middle line:84% he'd never have fallen down and broken his leg. 00:43:56.340 --> 00:43:59.270 align:middle line:84% The doctor when he came was professionally grave. 00:43:59.270 --> 00:44:01.940 align:middle line:84% Aunt Kate wrung her hands in her apron. 00:44:01.940 --> 00:44:03.890 align:middle line:84% I offered, bursting into tears as I 00:44:03.890 --> 00:44:07.400 align:middle line:84% did so, to pay Uncle Charlie's doctor bills. 00:44:07.400 --> 00:44:10.610 align:middle line:84% Uncle Ed just looked at me, lips puckered in surprise. 00:44:10.610 --> 00:44:12.950 align:middle line:84% None of the others seemed to have noticed what I'd said. 00:44:12.950 --> 00:44:16.430 align:middle line:84% "I really will," I bawled, clinging to his leg. 00:44:16.430 --> 00:44:19.130 align:middle line:84% "Here now," Uncle Ed said, "Katie, get this boy a cookie 00:44:19.130 --> 00:44:22.350 align:middle line:84% and then go on now away with you both." 00:44:22.350 --> 00:44:24.800 align:middle line:84% I went with him looking over my shoulder and Uncle Charlie 00:44:24.800 --> 00:44:27.590 align:middle line:84% gray faced on the couch, the doctor and his black suit 00:44:27.590 --> 00:44:29.540 align:middle line:90% bending down beside him. 00:44:29.540 --> 00:44:31.970 align:middle line:84% They were all smiling now, even Uncle Charlie, 00:44:31.970 --> 00:44:34.940 align:middle line:84% all of them describing what had happened as a tumble, 00:44:34.940 --> 00:44:36.980 align:middle line:84% or all except my grandmother who 00:44:36.980 --> 00:44:39.080 align:middle line:84% always took, according to my father, 00:44:39.080 --> 00:44:41.870 align:middle line:84% the darkest possible view of things. 00:44:41.870 --> 00:44:43.970 align:middle line:84% My mother and father had a fight that night 00:44:43.970 --> 00:44:46.130 align:middle line:84% because they thought I was asleep. 00:44:46.130 --> 00:44:49.520 align:middle line:84% My father said my grandmother was an angel of death. 00:44:49.520 --> 00:44:52.070 align:middle line:84% His anger may have made him unusually poetic, 00:44:52.070 --> 00:44:54.800 align:middle line:84% though now that I think of it, he said the phrase as if he'd 00:44:54.800 --> 00:44:56.930 align:middle line:90% used it against her many times. 00:44:56.930 --> 00:44:58.860 align:middle line:84% "If you hate her so," my mother said, 00:44:58.860 --> 00:45:01.160 align:middle line:84% "why don't you just send her to the old folks' home?" 00:45:01.160 --> 00:45:03.713 align:middle line:84% Thus my mother won as she always did. 00:45:03.713 --> 00:45:05.630 align:middle line:84% When it was clear to them both that she'd won, 00:45:05.630 --> 00:45:08.060 align:middle line:84% she said, "Oh, Bill, she's just worried. 00:45:08.060 --> 00:45:08.690 align:middle line:90% You know that. 00:45:08.690 --> 00:45:10.430 align:middle line:90% She's like a child." 00:45:10.430 --> 00:45:11.930 align:middle line:84% I lay in the darkness with my eyes 00:45:11.930 --> 00:45:16.130 align:middle line:84% open trying to make sense of the queer idea. 00:45:16.130 --> 00:45:17.870 align:middle line:84% It wasn't until the following summer 00:45:17.870 --> 00:45:20.990 align:middle line:84% that my family visited Remsen again. 00:45:20.990 --> 00:45:23.060 align:middle line:84% Letters passed back and forth two or three 00:45:23.060 --> 00:45:25.430 align:middle line:84% a week in the meantime, Aunt Kate telling 00:45:25.430 --> 00:45:29.390 align:middle line:84% us of, among other things, Uncle Charlie's gradual recovery: not 00:45:29.390 --> 00:45:31.640 align:middle line:84% as quick as it should be, she let us know. 00:45:31.640 --> 00:45:34.160 align:middle line:84% My mother was sending back our family's encouragement 00:45:34.160 --> 00:45:36.890 align:middle line:84% and sometimes inspirational poems from my grandmother's 00:45:36.890 --> 00:45:38.450 align:middle line:90% magazines. 00:45:38.450 --> 00:45:39.980 align:middle line:84% When we finally went to visit, it 00:45:39.980 --> 00:45:41.600 align:middle line:84% was partly because of Cymanfa Ganu, 00:45:41.600 --> 00:45:44.960 align:middle line:84% a singing festival was to be held nearby in Utica. 00:45:44.960 --> 00:45:47.600 align:middle line:84% At Uncle Ed's, I learned to my surprise and dismay 00:45:47.600 --> 00:45:50.900 align:middle line:84% since I disliked change, hated to see any slightest 00:45:50.900 --> 00:45:53.570 align:middle line:84% hint that the universe might not be orderly to the core 00:45:53.570 --> 00:45:57.260 align:middle line:84% and smooth in its operations as an immense old mill, 00:45:57.260 --> 00:45:59.000 align:middle line:84% that my uncles and Aunt who'd never 00:45:59.000 --> 00:46:02.330 align:middle line:84% before shown much interest in such things 00:46:02.330 --> 00:46:04.520 align:middle line:84% were planning to go to the festival with my parents 00:46:04.520 --> 00:46:06.050 align:middle line:90% and grandmother. 00:46:06.050 --> 00:46:07.760 align:middle line:90% I learned it by eavesdropping. 00:46:07.760 --> 00:46:09.440 align:middle line:84% When I was supposed to be asleep, 00:46:09.440 --> 00:46:11.760 align:middle line:84% as Uncle Charlie was down in his basement room 00:46:11.760 --> 00:46:14.670 align:middle line:84% snoring with his mouth open, I'd sneak down early 00:46:14.670 --> 00:46:17.280 align:middle line:84% and seen him there lying with one arm hanging 00:46:17.280 --> 00:46:18.420 align:middle line:90% over the bedside. 00:46:18.420 --> 00:46:21.510 align:middle line:84% I crept without a sound down the front hallway stairs 00:46:21.510 --> 00:46:23.100 align:middle line:84% and settled near the bottom to listen 00:46:23.100 --> 00:46:26.790 align:middle line:84% to the voices in the living room just to my left. 00:46:26.790 --> 00:46:29.853 align:middle line:84% Aunt Kate was saying speaking more softly than usual, 00:46:29.853 --> 00:46:31.020 align:middle line:90% "He could do with the lift." 00:46:31.020 --> 00:46:35.140 align:middle line:90% 00:46:35.140 --> 00:46:36.790 align:middle line:90% I learned it by eavesdropping. 00:46:36.790 --> 00:46:39.700 align:middle line:84% When I was supposed to be asleep as Uncle Charlie was down 00:46:39.700 --> 00:46:42.430 align:middle line:84% in his basement room snoring with his mouth open, 00:46:42.430 --> 00:46:44.020 align:middle line:84% I'd sneak down earlier and seen him 00:46:44.020 --> 00:46:47.570 align:middle line:84% there lying with one arm hanging over the bedside. 00:46:47.570 --> 00:46:50.110 align:middle line:84% I crept without a sound down the front hallway stairs 00:46:50.110 --> 00:46:51.670 align:middle line:84% and settled near the bottom to listen 00:46:51.670 --> 00:46:55.240 align:middle line:84% to the voices in the living room just to my left. 00:46:55.240 --> 00:46:58.300 align:middle line:84% Aunt kid was saying speaking more softly than usual, 00:46:58.300 --> 00:47:01.030 align:middle line:90% "He could do with the lift." 00:47:01.030 --> 00:47:02.590 align:middle line:90% "He's still down, isn't he?" 00:47:02.590 --> 00:47:03.910 align:middle line:90% My mother said. 00:47:03.910 --> 00:47:06.610 align:middle line:84% "Oh, Charlie'll be fine," Uncle Ed said, hardy as ever, 00:47:06.610 --> 00:47:07.990 align:middle line:90% and gave a laugh. 00:47:07.990 --> 00:47:11.230 align:middle line:84% I listened, uneasy, for what my grandmother would say. 00:47:11.230 --> 00:47:13.540 align:middle line:84% When she said nothing, I let myself believe she'd 00:47:13.540 --> 00:47:16.600 align:middle line:90% fallen asleep over her sewing. 00:47:16.600 --> 00:47:18.160 align:middle line:84% "He keeps in too much that's all," 00:47:18.160 --> 00:47:21.040 align:middle line:84% Aunt Kate said as if shyly, embarrassed that Uncle 00:47:21.040 --> 00:47:22.810 align:middle line:90% Ed hadn't agreed with her. 00:47:22.810 --> 00:47:25.882 align:middle line:84% "So when will we all go?" my father said, settling things. 00:47:25.882 --> 00:47:28.340 align:middle line:84% "Take Buddy too, he's never been to a Cymfana Ganu yet. 00:47:28.340 --> 00:47:29.800 align:middle line:90% High time he went." 00:47:29.800 --> 00:47:31.960 align:middle line:84% "Heavens to Betsy," my grandmother burst out. 00:47:31.960 --> 00:47:33.940 align:middle line:84% "You'd let that poor whippersnapper stay out 00:47:33.940 --> 00:47:35.740 align:middle line:84% till midnight with a bunch of wild drunken 00:47:35.740 --> 00:47:38.980 align:middle line:84% lunatics howling their miserable heads off." 00:47:38.980 --> 00:47:40.477 align:middle line:90% A shiver went up my back. 00:47:40.477 --> 00:47:42.310 align:middle line:84% I was much too little in the mind of a child 00:47:42.310 --> 00:47:45.940 align:middle line:84% to fit a description of any kind of singing I'd ever heard of, 00:47:45.940 --> 00:47:48.310 align:middle line:90% much less any I'd been in on. 00:47:48.310 --> 00:47:50.480 align:middle line:84% I remembered stories my Uncle Ed had told me 00:47:50.480 --> 00:47:53.050 align:middle line:84% of how Welsh were all witches in olden times, how they 00:47:53.050 --> 00:47:54.910 align:middle line:84% used to fly around like birds at night 00:47:54.910 --> 00:47:58.120 align:middle line:84% and make magic circles among trees and stones. 00:47:58.120 --> 00:48:01.270 align:middle line:84% The following day was so filled with anxious anticipation, 00:48:01.270 --> 00:48:03.625 align:middle line:90% I could hardly breathe. 00:48:03.625 --> 00:48:05.500 align:middle line:84% Out in the mill I kept close to Uncle Charlie, trying 00:48:05.500 --> 00:48:09.700 align:middle line:84% to guess every move he was about to make and help him with it. 00:48:09.700 --> 00:48:12.790 align:middle line:84% He seemed smaller all over since the accident. 00:48:12.790 --> 00:48:14.290 align:middle line:90% Though he wore arm elastics. 00:48:14.290 --> 00:48:17.290 align:middle line:84% his cuffs hung low as did the crotch of his overalls. 00:48:17.290 --> 00:48:18.940 align:middle line:84% His hands trembled and he no longer 00:48:18.940 --> 00:48:20.410 align:middle line:90% bothered to put his teeth in. 00:48:20.410 --> 00:48:23.740 align:middle line:84% In the past he pretended to appreciate my help, now, 00:48:23.740 --> 00:48:26.230 align:middle line:84% as I gradually made out, it annoyed him. 00:48:26.230 --> 00:48:28.000 align:middle line:84% "I'll get that," he'd say kicking 00:48:28.000 --> 00:48:30.580 align:middle line:84% the twine bale from the aisle as I reached for it, 00:48:30.580 --> 00:48:33.610 align:middle line:84% or as I ran to push a heavy door open further, he'd say, 00:48:33.610 --> 00:48:36.270 align:middle line:84% "Let it be boy, it's open far enough." 00:48:36.270 --> 00:48:37.630 align:middle line:90% Excuse me. 00:48:37.630 --> 00:48:39.130 align:middle line:84% In the end I did nothing for him, 00:48:39.130 --> 00:48:40.570 align:middle line:84% simply stayed with him because it 00:48:40.570 --> 00:48:43.630 align:middle line:84% was a shame to leave him and go look for Uncle Ed. 00:48:43.630 --> 00:48:46.270 align:middle line:84% He no longer did the kinds of work he'd done before. 00:48:46.270 --> 00:48:48.970 align:middle line:84% The 100 pound sacks were too heavy for him. 00:48:48.970 --> 00:48:51.735 align:middle line:84% He wasn't much heavier than the sacks himself. 00:48:51.735 --> 00:48:53.110 align:middle line:84% And when he pushed the feed truck 00:48:53.110 --> 00:48:54.550 align:middle line:90% after Uncle Ed had loaded it, 00:48:54.550 --> 00:48:57.220 align:middle line:84% both Uncle Ed and I would watch him in distress 00:48:57.220 --> 00:49:01.930 align:middle line:84% afraid it would tip too far back off balance and fall on him. 00:49:01.930 --> 00:49:04.960 align:middle line:84% Mostly, Uncle Ed had taken over the pushing of the feed truck. 00:49:04.960 --> 00:49:08.830 align:middle line:84% "Go ahead then," Uncle Charlie said crossly. "It's your mill." 00:49:08.830 --> 00:49:11.320 align:middle line:84% To keep busy, Uncle Charlie set rat traps, 00:49:11.320 --> 00:49:14.350 align:middle line:84% wound wire around old ladder rungs, swept down 00:49:14.350 --> 00:49:16.930 align:middle line:90% cobwebs, swept the floors. 00:49:16.930 --> 00:49:20.140 align:middle line:84% He still joked with farmers as he'd always done 00:49:20.140 --> 00:49:22.840 align:middle line:84% but it seemed to me the lightness was gone from his voice 00:49:22.840 --> 00:49:25.030 align:middle line:84% and his eyes had a mean look as if he didn't really 00:49:25.030 --> 00:49:28.665 align:middle line:84% think the jokes were funny or the farmers his friends. 00:49:28.665 --> 00:49:30.790 align:middle line:84% Sometimes in the office when the farmers were alone 00:49:30.790 --> 00:49:32.290 align:middle line:84% with Uncle Ed and me, one of the farmers 00:49:32.290 --> 00:49:34.373 align:middle line:84% would say something like, "Charlie's getting better 00:49:34.373 --> 00:49:35.420 align:middle line:90% every day, looks like." 00:49:35.420 --> 00:49:38.650 align:middle line:84% And I would know by their smiles that none of them believed it. 00:49:38.650 --> 00:49:42.220 align:middle line:84% I would stand by the heavy old oak desk full of pigeonholes 00:49:42.220 --> 00:49:44.032 align:middle line:90% and secret compartments. 00:49:44.032 --> 00:49:45.490 align:middle line:84% Uncle Charlie had once shown me how 00:49:45.490 --> 00:49:48.850 align:middle line:84% to work them all trying to guess what Uncle Ed might need. 00:49:48.850 --> 00:49:51.460 align:middle line:84% His pocket sized notebook, one of his yellow pads, 00:49:51.460 --> 00:49:55.300 align:middle line:84% or one of the big white pencils that said "E.L. Hughes" in red. 00:49:55.300 --> 00:49:57.910 align:middle line:84% But I could never guess which object he'd want next, 00:49:57.910 --> 00:49:59.783 align:middle line:84% so I could serve no useful purpose 00:49:59.783 --> 00:50:02.200 align:middle line:84% except if he happened to look over and say, "Buddy, hand me 00:50:02.200 --> 00:50:04.648 align:middle line:84% that can over there," then I'd leap. 00:50:04.648 --> 00:50:06.940 align:middle line:84% Out in the middle, Uncle Charlie would move slowly back 00:50:06.940 --> 00:50:09.220 align:middle line:84% and forth with a push broom needlessly sweeping 00:50:09.220 --> 00:50:12.070 align:middle line:84% white dust from the aisles or hammering nails 00:50:12.070 --> 00:50:15.670 align:middle line:84% into loosened bin boards, or mended burlap sacks not 00:50:15.670 --> 00:50:18.010 align:middle line:90% yet bad enough to leak. 00:50:18.010 --> 00:50:20.710 align:middle line:84% Now and then he'd poke his head in, the buttoned collar 00:50:20.710 --> 00:50:24.460 align:middle line:84% much too large for his neck, and would ask Uncle Ed 00:50:24.460 --> 00:50:26.500 align:middle line:84% if he'd gotten to Bill Williams' oats yet. 00:50:26.500 --> 00:50:28.150 align:middle line:84% "I'll get to it Charlie," Uncle Ed 00:50:28.150 --> 00:50:30.910 align:middle line:84% would say, waving a cigar. Uncle Charlie would 00:50:30.910 --> 00:50:33.430 align:middle line:84% frown, shaking his head, then disappear, 00:50:33.430 --> 00:50:35.440 align:middle line:90% going about his business. 00:50:35.440 --> 00:50:37.300 align:middle line:84% Sometime after lunch I found Uncle Charlie 00:50:37.300 --> 00:50:39.700 align:middle line:84% sitting on the floor beside one of the bins 00:50:39.700 --> 00:50:42.160 align:middle line:84% nailing a round piece of tin, the top of a coffee 00:50:42.160 --> 00:50:46.090 align:middle line:84% can, over a hole where bits of grain leaked out. 00:50:46.090 --> 00:50:48.490 align:middle line:90% I stood a while watching him. 00:50:48.490 --> 00:50:52.210 align:middle line:84% His hand when he reached his mouth for a nail shook badly. 00:50:52.210 --> 00:50:53.737 align:middle line:90% He pretended not to notice me. 00:50:53.737 --> 00:50:55.570 align:middle line:84% After a while, I went over and hunkered down 00:50:55.570 --> 00:50:57.945 align:middle line:84% beside him thinking I might hand him nails from the zinc 00:50:57.945 --> 00:51:00.310 align:middle line:84% coated bucket beside his knee, but at the moment, 00:51:00.310 --> 00:51:02.890 align:middle line:84% his mouth was as full as a pin cushion. 00:51:02.890 --> 00:51:04.720 align:middle line:84% When he said nothing, I asked, "What's 00:51:04.720 --> 00:51:06.878 align:middle line:90% a Cymanfa Ganu, Uncle Charlie?" 00:51:06.878 --> 00:51:08.920 align:middle line:84% "Welsh word," he ground out through the nails 00:51:08.920 --> 00:51:11.440 align:middle line:84% and carefully finished driving the nail between his fingers 00:51:11.440 --> 00:51:12.760 align:middle line:90% through the tin. 00:51:12.760 --> 00:51:15.110 align:middle line:84% Then he glanced at me guiltily, took the nails 00:51:15.110 --> 00:51:17.860 align:middle line:84% through his mouth and laid them on the floor between us. 00:51:17.860 --> 00:51:19.690 align:middle line:90% "Means come on back," he said. 00:51:19.690 --> 00:51:22.780 align:middle line:84% Then suddenly, his heart not in it, grinned. 00:51:22.780 --> 00:51:24.490 align:middle line:90% "Come on back to Wales that is. 00:51:24.490 --> 00:51:27.760 align:middle line:84% That's what all the Welshmen want, or so they think." 00:51:27.760 --> 00:51:30.430 align:middle line:84% He kept his head back as if he were listening. 00:51:30.430 --> 00:51:32.920 align:middle line:84% The way the sunlight came slanting through the mill 00:51:32.920 --> 00:51:35.830 align:middle line:84% great generous shafts full of floating white specks 00:51:35.830 --> 00:51:38.680 align:middle line:84% or whirling and swirling and powders too complex for the eye 00:51:38.680 --> 00:51:40.330 align:middle line:90% to comprehend. 00:51:40.330 --> 00:51:42.888 align:middle line:84% It was like being in a church, even better than church. 00:51:42.888 --> 00:51:44.680 align:middle line:84% And through in the trees where Uncle Ed had 00:51:44.680 --> 00:51:46.180 align:middle line:84% told me the Welshmen used to worship 00:51:46.180 --> 00:51:48.370 align:middle line:90% their peculiar bug-eyed gods. 00:51:48.370 --> 00:51:52.030 align:middle line:84% "Weather gods, tree gods, pig gods, Lord knows what," 00:51:52.030 --> 00:51:53.200 align:middle line:90% he'd said. 00:51:53.200 --> 00:51:54.790 align:middle line:84% My grandmother wouldn't speak of it. 00:51:54.790 --> 00:51:58.700 align:middle line:84% "Your Uncle Ed," she said, "has peculiar ideas." 00:51:58.700 --> 00:52:01.000 align:middle line:84% Abruptly Uncle Charlie dropped his head back down, 00:52:01.000 --> 00:52:03.280 align:middle line:84% smashed up a nail, cocked it between two fingers 00:52:03.280 --> 00:52:05.380 align:middle line:84% over the tin and started hammering. 00:52:05.380 --> 00:52:07.840 align:middle line:84% "Damn fools," he said then glanced at me 00:52:07.840 --> 00:52:10.630 align:middle line:90% and frowned then winked. 00:52:10.630 --> 00:52:12.820 align:middle line:84% "Tell me something else in Welsh," I said. 00:52:12.820 --> 00:52:15.220 align:middle line:84% "You've heard about it," placing another nail. 00:52:15.220 --> 00:52:19.180 align:middle line:84% At last he said squinting, "You know what Buddy means?" 00:52:19.180 --> 00:52:21.640 align:middle line:84% Before I could answer he said, "Means the poet." 00:52:21.640 --> 00:52:25.180 align:middle line:84% They used to set great store by poets back in Wales, only second 00:52:25.180 --> 00:52:27.230 align:middle line:90% to kings, maybe not even second. 00:52:27.230 --> 00:52:31.990 align:middle line:84% Same thing, kings and poets, different kinds of liars. 00:52:31.990 --> 00:52:35.320 align:middle line:84% He looked sullen, his face ash gray under the age spots. 00:52:35.320 --> 00:52:38.800 align:middle line:84% I studied him perturbed, no more pertubed than he was, 00:52:38.800 --> 00:52:39.820 align:middle line:90% I realize now. 00:52:39.820 --> 00:52:43.180 align:middle line:84% But at six I knew nothing of the confusion of adults. 00:52:43.180 --> 00:52:45.400 align:middle line:84% All I knew was that his eyes were screwed up tight, 00:52:45.400 --> 00:52:48.610 align:middle line:84% one brown, one blue and his mustache half 00:52:48.610 --> 00:52:50.590 align:middle line:84% covered the black hole of his mouth 00:52:50.590 --> 00:52:53.710 align:middle line:84% like a sharp gabled roof of old straw. 00:52:53.710 --> 00:52:57.370 align:middle line:84% I asked, "Are we're all going to the Cymanfa Ganu?" 00:52:57.370 --> 00:52:59.800 align:middle line:84% His eyes slipped off axis then abruptly 00:52:59.800 --> 00:53:02.890 align:middle line:84% he reached for another nail. "Of course, we are," he said. 00:53:02.890 --> 00:53:06.310 align:middle line:84% He lined up the nail and with two angry raps drove it home. 00:53:06.310 --> 00:53:07.630 align:middle line:90% "Don't worry," he said. 00:53:07.630 --> 00:53:10.120 align:middle line:90% "It don't hurt much." 00:53:10.120 --> 00:53:12.270 align:middle line:84% I remember only the inside of the building where 00:53:12.270 --> 00:53:14.710 align:middle line:84% the songfest was held, it must have been a church, 00:53:14.710 --> 00:53:17.440 align:middle line:84% very large with wooden walls, as yellow gray 00:53:17.440 --> 00:53:21.340 align:middle line:84% as the walls of a new barn. It was brightly lighted. 00:53:21.340 --> 00:53:23.170 align:middle line:84% The walls and overhead beams high 00:53:23.170 --> 00:53:25.815 align:middle line:84% above us all, glowing as if waxed. 00:53:25.815 --> 00:53:27.820 align:middle line:84% Everyone my parents had ever known was there, 00:53:27.820 --> 00:53:29.740 align:middle line:84% it looked like, the people milling 00:53:29.740 --> 00:53:31.330 align:middle line:84% about for what seemed to me hours 00:53:31.330 --> 00:53:33.940 align:middle line:84% shouting and talking and pressing tightly together, 00:53:33.940 --> 00:53:36.670 align:middle line:84% my father moving behind my mother from group to group 00:53:36.670 --> 00:53:38.740 align:middle line:90% carrying me on his shoulders. 00:53:38.740 --> 00:53:40.750 align:middle line:84% My grandmother wearing a light black coat 00:53:40.750 --> 00:53:43.630 align:middle line:84% and helping herself along on two brown canes, 00:53:43.630 --> 00:53:46.480 align:middle line:84% it was only that winter that she'd begun to need them. 00:53:46.480 --> 00:53:48.520 align:middle line:84% Went from rural, white-haired Welsh woman 00:53:48.520 --> 00:53:51.700 align:middle line:84% to another, talking and nodding and laughing until she cried, 00:53:51.700 --> 00:53:55.030 align:middle line:84% sometimes pointing a bony, crooked finger across the room 00:53:55.030 --> 00:53:56.990 align:middle line:84% and gleefully shouting out a name, 00:53:56.990 --> 00:53:58.990 align:middle line:84% though no one could possibly have heard it 00:53:58.990 --> 00:54:01.150 align:middle line:90% in all that uproar. 00:54:01.150 --> 00:54:04.210 align:middle line:84% Then somehow we got the seats, all of us together, 00:54:04.210 --> 00:54:07.235 align:middle line:84% me wedged in between my father and Uncle Charlie. 00:54:07.235 --> 00:54:09.190 align:middle line:84% A man got up in the front of the room. 00:54:09.190 --> 00:54:12.130 align:middle line:84% He looked like a Congressman or a well-to-do minister 00:54:12.130 --> 00:54:13.330 align:middle line:90% and said something. 00:54:13.330 --> 00:54:14.870 align:middle line:90% Everyone laughed. 00:54:14.870 --> 00:54:15.940 align:middle line:90% He said something more. 00:54:15.940 --> 00:54:17.290 align:middle line:90% They laughed some more. 00:54:17.290 --> 00:54:22.120 align:middle line:84% And then from somewhere booming around us came organ music. 00:54:22.120 --> 00:54:25.940 align:middle line:84% Uncle Charlie was jerking at my elbow, making me look down. 00:54:25.940 --> 00:54:28.810 align:middle line:84% He held a small Bible-like book with writing in it. 00:54:28.810 --> 00:54:31.810 align:middle line:84% No music, as in the hymn books in our church at home. 00:54:31.810 --> 00:54:35.110 align:middle line:84% I hadn't yet seen the ones my grandfather left my mother. 00:54:35.110 --> 00:54:38.590 align:middle line:84% Just writing and not a word anywhere that I could read. 00:54:38.590 --> 00:54:40.930 align:middle line:84% "You know your do re mi?" he asked, 00:54:40.930 --> 00:54:43.750 align:middle line:84% looking at me sternly, his face very bright. 00:54:43.750 --> 00:54:46.420 align:middle line:84% I shook my head, noticing only now that above the hymn 00:54:46.420 --> 00:54:49.840 align:middle line:84% words, all in Welsh, there were little words, do re mi, 00:54:49.840 --> 00:54:53.770 align:middle line:84% and so on, as meaningless to me at the time as all the others. 00:54:53.770 --> 00:54:56.230 align:middle line:84% Uncle Charlie looked up at my father as if an alarm, 00:54:56.230 --> 00:54:58.090 align:middle line:90% then grinned looking back at me. 00:54:58.090 --> 00:54:59.410 align:middle line:90% "Never mind," he said. 00:54:59.410 --> 00:55:01.570 align:middle line:90% "You sing what I sing." 00:55:01.570 --> 00:55:04.270 align:middle line:84% On every side of us people were standing up now, a few of them 00:55:04.270 --> 00:55:06.640 align:middle line:84% beginning to tap their feet, just barely moving 00:55:06.640 --> 00:55:08.890 align:middle line:90% the toes of their lumpy shoes. 00:55:08.890 --> 00:55:12.190 align:middle line:84% My father and Uncle Charlie helped me stand up in my chair. 00:55:12.190 --> 00:55:14.080 align:middle line:84% Suddenly, like a shock of thunder 00:55:14.080 --> 00:55:17.992 align:middle line:84% that made the whole room shake, they began to sing. 00:55:17.992 --> 00:55:20.200 align:middle line:84% Most of them seemed to have no need of the hymn books 00:55:20.200 --> 00:55:21.760 align:middle line:84% and couldn't have used them anyway, 00:55:21.760 --> 00:55:23.950 align:middle line:84% singing as they did with their heads lifted, 00:55:23.950 --> 00:55:26.950 align:middle line:84% mouths wide as fish mouths, proclaiming whatever 00:55:26.950 --> 00:55:30.070 align:middle line:84% it was they proclaimed, not so much to the front of the hall 00:55:30.070 --> 00:55:31.840 align:middle line:90% as to the gleaming roof. 00:55:31.840 --> 00:55:35.350 align:middle line:84% They sang as Welsh choruses always do in numerous parts, 00:55:35.350 --> 00:55:38.830 align:middle line:84% each is clearly defined as cold, individual currents 00:55:38.830 --> 00:55:41.140 align:middle line:90% in a wide, bright river. 00:55:41.140 --> 00:55:42.370 align:middle line:90% There were no weak voices, 00:55:42.370 --> 00:55:45.430 align:middle line:84% though some, like Uncle Charlie's, were reedy and harsh. 00:55:45.430 --> 00:55:46.450 align:middle line:90% Not that it mattered. 00:55:46.450 --> 00:55:49.150 align:middle line:84% The river of sound could use it all. 00:55:49.150 --> 00:55:51.220 align:middle line:84% They sang as if the music was singing itself 00:55:51.220 --> 00:55:54.370 align:middle line:84% through them, sung out boldly, no uncertainties 00:55:54.370 --> 00:55:55.780 align:middle line:90% or hesitations. 00:55:55.780 --> 00:55:59.470 align:middle line:84% And I, as if by magic, sang with them, as sure of myself 00:55:59.470 --> 00:56:02.830 align:middle line:84% every note of the way as the wisest and hardiest 00:56:02.830 --> 00:56:04.150 align:middle line:90% in the room. 00:56:04.150 --> 00:56:06.010 align:middle line:84% I was astonished by my power, as I 00:56:06.010 --> 00:56:07.540 align:middle line:84% know, thinking back, that it was not 00:56:07.540 --> 00:56:10.510 align:middle line:90% as miraculous as I imagined. 00:56:10.510 --> 00:56:12.700 align:middle line:84% Blown along by those powerful voices, 00:56:12.700 --> 00:56:14.800 align:middle line:90% the music's ancient structure. 00:56:14.800 --> 00:56:18.070 align:middle line:84% Only a very good musician could have sung off key. 00:56:18.070 --> 00:56:20.080 align:middle line:90% And yet it did seem miraculous. 00:56:20.080 --> 00:56:22.360 align:middle line:84% It seemed to have bones and blood that sang. 00:56:22.360 --> 00:56:24.970 align:middle line:84% All Heaven and Earth singing harmony lines. 00:56:24.970 --> 00:56:27.970 align:middle line:84% And when the music broke off from the final chord, 00:56:27.970 --> 00:56:30.200 align:middle line:84% the echo that rang in the walls around us 00:56:30.200 --> 00:56:32.640 align:middle line:90% was like a roaring amen. 00:56:32.640 --> 00:56:34.580 align:middle line:90% Hymn after hymn we sang-- 00:56:34.580 --> 00:56:38.030 align:middle line:84% old people, children, people my parents' age. 00:56:38.030 --> 00:56:41.390 align:middle line:84% Ancient tunes invented before the major mode was thought of, 00:56:41.390 --> 00:56:44.330 align:middle line:84% tunes like hugely breathing creatures. 00:56:44.330 --> 00:56:46.820 align:middle line:84% We were outside ourselves, caught up in a [? well, as ?] 00:56:46.820 --> 00:56:47.990 align:middle line:90% the Welsh say. 00:56:47.990 --> 00:56:50.150 align:middle line:84% It really did seem to me, once or twice, 00:56:50.150 --> 00:56:52.340 align:middle line:84% that I looked down on all the congregation 00:56:52.340 --> 00:56:54.950 align:middle line:90% from the beams above our heads. 00:56:54.950 --> 00:56:57.850 align:middle line:84% My father's hand was closed hard on mine. 00:56:57.850 --> 00:56:59.450 align:middle line:84% Uncle Charlie held my other hand, 00:56:59.450 --> 00:57:01.340 align:middle line:90% squeezing it just as tightly. 00:57:01.340 --> 00:57:04.130 align:middle line:84% Tears streamed from his brown eye and blue eye, 00:57:04.130 --> 00:57:06.830 align:middle line:84% washing his cheeks, dripping from his mustache, 00:57:06.830 --> 00:57:09.470 align:middle line:90% making his whole face shine. 00:57:09.470 --> 00:57:11.000 align:middle line:84% After all, when we were leaving, I 00:57:11.000 --> 00:57:13.550 align:middle line:84% saw that Aunt Kate and my mother had been crying too, 00:57:13.550 --> 00:57:17.360 align:middle line:84% even my grandmother, though not my father or Uncle Ed. 00:57:17.360 --> 00:57:20.700 align:middle line:84% On the steps outside, lighting a cigar, Uncle Ed said, 00:57:20.700 --> 00:57:21.740 align:middle line:90% 'good sing.' 00:57:21.740 --> 00:57:24.920 align:middle line:84% My father nodded and hitched up his pants and turned to look 00:57:24.920 --> 00:57:28.520 align:middle line:84% back at the door, as if sorry to leave. 'Good turnout.' 00:57:28.520 --> 00:57:31.070 align:middle line:84% Uncle Charlie, with his hands in his pockets, 00:57:31.070 --> 00:57:33.005 align:middle line:84% staring at the ground, said nothing. 00:57:33.005 --> 00:57:35.443 align:middle line:90% 00:57:35.443 --> 00:57:36.860 align:middle line:84% The following night, Uncle Charlie 00:57:36.860 --> 00:57:39.630 align:middle line:84% didn't come in for supper, though they called and called. 00:57:39.630 --> 00:57:41.630 align:middle line:84% I watched through the kitchen window as Uncle Ed 00:57:41.630 --> 00:57:44.630 align:middle line:84% and my father, gray as ghosts in the moonlit garden, 00:57:44.630 --> 00:57:46.760 align:middle line:84% shouted toward the trees across the road, 00:57:46.760 --> 00:57:49.010 align:middle line:84% the glittering creek, the blacksmith's shop, 00:57:49.010 --> 00:57:52.040 align:middle line:84% then turned and moved heavily as if gravity had changed 00:57:52.040 --> 00:57:55.160 align:middle line:84% and the air had grown thick toward the mill. 00:57:55.160 --> 00:57:57.950 align:middle line:84% Later, Uncle Ed, in the wooden armchair in the kitchen holding 00:57:57.950 --> 00:58:00.500 align:middle line:84% his cigar on the hand that had three fingers missing, 00:58:00.500 --> 00:58:03.230 align:middle line:84% stared into space and said, 'Poor Charlie, 00:58:03.230 --> 00:58:05.450 align:middle line:90% I wonder what's got into him.' 00:58:05.450 --> 00:58:07.730 align:middle line:84% Aunt Kate stood over by the sink or head bowed, 00:58:07.730 --> 00:58:10.730 align:middle line:84% thinking, folding the dish towel and unfolding it, 00:58:10.730 --> 00:58:12.500 align:middle line:90% then folding it again. 00:58:12.500 --> 00:58:15.140 align:middle line:84% 'I guess we better phone the police,' she said at last. 00:58:15.140 --> 00:58:17.210 align:middle line:84% 'No, don't do that,' Uncle Ed said suddenly, 00:58:17.210 --> 00:58:19.460 align:middle line:84% as if she'd started him out of a daydream. 00:58:19.460 --> 00:58:21.650 align:middle line:84% He leaned his forearms in the arms of the chair 00:58:21.650 --> 00:58:23.180 align:middle line:90% and hefted himself up out of it. 00:58:23.180 --> 00:58:25.280 align:middle line:84% 'I'll arrive to the office and phone around among 00:58:25.280 --> 00:58:28.730 align:middle line:84% the neighbors a bit,' he said, and it once went to the door. 00:58:28.730 --> 00:58:31.400 align:middle line:84% 'Why not phone from here,' Aunt Kate said or began to say, 00:58:31.400 --> 00:58:33.740 align:middle line:90% then glanced at me and stopped. 00:58:33.740 --> 00:58:35.930 align:middle line:84% 'Here, let me give you a hand,' my father said. 00:58:35.930 --> 00:58:38.720 align:middle line:84% The two of them went out and forward like shy boys 00:58:38.720 --> 00:58:41.510 align:middle line:84% and closed the door quietly behind them. 00:58:41.510 --> 00:58:44.000 align:middle line:84% 'I'll give Buddy his supper,' my mother said. 00:58:44.000 --> 00:58:46.730 align:middle line:84% 'I suppose it won't hurt for the rest of us to wait.' 00:58:46.730 --> 00:58:49.805 align:middle line:84% 'That's fine,' Aunt Kate said, still folding and unfolding 00:58:49.805 --> 00:58:51.163 align:middle line:90% the dish towel. 00:58:51.163 --> 00:58:53.330 align:middle line:84% 'We should never have taken him to the songfest,' my 00:58:53.330 --> 00:58:55.880 align:middle line:84% grandmother said. 'I told you it wouldn't be good for him.' 00:58:55.880 --> 00:58:57.950 align:middle line:84% My mother, herding me over to my chair, said, 00:58:57.950 --> 00:59:00.050 align:middle line:84% 'Mother, you never said any such thing.' 00:59:00.050 --> 00:59:02.120 align:middle line:84% 'Well, I meant to,' my grandmother said, 00:59:02.120 --> 00:59:05.500 align:middle line:84% and firmly clamped her mouth shut. 00:59:05.500 --> 00:59:08.420 align:middle line:84% Tomorrow morning we found him, I learned much later, right 00:59:08.420 --> 00:59:11.300 align:middle line:84% across the road in the creek behind the blacksmith's shop. 00:59:11.300 --> 00:59:13.550 align:middle line:84% I still occasionally dreamed of it, though, of course, 00:59:13.550 --> 00:59:14.720 align:middle line:90% I never saw it-- 00:59:14.720 --> 00:59:18.320 align:middle line:84% Uncle Charlie lying face up below the moonlit glass-clear 00:59:18.320 --> 00:59:23.280 align:middle line:84% surface, staring emotionless at the perfectly quiet stars. 00:59:23.280 --> 00:59:25.400 align:middle line:84% Aunt Kate, it turned out, had known all along 00:59:25.400 --> 00:59:27.302 align:middle line:84% that he'd gone off to take his own life, 00:59:27.302 --> 00:59:28.760 align:middle line:84% though she'd refused to believe it, 00:59:28.760 --> 00:59:30.782 align:middle line:90% and had therefore told no one. 00:59:30.782 --> 00:59:32.990 align:middle line:84% She'd found his clothes that afternoon, just a little 00:59:32.990 --> 00:59:36.050 align:middle line:84% after sunset, neatly folded and stacked in the chair 00:59:36.050 --> 00:59:39.230 align:middle line:84% beside his bed in the room where they let him live downstairs. 00:59:39.230 --> 00:59:41.840 align:middle line:84% 'He'd left them a message,' my grandmother said. 00:59:41.840 --> 00:59:44.510 align:middle line:84% For what were they were worth, the world could have them back. 00:59:44.510 --> 00:59:47.390 align:middle line:84% 'Now that's enough of that,' my father said sharply. 00:59:47.390 --> 00:59:50.270 align:middle line:84% Aunt Kate had told herself one foolish lie after another, 00:59:50.270 --> 00:59:52.580 align:middle line:84% as she explained to us, her hands over her eyes, 00:59:52.580 --> 00:59:54.890 align:middle line:84% her glasses on the table in front of her. 00:59:54.890 --> 00:59:58.100 align:middle line:84% Perhaps he'd found a lady friend, she'd said to herself 00:59:58.100 --> 01:00:00.620 align:middle line:84% and had gone out and bought himself new clothes, even 01:00:00.620 --> 01:00:03.058 align:middle line:90% new socks and shoes. 01:00:03.058 --> 01:00:05.600 align:middle line:84% The following night, when we knew Uncle Charlie was dead, 01:00:05.600 --> 01:00:07.730 align:middle line:84% but no one was admitting it was suicide. 01:00:07.730 --> 01:00:09.440 align:middle line:90% They never did admit that. 01:00:09.440 --> 01:00:12.350 align:middle line:84% Uncle Ed's living room was filled with people. 01:00:12.350 --> 01:00:15.500 align:middle line:84% All the chairs were occupied, even the arms of them 01:00:15.500 --> 01:00:18.752 align:middle line:84% where boys or young women sat, most of them cousins. 01:00:18.752 --> 01:00:20.210 align:middle line:84% And there were people in the chairs 01:00:20.210 --> 01:00:22.585 align:middle line:84% my father had brought in from the dining room and kitchen 01:00:22.585 --> 01:00:23.540 align:middle line:90% too. 01:00:23.540 --> 01:00:26.270 align:middle line:84% The people were all talking in low voices and sniffling, 01:00:26.270 --> 01:00:28.160 align:middle line:90% their eyes wet and red. 01:00:28.160 --> 01:00:31.668 align:middle line:84% I sat on one of my father's legs, watching. 01:00:31.668 --> 01:00:33.710 align:middle line:84% They talked to the singer Uncle Charlie had been. 01:00:33.710 --> 01:00:36.233 align:middle line:84% The festivals would never have been the same without him. 01:00:36.233 --> 01:00:38.150 align:middle line:84% They spoke of it as shame it was that he never 01:00:38.150 --> 01:00:39.170 align:middle line:90% had a wife and children. 01:00:39.170 --> 01:00:41.150 align:middle line:84% It would have made all the difference. 01:00:41.150 --> 01:00:44.240 align:middle line:84% And for a while, some sad talk made them ill at ease. 01:00:44.240 --> 01:00:47.270 align:middle line:84% They talked about other things-- crops and the weather, 01:00:47.270 --> 01:00:48.770 align:middle line:90% marriages, politics. 01:00:48.770 --> 01:00:51.710 align:middle line:84% Sometimes they talked now in groups of three or four, 01:00:51.710 --> 01:00:54.050 align:middle line:90% sometimes all as one group. 01:00:54.050 --> 01:00:56.330 align:middle line:90% Aunt Kate served tea. 01:00:56.330 --> 01:00:57.980 align:middle line:84% Some of the men had whiskey with them, 01:00:57.980 --> 01:00:59.820 align:middle line:84% which Aunt Kate didn't approve of, 01:00:59.820 --> 01:01:02.510 align:middle line:84% but she looked at the carpet and said nothing. 01:01:02.510 --> 01:01:05.570 align:middle line:84% The clock on the mahogany desk ticked on and on, but neither 01:01:05.570 --> 01:01:08.270 align:middle line:84% in the darkness outside nor in the dimly-lit living room 01:01:08.270 --> 01:01:10.430 align:middle line:90% was anything changing. 01:01:10.430 --> 01:01:12.230 align:middle line:84% Peoples stayed a little now and then, 01:01:12.230 --> 01:01:15.440 align:middle line:84% shifting position, moving just an arm or foot, 01:01:15.440 --> 01:01:17.300 align:middle line:90% sometimes blowing their noses. 01:01:17.300 --> 01:01:18.920 align:middle line:90% But no one got up yet. 01:01:18.920 --> 01:01:20.870 align:middle line:90% No one left for home. 01:01:20.870 --> 01:01:23.240 align:middle line:84% Slowly, the whole conversation died out 01:01:23.240 --> 01:01:25.470 align:middle line:84% like the embers in the fireplace. 01:01:25.470 --> 01:01:27.290 align:middle line:84% And as the stillness deepened, settling 01:01:27.290 --> 01:01:29.930 align:middle line:84% in like winter, an old magic spell, 01:01:29.930 --> 01:01:33.110 align:middle line:84% it began to seem that the silence was unbreakable, 01:01:33.110 --> 01:01:36.310 align:middle line:90% our final say. 01:01:36.310 --> 01:01:38.260 align:middle line:84% Then an old farmer named [? Cy Tom ?] 01:01:38.260 --> 01:01:41.020 align:middle line:84% sitting in the corner with his hands folded, twirling around 01:01:41.020 --> 01:01:43.010 align:middle line:84% his pants cuff, cleared his throat 01:01:43.010 --> 01:01:46.570 align:middle line:84% and pushed his chin out, face reddening, eyes evasive, 01:01:46.570 --> 01:01:48.730 align:middle line:90% and began to sing. 01:01:48.730 --> 01:01:52.900 align:middle line:84% Tentatively, then more boldly, others joined in with him. 01:01:52.900 --> 01:01:55.240 align:middle line:84% Aunt Kate, with an expression half timid, 01:01:55.240 --> 01:01:58.540 align:middle line:84% half cunning, went to the piano, and after a minute, 01:01:58.540 --> 01:02:03.160 align:middle line:84% sat down, took off her glasses, and began to play. 01:02:03.160 --> 01:02:07.090 align:middle line:84% They were singing in parts now, their heads lightly lifted. 01:02:07.090 --> 01:02:11.080 align:middle line:84% And the carpet, one after another, as if coming to life, 01:02:11.080 --> 01:02:13.660 align:middle line:90% their shoes began to move." 01:02:13.660 --> 01:02:14.470 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 01:02:14.470 --> 01:02:18.720 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 01:02:18.720 --> 01:02:42.000 align:middle line:90%