Clearing the Sky
"This is the way. Jess," said my father, pointing with his cane across the deep valley below us. "I want to show you something you've not seen for many years!"
"Isn't it too hot for you to do much walking?" I wiped the streams of sweat from my face to keep them from stinging my eyes.
I didn't want to go with him. I had just finished walking a half mile uphill from my home to his. I had carried a basket of dishes to Mom. There were two alips in the road and 1 couldn't drive my car. And I knew how hot it was. It was 97 in the shade I knew that from January until April my father had gone to eight different doctors. One of the doctors had told him not to walk the length of a city block. He told my father to get a taxi to take him home. But my father walked home five miles across the mountain and told Mom what the doctor had said. Forty years ago a doctor had told him the same thing. And he had live to raise a family of five children. He had done as much hard work in those years as any man
I could not protest to him now. He had made up his mind. When he made up his mind to do a thing, he would do it if he had to crawl. He didn't care if it was 97 in the shade or 16 below zero. I wiped more sweat from my face as I followed hitu down the little path between the pasture and the meadow
Suddenly he stopped at the edge of the Honka pocket km from his pocket, and cut a wisp of alfalfa. He held itp beswornhimand the au
"Look at this, Jess!" he bragged "Did you ever see better alfalfa grow out of the earth?
"It's the best looking hay I've ever seen any place." I said, "I've not seen better looking alfalfa even in the Little Sandy River bottoms!"
"When I bought this little farm, every body around here sand I'd end up with my family at the country poor farm if I tried to make a living here," he bragged again. "It took me thirty years to improve these old worn-out acres to make them do this!",
"I like these woods, Jess," my father said. "Remember when we used to come here to hunt for squirrels? Remember when we sat beneath these hickoties and the squngels threw green hickory shells down at us? The morning wind just as he break of day in August was so good to breathe. I can't forget those days. And in October when the rabbits were ripe and the frosts had come and the hickory leaves had turned yellow and when the October winds blew they rustled the big leaves from the trees and they fell like yellow rain drops to the ground! Remember," he said, looking at me with his pale blue eyes. "How our hounds, Rags and Scout, would make the rabbits circle! These were good days, Jess! That's why I remember this mountain"
"Is that what you wanted to show me?" I asked if
"Oh, no, no," he said as be began to climb the second buffalified ably the flat toward the sky. The posts on top of the mountain above looked as if deterged their long boughs were fondling the scence of white cloud Wag nie to see was on top of the highest point of my farm. And with the geofthe years, I had been over this point many mes. I had ever we wnything extraordinary p this high point of rigand land. I had sees the beauty of many wild flowers, few rock s and many species of hard and soft-wood trees
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"Why do you take the path straight up the point?" Lasked "Lock at these oder pe What are they doing here?
Within the distance of a few yards, several paths tefi the main path and circled around the slope, gradually clinking the mountain
"All paths go to the same place, "he answered
"Then why do you take the steep one? I asked
"Tli explain later," he spoke with half-breaths
He rested a minute to catch his second wind while I managed to stand on the path by holding to a little sapling, because it was too steep for my feet to hold unless I braced myself
Then my father started to move slowly up the path again, supporting hinseif with his cane. I followed at his heels. Just a few steps in front of him a fox squirrel crossed the path and ran up a hickory tree.
"See that, Jesaf he shouted.
"Yes, I did," I answered.
"That brings back something to me," he said, "brings hack the old days to see a fos squirrel but this won't bring hack as much smuch as something I'm goin' to show you"
My curiosity was aroused. I thought he had found a new kind of wild grass, or an unfamiliar herb, or a new kind of tree. For I remembered the time he had found a coffos tree in our woods. It is, as far as I know, the only one of its kind growing in our country.
Only twice did my father stop to wipe the sweat from his eyes as he climbed th second steep bluff toward the fingers of the pines. We reached the limbless trunks of these tu straight pines whose branches reached toward the blue depth of the sky, or the white clo was now gone. I saw a clearing, a small clearing of not more than three-fourths of an acre the heart of this wilderness right on the mountain top
"Now, you're comin' to something, son," he said as he pushed down the top wires he could cross the fence. "This is something I want you to see!"
