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The Rule and the Raven

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The Past That Is Never Past [excerpt, “Fathers, Sons, Blood”]

The Past That Is Never Past [excerpt, “Fathers, Sons, Blood”]

Last updated on: July 25, 2016 at 12:47 pm by Anne Carpenter

The Past That Is Never Past [excerpt, “Fathers, Sons, Blood”] 2016-07-25T12:47:50-08:00 Anne Carpenter

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Thomas Cole, "American Lake in Summer"

Thomas Cole, “American Lake in Summer”

The following is an excerpt from Harry Crews’s essay, “Fathers, Sons, Blood.”

—

I picked up a magazine not long ago in which a man was writing about his children. In the very beginning of the piece, he said, “The storms of childhood and adolescence had faded into the past.” He would be the poorer for it if that were true. But it is not true, not for him or for any father. The storms don’t fade into the past, nor do all the moments that are beautiful and full of happiness, the moments that quicken our hearts with pride. In early July of the summer Byron would turn 12, we were sitting on the top of Springer Mountain in Georgia. It was raining and we were soaked and exhausted to the bone, having made the long steep climb of the approach to the Appalachian Trail, which winds its way across the Eastern united States and finally ends on Mount Katahdin in Maine. Between us, embedded in the boulder on which we were sitting, was the metal image of a young hiker.

Byron put his hand on the stone and said, “Well, we made it to the beginning.”

And so we had, but a hell of a beginning it had been. It hadn’t stopped raining all day as we’d climbed steadily over broken rock. He was carrying a 20-pound pack and mine weighed 45, both probably too heavy, but we’d decided to pack enough with us so that we could hike for as long as we wanted to without getting out of the mountains to restock our supplies. I had put him in the lead to set the pace.

“Remember, we’re not in a hurry,” I called after we’d been going awhile. “This is not a goddamn contest.”

I was forced to say it because he’d taken off over the brutally uneven trail like a young goat. He’d looked back at me for only an instant and kept climbing.

Then, as the mud and rock made the footing more and more unsure, I said, “You think we ought to find a place to wait out this rain.”

He stopped and turned for just an instant to look at me. “Did we come to by God hike or did we come to hike?”

He was smiling, but he’d said it with just the finest edge of contempt, which is the way you are supposed to say it, and I scrambled to follow him, my heart lifting. Byron had heard me ask him much the same thing many times before, because if you change a couple of words, the question will serve in any number of circumstances. And now, in great high spirits, he was giving it back to me. …

“Dad, you remember about the time with the rain?”

“The time about the rain? Hell, son, we been in the rain a lot together.” I was wet and my feet hurt. I wanted to get the tent up and start a fire.

He cut his eyes toward me. Drops of rain hung on the ends of his fine lashes. He was suddenly very serious. What in the hell was coming down here? What was coming down was the past that is never past and, in this case, the past against which I had no defense except my own failed heart.

“We weren’t in it together,” he said. “You made me stand in it. Stand in it for a long time.”

Yes, I had done that, but I had not thought about it in years. It’s just not the sort of thing a man would want to think about. Byron’s mother had gone North for a while and left me to take care of him. He was seven years old and just starting in the second grade. I had told him that day to be home at six o’clock and we should go out to dinner. Truthfully, we’d been out to eat every night since Sally had been gone, because washing dishes is right up at the top of the list of things I won’t do. It had started misting rain at midday and had not stopped. Byron had not appeared at six, nor was he there at 6:45. That was back when I was bad to go to the bottle, and while I wasn’t drunk, I wasn’t sober, either. Lay it on the whiskey. A man will snatch at any straw to save himself from the responsibility of an ignoble action. When he did come home at 7:15, I asked him where he’d been.

“At Joe’s,” he said. But I had known that. I reminded him of when we had said we were going to dinner. But he had known that.

“It was raining,” he said.

I said, “Let’s go out and look at it.”

We went out into the carport and watched the warm spring rain.

“And you thought the rain would hurt you if you walked home in it?”

“It’s raining, Dad,” he said, exasperated now.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “You go out there and stand in it and we’ll see how bad it hurts you.”

He walked out into the rain and stood looking at me. “How long do I have to stand here?”

“Only until we see if it hurts you. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you when you are about to get hurt.”

I went back inside. So far, pretty shitty, but it gets worse. When I went back inside, I sat down in a recliner, meaning to stay there only a minute. But I hadn’t reckoned with the liquor and the rain on the roof. I woke with a start and looked at my watch. It was a quarter of nine. I went outside and there the boy stood, his blond hair plastered and every thread on him soaked. He didn’t look at all sad or forlorn; what he did look was severely pissed.

“Come on in,” I said. “And then: “Where do you want to eat?”

“I don’t want to eat.”

“How do you feel?” I asked.

He glared at me. “Well, I’m not hurt.”

We sat there on the top of Springer Mountain and looked at each other with the rain falling around us. I’d forgotten entirely about my feet and the tent and the fire. My throat felt like it was closing up and I had to speak to keep breathing.

“I wanted to apologize, but I had done such a sorry-assed thing that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. But at the time, it didn’t seem like it’d do any good.”

“It probably wouldn’t have,” he said. “Then.”

“Well, I’m sorry. I was wrong. I should have said so, but…” I’d run out of words.

He said, “I know. And I was only down the block. I’ve thought about it. I could have called. But, shit, I was only a little kid.”

I loved that. I loved how he said he was only a little kid. “What were you thinking while you were out there? I mean, you had plenty of time to think.”

He shook his head and laughed as though he couldn’t believe the memory of his thinking himself. “I never thought but one thing.”

“What was that?”

“I thought, That drunk fucker thinks I’m going to call and ask him to come in out of the rain…but I’m not.” Then he laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world, and I laughed too.

That was the first time I knew he was the kind of guy who could be put out on the street naked and he’d survive. The kid had grit in his craw. I thought it then and I think it now. But more than that, there on the mountain, the boy and I had been privileged to share a moment of grace that we could never have shared if I had not fucked up so badly all those years ago and if he had not had the kind of heart he has. But that moment is the privilege of blood.

—

Harry Crews (d. 2012) was an American essayist and novelist born in Georgia.

“Father, Sons, Blood,” pp. 178-181. From Classic Crews: A Harry Crews Reader. New York: Touchstone, 1995.

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